Karl Bookhammer
Karl Bookhammer
By Geoff Bottone
The Red Dragon Inn 10 Kickstarter is live!
The great thing about being strong is that Karl could carry a lot of books.
He carried those books into the Red Dragon Inn and used them to set up a little fortress at a corner table. None of them were the book that he had planned to get, alas, but they were consolation prizes that he could occupy his time with until that book was available again.
One of the waitresses brought him a mineral water and a bowl of pretzels, allowing Karl to snack while he was reading. He was always careful to wipe his fingers on the napkin he spread across his knee before touching the pages. In this way, he passed about an hour, finishing the book that he had read on the carriage down to Greyport and starting on one of the fresh tomes he had checked out of the Collegium library.
The new book was a fantasy story that was on the “Recommended by our Librarians” shelf. It featured an elf who had been run over by a stampede of wild horses and had woken up in another world. It turned out, in that world, he was something called an “Accountant” and had strange powers over numbers and money. For some reason, this made him very attractive to every woman he encountered.
Karl did not think it was a good book, but it was certainly a fun book, and it helped to pass the time.
He was about forty pages into it when he got the impression that someone was staring at him.
Peeking over the top of his book fort, Karl spotted two goblins and a dwarf seated at a nearby table. Karl didn’t recognize the dwarf, but he did recognize the leather slouch hat one of the goblins wore, and the very large bag of explosive ordinance sitting in the middle of the table.
It also helped that the other goblin, his friend Nitrel, was staring unblinkingly across the table straight at him.
He waved. Nitrel’s face transformed into an excited grin. She waved back.
“It is you!” she shouted, scampering across the common room floor to greet him.
Her explosive arrival toppled the books, scattering them across the table and down onto the floor. Karl managed to catch a few of them and spent the next few moments picking up others. Luckily, Warthorn ran a pretty clean ship, and there was nothing on the floor to stain the books’ pages or covers.
“It’s Karl!” Nitrel shouted, as she gave him a firm squeeze around his midsection. “I told you it was him, but did you believe me? Nooooo.”
Karl hugged her back. Over her shoulder, he saw her brother, Keet, and the dwarf looking up to the table.
Keet whistled. “It’s no wonder! You’ve definitely filled out quite a bit since we last saw you. I don’t know what you’re doing, Karl, but it’s working.”
Nitrel finally relented her hug and hopped back. “I bet it’s a growth spurt. Humans get growth spurts all the time, right Karl?”
Karl chuckled and shook his head. “No, no. I had my growth spurt a few years ago and, honestly, thought that that was the biggest I would ever get. But then I found the Atlas!”
“Atlas?” asked Keet, poking a finger up under the brim of his hat to scratch his head.
Karl stacked all of his books to one side and motioned for Keet, Nitrel, and their dwarven friend to sit down. He also moved his hammer off of one of the seats and leaned it carefully against one of the table legs. The dwarf studied the hammer for a moment and nodded in approval.
“That’s a dwarven librarian’s hammer, and no mistake!” he said.
“It is!” replied Karl, brightly.
“Why would a librarian need a hammer?” asked Nitrel, who had run over to the other table and returned with her bomb bag.
Karl lifted up the hammer and pointed. “This part on the bottom here is good for opening up crates of books.”
“Aye,” said the dwarf, winking. “And the hammer part’s good for clubbing anything that tries to get at the books!”
“Yeah, I wish I had had one when I ran across that dire bookworm in the Anvilhall Library,” said Karl, theatrically mopping his brow. “I had to make do with a copy of the Unabridged and Collected Speeches of Queen Akkarai.”
“Ha!” the dwarf laughed. “Nobody gets through those!”
“Thankfully the bookworm didn’t either!” said Karl, also laughing.
As their laughter died down, the dwarf stuck out a calloused hand. “Dimli.”
“Karl Bookhammer,” said Karl, taking it and shaking it, before adding, “just Dimli?”
A little of the mirthful light went out of Dimli’s eyes, and Karl knew he had made a mistake.
“Aye, alas. For now. My family is from the shamed clan, from Old Dwarvenhold.”
Karl had read about Dwarvenhold in several histories and fictionalized accounts. The ancient dwarven stronghold had been overrun by its enemies and, if the old tales were accurate, wiped from the face of Orrean. It was said that the clan of the Guardians had betrayed Dwarvenhold by allowing their enemies to enter the city.
There were many reasons why dwarves might go without a patronymic, some of them amusing. Being from a sept of the Guardians Clan was the least amusing reason. Poor Dimli.
“I’m sorry,” he said, somewhat awkwardly, as he released Dimli’s hand.
“Ah, lad, don’t worry about it. I’m sure the Guardians didn’t betray our people, and once I find Dwarvenhold, I’ll find the evidence to prove it.”
Karl noticed the two goblins sharing a somewhat worried glance.
“But anyway!” said Nitrel, a bit too cheerily. “Tell us your secret, Karl! About how you got so…big!”
“Well, like I said, I found the Atlas.” Karl said, somewhat relieved to be sliding away from his faux pas. “At first, I thought it was going to be a book of maps, but it turns out it contained a previously lost exercising principle called Energetic Tightening. I decided to follow the instructions, to see if it would work.”
“And obviously, it did!” said Nitrel, staring up at him.
“Yes! I’ve continued the regimen for about a year now and,” he flexed his arm dramatically, “well, you saw the results, obviously!”
“That’s fantastic,” said Keet. “I wish I could do something like that, but I just don’t have the discipline.”
“Oh, that’s no problem,” Karl replied. “The exercises in the Atlas are really easy. Unfortunately, I don’t have the Atlas with me, but I could send it to you when I get back home. You won’t even need to reimburse me for postage!”
Keet looked down at the tabletop. “Thanks, but you don’t have to go to all the trouble. Besides, don’t you need it?”
“It’s no trouble at all!” Karl replied. “And I’ve memorized the exercises by now, so you’ll find them really easy to do!”
Keet slumped down in his chair while Nitrel grinned at him. Karl wasn’t sure what was going on, but chalked it up to one of those weird sibling moments. An only child himself, Karl had experienced one personally, but he had read about them.
“Speaking of back home,” said Keet, perking up. “What are you doing in Greyport, anyway? Not that it’s not great to see you, but we’re a bit out of the way for the good people of Butter Pond.”
“Well, it’s a longish story and it’s not very interesting,” said Karl, “but I’ll try to sum up.
“I sent an Interlibrary Loan Request to the Collegium Library asking to borrow The Compleat Histories of the Troll People. I never got a response so, after months of waiting, I decided to come to Greyport to talk to someone in person.
“I talked to this nice minotaur at the desk who apologized. He told me I was supposed to receive a letter stating that they had temporarily suspended their loan program because they were working on fixing a security issue.”
This time, Dimli, Keet, and Nitrel all exchanged somewhat furtive glances, prompting Karl to ask, “do you know what this is about?”
“Well, kinda,” said Nitrel. “But we’ve also kinda been sworn to secrecy about it.”
“Oh,” said Karl. Then, after a moment, he added, “was it bad?”
“Not too–” began Keet.
“Bad enough,” said Dimli. “And there were two incidents, if memory serves.”
Keet shot Dimli a please stop talking look before leaning toward Karl. “There were, but they’ve been handled. They’re also in the middle of upgrading their physical and magical security to make sure that nothing like this ever happens again.”
“Oh, aye. They say that,” said Dimli. “The problem, of course, is that if you’re a good enough wizard, you know enough about magic to defeat most types of security. And there’s some types of wizards who seem to see impregnable magical security as a challenge.”
“I’m sure the wizards know what they’re doing, though,” said Keet, “so I’m sure it won’t be a problem.”
“Have you met wizards?” asked Dimli.
Nitrel, whose attention had been wandering in the last few moments, jolted back to the conversation and slammed her fist on the table, making her bomb bag rattle.
“Speaking of parties!” Nitrel shouted. “The three of us are going on an adventure!”
“Yes!” replied Keet, a bit too loudly. “Although it’s more of an expedition, really.”
“They’re the same thing!” said Nitrel.
“They’re not,” Keet insisted.
“Okay, then!” Nitrel folded her arms. “Tell me what the difference is!”
“Well, adventures are more about crawling around in dungeons, fighting monsters, and getting treasure. We’re just going to one of the old tunnel complexes on the outskirts of the Undercity to look for some information.”
“But there’ll be monsters in the tunnels, riiight?” asked Nitrel.
Dimli shrugged. “Maybe. Sometimes there’s beasties running around down there that the Runoff Rangers haven’t corralled yet.”
“And Dimli hopes to recover some knowledge from the tunnels,” said Nitrel, “and, Keet, you’re always telling me how knowledge is the greatest treasure.”
Keet sank down in his chair, looking tired and defeated. “That’s true.”
“Sounds like an adventure to me, then!” said Nitrel, with a satisfied smile. “Oh! Karl! You should come with us! It’ll be fun.”
Karl considered the invitation. He had certainly read more than his fair share of adventure stories. The better written ones had almost convinced him that even he could travel to far off lands, square off against deadly perils and legions of monsters, and win fortune and glory for himself. As much as he had wanted to do it, he had always told himself that he didn’t have the physical prowess or strength of character for the adventuring life.
Of course, that was when he was a 97-pound weakling. But he was a he-man, now! He had been gifted a dwarven librarian’s hammer after his defeat of Sothak Spinegnawer, the largest and most fearsome dire bookworm in Anvilhall. He could more than handle himself on an adventure. Plus, he had read hundreds of books on wilderness survival, dungeon delving tricks, and how to spot the ten basic types of traps. He had even recently read Attempt to Disbelieve: What To Do When You Think Everything Is an Illusion.
In fact, now that he thought about it, he was probably the most experienced adventurer–if one were going by the total number of pages read–in Greyport.
“Yes!” he said. “I’d love to go. That sounds excellent!”
It wasn’t until they had left the outskirts of the Undercity that Karl started to have problems. The tunnels were less well-maintained and lacked either lanterns or glowmoss. This meant that Karl had to stop reading and actually concentrate on where he was putting his feet.
He tucked a leather bookmark in between the pages and placed the book in his belt pouch. He’d just have to wait until the return trip to find out what happened to Elfstar the Accountant at the Greater Nüwhork Fiduciary Beach Party Weekend.
“Mind your head, lad,” said Dimli, from up ahead. “There’s a low ceiling coming up, and you’re most likely to whack your head on it.”
He was grateful to Dimli for the warning, because the ceiling bowed so sharply that he had to bend almost double to walk along it. Even his companions had to duck their heads, and Dimli’s helmet occasionally rebounded off of a ceiling bump, letting out a resounding bong.
As they progressed, Karl realized that there was a bit more to dungeon delving than what he had read. There had been a lot of talk of the excitement, the danger, the wonder of discovery, but not so much about how cramped and filthy dungeon-like environments were, and how sweaty and uncomfortable adventurers became traversing them.
He tried to distract himself with a question. “So, Dimli. How is it that this place is so close to Greyport, but you’ve only just now discovered it?”
Ahead of him. Dimli let out a grunt. “These passageways down here are a lot more complicated than you’d think, lad. They don’t always go in straight lines. Some of ‘em get bricked up. Other’s get filled in with dirt. Even ones that you’d think’d be easily accessible sometimes aren’t, just because everyone who knew they were there has up and died.”
“We’ve been over this area a bunch of times and missed the dwarven ruins that were here,” Keet added. “It wasn’t until we found something pointing them out that we knew they were here and how to find them.
The tunnel’s ceiling soared up to a more easily traversable height. Karl stood up, relieved, and stretched his back.
“Speaking of which,” said Dimli, drawing to a halt. “Keet, what’s the map say?”
Keet unfolded a limp and sorry-looking sheet of parchment as Dimli held up his lantern. Keet glanced between the map and their surroundings for a few moments, hmmming and ummming all the while.
“This definitely seems to be the right place, so that’s positive. I think we should find the entrance over there.”
“What exactly is this place?” asked Karl.
“Old dwarven waystation, we think,” said Dimli. “A place where travelers could stop to rest, but had to stop to pay a tunnel tax.”
Keet folded up the map and stuck it back inside his vest. “Since it used to be an administrative site, we’re hoping that it contains documentation that’ll allow us to prove that Dwarvenhold once stood here, or–”
“It did,” said Dimli, with a note of finality.
“–give us some indication of where it was and how to get to it,” Keet hurriedly concluded.
“But!” said Nitrel, brightening up. “We have to be careful, because these old dwarven ruins are always full of traps!”
“Traps?” asked Karl, somewhat baffled. “Why would they trap a waystation?”
Dimli shrugged. “Public areas are fine, I expect. The danger is when we go to the staff areas. We dwarves tend to be very serious about our security, especially in government buildings. So watch your step.”
“And also stand back!” said Nitrel, who went running to a seemingly undifferentiated area of rocky wall.
After feeling around for a few moments, she pointed at a spot. “This is it! Give me a good hammer whack right here, Dimli.”
As Dimli stepped up to the wall and limbered up, Nitrel took an igniter and one of her bombs out of her bag. She tossed it in one hand, deep in thought.
A single whack from Dimli smashed a divot into the tunnel wall and also brought Nitrel out of her reverie. She stepped past the dwarf and wedged the bomb into the wall.
“This should be enough to bring this wall down without collapsing the tunnel or damaging what’s on the other side!” she said.
Then she sparked the igniter and smiled. “Also, you should probably stand back.”
Karl got almost on all fours and scrambled back the way he came, followed closely by Keet and Dimli. A second or two later, Nitrel joined them, giggling in excitement.
Karl clapped his hands over his ears as Nitrel’s bomb detonated. A rush of air and powdered stone tore along the tunnel. He sneezed.
A moment later, they were pushing their way through the very large hole in the tunnel wall and into a large, rectangular room. Karl immediately recognized the room’s square-cut pillars and glyphic carvings as being of dwarven make. Ruined cobwebs dangled from the ceiling and from the arms of the low, stone benches standing around the edges of the room. The whole area smelled of damp and, more strongly, of animals. Karl held his nose as he tried to contemplate what manner of beast might have made a lair here.
“Looks promising,” said Dimli, “but the stuff we’re looking for is likely in the back.”
Breathing through his mouth, Karl followed the others to a back corner of the room. A stone bin, whose sides came up to his knees, stood next to a formidable looking stone door. Karl peered down into the bin and saw several flat, grey, oval objects resting on the tatters of what might once have been a sack of some kind.
“Ooh,” said Dimli, bending over the bin. “Look at this here!”
Karl tried to look past Dimli’s helmeted head, unsure if he had missed something. “What? What is it? What did you find?”
Dimli stood up, one of the grey flat things in hand. With a grin, he snapped a bit of it off and tossed it in his mouth.
“By the gods!” cried Karl, “what are you doing?!”
“Noshing on a bit of dwarven waybread,” said Dimli, crunching cheerfully. He snapped another chunk off of the flat oval and offered it around. “Like to try a piece?”
The goblin siblings waved their hands in frantic denial and tried very hard not to make faces. Karl just stared at the crumbly shard in Dimli’s hand. “You can’t tell me that’s still edible after all these centuries?”
“Aye, of course it is, lad! It’s dwarven waybread. Guaranteed to last a thousand years or your money back. Sure you don’t want a nibble?”
“I’m trying to cut carbs,” said Karl.
“Ah, your loss,” said Dimli, promptly shoving another piece in his mouth.
Keet looked away quickly. “Uh, now that we’ve sorted out our rations, shall we see about this door?”
Dimli gave the handle a try, but the door didn’t budge. “Locked. No surprise there.”
“I have a lockpick!” said Nitrel, brightly.
Keet smiled. “That’s great, sis, but I don’t see any sign of a keyhole. Maybe it’s hidden behind a lock plate or–”
His smile curdled as Nitrel took a bomb out of her sack and held it up. She waggled her eyebrows.
“Lockpick? Eh? Eh?!”
Dimly very gently placed his hand on top of the bomb and pushed it down and away from the rest of the group. “Seeing as how these are dwarven ruins, and maybe my chance to find Dwarvenhold, I’d like to keep the destruction to a minimum, if that’s all right.”
Nitrel sighed and stowed the bomb in her bag. “Fine, but if we don’t have any other options, I say we use it!”
Karl, who was only half listening, now stepped forward to study the door’s frame. It was decorated with square tiles, each of which was decorated with a different number of lines. Some of the lines were horizontal, others vertical. He examined them carefully, quietly counting out something on his fingers.
“Hey, Keet,” he said at last. “Is there anything written on that map?”
Keet withdrew the map from his vest. “There is. It’s in Old Dwarvish. I think it’s just the name of the waystation and–oh, here it is.”
Keet traced the square cut runes with his fingertip as he read, “Undertaking Waystation Number Sixteen. Barlek Tokentakerson, Stationmaster. There isn’t anything else though.”
“Dimli, refresh my memory,” said Karl, as he ran his eyes and hands carefully around the doorframe. “‘Barlek’ is Old Dwarven for ‘baby bear,’ right?”
Nitrel giggled.
“Sort of,” said Dimli, meditatively stroking his beard. “It’s more accurate to translate it as ‘tiny bear.’”
“Perfect!” said Karl, as he firmly pressed down on one of the doorframe tiles. There was an audible click.
“Hold on there, lad!” Dimli shouted. “I warned you to be careful! You might set off any number of old traps.”
“It’ll be all right, Dimli,” said Karl as he confidently pressed a sequence of tiles. “This is a code lock door that was popular right before the fall of Dwarvenhold. I read a book by Granna Hammerbiter that talks all about them. The scratches in these tiles seem random, but if you combine them in certain ways, you’ll get the runes of the Old Dwarvish alphabet. Then all you need to do is press the correct tiles in the correct order to open the door.”
“But we don’t know what the order is…” warned Keet.
“I think we do,” said Karl. “Granna also writes that the dwarves who used these code locks usually picked passwords that were easy to remember. Like the name of a favorite pet, or their mother’s clan name, or the tunnel where they grew up. It’s not really secure, but everyone assumed that dwarven honor would keep people from trying to unlock doors that didn’t belong to them.
“I admit it’s a bit of a leap, but I thought that maybe the stationmaster might use his own name as a code for the door, in case he was indisposed during an emergency. We’ll see if I‘m right…right…about…now…”
Karl pressed the last tile. There was a satisfying click from somewhere inside the door and it swung inward, revealing a low, dark room beyond.
“You got all that from a book?” squeaked Nitrel.
“Yeah!” said Karl. “Pretty neat, huh?”
“Very!”
They were in a cobwebbed hallway lined with countless doorways. The smell of old paper wafted through some of the doorways, which made Karl excited. Some of the doorways reeked of moldy and rotting paper, which made Karl sad. He was torn between going to certain rooms and seeing what kinds of old manuscripts remained versus going to others and trying to bravely survey the extent of the damage.
Dimli prevented him from doing either. “This is the dangerous part of the waystation now. Civil servants and guards only. We’d best be cautious.”
“I agree,” said Keet. “We should move slowly, carefully, and as a group. I have some chalk here, which we can use to mark off anything that looks like it might be a trap or a trigger for a trap. We should also take frequent breaks back in the front room. We don’t want to risk getting tired and making stupid mistakes.”
Nitrel stood up very tall and stuck out her chest. “It’s all right if we do make a mistake, because I have an eraser!”
“Sis, when you say eraser, do you mean a–”
Nitrel, grinning, held up a bomb.
“You can’t solve every problem with an explosive device,” said Dimli, a touch exasperated.
“You can if it’s a really big explosive device,” said Nitrel.
“Maybe put that away for now,” said Keet. “Once you do that, we should start with this room over here.”
The room Keet selected was one of the ones that smelled of mold and rotting paper, which made Karl a little apprehensive. He tried to steady himself as the party entered. After all, they were going to have to search all of these at some point.
Stepping through the doorway, Karl was surprised to see a space that looked not unlike the “Accounting Office” setting that had featured prominently in the book he was reading. There were dwarf-sized, angled stone writing desks arranged in neat rows beneath dark and cold ceiling lanterns. Each desktop had a lip at the bottom, so that any documents placed on them would not slide onto the floor. They also possessed cunning little side shelves to store pots of ink, brushes, and maybe even a slab of dwarven waybread or two.
Streaks of dark mold ran down the walls, drawing moisture in from somewhere up above and expelling it into acrid pools of standing water. Water also dripped in along the lantern chains. It was so minerally rich, and had been pouring in for so long, that the chains were covered in clumps of delicate stone icicles.
The documents that Karl could see had been all but destroyed by the dampness. The books were sodden messes, their pages swelling beyond their sprung leather covers. Stacks of parchment had curdled and turned black over centuries of neglect. Karl privately mourned the loss of the knowledge, even if most of it had been bureaucratic in nature.
“Och, no!” cried Dimli.
“What is it?” replied Nitrel. “What’s wrong?”
They all quickly clustered around Dimli, who had moved to stand beside one of the desks and seemed on the verge of tears. Propped up on the desk was a very large book that had once been very finely bound in rich red leather. Letters of peeling gold leaf spelled out, in the blocky runes of Old Dwarvish, “YE COMPLETE MAPS OF THE DWARVEN UNDERWAY, 194TH EDITION.”
“The ancestors are just taunting me now,” said Dimli with a sob.
“I don’t understand,” said Nitrel. “What is it?”
Karl explained while Keet put a gentle arm around Dimli’s shoulder and took him off to one side.
“I still don’t see how a book of old maps would help,” said Nitrel, quietly so as not to upset Dimli further. “Most of those tunnels have probably collapsed by now. Never mind all the people and critters that are down here digging new tunnels all the time.”
“I know,” said Karl, “but at least the maps would have given us some idea of which tunnels were part of the old dwarven network. That would narrow down the search quite a bit. Also, if the maps were to scale and Dwarvenhold was on them, we might be able to pinpoint where it was. Or used to be.”
“Oh!” said Nitrel. “That makes sense. Still, it’s weird that Dimli didn’t even try to look in the book. I know it’s in bad shape, but dwarves build things to last and–”
Nitrel tugged on the corner of the front cover and pulled, but only succeeded in lifting the entire book off of the desk. She abruptly let go, causing the book to settle back into place with a squelch.
“It’s stuck!” she said.
“All that mold and moisture is like glue,” replied Karl. “It’s probably…wait!”
Nitrel had one foot up on the table to brace herself, firmly gripping the front cover with her left hand and the back cover with her right. She turned to look up at Karl quizzically.
“What?”
Karl smiled. “You know I respect your direct approach, Nitrel, but we’re going to have to be gentle if we want to have even a chance of getting a look inside this book.”
“What’s that, lad? You think it’s still legible?”
Dimli and Keet had walked back to the desk. Karl tried not to stare at Dimli’s unusually red cheeks and eyes.
“It’s a long shot, but we might be able to. We’re going to need to build a fire. And we’re also going to need a pot to boil water.”
Keet thoughtfully repositioned his hat on his head. “We’ve got water in our rations and I’ve got a kettle for tea. Also, if you need something lit on fire, my sister has you covered–”
“True!” said Nitrel.
“–but how is that going to help us with this? The book is already soaked.”
“Well, I read that hot steam can loosen up stuck together pages without causing too much more damage to the paper or the text. Like I said, it’s a long shot, but it’s worth a try.”
Dimli nodded sharply, once, and seemed a lot more like his usual self. “I’ve waited this long. I can wait a wee bit longer for some water to boil.”
They held the book in the plume of steam for many minutes before its page edges showed any signs of loosening. Karl, Nitrel, and Keet all silently agreed that Dimli should be the one to try to open the book next. The dwarf rested the book back on the desk and gently tugged on the front cover.
The book opened with a soft sucking noise, which did a lot to buoy up everyone’s spirits. With painstaking slowness and a gentleness that his calloused hands and heavily armored frame belied, Dimli peeled up each page one at a time. He had gotten about a quarter of the way through when he sadly shook his head.
“It’s no use. The ink has run everywhere. The writing’s all a blur, and there’s no way to tell which lines go with which map.”
He lowered his head to the desktop, his helmet making an audible clang when it touched the stone.
“I’m sorry, Dimli,” said Karl.
The dwarf snapped upright. “What? No. No apologies necessary, lad! We might not have even tried to open this book if you weren’t here.”
Karl felt the warmth of pride suffuse his whole being. He was, as he suspected, quite good at this whole adventuring business!
“There might still be a chance,” said Keet. “Like I was telling Dimli before, the Collegium’s librarians have a lot of experience restoring old and badly damaged books. They may be able to do something with it if we brought it back.”
Dimli nodded and stood up. “That’s a good idea. We should get this book back to the Collegium and see what they can do.”
“But what about the rest of the waystation?” asked Nitrel.
“It’s been undisturbed for centuries,” said Dimli. “It’ll keep. And, since we know how to unlock the door, we can lock it on our way out and keep other people and beasties from getting in here and causing mischief.”
They were all in agreement, so they took a few minutes to put out the fire, stow their supplies, and make some chalk markings on the few dry spots they could find so that they knew where to start on their return trip. Karl took the heavy, sodden book of maps in his arms and confidently strode out of the room.
Only to find that a massive, hairy spider stood between them and the exit.
The four of them huddled in the doorway, occasionally peeking their heads out to get a better look at the spider. It was very large, with white fur, two clusters of bright pink eyes, and a set of glistening and extremely formidable-looking mandibles.
“Spiders,” muttered Keet. “It’s always spiders.”
“Right,” said Dimli. “Karl, you’d best stand back and leave this to us old hands. When I say–what are you doing, lad?”
Karl stepped confidently out into the hallway, lifting the sodden book up in two hands. He held it so that it was perpendicular to the floor, its cover facing the spider, its bottom edge resting on his head. He winced a little as water dribbled out of the book, into his hair, and down the back of his shirt.
“It’s okay!” he whispered. “I read about this in an adventurer’s journal! It’s going to be fine!”
He strode toward the spider, moving slowly so as not to startle it. The spider turned its head toward him and chittered in a way that seemed either curious or ominous. Karl was fairly certain that it was the former.
Keet seized his hat in both hands and pulled it down over his ears. There was more than a touch of panic in his voice when he whispered. “Karl, please come back here.”
“I know this looks dangerous,” Karl replied, “but it’s really not. You see, spiders, like many predators, are only willing to attack if they have a clear advantage. I’m using the book to make myself appear larger and more dangerous. The spider will soon realize that I’m not worth the effort, and will retreat rather than attack.”
“That’s a terrible idea,” whispered Dimli.
“I don’t know,” whispered Nitrel. “He knows a lot of stuff, maybe he’s right about this, too.”
As if to lend weight to Nitrel’s statement, the white spider skittered a few steps down the hallway away from Karl and lowered its head.
“He’s definitely not,” said Dimli. “Lad, that’s an albino dire wolf spider. Fairly common on the outskirts of the Undercity.”
Hearing that made Karl’s skin crawl, but he wasn’t about to show fear. He took another step forward and raised the book a little higher.
“They’re very venomous,” added Keet.
“I don’t know what kind of spiders you’ve been reading about, lad, but that technique you’re using isn’t gonna work on it,” said Dimli, whose voice had by now taken on a desperate, strangled quality.
“It seems to be working so far,” said Karl, trying to remain confident in the face of his friends’ unease. “I definitely seem to be intimidating it.”
“You’re not,” said Dimli. “Albino dire wolf spiders are blind! They hunt by sensing the vibrations of their prey.”
“Oh,” said Karl.
The spider sprang at him, the combined strength of its eight legs sending it soaring down the hallway to crash with the force of a battering ram into Karl’s chest. He fell heavily to the floor, book sliding out of his hands, with a very heavy, very angry spider standing on his chest. Karl looked up into two clusters of milky, pink, sightless eyes, and screamed.
“WHAT DO I DO?! HELP! HEEEELP!”
The spider lunged at him, its mandibles extended for a vicious bite. Karl twisted away just as something flat and grey flashed past his vision. The spider’s envenomed fangs sprang shut like steel trap, closing with a resounding clack on the piece of dwarven waybread that Dimli had thrown. One fang splintered with the force of the impact, sending a torrent of venom pouring down onto Karl’s chest.
The spider hissed in agony and reared back, taking most of its prodigious weight off of Karl’s chest. Karl took the brief opportunity to bring his knees to his chest and plant his feet in the spider’s furry abdomen.
“I guess it’s leg day!” he shouted, as he pistoned his legs out with all the force he could muster. He watched in a mixture of disbelief and relief as the force of his leg press flipped the spider over onto its back and sent it skidding down the hallway.
Karl sprang to his feet to find his friends standing in tight formation around him. Dimli stood between Karl and the spider, axe in hand. Keet came up on Karl’s right side, clutching the heavy map book with both hands. Nitrel ran in from the left, one hand frantically digging around in her bomb bag.
“I’ve got some bug repellant!” she shouted, “AND I’M GONNA USE IT!”
“She’s going to!” cried Keet. “She’s got that look in her eye!”
“Back!” roared Dimli. “Now!”
Karl half ran, half crawled down the hallway, trying to put as much distance between himself and the spider as possible. Keet and Dimli struggled to keep up as Nitrel produced a bomb from her bag, lit it with an igniter, and sent it rolling toward the spider with a gentle bowling motion.
As Nitrel raced back to join them, the spider sorted out its legs, flipped itself the right way up, and brought its head around to somehow stare sightlessly right at Karl. It let out a hiss that, while not overly loud, made the marrow in Karl’s bones shiver in a very unpleasant way.
Karl closed his eyes just as the hallway filled with noise and light.
Covered in a thin film of ash and spider guts, Karl, Dimli, Keet, and Nitrel made their way back along the old tunnels toward the outskirts of the Undercity.
“But we could have been killed!” said Karl.
“We weren’t, though,” said Nitrel, who was thoroughly pleased with herself.
“You could have collapsed the whole waystation. We could have been pulverized under thousands of tons of rubble.”
“We’re not, so it’s fine!”
Keet, who was a much paler shade of green than usual, shook his head. “Don’t bother, Karl. You’re not going to talk sense into her. Believe me. I’ve tried.”
“And this is dwarven construction we’re talking about,” said Dimli, a twinkle in his eye despite his serious expression. “A little popball couldn’t hurt it.”
“Little!” screeched an indignant Nitrel and a horrified Karl.
“But you didn’t know,” said Karl.
“Of course I knew,” said Nitrel. “I knew that if you blow up a bomb next to a spider, the spider’ll also blow up. Problem solved.”
“But you didn’t know how powerful your bomb was–”
“It was powerful enough!”
“Or if we were far enough away from it! Or if the waystation would survive. Or if–”
“You need to relax,” said Nitrel. “The thing you need to know about us adventurers is that our job is very dangerous, and that we take calculated risks all the time. They usually work out, though, like they did today.”
“But you didn’t do any calculations?!”
“Aw,” said Nitrel. “You worry too much!”
Keet moved closer to Karl to intercede. “What she means is that we have to keep our options open. And improvise. And also try to keep in mind that the things we’ve read in books don’t always apply to real world situations as well as we think they’re going to.”
Karl lowered his head. “I see that. Point taken.”
Keet reached up to pat him on the elbow. “Don’t beat yourself up about it. All of us were overconfident at the start of our careers. Even Dimli, if you can believe it.”
Karl looked skeptically at Dimli, who snorted. “If you and I are ever at a bar sometime and I am particularly drunk, I might be inclined to tell you about a wee baby of a dwarf with only a wisp of fluff on his chin who had run off into the night wearing naught but a loincloth and his great-grandfather’s helmet.”
“I would really like to hear that story,” said Karl. “It sounds way better than the book I’m reading right now.”
Dimli snorted again.
They walked on in silence for a bit before Keet cleared his throat.
“By the way,” he said. “That bit about making yourself bigger to get past predators. Where did you read that, anyway?”
Karl scratched his head. “Um, I think it was The Collected Adventuresome Diaries of Ludvig the Egregious, Volume One of a Continuing Series.”
The three adventurers exchanged a glance.
“Ludvig the Egregious, you say?” asked Dimli.
“Yes,” said Karl. “Funny thing, I could never find any other volumes in the series, just the first one.”
“That’s because he died rather messily before he was able to write any more,” said Keet.
“Oh?”
“Aye,” said Dimli, who favored Karl with a wink. “Think he was eaten by an albino dire wolf spider.”