“Next jump is within eyesight of the temple. From there, we can decide if we need to use any of the other nearby focus points or jump directly to the temple entrance. Do we want to get ready and then make the jump or camp here and jump first thing in the morning?” Ylnah waited for an answer.

  “Valgrin, what do you think?” Malcolm looked his friend over. “You seem to be doing okay for just finishing up our fourth jump.”

  The three others all stared at Valgrin.

  “I feel great, considering what I thought I’d feel like.” Valgrin turned to Ylnah. “You undersold how much easier this is on the system. I’m tempted to hire you as my full-time portal person. Save me a few hours each jump.”

  Ylnah blushed, then smiled. “I didn’t want to. How did my father put it—dash your hope? And yes, I know he told you about his plans to help me with this water. He never remembers that my hearing is much better than a human’s.”

  “And you don’t remind him…do you?” Valgrin smiled as he asked.

  “Not in a long time. Helps me be prepared for whatever he comes up with next.” Ylnah giggled, caught herself and looked to the ground.

  “We won’t tell him,” Malcolm’s response earned a crooked grin. “Now, back to your original question. We have, what, about five or six more hours of daylight?” Malcolm looked up at the sky.

  “At least six could be a little more.” Ylnah replied.

  “And if needed, I can provide light after dark.” Skwilly jumped on a rock, bringing him almost waist-level to everyone else.

  Malcolm nodded. Hope they all agree to keep going. “I, for one, vote to prep and jump now. If we’re not already in the temple by the time we run out of daylight, we have bigger issues. I’m just one vote though—Ylnah? Valgrin? Skwilly?”

  “Uh, I’ll do whatever you de…decide. I sh…shouldn’t have a vote.” Ylnah stuttered.

  “Everyone on the team gets a vote,” Valgrin pointed at the young woman. “Last I checked, you’re part of the team. I won’t vote until you do, and neither will Skwilly.”

  Malcolm and Skwilly nodded their agreement.

  Ylnah looked from one of them to the other, then repeated the action. “You’re serious?” The question came out almost as a statement, changing to a question at the last second.

  Both men and a priggy nodded, staring back at Ylnah.

  “Umm…I think we should…” Ylnah paused and took a long look at each of them. “I don’t know what to do. I can think of reasons to do both.”

  “Then vote by instinct.” Valgrin put a hand on her shoulder. “You are part of the team and your voice matters.”

  Ylnah stared at Valgrin for several seconds. “I’ve never been…I mean nobody considers…thank you. All of you. You agreed to let me come, even with objections. I told you I’d stay in the background, but you’re wanting my opinion.” She swallowed hard and made a show of brushing imaginary dirt from her sleeve. “I’m trying not to cry right now. I think…uh…we should get ready and go now. Waiting may mean more of them in the morning.”

  “Skwilly, your vote?” Valgrin scratched behind the priggy’s ear.

  “Whatever you want me to say to keep you doing that.” Skwilly chuffed. “Seriously, though, I agree with going now.”

  Valgrin nodded. “And I concur with all of you. Let’s use today’s daylight. And Ylnah, we don’t want you in the background. We want you to be back away from the fighting for your safety. It doesn’t make you any less of a team member. Without you on the team, we’d still be slogging along getting here. Your opinion matters as much as ours when it comes to the choices we make.”

  Malcolm smiled and nodded. May be too soon to tell, but seems like she just matured a few years. I’m sure we’ll have setbacks, but we’re making progress. Strange, we’ve only known her a few hours and we have this. Is the Structure still playing around with things? Maybe it’s Valgrin’s parenting skills?

  “That’s settled then. Is this one of the ones around the temple that didn’t have as much cover?” Malcolm asked.

  Ylnah stared back for a second, then blinked rapidly. “I’m sorry, I missed you were asking me the question.” She pushed a strand of hair behind her ear and giggled. “But then who else here would now? I mean, no, this one has plenty of cover. I set it up to scout the area once the goblins showed up.”

  “Then let’s huddle up, it’s time for another jump. If we’re going to be close to the temple, we best be prepared for a surprise.” Malcolm declared.

  Well covered and then some. Malcolm sat on a rock and watched the others, no signs of either Skwilly or Valgrin suffering from the jump. He grinned, watching Ylnah talking with Valgrin on ways to deal with a couple of goblin guards they’d seen when they had first looked around.

  “…to the little valley there…”

  “Re-entrant.” Malcolm interrupted Valgrin.

  Ylnah looked up, “What?”

  “Yeah, what?” Valgrin joined her.

  “One of my ex-girlfriends was into hiking. To understand her, I learned some words. Re-entrant is what we’re looking at over there. Basically, it’s a little valley, but re-entrant is the word. Anyway, I have been listening and I think it’ll work.” Malcolm crouched to a knee. “I’m ready to go when you are.”

  They reviewed the plan one more time, then the others joined Malcolm. Ylanh closed her eyes, and the world went silver for a second.

  Malcolm exhaled slowly, tension draining from his shoulders. Their landing spot behind the massive boulder shielded them perfectly from the guard's view. A soft scraping sound to his left made his hand instinctively reach for his weapon, but he relaxed when he spotted Valgrin belly-crawling toward the edge for a better view.

  A few minutes later, Valgrin made his way back. “I watched the temple opening and no activity. They’ve cleared away some of the rock slide to make the opening bigger and probably better footing—not sure what we’ll find inside, though.” He pointed his thumb behind himself. “The guards are throwing pebbles at a plant to entertain themselves, one of them glances at the path in the larger valley from time to time. The are wearing decent leather vests that look like their reinforced around the chest area. Each have a sword, sheathed at their hips. Which brings us to the decision—take them out first, or go right to using the entrance jump and sneak in?”

  Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

  “I, for one, don’t like the idea of leaving something or someone that close behind.” Malcolm nodded his head toward the guards.

  Everyone nodded agreement, and they firmed up the plan to deal with the guards.

  Valgrin pointed. “Ylnah, you’ll need to stay crouched down to cast. You’re sure you can control your Exploding Air?”

  Ylnah rolled her eyes. “I perfected the low power annoying cast to get even, a little, at school.” Her cheeks blazed red. “I have also knocked a few people out with the spell. The only unknown is how different a goblin skull is. I will send a decent punch their way to be safe.”

  “Understood.” Valgrin replied. “We’ll be watching and if there is enough distraction, we’ll jump down and take them out. If not, we lie low and think of another way. They might make it easy and just come to us.”

  Malcolm inched over the jagged terrain, wincing as a sharp edge bit into his palm. He smeared the blood across his pants, then unsheathed his sai with practiced silence. A quick glance confirmed the others were poised and waiting for the signal.

  Valgrin nodded at Ylnah. With a flick of her wrist, she targeted the goblin lingering at the far edge of the re-entrant.

  The faint thud sounded. Malcolm watched the near goblin for a reaction to his partner suddenly collapsing.

  It called out, then jogged toward the fallen guard. Malcolm surged forward—but Valgrin’s arm snapped across his chest, bringing him up short.

  Malcolm glared at Valgrin, then noticed his friend pointing toward Ylnah. She held up her palm in a clear "wait" gesture. Malcolm watched as she made another casting motion. A soft hiss cut the air, followed by a dampened thump that shook loose sand from the rocks above. When he looked back at the guards, the, formerly standing goblin no longer had a head. The fallen one writhed on the ground, green-black hands desperately clutching at what remained of its shattered face. After a single violent spasm, it went motionless.

  They all sat in stunned silence, watching. A few minutes passed with no reaction to the attack.

  Valgrin motioned for Malcolm to follow his crawl over to Ylnah. Skwilly had already made his way to her.

  “What was that last one?” Valgrin stage whispered.

  “I wanted to keep it as quiet as possible. So I cast an area silence spell. It’s a dome of air over an area—I guess the dome compressed the explosion. Sorry, I didn’t think that through. I saw that the second goblin would get close enough so I could take them both out, and I did.” Ylnah stared at the ground.

  “Indeed, you did.” Valgrin chuckled. “Don’t hang your head. You avoided the need for hand to hand fighting. Always a good thing—well, maybe not always, but usually a good thing.”

  Malcolm nodded. “I agree with the blue dude. Win number one, I avoided a fight. Win number two, no need to worry about these two behind our backs. You made a good call and well done.”

  Ylnah smiled, patting Skwilly as she did. “I’m glad it worked out.”

  “That’s adventuring.” Malcolm grinned. “I wonder if this will work? Is our mantra.”

  “So, according to you and your father’s research, we’re going into an outer hall?” Valgrin asked Ylnah.

  “Best we can tell. We’ll need to go south once we get in—”

  “Bouncing around like we did, I don’t have my bearings.” Malcolm interrupted. “South is to the left? Into the mountain, right?”

  Ylnah nodded. “Yes, the building merges into the mountain. There is a cave at the back of the temple and the fountain is in the first cavern, if we translated the documents correctly, which we may not have done—to be honest. Ready to go now?”

  “The second rule of adventuring—plans fall apart, usually in under five minutes, so expect the unexpected. I say, do your thing.” Malcolm smiled.

  Once again, everything faded to a silver color for a second. Malcolm threw his hands out to keep balanced on the loose rocks now below his feet. A quick glance over his shoulder confirmed they were right outside the hole leading into the temple.

  Valgrin stepped over a large rock, motioning for everyone to follow. “Watch your step.” He called out in a hushed tone.

  They all froze when Malcolm caused several stones to cascade down the incline.

  “Hear anything?” Malcolm whispered after a few seconds of silence.

  Everyone shook their head. Valgrin resumed the lead and stepped through the opening the rock slide had uncovered. Malcolm took a glance behind, then followed everyone else inside.

  Skwilly stood to the right of the entrance, nosing at the base of a pile of stone. “Rock slide?” He asked.

  “It doesn’t look like the piles been there long. It’s doing a great job of blocking the hall that direction,” Malcolm answered.

  Ylnah pointed to the left. “We want to go this direction, anyway. That direction,” she pointed past Skwilly. “Leads to the old temple entrance.”

  Malcolm looked to the left. Another huge mound of rocks closed the hall about thirty feet away. A faint flicker of light let them know at least one direction remained open.

  “That probably leads to the back of the sanctuary room or to the private rooms for temple staff.” Ylnah answered before anyone asked.

  “The flickering lights would indicate someone or thing is down that way.” Malcolm looked down at Skwilly. “Yes, I’m being Captain Obvious. On a slightly less obvious note, recent scuff marks cover the hall floor. Confirming something’s here.”

  Valgrin looked back at the group as they examined the floor. “Is anyone else finding it strange that we haven’t been greeted?””

  “Too much faith in the guards?” Malcolm offered.

  “And they have been here about a week. Maybe they’ve relaxed and aren’t worried.” Ylnah added.

  Valgrin shrugged. “Probably right. I’m just unsettled. Malcolm, does any of this remind you of one of your games? Nothing seems familiar to me.”

  “Pfff. You’re relying on my memory?” Malcolm grinned for a second. “But no, nothing so far reminds me of anything I’ve done or played.”

  “Okay, so I’m now more unsettled. Old temples, goblins, and we’re questing for a rare spell component. All standard elements of a crawl, but nothing familiar enough to have any type of anchor.”

  Malcolm nodded. “Yeah, I get that. I imagine less and less will have any familiar anchor. Even when dealing with Drathnor or other baddies, we know.”

  “Don’t like it. Makes sense, but don’t like it. Not that it matters.” Valgrin shook his head and turned back toward the flickering light. “Stay close to the interior wall, stay quiet, and follow me.” He stepped around some larger stones and headed down the hall, past the damage and towards the light.

  Six, maybe seven, feet wide. Set up to handle traffic, it seems. Wonder what this inscription says, or maybe it’s just decoration—seems to run the hall’s length. Malcolm examined the hall as they carefully made their way. The glow from Skwilly balanced out the lights from both ends of the hall. Need to get something for dark vision, can’t keep relying on others. He almost ran into Ylnah, but stopped in time.

  “Getting ready to slide up and take a peek around the corner. Any objections?” Valgrin whispered.

  A few seconds later, Malcolm watched his friend creep to the corner, then extend just enough to look.

  A shrill, piercing cry echoed off the walls. Malcolm watched Ylnah point across the hall, uncertain if anybody said anything. A moment later, the noise stopped.

  “I cast a silence on the Shrieking Moss.” Ylnah spoke a little louder than needed.

  “Incoming!” Valgrin shouted as he squared himself to the lit hallway. “Ylnah, stay against that wall.”

  “I’m with her, just as planned.” Skwilly out.

  Malcolm sprinted to stand next to Valgrin, then took a step back. He watched as three goblins came running down the wider hall toward them. “Ice shield up?”

  “Yep.”

  “Here we go.” Malcolm cast Lightning Flash.

  A ball of yellow and orange power flew down the hallway, crackling and popping as it flew. The goblins all stopped, staring at the ball with squinted eyes. One shouted, and they all turned around and ran away. Electricity arced out and hit each of them before they finished their first step. The explosion that followed threw them into the walls, floor, and ceiling. Green skin, red blood, and white bones scattered across the scorched hall.

  Valgrin pulled a bone out of his shield. “That would have hurt.”

  “We ain’t done yet.” Malcolm pointed down the hall. “Seems I still, unexpectedly, have one more of those lightning ball spells. Use it? Or do we fight em?”

  “I only see two, lets fight and hold that in reserve.” Valgrin said.

  “Um,true, but there could be mor…”

  Valgrin let out a war cry and started running down the hall.

  Malcolm shrugged and followed close behind, shouting, “Death to goblin scum!”