Hiroshi consciousness ca back slowly.
Then cos the pain. His chest. His arms. That bone-deep ache from the strength multiplier, still sitting heavy in his muscles like sothing poured in that hadn’t drained. The pain suppression was still running. Whatever reserves it had left, it was scraping the bottom of them.
He opened his eyes.
The reddish glow was still above him.
He was still in the sa room. He had to sit with that for a second, he’d half-expected to wake up sowhere else entirely, or not wake up at all, and the fact that he was here and breathing and apparently alive took longer than it should have to actually land.
He tried to move his arms.
But he couldn’t.
He looked down. Old iron chains were tightly wrapped around his body, bolted to the stone floor. His wrists were pinned close to the ground, which ant he was sitting up against sothing, hands trapped at his sides. He tested the chains once, put real weight behind it.
Nothing happened.
Whatever they were anchored to, it wasn’t moving.
He looked to his left.
The woman guard was chained the sa way against the wall two ters from him. Her head was down. Her breathing was visible but shallow. The shoulder wound from earlier had soaked through completely and dried dark against her uniform. Her face was pale in the reddish light. Too pale.
He looked to his right.
The clicking sound was the Kobolds. Four of them positioned around the room. Crouched at intervals, they were not moving, their flat wide eyes catching the light and throwing it back. They weren’t agitated. They weren’t aggressive. They were simply watching with a patience.
Hiroshi looked at them and tried to understand the situation clearly.
They were alive. That was the first thing. He and the woman guard were alive and chained and being watched and not hard beyond what had already been done. That ant they had been kept alive for so reason. Which ant soone wanted them alive and had communicated that to the Kobolds and the Kobolds were following that instruction.
That was more organized than anything he had encountered from goblin-adjacent creatures before. That level of instruction following required a chain of command. It required soone at the top of that chain who was making decisions with a purpose.
He thought about the ritual room around him. About what it was built for.
He thought about what it might need that two live humans could provide that two dead ones couldn’t.
He stopped thinking about it.
He tested the chains again. Slower this ti. Working through the options. The bolt points were solid. The chain links were old but the age hadn’t weakened them the way age sotis did with iron. Whoever had prepared this room had maintained it or atleast kept it functional.
He was still working through it when the door opened.
Not the door they had co through. A different one. Set into the far wall that he, smaller and lower than the other. It opened inward and sothing ca through it that made the Kobolds shift their posture slightly.
The Goblin Shaman straightened up after clearing the low doorway and Hiroshi looked at it and understood imdiately that this was different from anything else he had seen down here.
It was old. Ancient in the way that so creatures got where the age had changed them into sothing that barely resembled what they started as. Taller than a normal goblin by nearly half, the extra height coming from a spine that had curved and then sohow straightened back differently over a very long life. Its skin was the color of ash, grey-green and dry looking, pulled tight across the bones of its face and hands. One eye was clouded completely white. The other was yellow and moved with an intelligence that was uncomfortable to look at directly.
It wore robes. Dark and layered, covered in markings that matched the ones cut into the walls of this room. The robes moved when it walked. Around its neck hung things on cords. Bones mostly. So carved. So natural. A small dark pouch that it touched briefly with one hand as it entered the room.
It carried a staff. Gnarled wood wrapped in more cord and at the top of it sothing glowed faintly in a color that was close to the reddish light of the room but not quite the sa. Slightly different.
The Shaman walked into the center of the room without looking at Hiroshi.
It looked at the woman guard.
It studied her for a long mont. Standing over her with the staff held loosely at its side. The yellow eye moving across her slowly. Taking inventory of sothing. Making an assessnt.
Then it made a sound. Low and guttural. It ca from sowhere deep in its chest and the sound moved through the room in a way that Hiroshi felt in his sternum.
The woman guard’s head ca up.
Her eyes opened and found the Shaman above her and for a mont she was just confused in the way you were when consciousness ca back in pieces. Then the confusion beca understanding and the understanding beca sothing else and she pulled against her chains once hard.
Hiroshi said her na.
She looked at him.
He didn’t have anything to tell her. There was nothing he could say that would an anything useful. He just looked at her and she looked back at him and sothing passed between them that didn’t need words.
Then the Shaman moved.
It was fast for sothing that old. The staff ca down and what happened next was brutal.
Hiroshi looked at the wall across from him.
He kept his eyes there. On the markings in the stone. On the geotry. On the lines connecting point to point to point.
He kept them there until it was over.
The room went quiet again.
The Shaman stood over what remained and was still for a mont. Then it turned. For the first ti since entering the room it looked directly at Hiroshi.
The yellow eye held him.
Then it moved toward him. Slowly. No aggression in the movent. It crouched down in front of him and reached into its robes and produced sothing small and thin and curved. A blade. Narrow. More like a needle than a knife.
Hiroshi held himself still.
The Shaman took his arm. Its grip was stronger than it looked. It turned his forearm over and drew the narrow blade across his skin in a single clean line.
The blood ca up slowly.
The Shaman watched it for a mont like it was confirming sothing. Then it looked up at Hiroshi with the yellow eye and made that resonant sound again, deeper this ti, and turned toward the stone table in the center of the room.
It began to speak.
The markings on the walls started to glow.
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