Trevak muttered away to herself as she worked, weighting the trip stones just right.
“Bloody Overlord, always broadcasting all his treasures and such and attracting all these idiots.”
She pushed the 6 ft spears back into their concealed launchers in the tunnel walls with a pleasing click.
“Morons”, she muttered as she picked a few scraps of flash and clothing from the last point. “Don’t even get a chance to clean up before the next band of pincushions come waltzing in here, without as much as a by your leave”.
She glanced at the stains on the floors and walls around the trap killing zone. It really made it pretty obvious something bad was going to happen around here. Still, couldn’t be helped. She was proud of her work. You can only kill what is put in front of you, and she had a 100% record since the Overlord took her on.
Spears back in place, she knelt back down for one final check of the trigger mechanism. Squinting through the magnifier she had made herself in her tinkering shed, she considered it carefully. As a half Goblin she was blessed with a certain degree of cunning brutality, which made for a good trap setter. What made her special though was the intelligence that came from the other half. That was a rare trait in a Goblin, and she had parlayed that ability into the prime position as the Trap Chief of the most raided dungeon in the Iron Realms. She was happy in her lot. Her lot, sadly for her, was about to change.
There was a crunch behind her. Metal on splintered bone. Trevak decided to stay where she was.
“Ho there! Be you friend or foe?”, boomed a depressingly upper-class human accent. Another one, expecting to ride through her traps, as they had through whatever meagre challenge their parents had let them face to this point.
Trevak straightened and turned to face the predictably handsome young man in the mail coat and plate that had asked her.
“Well that very much depends”, she said. “Given that I don’t know who you are?”
The man roared with laughter. “Well met! Well met indeed, my small green friend!” He sheathed his sword and took off his gauntlet.
“Um, Sir Jerome”, interjected a voice from behind him. “Are you sure that’s wise? We are in a dungeon renowned for the devilish nature of its tricks. Perhaps a touch more caution….”
Trevak tried not to smile.
“You worry too much!”, said Jerome, striding forward, hand extended in greeting to Trevak. “How the devil are you? My name is Sir Jerome de Fancis. At your service.”
Trevak tried to see past the hulking armoured extrovert striding toward her but accepted a handshake. “I’m just Trevak”, she said.
“A pleasure, Just Trevak!” He turned to the voice behind him. “You see squire. He is known as Trevak the Just! A worthy name for an adventurer on the same quest as our own.”
A small weathered face peered at Trevak, under the armpit of Sir Jerome. “Hmm. She does look a touch, um, goblinish Sire.”
Sir Jerome fixed his squire with a glare, then turned back to Trevak. “Nonsense. The lighting does make her look a trifle green around the gills, but she is much too tall, and well-spoken of course, to be one of those subhumans. I’m sure she is ah……”
“I’m part Dryad”, Trevak improvised. “That’s where the green came from.”
“And the other part?”, asked the squire.
“How dare you, Yeeren!”, shouted the hero. “A woman's birth is her own to share or not share. Now, Trevak the Just, would you care to join with our quest into the very beating heart of this great maze?”
Without waiting for an answer he wrapped his arm around Trevaks shoulder and strode forward into the death zone of the trap she had just be preparing.
“Sire”, said Yeeren. “There is an awful lot of bloodstains around here, perhaps you should just wait..”
Trevak wriggled and tried to get free, but Jerome's grip was as steely as the gauntlet he had removed.
She watched the ground beneath their feet for trigger stones. He avoided one, then another. His dumb luck was astounding in its own way. Then he triggered one. Beneath their feet counterweights moved, and a well-oiled mechanism silently prepared to kill them. With no way to extricate herself from the killing field alone, Trevak did something she had never done before. With a violent leg sweep and push, she barrelled both of them over. The tumbled to the ground in a heap as a volley of spears at various heights crashed into the opposite wall. Trevak grimaced. They’d need resharpening now. Bloody stonework would have taken a nick out of at least one of them.
Yeeren’s shock was quick to fade. “How did you know to do that?”, she asked shrewdly.
Trevaks mind whirled through possible responses, but she was aware this ‘squire’ was no fool. Fortunately, she was saved by the bell-end.
“TREVAK THE JUST IN TIME!” roared Sir Jerome from the ground. “That’s what I shall call you! You wonderful thing, you! I owe you my life and I promise you this day, that I will not rest until that debt is paid.”
“Sounds like a plan”, said Trevak, helping the knight up. Yeeren eyed her suspiciously.
“A plan indeed, good lady. Now, come. I will not accept no for an answer. There will be traps ahead, and it seems your instincts about them will be valuable.”
Trevak could think of no way out it right now. Especially with some actual nous in the form of the squire to trick. “OK. I accept”, she said. She got a huge clap on the back for her troubles from the now standing Sir Jerome.
“Try and take some notes here, Yeeren”, Sir Jerome said as they set off further into the dungeon. “You could stand to learn a thing or two about how to help a hero in these situations. A little less whinging and caution and a little more action, hmm?”
Yeeren seethed. Sir Jerome beamed. Trevak plotted both of their deaths. And they all walked on together.
