GLINT's Arc

Chapter 8 of 10

Glint crouched in the dripping pipe and spread his hands. "I is not knowing how to break the big engine," he admitted. "What is a thruster, even?" The gnome who glared back at him was the same prisoner he had freed from the cage above the hydra. Nihm was small and filthy, grease smeared deep in his wrinkles, a wet cigarette stuck to his lip. His tools rattled on his belt as he worked. "Course you don't," Nihm spat. "Why would a goblin know anything useful." He chewed the cigarette and squinted at the far wall. "But I do. That lizard-cult can't fire the breath of the queen without power. They have to route it. Juice flows, and I can smell juice." He pulled a brass rod from his belt and muttered over it. The tip glowed blue. A thread of light peeled off it and crawled along the sludge, pointing deeper into the dark. "You help me?" Glint grinned, all jagged teeth. "You trusting a goblin?" "I trust nobody. But you cut me loose, and I want that engine dead more than I want you gone." He jabbed the rod ahead. "Walk." They followed the blue thread through tunnels thick with toxic slop. The air buzzed. Glint's teeth hummed. Ahead the walls shone with webbing strung between the pipes, fine as silver wire and crackling with sparks. Jeweled shapes hung in it. Then the shapes moved. Mana spiders. Their round bodies glowed like trapped stars. They hunched over green slug-rats, draining them dry. One turned its lit eyes toward the humming rod on Nihm's belt. "Oh, perfect," Nihm groaned. "They eat power. That's your signal they love." The nearest spider lunged. Glint flicked down his goggles and snapped up his arm. A small crossbow was strapped to his wrist, scavenged like the rest of him. He loosed a bolt. It punched through the glowing orb and the spider burst in a shower of sparks. "Run!" he yelled. They ran. Nihm hurled a sputtering vial that fried three spiders in a flash of light. Glint fired again and again, cranking the little crossbow with greasy fingers. Webbing snagged his bare foot and shocked him. He tore free, teeth gritted, and kept moving. A slime-rat squelched under his heel. Then the tunnel opened wide. The ignition chamber. The salvaged thruster squatted there, glowing hot, pipes feeding its mouth. The blue thread sank straight into a box bolted to its side. Nihm skidded to the box and wrenched it open. He stared at the tangle inside and grinned for the first time. "There you are." He shoved both hands in and ripped a bundle of cables loose. The thruster's glow coughed, sputtered, and died. The buzzing stopped. The chamber fell dark and silent. "We did it," Glint breathed. "We cut the power," Nihm said. He held up the torn cables. "But they'll know. The second their juice drops, Kwarvarask will send everything it's got down here after us."