Glint had walked three days to reach a gate he wasn't allowed through. The goblin stood before the Gates of Scraptown, a wall of welded spaceship scrap and humming machinery, and grinned his jagged grin. Behind those gates waited the Adventurer's Academy. No goblin had ever studied there. No goblin had ever graduated. Glint planned to be the first, then the most famous Dungeon Delver in the world. He pushed his goggles up his bald green head and clutched his mother's letter to his chest. His adopted mother was a famous adventurer. She had written the letter herself, her signature pressed into red wax. It said Glint belonged at the Academy. He only had to show it. Two guards saw him first. The nearer one lowered a halberd built from scavenged machine parts. His stubbled face twisted under his helmet. "Monster at the gate!" Garrek shouted. He swung before Glint could speak. Glint yelped and jumped back. "Wait! Wait! I have a letter!" He thrust the paper forward. "My mother wrote it! I'm a student!" Behind Garrek, something enormous stirred. An iron golem rolled forward on a single tank tread, its other leg clanking, its mismatched arms wider than Glint was tall. One huge eye burned orange. Bitzo. The ground shook with each movement. Glint's knees went soft. "Bitzo, hold it!" Garrek barked. The golem reached. Glint ducked. The halberd whistled past his ear. In the panic his fingers opened, and the letter slipped free. It fluttered down between the guard's boots. Glint dove for it. So did something else. A crab of rusted scrap scuttled from under the gate on clicking metal legs. Its claws snapped shut on the paper. Teal lights blinked along its patched shell. Before Glint's hand closed on the letter, the crab yanked it away and skittered sideways. "No! That's mine!" Glint scrambled after it on all fours. Bitzo's great arm slammed down where Glint had just been. The impact cracked the ground. Garrek lunged, halberd leveled. Glint rolled under the strike and sprinted after the crab. Its legs blurred. It vanished into a gap in the scrap wall beside the gate. "And stay out, monster!" Garrek yelled, breathing hard. Glint stopped at the edge of the rubble, chest heaving. The gate towered behind him, closed and guarded. The letter was gone. Without it, no one would believe him. No one would ever let a goblin in. He wiped grit from his cheek. Then he looked at the gap where the crab had fled. Thin teal light glowed inside, leading somewhere under the wall. Glint's grin came back, smaller now, but stubborn. The front way was closed to him. Maybe the back way wasn't. He pulled his goggles down over his yellow eyes and crawled into the dark after the crab, and his mother's letter.

The passage spat Glint out into gray daylight. He scrambled up a slope of wet scrap and saw the crab ahead, legs clicking fast over the rocks. Beyond it stretched a vast ocean of liquid metal. Its surface rippled like spilled mercury, bright and seamless. Glint had no name for it, but later he would learn the people here called it the Silver Sea. The crab ran straight toward its shore, his mother's letter clamped in one rusted claw. "Get back here!" Glint shouted. He pumped his legs and gained a step. The crab's teal lights blinked faster. A bolt of blue fire cracked past his ear. Glint flinched and looked back. Garrek had found the hidden passage too. The guard climbed the slope, halberd leveled, his masked face fixed on Glint. A second bolt leapt from the weapon's tip. It struck a pipe beside Glint and burst into sparks. "Stop, monster!" Garrek bellowed. "That's stolen town property!" "It's mine!" Glint ducked low and kept running. The letter was his whole case, his only proof. Without it he was just a goblin at a gate. He dove, fingers spread, and his hand closed on cold metal. He had the crab's back leg. The crab shrieked and dragged him forward. Glint's boots skidded across slick stone. Ahead, a great stone wall poured glowing green runoff and black sewage into the sea. The flow churned and stank. The crab was pulling him straight into it. "Let go, let go!" Glint yanked harder. The leg bent. The crab spun and snapped its big claw at his face. He jerked his head aside. The claw clipped his goggles and tore them loose. Behind him, Garrek charged. "Move and I burn you!" Glint had one second to choose. He could save himself, or save the letter. He threw his free hand toward the claw that held the paper. His fingers brushed the wax seal. For one breath he felt the letter's torn edge. Then the crab wrenched sideways and plunged over the lip of the outfall. It fell into the green flood with the letter still in its grip. The current swallowed it. Glint lurched after it and caught the stone edge just in time. Below him the runoff roared down a dark tunnel, carrying the crab into the sewers beneath the town. The letter was gone. His goggles were gone. Garrek's boots crunched behind him. Glint rolled sideways off the ledge and dropped behind a heap of pipes. Garrek's bolt scorched the spot where he had lain. Glint pressed flat and held his breath. "Filthy thing," Garrek muttered. He peered over the outfall, saw only churning green, and spat. "Good riddance." He turned and climbed back toward the gate. Glint waited until the footsteps faded. Then he crawled to the ledge and stared down into the stinking dark where the flow vanished. His letter was down there. His way into the Academy was down there. He set his jaw and climbed down into the tunnel.

The sewer air burned Glint's throat. Green light rose from the goo and lit the curved stone walls. He coughed, pulled his collar over his nose, and pushed deeper. The fumes stung his eyes, but he did not stop. His letter was down here. His whole future was down here. Then he saw it. The letter floated on the glowing flow, its red wax seal still whole. The paper spun slow in the current, just out of reach. "There you is," Glint whispered. He crept to the edge and stretched his arm over the slime. His fingers reached. The torn corner brushed his claw. The goo erupted. A wall of flesh heaved up from under the surface, dripping and huge. Tentacles coiled around the rusted shell of a crab. Mouths opened across the thing's body, each lined with crooked teeth. Eyes rolled open everywhere, wet and watching. The crab crunched between two of the mouths. Teal lights blinked out one by one. And there, stuck to a single large eye near the top, was the letter. Glint looked up at the towering monster. He wiped slime off his chin. "You'se gots to be kidding me," he muttered. The eye with the letter swiveled toward him. The whole mass lurched his way. Tentacles slapped the flow and splashed burning goo across the walls. Glint dove behind a thick pipe. A drop hit his arm and hissed on his sleeve. He slapped it out, teeth clenched.

The monster surged out of the sludge after him. Glint ran. Tentacles smashed the walls where his head had been. He bolted into a narrow side tunnel and the great mass of flesh jammed in behind him, mouths snapping, eyes rolling. The letter still clung to one wet eye near the top. Glint could not reach it and could not stop. He just ran. The tunnels split and split again. Glint picked turns by instinct, his boots slapping through shallow goo. Behind him the horror tore pipes loose and dragged itself on. Its tentacles stretched long and whipped past his ears. One wrapped his ankle. Glint yanked free and lost a boot. He kept going, barefoot now, breath burning. Then his toe caught something tight across the floor. A wire. Old and taut. Glint pitched forward onto his face. Gears groaned above him. A rusted slab of iron, hung by chains in the ceiling, dropped. Glint rolled hard against the wall. The slab crashed down behind him. It caught the horror across its bulk and pinned it to the stone. The creature split open. Mouths screamed from every side. The eye holding the letter burst, and the paper peeled loose and fluttered down. Glint scrambled over and snatched it from the muck. The red wax seal was whole. He pressed it to his chest and laughed, high and ragged. "Got you. I got you." Dust settled. The screaming stopped. Glint stood in a wider chamber, the trap's chains swinging overhead. He wiped his goggles and grinned. The grin died. All around him, small eyes opened in the dark. Dozens of them, low to the ground. Metal scraped. Rusty spear tips caught the green light. Ramshackle crossbows creaked as they drew. Kobolds crept from every crack in the walls, scaled and hunched, closing the circle.

The kobolds pressed closer, spears level. Glint raised his hands, the letter crushed to his chest. Then the nearest kobold stopped. It looked past Glint, at the huge split body under the fallen slab. Its mouth stretched into a grin. It turned to the others and shouted, "Rot-grabber's dead! We's feastin' good tonight, boys!" The circle broke into noise. Spears dropped. Kobolds swarmed the dead horror and started cutting up the remains. Glint stood frozen, waiting for a crossbow bolt that did not come. One kobold slapped his shoulder like they were old friends. A scrape of metal cut through the chatter. The crowd parted. A kobold limped forward, leaning on a heavy wrench he used like a crutch. One of his legs was gone. Bits of wire and cogs hung from his belt and clinked with each swing step. He stopped in front of Glint and looked him up and down with dark, clever eyes. "You led it onto the wire," the kobold said. He pointed the wrench at the swinging chains above. "That trap's older than my grandsire. We never could spring it. You dropped the rot-grabber in one go." He thumped his chest. "Wrencher. These are my tunnels."

Wrencher turned and swung his wrench forward like a crutch. "Come. Boss wants to see the goblin who dropped the rot-grabber." Glint followed him into the dark pipe runs. Kobolds hauled dripping slabs of meat behind them. The tunnels narrowed, then opened wide. Glint kept the letter pressed tight under his arm. "Never seen your kind this far south," Wrencher said. His clever eyes slid sideways. "Goblins live north. Firefinger Mountains. What brings you crawling under Scraptown?" Glint grinned with his jagged teeth. "Looking for work." He did not say Academy. He did not say graduate. Wrencher grunted and let it drop. Something splashed past Glint's bare foot. He looked down. A green translucent thing scuttled over the sludge, its body like soft jelly, eye-stalks waving. It hissed and darted into a crack. "Slime rat," Wrencher said. "Harmless. The upstream poison makes them. Been getting worse." He tapped a rusted pipe. "Somebody rerouted my main feed. Fouled my tunnels. Boss means to find out who." They reached the warren. The cavern was huge, lit by glowing sludge and salvaged lamps. Kobolds crowded every ledge. They hung the meat on hooks and chattered. Then Glint stopped cold. High above hung an iron cage. Inside crouched a gnome. Grease smeared his haggard face. Dirty hair stuck out at odd angles. He gripped the bars and glared down at the whole cavern like he wanted to burn it.

Glint pressed flat against a cold pipe. Below him the warren crowded with kobolds. They lifted their spears and chanted. On a stone platform stood a cloaked figure larger than the rest. Three rat-lizard heads poked from the hood. This was Kwarvarask, the cult leader the kobolds served, the true Boss beneath Wrencher's talk of work. Kwarvarask raised its claws. All three heads hissed as one. "The breath of the queen will cleanse the surface filth," it whispered. The kobolds screamed back their approval. Glint felt the sound shake the pipe under his hands. He finally understood. These kobolds did not want the town. They wanted to burn it. Behind the platform squatted a huge engine of salvaged metal. Pipes fed into its mouth. Glint had seen a thing like it in his old delver's map. A ship thruster. One blast would roast everything above, including the Academy he had crawled so far to reach. Then Kwarvarask turned to the iron cage. "First we feed the queen," it hissed. Kobolds cranked a wheel. The cage lowered toward a pit. From the pit rose a monster of stitched flesh and scrap. Five lizard heads snapped on one body, cables sewn into its skin. The gnome inside the cage gripped the bars and spat. "Keep your scaly hands off me, you three-faced sack of guts!" the gnome roared. Grease smeared his haggard face. A soggy cigarette hung from his mouth. Glint did not plan. He dropped. He landed on the cage roof and yanked the pin that held the door. "I is not on kobold’s side!" he hissed. "I'm getting you out." Nihm stared. "A goblin. Course it's a bloody goblin." He scrambled free as the five-headed thing lunged. Jaws slammed shut where his leg had been. At that moment the far wall exploded. Four strangers charged in. A half-orc swung a huge blade. A halfling darted low with daggers. An elf loosed arrows. A dwarf shouted and raised a hammer of light. Real adventurers, Glint thought. The kobolds broke into chaos. "Now! Move!" Glint hauled Nihm off the cage. They dropped to the cavern floor and ran for a dark pipe. Behind them the adventurers fought the hydra. Glint looked back once. The five-headed monster caught the half-orc and flung him into the wall. Kwarvarask's claws glowed. The elf fell. The dwarf's light winked out. The heroes who had saved the whole room went down one by one. Glint shoved Nihm into the pipe and crawled after him. The screaming faded behind the sludge. They were alive, and alone, and the thruster still waited above the town. "Right," Nihm wheezed. "Start talking, goblin. How do we stop that thing?"

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."

The chamber stayed dark. Nihm stuffed the torn cables in his belt and spat his cigarette into the sludge. "Now we run," he said. But the tunnels forked three ways, and Glint didn't know one from another. Both choices led into black pipe. Behind them, far off, claws scraped on stone. The cult had heard the juice drop. Glint grabbed a side pipe and hauled himself up. "This way smells like air," he said. Nihm cursed but followed. They scrambled through a cramped drain, slime-rats bursting under their hands, their stalk-eyes popping wetly. The scraping grew louder. Spear-points glinted in the dark behind. Then a shape blocked the pipe ahead. Glint knew the heavy wrench before he saw the kobold leaning on it. Wrencher. The old tunnel leader who'd respected Glint for killing the rot-grabber. Behind Wrencher crouched a dozen scaled cultists, spears raised, dragon trinkets rattling at their belts. "Traitor!" Wrencher hissed. His tail lashed. "You said you wanted work. You freed the gnome." He swung his wrench up to point past them, into the dead thruster chamber. His eyes went wide. The metal box hung open, cables torn, and deep inside the engine a red glow swelled and pulsed. "You idiots! The core's backing up. It's going to blow!" Nihm's head snapped around. "He's right. Rip the feed, the mana's got nowhere to go." He shoved Glint hard. "MOVE!" They ran as one now, goblin, gnome, and kobolds together, all fear of each other burned off by the thing building behind them. Glint's bare foot slapped the wet floor. The red glow lit the pipes orange. Wrencher swung on his wrench-crutch, fast for a one-legged thing, hissing at his cultists to climb. The thruster blew. The blast threw Glint off his feet and slammed him into a grate. Heat rolled over his back. Stone cracked and fell. When the roar faded, his ears sang. He pushed up on shaking arms. Nihm lay beside him, limp, a cut over one eye, cigarette gone, chest still rising. Glint hauled the gnome over his shoulder. He was heavier than he looked. Dust choked the air. Through it Glint saw Wrencher, half-buried under fallen pipe, one arm pinned, blood on his scales. The kobold's cultists lay scattered and still around him. "Glint," Wrencher rasped. He worked his trapped arm and couldn't free it. His eyes found the goblin carrying the gnome toward the one tunnel still open. "You brought this down on us. The Boss will hear." He bared his teeth, furious and helpless. "Run, goblin. Run while you can." Glint didn't answer. He turned and climbed, Nihm's weight dragging at his neck, toward a thin grey light leaking down from above. The thruster was gone for good. So was any welcome in these tunnels. He had made a true enemy today, and he carried an unconscious friend who alone knew the way back up to the Academy.

Glint hauled himself out of the drain into grey daylight. His back was scorched. His throat burned with smoke. Nihm hung limp over his shoulder, heavier with every step. The gnome's cut had split wide in the climb. Blood soaked Glint's leather armor and ran down his arm. The wall loomed ahead, and the great scrap-metal gate rose above it, its lights blinking through the dust. "Stay with me," Glint said. He dragged Nihm across the broken ground. "You still gotta show me how to get in. You promised." Nihm didn't answer. His chest barely moved. Glint dropped to his knees and pressed both hands over the wound. Blood pushed through his fingers. He pressed harder. It kept coming. He had killed a monster, sabotaged an engine, outrun a cave-in. He could not stop this. "Help!" he screamed at the gate. "He's dying! Somebody help!" A hatch in the gate ground open. Garrek stepped out, the gate guard in rusty armor, breathing mask hissing, techno-arcane halberd low in his grip. Behind him rolled Bitz-0, the iron golem, treads crushing scrap, one orange eye burning. Glint knew them. They had attacked him the first day he came with his letter. He didn't care anymore. "Please," Glint said. "He's hurt bad. I can't stop it." Garrek stopped. His masked face turned from the goblin to the bleeding gnome. "That's Nihm," he said. "The Academy's artificer." He barked over his shoulder. "Bitz-0. Now." The golem lurched forward. Its seized right arm jerked, then obeyed. From a slot in its chest it drew a slim hypodermic, needle gleaming. "NIHM," Bitz-0 said. "WOUND. DEEP." A grinding pause. "KRRNNGH. TREATING." Bitz-0 knelt with a shriek of metal. It pulled Glint's hands aside and drove the needle into Nihm's chest. The potion hissed in. Nihm's body jerked. His cut began to close, skin knitting pink over the gash. His breath came stronger. "Steady," Garrek said, watching. "Hold steady, little man." Relief flooded Glint. He sat back on his heels and grinned, jagged teeth bared. "You did it," he said. "He's gonna live." Garrek turned toward Glint. His grip shifted on the halberd. "You came out of the sewers," he said. "Covered in soot. Dragging our artificer half-dead." The eyes behind the mask were cold. "You're not getting an answer from me, goblin. You're getting an escort." Glint raised a hand. "Wait, I can explain, the thruster, the cult, I was—" The halberd blade swung flat and touched his shoulder. Blue light cracked across the metal. The shock slammed through Glint's body. His teeth clenched. His vision went white, then black. He fell beside Nihm in the dirt. The last thing he heard was Garrek's voice, far away. "Get them both inside." Glint had reached the gate at last. He was carried through it unconscious, a prisoner, not a student.