For a second, there was darkness and silence. The child turned around, reaching out and groping around in the dark. Next to them was a small bracelet that had a series of round stones threaded along it.
Tam pushed the trinket towards the sweeping hand, and the child immediately grabbed it and slipped it back on. Running their fingers across the beads, the child spoke.
“Azum!”
With that word, one of the beads on the bracelet sparked. The spark became a flame, and the flame leapt from their fingertip. It continued to grow as it soared forward, growing into a massive fireball, which blinded Tam’s darkvision.
Tam squinted his eyes shut right before the fireball struck one of the tunnel walls, covering his face as a wave of stinging heat from the explosion washed over him.
Cracking open a single eye, Tam couldn’t make out anything in front of him. His darkvision was fried, leaving him blinded in the dark.
“Azum!”
Tam grabbed the arm of the child just as the flame reached their fingertip. Wrenching the small child’s arm back wasn’t difficult, and with their wrist seized tightly, they couldn’t release the spell.
The child wriggled in Tam’s grasp, flickering the small flame at the tip of their finger. The fragile light threatening to go out and plunge both back into darkness.
It would be easy to kill the child. Tam still had his elven knife, but even a slash of claws across the throat would finish them.
But the child had spared him, when it could have put a bolt between his eyes. By the orders of his Goddess, he owed them the same mercy. Deescalation was core to survival against the surface dwellers. When a kobold kills a surface child, hundreds of kobold children suffer the retaliation.
So the two stood in a stalemate. Tam couldn’t release their wrist and risk another fireball aimed at him, especially while he was nightblind. The child refused to let the spell fizzle, but couldn’t pull out of the locked grasp Tam had on them.
“Maatus diir jany gli Nlin!”
Tam didn’t like the thought of standing in the middle of an unexplored tunnel, visible to all by the light of the flame, while nearly blind himself, all while a child babbled in a foreign tongue for the whole world to hear.
Digging his claws into the hard earth beneath his feet, Tam dragged the child along with him. He needed to find somewhere small to hide or soft soil to burrow into, until his eyes healed. Then he would have to keep moving until he found the trail of the fleeing village.
The child put up a token effort at first, digging their heels into the ground and trying to wrench themself free, but a few swats to the leg from Tam’s tail stopped that quickly enough.
“Luu bnii diir d’i Nlin?”
Tam hissed back at the child, shushing them. Any predator prowling these tunnels could hear them well before either of them would see it. Even as his eyes adjusted to the minimal light, it was hard to spot any hiding places along the tunnel. It was especially hard when every ten steps he had to shush the child again.
What were they even trying to do? They weren’t screaming loud enough for their parents above to hear them, if they had even survived the horrid beast that had emerged. Nobody else was around that could possibly understand them.
“Wgyst nysg la-” Tam instinctually interrupted the speech with another hiss, before his brain could even process the words spoken.
He knew that phrase. In his book, one of the hymns had been translated into giant-speech. It had those words, almost exactly. He was pretty sure it meant “What are you?”. He racked his brain for other phrases in giant, so he could communicate back to the child.
The hymn of hiding. He stopped to retrieve his book from the bag over his shoulder, and flipped to the very back. Transcribed phonetically into draconic runes, was the giant-speech translation.
“Gwyst feddy mwmw yn, nyng chwd moynt refr me gwy grang wgyst blewt peyfny gwudd brynd la. Sgint cwo dodomsengoi blarch bwbwoi la sgymsu pluw. Ewg dwimrewndoint blewt o la.”
When an enemy too great to face comes, flee to where they cannot reach you. I made for you the tunnels and burrows so that you would have a place to be safe.
The child tilted their head.
“Ajii mam? Húúp puur diir b’iirgu kúúny?”
Tam spoke slowly, “La fa pluw.” He gestured at the child and himself with the first word.
“La fa pluw.” The child echoed.
We must hide.
With those words exchanged, the two walked in unison. The child didn’t release the spell, but only so they had a light to walk with. Tam didn’t let go of their wrist, but they no longer struggled to get free of his grasp. They moved much more quickly like this, and they soon heard the sound of running water in the distance.
An underground river intersected with this tunnel, merging with it and flowing further down. They could follow the merging point and see where the flow headed, or they could move up towards the source of the river.
Tam let go of the child’s wrist, and cupped his hands in the water. He drank greedily, it had been a while since he drank water this clean and fresh. The child went to drink the water too, but it was a challenge with their right hand holding up the flame. Tam helped them, bringing his cupped hand to their lips and gently letting them sup the water.
“Wgyst nysg la oilde cla?” The child asked.
Tam slowly translated the phrase out loud.
“Wgyst… what. Nysg la, are we. Oilde cla. Bring names…”
“Ewg oilde cla Tam,” he pointed to himself. “La?”
“Bow.”
So the child’s name was Bow. One mystery about them solved, a million more to go. Who taught them the Giant’s language? How could they cast those powerful spells? Did they trust Tam? Could Tam trust them?
Tam couldn’t answer this now. He had to have faith. Kathonia wouldn’t abandon him with a dangerous child that would stab him in the back. This was a blessing, though of what kind he was not yet sure.
The plan hadn’t changed. This river cut curves into the walls of the tunnel that could just fit a curled up kobold, so he’d nest there as long as it took for his eyes to recover. It was easy to scramble into place, and from there he called Bow.
“Swnd sgef.” We’ll rest here. Used in many hymns, this at least was a phrase Tam had memorized in giant’s speech.
Bow sat down with their feet in the water. They still held the flame high, shining like a beacon in the dark.
Tam threw a pebble at Bow’s head. They needed to let go of the flame and hide.
“Bow! Swnd sgef!” He hissed.
Bow pointed at the flame above his index finger, and Tam nodded.
With a stiff flick of the wrist, the flame finally leapt from his hand and fell straight into the water, doused before it could grow bigger than an egg.
Surrounded by darkness, listening to the sound of running water, Tam quickly fell asleep.
He awoke from his sleep to a scream.
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