>>5343165When you return to the surface, most of your forces are likewise there. The Novice has set up a sort of improvised field hospital, using alcohol form the dwarves’ stores to clean and disinfect wounds, and the foes’ bedding and their remaining, undestroyed medical supplies to wrap up what wounds her magic is insufficient to completely seal. In the end, apart from your assassination squad, almost all your forces remain alive and largely unharmed—less than a half-dozen kobolds died or were injured in the invasion and destruction of this company-town.
“They barely even made us work for it,” the pit-Guard scoffs.
“I certainly do not feel underworked,” The Novice replies.
Nor do you imagine the kobolds do, as they and the Merchants extract and account for the spoils: additional gems and precious metals to augment your horde, family trinkets stripped away from the clutching hands of ashen-faced females and the bodies of the forty-odd dead dwarves. This is in addition to the many useful tools and implements, dozens of mundane but masterfully-crafted weapons, and the magic axe.
The dim moonlight is blotted out as the Bugbear Boss returns from his midnight flight. His bad lands, and he hops down from it. You survey the massive winged mammal with some trepidation, for it is even larger than the basilisk, if not quite so large as the Devourer; you eye its wings with a certain envy—not for the first time, you wish you had such wings, and could have soared over the battle as this creature and its master did.
“No escapees,” the Boss says simply, throwing a dead dwarf down at your feet, and re-wrapping his curious chain around one arm. You not that the body looks… Frosty, and strangely desiccated. The bat-thing holds the leg of another such survivor in its teeth.
