The further they pressed into Elbrinth, into a network of interconnected buildings like a massive tenement block, the more it became clear that the goblins had been down there for some time. Many of the interiors contained crude bedding, the walls painted with goblin murals and strange runes that Scylla insisted were not the old Elbrinthian language.

More than once they found discarded straw dolls, and crude wooden toys. But no goblin children. Indeed, the silence of Elbrinth had returned with a vengeance and became near-suffocating.

"They might be running for it," Scylla reasoned. "Gathering their families and fleeing via void cubes. After all, with us on the warpath... It's not a safe place to idle. Spirits, they must have been down here for months at least. All this time, sifting through the ruins of my people. The goblins, with their sheer numbers, and with their arsenal... I suppose they could reach deeper than any human expedition."

"Was there really that much for them to take?" Cricket asked.

"I didn't think so, but... with how deep into Elbrinth we are, it's quite possible there were caches of weaponry and untapped resources, lost to time before Bleak found them," said Scylla.

"There were so many goblins back there, and that wasn't even the full extent of their numbers." Illyana had paled. "I suppose I never stopped to think of... how many goblins there are underground. Out of sight."

Coin frowned his misshapen fanged mouth. He knew the gravity of the situation better than the others, who had never 'lived' among goblins as he had. Goblins bred at an explosive rate, where their gestation period was months shorter than those of a human or elven woman. The harshness of history, which had seen them spending centuries living deep in the bowels of the world, had them evolve into creatures that could survive incredibly lean conditions.

It was only the goblin tribes being so divided and poorly educated that kept them as minor nuisances in the past. But with Lord Bleak educating and arming them, uniting the creatures under a common cause... he must have been drawing thousands upon thousands of goblins under his sway.

A horrid sound snapped Coin from his thoughts, the braying of horrid beasts that seemed to echo around them from all sides. Coin glanced around sharply, sprouting a few extra eyes on the exposed sections of his grey flesh.

"Oh damnation," Varis said, rolling his eyes to the vaulted ceiling. "What now?"

"Nothing good," said Illyana. She had traded her broken sword for a cleaver plucked from a dead goblin, and held it aloft with one hand. More shrieks echoed from somewhere around them, and she tightened her stance.

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Coin tensed in his makeshift armour. "Come on."

They pressed on until the corridor opened out into a larger chamber that had several other doorways branching out in an assortment of directions. A fetid smell hung thick in the air, like rotten fruit left to ferment in the sun.

There came a rushing and scraping sound in the darkness, like the sound of hooves clipping and clopping at a mad gallop. Then the sound multiplied, broadened, and it sounded as if more horrid noises were coming frm each of the surrounding tunnels.

Things, for that was all that could really describe them, emerged from the dark one by one. Misshapen and twisted things that had perhaps been human once but were now twisted with inhuman proportions, bodies riddled with growths and scales and horns and fangs and tentacles, each one a different and unique affront to nature.

Spears of shadow flew from Scylla's fingers, shredding through one bull-headed abomination as it came charging forward, blowing a great hole through his torso. "More monstrosities," the witch huffed, raising a wall of umbral blackness to hinder more of the horned beasts. "I don't even want to know what horrible process spawned them."

A beast with the sloping saw-toothed snout of a gator and protruding talons of a cockatrice came loping Coin's way from the darkness. The mimic grunted, skewering it with a spear of flesh and bone, devouring the thing in one fluid movement.

"That bastard must have run off to retrieve them," said Coin, huffing and drawing the freshly absorbed matter into his aching muscles. "We-"

Askyr swept out of the dark so swift that Coin only barely saw hi before he was swept off his feet. They slammed into a far wall, uprooting a great chunk of the carved stone. Cursing, Coin struck him harshly in the jaw with one ironclad fist, sending a spray of tooth shards from his bloodied maw.

Great claws tore a chunk off iron away from Coin's chest, and the mimic howled as Askyr spa a stream of flesh melting toxin onto his shoulder. The two thrashed and bucked against each other, shaking the chamber and ripping more chunks from the wall. And with the others fending off the horde of misshapen things, Coin had to fear he would be facing this alone.

Until the explosive bang of a hand cannon echoed through the air, and a lead ball blew a portion out of Askyr's back. The basilisk-man hissed, recoiled, and caught a poison knife in the back from Varis. "Off of him!" the adventurer shouted. "Get-"

A backhanded blow struck Varis, and a horrid sound of bones cracking echoed through the chamber. Varis fell back, limp as a cloth doll, and made no sound but a pained wheeze as he hit the ground.

"Varis!" Illyana shouted, grappling with a lanky monstrosity that seemed halfway between an ogre and a bear.

"Damn you," Coin growled. He and Askyr struck each other at the same time, the impact blasting the two away from each other. The mimic skidded across the tiles, ejecting chunks of blackened flesh from his wounded shoulder.

The mimic huffed and swayed, raising his fists while Askyr prowled around him. The malformed thing, wounded and bleeding all over, snapped and snarled like a rabid hound. An animal in misshapen flesh. There was nothing human left in those eyes, nothing intelligent, nothing capable of rationality or higher thought.

A colossal boom of thunder shook the chamber, dislodging chunks of dust and debris from the ceiling, and the doorway behind them was torn open by a strong explosion.

Colony emerged from the opening, her extra flesh trailing behind her as a shifting grey slug. Chunks of ceramic were embedded in her chest and arms, but the elder mimic seemed quite unharmed.

"Sorry for being late." She tried to smile, but it looked eerie when her eyes didn't move. "There was more than one golem."

Coin smiled, despite himself. Everything was going to be alright now. "Colony," he said, "help me kill this bastard."

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