Skruc stroked an imaginary beard in deep contemplation. Morwen took the opportunity to try to figure out what sort of creature he was. Beneath the limp wizard’s hat protruded two batlike ears. A large brow ridge bristled with a giant eyebrow that stretched from temple to temple, and from its protective shadow poked a long, pointy nose, nearly as flaccid as the hat. That was the unpleasant stuff. Everything else on the face was nice. Round, wide-set eyes were fringed with thick lashes, and plump, red lips rested against gleaming white teeth. Dimpled cheeks flushed pink above a cleft chin. Morwen couldn’t figure it out. “Whatever are you?”
Skruc didn’t seem at all taken back by the question. “I’m a gnoggart.” Noting Morwen’s blank stare, he added, “My mother was a gnome and my father a boggart. And dearly departed Eggs here is a spoggart. Same father— Narg the Defiler—but his mummy’s a spider.
Skruc looked her up and down. “You really are a person then and a wizard to boot?”
“A warlock to be precise.”
“I bet you know lots of magic spells and can look after yourself in a pinch.”
“I’ve been known to curse people who don’t do as I ask and inflict great suffering upon them. Are you going to let me out now or what?” Morwen dug her fingernails into her palms drawing blood. If she could just move enough to point the staff at Skruc, she’d do more than curse him.
Skruc ignored the threat and began tearing at the web that trapped Morwen’s staff. “Is this your magic staff?” Before she could give it a deft flick of her wrist, mutter an incantation, and blast Skruc with shadow, the gnoggart pulled the weapon free.
“Not bad,” Skruc said huffing on the onyx and giving it a polish with his stained robe.
“It’s cursed. Anybody who uses it, apart from me, is afflicted with a nose that won’t stop growing,” Morwen lied. Given the size of Skruc’s nose, she thought that would be the best threat.
Skruc let the staff go with a clang. “We could release you, but there’s a problem…”
Goron rushed through the darkness, unable to slow himself on the glass-smooth walls. He heard the murmur of voices as he catapulted into a firelit room, its contents a blur, and rolled to his feet with his axe swung back ready to strike.
The mouth of a deformed gnome wearing a ridiculous hat dropped open and grew into a yawn when a ball of fire, emitting a high-pitched squeal interspersed with cussing, tumbled into the room after him.
A dead spider, with what appeared to be a boggart’s head, came back to life with a jolt, waved two hairy spider legs menacingly, and drew two daggers with nimble boggart hands. “You were saying there’s a problem letting me go?” Morwen raised her chin and eyebrows, and smirked.
While Eggs was away catching the meat for the pot, Goron, Morwen and Skruc gathered around the fire. Skruc sat cross-legged, and Morwen lay back with her legs stretched out, and her feet on the hearth. Goron squatted with his axe close by. He didn’t not trust either of the room’s strange owners and was ready to jump up and lop off heads at a moment’s notice. Szat’s appetite had overcome his aversion to spiders. He was taking a bath in the boiling mushroom broth and doing his best to drink his way to the bottom.
“You can’t walk through the slaugs’ caverns. You wouldn’t get more than a foot,” Skruc said.
“Slaugs?” Goron questioned.
“Slug people.”
Goron grimaced. “What…what’s going on down here? Gnoggarts, spoggarts and now slug people?”
“It gets lonely down here in the dark,” Skruc replied.
“But spiders—I’ve never been that lonely,” Goron said.
“My father was a man with extraordinary tastes. Nothing was safe. Whether it was animal, vegetable or mineral he lusted after it.”
Morwen’s lips curled up in disgust like fat worms tossed into a hot skillet. “Slug people really don’t sound very frightening.”
“Not by themselves, but there are thousands of them. You won’t stand a chance. They’ve enslaved many of the boggarts, forced them to work in the mines, and hunted the gnomes to extinction. God rest Mummy’s soul.”
“Is there any other way to the surface, a secret tunnel perhaps?” Morwen asked.
“Not a one.” Eggs emerged from the tunnel dragging a cocoon. Skruc jumped up excitedly. “The meat’s arrived.”
The prey gurgled in fear. Skruc fetched his knives whilst Eggs hovered close by him hoping for a compliment. “I suppose this makes up for the mistake earlier,” Skruc begrudgingly said. Skruc didn’t bother to put the creature out of its misery. He went straight into slicing it like a carrot—a piece at a time from the bottom up. It wasn’t until he got to the middle, the creature stopped squirming. Fifteen chunks of grey meat were all that was left. There were no bones or blood, only a slimy, clear fluid that oozed across the floor.
“What is it?” Goron shuddered and screwed up his face.
“A slaug, of course, they make delicious stew. Skruc removed a dripping Szat and dropped several chunks of meat into the large pot to join the mushrooms. The grey slabs floated like globs of fat in the murky, brown water. Skruc returned to sit cross-legged by the fire. “We’ll let that reduce so it thickens. Now where were we…ah yes, the slaugs. There’s no way to escape the caves unless you pass directly through their burrows. That leaves you with only one choice, walk right through.”
“But you said yourself, we can’t do that. They’re not friendly,” Morwen interjected.
“That I did, but you won’t be noticed if you’re one of them.” The pot began to bubble and overflow into the fire like lava spewing out of a volcano. A cloud of steam that smelt like a latrine ascended to the ceiling. “I’ve a potion.”
When the stew was ready, Skruc spooned out five generous bowls of the concoction and
