The Boy IN My Phone

Watchers Never Miss

An unknown enemy skulking unseen in the next chamber felt worse than a phalanx of visible warriors.

'One of us must draw their fire,' said the elf, 'in order to know what we are facing.'

'I am quietest and will see or hear their movement fastest.' The piskie's ears quivered as he spoke. All piskies were cherubic of feature; all those that Pela had known before were cheery and talkative, but this unthinkable thievery and the time spent with the obsessive, demanding, quick-to-anger elf, had laid the piskie's spirit low. He had yet to show her his smile, and the black eyes no longer gleamed. She had no idea how the elf had persuaded him to join this raid.

Pela didn't want the piskie entering that brightly-lit cavern. His evident fear had awoken her own; death breathed in that chamber, she sensed it with surety.

'Hold,' she spoke as the piskie started to rise. She pointed at the elf's folded chart of the caverns, 'You say we are here.'

He unfolded it further before agreeing.

'We passed a dark crumbling passage to our right, here.' The map received a tap. 'See, it connects with that one.' She pointed to the right-most passage at the distant end of the Elling's oval chamber.

The elf considered, finally nodding. 'Piskie, take this dark side passage, go nearly to its end and make a commotion there; enough to draw any guards out.'

'Piskie, escape, as soon as you have made your disturbance,' said Pela, 'for we will not tarry.'

The piskie eased his lucky acorn from around his neck and kissed it. The elf went back a little way with him to give a final instruction, then, without a sound, the piskie was gone.

The wait was long as the other passage stretched away from the chamber but, at last, a distant rumble of disturbed rocks came to their ears from the far end of the silent cavern.

A long moment swelled so that Pela started to hope that the unseen menace had only prowled their imaginations. Then, movement; three thin lanky figures stretched and eased away from the walls, which almost seemed to cling to them reluctant to let them go. Pela smothered a gasp, 'Watchers!'

The three watchers had all been standing on thin ledges, at least their own height above the path, two on one side of the Elling's plinth, one on the other. They held slender rough-hewn spears, a little taller than they.

'Some low level Merge cloaked them perhaps?' said the elf shaking his head at their lucky escape. The three creatures dropped with lithe grace onto the paths, shared a glance and loped off towards the chamber's far end, one snatching a torch from the wall.

'Watchers,' Pela was almost yanking on the elf's straggling snarl of beard. 'Watchers; they never miss.' She was dimly aware that a watcher melded a little of its consciousness into each spear to guide it.

'Now they are after the piskie. They have their Weirding spears, the piskie...' she cast around at a loss, until she finally alighted on; '...has a lucky acorn.'

The elf lifted the acorn from a pocket in his jerkin. He shrugged at her surprise. The piskie felt our mission was the more important, the more desperate. He left his luck with us.'

Next, he clamped Pela to his chest. She clung there. He was up and moving the instant the three watchers passed from their sight. As they drew level with the Elling's plinth, he placed her on his palm, which was a good match for her size.

They both stared out over the grey pool of corpse mould. The deadly fungi quivered, the tendrils that threaded it, thrummed as they converged on the Elling's plinth. Neither raider spoke, both wondering the same thing: is there another defence here, something beyond the guarding watchers and the deadly fungus.