Randall is thoroughly confused now. "There are bronze and copper kobolds? Are they a threat? Maybe a potential source of information for reaching the surface?"
Xiddik shrugs. "Dunno. Maybe. Metallic kobolds are meeker than most, in my esper...experence."
"You know about these lands below than I do. If you want to talk to this one, we can. If you want to forget we ever found them and go on, that's fine, too."
Covakis seems somewhat comforted by Asht'el's words, though he keeps glancing around expectantly. "This can't be the surface... they say that the surface has no ceiling, and that there's a bright light which constantly threatens to blind all who venture out. Will we see the surface soon?"
Xiddik is silent a moment. "Is no way to avoid them. Best get it over with. Stay here."
She adjusts her second pair of horns and takes off her tail attachment. The kobold seems to take on a more stately, elegant posture as she saunters through the passage towards the voice.
"OK, but if you want me to come to your aid, say 'sunlight'. I will stay back otherwise." Randall waits in the shadows, straining to hear the panic word, poised to run to her aid.
"G'day. What's that you've there?"
"This is not the surface, Covakis, you're right," Asht'el explains to the boy. "We had to get out of the chaos back there, so we took the gate we had found, just to get away. We're in another region of the Darklands, and will now make our way to the surface."
After a moment's quiet, he continues, attempting to give the boy some sense of the world he'll be adopting as his own, "As you say, there is no ceiling on the surface, just wide open sky, which is usually blue but can take on many colors, with the grey of rain - water falling from the sky, that is - or the many colors of the sunset. And rainbows, ribbons of color in the sky after rain."
"As to the bright light in the sky - the sun - it will take you some time getting used to it, I expect, but it is lovely and warm. The sun in my homeland - well, it is the same sun everywhere, but it is sunnier in some places that others. In any case, in my home the sun is bright and strong. It can be harsh and deadly, but it gives a beautiful light and warmth. I long to see the sun again, and to see it with you, lad."
Something causes the kobold to look up in the middle of her rather abrupt reply; her reptilian eyes narrow as she takes in Xiddik's presence, form, and color. She quickly closes her left claws around the object she'd been manipulating. "Who's askin'?" she barks back.
Covakis nods slowly. "It sounds... amazing, if strange. I hope we arrive there before we starve or are caught down here."
As she finishes, her tail twitches and she shows Xiddik what she's got in her claws: a homemade arrowhead that she's apparently been sharpening.
Xiddik's tail forms a little arch, expressing the equivalent of raised eyebrows. "You mark to kill it yourself? This water-thing skulk whereat?"
The girl's tail gives a little side-to-side swish across the cave floor. Her voice holds a hint of a challenge as she replies. "Yah, going kill it soon... you think I can't? Back, big cave that way." She motions toward the large room where the rest of the party is currently waiting.
Could leave, she thinks. They'd never catch me. Safer. Quicker.
She quickly shrugs off the notion. Even if she were alright with it—and she's not sure she would be anymore—there's still work to be done.
"...you gonna have to line in, Chakchak." She starts walking back, replacing her tail attachment as she goes. "Me shouldermates are there, and if I know them, they ain't like to let anyone face something lonesome. How big's it?"
The girl stands up, brushes herself off, and carefully gathers her newly-made weapons. "Okay. Guess I don't need kill it by myself, huh, just kill it. Eats many Deepdrifters."
A minute or two after Xiddik's departure, she comes back into the cave with a smaller, bronze-scaled kobold following her warily. The new arrival is carrying stone-tipped arrows that seem homemade, and she looks around the room cautiously from the shadows as the two enter.
Spotting the newcomer alongside Xiddik, Were-Njord immediately begins growling and huffing at the her.
Randall watches as the two emerge from farther down the tunnel. Once he's convinced that the newcomer is not threatening his ally, he will subtly shift his position in hopes that she will notice him without being startled. "I will let the others know we have company."
He turns and heads back down tunnel carefully to where they left the others, probably only leading the kobolds by a few paces, and says in a low voice, "Xiddik appears to have found a friend. Any sign of motion from the water or other tunnels?"
"We got a kobold tribe about," Xiddik says flatly. "Bronze. Is probably not hossile. Metallics are usually good neighbors. Says—the young one says there's a monster in the pool, though; eats many of 'em. In normal I say keep walking, but this is a better group than normal, so's your calls."
She pauses. "Oh. And her name is Chakchak."
"What sort of monster?"
"Can they help us get to the surface?" Jametor asks.
The kobold looks around at the group as they speak their strange tongue, its eyes evaluating each in turn. It cocks its head slightly at the sight of the halflings (and goblin), and its tail makes slow back-and-forth motions on the floor.
"Do you think your guest would prefer we translate into Draconic?" Jametor asks Xiddik
Chakchak gives the reptilian equivalent of a shrug. "Big teeth, many tentacles."
To Xiddik, "Should we do this for them? Do you think they will help us in return?"
Asht'el considers the idea of taking out the big-teethed, many-tentacled creature, while hoping that the presence of a drow, even a young one, does not upset the kobold.
"If it'll get us guidance on how to get to the surface, I'm game to take this thing on," he offers. "We've likely fought worse to get to this point."
"Could use directions, maybe. Never ill to make friendly with those that have the heads to remember a debt." Xiddik shrugs. "Like I say, this group can like as not handle some giant frog or whatever's what's mollering these lot."
Randall nods, "I thought as much. So how do we proceed. Chakchak, how far does the monster reach? Does it like to grab prey when they are somewhere specific?"
Were-Njord continues to eye the newcomer kobold suspiciously but grunts and nods slightly in wordless agreement.
When Randall's question is translated, Chakchak tilts her head slightly. "Never been here see it myself, or I'd not be alive, eh?"
He shrugs with a little grin, "It was worth asking in case you knew."
Thinking back on where he saw the scrapes and splashed water, he tries to determine where the creature might set its trap, if indeed it has a preferred trap at all.
"We are going to need bait. And I would rather it not be any of us. Can we create something that looks like a morsel?"
"You mean like a mannikin of one of us?" asks Fíriel thoughtfully.
"Well, who is the most attractive of us?" Jametor asks pointedly.
"Mannikin or whatever you call it when you create a picture out of magic. I've seen street performers do it - they make a picture of a passerby with big ears or what have you and it really looks like the passerby. You have to be careful who you choose for a target, of course." It always made for a good crowd to gain some extra coin, especially if the target was offended - or pretended to be. The simple good old days!
At Jametor's question, Asht'el casually looks in all directions but at the elf. He means me, I know he does!