The Last Satyr: The Company is Formed Part 1
The Way Ahead

The boys were engaged in a fierce underground battle with a force of orcs. Evidently, there were three sides to a drow argument: those that argued to march up, those that argued to march down, and the orcs who argued to stay. The remaining five of their company had stumbled into to fight now were the latter.

These few orc guards, their faces twisted in malicious intent, unleashed a barrage of arrows aimed at the boy bearing the torch, seeking to snuff out his guiding light and plunge their company into darkness. But fate had a different design; the arrows, futile against the boy's hidden mithril armor, merely ricocheted harmlessly off their target. In a swift counterstroke, Graybeard brandished his staff, unleashing a blinding burst of light that disoriented the enemy. Seizing the opportunity, Ronthiel, with deadly aim, dispatched all five orcs with lethal precision in the span of mere heartbeats.

Now lifeless, these were the first orcs the boy had ever laid eyes upon, though their reputation preceded them. Renowned for their unbridled cruelty and grotesque visage, they were a loathsome, wretched breed—misshapen creatures bearing brutish features: jagged fangs, protruding snouts, and unkempt, coarse hair, instilling a primal repulsion in all who beheld them.

Orcs are former light elves captured on the surface in the last war by the drow who mistreated their prisoners and made slaves of them, beating their bodies and bending their minds until they were little more than beasts today. They had been here so long they too could see underground and no longer recognized Graybeard as their keeper, nor he them. Lolth was their keeper now, and she kept them alive only to torment them. They obeyed her orders only out of fear and the promise of food (of which she gave very little as to keep them hungry was to keep them obedient).

“Drag these orc bodies back into the dwarf side tunnel,” ordered Graybeard of the boys. “Drop them in some hole back far enough so that they won’t be found. Otherwise, the other orcs will smell the corpses and wish to replace and eat their flesh. Then they’ll know we’ve been here. And Marroh! Quickly, mark this side tunnel we came in by so that we can replace it again on our return.”

So Marroh marked it with his broad ax while the other two boys pulled the five dead orcs into the same side shaft to drop them into a bottomless crack.

The party emerged from the depths of an ancient dwarf side tunnel into the sprawling expanse of an underground drow highway. The path stretched out before them, illuminated by the faint, ethereal glow emanating from the speckled golden stones paving its surface. Though the light it cast was dim and feeble, it revealed the vastness of the thoroughfare, hinting at its grandeur and scope.

The highway was a marvel to behold, wide enough to accommodate a procession of ten men marching abreast. Its breadth spoke of ages past, echoing with the footfalls of countless soldiers who had trodden its worn surface. To their right, the road curved gently downhill, disappearing around a bend into the unknown depths of the subterranean realm. To their left, it ascended in a steady incline, stretching forth in a straight line, seemingly endless in its reach, before disappearing into the murky shadows of chilling despair.

Graybeard stood there for a moment and then took a few steps down the drow highway to see what lay ahead.

Dong! Dong! Dong!

The bell still sounded the alarm and so it reasoned to the old keeper that any reinforcements had to march up from below to join the battle. But if he and the company were to march down it, while at the same time the enemy marched up it, they would meet and run right into them.

He wanted to see if there were places to hide along the highway for them to slip into in case that happened.

As he did so, he heard voices and footsteps coming, but not from below. Instead, they came from above and behind. He could hear orc voices complaining.

“Did ya see how they raised the barrier net before even half of us orcs got through? Anybody left on da wrong side was human sword food!”

“And after they dropped that thar' net on us, their wall riders launched their poison darts down wit our boys still in the middle of it!”

“I’ll say! Why, I bet they hit more of us den' they did those humans and their horses! That just shows you can never trust a drow!”

“Well! I’m for pulling out of her', that’s for sure! And I ain't never coming back!”

Although forced to serve the drow, orcs desired to overthrow their hated masters and spoke badly of them.

There wasn’t time for Graybeard to get back up to the dwarf’s side tunnel. The orcs were already coming within sight on the underground road.

He looked for escape. Yet found none.

“Well! Looky here,” they said, spotting him, “Fresh meat!”

The boys had disposed of the dead orcs back a good way and now returned to join Graybeard on the drow highway. But they stopped when they heard Graybeard’s voice. He was talking to someone.

“Dear me,” he was saying. “I seem to have lost my way. I don’t suppose you, dear kind orcs, can give me directions?”

“Directions, eh?” a gruff voice asked. “You look like a spy ta' me!”

“A spy?” answered Graybeard, aghast. “Oh, no! I’m too old for that. I’m here to call upon Lolth in order to issue her our surrender terms. You do wish to surrender, don’t you?”

The great bell stopped tolling.

“Surrender terms, huh? Looks like you’re a bit early for that,” a voice answered. “You hear that bell stop ringing? It means no more reinforcements are needed. Sounds like your side lost!”

“Let’s eat the old carp!” said another.

The drow’s authority over the orcs was an iron grip, a chain of fear that bound their wills and crushed their hopes, leaving them like caged beasts, longing for a taste of meat and freedom. By keeping them hungry and starving, and too weak to rebel, it allowed the stronger drow to rule them. These orcs were hungry enough to eat him—or anyone else for that matter.

“Stop!” commanded Graybeard, his voice firm and steady. “The bell stopped ringing, because the bell ringers are dead, as will you be too if you do not obey my wishes. I am here to accept yours and Lolth’s surrender. No more and no less.”

The orcs looked at one another uncertainly, losing their enthusiasm for eating him.

“He could be right,” said one of them.

“What matter if he is?” argued another. “We all know Lolth’s orders on spies. We’re to take 'im to her! She can either surrender as he says, or she can have her fun torturing him like the others! Either way, she’ll give us our reward. Fresh meat for all of us and all the while we march away from a duty assignment where maybe we get stomped under some horse’s hooves!”

“Yeah! There’s not enough meat on him anyway for all of us.”

The boys peeked out from the side tunnel to have a look and there must have been five tens of orcs in front of Graybeard. They were filthy, fanged, bow-legged, long-armed creatures with a taste for human flesh.

In their wretched condition, they were given only helmets and breastplate armor by the drow, if even that, but never shields or daggers, and only curved swords called Scimitars. Anything else they were too weak to carry or might have used them to kill their masters. Some were archers and very good with bows, though they now lacked the strength to shoot them very far.

Still, without Amien and young Joe without a shield, the boys had no chance in fighting that many, and Graybeard knew it too, for he looked right at the boys and shook his head.

“He’ll be wishing we had eaten him once Lolth gets her claws in him!” said one orc.

They all laughed.

Fortunately, they all had their backs to the boys, or they’d have seen them. So the boys ducked back into the dwarf mine and crawled back a way to discuss it.

“What’ll we do?” gasped Ronthiel in dismay. “He’s my keeper!”

“He shook his head at us,” Marroh said. “He doesn’t want us to try and free him.”

“We’d be killed if we tried,” agreed young Joe. “I’ve got no armor. They’d fill me with arrows before I took two steps!”

“And they can see in the dark,” said the boy. “We have to think of something else.”

But when the boys checked again, the orcs had marched Graybeard away. He was gone.

“We have to go out there after him!” insisted Ronthiel.

“If we go out there, we’ll be prisoners too inside of five minutes,” warned the boy.

“He’s right,” said Marroh.

“So what do we do?” demanded Ronthiel. “We can’t just do nothing. They’re taking him away!”

“You’re right. We can’t stay here, either,” said the boy. “Pretty soon, the drow sentries that left in obedience to the bell are going to come back. So we either have to go forward or we have to go back.”

“If we go back,” said young Joe, “that thing is behind us and maybe goblins too.”

“But if we go forward, there are orcs and likely drow ahead of us,” added Marroh.

“We have to save Graybeard,” repeated Ronthiel.

“I agree,” said the boy reluctantly. “We save Graybeard.”

But before the boys could step outside the dwarf tunnel to follow the orc troop, another armed group arrived, this time drow. They had returned to resume their guard station now that the battle above was over. The boys had to back up and move out of earshot, heading back into the dwarf mine. Here, they now all had a good cry, for each was certain they were going to die, either by that terrible thing in the mine behind them or by the wicked drow in front of them.

So they all had a good bawling. In the midst of their tears, the boys clung to each other like survivors on a raft, adrift in a sea of sorrow, seeking comfort in their shared misery. At first, some of the boys said they wished they had never laid eyes on the goat boy, and the boy had to admit that was true, and he cried in regret that he ever brought them here. But then Marroh reminded them that each had come of their own free will, and no one had forced them. They all agreed that was true and took back what they said to the boy.

Instead, they cried about those they had left at home and would never see again, and the boy cried about his aunt and thought good things about Sith, crummy old half-brother that he was.

And then somebody mentioned that no one would ever know what happened to them, and how they’d die down here, all alone and forgotten. They wondered if people would remember them as good or bad or not at all. They decided the boy would be remembered as mostly bad and for which reason they were in this mess in the first place.

Yet Ronthiel defended him, saying it was the adults that led them here and not the boy, and the others had to admit that was true. Ronthiel added that the boy had twice saved his life and he wouldn’t even be alive this long to be here if it weren’t for him. Again, the others agreed and, once again, took back what they said about the boy.

Now the boys were beginning to relish their despair and decided to top it off with a good “I want to be home!” cry. After that, though, the doom and gloom they so embraced began to grow old. They found themselves repeating previous laments, which quickly fizzled, and soon young Joe was snoring.

Having discovered that maintaining despair is hard work, the others also grew tired, and one by one, they fell asleep, the boy at his lowest low.

As the time passed, the torches they had lit now slowly burned out one by one, leaving the company enveloped in an impenetrable veil of darkness and foreboding silence. Amidst the cool, rough-hewn stone walls there was only the distant sound of dripping water.

It was then that a subtle disturbance stirred in the depths of the mine—a malevolent force that personified their deepest fears. They had forgotten they were being followed, and that there was malice behind in the darkness. Unbeknownst to them, its lurking presence made itself felt.

The boy stirred slightly as the unsettling sound of being followed reached his ears, like iron claws on rock.

In that chilling moment of realization, even in sleep fear gripped his heart like icy fingers, warning him that he was not alone in the darkness—that something sinister, something beyond the realm of mortal comprehension, lurked in the shadows, waiting... watching... hungering for the taste of his terror.

The faint sound instantly stopped. Then it drew closer, quicker, yet more silent.

Soundlessly it scurried. It stalked. The boy shifted as if troubled. Again it paused... and waited, waited until the boy was once again still.

And then, from out of the tunnel’s shadows, an abyss of terror emerged. Its large, black shape, veiled in shadow came creeping towards them. Unmistakably deadly, it crept with cunning. One moment it moved stealthily towards them, stopped dead still the next. It paused to wait... lest anything give its presence away. Two gleaming red orbs studied them. They seemed to smile with glee as they spied the sleeping boy. The darkness itself seemed to conspire with the sinister shape, weaving a tapestry of fear that bound them all in its inky threads.

It heard young Joe snoring but took no interest in him. Its attention was solely for the boy. Finding him, it paused, waiting with predatory patience. Pearly white fangs glistened in the darkness, poised above cold, cruel lips, ready to strike. It waited, looming over the helpless lad. Ready... ready.

Abruptly, the boy’s eyes snapped open. Something was leaning over him. It was right over his face... He saw it smiling down at him in the dark.

Too late, his eyes widened and he gasped.