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It had been months now since word had passed his lips, they would hold no purpose among these giant frost worms. They sang to one another with their strange noises carried along the cold air, no song to remember for the ages but more than he would ever sing or truly hear. His time in the village had shown him that, he held no song in him and felt no others. Others would hear that song this day though, even if now the worms rested, they would soon have their due.
Celith lifted himself from the large crevice he inhabited during the day along one of the massive tunnels walls, longbow in hand and slowly, carefully, while keeping from placing too much pressure on any step, moved out on the ledge looking over the snow covered floor. The tunnel around him flickered with iridescent lights from the worm larvae encased in icicles reflecting off of the ice covered walls of the tunnel. They would be here soon; the others, the prey, they would not be the first of their kind to enter here, nor the first to be lured to this place by him. He hadn’t seen the worms in days now, but that mattered little, whenever danger found its way to their larvae the beasts were quick to arrive, bringing freezing cold and tearing maws for any who dared to be heard.
He crouched at the edge of the outcropping rocks with his snow-coated cloak and hood wrapped tightly around himself and his bow propped against the back of a boulder beside him. He looked not so different from a snow covered boulder himself with the cloak around him and held tight together by his hands at the front. Celith would move none for the next few hours, letting himself descend back into the bleak cold of his mind, little thought passing through it beyond what his senses offered of the world around him, and no feeling at all.
Eventually motion and the crunched snow beneath heavy boots drew his mind back to the iridescent tunnels around him. The hobgoblins seemed unaware of him, still making their way down the entrance of the sloping tunnel. Celith retrieved his bow from the boulder beside him and move a few paces back into one of the meagre shadows the lights thrown from these chrysalises did not touch, waiting and watching the goblinkin. The lesser ones scurried around with crude pickaxes taking heavy cuffs to the back of the head whenever they let the heavy metal knock against anything. Celith slowly drew an arrow from his quiver and notched it on his bowstring, it would be only moments before the creatures reached the larvae. He cared little for the creature’s life himself, it held no more meaning than the brutes who sought it, but he would follow what he had been taught and perhaps in this small way, by guarding these beasts young he would belong here.
They had reached the icy chrysalis now. The hobgoblins were grunting and instructing their lesser kin to break the icicle off at the base, attempting some poor form of stealth as even they knew rightly to fear what they stole from. He was surprised the worms had not come yet, but he would do this himself if he must, he knew these tunnels far better than the brutes below and had laid traps in the tight tunnels the worms did not travel. Regardless of the worms he could not have these goblinkin so close to where he rested. Celith took a few steps forward and pulled back his bowstring, setting his aim on a goblin about to strike the base of the icicle, but before he could let loose the arrow, the snow beneath the hobgoblins and their minions began to shake as a white long figure hurled itself up from beneath the snow scattering the goblinkin that had been standing atop it and sending them falling back.
It was one of the worms, younger but still the length of four men head to toe and as wide around as a horse. Two sword-like pincers threatened from its maw and its white snow-like skin gleamed with the frost's lights dancing around the tunnel, as it opened its maw Celith plugged his ears with his fingers and rolled back from the beast and its prey trying to avoid its shrill song. But still he heard the worm trilling out its compulsions not to resist to the goblinkin, dazing them and Celith as well, before striking at one of the hobgoblins as it stood mesmerized, tearing a limb clean from its shoulder with its icy pincers.
Celith watched dazed by this creature's song, enraptured by a detached fascination with the battle taking place before him. The little greenskinned goblins stood in a daze still, though the four remaining hobgoblins had regained their senses already and the largest - his chest covered in some scavenged plate cuirass too talented of make to be fashioned by hobgoblin's hands - roared a challenge at the beast with its axe held high. The worm let out another call, no trilling song this time but a high shrieking noise that caused Celith to wince. It lunged at the brute, taking its chest between its pincers and slowly squeezing against the plate. In unison, the hobgoblins lunged forward at this bringing their axes to bear on the worm's back and sides as the largest of the group slowly lifted his axe above the worm's head, seeming slower than he should be even with these pincers crushing his chest. It was as Celith saw the ice forming in the hobgoblin's hair that he felt the songs holding over his sense give way and he was quick to loosen an arrow into the back of one of the hobgoblins hacking chunks out of the worms side. The arrow lodged itself in the back of the creature's neck, a lucky shot even for the elf’s trained arms.
Celith began to aim another shot as the corpse of the hobgoblin fell over the worm's body, but at theis instant, its compatriot trapped between the worm's pincers let out a might roar and brought his axe crashing down into the worm's head, once then again and again, the last strike embedding the axe in the its elongated skull. Celith took a few steps back watching in silence as the hobgoblin dropped from the worm’s lifeless maw where it had held him up in the air before, the worm's body crashing to the floor a moment later with a resounding impact against the snow and ice. The large hobgoblin slowly stood, wheezing with the effects of the worms crushing hold. He seemed to still hold strength however, as he was quick to send a goblin flying a few feet with a brutal strike of his hand, growling out some command in his guttural language to the others who were quick to snap from their daze and begin to move over to the larvae’s chrysalis again.
It was at this moment the entire tunnel began to shake with a dizzying force. Celith’s gaze rested on the young worm's carcass; he knew this sound, its elders were coming, twice over in size and width, a deeper shriek was heard echoing from the tunnels below, drawing closer with every moment. The hobgoblins and their lesser kin had noticed the arrow in their fallen but their attention was turned to the tunnel these shrieks and shaking came from now.
Celith glanced to the opening of the crevice he had been staying in this past time. Months, maybe more than a year now. He was not sure, but his time here was done, that he was sure of if anything. As the tremors of the tunnels walls became more intense and icicles began to fall from its roof, striking the snow-covered ground like deadly daggers and some shattering with impact, Celith spared one last glance to the retreating goblinkin beginning to flee for the way they came. He began to climb up the side of the tunnel with his bow on his back with haste. If he was quick enough, he might be able to escape before the worms had finished their dire work with the foul creatures below…
Celith panted, his breath heavy and struggling in the icy air as he looked back at the entrance to the worm tunnels. He had lost half his cloak and nearly his legs with it, but he had escaped whole of body. The same could not be said of the others who had entered those depths, he had seen the worms devouring goblinkin whole without stopping for a moment. He slowly shook his head as he finally took a moment to catch his running breath. He had been a fool to think he could belong. He had not belonged among his own kind - why would he belong there among their depths anymore so? He knew not the answer.
A southerly wind picked up and blew in savage gusts now. The cold of it ripped at his skin and pushed him along with it as his feet sank knee-deep into the snow with each step. Turning his gaze south to follow the snow-capped peaks that lay before him, he reckoned it was as good as any other. He would follow the wind, and the ice. The mountain had not rejected him yet.
