Darnak ignored him. The dwarf watched as the lizard-fish drew nearer. When it was only a few feet away from the dwarf, it raised its head and hissed. The blue tongue flicked out, and the spines lifted threateningly.

Threatening or not, Darnak didn’t appear to care. He waited for the lizard-fish to finish hissing, then calmly stomped its skull into the rock. “Stupid little beasts, too.”

Stupid they might be, Jig thought, but there were a lot more lizard-fish than there were adventurers. Even as he watched, several more emerged from the water and crawled toward the dwarf. Barius stepped forward to join him. His sword impaled one of the creatures and flipped it back into the water. Another attacked with a sudden burst of speed, only to die beneath Darnak’s heavy boot. Even as Darnak wiped lizard-fish guts from his boot, however, more were racing forward to attack.

“Back,” Barius shouted. Jig rolled his eyes. He and Riana had already retreated to safety.

The others joined them farther up the tunnel. Nothing followed. The lizard-fish wouldn’t come this far from the water, it appeared.

“We could stand there until we were hip-deep in the things,” Darnak grumbled. “They’d still keep coming. Not a brain in the lot of ’em.”

Like goblins, Jig thought suddenly. Swarming to their death and hoping to overwhelm the enemy with sheer numbers. But he said nothing.

“All it takes is one slip, one moment of carelessness, and those spines would be the end of us,” said Barius.

“Then I guess we’d better stay on our toes, eh boys?” Darnak grinned.

I was right, Jig realized. They won’t turn back. They probably don’t know how to retreat. As they continued to discuss how to get past the lizard-fish, Jig walked to the end of the tunnel and stared at the beach. The lizard-fish had returned to the water, leaving the dead bodies behind to rot. Something else would no doubt come along to feast on the remains. Carrion-worms, perhaps. Or maybe some other creature scavenged the lakeshore. That was how the cycle worked.

At least that was the way things were back home. Who knew what life might be like lower down? No goblins had ever explored much beyond their own territory. Nor had anything from the lower depths ever emerged into Jig’s world. Which was probably a good thing. In fact, for all Jig knew, the lizard-fish might be there as much to keep the monsters of the lower caverns trapped below as to keep those from the surface out.