"Hey. Arx. Listen up."
I turned to see who was speaking, but the corridor was empty.
"Idiot. This is why you're still a peasant. Don't look for me, just listen. Carefulrogue is slipping up. There's a beast loose in the caverns, and it's moving for the stairs. I need you to call the New Wave Warmen. Can you do that without screwing it up?"
I nodded, slowly.
"You don't have to nod, moron, just do it or don't do it. None of us have ever been this thick before. I suppose there's always a first time."
Still confused, I set off anyway. At the time I didn't even think that the militia might not listen. They probably knew the speaker, or so I thought. On my way through the bedrooms, I stopped to touch the pillars for good luck. They were the remnants of the walls that kept the trolls out, or so I am told. I was only a child then.
When I told Apiks about what the voice had said, he just propped Tanbutan (the famous chainsaw which he earned the title "thirty man slayer" with) up on the rack and nodded sagely while I talked. He called the other two militia, and they left smiling and joking.
Soon they came back up the stairs, with grimmer faces and splashed in greens and oranges. In the cave they had found a great blob of grime and poison gases, just like I was told. Apiks took me aside and told me that if the mite told me anything more, I had better let someone know.
"Don't worry, Apiks, he's too dumb not to."
Apiks didn't seem to hear the voice. I don't know if he was ignoring it to make me feel better.