Cauldron Size

Kos had seen many things in the City of Guilds, but not since the great fertility festival of ’87 had he seen such a dense concentration of goblins anywhere, let alone in Utvara. For better or worse, these goblins weren’t concerned about the propagation of their own species. The Izzet goblins worked like industrious insects, without a break, to birth three new members of what might be the deadliest species on the whole plane. From Kos’s angle they seemed to cover the breadth of the Cauldron’s wide base and crawled upon all the struts, supports, transfer points, and power tubes that ran between the generators, the walls, the ground, and the nest at the center of it all. Smog occasionally blocked his view of the lava pits on the far side, but he could certainly smell them. Kos noted that most of the glowing, glassy white pipes and power from the east side of complex seemed to feed directly into the trio of eggs.

The defenses of the place—the workers could only count as defenders if they chose to fight instead of continuing to work, and they seemed preoccupied—included perhaps a dozen elementals that Kos could see; djinn monitoring the ramparts; and a few archers, goblins, mostly, perched on a ring above Kos. The translucent form of the famed Pyraquin scattered orange light chaotically over the entire area.

The Cauldron narrowed near its domed top, meaning Kos—at the north point, nearest the sleeping watch-drake—was no more than a hundred feet away from Golozar, to what Kos was pretty sure was the south. The old wojek guessed that the tangle of metal holding him up was at least six feet from the actual inner wall. Pivlic was to Kos’s right, at the western point, and the goblin courier Crix hung on his left. They were all at least fifty feet from the landing platform where Zomaj Hauc stood, regaling them with the details of his plan. Or trying to. Kos couldn’t decide what made his current situation worse—what Hauc was planning to do or listening to Hauc describe, around the many tangents, what he was planning to do.

***

Guildpact, Chapter 13