The clapping made Dantes jump, but he kept himself from lunging into the nearest of the kobolds in an attempt to take them down before they could take him down.

“Good job with the lock,” said one of them to his left. His scales were green with flecks of gold and he spoke at an odd, deliberate pace.

“Yes, very impressive for one of the clumsy handed races,” said a different one. He was red with a single silver eye and he spoke with a bit more confidence.

A third, black scaled Kobold wearing a purple robe that had clearly originally been made for an elf or human, inhaled deeply. “I don’t know, I taste a whiff of dwarf on him. Still impressive though.”

“Dwarven blood could be as much of a liability as it is a benefit. It could mean he attempted the entire journey drunk,” said the red one.

Rather than laughing at the comment as Dantes would’ve expected, the other two Kobolds simply nodded as if they’d just heard a unique piece of wisdom.

Dantes slowly moved his hand off the shiv he had been ready to reach for in his sleeve. He then knelt down and picked up his lockpicks which had fallen from the door, not taking his eyes off the three in front of him.

“Thank you for the compliments. It wasn’t easy.”

“We were hoping that you’d get caught so that we could eat well tonight, but since you have made it so far without issue, we can no longer claim your flesh,” The red one gestured to himself, then the green kobold, and the black one. “I am Tyr, he is Fen, he is Tek.”

Dantes nodded at each of them as they were introduced, and when they were done he pointed to himself. “I’m Tes.” Kobolds had a system of names that represented their place in Kobold society. The first syllable was for identifying, and the following ones were based on who they were and what they did. Since they were in the pit, no kobold had more than a single syllable since they no longer had their old place in their society. Whenever Dantes had spoken with Mez, a kobold bootlegger he traded with, he’d always only referred to him as Tes, so he figured he’d stick with that.

“Tes, welcome. Come, come.” Tyr moved further in, and Dantes followed him, slowly, making sure that the kobolds weren’t moving to surround or trick him. He saw a small fire with rats roasting over it on a spit, four piles of loose cloth, and a small table with tools that looked to have been crafted from small pieces of scrap metal or stone.

Once they reached the fire, Tyr grabbed one of the skewered rats and handed it to him. Dantes’ mouth watered, cooked meat was a rare thing in the pit. It wasn’t the first time he’d eaten rat, though it was the first time he’d done so since he’d begun talking to them. He took a sniff, but couldn’t detect any poison or anything else suspicious. He took a test bite, and after a few minutes, took another.

“Hmmm, a cousin,” whispered Jacopo from his collar. “He had been warned many times of the dangers of this region.” He sniffed. “Give me a piece.”

Dantes subtly tore off a piece of rat and handed it to Jacopo. Rats could be found all throughout the prison. The areas closest to the maw had the fewest of them. It was a common thing for people to hunt them, but the rats in the Pit were different, smarter than their kin in the city. They tended to avoid traps, and be long gone before anyone could reach them when they were being hunted. Dantes had only eaten them on those lucky occasions where he’d found one in a kobold trap before the kobolds had.

After they were all seated and eating, Tek looked at Dantes. “So, what brings you to our territory?”

“Just passing through,” he said, wary of revealing his intentions, as welcoming as the kobolds were.

“Passing through to…?” asked Tyr, insistent.

He thought it over. It didn’t really matter if they knew. There wasn’t anything they could do with the information that could hurt him. They already had him outnumbered if their intention was to harm him. “Clan Stonedust territory.”

“You are going the wrong way,” said Fen simply. “Faster to travel through the maw.”

“Can’t do that.”

Tyr nodded sagely. “Someone means to kill you?”

Dantes nodded, surprised at the insightful question “Yes.”

Tek chuckled. “Very common. Some human kills an orc, or a small gang picks a fight they can't win. Soon they can only survive on the outskirts, forced to deal with us. Most don’t manage the traps though. Too stupid, or they break them and ruin our hard work. This is also stupid.”

Fen picked a rat leg from his teeth. “Why did you not simply break the traps? That is what your kind usually does.”

“I have a friend, Mez, he gave me some advice about you that I try to follow.”

“Mez? The one who brews?” asked Tyr.

Dantes nodded.

Tyr’s expression became sour. “The one that refuses to live with his clan.”

“His booze is good though,” said Tek.

Tyr gave him a look and Tek shrugged. “It is! Even a single sip is guaranteed to thicken your scales.”

“The only thing his brew is good for is disinfecting wounds,” said Fen. “Though, in his defense, that is a good purpose.”

Seeing Tyr’s expression, Dantes moved to change the subject. “So, why are you three here?”

“It’s our shift to check the traps here. Take any captured meat back to the clan, guide any kobolds new to the Pit to their new home.”

“Why not meet them at the maw?”

Tek frowned. “If they cannot get here, they are not welcome in the clan. Many of these traps, and the door, are here to challenge them.”

“If they fail?” asked Dantes.

“They would still join us,” said Tyr, “they would be shared among the clan.”

Dantes nodded, understanding the implication. It wasn’t exactly subtle.

He finished his rat, picking off the last piece to hand to Jacopo who chewed on it greedily. The cannibalism didn’t bother him much. Jacopo was a rat, which meant he had very different standards which Dantes saw no point in judging him for. It did make him think of cannibalism from his perspective. If he ate an elf or an orc, would it be full cannibalism or just one fourth cannibalism? Would eating a human be half cannibalism then? He had a bit of dwarf in him, though the thought of chewing through one's hairy hide was even less appetizing to him than regular cannibalism was. The kobolds clearly had no issues with the practice.

Dantes placed his rat-skewer back into the fire and stood, brushing some dust from himself and wiping grease from his face with the sleeve of his jacket.

“Thank you for your hospitality, particularly not killing me, I appreciate that.”

“You are welcome,” said Fen with a nod.

“I’m going to try and make it the rest of the way to Clan Stonedust territory.”

The kobolds exchanged glances. Tyr seemed to read the other two’s looks and turned his attention to Dantes. “Tek will accompany you out of our space. No reason to risk you destroying or triggering one of our traps and giving us more work to do.”

Dantes narrowed his eyes. “I can travel alone. I’ve had little issue with your traps so far. Or you could just tell me what to expect.” They’d been friendly to him, and that made him suspicious.

“It is our territory. You have entered it respectfully and eaten within it. We insist.”

Dantes mulled that over. If his meeting with the dwarves didn’t go well, there was a good chance he’d need to come back through this section of the Pit. He couldn’t afford to antagonize them. He wouldn’t need to rely on Tek for direction, since he had a general sense of which passages to take anyway, and even if the intention was for Tek to kill him, he was fairly certain he could handle a single Kobold, particularly one he intended to be watching closely for the entire trek.

“Okay, but I’m going to be searching for additional traps as we move… in case you’ve forgotten one I might run into.” He said.

Tyr made a slightly offended expression, but Tek shook his head. “It would be insulting if you didn’t.”