The party in general was startled and knew that they would be doomed if the whole citadel realized that they were here. " Get it!" yelled Teflar and ran swiftly after the thing. Erelis and Nanith followed the ranger and they watched as the kobold scampered toward a thin opening in the western wall.

Its tiny legs were no match for Teflar, however, and the ranger soon pounced sending the creature collapsing to the floor in a small ball.

The fellowship gathered around quickly and watched the whimpering kobold cover its eyes with tiny folding arms. Nanith looked around nervously; the sobbing echoed hard off the stone walls. " Just gag or knock it unconscious...quickly."

Before Oktavianus could happily oblige with an overhead arc of his hammer, Teflar halted them " Wait! Let this thing talk first. It may be worthy to us as a walking captive, guide, and spy." The ranger turned to the lorist " Gailwind, do you know the language of this sort of creature? The korbashlavid or some such?"

Th elven sage nodded slowly " Yes, I had dabbled in the dialect for a couple weeks at the Resundas Seminar."

Accepting this good fortune with an odd hesitation, the ranger looked down at the quivering beast " Hey you." He lifted the kobold up by the nape of its neck and talked slowly as if the beast could understand the common tongue after slow anunciation.
" We are here to help you." He turned the creature towards Gailwind and asked him to translate everything that they asked.

The traditional questions were passed and, with great prodding, the kobold replied in a high-pitched, broken yap that irritated all who listened.

" This humanoid's name is Pomeer." The lorist informed " He is a keeper of this room and all its former contents."

Aramil adamantly flipped through his spellbook " And what, pray tell, should I say was this rooms contents?"

Gailwind pressed the small being for more information while it stood there shaking. It responded with a certain regret and cowered as close to the ground as it could.
The lorist paused a bit after hearing out the humanoid " It is describing a..a..dragon?" He looked at the large, green scrawlings on the walls and then to the large cage along the southern wall.
" Yes, Pomeer is a keeper of such in this place of dread."

" What!" jumped in Roslyn with complete incredibility. " Dragons are not indigenous to this area." She raised her tiny voice for emphasis " Not for centuries! And they are virtually extinct!"

Erelis lowered his scythe. " It may have been smuggled in. Anything is possible at this point. Gailwind," he prodded " ask him where it is. I've got to see this. I thought encountering demons and zombies were the ultimate shock!"

Gailwind exchanged words with the kobold in a hissing, choppy language while Nanith took time to survey the room. The rogue noticed a few other doorways and then went over to examine the cage. The sage interpreted for the group " It thinks the wurm was stolen. He is very frightened and offers us to speak to his leader."

" Leader!" blasted the dwarf " You've got to be kidding! We are damn lucky we aren't surrounded already and now you want to go find the whole army!"

Teflar shushed the dwarf with his finger " Calm down, cleric. We will have to face them eventually anyway. We can at least have this 'Preemer' act as our emissary...."

" Bad idea!" interjected the dwarf " If he was in good standing, he wouldn't still be in here quaking in this bedroll!"

" Oktavianus," affirmed the woodsman " If he were in bad standing with its peers, he would have been killed. Besides, if things were to go wrong, you don't think you can handle a few hundred of them yourself? My God, our lorist and a mage going hand-to-hand at the pillars and making themselves heroes..."

The priest's eyes widened as the ranger continued his case " Okay, okay, Teflar. " resigned the dwarf with a new inspiration " Let us find this leader and have'em explain themselves!"

Nanith returned to the party as deftly as he slipped away. He stared through the humanoid as if his gaze could dissect the information it held.
" Wait, our friend here claims to be the �Keeper of Dragons�." He pointed at the cage without looking away from the kobold " Looks to me like he is the �Keeper of Nothing� at the moment. I think he probably let the dragon whelp escape." Nanith grinned crudely " Not something his peers would appreciate. I�m sure these kobolds lost many lives in capturing the wyrmling or maybe stealing an egg from its mother." Ninnipin's smiled diminished " No wonder he was crying like a baby when we arrived. If I was this korbashlavid, I would use us as a bargaining tool for my failure." He took a step closer to the kobold " It could easily be deceiving us. It could exchange our lives for his claiming that it was us that let the dragon escape."