"Oh, so you also got done in," the snicker came from a man wearing a red plated armor.
The fortress mouth swallowed sound the way it swallowed people. Thick stone walls, iron portcullis, torchlight licking damp bricks, everything here was built to funnel bodies in and keep them from spilling out.
The portal itself sat like a wound in the air, a vertical slit of shimmering distortion, and the space in front of it had been claimed the way predators claimed a watering hole.
A bunch of climbers who looked worse for wear were standing in front of the portal at the fortress.
Torn sleeves, dried blood in the seams of rough goblin armor, or more like rags of newbie tracksuits, soot on cheeks that had been wiped too many times with dirty hands. Some held their weapons like walking sticks, some held them like they were still expecting something to jump out of the rift and finish the job.
