In hurried whispers, I informed everyone about the incoming group of goblins. They all played it cool and shut their traps while I did the talking.

  The plan was for everyone to pretend to be asleep; when the goblins were on us, we would launch our surprise attack and take out a significant portion of their ranks before the real fight began. So, that’s what we did. We waited, and it didn’t take long for me to hear the sound of their footfalls. These goblins’ stealth skills were lacking. If I had actually been asleep, I would have undoubtably been woken up by the sound of their approach.

  We all stayed still, breathing softly, as Val fed me information on the intruders. She told me one was close enough that I should be able to see it, and sure enough, I saw its silhouette begin to take shape in the darkness beyond the firelight. It came forward, stepping into full view in our campsite. I kept my eyes open a sliver, so I could glimpse my first goblin.

  I had figured they would be ugly, but I was unprepared for just how ugly these goblins were. This one was a twisted, broken thing. Its skin was deep green, verging on black, and the thing smelled so bad my eyes watered.

  The one nearest me walked with a limp and carried a crudely made spear that doubled as a cane. Its face was hidden under a strange wooden mask with small slits carved so that it could see through. It was creepy.

  My heart rate climbed as I started to doubt my courage. Maybe it would have been best to make a run for it or try to hide and avoid the fight altogether. While not as large as I, these goblins were still scary as hell. They looked so otherworldly, even more so than the Kurskin or the Dalari. I had no idea how strong they were or what they were capable of. Their deformities and strange builds might make their movement awkward and uncoordinated, but my instincts told me they would fight back like animals.

  Other goblins slunk their way into our camp, crudely sneaking past my ‘sleeping’ friends as they inspected them. The one I had my eye on held an object up. It was a cylinder of some kind. Three more goblins produced these objects. They shook them vigorously for a moment, and all their masks turned back to the one I had first seen. It raised the cylinder up and threw it hard at the ground. The other goblins followed in sync. When the objects hit the ground, they exploded into a bright, blinding light. I had to shield my eyes with my arm for fear I would go blind. I heard Kitz scream, and I thought I heard a woman yelp, possibly Tabby. I stood, holding my sword out threateningly, but my eyes remained shut. I dared open them slightly but was blinded by the still-burning flares around me.

  I screamed out for everyone. Ersabet answered, and so did Delen. I thought I heard a murmured shriek, but it was lost among the random footfalls of the fleeing goblins.

  They had taken Kitz and Tabby, and I was still standing here. I tried to open my eyes, but the blinding light remained. I could run away from the flares, but with my luck, I’d run headfirst into a tree trunk and knock myself out cold.

  Eventually, my brain caught up to the moment. “Get your blankets,” I yelled. “Cover the flares with them.”

  It took an annoying amount of time for us to cover the flares with our blankets without actually being able to open our eyes and see the flares. They refused to burn out, so we persisted and eventually succeeded in snuffing out the light. We dumped whatever else we could find over those blankets to be safe. It took a solid minute for my vision to return to normal.

  “Let me know when you two are ready,” I said to Ersabet and Delen. “We’re going to get our friends back from those things.”

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  “I am ready now,” Ersabet said. “It appeared to be a rather large group, so trailing them will not be a problem. Fighting them may prove challenging, however.”

  “I’m here to help,” Delen said, holding up his homemade taser. “Kitz is a thorn in my side, but I’ll be damned before I let anyone hurt the boy. But we must be careful. Goblins aren’t like people. From what I know, they’re irrational and nearly impossible to negotiate with. And they’ve been known to kill hostages just for the fun of it. I fear that if we start a fight before we have Kitz and Tabby secured, the goblins may kill them.”

  “Delen is correct,” Ersabet said. “We must be cautious. Will you be able to track them in the dark?”

  The moonlight was bright enough that I could see the arched brow on Ersabet’s face. She already knew the answer.

  “We’ll find them,” I said. “You all saw how they looked. I’d be surprised if they can run half as fast as we can. We’ll catch up in no time, get ahead of them, and set an ambush. We’ll kill the ones holding our friends and haul ass back to the wagon.”

  “Is that our plan?” Ersabet asked.

  “Yes,” said, frustrated. “Unless you have a better one.”

  She cocked her head. “Not at the moment.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Thanks for your input. Now let’s go. They’re getting farther away by the second.”

  “They’re only about two hundred yards ahead of you,” Val said. “If you hustle, you can catch them in a matter of minutes. Follow me.”

  Val turned and jogged off into the darkness. I stood in shock at her initiative, then remembered that she had to be near me to manifest her visual avatar.

  “Follow me,” I quickly said to my friends, and we abandoned our fire, our camp in disarray.

  We stalked through the darkness. Thankfully, trees were sparse in this area and weren’t nearly so tall and intimidating as the grand pines near Danver, so navigation was easy. We just stayed low, fast, and quiet. They all followed behind me, trusting that I knew what I was doing, while I trusted that Val knew what she was doing.

  “One of them just disappeared,” Val said.

  “Uh, their dot on your map disappeared?” I mentally questioned her.

  She slowed her pace before me. “Another one is gone. And another!”

  “What does it mean?”

  “They’re either dying, or something is interfering with my local detection abilities.”

  “What do we do?” I asked, passing Val as she slowed.

  “I would advise that we avoid a potentially dangerous situation and return to the camp, but if you would rather save your friends, I would make haste to those goblins before they all disappear.”

  I did just that, picking up my pace, trusting that the others would follow. Val kept counting down the vanishing goblins until there was only one left. We were about fifty yards away when that final dot on Val’s map vanished.

  She led me to the location where they had all disappeared. We were forced to scramble up a steep hill to reach the area, which was a sort of plateau that slowly leveled out with the ground in the distance, but it was dark, so it wasn't easy to see the whole expanse. There were a few random copses of trees in the surrounding area that I could see, and some other rocky hills.

  “They were here,” I said to the group. To prove I wasn’t crazy, I asked Ersabet to produce a light. She materialized one in the palm of her hand.

  Delen gasped. “Now, that is quite the trick.”

  “It is magic,” Ersabet said.

  “Actually, it’s technology,” Delen corrected. “Magic isn’t real.”

  He looked sad about it.

  “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic,” I said, stealing a line from Arthur C. Clarke.

  “That was well said. No, can we get back to the matter at hand?” Ersabet asked.

  I pointed to the ground. “Shine your light around, see if there are any tracks.”

  She lowered her hand to illuminate the ground. After the fourth pass through our search grid, we found tracks. A lot of them. So many that they were nearly impossible to follow. It was a mess, but one that we were determined to unravel.

  The answer came when I tripped on an uneven part of the ground. I managed to catch myself and noticed that this strange rise in the earth was oddly square-shaped. I urged Ersabet forward, and I bent down to take a close look. For the most part, it looked like the ground around it. I ran my hands along the edges of it and smiled as my fingers went into a small opening. Inside, I found what felt like a latch or a handle of some kind.

  It was a hatch. Those fugly goblins had taken my friends underground, and we had to get them back.

  “Guys,” I said. “This is going to suck.”