Weekdusk, 30th of Draconar, 11th year of the Stringless Era

  On Torm’s recommendation, they moved in the early hours of the day. Goblins were most active during noon and midnight, preferring the twilight hours to sleep. Oras had not known that. ‘I wonder if that extends to their civilized kin,’ he thought to himself. There were a great many differences between what were known as savage and civilized goblins. A stunning lack of empathy in one and greatly more pleasing looks in the other were the greatest one. Differing intelligence was also often noted.

  Oras was pretty sure that was only because savage goblins were, as the word noted, barbaric tribal people that could not hold a tribe together long enough to achieve a higher form of learning. They probably had the potential brainpower to achieve civilization, but never got to put that to the proper use.

  ‘Humanoid vermin,’ Oras thought. There was no point in feeling for the lot of the savage goblins. They would not extend that same courtesy to him. Every time they killed a group of the savage creatures, they effectively pushed back an invading force. Were it up to these greenskins, history had shown abundantly, all of current civilization would be dragged back into the wild.

  The choices were to let them win, to be governed by raping, pillaging, murdering sociopaths, or to kill them first. That was the binary choice with savage goblins.

  Anyone who pretended otherwise was delusional.

  They were deep into the jungle, so deep that the canopy above blocked them from using the sun to navigate. Like all adventurers, they travelled with a compass. They did not have to rely on it much. Theria and Oras had well-trained instincts when it came to orienting themselves and Torm knew the land well enough. When they got close to the ruins, Torm gestured for them to crouch. Soon after, they poked their heads out of the ferns.

  They were at the edge of a cliffside, overlooking the ruins. Whatever the Precursors had done to prepare the construction site still stuck around an untold number of years later. The plants had begun to creep into the oval-shaped clearing, but were doing so at a pace that would take centuries more to fully reclaim.

  As had been described to him, Oras found the ruin underwhelming. White stone with blue decorations had been shaped into curving forms that were almost all derelict. A few pillars stood intact, two of them even still held up a crossbeam. Everything else was in a state of decay. Tall walls were broken and in the central gap, where some resplendent room must have once been, a group of goblins slept around a campfire.

  “I count 10…” Torm muttered. “My eyes are getting worse though.”

  “There’s 12,” Theria stated with confidence, pointing them at each of them.

  “A full breakaway group then. They’d start a whole new tribe here if we don’t root them out… which will be difficult…” Torm rubbed his chin. “There will be parties out hunting and scouting come noon. Let’s prepare for them.”

  They pulled back into the jungle. Torm guided them towards a spot he remembered from a previous trip there. A toppled tree gave those small enough or with a sufficient sense of balance a bridge across an ocean of ferns. It was a convenient way to save some time. It was also a perfect ambushing spot.

  What followed was the dull waiting that often accompanied such strategies. Theria and Oras squatted in the ferns on one side, Torm on the other, with nothing to busy themselves but their thoughts. The newlyweds also snuck in some mutual feeling up. Dedicated to the mission, they kept that to a minimum.

  It took over an hour for the first goblins to come across this path. It was just two of them. One was large for his species, almost reaching Oras’ collarbone, the other was especially small, barely making it past the Dragonblood’s hips.

  The duo began to cross. The tall one growled something guttural at the smaller one, who shirked away from the harsh words. Mid-rant, the big one took an arrow to the temple. Oras snapped upwards and grabbed the small one by the neck, pulling him into the ferns while the big one collapsed into them. A gruesome snap later, the second goblin was dead as well.

  “Good start,” Torm whispered. “Drag them a bit off to the side.”

  They did as instructed, then returned to their positions. ‘10 goblins remaining,’ Oras thought.

  Then it began to rain.

  A downpour on the rainforest soon soaked the canopy above and trickled down to the lower levels. Trees and leaves shook in the powerful gusts that, out of nowhere, rushed through the jungle. It was a perfectly normal weather phenomenon out there. Within the ferns, the three of them had a decent amount of cover.

  They did not hear the next group of goblins approaching. They only saw the four of them when they were already stepping onto the tree. One of them snapped right at Oras. The Dragonblood realized only then that the winds had shifted their cover too much to keep his black hair from standing out.

  “ATTACK!” Torm yelled.

  If they could take these creatures out quickly, the weather would mask the noises of combat.

  The goblins’ first reaction to being attacked was the reason why people were confident to take on 2 on 1 - they squabbled. The small, craven creatures competed with each other on who got to enter the fray last. The goblin at the head of the formation, who had spotted Oras to begin with, readily fell back into the group, only to be met by a bunch of shoving hands.

  “If you’re offering,” Theria spoke grimly, immediately taking aim at the immobilized goblin. Her arrow struck true, the kinetic force and shook from the projectile enough to make the heart stop beating in the small humanoid’s rib cage. “One down.”

  Using the continued disorganization of the goblins, Oras jumped out of the ferns. He almost slipped, running on the wet, toppled tree. Almost was not enough to stop him. Inelegantly but effectively, he crashed into the pile of cowardly greenskins. He was met with horrifically ugly faces, oversized noses and eyes as yellow as the crooked teeth beneath.

  The knuckle dusters turned one such nose into a snapped, shattered mess and the skull behind it into shards. The second greenskin was taken care of in a near instant and the remaining two only grew more panicked in their attempts to hash out the pecking order.

  Torm snapped up from the ferns, stretching his sword arm. He had just enough reach to thrust the weapon into the neck of one of the remaining goblins. The ugly creature’s scarred body collapsed to the floor. It tried to keep pressure on its neck, but the vitae was flowing a greenish red from the slit. It would be dead within minutes and pass out before that.

  Oras began to position himself for another attack, when the thrum of a loosened bowstring reached his ears. Just as the sound registered, the arrow pierced the heart of the final goblin. It toppled over backwards. Fist still raised, the Dragonblood instead ended the life of the greenskin that was trying not to bleed out. There was no reason to make it suffer longer than it had to.

  “Yet again, quite clean,” Torm complimented them. “You really are cut out for this.”

  “Ya callin’ us exceptional?” Theria asked with a broad grin.

  “You’re talented and you don’t get in over your head - at the very least you won’t die to the obvious pitfalls,” Torm answered, his voice raised to overpower the wind.

  “We have them down to the 6 now,” Oras stated. “Should we attack?”

  “Honestly, that’s up to you!” Torm turned his gaze to the sky. “The rain will make it easier for us to get close, but the wind means that Theria will have to get closer than archers usually should. We could wait until dusk, hope that the weather turns and try to catch them when they sleep. There’s a risk, though, that they’ll catch up to what we did and try to evacuate.”

  “And the choice is mine?” Oras asked.

  Torm nodded. “Both are good options, so I won’t advocate for either. You’re the leader.”

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  ‘He is a good teacher,’ Oras thought, once again happy he had come in so early for the registration. There were plenty of egomaniacs among the mentors, no doubt. ‘What do I want to do here?’

  Oras considered the question for a full minute, before he came to a conclusion.

  “We’ll ambush them now. Surprise is our greatest weapon.” With the decision reached, they moved towards the ruin.

  It was later in the afternoon and the goblins were quite active. Through the curtain of rain, Oras saw their green shapes move around, contrasting clearly against the white of the ruins. From their current angle, they could see three. A convenient number.

  “I’ll take the left one, Torm the right, Theria goes for the centre,” Oras instructed quietly.

  The party member and the mentor nodded in confirmation. All readied their weapons. Oras lead the charge.

  They did not scream. The pounding of their feet on the consolidated, wet ground could have been mistaken as any number of noises. Not so the crunch of bones getting pulverized by the impact of the knuckledusters. Oras hit his target in the side of the neck, snapping the bone violently.

  Torm and Theria dispatched their targets in similarly efficient manners. ‘Just three left,’ Oras thought and turned his gaze up at the remnants. The trio of goblins screamed in surprise and rage. One of them was notably broader than the others and equipped with a primitive stone knife. It barked orders over the panic of the others.

  If there was any that would give them trouble, it would be that one.

  Put into their place by the bigger goblin, the regularly sized greenskins moved to attack immediately. One did so by looking for the perfect angle, the other just charged in like a maniac. It sprinted towards Oras, only to swerve before entering his reach and coming towards Theria instead.

  The redhead loosened an arrow, but had aimed for where it would be when attacking her husband. The projectile whizzed over the goblins head. The creature leapt. Theria tried to bring her bow up as an impromptu shield. She was too slow.

  Filthy, yellow teeth sank into her neck. Teeth clenched, the hunter suppressed a scream

  Oras was moving to support his wife. “EYES ON THE ENEMY!” Torm yelled.

  The warning came in time to prevent disaster. Surprisingly swift, the chief of the goblins had bridged the distance. Oras managed to twist his body enough that the stone knife merely cut into his side. It was a hurting wound still, but a far cry from the stomach splitter that he could have gotten.

  A punch to the side of the head dislodged the goblin from Theria’s neck. The ring of teeth marks left behind looked gruesome, a bloody set of imprints near vital veins. All the same, Theria managed to get an arrow ready and fire it at the chief. The projectile went wide, missing the small, nimble target.

  While dodging the chief, Oras spotted Torm charging across the battlefield and towards the last goblin. The idea must have been simply to reduce enemy numbers before the situation got even messier. Oras would have rather seen his wife relieved of pressure, but Torm’s course of action did have its logic and he did dispatch the skulking greenskin with a singular swing.

  A concentrated look on her face, Theria’s green eyes snapped back to the creature in front of her. She skilfully kept out of its range, dodging the snapping teeth. An arrow was fluidly drawn from her quiver, placed on the string of her bow, and then loosened. With less than two metres between them, the projectile pierced through the creature’s forehead and sunk deep into the brain.

  That only left them with the chief.

  The broad-shouldered goblin was really nimble. Oras kept counterpunching, trying to exploit what openings he was given. The small humanoid knew to use its weakness to its advantage, continuously weaving its frame through the attacks. There was a grin on its ugly face that Oras just could not wipe off.

  The goblin chief swung its knife as soon as Oras overstepped. One of the leather straps that kept the shoulder armour in place spared the black-haired man from the worst of it. There was only a minor cut across his ribs at the end of it.

  Oras squared up to confront the creature again. It did the same. Both of them were surprised when Torm’s sword came in horizontally. The enchanted iron sang, as it took the head clean off the creature. The ugly visage twisted into a baffled expression, before falling onto the wet ground. The body collapsed on its knees, lifeless.

  “Thank the wisdom of nature for armour, ey?” Torm asked and squared the two of his students up. “Those will heal quickly, but we should wash them out.”

  When it came to Theria, Oras had to validate that himself. He gave the wound on her neck a quick inspection. It looked worse than it was. The goblin had only bitten down, not taken a chunk out of her, and the marks were ultimately not that deep. His own wounds, made by an unsteady stone edge, were similar.

  “Guess we can just sit in the rain for a sec?” Theria joked.

  “Should work well enough,” Torm confirmed.

  Exposed to the streaming rain, they then did what all adventurers did: look through the camp of the enemies they had slain. “My father often said that adventuring is half heroism and half scavenging,” Oras made small talk.

  Torm laughed drily. “That’s a gracious ratio.” The veteran picked up some bones, then dropped them back to the floor. “Typical goblin camp, nothing of value to be found.”

  Oras had to agree. The improvised shelter that the goblins had made from sticks and fern weren’t even fully capable of that task. At least the rain was doing a good job of washing away the filth the creatures had smeared all over these venerated walls. He had a fun time studying those. The material was stone, although he could not say what kind. The ornamentations appeared purely decorative in nature. If there was a hidden meaning, he was either too dull to find it or the missing segments of the walls had taken it with them.

  “Where did the rubble go?” he wondered out loud.

  “Got carried away soon after the ruin was found. Nobles pay a fortune for it, so do alchemists that want to try to recreate the materials.”

  “So, what’re we doin’ next?” Theria asked. “Collect proof of how many goblins we killed?”

  “They only force adventurers with a poor track record to do that.” Torm lazily gestured at himself. “Because you agreed to a mentor, I can vouch that you did the job properly. 12 goblins won’t get you any extra pay though. This was a clear out mission, you’d have gotten the same money if you found 1 or 100.”

  “I assume kill missions are rare?” Oras asked.

  “Pretty rare, yeah. The whole ear collecting is more associated with bounty seasons. I think the last one of those was called… 3 years ago? The duke has to organize those.” Torm picked up, then dropped another little, valueless thing. “In any case, we are done here. We can head back immediately.”

  “4 days of walkin’ to lay in ambush for half a day and then charge into a camp, all to then walk back 4 days,” Theria summarized.

  “Told you, being an adventurer is 95% walking from A to B.”

  “Yeah, I knew that the first time,” Theria playfully stuck out her tongue. “Ya wanna study those walls for longer or can we go?”

  “Give me ten minutes.” Oras wandered the walls for a little bit. He inspected everything he thought there was to inspect, then shook his head. “These are fascinating. Still, I learned more about Precursor architecture from books.”

  It was unfortunate, but this place really had been picked clean a long time ago. It was such a minor site so far away from everything that it wasn’t worth the effort preserving. That felt like sacrilege to even think.

  ‘Sometimes dedication to realism forces us to admit that which we do not want to,’ Oras thought. Then, he and Theria followed Torm. The veteran had already moved out of the ruins and was waiting for them under the cover of a large leaf.

  “Seen everything you want to?”

  “Far from it,” Oras answered. “Here, however, we are done.”

  “Glad to hear it.” Torm stood up and waved for them to follow.

  The journey back was remarkably simple. The injuries made the long walks mildly unpleasant, but the placements of the wounds meant it wasn’t too bad. Theria and Oras already knew what herbs to look for to help with the healing process. By the end of the four days they needed back, the cuts and bite had been diminished to itchy scabs. A few more days and it would all be healed without scars.

  They arrived in the Adventurer’s Guild late in the day. Because the building in Kumse was neither tavern nor inn, there was barely any activity at that hour. Anyone who used it as a meeting space had already left, leaving only a few people who had gone there to socialize and late returners from missions like them.

  The clerk behind the desk was someone new. Confident all the same, Oras stepped forwards. “We have returned from a mission,” he said and placed the Intel Crystal on the desk.

  “...What mission?” the clerk asked with a yawn. “You new?”

  “I am.”

  “It is customary to state what mission verbally so, when I check in the backroom what you are supposed to have finished, I can be sure you didn’t just loot this crystal off some corpse and are trying to get a lucky payout.”

  “People try that?” Theria asked, mildly disgusted.

  “People try everything, especially bandits and cultists,” the clerk said. “So?”

  “We were on a mission to exterminate goblins in a Precursor ruin.”

  “Very well,” the clerk took the crystal and disappeared in the backroom. The odd noise of reconstructed, ancient artifice echoed out. A bit after that, the man returned. “First mission completed. Do you have proof of completion?”

  “They have my word,” Torm chimed in at that point. He had hung back deliberately, to let the young ones learn.

  “Wonderful,” the clerk drawled. It wasn’t clear whether he was tired or sarcastic. He went back to the machine in the backroom, updated the intel in the crystal, and then returned to them with it in hand. “The mission has been logged as completed. I’ll go get your payment from the safe.”

  Another wait, then the satisfying clack of gold coins getting stacked on the counter. “Your reward, 10 gold coins.”

  9 days of travel and risking their lives netted them a fifth of the money that they had saved up over years. It was a simultaneously incredible and meagre reward. Objectively it was a whole lot of money, but in a world where they had no steady income, it would have to tide them over as they travelled to get the next mission done. That and they would have to save up to eventually afford better protection and weapons, maybe consumables like healing potions.

  If being an adventurer had been an easy path to riches, even more people would be doing it. There was a reason why it had a reputation as a profession for third born.

  “I’m good,” Torm pre-empted the question of his share.

  “Ya sure?” Theria asked, while Oras was all too ready to slide the coins into his purse. Respect barely kept his greed at bay.

  “I get a payout from the Guild for the service. You will need the money more than me.” Torm stretched. “Now, I’ll go home. If you are looking for work again tomorrow, you can find me here about 30 minutes after opening. If you are taking a few days off, I might be out with another party. Your call if you wait for me or not at that point.”

  “Noted.” Oras pushed the 10 gold into his pouch. ‘16 gold,’ he said to himself. Sharing rooms and eating cheap, it took him and Theria about a gold a day to stay alive in the city. ‘Best to get out there again tomorrow.’

  Being on the road was just so much cheaper.