Evelyn the Fierce had been traveling through the Western Forest for days, searching for the cabin she'd seen on a wyvern hunt a few years back. It had been in rough shape when she first saw it, having apparently been abandoned a few years prior, so if it was still standing, the place would undoubtedly be in dire need of repairs. Well, that was nothing she couldn’t handle, as long as the foundations were in good shape. After all, it was the location that really interested her. The cabin was set on the shore of a pond fed by a tributary of the nearby Lumin River, ensuring a source of both fish and clean, fresh water. In addition, the river led directly to the great city Lutheon where her party had picked up that wyvern hunt. The city would be a few days travel by horse, but by boat that time could be cut down significantly.
Of course, she would have to get a boat first, but she could take care of that in time. It wasn’t like she was lacking in funds. Actually, now that she really thought about it, wouldn’t it have been easier to have started in Lutheon and searched for that tributary by boat? She had set off rather impulsively, she supposed.
Evelyn heaved a heavy sigh and stretched. It seemed her bones were getting too old to spend days on end in the saddle.
Her old adventuring companions had always teased her for her rash decision making, and apparently that old adage of wisdom coming with age was only empty praise meant to soothe the elderly.
Evelyn’s ruminations were suddenly cut short by a sharp cry from nearby. Pulling at her horse’s reins, she stopped and listened, waiting for the sound to come again. The birdsong and soft chatter of insects had gone quiet, and it wasn’t long before a muffled sobbing reached her ears, punctuated by frightened hiccups. As quietly as possible, she dismounted her large warhorse, leaving him behind as she snuck forward, sword at the ready. Glaive was a well-trained horse, so she felt assured that he wouldn’t wander off as she searched for the source of the noise.
The sound led Evelyn to a small, shadowy clearing under the branches of an ancient oak tree, where she spied a small leather satchel and an ornate bone dagger, both apparently recently dropped judging from how neatly they rested atop the fallen leaves without a speck of dirt.
She was close now, very close. Those muffled cries were definitely coming from this clearing, but there was no one here, at least not that she could see. In her head, she ran through a list of possibilities. Ghosts were unlikely at this time of day, and it wasn’t nearly loud enough to be a banshee. She looked up, scanning the branches for danger, although she was certain that the sound wasn’t coming from above. Straining her aging ears, she finally realized that the sound was coming from under the ground. Could someone have been buried in such a short time? There were plenty of footprints, even a few strange scuffle marks, but no obvious signs that the earth had been dug up. She crept further into the clearing, careful not to disturb the tracks.
All at once the cries swelled, seeming now to come from directly behind her. She whipped around just in time to see the ground rising up as two enormous, spindly appendages shot out of a newly revealed crevice. Evelyn was barely able to evade the blow, leaping backwards as the legs slammed down right where she had been standing. More legs followed after the first, each one as long as Evelyn was tall and covered in thick, coarse hair. The enormous creature gave her no chance to recover from the shock of its appearance as it lunged forward, fangs first.
Acting on decades of experience and instinct, the retired adventurer lowered her stance, bringing her sword forward at the same time, piercing the head and killing the creature in one swift, clean blow. Easy-peasy.
This did not, however, stop its enormous corpse from barrelling into her, carried as it was by its own inertia. She crashed to the ground, the body of what she now recognized as a giant trapdoor spider landing heavily on her chest.
Giant trapdoor spiders are considered Class 4 monsters: dangerous for the inexperienced adventurer, but most people can take them down solo if they have more than a basic level of training. That is, if they aren’t caught unawares. The true danger of these things lies in their ability to camouflage the entrance to their dens, where they lie in wait for unsuspecting prey to pass by.
“Holy Hannah,” Evelyn muttered as she heaved the thing off of her, “I’m getting too old for this.” Every joint in her body ached as she stood and brushed herself off.
Fortunately, now that the spider had revealed its den, finding it again would be a small matter, and she would easily be able to rescue whatever hapless traveler had been caught. The more important issue was how a giant trapdoor spider came to be here in the first place. Giant spiders didn’t normally live aboveground. The fact that one had found its way up here could only mean that there was an entrance to an uncharted cave system somewhere near here.
Evelyn frowned as she crouched down, using her sword to gently prod the earth where she had seen it emerge. When it pierced the den’s hatch, she used it as a lever, gently lifting while marveling at how well-camouflaged it was. It was no exaggeration to say that even an experienced ranger would have had difficulty spotting this place. Not only that, but it was also much sturdier than she imagined it would be. Webs were woven thickly together with branches, vines, and leaves, forming a sturdy hatch. Evelyn was almost certain that it could have withstood even Glaive’s weight, not that she would want to test that theory out.
With the hatch fully open, the summer sun that filtered down through the branches of the trees pierced the darkness in the den like spears of light. Evelyn could now distinguish two voices, one crying while the other seemed to be grunting or mumbling. She hopped down into the hole, that short distance sending a shock of pain to her knees, an unwelcome reminder of her recent retirement.
Inside were two tiny shapes, no bigger than toddlers, tightly wrapped in webbing like packed lunch. Could someone really have been foolish enough to let such young children play alone in the woods?
“It’s alright, kids,” Evelyn announced as she approached. “The spider is dead, I’m here to help.”
Stooping down, she cut the bindings off of the children, revealing pale green skin and yellow cat-like eyes that glistened with tears. No wonder they were so small; they were goblin children, not human children.
They flinched away, clearly terrified by the sight of a large, armored human looming over them with a sword. Evelyn had rescued plenty of terrified human children in her time; she was confident that she could soothe goblin children just as easily. She sheathed the sword that she had used to free them and flopped backwards onto her butt. The nearly identical children - she presumed they were siblings, possibly even twins - had scooted as far from their unexpected savior as the cramped space would allow, and watched her with wide eyes. At first, Evelyn didn’t say anything to the pair. She concentrated on keeping her expression as pleasant as possible as she took her ration pouch and water skin off of her belt. Lips upturned into a smile, slight squint to the eyes, relax the brows: these were the keys to a friendly countenance that Evelyn had honed through years of training.
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After taking a swig of water, she finally spoke to the children. “You must be thirsty; do you want some water?” She held her water skin out to them as she said this. The one on the left, who had bright feathers braided into his hair, shook his head, his arms clasped protectively around his brother. “No? Ah, then, how about some jerky?”
At this they seemed to perk up, though they remained hesitant to accept her offer. It wasn’t surprising; humans and goblins weren’t on friendly terms, after all. She set the pouch down and nudged it towards them.
Goblins had long been feared as thieving, bloodthirsty monsters, and were quickly exterminated whenever their villages were found near human settlements. In truth, other than minor dietary differences, they weren’t much different from humans. They raided and stole from humans, certainly, but only when they had no other options. After all, it wasn’t like they could trade for what they needed if, for example, a goblin village was suffering a famine, forbidden as they were from entering human settlements. It had become a bloody cycle, a self-fulfilling prophecy with goblins becoming the monsters they were feared to be, and humans strengthening their persecution as a result. So it was no wonder that these two children were so afraid of Evelyn; they must have grown up hearing the same stories about humans as human children heard about goblins.
Fortunately, such a seasoned adventurer such as herself knew precisely what their weakness was. After a moment’s hesitation, the one on the right, who wore a beautifully carved bone necklace, snatched up the pouch and dove into its contents. His needle-sharp teeth shredded the jerky easily, and soon his brother was also eating, their cheeks puffing up like chipmunks as they chewed. Goblins ate mostly fish, very rarely hunting large game like deer, so Evelyn’s venison jerky made for an irresistible treat.
“Be careful to eat slowly, or you’ll choke,” she warned.
They nodded, audibly gulping down their mouthfuls, and ate the rest of the jerky in small nibbles, stealing glances at the stranger every so often as they did so. When they had emptied the contents of the pouch, their frightened trembling had also stopped. They shifted and fidgeted under the weight of her presence, clearly brimming with curiosity, though their anxiety made them cautious. Evelyn, meanwhile, sat quietly a short distance away, watching the pair, apparently unaware of how daunting they found her unwavering gaze to be.
Finally, the boy on the right reached out tentatively to place the emptied pouch in front of her. “Th-thank you for the meat,” he said, voice quivering as he spoke. “Um, miss human, are you, uh… are you gonna eat us?” At his words, the one on the left, who had seemed relatively calm up to that point, suddenly sprang up and grabbed a rock, brandishing it at Evelyn.
“Oh my– no! Gosh, no.” She waved her hands as she answered, trying her best to look non threatening. “I’m not going to hurt you, I promise. I’m only here to help.”
“Don’t believe her, Fin!” shouted the boy with the rock. “She probably just gave us that to fatten us up for her supper!” Fin’s face paled, his eyes once again filling up with frightened tears.
Unsure of how to respond to that convincingly, Evelyn instead opted to make her introduction, as politeness dictated. “Oh, your name is Fin? My name is Evelyn; it’s nice to meet you! Now, why don’t we get out of this hole?” She stood slowly, hands still raised, and started moving back towards the opening. She didn’t know anything about goblins’ social etiquette, a fact which she suddenly found herself lamenting, but she did know that the gloomy atmosphere inside the spider’s den would do nothing to make the children feel at ease.
In spite of her heavy armor, Evelyn climbed nimbly out of the spider’s den, with only a few creaky joints hindering her. The children had a bit more difficulty getting out, but the feather-haired one whose name she still did not know only bared his teeth at her when she offered a hand. Well, that wasn’t particularly surprising. Unbothered, she went over and picked up the belongings that she assumed they had dropped when the spider attacked: the pouch and the bone dagger. She held them out to the pair as they clambered over the lip of the lair. The feather-haired boy was the first to reach the top, and he immediately snatched the bone dagger from her, holding it in front of himself with clumsy posture.
“Widen your stance; you’ll be knocked on your tuckus like that. And hold your blade like this,” Evelyn instinctively corrected the boy’s posture.
“I know how to hold a sword,” he snapped. “I’m the best warrior in the village!” But he followed her instructions in spite of his attitude, and even seemed quite pleased when she gave him an approving nod. He reminded the adventurer of herself when she was younger.
One thing was certain, though: in his tiny hands, the dagger did indeed look like a sword.
Fin was the next to exit the den, in a much clumsier manner than his brother. As soon as he took his pouch from her, he peeked inside, checking that its contents were safe.
Now that they were all standing, Evelyn could see just how small the children were: the tops of their heads barely reached her knee. Evelyn looked back and forth between the two brothers, before coming to a realization.
“The carving on that dagger and that necklace are very similar; were they made by the same person?”
The dagger’s hilt was like a larger, more intricate version of the beads on the necklace. Each depicted a bird with wings wrapped around as if to shield something.
“Oh, yeah,” Fin said, tugging at the necklace as he replied. “I made them. They’re not that good, but…”
“It’s good. Much better than you can find in the cities.”
As Fin beamed under her praise, his brother just snorted, saying, “Of course it’s good! My brother doesn’t make things that are bad!”
Evelyn nodded, suddenly uncertain of how to proceed with the children. It wouldn’t feel right to just leave them in the forest by themselves, but she was sure they wouldn’t be comfortable bringing a strange human back to their village. She didn’t want to make herself suspicious by asking, so instead an uncomfortable silence hung around the three as they stood next to the spider’s corpse.
“I have a horse,” Evelyn announced, attempting unsuccessfully to break the awkward atmosphere.
The brothers looked around the small, horse-free clearing before replying in unison, “Ah, I see.”
“Would you like a ride back to your village?”
“On… your horse?” The two looked skeptically at one another. “Umm, give us a moment.” They scampered to the other side of the spider corpse, where they crouched down to have a whispered conversation.
“What do you think, Fig?” Fin inquired.
“She’s obviously nuts,” Fig replied. “I’ve heard this happens when humans get old. Their brains start to go all wonky and before ya know it, they don’t even know who they are!”
“That’s terrible! Why would her village let her wander around like that? What if she gets hurt?”
“Don’t you know anything about humans? They don’t take care of each other like goblins do. You know that human saying, ‘it’s a dog eat dog world.’ She probably had to run away so they wouldn’t feed her to dogs!”
Fin gasped loudly, then clasped his hands over his mouth, peeking over the body of the spider to where Evelyn was waiting. “We have to help her.”
“Agreed.”
The two shared a determined look as they shook hands, making a silent pact with their eyes to protect this abandoned human.