Blue fireflies floated around Rast’s head. His ears tingled to the cold breeze coming from the moss-green sea. A short distance in front of him, a single goblin sat, playing with a black rat, squeezing its tail, spinning it around in loops despite its low and high pitched scream.

Weeeeeeeeeeeee.

Loki and Björn stood in front of him, clenching their daggers and sword respectively. To his side, Annie stood with her bow, string pulled, arrow clenched tightly between her fingertips. Marie, stood behind them, with her small book, quivering at the sight of the goblin.

“Okay, on my three I want Annie to shoot. One, two-” Rast’s whispering was interrupted by Björn rushing in, screaming at the top of his lungs. The goblin jumped straight into the air in a mix of fear, panic and shock.

Björn swung his too heavy sword, missing completely, hitting the rock beneath the goblin, numb wrists shaking, fingers growing weak. Annie shot her arrow, it went straight into the back of the warrior making him yelp. Sorry Björn!

The goblin quickly realized its situation, and bolted for the forest, but Loki was there swinging his daggers around. The goblin jumped back, hissed, and threw his weapon. The blunt side flew into Loki’s forehead, knocking him out completely.

Even the goblin looked shocked.

And turned around to run the opposite direction. Rast had finished his ice shard spell, and it flew straight for the goblin… the same time as Björn had recovered and charged in. The ice shard shattered against his back. Aaaah. He tumbled forward.

Marie looked completely white, her hands shaking too much to form a single spell. They’d have to wait until after the fight was completed until they’d received any healing, and luckily for them the goblin ran away.

“Fuck. Fuck, FUCK!” Björn screamed, hands banging against the floor. “I can’t even fucking kill one goblin. I’m useless. I’m just completely. FUCKING. Useless,” his lungs forced him to take a breath, a tear fell down onto the rock. “I-I-I, I thought I was going to be great.”

“Don’t say that,” Annie said with her most endearing tone, head tilted sideways.

Björn’s head jerked upwards, staring right at Annie, eyes bloodshot. “What? We have a ranger with terrible precision. A rogue that can’t take a scratch. A mage that can only cast one spell. A healer that doesn’t heal. And a fucking warrior that’s dumber than a pile of fucking bricks.” He banged his hands against his temple hard enough to make Rast flinch. “And to top it off, our teamwork is terrible if not nonexistent. We’re a group of losers, let’s face it.”

There was a loud silence after that. Nobody wanted to believe it, but when the idea had been shown and presented over and over, pushed into their faces, mushed into their mouths, screamed into their ears, it became insanely difficult to push it off.

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Loki woke up with a loud gasp, he shot up from the ground to stand, looking around for the goblin, spinning around in a circle to check if the goblins was behind him. Upon discovering that it had fled, he triumphantly said. “Ha, ha-ha. One small step for humanity, one giant leap for the Bird Party, wooo!”

They all laughed.

The twirly path back disappeared quickly. They returned to the abandoned, rotten and dilapidated house they’d slept in for the last month. The handle detached when Björn pulled, so he kicked the door down, walked in, and shoved it back into its spot when they were all in. The moon shine was the only light they had. The air smelled wet, the planks rotten and wet with moss growing in the cracks. They had sleeping bags in the corners

All but Rast fell asleep, it was the only escape from hunger they had. He couldn’t fall asleep with the heavy pouch in his stomach weighing him down. He was the leader, and failing was ultimately his fault. He couldn’t have it so.

The streets were empty but for a few groups walking in the sides. Rast could see the spiderwebs undisturbed, illuminating in the moonlight. He walked with his hands in his ragged pockets with no bottom.

He pushed open the door to the adventurer’s guild and the warm air flooded out. It smelled nice inside. The room was mainly empty but for a few adventurer’s drinking and a clerk working with paperwork.

Rast saw an older adventurer wave for him. The man sat alone with a jug of wine in his hands on a long bench scared by many different cuts. The old man spent most of his time here, judging everyone.

“Did it go any better today?” The old man asked, glancing up at Rast.

“No. Today was an unfortunate day.”

“Did you lose any of your party members today?”

“No.”

“Then it wasn’t too unfortunate.”

“I guess.”

“Sit down kid. Let me tell you a story.”

That’s weird. Usually old man Andrew never opens up about anything.

“It was back in the days when I was still a young man like you,” Andrew said. “I’d gotten into a party that fit me really well. It felt as if we could read each other's thoughts and we breezed through most opponents.”

“We challenged ourselves, and we grew, and we thought highly of ourselves and took larger challenges. The days quickly passed, our names growing more popular, and then, one day, we flew too close to the sun and all of them died but for me. I escaped. It was as sudden as that.”

“Kid. Don’t be like me. Stop chasing greatness. It won’t lead you anywhere satisfactory. Be humble, and live a good, happy life.”

Andrew looked back at his drink. The conversation was finished, and Rast stood up, walking towards the quest board. There was a new quest that caught his eye. It wasn’t as much a quest as multiple papers of quests, a whole load of them. And on it peculiar words caught his eye. Adventurer’s training camp.