The cabin fell eerily silent. Apart from the occasional grunts from the goblin, there were no other sounds for a few moments.

Agnes glared towards Abigail with her abnormally cold and dead eyes.

“Joking… I was just joking,” Abigail said nervously, her smile wavering ever so slightly. “I apologize, that wasn’t very funny. However, I will tell you that they were close to being harmed.”

Agnes froze for a moment before quickly saying, “How so?”

“As you know, I was attacked by one of those creatures as well. When I was, I happened to think about your precious grandchildren. So, I sent a raven to watch over them, and I found out one of those creatures getting ready to ambush them as they were traveling here.”

Agnes thought over what she said for a moment. What Abigail told her sounded awfully suspicious.

Why does she show so much care all of a sudden? She never has before, Agnes thought.

“Even if that was the case, I’ve put a protection spell on them already. No… goblin or any other small green creature should be able to lay its hands on them.”

“That may be the case,” Edith chimed in, “However, such a long standing issue could still put them in danger, and even if they do never encounter harm, it would still scare them quite a bit if they found out they existed.”

Agnes sighed, but before she could speak another word, a few knocks came from her front door. Before allowing anyone in, she signaled with her hand to hide the goblin. Edith snapped her fingers, as she did, a purple light began to swirl around the creature, causing it to vanish from sight.

“Come in,” Agnes invited.

Two small kids barged into the cabin, screaming in unison, ”Nana! Nana!”

The two children hugged Agnes tightly, and for once, she let a joyful smile show on her wrinkled face. After a moment, the two children then ran to Edith and Abigail to give them a hug as well. Seeing that both of their reactions were similar to hers, it put her deep into thought.

Maybe they do care about my grandchildren.

“Hey there, mom,” A young voice sounded from the doorway.

Glancing over, Agnes saw a short woman with messy brown hair and hazel eyes. She was rather beautiful and her eyes only accentuated that. Her simple dress hung low as she approached her mother.

“Hello Amelia, how have you been, sweetheart?” Agnes smiled warmly, avoiding eye contact.

Amelia let out a breath before responding.

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“I’ve been doing alright. The trip sort of wore me out, why do you have to live so far away from the town? My poor vehicle was struggling to make it the whole distance, I’ll need to take it to the mechanic soon.”

She walked around the cabin a few moments before spotting the shattered window. Her face grimaced and she worriedly glanced towards her mother.

“What happened to your window?! Did someone break in?”

“Oh, no, there was just a little accident that happened not too long ago.”

Amelia was slightly suspicious of the excuse, but she trusted her mother, so she let it go.

“Nana! Do you have a radio yet?” The young boy asked, his innocent and youthful dark brown eyes staring at Agnes.

“No, sorry honey, just haven’t gotten around to getting one yet,” Agnes replied, looking down into her lap. “However, I do have some cookies!”

“Really?!” Her other grandchild, a young girl, exclaimed whilst excitedly running up towards her grandmother.

“Sure do, here, let me go get them out of the oven right quick, they should be just about finished.”

Agnes steadily stood up using her cane. She held her back as she hobbled towards the old solid black stove in the kitchen. Grabbing some oven mitts, she unlatched the oven door and took out the pan of freshly baked cookies. Placing it on top of the stove, she warned her grandchildren to not touch them for a few minutes so they could cool down.

She returned to her recliner and the four began to casually chat with each other. After a few moments of conversation, she suddenly heard one of her grandchildren yell out in pain. Seeing tears run down the young girl's face as she ran toward her broke her heart.

“What’s wrong sweetie?” Agnes asked, filled with worry.

In between tears, the young girl responded.

“I… I waited a few minutes, but… but… the pan was still hot.”

“Aww, give me your hand, I’ll make it better.”

With an outstretched hand, Agnes clasped it in both of hers. Her dark brown almost black eyes swirled, which no one seemed to notice. The young girl seemed to stop crying after a few seconds.

“T-Thank you nana.” She sniffled a bit.

Agnes hadn’t healed nor removed the burn mark, she simply eased the pain. Both Edith and Abigail knew what she did, but her daughter was a little more… slow to catch on and simply dismissed it as the typical “grandmotherly healing tricks”.

After a bit more chatting and the consuming of cookies, her daughter and grandchildren bid her farewell. She was sad to see them go, but she smiled anyway and waved goodbye to them as they left through the front door.

Agnes sighed a bit as her smile quickly dissipated.

“Alright, I’ve decided to help you two with the extermination of these goblins and the persecution of Evelynn.”

Abigail and Edith were both happy to hear that and gave her their thanks.

“Speaking of the goblins, what should we do with the one we currently possess?” Edith asked, snapping the one she hid back into existence.

“I say kill it,” Agnes suggested.

“Well of course you would say that,” Abigail remarked. “I think we should keep it. At the very least, we could train it to locate other goblins.”

“I agree,” Edith said.

Outnumbered 2 to 1, Agnes had no choice but to go along with it.

I guess it doesn’t matter, after all, I can just kill it after all of this is said and done, Agnes thought to herself.