The Lundy village raiding party left at dawn. Some wives and family members of the party members awoke to see them off (Tryle waved good-bye to his mother and Opal as the gates closed slowly behind him), but otherwise they departed without much fanfare.

For the first hour, they walked along the slim edge of a ravine overshadowed by a thick canopy of vine-entangled trees. The trail dipped and rose gradually for about two miles. At the top of the slope, the raid party came across a mossy boulder of granite much lighter than it appeared — one of the outermost disguised entrances to their village territory — and rolled it aside, passing through in twos and threes before rolling the giant rock back into place.

It didn’t take long for Tryle to discover he hated hiking.

He was no stranger to covering long distances, to navigating his way through dense brush and scaling the short rock formation that sometimes rose up in the meadows. Dwelling in the Woodlands meant constantly being on your toes, even for goblins, and their hunter-gatherer lifestyle naturally demanded for a certain degree of physical fitness.

But there was a big difference between freely roaming around a sunny field or swimming around the refreshing pools of a cold cave, and trudging fifteen miles at a hard pace (over bumpy, uneven ground with tree roots thick enough to fell grizzly bears) with only one lunch break at noon and two pee breaks throughout the day.

Tryle would have much preferred to mine turquoi crystals for eight hours rather than hiking for one. At least mining for the crystals had a legitimate purpose to it.

As evening drew in, birdcalls drifted in the trees overhead, overlaying a pretty symphony along the percussive footfalls of marching goblins and the brittle crunching of leaves underfoot.

Finally, Chief Jrunta called for a halt. They made camp at a clearing in the shape of a shallow bowl. With grateful groans, fifty packs thudded to the ground, and the goblins spread out to claim their sleeping spaces.

Tryle found an empty corner for himself, and with great relief, undid the pack straps and propped the pack against the curved incline of the bowl-like clearing.

He’d made some quick modifications to the pack before they’d left the village, sewing on thick fabric hip pads and adding rope latches to both the flanks and pack straps. Then he tied thick coils of hemp rope across his chest and waist and distribute weight across his entire body. This eased the strain of having to carry the heavy door-breaching tools Jrunta had assigned him to carry — a totally unbiased decision to make, Tryle sarcastically thought to himself.

He’d also made up for the pack’s lack of human waterproofing by adding an improvised mixture of wax and Giant Snail slime to make a nonpolar coating. He wasn’t sure if the coating had set in enough — he’d only been able to heat the surface of the pack by the fire for a few hours — but while it was doubtful it would hold up in a flood, Tryle was confident it would provide sufficient protection from normal levels of rainfall.

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Tryle realized the quartermaster might not be too happy about the changes he made, but he couldn’t imagine why. He was pretty much doing the goblin’s job for him.

He laid out his bedroll and strung his cloak in makeshift A-frame over it. It took him longer than normal; each motion caused him to wince, his shoulders and back aching from the day’s worth of trekking.

Meanwhile, the rest of the goblins broke out the meal supplies and began making their dinners. Soon, the clearing was full of laughter, the clinking of mugs full of bitroot beer, the twanging of canvas being stretched into shelters over bedrolls, the crackle of multiple small fires, and the sizzling of fox meat strips on hot pans.

Tryle did not join in. Despite the advice Anok had given him the night before, he was determined to avoid them as much as he could for the rest of the raid. All he had to do was keep his head down for the next few days (it would take them a total of two-and-half days of hiking to reach the granny’s cottage).

He could hear Anok’s voice in his head, reminding him of all the experience he’d gained from the last two raids he’d been on.

“You’re a newbie,” Anok had said, as they and Opal watched Gumbo and his cronies pressing red-hot fire crab claws into each other’s armpits around the stack of blazing logs. “So the guys won’t expect you to take the lead on preparations or raid execution, but you still gotta pull your weight, if you know what I mean.”

“I don’t,” Tryle had replied.

“You gotta socialize, make sure the group feels comfortable around you.”

Tryle had shot him a look. “You’re telling me to make the rest of them more comfortable?”

“Better than refusing to go altogether. Do you know how weird that was? It’s like your begging to get beat up.”

“I’m not gonna change any minds by sharing a few chicken legs around the fire, Anok.”

“Worth a try to engage.”

There were more howls of exhilaration as the crab claws did their work. Opal was laughing so hard that tears were streaming down her face.

Tryle had watched one of the newly-tattooed goblins rub his armpit vigorously to dull the pain. “Not too sure I want to engage with that.”

In the small circle of goblins who didn’t treat Tryle like the village pariah he was, there was one thing they still failed to understand. He didn’t really want to fit in. Some nights he’d entertained the notion of an alternate world, one where in exchange for fitting in, another version of himself gave up on the idea of intellectual pursuits.

Where he threw out all his books and pages of notes. Where he relinquished his desire to understand the intricacies of magical science, stopped his experiments altogether, and allowed himself to be welcomed back into the fold of Lundy village. Where the most complex problem most goblins tried to solve was how long they could blow a fire funnel from the extra methane stored naturally in their gut.

The result of this thought experiment always came back the same: he would end up climbing to the top of Bighorn Mountain and flinging himself off its peak. To Tryle, suppressing his interests was akin to cutting off his ears. Failing to push his knowledge forward was like tying a constrictive rope around his arm until it fell off. Stopping himself from thinking altogether about why the world worked as it did was like a death sentence.

In short, if it came down to making friends in Lundy village or perfecting a finished version of the All-Purpose Block Builder, then Tryle would declare blood vengeance on the entire village that very minute and spend the rest of his days in whatever “poop shack” was needed to achieve his goal.

For obvious reasons, Tryle had never told his mother about this particular conclusion.