Wikwocket was not a fan of early morning activity, especially when it's technically still "night".
Even so, she had to admit that the day was turning out to be completely worth it for the excitement and mystery.
Who was that guy? He magicked us here, right? What was going on with the sky getting light when that strange sound started calling me? Why did that guy seem so surprised to see us? Was he really asking Gruntle to kill us? Why did he even think that would work? And what's with all the goblins? That guy wanted them killed, too, right? So much happening! It's like being rewarded for getting out of bed!
She hurried after her gnollish clanmate towards the calls for help and evil goblin laughter, through the cooking area with its stewpot still bubbling over a fire. The table of food and cooking implements in the food-preparation area beyond were in complete disarray - the table overturned, bowls and platters of food atrewn across the floor. Small bare footprints were stamped in mashed turnips in the direction of the commotion, beyond a pantry door. Gruntle stalked nearly silent to the side of the open doorway. He stretched up to his full height so he could sneak a quick look down into the room from the upper corner of the doorway, then drew back. He gave a quiet growling-grumbling sound that Wikwocket had come to think of as meaning dangerous, but not enough to be afraid of as she caught up and stood against the wall on the other side of Gruntle. She answered with an acknowledging grunt and raised BiteySue and her dagger.
Gruntle passed his f'lail to his shield-holding hand so that he could unbuckle his collar, his excited grin widened into a frightening display of teeth. Wikwocket hardly noticed her own marginally-less-scary mirroring the gnoll's in her excitement as she listened to the sounds in the next room - goblinish laughter interrupted by small groans of effort, coinciding with the humanish screaming and pleading becoming clear, then muffled again with the sound of a door slamming shut.
Gruntle tucked his collar into his belt, and his eyes went black as he took his flail back up and charged into the room with maniacal barking laughter, Wikwocket following close behind him,
A small crowd of goblins inside the pantry cackled and strained as they collectively tried to pry open a trapdoor in the floor. A terrified middle-aged man visible through the partially open trapdoor clung to a handle underneath tried with all of his strength to pull it closed again. He finally succeeded when two of the goblins lost their grip as one was smashed and brok'en by a gnoll's flail and his startled neighbor's neck and shoulder crunched in gnollish jaws. One of the others failed to get their hands loose in time and screeched horribly as their fingers were crushed and stuck in the trapdoor.
The other five let go in time and took up weapons, several of which seemed to be very nice kitchen knives.
One raised a meatcleaver to chop at the unexpected gnoll just as Wikwocket stepped out from behind Gruntle and skewered the goblin through the chest. Another with a vegetable-chopping knife dodged back just in time to turn the slash from Wikwocket's dagger from a fatal slash across the throat into an ugly but non-lethal cut across its face. It shrieked in pain and fear, and with desperate alacrity it dodged and sprinted past them both and away through the kitchen.
The two goblins still fighting threw themselves at the monstrous beast who'd appeared without warning to ruin their fun, one swinging a heavy iron meat tenderizer, the other slashing with a viciously sharp paring knife. Whatever pain Gruntle should have felt from the long but shallow slash across his hip and the bleeding indentations at the side of his lower ribs from the meat-tenderizing hammer didn't slow the gnoll down in his ecstatic mania of violence. Seeing the demonic, bestial thing that was assaulting them hardly noticed the smashing of the spiky metal meat-tenderizer into his side, the goblin swinging it dodged away from Gruntle's impending flail-strike and made a wildly-dodging run for the door, pausing for only the tiniest moment on the way to snatch up the fine meat-cleaver dropped by his dead former compatriot. Wikwocket's attempt to catch the goblin with the point of BiteySue as it fled past was confounded by the goblin's unpredictable changes of motion. It fled the pantry, but at least had the decency to do it without too much annoying screaming.
The last freely-moving goblin had the good sense to recognize its predicament, and it, too, attempted escape, but by now Wikwocket was starting to get a sense of the malicious little creatures' habits and was ready this time. She managed to correctly guess which side of Gruntle it would try to rush past and moved to meat it with her rapier and dagger.
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The goblin fell to the floor gurgling with two new holes in its body.
Throughout the brief violence, the sound of the pantry had been dominated by the duet of panicked screaming from the goblin whose fingers were still firmly held by the trapdoor and the person clinging to it underneath trying to shut it by the force of his weight. The stuck goblin's screams somehow became louder and it tried more frantically to pull free, heedless of what would happen to its fingers as the full attention of the gnoll turned on it.
The goblin pulled free of the trapdoor, leaving its fingers behind, as the heavy flail swung around and smashed into the goblin's chest hard enough to rip the body free from the fingers. Its screaming stopped, and that of the people below the trapdoor was muffled as the trapdoor closed again.
Wikwocket admired the carnage they'd just caused. For a good cause, though - we're rescuing people from evil goblins! Heroic! she thought as she looked for more potentially lurking goblins.
Finding none, Gruntle took a deep breath, then let it out slowly with a complaining grumble. His pupils returned to their normal size and he slid his shield back up to his shoulder, hung his flail back from the hook on his belt, and buckled his collar back around his neck.
Wikwocket tried to lift the trapdoor, but it wouldn't budge.
"Hey, I think we got them all down here, are you all unharmed down there?" she finally gave in and shouted at the door. The yelling of the people underneath may have kept them from hearing her.
Gruntle helpfully grabbed the ring on the trapdoor and yanked it upward, startling the screaming man hanging from the bottom. Gruntle leaned down to look. The mans screams got even louder for a moment before cutting off as the man's eyes rolled back and he went limp, letting go of the trapdoor and falling to the floor. Someone else's scream from the cellar below called out.
"Cedric! What happened? Cedric! Wake up!"
"Hey, I think my big friend just startled him, he's probably fine," Wikwocket called down, leaning over to look down. she could see at least three people wearing kitchen aprons down below, gathered around the limp body of Cedric. "Is everyone all right down there?"
"As all right as we can be after these murderous little green menaces came charging in, stealing and ruining things and trying to kill us. Are they gone?"
"We think so, but we need to go check upstairs, our friends our up there looking for the rest of the goblins. Don't worry, we're mysterious adventurer heroes, we'll get rid of them!"
"Thank you," yet another voice of someone hiding in the cellar called out to them. "Who are you, anyway?"
"We're..."
A loud boom from somewhere upstairs vibrated the walls and floor, shaking down dust from the ceiling. Gruntle looked up, and loped back out through the kitchen.
"We'd better go check on that! You can call us the gnoll party! You might want to stay down there for a little while just in case there are more sneaking around, but I'm sure we can get rid of the last of them one way or another pretty quickly! We're professionals! Farewell, brave kitchen-workers, may we all meet again under better circumstances!"
She rushed as quickly as her short gnomish legs could carry her after Gruntle. Al and Bote nearly ran into them at the bottom of the stairs as they descended.
"Did you get them all?" Wikwocket asked excitedly.
"I think they're all gone one way or another, but I heard the woman we met up there setting off another of the devices she had, so maybe she found another one after we left. The ones that were still alive that we knew of were all trying to escape out of a window in the room in the far corner up there."
"Should we go up and help her look for more?" Wikwocket asked. "Them maybe we should go around and introduce ourselves!
"I don't know, it seems to me that standing near someone willing to point and aim tiny hand-held cannons in their own hands might be dangerous for everyone. I'm also not sure we should introduce ourselves, we don't even know where we are yet, and I don't know if it's a good idea to try to explain how we got here and what happened to the crazy man whose summoning ritual brought us here. I wish I knew what he was up to , but now he's dead and we may never know."
"How are we going to become famous and influential unless people get to know us?"
"Both approaches have merit," Bote suggested, "Having just rescued a number of people from a goblin raid, it may be worthwhile to speak to the locals and perhaps get some insight into where we are. On the other hand, it may be difficult to explain the presence of an official gnoll, and the savaged and blood state of the man who seems to have been responsible for bringing us here. I think we will need to defer to our leader to make this decision."
Bote grinned through their beard, showing a hint of good-natured malice.
"Why do I have to be the leader, anyway?" Al complained.
"Because you did not refuse in time, and now it is too late."