Within half an hour the party was sitting on the edge of the fountain staring at Malusi, Ewan and Twix on one side and Arlo, Simon, and a bound up goblin on the other.

Arden took a long drink of water from his canteen and then looked over to Malusi. “You’re smiling so I assume all is well, but I gotta hear this story. How are you out of the house?”

Malusi’s grin grew even bigger as he started talking, “One of the guards had come and gotten dad earlier so I knew something was up. I got dressed and was sitting near the door with a machete in hand. Then I heard a commotion outside. Some growling and screaming. I opened the door as saw Ewan sitting on Twix while Arlo was trying to fight off some goblins that had surrounded them. I wanted to go help but I couldn’t bring myself to leave the house. Just as I made eye contact with Ewan one of the goblins dove over Arlo and tackled Ewan, knocking him to the ground. The next thing I knew, I was standing over Ewan and was killing goblins as fast as they could come.

“After it was all over, I was sort of afraid to go back inside. Afraid I might not come out again. So Ewan, the wolves, and I sat down in front of my house and just waited. When we heard the horns we knew the guards were taking care of business so we waited for a bit and then started cautiously making our way in this direction. As we were coming this way, Arlo must have smelled something because he suddenly took off on his own.”

Arden nodded his head and then looked over to Simon the guard and Arlo, “And how do you two end up together.”

Simon stopped petting the wolf and stood as if giving a formal report. “I was patrolling Bread Street and had just passed Spittal Street when I heard an animal yelp and a goblin’s battle cry. I doubled back to Spittal ran over to Lawson and saw Arlo and this goblin fighting. At first I couldn’t understand what was going on because I knew the wolf could easily kill the goblin, but Arlo was taking hits while trying to grab and drag the goblin. I ran forward and clubbed the goblin over the head, knocking him out. I quickly blew my whistle to get more help and then bound the goblin. Once another guard showed up I passed him the bound goblin and then I picked up Arlo and brought him here for healing.

Before Arden could reply Christi stepped up, “Thank you for your report Simon. You did well. Now, sit before you fall over. You look exhausted.”

Arden laughed to himself. The way Simon made his report completely left out the emotions of the situation. Simon was nearly in tears, thinking the wolf was near death. Thankfully, the wounds looked worse than they were.

“Well, let’s get to the next step,” Arden said as he stood and walked over to the goblin and healed him, drawing some questioning looks from the guards.

Nolan approached the now healed goblin and asked in common, "Where is the tunnel you used to get into the village?" The goblin just stared at him as if he couldn't understand him.

Before he could ask again in the Goblin tongue, Christi pulled a dagger and stepped forward saying, “Well, if we can’t talk to him we might as well kill him.”

As she did so, the goblin started screaming, “I speak human! I speak! I love to speak human!”

Everyone but Christi seems surprised by this. Christi continued forward and placed her dagger right in front of the goblin’s eyes. “Good. Show us how you got into our village.”

After that, the goblin obeyed pretty well. While the group was walking through town they learned that his name was Prit and he was a goblin boss of some sort. His orders had been to kill as many people in the village as he could before dying.

“So this was a suicide mission?” Hazel asked

Prit nodded his head, “Yes. We were all prisoners. Promised freedom if we kill everyone.”

“Why not just run away.” Willow asked

“Death better than punishment. Quicker.” Prit said.

The group stopped talking as everyone processed this news. Thankfully they reached a house shortly after and Prit pointed up to it. “The tunnel is in there.”

Hazel moved to enter the home and both Christi and Nolan held out their hands to stop her. Nolan looked back to Prit. “Please go before us and disarm your traps.”

Prit grinned a sly grin as he stepped up to the door and knelt down. A moment later there was a click and the door opened, revealing some sort of mechanism with two spears.

“Good call,” Arden said.

Arden, Nolan, and Christi did a quick survey of the home which reveled a couple in the master bedroom with their throats cut and a tunnel in the basement. Thankfully there were no other goblins. Between the goblins and the dead bodies the house reeked so the group headed back outside to make plans.

“Captain, do you have a jail cell where you can hold Prit for us?” Nolan asked.

“I do, but why? Why not just kill him?”

“He has information we’re going to need if we’re going to stop the goblin threat.”

"Stop the goblin threat" the Captain asked? "You plan to attack them?"

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

"I don't see any other way to get them to leave Wildemill alone."

Thinking for a moment Christi nodded. “Yeah, I can hold him. But what are we going to do about the tunnel? If we just cave it in it could damage a number of buildings between the wall and here.”

Arden shrugged, “I don’t know. Find some volunteers to live in the house and guard the tunnel.”

"I like it. I volunteer you,” Chiristi said with a grin.

Arden just shrugged, "Well, after your guards take away the dead bodies and we clean it, sure. We can't stay at the inn forever. Did you know the couple that lived here?”

“Yes. It was Oscar and Leah Myer. They’ve been here for a couple decades. He was our alchemist. They were good people.”

“That was Oscar?” Willow asked in a soft voice with a stunned expression on her face. Arden quickly stepped beside her and embraced her.

Christi, Prit, and the rest of the party stepped off to the side to give Willow some space.

“Do they have any relatives? Any kids,” Hazel asked.

“No. At least they’ve never mentioned any.” Christi paused before continuing, “I’ll speak with the mayor tomorrow and see what she thinks about letting you have the place, or at least stay there for the time being. For now, I’m going to go help my guards clean up the goblin corpses before the town wakes up. Thank you all for your help tonight. This could have been much worse. They chose a good night to do this raid as most of the town is too drunk to have noticed anything. They could have slit nearly everyone’s throat by morning and no one would have heard a thing.”

As Christi walked away Nolan turned to the group and in a somber voice said, “Let’s head to the inn, clean up, and get some sleep. I’m sure we’ll all have some stat points to assign when we wake up tomorrow.”

⚷

When Nolan woke the next morning, the sun was up higher than he had wanted. He hurriedly read through his notifications from the previous night’s fighting, he didn’t get another level as he expected but he was close. He did, however, level up a couple skills and his healing spell. Nolan dressed and headed into the common room where he found Arden eating breakfast with an exhausted looking captain of the guard and the mayor.

“Morning,” he said as he approached the table. Looking to Christi he asked, “You’ve been up all night?”

“No sleep until the job is done. Couldn’t have people waking up to dead goblins everywhere.”

“I suppose not.”

Helen looked over, “Arden said you all would be interested in the Myer residence. Are you sure you’re okay with staying in a home with a goblin tunnel in the basement?”

“Well, I’m not sure about staying there, but my hesitance is more because I like my privacy… and Arden snores. But I’m sure we can find a way to block that tunnel. Willow has gotten pretty good with that earth moving spell.”

The mayor grinned and looked to Arden, who just shrugged. “He’s right on both counts. I do snore, and I’m sure we can block or seal that tunnel.”

Christi laughed while Helen nodded her head. “Well, if you want the house, you can stay there. We’ve already removed the Myers. They’re being prepped for the funeral we're holding tomorrow for all those killed by the goblins. You can move in today if you’d like. The Myers’ belongings are still there, however. Since they have no family that we are aware of, feel free to use what you can and give away the rest. However, the house only has two bedrooms, and I know there are five of you. So I’ve chosen two other vacant houses. Normally houses are tough to come by, but with so many people having fled, we have a number of houses sitting empty right now.”

“That sounds good," Arden said, "I assume there will be rent due on these houses? How much will that be?”

The mayor rolled her eyes, “Please. After all the ways you’ve helped out since you’ve arrived, not to mention last night? As far as I’m concerned, the houses are yours as long as you’re here in honor of the help you already provided. Had you not found the tunnel and tracked the goblins last night, a great many people would have likely had their throats cut by this morning. As it is, we only lost eleven citizens last night.”

“Thank you, madam mayor. We appreciate that.” Arden said

“Eleven dead,” Nolan said dejectedly. “I had hoped we stopped them soon enough to prevent that.”

“I understand.” Helen said, “But if wishes were fishes, we’d never go hungry. Accept what’s happened and move forward, which brings me to my next point. Christi filled me in on your conversation with Prit, and I’ve spoken with him as well this morning. It’s obvious that something has to be done about the goblins, or they will simply continue to bleed us. And it sounds like their current hobgoblin chieftain isn’t going to back off.”

“You want us to attack the goblins?” Arden asked

“Yes, I do. From what Christi told me, you did better than our best guards could have even though many of them out-level you by a fair margin."

Looking at Arden, Nolan asked, “Thoughts?”

“I’d say she’s right. Willow is our weakest fighter and she’s better than two thirds of the guards I feel.”

“I meant, what do you think about attacking the goblins” Nolan clarified.

“Oh, yeah. We gotta do it. But we need information. And we can’t forget about the dungeon we still need to find.”

“Do you think there really is a dungeon,” Helen asked?

“No. But like you said, it’s a risk so we gotta look for it. Right?”

The mayor sighed, “How long until you think you could put together an attack on the goblins?”

“We could do it today if we actually knew anything. We need time to gather information.” Arden answered.

“How long do you think we can hold off on attacking the goblins? Are we looking at days, weeks, or months?” Nolan asked.

"And what are our constraints? If it's food, could we just go buy more and bring it back? Is there some other limiting factor," Arden questioned.

“Right now our constraints, as you put it, are making sure we evacuate while we still have the supplies to get us safely back to Wyham. And we’re not currently hurting for anything. But I don’t want to give the goblins time to plan another attack like last night."

“I get that. But let’s take some time to interrogate Prit. The most recent scouting report wasn’t even aware of the hobgoblins taking over. That’s a big unknown. I’m hoping Prit can shed some light on a lot of this, starting with whether or not they actually believe the dungeon exists. Once we have enough information to know what we’re getting ourselves into, we’ll take the fight to the goblins.”

“Sounds like a plan,” the mayor said. “Would you like to see the houses I’ve picked out for you?”

“Shouldn’t we wait for everyone else to wake up?” Nolan asked.

“They’re all out and about already,” Arden answered.

‘I really did sleep late.’ Nolan thought.