A beaten-down Adria walked through a pitch-black Saint Goblin's Inn while her mind floated out of the tavern and out of the present. Stone walls blurred and faded into white forests of the north with a corrupted wound standing at their heart. A dark giant. Black Ice Mountain. Adria sat on a windowsill on the top floor of the mountain's dreadful castle, Black Ice Bastion, gazing into the calm night landscape, black smoke and flames that puffed out of the sides of the mountain blocking her view occasionally. Every dozen seconds or so, she glanced at the torches wandering around the castle's ice sculpture garden.

Her handcrafted watch's arrows ticked ever closer to the marked time. Still, she couldn't get her eyes off the window: they wouldn't see this nature's portrait ever again and deserved one long last look.

With minutes left, Adria hopped off the windowsill and checked a prepared backpack. All there. She tucked in a special note with certain words of passage and moved on to changing, discarding her golden dress and high heels for a pair of leather hunting boots, thick pants and a fur coat with bannerless sleeves. Most importantly, to hide her signature scarlet hair, she tied a flannel cloth around her head.

The arrows of Adria's watch still hadn't passed the mark. Until they did, Adria paced, clinging to the life of luxury for at least a few moments longer. She put her hands against the red bricks of her living room's fireplace to feel the warmth. She rubbed the purple carpets to feel their soft tickles. Then, she filled a silver goblet with wine and drank it whilst making sure to savor every sip and flavor. Lastly, she appreciated the paintings of famous battles, which hung in every room, before the view from the windows caught her attention.

Pure darkness engulfed the gardens that surrounded the castle.

The nightguard shifts changed.

It would take the patrols five minutes to stroll back to the barracks and wake their fellows up. Another minute or two before the other shift would arrive.

Adria took a deep breath and opened the window. A cold breeze blew across her face. Her heart raced. She grabbed one last silver goblet, flooded it with wine, downed the drink and began to scale the wall.

Longing of the past, when no one knew her face or her hair, when she could walk the streets of the city in Black Ice Mountain freely, stabbed at her heart.

Look at all this bullshit I have to go through nowadays just to escape from my home, she thought.

Adria dropped on the snowy ground of the ice gardens. In the darkness, she navigated the mazes of ice hedges and the statues by memory and touch. And she stayed wary not to mistake a guard for a sculpture. After passing countless monuments, her fingers felt stone fur. A hound.

Back when I was little and he was just beginning to this build the Bastion, I saw hordes of slaves climb this stairway up the side of the mountain. The castle appeared. Statues too. But the stairway was forgotten... And remained untouched, pushing the sculpture, Adria remembered her mother's words on the day they first ascended to Black Ice Bastion from the city.

The hound moved a meter. Its eyes started glimmering.

What?! Adria thought, letting go and stepping away. It’s alive?!

Shouts and footfalls echoed from behind her. The eyes didn’t glow. They reflected torchlight.

“In the name of the north, stop!” A guard roared. Waving a torch, he approached swiftly. “Identify yourself, thief, vagabond, whoever you are!”

Adria stared at the approaching man, frozen in fear.

The thought that her plan had failed shot into her head like an archer's arrow. As the details of the approaching guard became clear, she snapped out of it, fell to her feet and crawled under the hound statue. The underside of the ice creature caught the cloth around her head and tore it off, revealing her scarlet hair. The wind scattered it for all the guards of the new shift to see.

“Miss Adria! Where are you going?!” one of the guards shouted. “That stairway is certain death!”

But Adria didn’t listen, didn’t look back: she ran down the sides of Black Ice Mountain, stairs crumbling beneath her feet. By the time Adria reached the ground, she was exhausted and ravaged by the cold, and lost in the darkness. How would she make it out of the north if going down one mountain took such a toll?

Whatever it takes... I'll find a way... Just to not be here.

She stopped to collect herself and breathe, and started into the wasteland of rotten corpses and rusted helmets of failed attackers and naïve heroes, which encircled Black Ice Mountain. Frozen, terrified faces and endless gazes of skulls chilled Adria to the bone, pushing her forward to not become one of the thousands. Behind, gates to the mountain opened, and lights swarmed out along with shouts.

Will they ever stop chasing? Will I ever be safe? she thought and the field of death swallowed her.

“Hey… Uh… You alright?” U’lis uttered quietly.

Adria snapped back to reality: she stood in the middle of the dark corridors of Saint Goblin Inn’s second floor.

“Yeah, I’m fine,” she said. “You should start asking questions if I'm running around with a smile after cleaning up the whole inn then carrying a dozen witless to their beds.”

U’lis eyes narrowed.

“No, you don’t look fine,” she whispered. The flashy and flamboyant master chef was a completely different goblin out of the kitchen. She waved her long fingers about. She took a fork on a rope and dangled it above Adria. The fork spun left. U’lis shook her head. “The magic in your blood is off. Everything about you is off. You're no better than spoiled dough. Come in.”

U’lis pointed at the open doors of her chamber, through which, light slithered into the dark corridor.

“I think I’m going back to--”

A muffin with blueberries and icing appeared in U’lis’ hand. Adria rolled her eyes and followed the master chef back to her room. The place provided even more proof that she became a different goblin in the kitchen; there, she was not only flashy, but also as orderly as a lord, yet this place was in a state of war. Books, papers and scrolls overcrowded the shelves along the four walls. Countless had fallen to the floors, along with kitchen tools and clothes.

One wrong step and I could die here, Adria thought.

On U’lis’ bedside table, a scroll was opened along with a grimoire -- the book’s pages were black, and its words were white.

If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

“What are you up to tonight?” Adria asked in between bites of the muffin.

“Comparing the teachings of the Eighth God with the spells of BSG.”

“BSG?”

“Basic Sorcery Grimoire,” U’lis said. “You can find the flour, sugar, eggs and milk of sorcery in there. Then you put the Eighth God's teachings up to the BSG and see if any ingredients match. If they do, then you look deeper, see if the ingredients are for a muffin, pancakes or... Huh?”

“You're one hell of a goblin.” Adria grinned, then lied to make her role as a goblin more believable. “How can you survive so much sorcery? I almost passed out saying that spell to the hounds.”

Sorcery had no major side effects on humans.

“I've trained a thousand witless to make my kitchen run smoothly so training the sorcery in my blood—that I could survive killer spells—was no problem. They're the same thing. For example... How do you get a witless to bake a cake?”

Adria shrugged.

“First, in as much detail as you can, you teach every step then bring the whole thing together. Same with magic. Lift up a pint of mead without touching it before you try to cause an earthquake.”

Adria listened to U'lis like a traveler witnessing the way of life of folk from faraway lands. The master chef proved even further that the teachings of the Auditorium of Sorcery were demented.

“How do you find the spells? How do you practice... lethal spells?” Adria asked.

“Abandoned churches are goldmines for ancient texts! And if there isn’t something I need here, master chefs get paid enough to buy it.” U'lis dragged ladders up to a tall bookshelf and clambered atop the ladder, then began to search for something. “Lethal spells... Those I either use on myself or on the still living steaks La'Var needs executed.”

U’lis snatched the book she’d looked for, dropped it to the floor and jumped out. Adria dodged out of the book’s way. It slammed on the floor. A purple cloud exploded out of it along with a strange whisper and the book bounced up, into U’lis’ grip right as she landed.

After flipping through half a dozen chapters, U’lis quickly read a page and turned to Adria.

“Okay, now wave your hands like this and say after me, ‘Oh ancestors, who fought for the blood flowing in my veins, give me your strength!’”

Adria followed the instructions. Exhaustion, the pains in her body and the sluggishness in her head all vanished. In fact, her muscles felt a tad stronger as well. It’s like when Saint Goblin touched me.

U’lis grinned.

“Remember this. It’s a useful little spell. Will definitely help out if any more hounds run wild in the inn.”

Adria nodded then her brow curled. A page in the book U’lis had opened caught her attention. The page contained a ritual, which showed you the type of magic you were born for. U’lis followed Adria’s eyes and read the spell.

“You want to know?” U’lis asked. “It’s a fun one: first you--”

“No, I’m good. I think I’ll go to bed now,” Adria headed for the exit.

“Come on, it won’t take a minute!”

Adria shook her head: U’lis jumped up and grabbed her hand, and dragged her back.

“I already know,” Adria snapped. “It’s black ice.”

The master chef let go and went silent for a moment.

“You said the north, but never said there… Anyway, really? I don’t feel the ice within you.”

“I’ve been here for only a week: I’ve got a lot of stories from my days in that place. I know I’m ice and one day I’ll tell you how,” Adria said. “But not now.”

“Sure.” U’lis smiled. “At least you look better than a northerner.”

“Thanks.”

In the pitch-black corridor, Adria passed another open door. The light from the room beyond it lit her way. And in that room, knives sliced and clanked, and there was heavy breathing. Frowning, Adria peeked inside.

Around a table, La’Var and Ba’Gan were playing the knife game. On both sides, there were stacks of coins -- winnings. Both goblins had been cut up and bled, but looked no less determined to win. Whilst Ba’Gan sang a song in the witless tongue, La’Var stabbed in between his fingers.

As the song finished, La’Var exploded with laughter and snatched Ba’Gan’s coins.

Then he saw Adria.

“Ha’Dria!” La’Var jumped to his feet, spraying blood on the floor. “Thank you, thank you for dealing with that other hound. I see, clearly, you have a bit of beast whisperer blood within you!”

Beast whisperer and a lot of other blood in me, Adria thought and nodded.

La’Var took a knife from his belt. It had a rope handle and a blade of bone. He handed it over to her.

“This is the trophy from my first ever night in a forest,” La’Var said. “Sometimes, nasty things take place here, in the inn. So take it -- you’re gonna need to defend yourself eventually. Of course, it’s not free. I’ll need something in exchange from you for that.”

Adria hesitated before taking the knife, raising her eyebrow.

“When I will be on the Elder Hunt, you will have to be by my side!” La’Var laughed.

“Sure.” Adria took the knife.

Different folk believed different things would bring upon the Fourth Age. As was the case for hunters, they believed an Elder of the Forests would arise and it would be the duty of every hunter in the world to join in on the greatest hunt there would ever be.

“Beast whisperer blood? Hah, more like fool blood,” Ba’Gan snickered. “She put her life in danger for free. For not a single coin--”

“Shut your noggin before I do,” La’Var snapped. “Coin isn’t all there is in the world.”

“It is when you have none. If I had arrived penniless from a faraway land, I wouldn't be a fool like her. No way would I waste perfectly good opportunities to get the riches my beautiful face deserves—“

“I'm gifting you one last chance to deal with me before you have a conversation with my fist. I accept apologies. Fist doesn't.”

“Then I’d be a fool too because I’d be apologizing for the truth!”

Sighing, Adria disappeared from the room, leaving the two to argue among themselves. Entering her cramped chamber of stone walls, she made sure to shut the door, then lit candles and finally took off the Mask of Roguish Disguise.

Feelings of falling, rising and being tossed around flooded Adria. The magic within her shifted and her goblin facade vanished.

On the room’s shelves, a sea of plants sparkled green -- she went around, watering them, petting them, trimming the leaves. Even though she spent all day taking care of things in the inn, catering to these quiet, sun-eating friends put a smile on her face.

“Guys, you know I’m… A little scared,” Adria spoke to them while getting out of her clothes. They were of human size but shifted along with the appearance of her body when she put on the Mask of Roguish Disguise. “A very close call happened today and I really don’t want anything like that happening again. I don’t want to see Black Ice men in the inn. I don’t want to see anyone from the north or even think about it.”

The plants listened to her woes and contemplated in deep silence.

Adria untied her scarlet hair and got into a striped shirt.

“I hope I won’t have to run even farther into the south -- this is the first place in the world I really like,” she continued. “Yeah, I have to pretend to be an entirely different creature or Saint Goblin will banish me, but that’s alright as long as this place can be my home.”

As the words left her tongue, Adria remembered about 'A Guide to Goblin Behavior'. She found the backpack she’d traveled with from the north and rummaged inside. Past the flask, the food chest and other various journey supplies, she found a bundle of papers: myths of Saint Goblin’s Inn, the password to enter Saint Goblin’s Inn and, most importantly, 'A Guide to Goblin Behavior'.

Placing a candle by the bed, she fell into the cold sheets and began flipping through the pages. Quickly, they engrossed her. For an hour, Adria couldn't let go of it.

Then her eyelids grew heavy. The book’s words lost all meaning. She rubbed her eyes and dropped the book by her side, and… her jaw dropped, a wave of cold fear gripping her heart.

“I am here by the orders of our great and mighty hunter Ba'Gan to say I am deeply sorry... Huh?” Ba’Gan stood in the doorway, as shocked to see Adria as she was to see him. “You’re human.”

Ba’Gan stuttered. His eyes flashed. A menacing grin took his green, wrinkly face.

“Saint Goblin! Saint Goblin!” shouting, he ran off.

***

That night, U’lis fingers bent and shifted. Saint Goblin’s crosses danced around her neck whilst she said her evening prayer to the Twenty Gods of the First Age. A powerful curse was cast in Sparkling Valley, one that moved items imbued with magic all over the land. An immense evil had arrived in Gothsin.