What the goblins had accomplished in the confines of the dungeon was remarkable. The party —led at sword-point — passed rooms the goblins had fashioned to fill the countless roles an insulated community needed to thrive. There were tailors, a smokehouse, a makeshift distillery, and residential rooms packed to the gills. Easily hundreds of goblins evidently lived down there and had formed their own society.

Utterances of confusion were shared around the team. Deacon gave context, explaining, “goblins are likely the most adaptable hominids in the world. They typically grow to adulthood in only two years, despite an average lifespan of a hundred and fifty or so. They reproduce easily, gestate quickly, and almost always are born with new mutations based on environmental pressures. So if you drop a couple dozen goblins in a snowy mountain, in a decade you’ll have a new branch of snow goblins. In this case, we’ve got dungeon goblins. Hopefully, the first generation is around and can give us the info we need.”

They came upon a door, where the lead goblin stopped and turned to the group. “You stay here. I will inform the elders that you seek an audience.”

“That you,” Deacon said. “I never caught your name, I’m Deacon.”

The goblin was briefly perplexed. “That is an ugly name. I am called Tin.”

Deacon gave a smile. He chose to take it as a compliment. After an uneasy wait, with countless eyes on the party, Tin opened the door and ushered them in. Three goblin women and one goblin man sat cross-legged on the concrete floor of the candle-lit room. They wore aged clothes from the outside world, with a slightly dated fashion sense but otherwise in good taste. Two of them even wore glasses. They all had darker green skin, with a bluer hue than the newer generations, and their brown hair was speckled with gray. As Deacon was about to address them, he felt a hand patting his leg to get his attention. He looked down to see Tin, offering a bucket of water, along with a bar of soap and a washcloth. The gray scriptyr was briefly puzzled until he caught sight of the arrow still embedded in his leg. He accepted the hospitality, cleaning his wound as he spoke to his hosts.

“Thanks for the shiny reception. I’m Deacon, and these are my companions. Without any means to communicate, they thought attacking was their only option. I’m embarrassed and deeply sorry for how we conducted ourselves.”

Bones whispered, “I feel so out of the loop.”

Sonnet whispered back, “hush, I’m missing the show.” She stared hungrily at Deacon, cleaning blood from his leg in only his underwear.

One of the women, wearing a red blouse and glasses, took the role of first ambassador. “Such is the way of strangers in the dark. Our defenders used the same approach. In the forty years, we’ve been down here, many small militias such as yours have come here, and you’re the first to bother talking to us. Which has me… curious. You’re a curious man. So, enlighten me — why have you come further into the dark to speak with us?”

“Curiosity, I suppose,” Deacon answered, all too proud of himself. “I can’t help but seek patterns everywhere I look. When I see a dog flinch at a raised hand, I’m compelled to follow it home and meet the owner in dire need of being taught their own flinch response. My fuzzy-faced human friend behind me was told he should come here, and that a rewarding adventure awaited him here. You’ve spent forty years down here, hidden in the shadows while generations of your children are slaughtered by those looking to sharpen their combat skills. To me, that doesn’t seem like a situation you would put yourself in voluntarily. I’ve got to know — is there someone out there who needs to be taught to flinch?”

The four goblin elders smiled widely, sharing a look. This time the man spoke, giddiness in his demeanor. “Jacob Preenely. He was the lord of our tenement building in the city of Montar. He drafted contracts of ownership over us without our permission, and when the chance came to cash in on increasing property values, he sold us to be used as dungeon fodder, for a small stipend from the king. It’s supposed to ‘foster a competent reserve army’ or some such bullshit. There were sixty of us crammed into that slum, and the ages of have whittled us down to four still living in the memory of hatred for that pig.”

“You can rest assured, your story won’t be forgotten, and he will pay. I give you my word.”

“While you’re here,” the first woman said. “This dungeon can still be rewarding. Each floor beneath us is home to increasingly challenging and aggressive creatures, and treasures for the taking. Hunting the beasts on the next level below has been our source of food, but they have grown too numerous without natural predators, and with each year, hunting gets more dangerous. We’re left picking off the ones bold enough to venture up here alone. If you could cull their numbers, and the numbers of some of the monsters even further down, you’d replenish our food supply and perhaps even open up new avenues to explore what the other levels have to offer. Keep any treasure you want, you deserve it.”

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Deacon smiled. “We’d be happy to oblige.” Then, in common, he gave his party the rundown. Before long, he’d changed into a fresh pair of pants from his bag and they were on the move. The goblins were insistent on washing and patching up his pants, but he wouldn’t have it. He left them as a source of fabric, along with a few other garments he wouldn’t miss. They were shown to the barricaded stairway and took the plunge, hungry for some action.

“You’re an oddly generous drunk,” Marla remarked to Deacon as they descended.

“Holy shit, I forgot I was drunk,” Deacon exclaimed. “I just thought I’d become immune to pain somehow. Did I look tough with an arrow sticking out of me? I bet I looked tough.”

“Eh, you kinda just looked foolish. Love the underpants, by the way. Pink suits you,” she said, suppressing a laugh.

“Comfort is primary. If anyone who sees them judges me for them, they shouldn’t be seeing them.”

The party was quickly swarmed on reaching the final steps, but they weren’t caught with their pants down. The first lunge was intercepted by Marla beheading the awful creature. The beasts were an unholy fusion of pigs and rats, clawing and biting everything in sight. They had numbers, carpeting the corridor like a burrow of naked mole rats. The numerical advantage simply didn’t pose a threat to powered adventurers, however. One by one, they were mowed down, by Halwark’s longsword of light, Marla’s cleaver-saw, Bones’ poisoned chain whip, Sonnet’s unnerving black tendrils that she summoned from the shadows to strangle and crush, and Deacon’s molten spray of sparks. They pushed forward, soaking the hall in blood, and over time filling it with the sickly appetizing smell of bacon.

“I can see why they eat these things,” Sonnet mused. “I’m getting hungry.”

“You meat-people are disgusting,” Bones scoffed.

Deacon found himself in a position mages are advised against. The hall was a choke point, with monsters pouring in from one side. Deacon’s lava shower wasn’t something he could use to snipe at targets from safely behind his allies, it was a hazardous area of effect directed plainly at whatever had the misfortune of standing in front of him. So, unbecoming of a comparatively vulnerable spellcaster, he was forced to stand up front, periodically ducking back to catch his breath and recover mana. On one of the occasions where he did so, he briefly felt shoes on his shoulders, as Marla nimbly scaled his body and launched herself into the clamoring tide of vicious rat-pigs. A bloody wake formed around her as though she was a speeding cargo ship. She carved her way down to the end of the hall, then turned back and rejoined the group, one chopping step at a time. The remainders were sparse, enough so Sonnet could constrain all of them in shadowy tentacles. Held down, they were swiftly dealt with by either Halwark impaling them or Bones ripping them open with their whip.

The party stood panting after the ceaseless battle.

“Oh wait, Deacon,” Bones said, feigning regret. “Did you want to talk to them first?”

“Shut up.”

They didn’t waste much time before pressing on, following the end of the hall’s singular right turn. It opened up to a large room, in the middle of which was a series of square descending platforms, resembling a shabby fight pit for an audience to look down on. It was unclear how many platforms it contained, as after two levels, it was filled with dark water accumulated from an incessant rain of leaks pouring from the ceiling. The filthy pond could barely be seen through the mountains of rat pigs writhing throughout the huge room. On the opposite side was an intersection of a hall and what appeared to be the opening to the next staircase.

“I recommend we cut a path through to the end and move on. We need to leave something for the goblins to hunt,” Halwark announced in a hush.

“Good call,” Deacon concurred. “It looks daunting though. It feels like we’re jumping into a meat grinder.”

Halwark stepped in, followed by Bones, then Marla. Deacon paused at the entry, and Sonnet stepped behind him, gesturing for him to go. She said, “it’s important to do things that scare you.”

Deacon looked back, and before entering, replied, “you scare me.”

Sonnet smirked. “Good.”

The snarling, wolf-sized beasts came from all directions. They briefly hissed as Halwark ignited a flare of sunlight, and critically, Deacon winced too. The mistake was punished with a deep gash clawed into his hip. He fired back with his flamethrower and forced himself to keep his eyes open. His senses were battered. The small white ball floating in the air, in an imitation of sunlight was much too bright for this enclosed space, so every sharp line of the grotesque orgy of vile monsters was highlighted. As well, he was acutely attuned to the pungent stink that can only come from pig rats, cooped up with no ventilation and covered with their own rotting waste, and both fresh and old metallic blood, all crammed into a space filled with rancid still water. The blood-curdling noise of the demonic chorus of frenzied squealing mixed with the echoes of water dripping on concrete to scrape around the inside of Deacon’s skull. His nervous system was overloaded, only allowing his sight to filter in as still images one at a time. He saw his hand lash out at oncoming beasts, and in the next image, flames burst forth. He felt heat, but then cold. Not cold, he realized, wet. He was bleeding, from somewhere, so much so that his clothes were soaked through. The next image brought the sensation of steering pain. He was bleeding from everywhere, and his sight was nothing but the viscous creatures, as dozens had him pinned down. Could his journey really be cut short? His mana reserves were drained, and his strength was sapped. He had no fight in him. All hope was lost.