Spoon helps squeeze us past the iron gate as the humans gallop off to fight the undead. We slinked into the shadows, past the weird torch lights that hung high above the ground on little black poles, and down the hilly streets. The terrible gates and the humans that man them are far behind us, and now there is only the city itself.

This village made of stone.

The houses tower over us, but some are bigger than normal human houses. Some feel like giant barns but don’t hold animals. No just more humans, loud and excited humans, while others are dead like tombs. We stay close to the shadow cast by these buildings. Their large size and bulk provide us somewhere to shuffle as we follow the rats that also make this place home as they stick to the walls and away from the weird fire globes that light the streets and the inside of windows.

In this place that feels cold and alien, the humans walk by us or around us but never at us. Never threatening, always wandering and swaying in this direction or that, sometimes peacefully, other times bickering and arguing with each other. I suspect that we could walk the streets and no one would pay us any mind, but… something feels wrong in that statement. It only takes a stray glance, one glimpse of green instead of pink or brown skin, and we would be chased down these roads with nowhere to go, nowhere to hide. The shadows are safer, and neither Dagger nor Spoon protests. In fact, they haven’t said anything since we left the gate behind us…

We are in awe.

It isn’t the grandeur of the city. It was dirty and full of smells, both unsavory and unmistakably dung-like. Or the architecture, which has the elegance of a Goblin tent made of one material instead of stuff we “repurposed”...

No, we are overwhelmed by history being made by three Goblins, outcasts from our tribe on Gabo Mountain. Maybe that’s too much to think about, and maybe trying to truly appreciate this fact makes my head hurt, but it feels strangely exciting. Like, I want to sneak the entire raiding party here! Finally, a place where they’ll never see us coming! Finally, a land where the dogs and other dangerous animals bark and hiss at us before the humans even realize we’re there.

If Elder Bones could see this! This dirty, human-filled place!

And it is with that thought that I realize that we can’t just wander down these streets and alleys forever. I pull my party aside, away from the street and deeper into the shadows, where the space between two buildings forms an alleyway narrow yet wide, as we cower behind some bins no doubt used for trash.

Stolen story; please report.

“Goblin Supremacy!” I whisper in excitement!

“Goblin SUPRE—” Dagger shouts in his own excitement before I yank him hard next to me!

“Idiot!” I grunt, followed by ten minutes of berating Dagger while Spoon muffles a fit of giggling.

To be honest, he isn’t listening, but it feels good, so I catch my breath and go into my plan, “We need to steal something!”

They both nod.

“But what to steal?”

They both shrugged in unison. Ok, I don’t have a plan. This place is too big, too strange, too… smelly? Dagger sniffs the air, and his nose points him toward the trash bin. It is taller than a goblin, so when he wanders over, he climbs. I follow while Spoon shakes her head, her face gagging in disgust.

The bin stinks. That is definitely a thing, but the smell is… food-like? But wrong food, as if wedged inside the folds of a Goblins loincloth for days because the Goblin that stole the food forgot he had it. This is the exact opposite of how food smells in human villages, where the scent wafts over the fresh and warm hills. This city and its bins have more in common with the refuse of Mount Gabo, where large enough bread crumbs grow moldy after being hoarded.

And Dagger and I are climbing into it, complete with a soft “gunk” when we land inside. The smell somehow gets stronger, yet bearable, and it doesn’t take Dagger long to find what he is looking for in the dark brown mess.

Leave it to a raider to find food in the least likely places.

“Ta-da!” goes Dagger as he shows me a loaf of bread, not moldy and only slightly as smelly as the trash around us. I take another sniff just to be sure, but the loaf remains what it looks like, golden brown and probably edible.

I reach out to grab a piece, and to my surprise, it’s harder than it looks on the outside. But still, it breaks off. For a moment, it’s me, a piece of bread, and the smells of the dumpster, before I shake my head of any real doubts and take a bite.

I’ve eaten worse.

The crunch of the bread matches the smell of the bin and the refuse around us, and for a second, I fear that I’ve accidentally eaten something better off on the ground than in my mouth! But then the unmistakable staleness kicks in of day-or-two-old bread, and my fears melt away. Dagger takes a bite off the stale loaf, and now we’re munching on the discarded bread without a care in the world.

Until Spoon marches past me and grabs the loaf from Dagger. This starts a fight between Dagger and Spoon, then a fight between me, Dagger, and Spoon as I try to break them up before Spoon starts throwing fireballs inside the trash can!

We fight until we stumble and fall from the bin in a heap, first me landing on the ground, followed by Dagger, then Spoon, who lands on us both with the stale bread held triumphantly over her head.

“Share!” she announces before taking a bite.

“Oh, this is good!” she says between crunches. “Where can we get more?”

Dagger groans as the majority of Spoon’s weight is on his spleen, but Spoon’s question becomes an idea. Where did the food come from? I look past Spoon’s leg and see the building next to the trash bin. Large and unassuming, but also barn-like. Humans store food in big places. And humans tend to be lazy despite having long legs, so—

“From there.” I grunt. And a plan is born.