Red didn’t know how long she wailed. She stumbled about in the lightless murk, screaming at her captor to let her out. She hammered on the walls, on the floor, flung out random spells that came bubbling out of her throat. And yet, she was still stuck in the darkness.

That Crone couldn’t do this. Red needed to get out. Red needed to be free.

The gloom pressed in on Red. There was no light at all inside the stone room, no windows to let any glimmer or noise of the outside world enter into her prison. She was caught. Trapped.

Lost.

It was impossible to tell how long her panic lasted. When did her body finally give out? When did the exhausted stupor claim her mind, leaving her flat on the floor? The stone felt cold as a corpse.

Slowly, very slowly, her thoughts returned to some semblance of order. Red could think again. Strange how much fear and panic could overtake one’s mind to the exclusion of all else.

First thing first, she had to get out of here. But how? She couldn’t even see.

That said, her eyes were adjusting. Slowly but surely, the gloom grew more and more defined. Perhaps it helped that goblins had naturally large eyes compared to the rest of their heads. She had read that larger eyes could see better in the dark.

Nevertheless, the definition was still minimal. And Red was tired. She couldn’t very well walk to wherever she wanted. So, she crawled.

It took some more undeterminable amount of time to reach the door. Before Red got to it, she did her best to determine the layout of her prison. There really were no windows, no loose flagstones, no other opening that she could make out. Just the one door she had been thrown through and locked behind.

Which meant, the only way out of the predicament for Red was through the door in front of her.

But how?

Now that she was once again in possession of her full faculties, she was not about to go hammering on the door again. Stupid. Stupid. She really shouldn’t have called so much attention to herself.

For all she knew, that weird Crone was doing something outside to make sure Red was really locked in.

She forced herself not to despair. No. First, she was going to try to get out. She was not about to give up without at least attempting everything she was capable of.

That brought her back to the main issue. How was she going to get out of here? The lock clearly needed a key. None of her spells could get past that lock either. Could she perhaps angle her stairway summon such that it knocked down the door? It wasn’t impossible, but the improbability of success made her think of other things first.

What else… what else…

Red paced, trying to think. Wind? Not helpful. Neither was yarn or lawn. Could she fashion a key somehow? Using the threads from the yarn and the grass from the lawn? No, that couldn’t be right.

She could try the same with dough. It was at least solider and could—

Red stopped pacing. Dough. That was it.

She wasn’t going to summon dough. Not exactly. But dough’s precursor might just be enough to free her.

With excitement and anxiety building in equal measures, Red sneaked up to the door again. She leaned in close to the lock. With no small an amount of care, she poked the tip of her wand into the keyhole. Just a tiny bit. Just enough so that when she summoned flour, most of the white dust ended up sprinkled within the lock.

“I call upon the olde sustenance that mine forefathers and foremothers created.” Her voice was quavering, but the words were clear enough. “Flour!”

More of the white dust flew everywhere. Red wasn’t taking any chances. She summoned more and more, making a small cloud float in front of the door.

A lot had gotten on her too, caking her hood and any exposed skin. It would be dangerous. But Red was already in big trouble. If a little pain was what was needed, then she wasn’t afraid of suffering.

So long as she got out in the end.

Taking a deep breath, she prepared the next spell.

“I call upon the olde flame that mine forefathers and foremothers tamed.” Her voice was quavering, but the words were clear enough. “Spark!”

Light flickered at the tip of her wand. A tiny flame materialized, the heat licking her hand. Then the spark flew.

And ignited.

The sound wasn’t anything Red was prepared. She had tensed for an explosive bang or boom, but what came was a mixture of a concussive slap and a whoosh.

More importantly, she was thrown off her feet and sent flying backwards by the pressure. She coughed, her entire front singed and smoking, her hood smouldering at the corners. But she was alive. She was conscious. Good enough.

Once she got over the initial shock, she stared ahead. Then choked out a laugh. It had worked.

The door was gone.

Her combination of spells had worked. Another thing Red had read somewhere—flour was very, very flammable. Turn it into a cloud of tiny grains and it could become an explosive.

Exactly what Red had used to free herself.

Free.

Groaning, she got to her feet as fast as she could. Movement made her wince. That explosion had definitely opened some wounds. But nothing was debilitating.

Red wouldn’t have much time. The detonation had been loud. She’d be suffering unwanted attention soon enough. Red needed to make her getaway before the Crone materialized again.

She threw herself to the blown-apart doorway before jerking to a halt.

Crones. Lots of them. A huge horde blocked her forward path, ringing around the entire area and blocking off every direction Red might have thought of taking. Why were there so many?

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

No sign of that weird Crone who had apprehended her, though. Good. These regular ones she could deal with.

Red swallowed. So many. Maybe she couldn’t deal with them.

Maybe she would need to run.

For a second, it appeared there was nowhere to go. But that wasn’t really true. Red turned back around. There was one direction she could take.

Behind her, the Crones were getting closer and closer. She could have tried distracting them by using their various implements against them, but they were far too numerous. Red would have been overwhelmed. Already, her senses were overreacting. Her nose was stuffed with their combined stench.

“I call upon the olde heights that mine forefathers and foremothers climbed,” she said. “Stairway!”

The rickety staircase materialized right in front of the door, right in front of Red’s feet. Better yet, the top of the stairway reached all the way to the roof.

Wasting no time, Red rushed upwards.

She went so fast, she almost tripped. Plummeting back down would have been a fatal mistake. It was a good thing she caught herself and continued upwards, before throwing herself onto the roof and falling flat on its surface.

Red breathed hard. The stairway was still standing. One by one, the Crones reached it and started to climb it up.

They kept falling back down. All the hags were weak when it came to climbing steep flights of stairs. But they were making progress overall. For every Crone that tumbled back to the ground, the one behind it reached a higher step. Soon enough, they would reach the roof.

Which meant Red couldn’t rest.

Red got to her feet. She was so high up now, she could practically survey the entire area around her location. If only there was time to actually check her surround—

Wait. Were those Great Trees?

Over to her left, on the side of the stone house Red hadn’t seen yet, was a small garden. Great Trees grew there. These were small, young, but clearly recognizable with their shimmering silvery-brown trunks and their thin, red leaves. What in the world was a patch of them doing here of all places?

The gibberish of the first Crone reaching the rooftop hauled Red’s attention back to her immediate area. No time to waste. She ran.

With her heart attempting to escape her ribcage, Red hurtled towards the spire spewing smoke. The sloped roof was tiled with stones too. It was one she didn’t recognize. But the little tiles stuck out over each other, and Red tripped more than once.

When she finally got to the spire, she fell again, colliding with the spire’s hard bricks. She was stunned for a second. When she recovered, she looked around.

Only to see the first gnarled, twisted hand reaching over the top of the staircase.

Red started hyperventilating. Her fingers twitched. No. No. She had to control herself, control her body’s reactions. The Crones were slow. There was still time.

“I-I call up-upon the olde heights that mine fore…” She took in a shaky, steadying breath. “I call upon the olde heights that mine forefathers and foremothers climbed. Stairway!”

The new rickety staircase appeared in front of her again. This time, it leaned against the spire coming out of the roof, its top nearly reaching the opening at the very peak of the spire.

Red began climbing.

Halfway up, she looked back. Big mistake. The Crones were almost on the roof. Her heart started thudding again, sweat flooding her palms and making her grip slippery. Keep moving. A few breaths later, she was at the top.

She coughed in the smoke. Was she mistaken, or was there less of it now? It was hard to tell. But if it was true, then all the better for Red.

Because there was only one direction for her to go again.

Although, before she climbed down the hole in the spire, she brought her wand up high. “I call upon the olde sustenance that mine forefathers and foremothers created. Flour!”

It didn’t work as well this time. There was already heat wafting around the peak of the spire, already a few stray sparks taken up by the smoke.

More importantly, Red’s target was the bottom of the spire. It was hard to get all the flour down there. Many of the grains sparked and burst on their way down, but there was no gigantic explosion at the base as there had been before the door. Drats.

Red pulled off her hood and made sure it wasn’t smouldering any longer. Then she began collecting as much flour in it as she could.

All the while, she kept an eye out on the Crones. More of them were pulling themselves onto the roof. Several had reached the peak of the staircase, but then had fallen back down again when they had attempted to cross over to the roof.

But a few had managed to get on. A few whose numbers were being strengthened over time. A few who were coming straight for Red.

Breath catching in her throat, Red decided she’d stored enough flour in her hood. She climbed up to the edge of the spire’s peak. Here went nothing. Closing the hood securely before tying it around her neck, taking a deep breath against the smoke, and squinting her eyes against it too, Red began climbing down.

It wasn’t easy. She wasn’t a mountain goat that could scamper up or down any surface, no matter how sheer.

Thankfully, Red was an adept when it came to climbing trees. This was little different. The only thing she had to be wary of was letting the smoke get into her eyes or her nose. She could barely see, could certainly not breathe.

Could only feel the ever-rising urgency to get to the bottom.

Except, the bottom was aflame. Not surprising. Where there was smoke, there was fire. But Red had counted on it, had prepared for it, had hoped that it indicated the Crone who had trapped her here was nearby. For now it was time to use all the flour she had stored.

Red knew this was going to be excruciating, but she had come this far, hadn’t she? She was not about to back down now.

Maintaining her spot on the spire’s wall, she untied the hood with one hand. Then she flung it down, letting it fall open at the same time. All its contents spilled out in a dangerous cloud.

And exploded.

Another combination of a pressurized slap and a whoosh. But Red could barely notice the sound. The explosion had burst outwards into the room the spire was connected to, as Red had planned. But a chunk of it shot upwards too. If Red had been singed before, she was now properly burned. She lost her grip with a scream and fell.

Thankfully, she had lowered herself far enough down the spire that her sudden decent wasn’t too dangerous. In fact, the burn itself was worse than the fall.

Groaning once more, Red was getting back to her feet. She wasn’t the only one making noise, however. Red had reached her captor.

“I can’t believe you did it.” The Crone laughed shrilly, though there was something strange with its voice. Like it was taking on multiple cadences at once. “I can’t believe you not only broke free, you dared to come here too.”

Pain walloped Red at several spots, but once more, it wasn’t debilitating. The burns might have been bad, but they could be healed later. She had to focus.

Red coughed, put out some the fires trying to climb up her clothes. It didn’t really help. Her last flour-induced explosion had set much of the room ablaze. Much of it was obscured by the smoke filling the room. Heat bathed her, pressing down on her with the same oppression the darkness had in her prison.

But unlike in the prison., Red was a master of herself. She wasn’t going to panic.

Red wasn’t afraid.

“I’m here—” Red coughed. “I’m here to stop you, hag.”

The Crone laughed. “You may as well wish to stop the sun from rising or the rain from falling. Don’t be silly, dear.”

“Don’t call me dear. Just because you can talk doesn’t give you or your kind the right to mock me.”

“Then what shall I call you, little goblin?”

What was Red doing? Why was she talking with this hag? It wasn’t like she was going to get any actual answers here.

Red glanced around the area, noting the cauldron that had spilled its gloopy contents onto the floor, the various furniture she had set ablaze, the sheer mess she had caused.

Just as those awful Crones had done to her great ma’s home.

It should have made her smile in satisfaction. It should have let her feel satisfied. Why wasn’t she feeling accomplished now that she had met her objective? All Red’s soul held within it was a hollowness. Almost… almost like relief.

But that wasn’t what she was here, at this exact location, for. She still had a job to do.

“If you must call me anything,” Red said. “Then call me your destroyer. Because I’m here to stop you and your kind, once and for all.”

Another shrill laugh. “Truly, I haven’t seen such brazenness from the goblins in ages. Oh, how different our world would be were the rest of our kind so… rebellious.”

Red froze. Our kind?

Once again came the nearly irrepressible urge to ask what in the world this Crone meant. But she knew for certain she wasn’t going to glean anything. Not from this hostile hag. Great ma. She had to remind herself about Great ma. That was where she would find answers, surely.

Red pointed her wand at the figure in the smoke. “Listen well to my warning, Crone. If ever—”

Her voice faltered as the Crone who had captured her stepped forward.

Our kind.

It wasn’t a Crone standing before her, wreathed in smoke and burning at far too many spots thanks to the explosion she had caused. For a horrific moment, Red thought that she had set her own Great ma aflame. But the figure before her wasn’t even a goblin in truth.

Her captor, it turned out, was some sort of impossible amalgamation of the two.