9:12 PM, 9th of December

<1 hour and 30 minutes since unscheduled departure>

As soon as Wolf’s eyes readjusted to the dark interiors, she saw that the second carriage looked the part of a standard passenger train, with neat rows of cushioned seats facing each other across polished wooden tables. Presently, the seats were vacant while the tables bore signs of recent use. Interrupted card games, half-eaten sandwiches, and still-smoking ashtrays: standard fare for a barracks full of bored soldiers.

Wolf and Linlin passed through this carriage without event, with the Assassin appreciating anew the rationale behind the Pugilist’s insistence that they take on the Goblin army head-on and push through. Their loudly pesky antics had drawn the whole lot of hotblooded young men who’d already been itching for action, and now, with an entire platoon out of commission, the defenses through the rest of the Kronvall Express had thinned considerably. All that would be left were miscellaneous staff, regular passengers, the Urlking himself, and… Eddie.

Wolf quelled her darkening (and distracting) thoughts as she and her packmate made their way onto the third carriage. And good thing too, because here, they came face to face with the Goblins’ next line of defense: a pair of soldiers who stood guard over a second set of doors just inside the carriage.

They were an ‘odd’ pair, even as far as pairs of Goblins went. One was young and skinny—likely still wet behind his green ears—with nervous eyes that bulged at the sight of Wolf and Linlin. The other was a squat older thing who barely batted his browless eyes at the intruders.

The young one shouted something, then made to charge at Wolf without waiting for an answer. The Assassin slid her hand to the kni—no, the scimitar—at her belt, ready to answer in kind. Before she could move, however, something darkly metallic came down hard on the young Goblin’s noggin, cutting him off mid-shout. Then his eyes rolled to the back of his head as he dropped to the floor, face-down.

The older Goblin stood over his fallen comrade, with a baton held in outstretched hands. Then, just as understanding dawned on Wolf, the ‘Goblin’ transformed.

“Salt,” Wolf greeted the new figure with a shaky grin. The sheer force of her own relief had taken her by surprise. “Could’ve given us a warning. I’ve been known to take on multiple Goblins at once, you know. Things could’ve gone very badly for you.”

Salt Bolton, now clad in her patchwork [QUILTING] dress, merely snorted in response. No Pepper here to translate, but the gist was more or less clear. Then the Illusionist held up a hand in the universal signal for ‘wait’, before placing her other hand next to her now very human ear.

Wolf recognized the gesture instantly, having had her share of getting used to the metallic presence of [WHISPER BOND] in her own earhole. Beside her, Linlin too had pulled out a circular band with a hook-like extension: the mouthpiece. The Pugilist then spoke into this mouthpiece, not bothering to wear the band around her immaculately clean-shaven head.

“Gabs? We’re here. You let us in?”

This raised more questions in Wolf’s mind, chief among them being ‘what’s behind these doors?’, but she sensed now wasn’t the time to ask them. She watched patiently as her packmates waited to hear back from the Artificer. And even as she did, her eyes lit up with the answer to her own question.

Before she could put that answer into words, the doors behind Salt suddenly slid open to reveal… another Goblin.

Wolf tensed, once more instinctively reaching for her weapon. This time, however, her alarm hadn’t been the result simply of a Goblin’s presence—for even she could put two and two together by now. No, her hair now stood on end and her heart jumped to her throat… because of what this particular Goblin looked like.

It was that Goblin. The one from the painting in Buchanan Hall. The one that had caused Wolf to do a double take, thinking she’d seen someone she knew. But that someone had a stranger’s name: Viktor Gabbro, MA in Boilersmithing.

Except… this wasn’t Viktor Gabbro the dour academician, was it? No, his posture was too relaxed, his manners too friendly, and his expression too jovial.

“Wolf! I knew you’d make it out, you tough old bird! Well, don’t just stand there, come in!”

Wolf continued to gape at ‘Viktor’ for several seconds, as she struggled to calm herself. Viktor’s impostor appeared to take this the wrong way, as ‘he’ looked down at himself before announcing happily, “Oh, I suppose I don’t need this anymore!”

The Goblin from the painting—from Wolf’s own mutated memories—morphed into the widely beaming figure of Pepper Bolton. Wolf finally relaxed, though it took her aging heart a while longer to fully settle down. Then she followed her packmates into the newly opened room, where she found answers and more questions.

As it turned out, this was another ‘themed’ room like the Reception Hall, except clearly designed for a very different function. Fine dining tables made way for homely desks, and instead of a dance floor, there was a large open area strewn with toys and dolls. Even now, a few dozen human children, at a glance aged between five and ten and all dressed in the same cyan-coloured smock, sat under the paltry glow of a lone light fixture, surrounding the kneeling figure of—

“Gabs!”

Wolf made to stride toward her Artificer friend, but shrank back immediately at the sight of children looking up at her in alarm. Only then did she realize that she must cut a rather gruesome figure: an old dishevelled hag sporting a curved sword that still dripped with fresh Goblin blood. Gabs Dominguez, for her part, put down the thick tome she’d been reading to the children from, before skipping over to join Wolf in the shadows.

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And there they were. The Wolfpack of Shved Mountain. Reunited again after the disastrous start to their job… save for one traitor. Wolf von Leid tried her best to put Eddie out of her mind (and ignore the frightened yet curious eyes of the children) as she basked in the glow of friendship and camaraderie. Or, she would’ve, if only Gabs would let her.

“Took you long enough!” the Artificer snapped by way of greeting. “Alright, every second counts, so listen close. We’ve managed to sneak in here on the back of ‘the Conductor’s authority’, but it’s only a matter of time before the Goblins wise up and come sniffing around. We need to uncouple this carriage and get the children to safety, but before we can do that, we have another decision to make. Who’s staying with the children and who’s moving on to take another shot at the Urlking?”

“We need Wolf for Urlking,” Linlin answered right away, “and I will support. Salt, Pepper, Gabs: you all stay here and—”

Salt grunted, more than a little irritated.

“Yer ravin’ mad if you think I’m goin’ to let you two have all the fun whilst I twiddle my thumbs. And if Salt’s going, then naturally, I’m coming with—”

“What? So you’re just going to leave me with the children by myself? Listen, I won’t say I’m not flattered by the trust, but I hardly think one retired Artificer is cut out to—”

“No.”

All eyes turned to Wolf at once. Only then did she realize that she’d spoken at all. Once she did, however, she knew exactly what to say next.

“No. You all stay. I’m going ahead by myself.”

“Assassin…” Linlin’s eyes, normally so politely neutral, flashed with warning. “Even I lose patience with your stupidity. You shut up now and listen to—”

“No, you listen to me! This is the way it has to be, do you understand? Out of everyone here, I have by far the least to lose. In fact, I have nothing to lose... because I already lost everything. Besides, we’re only in this mess because of me. Because of my mistake thirty years ago, and again tonight. I’m not letting any of you stick your neck out to clean up my mess. Especially not when we’re up against the Urlking himself. So, Gabs, if you’ll just give me one of your miniature [HEX BOMBS], I could—”

“Assassin! I warn you, do not make me—”

“What about my father?”

Now Wolf’s eyes joined those of her packmates as they all swivelled toward the interruption.

Until now, Wolf had assumed that all the children present had gathered under the light in the middle of the room. She was wrong. For there was one child who’d remained in the shadows, standing apart from her fellow captives, in more ways than one.

The girl was likely no older than seven or eight, though it was difficult to tell due to her small stature (even for her age)… and also because she wasn’t entirely human. Pallid skin with a slight greenish hue. Protuberant ears that weren’t quite human nor quite Goblinoid. A pair of small, almost dainty tusks that poked out of lips set in a defiant line. And eyes that glowed like a burning furnace, made all the more radiant by the surrounding darkness.

Wolf openly stared, hardly believing her own eyes. Her outsized astonishment couldn’t be fully explained by the fact that this girl was a… a halfling. No, there was something somehow even more disturbing about her. Something about the half-Goblin girl—about the flames that danced within her eyes, half-hidden in shadows—reminded Wolf of herself.

Yet, clearly, the existence of this halfling was no news to her packmates, as none of them reacted with surprise. In fact, Pepper even dashed over to the thing, kneeling beside the girl to put a grandmotherly hand on her bony shoulder.

“Elshka, dear,” the Illusionist cooed, “don’t you worry about your father. We won’t leave him behind. Besides, you know as well as I do that he’s tough enough to look after him—”

Suddenly, a sharp metallic keening. Not too unlike a steam train braking to a stop.

Wolf reflexively flinched, with her darting eyes scanning for the source of the ambush. Then she came to a new realization as she noticed the sudden changes to her surroundings. This wasn’t a Tactician’s spell. No, it was a real sound emitted by a real train. For the Kronvall Express was braking to a stop.

“Oh, sod this!” Gabs yelled in dismay. “It must be the Urlking. The train won’t start or stop without his direct orders. Viktor couldn’t be expected to stall him forever. Girls, quickly now! We must decide on our next course of action before—”

Wolf moved without thinking.

First, she reached for one of the pouches on the Artificer’s leather harness, grabbing a handful of [HEX BOMBS] in the same smooth motion. Next, she activated [SHADOWBREAK], not to attack a foe, but to escape her friends.

She burst out of the children’s room, then through the next door on the other side, where she once again came under assault from the elements. The winds here were even stronger and the snow thicker, for they were high up in the mountains now, with the front of the train just now crossing a sky-high bridge that spanned a vast canyon, with nothing but the open air on either side.

Wolf didn’t hesitate. She pushed the [HEX BOMB] into the coupling mechanism and stood back from the ensuing explosion. The carriage continued to slide forward out of sheer momentum, but now with only the brakes working on its wheels, the distance between it and the rest of the train grew rapidly.

“Sorry, girls!” Wolf yelled over her shoulder, her voice raspy from the effort. Even now, she could see the sprinting figure of Linlin Yuan, her usually polite face now livid with rage. “With any luck, I’ll see you all on the other side!”

Then Wolf [SHADOWBROKE] again, jumping off her stalling carriage and onto the shortened train that still moved at speed. It should’ve been a distance that a Wolf in the night could clear with ease, but she immediately noticed that something was wrong. It felt as though… she’d been saddled with extra weight. Like something—or someone—had hitched a ride on her shadowborne trip.

Wolf nevertheless reached the next carriage, having had to expend some additional effort to make the jump. From her new vantage point, she first checked to see that the children’s carriage—with her packmates on board—faded safely into the distance, precluding any realistic attempt at catching up to the rest of the train before it too ground to a halt. Next, she turned her attention to her most pressing concern. The ‘something wrong’ during her earlier jump. Her little stowaway.

Wolf eyed the halfling, even as the girl clung to one of her legs and looked up with a pair of burning, defiant eyes.

“Now,” she half-said half-sighed, “what’re we going to do with you?”