Chapter 3: New Arrivals

The forest I now walked through was filled with lush green trees and the warm air was tinted with a slightly sweet smell. Trekking through this never-ending forest made me feel almost like I was still only a few states from home. If I walked through this biome for long enough, I could've sworn I'd come out the other side to a never-ending prairie with dry grass and sweltering heat. A prairie that on the other side of it would lead me straight back to my home.

Dallas. Wait, that’s not quite right. I lived around it, in a different town.

An image conjured itself in my mind, one of a small farmhouse surrounded by wheat. It was home. But why can't I remember the details, why is everything so damn foggy?

Suddenly, I heard a squeak behind me, like something bending. “Put your hands up,” the voice was close, feminine, and directed at me.

Crap. I had been too distracted with my own thoughts to realize someone was behind me. I couldn't see her but the noise before she spoke made me imagine a bow, cocked with an arrow and aiming right at my head. Slowly, I did as they asked. Whoever this was, I could tell they weren't playing games.

“May I ask why you are covered in blood?” The voice, though threatening, almost sounded aristocratic.

I almost responded that I got it from killing a man but I knew she wouldn't like that answer. “Would you believe it if I told you it was from a shipwreck?”

“Due to your injuries - or lack thereof - I would say no.”

“How about a weird little human-looking creature with pointy ears?”

“Did you sneak up on it?”

Being truthful was definitely in my best interest. “No, actually it tried to attack me. I took it down.”

“What color was it?”

“I guess tan.”

“You took down a hedren with just a knife?”

“It was all I had on me.”

She paused, considering if I was telling the truth. “Pity you couldn't take me with a knife, give me your gold.”

I felt a twinge of anger hit me. “Now, why the hell would I do that?”

“Because I have a bow aimed at your head.”

“No way.”

“Do you want to die?”

“Try me, lady. I have been in a shipwreck and got attacked twice today. If you shoot me with that damn thing you better hope to hit the right spot.”

“Twice?”

Dammit! I sighed, “I was attacked right after I shipwrecked into the beach. It was some guy wearing the robe I've got on now, he shot lightning out of his hands.”

There was a slight chuckle at what I'd said. “You sure had an interesting day, put your hands down.”

I put them down and squeezed my eyes closed, expecting an arrow to slice into the back of my head. It didn't come.

“Face me.”

I pivoted on my heels and now saw the one who threatened me. As I expected, it was a woman with a now relaxed bow in her hands. She wore green-plated, leather armor. She had thick, brown hair put into a ponytail, green eyes, strangely long ears, and medium-tanned skin I’d describe as perhaps Hispanic. Maybe I'm in Puerto Rico?

“I would not want any of your gold even if you had any,” She said. “Now, how did a low-level Adventurer like you go through a shipwreck and hedren attack as you say and come out the other side with no single scratch to show for it?”

Come on, there's gotta be a good lie. “I...” I couldn’t think of anything convincing and knew the only good answer was the truth. “I healed.”

Her eyebrows scrunched together. “Did you take a potion?”

“No, I just...I healed, okay?”

Her eyes narrowed unbelievingly. “How?”

The anger was back and I couldn't hold it in. “I wish I knew! I don't even know how the hell I got here!”

She stepped back, her hand tightening just slightly on her bowstring. She took a quick breath and took the arrow out of her bow, placing it in a big quiver on her back. “Well, I would assume you got here on your ship that wrecked.”

“Sure, I guess so,” I said, forcing myself to relax again. I couldn’t just go getting flustered about my situation to a woman who had threatened my life, that seemed like a sure-fire way of ending up as nutrients for the trees.

She put her index and thumb into her mouth and let out a whistle that started high before changing to a lower note. “Are you up for a job?”

I was taken aback. First, she's pointing an arrow at me and now she's offering me a job?

Straight to the point, I suppose.

What else do I have to do, wander aimlessly on some island? No, if I want answers that'll be the fastest way to them. “Uh, sure.”

A slight, sly smile stretched onto her face. “Great, pick up your weapon.”

I did so and as I stood back up I heard a twig snap in the distance. My head flicked to where it came from, expecting some grotesque monster to show itself and attack us - hedrens must just be normal animals in the Caribbean, there are lots of animals I don't know about.

Instead, I saw another person whose face and skin color looked eerily similar to the woman with a bow, down to even the strange ears, and had on the same green-plated, leather armor. The only real difference between the two of them was this person held a dagger in his hand, looked a bit more muscular, and was a man.

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"What's wrong, Hazel?” The man asked before his eyes shifted over to me. I felt my body go rigid as his hand tightened around the dagger hilt.

“Nothing, Finn, just found someone who might help us out with our little quest.”

“I see,” His face grew calmer, but his hand didn't leave the dagger.

There was panting behind Finn. “Why do you have to go so fast?” The voice was deep and gruff and belonged to a man who came slowly through the tree line. The man was tall but had quite a stomach, a big bushy beard, and unlike the other two who wore green, leather armored clothing, this man wore what seemed to be steel-plated armor. Though the man was clearly much less fit than these two, I noted he was carrying a massive, double-sided battle ax in one hand and a big leather bag on his back which had a sword strapped to its side.

Any one of these three could kill me in an instant.

“Oh,” the big man said as he put a big hand on Finn's shoulder. “Who do we have here?”

I cleared my dry throat, feeling cornered. If they try anything, maybe I'll be able to pick up the knife and book it. However, that thought didn't fill me with hope. I'd just have to pray that they didn't have bad intentions in mind.

“My name is-” I stopped. What was my name? It was such a small thing to have, yet it had so many implications. It was a part of a person, ingrained deep within themselves. And yet, I didn’t have one. I was nameless, I was no one. At that moment, I felt my heart drop and my skin grow cold. I was nobody...I was nothing.

But then, suddenly, one came to mind. “La'Quet.” The words sounded so unfamiliar, yet I knew they were right. They had to be.

But no one in Texas was named La'Quet, no one I had ever met.

“Well, sorry to get on the wrong foot, La'Quet,” Hazel said. “but you should know why we take precautions. The big guy there is named Gronan and the grumpy-looking one is my brother, Finn.”

“Hi there,” Gronan said and lumbered up to me with one hand out. “I didn't expect to see another Adventurer out here, nice to meet you.”

I grabbed his hand and gripped it hard.

“Nice grip,” He said with a grin. I had expected to see yellow, jagged teeth in his mouth but, surprisingly, his teeth were impeccably white. Pain shot through my entire arm and tears began to form in my eyes as he nearly crushed my hand in his. He let out a hardy laugh and slapped my shoulder so hard I tripped and nearly fell. “I like him,” He said, turning back to the other two.

“Are you sure we need him?” Finn asked Hazel. “I think we'll be fine to do this on our own.”

“Don't be such an ass,” She said, rolling her eyes. “We might be able to do this one, but what about later contracts?”

Finn bit his lip. “Fine,” he said grumpily before turning away from everyone and walking through the trees. “Come on, I found where the little shithead ran off to.”

“How?” Gronan asked, following in line behind Finn. “I was with you and didn't see anything,”

“Get better eyes,” Finn responded.

Hazel didn’t follow them, instead, she turned to me and waved for me to follow, “Go on.”

I followed her instructions, going behind Gronan. This all felt so unreal. But it was. The way a slight breeze hit me, cooling the sweat on my brow, and the way I could smell a certain musk waft off of the big guy, Gronan, confirmed it was real. My imagination was never good enough to come up with anything like this.

Hazel fell behind me, keeping a lookout for anything that might've tried to sneak up on us.

“So, what's this 'shithead' we're looking for?” I asked.

“I will catch you up from the beginning. We got a contract for something stealing people's jewelry in town. We caught it in the act of taking jewelry out of a woman's purse. It was a goblin. It ran from us and managed to slip by us because someone was too busy in the brothel to help us,” She said 'someone' just loud enough for the other two to overhear. “And so here we are.”

“Hey,” I heard Finn say up ahead. “You didn't tell me we were already looking for it.”

“Because,” She called out to him. “We didn't expect to see it there.”

“So why are you blaming me for not being there?”

“Because you need to stop screwing on the job!”

“I wasn't on the job though.”

"Axhel,” she said with a mumbled growl. “It's okay though, we found you due to this, it's good to see another Adventurer out here. They're very spread out in this area of District One.”

I thought about asking what a District One was but then large text appeared in my vision:

Quest Attained:

Little Men

You found a group of Adventurers like you and have agreed to hunt down the so-called goblins with them. Find them and eliminate them.

I felt a lump in my throat after reading the last two words. Eliminate them? And then the rest of the text hit me, goblins. Finn had said they were hunting down a goblin too. But goblins didn’t exist, they were just part of fantasy stories and fairy tales. Right?

“What are you doing?” Hazel asked, looking at me with her squinting eyes once again.

I quickly snapped the menu away with a thought. “Oh, uh, looking at a menu.”

“What does that mean?”

Seeing her confused face, I concluded people here didn't get menus along with being an Adventurer.

“Sorry, I was just lost in thought,” I tried to change the subject. “This land is really different from my home.”

She nodded. “Must make you feel out of place.”

“Very.”

So am I just weird then? How the hell do I see this thing anyway?

Someone messed with my head. Yup, that had to be it. Probably that weird robe guy, he slipped some technology into my head. That had to be it. But then if there was technology here, why did Hazel have a bow? Hell, why did no one here have a modern-day weapon?

We must be in a remote place. This island in the Caribbean or wherever the hell it was must've just never been seen before by modern people. Hence the goblins. It made sense, not many bigger countries dealt with remote countries.

As we continued our way through the tree-filled forest, it came to mind how little underbrush was in this forest. Other than the grass, the only other kind there was were the stray vines or bush here or there. But even with that, this place was easy to walk through. It was strange, as if this place was cleared often for travel yet the way these people acted, it felt like there weren't many people in this so-called District One.

Just one more strange thing in a strange land.

That wasn't all either. Being in the prairies of Texas, I didn't see a massive amount of trees but I wasn't a fool, I had seen enough to know what they looked like, and the ones here, well, they were just off. It wasn't anything major but it was just the way their bark was shaped. It looked almost like the bark was wrapped around the trees like candy canes. As if these trees adapted to the environment in a completely different way than any tree I'd seen before.

“Hold,” Finn said. Everyone stopped in their tracks and I nearly smacked into Gronan. “We're here.”

Hazel went around me and Gronan to her brother. I followed her. It didn't seem like we were there, all I saw that was different here was there was a boulder that sat in a small clearing around the trees. “I see, the trail goes right to that cave.”

“What trail? What cave?” I asked, stumped as to what they were seeing.

“Goblins aren't smart, but they're not idiots,” Finn said, ignoring me, “Help me out here big guy.”

“Hang on,” Gronan reached over his back and grabbed the hilt of the sword strapped to his bag. The sword came out easily and he held it out toward me. “Here, it'll be a lot better than your tiny knife.”

I grabbed it awkwardly at the very end of the hilt and Gronan let go. The sword was a lot heavier than I thought it was going to be and the blade hit the ground. I put more support onto the hilt and pulled it up, waving it slowly, trying to get a feel for it. The lump in my throat was growing and I thought about asking them to sit this one out. But then I thought about that wheat-filled field and the farmhouse. The only way I was getting back there was by doing what it took.

“Alright, coming,” Gronan said and followed Finn to the rock. Finn pointed out a slightly flat outcropping on the side of the rock and Gronan took hold of it, pulling it off to reveal a dark cave entrance.

“How the hell did a little goblin get in there?”

“That's what I was going to ask,” Hazel said. “I suppose we'll find out. Come on,” She said and went inside the dark expanse behind Gronan.

Whatever was in there, it wasn’t going to be good. I gripped my new sword and hoped luck would be on my side.

Because I knew for sure that skill wasn’t.