Adam walked in the mindscape, like a phantom inside the dream of someone else. Unlike the first time he was here, there were no psychic strings pulling everything apart. There was no new destruction. No impending collapse. It was just him, alone, in the mind of a monster.

The mindscape was broken, barely held together by his earlier intervention, but it was enough. He passed through the ruins of emotions and feelings, forever burned and gone. He passed through a maelstrom of thoughts, unable to calm and form.

He walked until he reached what he began referring to as Memory Lane, the section of the mindscape where every memory was stored in fragments, pieces that formed a bigger picture if placed together.

But there was no piecing together any of this. Not today. Adam did not know how, and even if he did, there was no guarantee that it would be quick.

Further complicating things was the damage he had already done to the lane. One month's worth of fragments had been destroyed, shattered completely when he was rampaging through.

It was a mistake and Adam realized this too late. He had to navigate through his own carelessness now, risking failure along the way.

Adam told himself that he couldn't afford to fail. There were lives at stake. Failure meant that a little girl would lose her life, and a father would lose his daughter again, with no hope of ever bringing her back.

Time was of the essence, but patience was also a virtue. He walked through the lane with both in mind, making sure to skim over every fragment with care and a keen eye.

Memories were such a fickle thing, fragile and small when interacted with in the mindscape. Adam had scolded himself for going in guns blazing during his first attempt, inflicting unnecessary damage to what could have been a steady and easy operation.

Technically, this was the second time where he was in the mindscape of another. It was still surreal for the psychic to consider the reality of, sometimes even disturbing.

Briefly remembering the time he scanned Felsha's mind, he remembered himself to be a mere observer, standing beyond the borders of her mindscape and gazing at passing scenes of mental cognition given form.

He caught glimpses of the answers he sought, but never attempted to go any deeper. If he was so careful with Felsha, despite her being revealed to him as a deplorable assassin, why did he give no quarter to the mind of a goblin?

It took Adam only a few seconds to consider the answer to his question. He hated the goblins. Their minds were wicked, filled with envy, malice, and depravity. The more he sensed them with his telepathy, the more disgusted he had become. Killing them stopped the unsavory thoughts, quelled the stream of disgusting feelings, and muted the screams of emotions better left silenced.

It was unlike him to lack sympathy or empathy for something or for someone, but the goblins had been made an exception, and through no fault of his own.

Adam never imagined that a species as deplorable as goblins could exist, yet here he was, inside the mind of one, skimming over fragments of its memories in an attempt to save a little girl.

The thought of saving a life was what drove Adam forward, helping him focus his mind towards accomplishing that objective. Eventually, through careful selection and handling, he found a fragment of importance.

As he held the spiky thing in his hands, the fragment sparked and flickered, revealing scattered scenes of a memory from a month ago. One scene buzzed into view, showing a little girl huddled in the corner of some abandoned room that was barely lit by a dying torch. Before Adam could reach his hand to touch the scene, it disappeared, revealing something else entirely unrelated to the previous instance.

Adam was now irritated.

Just looking at the shard wasn't enough. It was too random in the scenes it showed, unpredictable and incomprehensible. Unable to think of anything else, Adam decided to do an experiment and take a tremendous risk.

Adam would try to enter the fragment itself, but in doing so would lead to either of two possibilities. He would either relive the memory as if it was his own, retaking the steps of the goblin and becoming one with its thoughts, feelings, and emotions at the time, or he would simply become a spectator, watching the goblin from a distance as the memory unfolded.

Seeing no other choice, Adam decided to take the risk. With a pause that felt like an eternity inside the mindscape, Adam pierced through the fragment and walked in.

Unfortunately for Adam, the former happened. He became the goblin. Fortunately for his sanity, he only saw through its eyes but never felt any of its thoughts, feelings, and emotions. He was a spectator still, though from an uncomfortable point of view.

And so, the memory unfolded, and Adam found himself traveling through a forest on foot. He could not look around or control any of the goblin's movements, merely following where the creature looked.

Despite this handicap, he saw and he heard. The goblins were walking through a familiar forest, cutting through vegetation as they walked between the trees, trudging over swamps and bogs along the way. They were tired, but also sounded proud and boastful of something.

Most of the goblins carried with them a dirty and tattered backpack, containing things such as some forms of kitchenware, fabric, clothes, and a few pieces of equipment like vests and weapons. But the bulk of what they were carrying were food and crops, stuffed into their packs in a haphazard mixture.

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Adam's irritation turned into a cold anger as the reality of what he was currently witnessing dawned on him.

They were headed somewhere, and if Adam's instincts were correct, they were going westward towards whatever place they had locked the little girl in.

The goblins talked among themselves between their disgusting snickers and sickening laughs. Adam could barely stand their voices even though he didn't understand a single word they were saying. It was like listening in on a bunch of squeaking and chattering rats infected with rabies.

Vermin. What a fitting title to describe their existence.

The scene passed in a blur as Adam tried to influence the passage of time within the fragment with his will. It worked and time sped up, rushing forward into a haze. As soon as he saw something different crest over the horizon, the fragment slowed.

There was a mountain in the middle of a sea of trees. It was tall, wide, and most definitely old. It was jagged on all sides and treacherous on every slope. It had three peaks covered in snow, shrouded also by clouds at the very stop as if in perpetuity.

The goblins were elated upon seeing the mountain, quickening their already fast pace. Adam figured that the creatures had set themselves up deep inside a cave somewhere within the mountain. It was their preferred nesting spot as claimed by the book.

However, as the goblins made their way to the slope, Adam did not see a cave. Instead, he saw something that brought a chill down his spine.

As the goblins neared the foot of the mountain, the dense forest began to wane, giving way to a clearing filled with ruins from ages past. The remains of once stout walls stood as nothing more than lonely towers of brick and stone piled along the outskirts, surrounding what used to be a large city.

The city had been built beside the mountain with many overgrown stone paths leading towards a wide staircase carved into the slope itself. The goblins made their way there, climbing the stairs and ignoring the old ruins around them.

The ruins were predominantly built from stone and brick, allowing the husks of homes and buildings to remain despite the passage of time and the wrath of nature. There were stories to be uncovered here, rife with tales of devastation and tragedy. Everything was empty, either stripped or rotted away. Nothing of value remained, aside from a few bones here and there if such objects could be counted as valuable. It was a dead city, empty and deserted.

Adam wondered why anyone would consider building a city on the foot of a jagged mountain. When the goblins reached the end of the stairs, he received his answer.

High above the mountainside was an entrance of chiseled stone protruding from the slope. Tall and wide, it was undoubtedly a fortified gate, granting passage into the mountain. The walls stretching from the mountainside were thick and dark, seemingly tarnished by time. Two massive gates of hardened wood and iron lay sprawled upon the entrance, broken and bent, seemingly disconnected from the hinges.

The entire thing looked abandoned, with chunks and pieces missing in many sections, but it was still a grand thing to behold even through the yellow eyes of a goblin.

There was something about this place that disturbed Adam even though he was only seeing it through a memory. From the ruined city at the foot of the mountain, to the abandoned entrance built into the mountainside, he felt a constant and unseen stream of foreboding. Maybe it was the age, the scenery, or something else. Regardless, Adam watched and listened.

From the outside, the entrance looked to be abandoned, but this was only an illusion. A shortcoming of seeing through the limited sight provided by goblin eyes.

Squinting, Adam noticed the others lurking about the entrance, hiding in nooks and crannies, lying in wait within corners and holes. There were hundreds of goblins here, possibly more.

They all greeted the returned goblin group with nasty cheers sprung by a cacophony of disgusting voices. The returned goblins proudly presented their packs of loot, hoisting them high as if they were some sort of great treasures to behold.

Adam was not at all amused, but he continued to observe, restraining himself from tampering with the memory.

As expected, the halls were as tall and wide as the entrance, allowing for a lot of empty and free space. The goblins he was observing made their way through the dimly lit halls, passing by dozens of small makeshift shelters and haphazard construction. With each corner they turned and each hall they passed, there were spacious rooms in-between supported by large stone pillars. In each room was a cluster of ramshackle homes. Homes for goblins.

Adam shivered. There were thousands of them, living in disgusting squalor, and yet every goblin he came across appeared satisfied with its condition and position. They were disorganized and rowdy, but such a description was already giving them too much credit. Chaotic would be a more fitting word to describe them.

Despite everything he was seeing, Adam knew this was only but a taste of what this place was. The eyes of the goblin were ill-suited to behold the grandeur of the architecture.

Judging by the occasional ancient wreck and ruin that dotted the halls and rooms, Adam came to a conclusion. The goblins had claimed an ancient mountain fortress as their home, turning it into a cesspool of their hate and depravity, bastardizing what had been left behind by the true builders.

Adam felt his curiosity tingle at the back of his own mind, tempting him to take control of the memory, but he resisted the urge. Not only was it still too risky, but he also wasn't here to gaze at old ruins. He was here to find a little girl.

And thus, he waited for the moment he was waiting for. After what felt like an eternity, the moment came, and it was worse than anything Adam could have imagined.

Deep inside the underground fortress, within a grand hall of shimmering stone, surrounded by tall and thick pillars, was a giant statue depicting a stout and wide humanoid clad in glimmering scaled armor, with a pickaxe slung on his shoulder, an ax on one hand, and a bushy and great beard falling down his thick face. It was a masterwork, standing proud despite what seemed to be centuries of neglect and decades of goblin contamination.

The goblin sneered at the majestic sight, hurling insults with its incomprehensible language. It hurried down a path leading to the foot of the statue, almost tripping on several staircases along the way. At one point, it looked around, and then Adam saw them.

Hundreds of humans; men, women, and children, had been tied and gagged against wooden poles dug into the stone floor around the statue. And they were still alive, somehow. A few still struggled, many simply groaned. A few cried and wailed.

The goblin arrived at the foot of the stone giant, beholding a small room dug between the large feet.

Chained and caged like an animal, a little girl sat in the corner of a damp and dark room, trembling and unable to gaze at the dim light radiating behind her ragged back.

The goblin threw the pieces of bread it had brought onto the dirty floor, laughing as it shook the metal bars that kept the little girl inside to presumably get her attention. She flinched, then covered her ears with her hands, begging for the goblin to stop, not wanting to look at its direction.

Having seen everything he needed to know; Adam removed himself peacefully from the memory fragment. Then the goblin's mind exploded, figuratively then literally.

A storm of terrible wrath thundered, and it would show no mercy.