Yunxia groaned, prompting one of the little greenies to jab her in the side with the butt of his spear. They had been walkng for what felt like hours, and she was a mage, damnit! Walking like this was not for her. Oh, how she wished she could cast a spell, any spell. Preferably fire, but anything deadly would do. Unfortunately, at least one of the goblins was smarter than normal for the species and had affixed a set of iron bracers to her wrists, and if there was anything she remembered from the classes she hadn't slept through, it was that iron and spellcasting did not mix. Oh, you could cast at it just fine, but if any was touching you, you'd have about as much magical power as an ogre. That is, none. So here she was, with the rest of her companions, being paraded through a damp, dark forest by goblins. If they got out of here alive, this was one tale the historians would definitely not be hearing about. Along with the time she had accidentally set Silas' hair on fire. Thinking of that time (or more accurately, his expression when he finally got in front of a clear pond and could look at himself) made her giggle, which, predictably, earned her another jab to the ribs. Glaring down at the offender, she was met with the nasty grin of a goblin, and that was all teeth. With a shaken "eep!", she resigned herself to silence for the rest of the trip.

The other two members of the party were not doing any better than her, either. The goblins had at first found Sophie's string of curses and insults amusing, and had provoked her relentlessly, so she was spewing nothing but irate invectives. They had found her graphic descriptions of exactly where she was going to stick their spears (and presumably what followed that process) much less amusing, and had promptly gagged her with several strips of leather torn from her own clothing. The resulting silence had been almost unnerving at first, but then again, they were prisoners. Silas, meanwhile, seemed to be handling it better than Sophia, because the goblins had knocked him out with a combination of lassoes and clubs after he had kicked one of them into a tree. Several of the larger goblins had been tasked with carrying him, which Yanxia found odd. Goblins were lazy, and the large ones usually just bullied the small ones into doing what they didn't want to do themselves. But then again, they had the foresight to put her in irons, so at least one of them wasn't a total idiot. Tripping over a root, without the benefit of her hands to catch her, she found herself sprawled in the dirt, and much more familliar with the mocking laughter of goblins than she ever wanted to be. Pulling herself up, she decided to just watch the way ahead of her for the rest of the time.

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

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The...camp, if it could be called that, was more a collection of ramshackle tents, a large fire pit, a rock outcropping with a rusted cage sitting under it, and stink. The smell of several dozen filthy goblins which had not bathed in weeks, lacking even rudimentary waste disposal, and at least two mutilated corpses, which had been left laying in front of the largest tent. To Yunxia's sleep-deprived eyes, in the harsh morning sun, it looked like a scene straight out of the Five Hells, not a mundane goblin settlement. She ddin't have time to take the scene in for long, though, as the goblins began pushing and shoving her and Sophia towards the cage, paying no attention to the prisoner's yelps of discomfort. As she soon fond out, the stink was not any lesser in there, and the goblin guards that had been posted did not take pity on the beautiful elven girl, no matter how many different faces she tried. 

Just when she thought she was getting used to the menagerie of horrors, then came a new goblin. Smaller than either of the guards, it scampered towards the bars, and twisted its face up into an expression that looked like the kind you'd see on a mask made for the theatre...or frightening children. Then it got worse. It spoke. A gutteral, harshly accented voice, the sound of stones grinding against each other. 

"Weak, ssstupid humans. Think you better than us because you live in big cities. Hide behind walls, ssstay away from trouble. But it make you weak, and now you prisoner of Gruk!" "We sell you back to humans for many shinies, much meat! Gruk get rich and strong, clan get rich and strong!"

At the end of his tirade, Yanxia had to interrupt, even though it felt like the fear was leaching the warmth from her bones by the second. 

"Ex-excuse me, but I'm not a human... I'm an elf, so you can't sell me back to them...they're not my people..."

At this,the goblin looked at her, a strange expression on its face before giving her the same tooth filled grin she'd seen on the face of the one who'd kept jabbing her on their way here.

"Oh, we know. Pointy-ears get us more shinies than other two combined. Very rich humans pay lot of shinies for pointy-ears, see, no questions, no killing." He saw the horrified look on the yong elf's face and began to cackle, a twisted laugh. Not quite haunting, but to a powerless girl in a cage, it might as well have been the throaty laugh of a demon.