When a group is walking quietly along a trail, there are two states that must occur. Either the group will walk in silence until a {comic-relief_character} steps on a twig, prompting an ambush of improbable proportions. Or, despite the need for silence, the local knowledgeable character decides to info dump. Somehow, the second state is the most successful for sneaking.

“You can always tell a goblin’s trail from any other animal or monster trail,” Petra said, “Because of a combination of factors. Like a lot of humanoid monsters, they seem fond of wearing bone jewelry. But unlike most of the others, they’re unskilled in making it.”

Petra motioned to the small bones littering the trail, “Their necklaces snap, the bones fall apart, or they simply don’t secure things properly. The paths goblins use begin to accumulate these little pieces of bones, making a trail of bone-crumbs back to their den. Some scholars think that the faultiness is on purpose so that the goblins can find their way home, but I doubt if said scholars have ever met a goblin.”

Jasson nodded and they continued in silence, occasionally dodging into the bushes as a group of goblins wandered past. Eventually, they found a clearing and a cave on the side of a mountain. Petra led them into the bushes and had them lay in wait as the goblins went in and out.

“Okay,” Petra whispered, “how many would you say there are sis?”

“Thirty,” Clara said, “Plus the king and queen. We should be careful not to get surrounded. We will need to clear out the individual rooms as well.”

“I agree,” Petra said, “Tortoise?”

“Not on the approach,” Clara said, “If anything, we need to let some goblins through so that they don’t run for any other exits they might have.”

“Heron then,” Petra sighed, “Low risk as long as he doesn’t fall.”

“Umm,” Jasson said, “We’re planning on attacking them, right?”

“Yeah,” Petra said, “What about it?”

“I mean,” Jasson said, “If I’m going to participate then I’d like to know what the plan is first.”

Petra sighed and explained the terms. Tortoise was a defensive form that allowed them to move in an earthen dome. They could adapt it here by getting close enough to seal up the holes and work through the place one room at a time. Heron was a method of baiting the goblins out into a disadvantageous trap, then surrounding and exterminating the monsters.

“So we’re doing Heron?” Jasson said, “How do we surround them? There’s three of us.”

“Simple,” Petra grinned, “I’m a powerful earth mage. We build walls, then eliminate them as they try to climb over.”

“Okay,” Jasson said, “but there’s only three of us. How would we guard the walls?”

“It’s not that hard,” Clara said, “If we build it right Petra could control the whole area with me standing guard.”

Jasson remembered the earth bullets Petra had used earlier and nodded, then said, “Then how do we get them out? You mentioned bait? I have some dried jerky we could use.”

Jasson looked from one girl to the other, seeing their evil grins.

“What?” Jasson said, “Will that not work?”

Petra said, “Only if you jiggle it in front of their noses.”

“Make sure to hold onto it,” Clara said, “You’ll be running quickly after doing so.”

“Ah,” Jasson said, “I’m the bait.”

****

“AAEEEEEEE!” Jasson screamed fifteen feet inside the cavern, channeling the gut-clenching terror at seeing twenty evil green things turning to watch him. A few heads poked out of other rooms in the cave, and a cackling war cry sprouted from the surprised horde.

Fleeing down the cavern Jasson was grateful that he had tightened the laces on his tennis shoes. Fortunately, Jasson easily outpaced the horde of goblins. Apparently being three feet tall made them a good bit slower than even him, which made this bait situation a surprisingly reasonable risk.

The fortifications were three ten-foot-tall walls in a U around the entrance. As Jasson scrambled up the wall in the back, he heard the goblins die in droves behind him. Cresting the wall Jasson rolled and heaved, breath coming in ragged gasps. Then he laughed, the thrill of being alive filling his heart.

“I’m up!” Jasson called, “Destroy the ladder!”

The earth beside Jasson exploded as Petra destroyed the ladder, and Jasson struggled to his feet and pulled his phone out. This was the perfect chance to test his spells on MADaptation, and he’d charged it to almost 70% during their journey here.

The goblins swarmed out in twos and threes, shrieking and charging the walls. Jasson opened MADaptation, then balanced the Light Crystal on the screen as tendrils of lightning reworked the shape. Jasson plugged the reshaped crystal in and then, carefully, turned it around so the dangerous end was pointing out. The interface was upside down and wouldn’t rotate, but there weren’t any words to worry about. Jasson had been itching to experiment with the spells but hadn’t found any time for it. But now…Jasson selected the one that had almost killed him.

“Here we go!” Jasson said, pointing the crystal as best he could, “Fire!”

Gling!

A shining rocket of light emerged from the crystal and shot forward. About the size and speed of a thrown Football, it sped towards the enemy. Passing by a couple of goblins, it crashed into the ground and exploded. The closest goblin was torn to shreds and the force of the explosion flattened half a dozen other goblins.

“YES!” Jasson whooped.

Jasson fired another, exploding it against a group to the right. The flash of light wasn’t as bright as he thought it would be, but it still left spots in his eyes.

“Oi!” Petra’s voice said, “Keep away from the walls! I didn’t build them for that.”

“Sorry,” Jasson said, grinning.

Finally, Jasson thought, I’m OP!

Jasson checked his phone and blinked. 54% battery from the 70% it had been moments before.

“Woah,” Jasson said, “That’s only two shots! Dang. Let’s see what else I have.”

Jasson toyed with his phone, trying out the other options. He found the flashlight, which was a circle for some reason. Then there was a laser ruler, a laser pointer, and a taser feature. There was even rippling lightning that exploded in an AOE electrical discharge that sucked an enormous twelve percent of his battery. Finally, Jasson found his favorite function.

“Heh, heh, heh,” Jasson said, “Let me show you its features!”

Jasson pressed the button and a bolt of light shot out and seared a goblin to death.

I HAVE A LASER GUN!!! Jasson squealed internally as he did a little skip.

This was getting fun! Jasson rattled off shots, usually missing the first two before sending a smoking corpse to the floor. Occasionally the goblins would try to scale his part of the wall and Jasson would shoot them point blank, smelling the burned hair and flesh. The horrid stink of victory.

“Jasson!” Petra called, “They’re not coming out anymore. We’re going to go in and kill the king. Make sure none sneak past us.”

“But-” Jasson saw Petra give him the look and said “All right. Good luck.”

They’re trusting me to guard the exit. Jasson thought. This is progress.

The twins jumped down and ran into the cave, Clara taking point while Petra held earth bullets ready to fire. After a few minutes, Jasson felt the ground shake and he started to get worried. Everything was going okay, right?

After long minutes of inactivity, Jasson opened up TikTik. His signal was weak and would drop occasionally, but was decently fast when it connected. Every few TikTiks Jasson saw a goblin try to sneak out, and he would snipe the monster before it could clear the wall. Then it was back to scrolling.

The sky grew lighter before the twins emerged, waving towards him. Sighing with relief, Jasson unplugged the crystal and pocketed it with his phone. Jasson was low on power, both for the phone and himself, and couldn’t muster the energy to start charging again.

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

“We got all of them!” Clara called, “There was a troll!”

Jasson raised his eyebrows and stepped to the edge of the wall.

“Really?” Jasson said, “Was it…uh…what are trolls like? Green? Rocky? Pink with long crazy hair?”

“You don’t know?” Petra said, “Come on. You should see the body. It’s something you should know.”

“I would,” Jasson said, “But I can’t jump down ten feet like it’s nothing. At least not yet. Mind making me another ladder?”

“I’ll do you one better,” Petra said, walking up to the wall to Jasson’s right, “Step away from the edge.”

Without waiting to see if Jasson obeyed, Petra mumbled something and the Earth Crystal she used glowed along its four-inch length. The wall rumbled and the part near Petra sunk back into the ground at varying heights, making a set of stairs.

“That easy enough for you?” Petra said, “Now come on. We’re on a time limit since the guild Evaluator will be waiting for us on the road in a couple of hours.”

“All right,” Jasson said, dusting off his butt, “I’m coming, don’t worry about it.”

Jasson followed Petra into the cave as Clara piled the goblin bodies outside. Details leaped out at Jasson, things that he had missed while running for his life.

“Why are those holes in the ceiling?” Jasson pointed up at openings in the roof of the hallway leading into the entry room.

“I don’t know,” Petra said, “They’re called murder holes, where the goblins poured boiling water on us.”

Jasson looked at the puddles on the ground and said “I thought you said that goblins weren’t smart.”

“They aren’t,” Petra said, “But they are capable of taking orders.”

“Orders?” Jasson said, “From the King?”

Petra shook her head and said “I don’t know. We’re really lucky that you’re alive. You don’t have fire resistance, so that attack would have killed you. But it looks like they didn’t notice you in time to hit you with this.”

Jasson gulped, nodding as he followed Petra further into the cavern. The first room, the one Jasson had run into in order to bait the horde out, was about twenty feet tall. There was a set of stairs carved into the wall, leading up to a platform above the entrance. Jasson could see a smoldering fire and an overturned cauldron, as well as the steaming remains of three goblins.

The entry room ended in a hallway that went another twenty feet into the mountain. There were two small rooms to either side before the hallway opened up into another large chamber. Not as big as the first, this one was filled with a dozen goblin corpses. Against the wall in the back was the corpses of two six-foot-tall hideous goblins, and off to the right was a large pile of rubble.

“See it?” Petra said, pointing at the rubble, “This one looks like stone, but they can blend in with their environments over time.”

Jasson managed to pick out a tall form, stone-like skin, and disturbingly long limbs sticking from the rubble as its head lay facedown five feet away. Long braids of coarse hair hung from the head, and the puddle of blood reflected greenish-black.

“Usually the easiest part to see is their hair,” Petra said, “it can get quite wild.”

Jasson snorted, “I think that I’ll look out for an eight-foot-tall spindly rock topped with a mop.”

“Don’t underestimate Trolls,” Petra said, “Trolls are enormously strong and have somewhat sharp fingers. Most of all they’re an ambush monster.”

“Ambush?” Jasson said, “What, does it hide behind a tree?”

“No,” Petra said, “It folds up. Into about…the size of one of those goblins. For this one anyway. They like to hide in crates or under tables and drag you in when you get too close. There are records of ones so big that they can only hide under bridges. But the younger ones are more common can even fit in your bag, which is amazing since those are about as tall as you are. One day, you sling your bag over your shoulder and when your guard is down it attacks. Long arms emerge and seize your throat, strangling you or cutting your throat.”

Petra’s voice echoed on the last word and chills flew down Jasson’s spine. He could see it in his mind, the arms reaching around and closing around him with brutal claws.

“How did you find this one?” Jasson said, “It was hiding, right?”

“Yeah,” Petra said, “It tried to jump Clara. The idiot.”

Petra pointed at one of the hands and said “It had a hard time fighting after she shattered its fingers.”

Jasson saw the hand, crumpled like a cartoon and missing the ends of some of the fingers.

“What about the claws?” Jasson said, “Didn’t they cut her?”

“A bit,” Petra said, “But she’s tough. Trolls sharpen their claws by sucking on their fingers, using their teeth to shave away until they have a cutting edge. Deadly enough I guess, but nowhere close to sawing through Clara’s skin.”

Jasson whistled and said, “Is that how skin works?”

“Yeah,” Petra said, “The tougher you are, the harder it is to damage your skin. Why? How else would it work?”

I’m in another world, Jasson thought, with magic and monsters. Why would this be strange? Pedicurists must have a hard job here.

“I guess I’m just soft,” Jasson said, then motioned to the goblin corpses, “Should we haul these out or leave them here?”

“Yeah, we should get started.” Petra sighed, “And we probably won’t get paid for the troll. That’s on top of the ten gold we probably won’t get because of ‘completion’.”

“Why?” Jasson said, grabbing the body of one of the small goblins’ arms and relized that it wasn’t attatched, “Ew. Oh, this is gross.”

“Wuss,” Petra said, reminding Jasson of why he tried not to talk to her, “Come on, it’s not gonna kill you.”

As they hauled the squelching bodies out, Petra told Jasson about how they’d get scammed out of their pay. The Adventuring Guild Evaluator was responsible for adjudicating whether the job was finished or not, and it was common for the employer to give the Evaluator some gold under the table to take a bit off of their total bill. They commonly did this on completion percentage and total heads to be paid for. The evaluator will round down the number of goblins killed and ‘find’ a goblin that the adventurers ‘missed’. And because they ‘missed’ a goblin, their completion pay would be reduced.

“At least, that’s what I hear.” Petra said, “Although I’ve never had it happen to myself. But I’ve talked to dozens of adventurers in another city, and they all agreed on these points.”

“That sucks,” Jasson said, “You should have left the troll for them and said it’s not a goblin, so it doesn’t count. That way the Evaluator will learn a lesson, or at least be useful for once.”

Jasson picked up the top half of a goblin corpse and winced at the trailing organs, then slung the body into a canvas bag Petra had produced from her Locker. The blood was seeping through the bottom of the sack, leaving a green-black smear across the stone floor whenever Jasson hauled it outside.

“Nah,” Petra said, “Then we’d be antagonizing a great-paying group. I just wish that there was a way for us to prove that this place is cleared before they come. But we’d need a truly expensive crystal for that, and even then the video wouldn’t be clear.”

“Ah,” Jasson said, “I can take a video of this. The Ophone camera is really good, so I doubt that they will be able to contest it.”

“Really?” Clara said from across the room, a pile of corpses on her shoulders, “Your Crystal is that nice?”

“It shoots spells,” Petra said, “I’m not surprised. It’s not like any other Viewing Crystal I’ve ever heard of. Once we’re done getting these goblins outside, go ahead and take some videos of the rooms in here while we organize stuff.”

Nodding, Jasson hurried as he was eager to be done with clean up. The pile of corpses outside was a nightmare of jumbled bits, and Jasson dumped his sack out onto the revolting scree. Turning, Jasson saw Petra and Clara emerging from the entrance.

“Just start recording,” Petra said, “I forgot about the other rooms we already cleared. By the time you finish those, we should be done with the rest.”

Jasson gave a grateful sigh and dropped the crusted sack, then wiped his hands off on his clothes before pulling his phone out and heading in. Jasson took several pictures and videos, documenting each room from various angles as he also charged his phone with the crystal. It was harder than he thought, as sleep deprivation made Jasson sway woozily and blur some of the photos. By the time Jasson finished documenting the last room, the twins had finished clearing the bodies out over a half hour beforehand.

Jasson squinted in the morning light as he left the goblins' den and found that the earth walls had been leveled, with no indication of where they had been. There were over two dozen reassembled goblins laid out in a line on one side of the entrance, several with more guesswork than solid bits. On the other side were the goblin king and queen, the troll, and a smaller line of goblins.

“Hey,” Jasson called to the two girls, who were relaxing and unpacking an early breakfast, “what happened to the walls?”

“I put them down,” Petra motioned, “go wash your hands before you eat. Goblin blood tastes horrible.”

“I figured that much out,” Jasson said, “but why did you pull the walls down?”

“It’s better that they don’t know how easy this was for us,” Petra said, “They might try to recruit us to their side, or possibly see us as a threat. It’s not worth the risk.”

“Oh,” Jasson said, “But…look. Most of these goblins are just piles of bits left over from us.”

“We’ll manage,” Petra said, “The spells I used are pretty common and goblins are weak. As long as we don’t flaunt it, we should land as talented but not overly so.”

Jasson thought for a moment then said “I take it that you’ve thought this through.”

“Yup,” Petra said, “Just claim your kills. They’re distinct enough from my earth magic, so it shouldn’t be too hard. That explosive shot will be tricky, but you should get plenty of pay anyway.”

“Speaking of which,” Jasson said, “How strong was my Missile? I don’t know much about magic.”

“I don’t know if it’s your power or your phone’s,” Petra said, “But on a scale of one to twenty I’d say it’s a thirteen in raw power.”

“That’s good!” Clara said, “I’m a one. I can make dim lights, light a fire, stuff like that.”

Petra said, “I’d say that I’m a sixteen in my specialties. The main problem is getting a high-quality Earth Crystal. I’m always worried about this one since it’s a Monster Crystal rather than a Natural one. Sometimes I wish I had Clara’s power.”

“Really?” Clara blushed, “It’s nothing special. I just swing really hard.”

“Speaking of which,” Jasson said, “how does that work? Were you born with the strength?”

“I mean,” Clara smiled, “I always was a bit stronger than the others.”

Petra snorted and said “She broke the bars of her crib. But she did train a bunch if that’s what you want to know. I can only approach her childhood strength with my enhanced gloves, never mind what she can do now.”

Petra held up her fingerless gloves and Jasson nodded. He’d been wondering about her gloves, but always forgotten to ask. So they were a magical object, eh?

“So you’re mirroring each other?” Jasson said, “Petra is a one out of twenty for strength, while Clara is a sixteen out of twenty?”

“No idea!” Clara frowned, “I never got the chance to tournament. It was supposed to be this summer, but…well.”

“Tournament?” Jasson said, “There are tournaments in Stalt?”

“No,” Petra glared at him, “there are not.”

Jasson met her glare for the spite of it, but relinquished after a couple of seconds. This was the most they’d ever told him about themselves. He’d have to accept it for now.