Silhouettes stalked through Gladstone Forest, converging on a small band of mercenaries, huddled together in the crook of a large oak. The storms from the previous evening had petered out, but the weight of the night’s rainfall still caused the leaves to routinely buck under the volume of water they cupped and pooled, and dump their contents on the sludgy earth, slick branches, and, in some cases, sodden adventurers.

Gabriel was unceremoniously awoken by the gentle tap of an iron gauntlet backhanding him in the face.

“Merciful, fu-,” Gabriel managed before the gauntleted hand clamped his jaw shut.

“Shhhh, goblins,” Lydia warned.

Now, “goblins” is the kind of word that generally gets some attention. It’s a word that gets the heart pumping, sets the juices flowing. One can normally count on its utterance to ensure a degree of lucidity in the recipient, and cooperation in matters to follow.

That’s the norm.

Unfortunately, on this occasion, other factors were at play.

Firstly, Gabriel was not a morning person, and he definitely wasn’t an “unexpectedly-awoken-in-the-middle-of-the-night-with-a-slap-to-the-face” kind of person.

Secondly, Lydia was delivering her warning through an entire mouthful of Soldier’s Solace, a root that, Gabriel would later observe, seemed to expand when it came into contact with saliva, and fill whatever cavernous mouth it had been inserted into from cheek to cheek.

The result was that, while Lydia probably thought she was peering smolderingly into the darkness and whispering out a suave, yet devastating, warning to her employer, what she actually said was a good deal closer to:

“Mmmf, gabbles.”

It was then up to Gabriel to, in his soporific state, decipher this message and make sense of the warning issued.

He failed.

“Gabbles?” Gabriel shouted into the night, “No, no, no, I have enough stupid nicknames as it is, thank you very much, and I don’t need you adding to that already embarrassingly long list.”

Lydia paused as she processed what, to her, seemed like an entirely out-of-place and utterly nuts response.

She turned to Gabriel.

“Wuuth?” she asked.

Gabriel rubbed sleep from his eyes, “Don’t call me a wuss! I only sound like a wuss because you’re giving me wussy nicknames!”

At this point Lydia seemed to be wondering if she had maybe hit Gabriel a little harder than intended.

“I kun thee’ll dees gabbles!” Lydia screamed with her eyes more than her voice.

Gabriel scratched the back of his neck, unsure of how to take this news, “I… um, I can feel this too, Lydia.”

Lydia grabbed Gabriel, none too gently, by the front of the robe he was wearing - a Vish special, in bright orange and violet - and near screamed, “Day we’a’rr kith uth!”

Gabriel thought a moment and then smoothed his hair back over his ears, “I mean, why wait until day? Perhaps we should act on this while the feeling is still strong, no?”

Lydia flung Gabriel back into the dirt and peered frantically into the darkness again.

“I think it’s perfectly normal, Lydia! It’s nothing to be ashamed of!” Gabriel assured her, “These things are known to happen between two people travelling together, especially when there is this kind of tension between them,” he went to place a hand on her shoulder, “I mean, think about it, you’re a hired blade, living a life of danger, and I’m a mercenary captain, who has reached out to you and offered you some stability, some certainty - a haven in the storm that is your tumultuous life,” he tried to wink at her and instead blinked.

Gabriel’s tongue was working on a different sleep schedule to his brain and the rest of his body (although somehow it was still only the second appendage to wake up). Consequently, his tired eyes and tired ears neither saw nor heard the rustling of goblins moving on the periphery of the camp, arranging themselves so that they surrounded their prey. He also completely missed Lydia’s look of pure murder, but some oversights are more of a blessing than others. What Gabriel did notice though, even in his stupefied state, was Figo leap four foot into the air screaming, “Goblins!” at the top of his voice.

Vish and Bling woke with a start.

Gabriel swung his head left and right, “Goblins? Where? There are goblins? Lydia, why didn’t you… Ooooooh,” Gabriel said.

Lydia’s lashes dripped pure venom. She spat the wad of root out she had been chewing and snarled at Gabriel.

“You see, I thought you were saying, well, something quite different,” Gabriel fidgeted, “Also, a little surprising! Although, not entirely surp-”

“Gabriel!” Lydia snapped.

“Shit, yeah,” the mercenary captain proclaimed, coming to his senses, “goblins! This is bad!”

Arguably, the situation had been upgraded from “bad” to “terrible” in the time that Gabriel was coming into himself, but nobody really seemed in a mood to debate semantics.

The goblins stood just outside their field of view, in that area of twilight-style darkness where images are unresolved, and shapes bleed into their surroundings. It took Gabriel’s eyes time to adjust, and make sense of what he was seeing.

Slowly, as if emerging from fog, the goblins seemed to manifest.

They were dark splotches of greens and browns, that appeared deep indigo in the darkness. Their bellies were distended, and poked from the bases of torsos that were far too long, mounted on legs that seemed far too short. Their arms stretched all the way from their bony shoulders to the mud they stood in, with muscles that seemed to swell from their bones, making them look like links of sausages. Their heads were rodent-like, with huge protruding ears that stretched from their temples like bat wings.

Gabriel gazed at the statue-esque figures, merging with the trunks and branches behind. They varied wildly in size. The tallest among them was the size of a small man, whilst the smallest was the size of a... much... smaller man..? Gabriel blearily bemoaned his current cognitive celerity. He shook his head to try and rattle his pupils into focus.

It was hard to make the creatures out, they blended so well with their surroundings. In fact, Gabriel might not have spotted them at all if it weren’t for-

“Those teeth! Gods, that’s all kinds of unnatural,” Gabriel said, recoiling as he spoke.

The goblins were grinning. They were grinning so widely that the pale moonlight lit up their smiles and illuminated them like macabre constellations, glowing to rival the stars. Only, they were not a shining smattering of incisors and canines, creating absurd images, they were perfectly uniform bars of light - little rectangles of neat rows of perfectly formed teeth that were both captivating and terrifying because they were so-

“Human,” Vish spat the word as if it were a curse, “Those teeth look fucking human!”

“Mulch Goblins,” Figo pieced together, and notched an arrow as he shared this epiphany.

Mulch Goblins were creatures of the undergrowth, who, unlike their subterranean cousins, lived in swamps and forests, where their flesh perfectly matched their surroundings. They were said to hibernate in the warmer seasons, buried beneath the dry dirt and leaves, only eating when game or rodents stumbled near their ever-open mouths. The unfortunate meal’s scent would be picked up by the huge nostrils of the goblin’s hooked nose, that appeared simply part of the flora when the creature was submerged beneath the debris smattering the forest floor.

The rain would have triggered the goblins from their slumber. It was in these deluges that they were able to move freely, without molestation from the forest’s other natural predators. They often used the time to forage for fungi or fruit, hence their omnivorous dentures, but the ease with which they could move through soft mud, darkness, and wet detritus, also made them formidable hunters. A tribe like this would have their pick of the forest’s residents.

The presence of Mulch Goblins here meant that Gladstone was not just being harassed by a roaming band of miscreants, it was facing an infestation. This could be potentially devastating for the entire town.

On a more immediate note, it also meant that Gabriel and his team were looking royally fucked.

“We are royally fucked,” Gabriel noted.

“Perhaps we can barter with them,” Figo suggested.

“What, like, offer them Vish in exchange for our safety,” Gabriel extrapolated.

“I suppose we can’t put you forward; I don’t think they’re cannibalistic,” Vish sniped back.

“Quiet, all of you,” Lydia looked at Figo, “What are they waiting for? Why haven’t they attacked yet?”

“The talking is actually helping,” Figo informed her apologetically, “Mulch Goblins attack when prey appears vulnerable – asleep, inattentive, lethargic, and so on. Folklore suggests that was the origin of the travelling bard. Adventurers would hire performers to play through the night, to dissuade Mulch Goblins from ambushing,”

Figo caught Lydia’s reproachful look, “Just, you know, so they say,” he mumbled.

“So, we wait them out, then?” Gabriel asked.

“In theory,” Figo said with a half shrug.

“Do they… Melt when the sun comes up or something?” Gabriel asked sheepishly.

Figo frowned, “I think it’s more likely that they’ll just move on to find easier food.”

“Right… Sorry,” Gabriel said.

There was a brief silence, during which the creaking of little goblin joints could be heard.

Vish shuffled, “So, we need to show them that we’re alert, or else they’ll attack?” he clarified.

Figo looked unsure of himself, “That’s what the stories say.”

“Okay, soooo,” Vish began, “I spy something beginning with “G”.”

“Goblin!” Bling shouted.

Vish clicked his fingers, “Nailed it, Bling. Your turn.”

Bling beamed a grin that rivalled half the goblin tribe combined. She “ummed” loudly before deciding upon, “G!”

“Gabriel?” Figo asked.

Bling shook her head.

“Gabby?” Gabriel groaned.

Bling shook her head again.

“… Goblin?” Vish tried.

“Goblin!” Bling confirmed.

“Is that in the rules,” Figo wondered out loud.

“It depends. I mean, if it were a different goblin..?” Vish mused.

“Enough! By the Gods of Virtue, enough! Please!” Lydia snapped.

“Fine, fine. Then how do you suggest we kill the time and remain alert?” Vish grumbled.

“I don’t know, just, some other way. Any. Other. Way.”

The band of mercenaries fell silent.

Rustling could be heard as goblins at the back of the pack began to surge forward. A few of the closer goblins were brandishing makeshift weapons – branches, sharpened stakes, and what appeared to be clubs fashioned from femurs. The mystery surrounding the disappearance of the pack of wild dogs that had followed the mercenaries the day before now seemed to have a very different, far more ominous conclusion.

Frantically, Gabriel and his group searched for a way to break the silence.

The goblins pressed forward.

Finally, a croaking, a-melodious sound penetrated the quiet.

“I knew girl who loved make socks…” Bling began singing her favourite bawdy tavern song, albeit missing a good percentage of the words.

“No! No songs,” Lydia clenched and unclenched her fist, "I... Appreciate, what you are trying to do, but it won’t work. They’ll wait us out if they can but they won’t wait forever. As we speak, more and more are forming up.”

Bling pouted but dutifully switched to just humming her tune.

“Look,” Lydia reasoned, “If what Figo says is true, and they seek easy game, then I don’t think this situation is just going to disappear because of a few melodies. There are dozens of them out there; we’re already easy prey to them. We have to act quickly, before we are completely overrun."

"What do you suggest then?" Gabriel asked.

“We need to handle this like warriors, like soldiers. We need to think tactically and take advantage of the situation,” Lydia rose to her feet, “We’re doing this my way.”

Lydia’s arm shot out like a striking cobra and grabbed a goblin from the crowd. She twisted her body and planted the creature head first in the trunk of the tree she had been propped against. The unsuspecting goblin didn’t even have a chance to register its impending doom. Lydia splattered the poor soul like a mosquito. If there had been any uncertainty surrounding the appropriateness of the name “Mulch Goblins” there certainly wasn’t any longer.

Grins throughout the glade disappeared. It was as if the stars themselves had guttered and died.

“I think you may have ang-” Figo didn’t finish his sentence. He was distracted by a swooshing noise as hundreds of pounds of iron flashed across his vision and disappeared into the woods.

“Did Lydia just…” Gabriel looked around to ensure he was not going completely insane, “leg it?”

Vish did a quick head count, confirmed Lydia’s absence, and bolted after the retreating warrior.

“I think perhaps we should-,” Figo stammered.

“Run!” Gabriel finished for him, and charged after his fleeing fellows.

The goblins, mercifully slow on the uptake, took a few seconds to adjust to the change in circumstances, and then revised their tactics.

A howl emitted from somewhere in the group of goblins, and was soon taken up by others. It wasn’t the proud call of wolves, or the ominous whistling of a gale, this sounded more like a garbled cacophony of phlegm-rattling death screams; a cappella was apparently not a Mulch Goblin thing.

The goblins gave chase.

The troop of humans sprinted as fast as they could, but somehow the goblins were still gaining ground. They moved easily through the muddy terrain, planting their knuckles in the squelching earth and swinging their short legs forward like a pendulum. They hoisted and flung themselves over logs and bushes effortlessly, closing in for the kill. Before long, they were within striking distance.

A goblin reached out its gnarled arm and slashed at Gabriel.

Gabriel didn’t feel the pain. All he registered in his heightened state of fear was something tugging at his leg. It was only when he looked down that he noticed a slash along his calf, now exposed from where his trouser leg had been torn away.

Gabriel yelped, and carried on running.

Another goblin caught Bling’s ankle, tearing a small oval of flesh from the bone. Bling tumbled forward but rolled onto her feet again. She leaped over a goblin crouched low in her path, and upped her pace still further.

“They’re getting ahead of us!” Figo shouted.

The faster goblins were running alongside the mercenaries, trying to head them off and force them into the swarm behind. Those that were taking pot shots seemed to be focusing on funneling the adventurers, rather than catching them. Gabriel realized with horror that the goblins were content not to catch them just yet. They would keep them clustered, prevent them from fanning out, and wait until their prey tired.

“I guess running counts as vulnerability!” Gabriel sneered at Lydia’s back.

A goblin dove recklessly in Gabriel’s path, almost toppling him. Gabriel barely sidestepped in time, losing valuable seconds and plunging ever closer to the main body of the hunting party.

“Gabriel, your sword!” Vish called from off to the left.

“Ah, thank you!”

Gabriel unsheathed his weapon and began swinging it aimlessly, hoping to ward any ambitious attackers from his path.

“No, give it to me!” Vish called again.

Gabriel got lucky and nicked a leaping goblin on the shoulder as it pounced from behind a tree.

“Not a bloody chance,” Gabriel shouted, breathing heavily now.

The mind-mapper swore under his breath. He had to come up with a plan, and fast. Three goblins, two with skin as brown as old leather and one the green of mold, were advancing on his flank. They were grinning again. It almost looked like they were laughing at him.

One of the brown goblins got over eager, and launched itself at Vish prematurely. The goblin fell short and tumbled back into the pack, where it was trampled by its kin. The other two were more patient. They worked in unison, with the green putting pressure on Vish, while the remaining brown gained the lead.

At some unspoken signal, the two goblins flung themselves in the path of the mind-mapper.

Vish squealed, and extended an arm. He slapped the green goblin squarely on the forehead.

Vish smacked the grotesque creature’s soul squarely from its body, and imprinted it on the brown goblin behind. The green goblin crashed to the ground, whilst the brown goblin reeled from the sudden mental appearance of his hunting buddy. With their tenuous sense of self-awareness, the goblins minds could be easily manipulated.

The other goblins gave Vish a wider berth after that.

Content to play the long game, the Mulch Goblins eased off on their guerilla attacks, and redoubled their efforts to gain the lead. They were moving like two outstretched arms on either side of their fleeing quarry, embracing the adventurers in a murderous hug. The two columns tried on numerous occasions to converge, but were hampered by the mercenaries.

Lydia slashed and hacked at anything that fell within the reach of her bastard sword, creating a trail of bodies that almost tripped Vish on several occasions.

On the right-hand side, Figo carefully picked off the fastest runners, and put pressure on the goblin vanguard with occasional hopeful shots.

“If we can keep them off of us until the edge of the forest then we should be safe,” Figo shouted over the din of twigs snapping, people shouting, goblins dying and Vish swearing.

Figo notched another arrow and took aim at a large goblin wearing bark as armour, blocking the path ahead. The goblin seemed determined to stand its ground. The handsome archer steadied his arm and aimed for the monster’s exposed head.

The arrow drooped from Figo’s bow, and limply pinged off of a sapling.

“Ah,” Figo said, watching his homemade arrow impotently sag to the ground. His legs were still carrying him forward, towards the waiting smile of the broad goblin.

The bark-bedecked creature clenched its fists together and swung at Figo’s head with a hammer-blow. It was all Figo could do to duck to the side at the last minute. The strike connected near his collarbone, toppling the archer and sending him careening forward. He tumbled through a bush and skidded to a halt. The goblin rounded on the fallen archer, and others peeled from the pack to help incapacitate the weak link. They loped towards Figo with glee.

Figo tried to level his bow but found his left arm unresponsive. The double-fisted punch had dislocated his shoulder, rendering him defenseless, and causing every movement to send shooting pains from his fingers to his throat. He winced in agony.

Four Mulch Goblins were looming over Figo now. They were close enough that he could smell the decaying organic matter on their breath that gave them their name. They were not armed, but their claws were long, hooked needles, that looked like they would be equally effective at tearing hides from carcasses as they would be pruning hedges. Shoulder to shoulder, the goblins looked like a patchwork quilt of beiges, greens, browns and red. They were the colours of life and death in the forest, the mud-brown of the earth, the vibrant green of the leaves, the red… Figo shook his head. Red? Was that red?

Figo didn’t have long to make sense of the scene before Bling shredded the image. She moved like a dervish, twisting and slashing, kicking and snarling. Knives dug into chests, daggers flicked across throats, and a hairpin ended its useful life protruding from an eye socket. Before the bodies had even hit the ground, Bling had Figo up and running alongside her again.

“It seems your sister’s still got it,” Vish said to Gabriel as he pulled up alongside his captain.

“Old habits die hard,” Gabriel wheezed, “but not as hard as goblins!”

Vish was shaking his head.

“Alright, fine, I’m sorry about that one,” Gabriel confessed.

The mercenaries enjoyed a lull in the attacks after that. Lydia, Bling and Figo had massacred a small army by this point, and Vish had imprinted a handful of souls on rocks, oaks, elms, and one poor caterpillar who just happened to be in the line of fire. The threat was ever present, but the team were left to run for their lives in relative peace.

An odd thing can happen in a heightened state of adrenaline - when survival is the only goal, and every swing of the arm, every footfall can mean life or death - a person can get kind of bored.

Gabriel had hit this point.

The mercenary captain was panting fiercely, and he was long past sweating. His hair flicked back and forth and slapped against his throat and spine alternately. His arms were leaden, and his feet and shins were numb from slurping through the mud and stubbing and thumping against knots of roots and stumps of trees.

The monotony of fear was making Gabriel entirely too aware of his misery. He looked around to see how the others were getting on.

Vish was faring much the same as Gabriel. His robe was shredded, and he seemed to constantly have to disentangle himself from one thing or another. He moved gracelessly. His limbs flailed, seemingly independent from the rest of his body.

Figo was cradling a useless arm, and looked worryingly pale, but he was still somehow out-pacing both Gabriel and Vish. Unlike them, Figo was careful where he placed his feet, and he looked ahead to see which patches of leaves or bundles of twigs would slip or trip him, and which were relatively dry and safe. He was calculated and conservative. He leaned into his run and kept his posture as best as his dislocated shoulder would allow.

Bling didn’t so much run as she did throw herself through the forest. It looked as though she were propelling herself vertically, rather than running along the same horizontal plane as the others. Her technique was almost non-existent, but she was utterly fearless, and seemed confident in every move she made. Whatever she was doing, it was working, Gabriel decided.

Gabriel looked at Lydia.

The warrior-woman could best be described as a metallic avalanche. Lydia hurtled her body onwards like a boulder hurled from a trebuchet. She seemed to move through obstacles, rather than around them. She was making up for her lack of speed by ploughing a direct path through the dense foliage, whilst everyone else was forced to dodge and duck.

In their various ways, they surged onwards, whilst the wheels of the clock turned and the sun rose in the sky, bleaching the night from the landscape.

Gabriel had become thoroughly distracted, and was busy winning an imaginary argument with Archimedes, his oh-so-smug mercenary rival, when he was jerked back to reality by the sound of Figo calling from up ahead.

“The treeline! We’ve made the treeline!” the injured archer called excitedly.

Everyone pulled deep from within their dwindling reservoirs of energy and found that little extra. They sprinted for the clearing beyond with all of their might, overcoming fatigue, mental-exhaustion and injury.

One after another they burst into the pasture beyond, gleefully bounding along the short grass that came to meet the forest’s edge. The blades were coated in morning dew, and they were instantly struck by a smell of freshness, of spring, of new life. It was entirely different to the miasma of rot that had trailed them through the night.

“We made it, we actually made it,” Vish spluttered, his hands on his knees.

“I can’t believe it!” Figo joined in, “We’re saved.”

“For a second there I really thought that- Oh shit, they’re still coming. Run!” Gabriel said.

Goblins erupted from the woods and pranced along the grass.

“I thought you said they wouldn’t follow us out of the forest!” Gabriel screamed, in a pitch that was almost lost in the din of the goblin’s war cry.

“I thought maybe they wouldn’t!” Figo replied.

The party crested a small hill and continued sprinting for the road that would, if they survived, take them to Tindra’s Western entrance.

The goblin warband followed.

As the group descended the small grassy knoll, someone (Gabriel thought it might have been him) yelled out a very compelling, “Duck!”

The mercenaries threw themselves to the ground in time for a plume of fire to pour over their heads and pummel the hillside behind.

Goblins burst into flames with a horrific combination of screeching and popping. Some seemed to rupture from the sheer heat that bombarded them, some were ashy smears on the grass, others still wandered around like tea candles floating on the surface of a pond. Those that survived turned and fled back into Gladstone Forest, leaving their clanmates to extinguish themselves or die.

Gabriel watched the last of the goblins guttering out and tried to rearrange his thoughts. The events of the night had become almost too much to comprehend, and now he had just narrowly avoided spontaneous combustion. He tried to ground himself.

“Okay,” Gabriel croaked, “Okay, okay. Is everyone alright.”

“Yes,” Lydia reported.

“I’m fine,” Figo added.

“Oh no,” Vish said, shock tinging his voice.

“What? What is it, Vish?” Gabriel asked urgently.

“Oh no, no, no, no. Gods, no!” Vish said, hammering the earth with his fist.

“What? What is it?” that was when Gabriel realised, “Wait, Natasha? Oh, shit, oh gods, Natasha!”

“What?” Vish asked.

“What do you mean, “what?” Natasha is missing!” Gabriel reminded him.

Vish looked at Gabriel, “What the hell are you on about? She’s over there!”

Gabriel swung to look where Vish was pointing. Natasha was merrily picking at the dirt, entirely unconcerned by her very recent brush with death.

Gabriel was aghast, “Then why in the name of-”

“My robes,” Vish moaned, “I left my laundry back at the camp.”

Gabriel didn’t get a chance to fulfill the promise he made in reply, and strangle Vish to death. The mercenary captain was distracted by a small contingent approaching them from the direction of the road. They were soldiers, or at least the majority were. They wore kettle helmets with nose guards, and studded leather armour over red tunics. The man at the head of their procession, a middle-aged gentleman with a crown of thinning blond hair, was differently attired. This man, who just minutes before had produced a tidal wave of flames from his fingertips, wore rich, claret coloured robes of a satin-like material. Stitched on the front of the man’s robes, in some of the finest embroidery Gabriel had ever seen, was a splendid creature of mythical majesty.

“Guys,” Gabriel said, clearing his throat, “what animal does that look like to you?”

“I think it’s a dragon,” Figo volunteered.

Gabriel squinted at the dragon emblem and nodded his head, “Uh-huh, and, umm, would we describe this dragon as, perhaps, rising?”