One thing that amused me after getting ready to head out and find the goblin’s food source, was Brandr. Or, more specifically, the two little peaks that poked prominently out in the front of her now stretched too-tight top. Yes, I know things were getting serious with the message we’d all just received. That doesn’t mean I couldn’t take a moment and appreciate how her top clung tightly around her newly grown cleavage; or smirk at seeing her wiggle a little oddly with the way the suddenly extra-sensitive tips of that said cleavage responded to the feel of the fabric against her skin.

Following my gaze with her eyes, Isabella giggled and walked over to Brandr and nonchalantly reach up and rubbed her fingers around each bulging peak. As she rubbed around Brandr’s chest, she started to lightly sing, “One quick rub on the nip in the shirt. One quick rub on the nip. Rub it around, even up and down. One last rub of the nip in the shirt…..”

Then she gave a light squeeze of each peak and tugged Brandr slightly forward with them. “And with a last tug, we go out the door… Are you coming you lug, ‘cause you won’t get to see any more….”

As the two of them walked out the door; Isabella tugging lightly and Brandr following as if nothing was unusual, I just had to stand there and shake my head to clear it. Just what the hell had I just witnessed?

Slowly, I grabbed up my mace and spike and then rushed on out to catch up to them. Isabella was out in the hallway giggling to herself, but Brandr was nowhere to be seen. I decided to pretend I hadn’t seen a thing, and wasn’t going to give Isabella the satisfaction of seeing me look confused for once. Slowly I shut the door behind me and I started up the hallway to where the goblin barricade was.

“Where are you?” I sent a thought to Brandr, rather than ask Isabella while she was giggling. No knowing what might feed her laughter, and I wasn’t going to add any more fuel to the fire.

“Scouting,” came the silent, gently reply. “The Guardian, as Isabella calls it, is not near. It should be safe to move towards the barrier.” It still amazed me how she could look so cold and unflinching, and yet somehow sound so soft and gentle. If Brandr was the least bit bothered by Isabella’s actions, she didn’t show any sign of it in her thoughts, or complain to me over it.

A little annoyed, I reached over and smacked Isabella on her rump as I walked on past her. My hand made a loud popping smack, and she gave out a little “woo” of surprise and turned to look at me. That might have been just a bit harder than I’d intended, but I wasn’t going to say so. “Come on, let’s go” is all I told her as I moved on down the hallway.

Still slightly giggling, Isabella rubbed her cheek and the skipped to catch up and lean against my arm. She made what we were doing seem more like a date of some sort than a monster hunt. Part of me was annoyed by that, but a larger part was grateful. Chances are, we were going to have to fight and kill the goblins, and I really didn’t relish dwelling on that part of the mission. Her antics helped keep me from brooding too much over what might, and probably would, end up happening shortly.

I really was grateful for her presence, and I was going to have to do something for her soon. I already had an idea of what I wanted to do, but life just kept us so busy I barely had the time to pass gas, much less do everything I wanted. Gently, I moved my arm down that she was leaning on, and wrapped it half around her hip so I could gently rub her cheek that I’d just smacked. Isabella just giggled and laid her head on my shoulder as we walked quietly together.

It really did feel more like a date than the start of a hunt.

“The barricade is still clear. Do you want me to go check it, or see how close The Guardian is on its patrol?” Brandr seemed to be so much different from Isabella. One girl was diligently scouting and working, while the other was snuggling and getting her tush stroked. And yet, in their own ways, they both seemed completely relaxed and unbothered by the differences in each other.

“We’re still a little behind,” I thought. “If you want to find the Jello-Muncher’s location, that’ll give us time to catch up to you.”

A gently query came back, “Jello Muncher?”

“It’s the name of what Isabella calls The Guardian. I keep telling her she’s calling it by the wrong name,” I answered.

“Then, I shall find the location of Jello-Muncher and report back.” Now, I thought that was nice. Brandr didn’t argue; she simply changed to name to make it the same as I called it. Somehow, that made me smile a little, and I gave Isabella’s rump a light pinch of amusement, which made her giggle and wiggle beside me a bit tighter.

As we finally got to the barricade, it didn’t look like it’d changed any from before. Slowly, I eased over to the small hole in the barricade and bent down to look through it. Nothing seemed out of place or dangerous, so I went ahead and began to wiggle my way through the rubble. I wanted to be the first through, in case the goblins had come and trapped it, or were waiting to ambush on the other side, but much to my relief, the way was clear. Once Isabella saw I was safely thought, she wiggled through the gap and joined me on my side.

“We’re on the other side of the barricade,” I sent to Brandr. “Any sign of the Jello-Muncher?”

“It’s not close,” came the gentle reply. “I’m coming back. I don’t believe it will be a worry for a little while. It seemed to be heading to other end of the far hall and away from us.” A moment later, Brandr came silently running down the hallway and she simply slid underneath the barricade, squirmed a few times like a snake slithering across the grass, and almost instantly was on the other side with us. A wiggle-fest that took me a minute to get under, took Isabella half a minute, and Brandr about three seconds. I might have to start working on some yoga, or something, soon!

“So where do we want to start looking first?” Branr’s quiet voice asked, and this time Isabella looked up and over at her as well. Apparently, she was only talking to me earlier, and was in full party chat now. I wish there was some way to tell if what you heard was a whisper or a group chat. I could just imagine some embarrassing moments answering privately to group chat or out loud to a private message in the future.

“We’ve been down the first tunnels on the left, and there didn’t appear to be any goblins in them that we saw before,” Isabella answered. “In fact, the tunnels looked like they had been stripped bare. There weren’t even any corpses in those halls. What say we start the search on the right and work our way up slowly towards the center area? Search and clear as we go.”

For two reasons, I liked her way of thinking. First, I too wanted to clear as we go so we could try and not wander up paste a whole bunch of goblins and then find ourselves surrounded and swarmed in the middle of them. And second, I didn’t like those overly dark tunnels on the left. They were too quiet. Too empty. They set my nerves on end.

“I agree,” I told them both mind to mind. “Let’s start with the first tunnel on the right, go all the way down it, and then cut through the connecting classrooms and come back up the second tunnel to the main path here. Then we’ll do the third and fourth halls on the right to see what’s there, and if things are still clear without us having found them, we’ll search the third and fourth left side halls. We’ll just work our way up the tunnels one at a time and try not to draw attention to ourselves until we can learn more about where they’re at in this wing.”

“And,” I added, “let’s stick to the full party speech as much as possible now. Try and keep the private chatter down so everyone stays focused as much as possible.” Slowly I pulled my makeshift rod from my belt and both of the girls nodded.

Brandr moved a few steps down the right tunnel and then stopped and stood still. After a few seconds, what appeared to be a black smoke started to ooze out and around her body. She stood still for about ten seconds or so total, and by that time she was completely enveloped by the dark fog. The mist concealed her body and seemed to blend in with the shadows along the hallway. Brandr slowly faded from where she had stood a few moments before. All that remained was just a darker patch of shadow that seemed to slowly slink away, and disappear into the darkened right tunnel.

Now that was a convenient skill for an assassin to have. I suppose that must be what her Nightshade talent was. One girl could cloak themselves in the shadows of the night. The other could use magic. And me? I could bonk things on the head. Sometimes. And not very well. I want to find a class for myself sometime soon too dammit!

I waited a few moments to give Brandr a head start on scouting the way, and then I started down the tunnel myself. Isabella made her light blue flame and floated it in front of me as she brought up the rear herself. If Brandr was going to do the main scouting, it would be up to us to do the deeper exploration. As we came to the first doorway on the right, I eased the door open and headed inside.

Much like the hallway to the left, there wasn’t much sign of anything left in here. There was blood stains everywhere, and scattered papers, books, and stationery scattered around the room, but even the corpses were missing. Knowing what I knew of the very first goblin igloo I’d found, I could easily imagine the little buggers all getting together and taking the corpses for some nasty goblin construction. I shivered at the thought. Isabella took a moment to dig around through the papers, snoop into anything that looked it might have been something of even the tiniest bit of interest, but there simply wasn’t anything worth mentioning in this room.

Slowly, we eased back out of the room and into the hall where we continued our slow steady search method. We’d only went through three or four of the rooms, when Brandr’s gentle voice came to us. “I’ve reached the end of this hall and see no sign of the beasts. Should I return to you, wait here, or continue to scout for the enemy while you conduct your search?”

I looked over at Isabella and she shrugged slightly back towards me. “I think she’d be safe to search on her own, as long as she’s quiet and stays cloaked in that darkness trick of hers. What do you think?”

I thought for a moment and then asked, “Brand, how hard is it for you to stay hidden like that? How long can you remain covered in that smoke?”

“It’s a little difficult to hide myself in the fog of darkness to begin with, but once I’m hidden I stay that way until I step out of the darkness,” she answered. “ As long as I don’t move too fast, or try to break it, I could even sleep while cloaked in the dark. Attacking is too quick of a movement and disrupts the fog, so I can’t remain hidden if I use my blade on something. I suppose it may be a trait of the darkness which explains why assassins used low movement weapons like blowguns and darts to strike opponents in the past.”

Slowly I nodded to myself. As long as she could hide herself so thoroughly, I figured she should be safe enough to scout around. “Go ahead,” I told her. “We’ll check to make certain no survivors managed to leave a note or sign of some sort behind in the classrooms, and we’ll work our way up and slowly follow behind you.”

Isabella and I continued our brief search of the rooms down the hallway, but seeing as how the first few were so completely empty, we started doing more cursory looks through the rooms than thorough searches. Walk in, I’d walk around the right side of the room and poke at a few minor things; Isabella would walk around the left side and do the same; and then we’d meet back up at the entrance and leave to move down to the next room.

I didn’t bother to count how many rooms a single hall had, but it was several dozen on either side, at least. Doing our quick “in, around, back out” method of searching, it probably took us an hour or so before we got all the way to the end of the hall, where we worked our way through the last north classroom and onto the next hallway.

We were about halfway down the second hall when Brandr’s voice came to us again. “I’ve found them. They have built their lair on the left side, at the far end of the hall, in the classrooms between the 6th and 7th halls.” I have to admit, I was shocked that she’d managed to move up and down that many different tunnels before we had even searched down one and back up the next!

“Do you want me to come escort you here? Or stay and watch over them? I can hide myself in a far corner and observe for a while if you wish.”

“If you can do it safely, let’s do that then,” I told her. “How many goblins do you think there is?”

“From what I can see, it appears as if they have taken over about 8 rooms. The first two rooms appear to be some sort of guard area, but there are only a few of the male greenskins in them. The next four rooms look as if the goblins have tried to remove the walls between the rooms as much as possible. It seems to be a communal area, where many gather. The number of male greenskins is rather low, but there are many female grayskins, that seem to be doing all the real work.

“I haven’t chanced trying to go past, so I don’t know how many might be in the last two rooms, or what those are. From what I have seen, there are about a dozen males total and about twenty females.”

“Only that many?” Honestly, I was expecting a goblin horde to be hundreds of the buggers. But then, when you think of all the ones Brandr had killed in that second hallway, and all the ones that we had killed scouting or at the barricade, I guess it made sense. Just like with the rats, we’d already whittled down the numbers of this group considerably. Our opponents weren’t endless, and we had already heavily hurt them. That probably explains why they no longer bothered to guard the barricade – too many loses already.

I was still worried though. If just the males fought, we could probably deal with them somehow. Isabella and I had already managed to fight and put down groups of five or more, and we now had Brandr with us. With her skill with a weapon, I was certain we could take the men; but if the women joined in somehow, things would go from bad to screwed in a moment.

“That’s all I see here,” Brandr confirmed. “But I don’t know how many might be in the last two rooms, or what those rooms are used for. I may be able to work my way around and see what’s in them, if you’d like.”

“No.” I sent back to her, “That’s fine. We don’t want you to put yourself at unnecessary risk. If you can find a safe spot to watch without fear of being seen, observe them and we’ll finish searching this hall and then work our way up to you. Focus on the females. Are they simply workers, or do they seem like they might have weapons or be a strong risk like the men. We’ve never seen a female as a scout or a guard, so we don’t know if they’re more dangerous than the males, or just menial workers for them."

“I’ll do it,” was her only reply. We had found our first foes, and soon we would have to do battle with them. I just hoped we would be able to handle whatever came next.