A crack appeared in Ria’s guise upon hearing about the marble.

What has that got to do with anything? She almost asked then remembered her conversation with the Croc. According to whom, the marble was a marvel private to the first stage and the goblin and was neigh impossible to be brought away. But she had done it. At the Goblins insistence she had brought the marble along with her to the second floor and the floors further. He had used her. The reason of which Ria was sure the goblin was about to tell her in his own words.

The goblin snickered at her sudden stiffness and understood without her telling.

“So chose you it did.”

“I don’t know anything about that,” she said, hoping to find out more about the unusual disappearance of the marble but without coming out as interested. It was supposed to give her a boon of strength, the marble - not simply disappear into particles of light! Having already seen the selfish man show his ability, she was really interested.

“Me think you are a lying whore. Did the marble not glow and disappear when you were in the garden?”

He answered for her.

“Oh,-ho-ho- It must have. Me can read your slutty face. Me didn’t believe you would come back from the garden though, but here you are, so scared and anxious yet, standing still and alive. Yet, such a pity. Ah – so unfortunate I am. Your unrivaled bosom and that refreshing scent you give . . . truly what unfortunate coincidence this is. If only it was someone else with the naivety of yours . . . Me could have been enjoying your body right now.” He said, bringing his face close to her bare body and taking a loud whiff. She took three steps away from him and he didn’t follow.

“Me believes you held the beast's heart- and don’t try to act coy- Me can read your face like a cookbook.”

Gritting her teeth in a mix of anger, shame, and fear, Ria indulged the Goblin with truth to be repaid with truth in return. “You mean the orb containing starlight?”

“Starlight . . . it is not wrong of you to call Devils breath by that name. Me think it is a very fitting name.” he said pondering, “So yes, me will rephrase my question so you can understand it with your small brain. Did or did not the marble absorb starlight from the monster's core?”

She scowled at him for calling her stupid but nodded her head to answer his question. A look of pure joy on his face, the goblin started laughing.

“And in which part of your body did the waning light disappear into?”

Ria subconsciously hid her right hand. To which he forcefully grabbed her both arms and pulled them apart. He didn’t display a feat of strength justifying his demonic presence rather struggled to bend her wrist, clearly putting at display his lack of strength. He looked between her hands and went for her clenched right fist, letting go her other hand in return. She braved a punch at his face with her free hand but he shrugged it off, showing no signs of pain. Rolling her fist, he pried open her fingers and there -to her surprise- glowed a faint ring-shaped mark which she hadn’t noticed before.

“Yes.” the goblin yelled in excitement and Ria hurriedly pulled her hand away from his eyes and stepped toward the wall at her back. Ria noticed the regretful absence of the door leading to the tunnel beyond. The goblin wasn’t being coy with his tactics. He was already being blunt with his manners –calling her a whore and a tool- and the door's absence only strengthened the danger toward her life.

“It has happened. Me plan worked. Oh, for so long I craved a naïve fool with the qualities of a leader and my prayers were answered. Now, me will be free . . .”

Ria stood dumbstruck in front of her dancing companion. Like before, her punch had failed to harm the goblin. Whatever damage she did had been healed in a matter of second. Not understanding what the goblin was up to terrified her, but having found out that there was no way out was even more horrifying. What would she do if he pounced on her? He didn’t even feel pain! How would she defend herself? she thought.

“But you can’t hurt me?” Ria murmured and the goblin –in his haste- indirectly agreed to her suspicion.

“Do you really think that?” he said, walking over to his new chair –the one he had dragged from the dinner table after Ria’s little stunt- and sat on it, acting without hurry, like everything was under his control. He swept the whole room with his eyes before setting them back on her. His eyes twinkled like a child waiting for praise. He was excited like never before.

“Me will let you a chance to glimpse at my excellence. Me find it really hilarious: all the whining and crying you did, all the struggles you faced to find the exit.”

“You mean there is no exit?” she snapped.

“Oh, there is one -and you are really-really close to it.” He managed to wheeze the words out through his laughter while leaning the chair back on its hind legs. He had a fit of laughter after which he stubbed the chairs front legs flat on the floor and looked at her: really looked into her eyes.

“A real pity it is.”

“You know what pains me more than not being able to enjoy your body?” he asked seriously. “Me, who controls the life of your kind in here, can’t leave this place as you filthy humans can! They said it was my punishment; well, I beg to differ.”

“Me won’t stay a prisoner forever though. Not me.” He then started rambling about times and places Ria had no recollection of, making the goblin a creature belonging to some foreign time and place. He mumbled about things like kingdoms and wars, about rivers of blood and really obnoxious stuff which was truly unbelievable to hear. His words sounded like the narration of the scenes screening on his television. Both of which painted a vivid picture of his hometown - wherever it was. He rambled about his hatred for winged and horned beings for a long time before –finally- he once again focused his story back on the topic which concerned Ria.

“Me will leave. I told them and they laughed at my face. Me decided then and there to show them. For millenniums Me struggled to find a way and then a woman got the boon of prophecy. She told me they lied. That they did. She told me the truth, she showed me the path. Me wasted so much time finding the key to the cage holding me imprisoned while it had always been there, right under my nose. She gave me a prophecy at her dying breath. End will come and night will rise; the golden sun brings a hidden prize. She told me. It cages death, a cycle stopped; it can free life, and bring you hope. Break the cycle, to want a wish; surrendered death will lead to bliss.”

The goblins previous words had sounded like nothing more than the ramblings of a crazy person to Ria. The prophecy, however, did take her interest. “What does it mean - the prophecy?” She asked while repeating the words in her mind to commit them to her memory. She didn’t know why, but a feeling told her the words were important, much more important than her life.

“Oh, now you are interested. Good, good. Me will consider this your last wish and tell you. The marble is the golden sun –the woman told me- and it can grant a want at its master’s death.” Seeing Ria’s confused expressions the goblin started laughing.

“Don’t you see?” he said ecstatically. “The marble is my way out. It can grant me a wish at its master’s death!”

“What has that got to do with me?”

“The prophecy has got to do everything with you- little lamb. I purposefully made you –a feeble human- the marbles master. Now with your death, it will grant my wish . . . and I’ll be free at last!”

“But-” he can’t hurt me, just like how I can’t hurt him. She thought, but she knew it had somehow managed to get past that little obstacle. The croc called him an old dog and she was right about him.

“Now to take care of our little problem,” the goblin pulled out a glass filled with his semen from under the chair and tilted it toward Ria.

“If you think I am going to drink that-” she said but his laughter cut her short. Standing up, he winked at her and chugged the glass’s content. Once done with it, he burped and threw the empty glass to his back. At first, his antics stupefied Ria then she remembered the effect the white goo had on her. She had completely lost her mind during the one hour its effect had remained.

“Me told you, didn’t I? I have everything under control?” he couldn’t even finish his words before his whole body started shaking. His voice trembled while his laughter echoed in the room.

Shaking, the goblin soon fell to his knees and bent forward with his hands on the ground. Neither did his laughter stop nor did his trembling. To Ria’s horror, his goblin’s physic started changing rapidly under her supervision.

First, his skin darkened, and then his fangs grew pointier and longer. Muscles popped into existence where bones had been visible under his skin once. First expanded his shoulder, and then his chest became fuller. His neck grew broader as his voice grew heavier and freaky. His muscles wriggled into existence under the skin of his back which tore at places near his joints. At last his legs became the size of a log and his skinny arms became larger than Ria’s waist. He no longer laughed but growled while a layer of thick black hair grew to cover his body in proportions to his newly found strength.

The creature which stood up from the floor after the transformation looked nothing like the goblin from before. All signs of his weak, shrewd self were overtaken by visual terror.

At this point, he reached his biggest size: A seven feet tall block of raw muscles and hatred. The creature now had eyes redder than the color of blood. His ears had turned into two small knobs, and he had grown three more set of visible fangs. His nails had grown larger and sharper; his face looked like a watermelon wrapped tightly inside a sheet of wrinkle-free skin, and his nose sat flat under his stretched skin. The sudden growth spurt had such effect on its skin it was stretched tightly against the contours of its muscles: His lips were pulled flat at both ends – unable to cover its yellow gums and brown pointed teeth; his eyelids were also stretched wide enough to show the muscles surrounding his marble-like eyes.

It’s like . . . the thing is wearing the goblins skin as a mask, Ria thought, trying to hold her disgust. If it wasn’t for the contrast in the size of its dick -which had decreased from the size of an arm to the size of her pinky- keeping her light-headed, she might have started crying by now. What am I going to do with it?

There was one thing she was certain of, the goblin was after her life and he would be swift with it. He had constantly cried about his regret for not being able to enjoy her body, so a part of her fear was taken care of.

At least, I won’t suffer.

This change in his physique was the method the goblin had found to challenge the binds binding it from hurting the challengers. Whether it was raw strength or something else, she had no idea.

Ria stood still, rooted to the floor by fear. The giant sniffed the air around instead of mocking her like a big bad bully usually would have. She firmly held her knife, noticing its chipped edge and getting ready to fight. I should run. The thought swept past her mind, but she stood her ground, silently watching the creature scratch its hairy head. She hadn’t suffered countless days inside the sewer to give up without a fight. She would at least resist, and if she died in the end . . . then that would be that.

There was nowhere to run, anyways. The goblin had been meticulous with his preparations. No doors connected the room with endless tunnels and drowned sewers. It was just her and the creature alone confined in a closed room. Unknowingly, she had been holding her breath ever since the goblin had started transforming. The moment she saw it ignoring her for whatever reason and released her breath, it turned toward her and their eyes met.

She only saw a sea of red churning inside its eyes for a moment before wind sweep against her face. Its swift attack would have troubled anyone, but she still managed to get her knife between its hand and her body. It’s another thing that even though her knife dug to the hilt into its palm, the creature didn’t avert its hand away from her and she was sent flying at the impact.

She collided with the wall. A ripple spread across the wooden wall expending the energy behind the crash. But the impact hurt her nonetheless. Thanks to her restructured body, she only fell dazed for a couple of seconds and her inner organs were slightly displaced because a normal human would have easily had a concussion and lost consciousness from the force. Even in a daze, she saw the creature following with a charge and, out of sheer luck, managed to slide out of its way before its shoulder tore into the wooden wall. Ria didn’t wait for her headache to subside and sliced at his calf. Her knife only managed to leave a shallow cut, but it didn’t heal like before. And she saw that.

It can be killed. She thought, rolling away while it followed, stomping at her shadows.

The creatures every stomp left behind a web of cracks on the screeching floor. Insufferable as it may have been, Ria survived its first bout of anger and stood up leaning on the wall on the other side of the room. The room spun to her eyes. It didn’t follow her, rather roared from distance and threw at her whatever it found nearby. Chairs and furniture flew through the air and broke into pieces colliding with the wall. She hurried under the dinner table -which wasn’t far from where she stood- while broken wooden pieces flew around her. The goblins recliners soon bounced off the table as the creature spread its arm and screamed at the roof in pure joy.

Why is it acting so different? It’s like . . . the goblin has turned into an animal, a beast. Did he give up his ability to think to create the chance? No, someone who could plan so far ahead wouldn’t pay such a heavy price for freedom. The one hour. His strength is only for one hour.

Her thought perfectly caught why the goblin was in regret. His actions further strengthened her idea when the moving pictures in the television attracted its attention. Gone was that box of idiocies and fantasies in the next moment. The walls and the floor came next. It stomped and smashed, it did whatever it liked. And Ria was sure as hell, she saw it smile. The smallest of movements its lips made, nothing more than a twitch, but it was smiling; it smiled for being able to let lose to its heart’s content.

This wasn’t the goblin that scared her. This was something else, something raw and natural. A beast it was without much to write about in terms of his thinking ability, but a predator, nonetheless. It still held the ability to kill her in seconds. However, the removal of the healing factor and the goblins wit made it a much easier target for Ria to handle. A beast, it may be, but not her first one. It didn’t have endless stamina like the zombie and neither did it have the ability to replace its bones like the skeleton. It was just a bag of muscles. Something she could handle.

Finished bellowing steam, the creature remembered the rat it had been trying to squish under its feet and jumped atop the maple wood dining table. Ria yelped from underneath which, and it heard her clearly. Next came a fury of punches at the table’s top which made it ring like a war drum.

Boom – Boom – Boom, the table screamed.

Not even a minute had gone past when its hand tore through the tabletop and brushed past Ria’s head. She hurried out from under the table and it saw her. Its cheeks curled upward and tore at its skin. Pulling two chairs from the side, it smashed them above its head and screamed at her retreating figure. Broken pieces of wood fell on Ria one which smacked directly on her head. “Wha!” she yelped in pain and it jumped behind her. The ground trembled from its weight and the floor screamed again in annoyance. A large crack spread under her as it fixed its fingers around her head. And before she could understand anything, she was lifted off the floor and brought in front of its face; where their eyes met for the second time.

It lifted one end of the table –grinning- and threw it at the wall behind as a show of force; she tightened her fingers around her knife. Her chance came when it tried to head butt her face. In a swift motion, she stabbed it on the side of its head, missing the temple and it brain but managing to puncher its left eye. It bellowed in pain and softly flung her toward the fireplace.

“Shit!” Ria cursed under her breath coming to a stop right of the fireplace. Her knife remained lodged on the side of the creatures head, robbing her only weapon and making her barehanded.

“What now?” She thought and hissed as a plank broke near her and stood up scratching her arm. While rubbing the gash her eyes fell on the can of lighter fuel lying beside the pile of logs. Looking between the cracked floor and the fireplace a plan formed inside her mind. “It’s going to be difficult but-”

The creature shook, groaning. It looked weak and unstable. Gulping, she made her move. Rolling between it legs she came to stop behind it, stood up and kicked it at the back of its knee joint. As it fell, she went to the foot of the toppled table and collected the table cloth from the ground. The cracks spread on the wooden floor as it fell and Ria threw the cloth at it head after tying weight at the corners.

Unable to cope with the cloth it screamed in annoyance; while she quickly made way to the fireplace, picked the can of fuel and emptied it at the monsters head. As it fumbled about on the floor she pulled a burning log from the fireplace and threw it at the monster. The creature lit up like a bonfire. While its heavy rattling screams echoed in the room, Ria tried to crack the floor and plow it into the pit.

But it stood up before she finished and ran toward her with fire still burning on its flesh. It threw the burning cloth at her- bringing along the odor of burning rubber and blood. She dodged the cloth but met with his fist midway, and was sent rolling. Before she could even through up blood, it picked her up form the back and threw her to the other side of the room like a ball. She smashed back first into the flat of the dining table. The impact turned her fizzy and her ears started buzzing. She lost sight of the room around her for a few seconds.

Finally, when she opened her eyes, she saw it waiting for her at the center of the room with fire churning behind it. It was challenging her. Ria stood up staggering and hissed at the sight of her twisted left arm. It was broken beyond repair. Blood ran down from her left side where a deep gash had opened up.

“You want a fight, huh, fucker? You think you are winning, huh?! I’ll show you - Just you wait! Screaming, she ran- not toward it, but toward one of the webs of cracks formed on the floor.

It ran after her, stomping and cracking the floor. She fell to bait it and the creature stomped at the false chance, helping her spread the cracks across the floor. It punched and stomped, but she dodged away like a fly. Her injuries made her struggle but she got through the worst of her pain with pure willpower.

Then finally, the cracks expanded and connected one by one and broke the whole floor. A pit formed in the middle of the room and the creature fell into it.

Ria came to stop at the edge of the pit as the whole room burned around her. Smoke made her cough but she held her feet. The creature tried to come out but she didn’t let it.

She doused every piece of wood she saw in the room with fuel and threw it into the pit. She threw the table, the chairs and everything else. Even the paintings and the logs weren’t spared. Soon fire churned inside the pit and its screams she heard above. The floor felt hot to her even through her boots. It is understandable how high the temperature inside the pit must be. It soon got so hot inside the pit that it became almost insufferable for ria to stand at its edge. But she stayed firm. She was being foolishly tenacious. Some of it had to do with her promise to kill the Goblin and some of it was to rub salt on the goblins ghost- if there was any. The goblin was cooked alive. Its voice drowned beneath the crackling of the fire and as she started losing conscious to smoke, a door opened at her back and she jumped through it.

She watched the Goblins room fall prey to the fire she had started as the door slowly closed- separating her from the scene.

In the end, even though the goblin had planned for years and years, he had forgotten to consider the chance of losing to a naïve little girl. He must have spent countless years to wait for the right candidate: someone weak and fearful. And even when he found the leader candidate whom he thought he could kill by the sheer force of his strength, he still died. Goes to say, weak as Ria may have been at the start of her trial, she had changed and grown strong; and not just physically but also mentally.

Ria sat on her knees in the knee-high sewer water, thinking about everything she had been through and what killing the goblin meant for her. This was possibly the last floor of her trial. The loss of her knife pained her. It had been through thick and thin with her. And now that she’d lost it, the thought of entering another beasts den made scared her.

When she finally rested her mind and looked up, the familiar darkness of the Croc’s stage welcomed her. Water once again flowed in the sewerage tunnel. However, there was something different about this tunnel. She was sure there was light in the distance. Not light from candles which glowed at the Croc’s dinner table, but natural light.

She walked through the waist-high water and an hour later reached the lights source. There was a garden where the light was coming. But the garden didn’t belong to this stage. It was growing behind the door leading out of this stage. Surprisingly, the door which only appears at a stage’s end was already open.

“What about the Croc, what happened to her?” It didn’t take long for her question to be answered. She had only stopped for a second when a long and strong jaw caught her leg in its grasp and dragged her into the sewer water.

A few bubbles rose to the surface in behind her and the water became turbulent for a few moments before everything turned silent once again. As for Ria . . . she never came out of the water again.