“Did we get the butta churn?”

Spoon’s question hit me a little differently after spending the last 10 minutes crying for her to come back. Because in my sheer panic, I forgot about the butta churn!

But Dagger merely points at the chimney, and I see the small round barrel with its strange lid lying innocently by the billowing smoke. The butta churn.

I have half a mind to toss it back down the chimney for all the trouble that thing caused us. But—

We goblins gotta steal something from the humans! The only problem is we never got the notification that the theft was successful. A fact that dawns on me, even though the inside of my brain is slightly mushy from the psychic damage. Thinking too hard hurts. And even thinking about why starts the beginning of another headache. So I take what’s going on in stride.

“We gotta get out of here,” I decide, having had enough of the human city.

Spoon and Dagger nod enthusiastically in agreement. The Rock Party will escape the humans and take the loot back to Mt. Gabo! It is one thing for a goblin to enter a human city, but it is entirely different to make it back. Many Goblin generations have passed since that happened!

I can already see myself coming back to the tribe, a new high-level goblin, an entire Level 4! And with loot! Elder Bones will be proud of me! Exile would have been worth it! Maybe we will be invited back!

I want to shout. To laugh maniacally. We’ve almost done it. Only one, no two, gates, and we’re free!

Except… we almost died the last time we tried to pass through the gates. It was dark. And Yeezsus sent zombies to help us (thank you, Yeezus, by the way!) The sun is still shining bright in the sky, and our short legs will take maybe one or two hours to get to the gate. Oh-

I wander over to the roof’s edge, to the sound of human activity I was ignoring before, and see something that nearly stops my heart.

HUMANS! So many humans! And Elves, dwarves, and lizardmen? Oh. My. God. They clog the streets with their bodies, and their voices would be deafening if we weren’t so high up. Each one having a conversation with another, some calm, but others heated. Larger humans, clad in armor, walk the streets and bonk the unruly and the fighty small ones. And the shouts of other humans saying “Buy stuff here!” or “SHOP OPEN” pierce through the noise.

Their clothes, both obnoxiously rich and others similar to what I’m wearing, mix and flow together in a weird tapestry of non-Goblin big people. The civilized world, Elder Bones would say. And my heart sinks, knowing what would happen if three goblins carrying a butter churn tried to mix in that crowd…

In the darkness of night, three goblins running around empty-handed seemed un-strange, but in that crowd? With loot? Not hidden, not sneaky, we will be noticed, will be seen, they will know we are green.

Suddenly the black smoke of the chimney didn’t seem so bad of an end.

I need a plan.

“That’s a lot of humans,” Spoon says with amazement.

“And Elves too. Stupid Elves.”

I look at Rock and shudder, sharing a memory of the one and only raid we did together that involved the Elven race. We don’t live by the Elves (at least my tribe doesn’t), and a journey to a proper Elf settlement would be too far for even the most ambitious goblins. Elves, especially on their own, aren’t known for being especially vicious or cruel compared to humans. Or for keeping dangerous hell-beasts as pets. So when our scouts reported a group of Elves meandering below Mount Gabo, we had to act…

What happened next was particularly embarrassing. We choose the cover of darkness to sneak down and ambush the Elves, hoping to dull their senses! A great plan. A magnificent plan. Until my cousin named Splint took an arrow to the knee. She did live, mostly because she insisted on wearing a wooden splint at all times on a different body part, like her elbow, her back, the side of her head, and the arrow only destroyed her namesake, not her (the splint was on her knee you see).

Unfortunately, the same can’t be said about anyone else in her raiding party. Arrows to the head, the chest, some took a nice one to the gut. 15 goblins died in 10 seconds with only the tall grass as cover. Dagger and I hid behind a lucky log, lucky because we could hide behind it, as we heard the whizz of elven arrows flying through the night sky, followed by the screams of goblin raiders being cut down in surprise.

Dumb Elves.

If they can spot goblins in the dead of night beneath the tall grass, they could definitely spot us. Even if they’re not the violent type, they’ll sound the alarm, and the humans will do the rest….

“We could take the alleys?”

I look at Dagger whose eyes are focused on the crowd, particularly the Elves, and nod in agreement.

“There are humans down there too. Small humans,” Spoon says from the other side of the roof.

I wander over to her, see what she saw, and realize that we may be trapped. The humans down there, small, yes, but also… rough looking? As if the small shadows of the alleys are naturally their home. They stalk and wait, eyes on the crowd, sharp and impatient. And hungry.

I don’t like those eyes, especially from humans whose skin seems pale or even slightly yellow in the half-light of the alleyways. Worse, if I stare long enough, not at the faces, but at the various pathways behind the rough-looking humans, I see more of these hungry humans, their bulk half-hidden by shadows but there. I gulp.

“I think we’re stuck.”