It wasn’t my brightest idea heading out after having crafted all morning, but it was something that I needed. My days had been rough emotionally and now mentally. So I needed the break of heading out.

I was better armed than before, having the short sword strapped to my side. My armor was also better, even if all of it wasn’t magical. Unfortunately, I only had a few arrows, so I left the bow until I could figure out a way to improve it or make more arrows.

We scouted down slowly to the ascent. Nothing appeared to be out of place. It was nice knowing that the goblins hadn’t been this far.

When we got to the battle site, I slowed down even more. If there was going to be a place where I got jumped, it would be here. This location was a natural chokepoint, so I expected to encounter someone here.

When we didn’t, I was also pleased. Blink led the way because she cheats. While she was now as heavy as a full-grown Labrador, she was lower to the ground, had better claws, and could climb almost anything.

So when I climbed down and then back up, she just went across the half-inch ledge and looked at me like I was slow and stupid. I might be both.

It wasn’t long before I found the tracks of the goblins that I had fought heading downriver along the ridge path. They had done nothing to conceal them as they moved.

What made me somewhat nervous was that I didn’t see any fresh tracks. I was hoping to have seen new tracks following the old ones until they turned back. But, sadly, I wasn’t seeing any search party following them.

I might have gotten my hopes up about killing all of them, except I saw the smoke again today on my hike. This meant they either hadn’t sent a search or didn’t care.

I wasn’t sure which was worse. If they hadn’t sent one, that meant that they could still find my home. But, on the other hand, if they didn’t care, then it might mean that there were so many of them that the party I killed didn’t matter.

I only had a few hours left in the day, so Blink and I headed down, staying on rocks and hard-packed dirt. I wanted to get as close as I could without them finding me.

I still hadn’t found their home, and it would be nice if I knew where that was. If nothing else, I could figure a way to get around them and keep going downriver. I would just use the side of the river that I started on to head down, but other than wading, I haded found a crossing.

I headed down to where I had seen the fight before. I wanted to see if the bodies had ever been moved. When I got there, it looked just like when I had first seen it, except that the bodies had all been eaten. The weapons still were scattered, and what little they had outside the short spears were also there.

As I searched through the bodies, I found that a few carried little baubles and bits of ore. Nothing much and no way for me to tell if there was any worth to any of it, but I took it because I didn’t know if I could use it somehow.

If I had been smarter, I would have turned around. However, I was dealing with a slow burn anger at this point. I felt like I just let everything in the world happen to me and that I wasn’t taking enough agency in my life.

So, I pushed on.

Following the path was easy. The troop of monsters hadn’t tried to hide their passage at all. No, they trampled the ground as they moved, leaving a mess everywhere.

After fighting them, I kind of expected this. They were with the truest sense of the word savage. While they were tool users, they were also dumb as a truckload of crayon eaters and just as mean.

We pushed on down the path. Blink was never in sight as we moved. She was always moving around me but beside the trail and not on it. I only knew where she was because of the bond and the occasional times that I would see a branch sway for no reason.

I was nervous as we pushed on as this was farther than I had ever been. It was another hour or two when I saw that the path was headed directly towards a smaller waterfall. It looked like this was perhaps for the tributary that I had crossed on my way up.

The waterfall was nothing much. I guess it would have been pretty or pleasant if I hadn’t been living at a bigger one and if I hadn’t been worried about the little green buggers that were crawling all over the place.

This was their camp or perhaps a camp. It wasn’t much to look at; there were three huts, each just a little bigger than my lean-to. There was one fire at the camp which looked to be about the size of a cooking fire, and I didn’t see any place for others.

The lack of cooking fires worried me. This place didn’t look new, so I figured they hadn’t just moved here. However, what it did mean was that there were other camps since I saw at least four smoke plumes. If I engaged them here, then they would have the home turf advantage and would have other places to get back up from.

I felt Blink nuzzle up to me as I crouched down, watching the camp.

“Well, girl, we know where at least some of them are.”

She bumped her head on my leg and then looked off to the right. I took a look that way to see that a boar riding version of the goblin was coming down another trail. With him were several people tied up and dragged along behind the boar.

It took me a few moments to see how many humans were there. They kept falling down and getting hit by the gremlins, and the goblins were taking their own fun with them. As I watched, I counted 6 people; all of them were thin and looked worn out, like they had been marched for days before they got here.

I wanted to run down into the camp and fight and rescue all the people. The problem was I knew that I would lose that fight. Perhaps not at first, but soon I would. There were around forty of the little gremlins and at least a half dozen goblins, along with three boars.

Even at my best, I didn’t think that I would be able to fight forty-six of these guys. That didn’t even take into account the ones from the other camps around here. I was sure that if I attacked, they would raise the alarm, and I would be facing 4 or 5 times these numbers.

I might could pick a few of them off and fade back into the forest, but I wasn’t sure how well they could track. Everything I knew of them was from my dreams and from the fights with them. I had never seen them out of combat.

I watched as they moved the people into a pen on the near side of the camp. The people were about 100 yards from me, and if I could run down there and free them, I would do it. So I watched to see what was going to happen.

Then I saw runners leave camp in three different directions. Blink vanished on me about that time and started to move around the village. It was as if she was scoping out a place that she was going to hit later on. I knew that I was.

I didn’t want to move too much because I wasn’t wanting them to see me and come after me. So I just watched to see what would happen. The cooking fire was getting a lot of attention, and the prisoners weren’t.

The pen they were in was only a few feet tall. I could leap it if I needed to, but I was sure that the people would be stuck on the inside. They were all hobbled, looked weak, and had gotten the crap beat out of them when they got to the camp.

Before long, more of the little guys started to show up. They were coming out of the woods from the directions that the runners had gone. There were three groups that showed up; each had a goblin and a handful of the gremlins. First, the goblins went over to where the head goblin at this camp was and bowed, then they went with him over to the pen with the people.

The head goblin pointed into the pen, and one of the new goblins went in and grabbed the biggest person. He held their arm and squeezed it a few times, grunted, laughed, and then started to drag the person out with the rope around their neck. The guy being dragged just sat down, and the goblin bounced on the end of the rope like a cartoon.

That made the goblin mad, who turned, jumped on the person, and bit his throat. I watched as blood poured out, and the green monster went over to another person. As it reached for the rope around the head goblin yelled something and pointed at the dead body.

There was some yelling back and forth before the little guys came in and pulled the dead guy out. They took him over to the boars, strapped him on, and started to head out. As that was happening, one of the others went in and grabbed the lead going to a thin lady who had problems keeping up with the four-foot-tall monster. He would yank the leash, and she would stagger forward. It was easy to see that she wasn’t doing well.

The last to pick was the one that came from the closest path to me. He went in and poked around a little and found another girl that he liked and started to pull her out to the group. The head leader was laughing and slapping everyone on the back as they left the camp.

I could feel that Blink was following the ones that left last, and that was the way that I went as well. I fell back into the woods and then cut over towards the direction I saw them go. Even if this was a war, the way that they just killed their prisoner by biting his throat out was too much. I might not be able to get everyone out, but I might could rescue the girl.

I shadowed them for a few minutes until the sound of the camp was lost to the forest. Then I started to move closer to them. It would be good for me to see what was going on so that I would know how best I could help.