(Book One Complete!) Friendly Neighbourhood Goblin (Mercenary Company LitRPG)

The fires dimmed to a deep red, like the glow of the Withered Forge. Cinders blew in the wind, and smoke plumed high above their vantage over the valley, obscuring the Lantern Bearer, wherever he was in the sea of stars.

Stump swayed in the heat, unbalanced by his short battle with the mountain bat.

Denna held him steady. "You've brought some of my friends," she said, kneeling before him. "Did they tell you what happened?"

On closer inspection she was only partially dressed for combat. A single greave and boot guarded her left leg, a shoulder pad hung loosely to her right side, and a sandal woven from twine and plant fiber was barely fitted to her other foot. Her skin was dark with dirt, and her hair was flat against her scalp in places and thick with knots in others.

She carried none of the regal finery of her royal station, and didn't seem to miss it.

"Boren told me about the goblin attack," he said, looking behind her to find The Stillwater Fellowship had returned with equally as many feral Iron Fleece soldiers, some of whom Stump vaguely recalled from their short stop at the manor. "The goblins, where are they? did they run?"

He took a step, but stumbled into Denna's thigh.

She placed a hand on his back. "Don't exert yourself. They fled, but we managed to slay nearly a dozen."

"Thrung…?" he said, and blinked away the dizziness. "Yeza… did you find her…?"

Before Denna could answer, she whipped around to a sudden cry cutting through the crackling din.

"Help!"

Dharmis was facedown near the smouldering fire where he had landed in the wake of the beast's flight. His arm was twisted awkwardly beneath him, his fingers curled in directions that shouldn't be possible.

Boren was on his knees, bloody from the waist down. "Medic! He needs a healer!" he called.

Tallas rushed over and helped roll the barely conscious lizardfolk onto his back. He gently tapped Dharmis' cheek, but received nothing more than pained murmurs.

"You're alright, you're alright," whispered the felari, though his quavering voice suggested it was as much a reassurance for himself as it was for Dharmis. "Durg's going to patch you up. Can't join our company in this state, can you? Durg!"

"I'm right 'ere," said the dwarf, dropping his packs at his feet. He rolled up his sleeves and held out his hand. "Water."

Amidst the gathering crowd of mercenaries The Stillwater Fellowship set to work as they had done for Faelan after the burning of his home. Stump lit their huddle with a lumen, Chappy Gum was prepared, and Dharmis' shredded gambeson was torn away to reveal the deep gashes running across his chest.

Durgish was the only one who didn't gasp. He operated with a grim steadiness, his fear only hinted at through glistening beads of sweat gathering on his forehead. The rest of it was hidden behind the practiced studiousness of his lowered brow, a mask Stump felt must have been common among those who so often found themselves in the company of the dying.

"Breathe steady, Dharm," whispered Boren, who bent by his friend's ear.

The lizardfolk gurgled. Tallas wiped away the blood.

"Chappy Gum," said Durgish, once the wounds were clean.

Hadder and Wick, standing at the ready with strips of leaf-studded bandages, stepped forward.

Durgish placed them carefully, ignoring the lizardfolk's feverish squirming, and flattened his palm. His lips moved around a prayer no one could hear, and flowing from his fingertips came the growl of a dead god. Light traced the outline of his hand. It surged in slow, bright pulses, each one followed by a sudden rise of Dharmis' chest.

At the end of it his body settled. Air escaped him in shallow, wheezing breaths.

Durgish wiped his forehead, then paused. His features darkened.

"Durg...?" Tallas ventured, his tone choked with dread.

The dwarf ignored him, and placed his hand on Dharmis' chest a second time. This time his prayer was loud enough to register fragments.

"Anima... waters o'... bloom..."

The light flared again. Dharmis shuddered, heaved, breathed deep, and when the magic subsided he remained motionless on the promontory.

"Dharm," pleaded Boren. He shook his friend by the shoulder. "Dharm, wake up."

"Damn it, lad," Durgish hissed, pressing both hands on the lizardfolk's chest. The next words he uttered were not so much a prayer as they were a command. "Anima, I as yer lowly servant ask for the waters o' yer virtue, for in the rot o' yer passin' may we bloom as stewards o' yer will. Anima, I as yer lowly servant ask for the..."

Around and around he went, gushing magical might in rhythmic waves, like the weatherbeaten shores of Seabrace. But like those waters it receded, and each flare was dimmer than the last, until nothing but a flicker lit the space between his fingers.

Somewhere in that desperation Dharmis took his last breath. His eyes opened to the sky, and would never close again.

Slowly they all went quiet. Whatever encouragements and affirmations had been spoken by the Iron Fleece ceased. Boren fell on his backside, shoulders slumped. Tallas squeezed his friend's cold hand.

Durgish was the only one who hadn't given up.

"Anima, I as yer lowly servant..." he continued, though his virtue was spent and Dharmis was as still as the stone beneath them.

"Durg," said Tallas. He rested a hand on the dwarf's wrist. "He's gone."

The dwarf swatted him away. "...For the waters o' yer virtue, for in the rot o' yer passin' may we bloom as stewards o' yer will..."

Stump dimmed his lumen until it vanished, leaving them aglow in nothing but the ruddy light of the smouldering woods. He approached and fell to a knee by the dwarf's side.

"I'm sorry," he said.

"Anima, I as yer lowly servant ask for..."

"You tried all you could, but it wasn't enough. I know what that feels like."

"...waters o'... waters o' yer virtue. For in the rot o' yer passin'..." The dwarf's voice cracked.

"Durg..."

"...may we bloom as stewards..." He whispered the rest of the prayer, then expelled a long exhale and closed his eyes.

Tenet Of Lumensa Fulfilled - Virtue +1 (5/11)

When Stump placed his hand atop Durgish's, the dwarf pulled away, tore the Chappy Gum off Dharmis, and tossed it to the burning woodland. He stood and turned without a word and stalked across the promontory.

Stump made to follow, but Hadder blocked the way, shaking his head.

"He doesn't like when his powers fail," he said. "It shows us how weak the magic of the gods has become, and that reminds him that they're all gone. Dead. That our world is no longer like it was."

Stump looked up to find the normally aloof half-smile of the Merchant buried beneath a sagely frown.

"You don't feel the same?" he asked.

Hadder shrugged. "Gods. No gods. Some have a need to look on days of old as more noble than our own. Something to return to. Durg's one of them. Can't say I share his sentiment, but I can't rightly say he's wrong, neither. All of us are trapped in the same well of time, with naught but stories left by those who came before. But stories are just that. Believe them if you like. Me? I go where the water flows. Got to think growin' up in the Mudflats does that to you."

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Durgish had come to a stop at the ledge, only a silhouette in the dark, and gazed beyond their perch. But it wasn't the stars he was consulting, Stump knew. It was the cave his eyes searched for, nestled somewhere in the shadowed valley below.

Hadder dropped his voice to a whisper, and added, "But I don't like seeing him upset. You end this tomorrow. For Dharmis, for Durg, for Denna, for your goblin friend, for yourself, whoever. No escape. No mercy. Come morning, you tear out this goblin bastard's heart."

"We lost eight in the attack," said Denna. She sat next to him, legs dangling off the promontory, eyes distant and stained with tears. "I thought we were the only ones who lived. I didn't know anyone escaped for Peaktree."

Drawing from his lessons with Kestrel, Stump searched her face for meaning—anger at her companions for abandoning her. Sadness at the loss of those who never had the choice. Relief wedged its way in there, carried on a faint undercurrent of pride in her own survival. All of it was blunted by Dharmis' death.

"I'm glad they managed to find safety, at least for a time," she said, then turned to him with glimmer of cautious hope. "I didn't see Pugg with you. Or Perrin, or Meena. Are they still there?"

His silence and lowered ears told her all she needed to know, but whatever tears she might've spared had already been spent.

He began with the battle, relaying the heroics of her friends and the traps they'd set for the horde. The desperation. The retreat and the infighting in the cellar and Wick's bravery in rallying them together again. He talked of his fight with Thrung, and fumbled as he recounted his time with Gold-Blooded.

She peppered his tale with pieces of her own. The ambush, the flight into the woods only half-dressed for battle, and the regrouping with her allies. The cave they found, with its wall drawings of figures with green skin and pointed ears—the home of one of the six tribes Thrung had burned into submission.

She talked of living in the woods beyond the shroud, and the beauty of clear nights and crisp, sunny mornings, and the horrors of the beasts that roamed. She'd put a focus point in Survival, which gave her an edge in the wilderness, and took the lead in fighting Thrung's army from the shadows.

"Why didn't you run?" he asked.

Several attempts at a reply died with a sigh or a shake of the head. Finally she shrugged and said, "You gave me a quest. I wanted to find your friend. I tried. I really did. We've been slowly dwindling their numbers, but up until your battle they seemed uncountable, and there were only five of us." Somewhere in their exchange she had slipped the Iron Fleece badge into her hand. Its blue glow was barely visible beyond the grime. "We could have avoided it all if Torrig hadn't rejected your offer."

"What do you mean?"

"Our attack in the woods. You would have known where to raise camp to avoid it. You might've seen it coming before it happened. We would have taken the battle to their cave and rescued your friend before Peaktree was ever assaulted. Torrig and his stupid prejudices. My father shares them. So do my brothers, but I never understood."

Stump stealthily unclipped his own badge and turned it over in his hands.

"I used to dream of meeting someone from your company, you know," he said. "A Knight. A real one, I mean. Someone brave and kind."

She scoffed. "And then you met Torrig."

"I was thinking of the time I met you."

His earnest tone gave her pause. She noticed the badge in his hands, and slowly her face softened as she took his meaning.

"My father would disown me," she said.

"We're almost copper, now. As our fourth member you would always have an important role in the company."

She considered it with a playful grin, but it vanished when she realized Stump wasn't smiling back.

"You're serious?" she said.

"You don't have to say yes now. Or at all, I mean. But... well, knights stand together, don't they?"

The ghost of a smile returned, but she suppressed it. She fidgeted with her own badge.

"A penny company. My father would..." she mused, but cut herself short. "You'd still need another member to advance to copper, and from what I hear very few penny companies dredge themselves out of the mire. Do you have any idea who your fifth could be?"

Stump wasn't sure why he didn't immediately answer. He adopted an expression of deep thought, but he already knew the name. Maybe saying it aloud would make it real. Tangible. And if it was breathed into the world, even in the presence of someone he trusted, it could be lost. So he held it to himself, and whispered it in the quiet of his mind.

Yeza.

And her name reminded him there was still more to do.

The stars had dimmed against the gradient of blue spilling over the horizon like a tipped pint, dotted with dark grey clouds like spots of foam. A strip of light bled over the hills in the distance, heralding the slow coming of the sun.

By first light, Thrung had said.

Stump excused himself. He passed Dharmis' body on the way to the woods, and Tallas and Boren who sat nearby, and Durgish who was already preparing the dead for travel back to Guttershine to be embalmed in peat. He stepped around the barbecued body of the mountain bat, and over slain goblins, and found a corner of the charred woods to slip the Sending Stone into his hand.

"Fire-Spitter."

There was a crackle. Hushed chatter sounded through. Thrung's tribe was nearby, perhaps listening.

"Ergul," the king hissed. His voice echoed off the walls of their cave. "It's nearly light. Have you run back to the lands of the tall men? Did you flee after the fighting? If not for that winged beast you would have found yourself in the afterworld, and soon Yeza would join you."

The boasting did little to rattle Stump. Thrung was saving face in front of his tribe, and that meant framing his own retreat as some kind of victory.

"You're right," Stump allowed. "If not for the mountain bat, things would have ended very differently."

Thrung snarled. "Go. Run back to the Shadowlands where you belong, coward. My army will grow again and I'll soon find you there."

Stump paused, surprised. It wasn't a threat, it was an offer. Terms of peace translated into the bluster of goblinspeak. Thrung wanted to break his own challenge of single combat, but to do so in front of the tribe would be akin to throwing his crown to the ground and crushing it beneath his heel.

He wants me to do it for him.

The goblin king had talked himself into a corner and was too stupid to talk his way back out. Dropping the veneer of respect, Stump breathed his promise into the stone, loud enough for the tribe to hear.

"You can run if you like, but I'm coming home. I'm coming for Yeza. I'm coming for your tribe, to free them from your tyranny. I'm coming for you, Thrung."

He didn't wait for a reply.

Stump slipped the stone into his pouch to the muffled curses of the goblin king and waddled back to the others on a comfortable wave of bloodlust.

They broke camp and hiked through the pre-dawn chill. Stump found himself at the head with Wick and Denna, guiding them through familiar woodland nooks while she scouted ahead and tracked hidden creatures with the abilities of her newfound Survival skill.

They met no resistance.

The cave was where it had always been, partway up a hill and angled slightly to the sky. But the surrounding land was unrecognizable. Flora had retreated down the hill like a rolled carpet, as if escaping a blight. Where there had once been ancient twisted trees were now carved pikes driven into the earth at deliberate points leading to the cavernous entrance. They were adorned with baubles Stump couldn't decipher from the tree line.

Morg's heavy breaths warmed the back of Stump's head.

"That's it?" said the dwarf.

"That's it," said Stump. He looked to Denna, who was crouched some feet ahead. She skittered over after searching the vicinity for traps.

"Should we coax them out?" she wondered.

"No. I'll go in."

"Alone?"

He nodded.

"You'd be fallin' right into his trap," Morg grumbled.

"He's right. Ambush is how they fight, Stump. You know this," she said.

"Not this time," Stump pressed. "Thrung challenged me personally. He's already failed to take Peaktree, and last night he failed to kill us. He needs to show strength now more than ever or risk losing the tribes he conquered. If I accept his challenge, but he doesn't, his reign is over."

There was a long pause before Morg replied. "But how're ye gonna win in a fair fight? Meanin' no offence, but he's got the magic o' flames behind him, and all ye got is light n' some fancy illusions."

Stump had an idea. The parts of it were all there—what he'd learned in Seabrace, what Kestrel had hinted at during their first conversation, and the very tenets of Lumensa—but piecing them together into a workable whole was another matter entirely. It sounded silly in his head, and he imagined it would sound even worse out loud.

"I'm not sure," he lied.

Before Denna or Morg could volley more reasons to take a different path, two goblins emerged from the cave. They stood barely outside, spears in hand, and scowled at the mercenaries lurking in the woods.

Stump stepped forward, but felt Denna's hand on his shoulder.

"You don't have to do this," she said. "If we fight them together they can't win."

"No. He still has Yeza, and if we do that he'll kill her."

He took another step, but was thwarted by a second hand.

"If yer certain," said Morg. He stepped around his goblin friend and held up the amulet. The stone shimmered with shards of sunlight. "At least allow me to give ye all I can."

Stump nodded, and the stone dimmed like a dying candle. The light fizzled through and buzzed around him. When it vanished, a familiar thought entered his mind.

Virtue +1 (6/11)

Morg released the amulet, now as mundane as any trinket. Before stepping out of the way, he said, "Don't waste it, ye hear? Oh, 'n if yer not standin' at the mouth o' that cave within the hour, I'm stormin' in 'n layin' waste to all 'em gobby's I find."

Stump took the promise with a smile, but it soon faded as he made his way up the slope and could see the abominations that decorated the pikes.

The first one stood crooked, surrounded by river smooth stones and fish bones. Moss wrapped around it like sheets of fungus, and dangling from its point was a wreath of six small skulls dipped in dark blue paint—the heads of the blue matrons.

Death, Stump heard as he navigated by. He winced at the thought.

Tangled vines of dungwort curled around the base of another, and a bed of mushrooms colonized cracks in the wood. The bony remains of the yellow matrons stared at him through eye sockets stuffed with dead flowers.

Death, the skulls repeated.

The word rang again as he passed the buzzing carcasses and animal skins of the red matrons, where they too sentenced him. Spiders scattered from cobwebs around the heads of the green matrons, and there were so many bones and tribal fragments dressing the next pike that it was impossible to tell them apart from what remained of the black.

Death, death, death, they told him.

It was more than a graveyard. It was a hall of trophies, a mockery of their traditions and beliefs. It was a warning to all other goblins, a display of power.

Before he could wonder where the bones of the white matrons were, the goblins at the mouth of the cave circled him on approach and urged him inside with the point of their weapons.

He was afraid. Terrified. Nothing more than he had been on the day of his trial. All he'd learned, everything he'd accomplished, all the challenges he'd overcome slipped away as he ducked into his home and breathed the cool rush of cavernous wind.

The shadows swallowed Stump whole.

Death.