The warlord and knights looked at each other confounded, shrugged and watched the fight.

Krigga inched over, pointing to the fresh corpse, "Gonna finish that?"

Grinless scratched and headbutted the dwarf. Goobdwib threw jabs. The goblin dodged nimbly and kicked for the crotch. His foot met a hard under-codpiece; he cursed and hopped about. Goobdwib barked, "Ha!" and put the goblin in a headlock. Grinless hissed and bit like a mad cat, squirming out and crawling over the dwarf. Then Grinless had the dwarf in a headlock, held largely by all his beard and hair. He had him good and tight, until beard hair tickled his pointy goblin nose. He snorted, "Ah, ah, ah...WHICHEW!" and projectile sneezed clear across the room.

The snot trail was a good 10-15 ft, but dead center of the mucus blast was the Warlord. In particular, his eyes, where now lodged old desiccated stink bug bits lost from Grinless' collection long ago, forming an impossibly gluey mess right over the Warlord's enchanted eyes.

Everyone stopped and stared.

The Warlord shouted, "Great Abyss, get this mess off me!" The knights scrambled to clean him up, but it wasn't looking good. Sniffing a green drip, Grinless saw signs of trouble and slinked off to retrieve their travel packs.

Unable to clean out or open his eyes, the Warlord demanded they remove the amulet. Its energies began to build up, the demon spirits aching for release. The amulet was caught on the Warlord's intricate helmet he insisted on wearing all the time, because it made him look intimidating, which one Knight forgot to unbuckle properly. The Warlord's howls mingled with the demon cries.

Goobdwib and Krigga finally got the hint and scooted after the already fleeing Grinless. They reached the surface just as the Warlord exploded with dark knight bits and demonic ectoplasm. The group left the castle as it shuddered dangerously.

As it collapsed in a ruin of spent magicks and dust, another figure came running out. It was a lithe elf dressed in flowing, earth-colored robes. "Well met! I'm Fernfrick, and thou saved my life. For that, I'm forever indebted to you..."

Grinless groaned and ran faster from his group of insane followers.

Sometime later the group was camped out in their usual arrangement: Grinless alone in his ragged, smelly tent some distance from the others; Krigga with his upside-down tent (for catching the rain); Goobdwib with his sturdy, squat, square tent; and Fernfrick with his willowy animal-hide-free tent. Krigga and Goobdwib had learned not to bother their reluctant leader so much until on the road at least, but Fernfrick kept tidying and sprucing up Grinless' tent with nice smelling flower garlands.

Grinless of course hated this, would curse and tear apart and throw out the flowers, hastily re-dirtying his things. Grinless also yelled at Goobdwib for cleaning and polishing his sword and shield—just when he'd gotten it greasy and ashy to his satisfaction with all his favorite flavors. Goobdwib accepted this affectionately, but protested, "That be no way to take care of arms!"

Grinless snapped back, "Not arms and not yours; mine things! Hands off, you and elf!"

At this the dwarf and elf would glare at each other with the age-old racial antipathy. Goobdwib thought the elf too feminine, too focused on growing and picking flowers, too nice smelling, had annoying long-flowing robes, and his refusal to commit violence was cowardly.

Fernfrick abhorred the dwarf's coarseness, ignorance, impatience, and penchant for easy, violent solutions.

But most of all what set them against each other was the competition for loyalty to Grinless. They would fight to prove who was more committed to Grinless' cause, rushing to serve and assist him until they were tripping over each other, while Grinless just wanted to get away.

This morning, after the dwarf and elf fought to serve Grinless breakfast and he'd yelled at them for messing with his stuff, Krigga stumbled into them rubbing his cloudy eyes. "Grinless, boss-buddy, eyes feel bad-worse and squirmy. Sure they OK?"

Grinless glanced at the snaggle-tooth goblin, his large eyes covered with milky film, small white forms moving in the corners. Grinless looked closer and picked one up, Krigga flinching. "Hmm, maggots," commented Grinless.

"Is good?" asked Krigga, eyes tearing up.

Grinless popped one in his mouth and smacked away. "Hmm, pretty good. Grow more maggots, be fine. Keep up good work."

Krigga gave a pained smile and nodded, brushing eye-maggots into the corners.

For once dwarf and elf shared something—a shudder and look of disgust. One thing they agreed on: goblins were weird.