He braced himself against a ruined bedframe and slowly rose.

The room was a shambles, covered in mud and blood and something sticky.

Somehow, it just didn’t feel right. But why? He cocked his head, mystified, but it came to him immediately:

This was no longer his house. This house was no longer his home.

He sought out the treasure chest hidden beneath the bed. The lid was smashed and someone had rifled through the contents. It had contained the pretty stones he’d found while playing with the girl next door, some pressed dry flowers, and a stick that was the perfect size to be a sword.

Now all of it was destroyed, stolen, lost.

Fishing through the box, he thought he had grabbed hold of his father’s dagger. It was a memento of his, with a hawk’s-head hilt, entrusted to the boy by his sister.

But all he could find was the dagger’s scabbard, and he tossed it back into the box.

When he went to leave the house, he felt something through the bottom of his shoe.

It was his sister’s purse. It was just a plain leather pouch, but it was sewn with a flower pattern. He took it in hand and heard the faint jangling of coins inside.

He tugged on the string and then hung the purse around his neck, tucking it inside his shirt. He made sure to close the purse tightly so that it would make no sound.

Slowly, he peeked out the door, making certain that they weren’t around, and then went outside.

The sky was a gruesome reddish black. Was it morning or evening? He couldn’t tell.

His shadow stretched out, and he stuck close to the wall of the house to conceal it, as if he were playing a game of shadow stepping. Eventually, he made it far enough along the wall to get a glimpse of the house next door. Not that he needed to look.

Hanging from the branch of a tree in their yard, where there had once been a swing he liked to swing on, were the bodies of the husband and wife who had lived there.

Other than his sister, it was the one thing he had been able to see in the past three days.

He hardly felt anything about it, though, as they no longer looked human to him.

What about her, I wonder?

He struggled with whether to look for her but soon realized it was a question he didn’t need to answer. If she had come back, it would have been by carriage, and the wreck should be around somewhere. If there was no carriage, it meant none had arrived.

It meant everyone knew this village had been attacked by goblins. Everyone knew, and no one had come.

He could hear excited voices in the distance. The crackling of a campfire. The sounds of cooking.

He clenched his fist and bit his lip, but no matter how hard he dug his nails into his hands, no matter how hard he bit down, he couldn’t make them bleed; it was so terribly frustrating.

If they had known he was standing here now, thinking these thoughts, they would only have laughed at him. That was all there was to it. By the time they attacked the next village, they would already have forgotten about him.

I should get out on the town road.

He had never been to town. He had no idea how far it might be or whether it was even possible to walk there.

But it felt like his only choice.

Then, suddenly, his knees buckled, and he stumbled. It seemed he didn’t have the strength to stand.

But I must…go forward…

He began to crawl along the ground, forcing his body to move toward the road. His elbows and knees got scraped raw, but he ignored them and kept moving.

He crawled single-mindedly down pathways, through bushes, past places he had been running happily around until just days earlier. He ignored the useless thoughts that bubbled unbidden into his mind; he focused on keeping his arms and legs moving.

A long time passed.

His surroundings gradually grew dark, which meant that perhaps the red sky earlier had been twilight. He didn’t bother to look up from the mud, even as stars came out overhead and the twin moons began to shine above him.

Soon, he would be at the fence that marked the border of the village. The one he and that girl had once snuck up to, only to be roundly scolded by his sister. If he could get past that fence, he would be outside.

It would be the first time he had ever left his village, and it would be because his village had been destroyed by goblins.

“GROBB…!”

“GOOBRRB! GRO!”

But it seemed things would not be so simple.

There they were.

They weren’t that much taller than he was, as if they were just some brats from a neighboring village. But they were far, far more terrible.

He knew because he had seen every minute of what they’d done.

He knew why these creatures, normally reputed to dress in rags, had fresh, new outfits this evening.

They were standing listlessly around the fence, spears in hand. Even the boy could tell they were guards. He had seen the adults in his village trading off the watch at the village gate, so he knew what a guard was.

Were there other paths that led out of the village? He tried to think, but his mind was hazy, and it was difficult. There were a few side streets he had discovered while playing, but he couldn’t imagine the goblins hadn’t found them as well.

He breathed as quietly as possible, trying to stay hidden, but suddenly, a pair of the little burning pupils turned in his direction.

He sees me.

The boy learned then that goblins could see in the dark, although the knowledge came too late to help him.

He grabbed a stone in his right hand and stood. He threw the stone. It might have been nighttime, but he had the light of the moons and the stars. The rock whistled through the air in an arc.

“GOBORR?!”

The goblin screamed, accompanied by a wet crunching sound. He tumbled to the ground, writhing, blood streaming from his nose. He clutched his hands to his face and made a sort of panicked whine.

Forcing his shaking legs to move, the boy picked up another rock and started running.

“GOOBRBRRB!”

The remaining goblin had been laughing at his companion’s misfortune, gesturing at him with his spear.

The boy knew he wouldn’t make it in time, but he didn’t care.

Now the other goblin, gibbering with rage, picked up his spear.

Die, you filthy monster, the boy thought. He gripped the stone as hard as he could.

The rusty spear tip rushed at him. It was clear to him that this would be the end. The only real question was whether the end would come here, immediately, or over the next several days…

“I see now.”

At that moment, there was a gust of cold wind from the west, such as the kind that blows at night.

He didn’t understand what had happened; he only registered a whistling, like a flute. Then the heads of the goblins in front of him went flying, and the sound changed to spurting blood.

He used his sleeve to wipe away the dark blood that splattered on his face. His older sister was no longer there to scold him for bad manners.

“The boy’s got nerve, if nothin’ else.”

At that moment, he thought he saw a hideous, wrinkled old rhea.

But no sooner had he registered the sight than a dull, heavy pain lanced through his head, and his darkness overcame his consciousness.

It was not until he came to that he realized he must have been knocked out.

And the end hasn’t come yet.

*

Another village destroyed by goblins.

It would never be anything more than another number in another report furnished to the king, who would never so much as know the village’s name.

Perhaps not even the gods knew what the village was called…

Interlude

Of Something Typical That Becomes the Seed of an Adventure

The sharp sound of metal echoes through the tunnel today, as it does every day.

Down and down they go, deeper and deeper into the ground, seeking the metal they desire.

Human and dwarf miners, diggers of all races, break the rocks with pickaxes, tunneling deeper below the mountain.

Treasure is what they seek: gold and silver and jewels sleeping beneath the earth. It’s not so farfetched to imagine they could become rich as lords overnight.

“Just about makes me feel like an adventurer,” someone jokes, and the men all laugh boisterously.

“Hope we don’t see no monsters down here.”

“It ain’t monsters who live this far down. Be more worried about Dark Gods and the like.”

Another chorus of laughter. They can’t forget the battle five years earlier; the best they can do is laugh it off.

What is life but an accumulation of days, after all? And can you really call it living if you don’t enjoy those days?

Maybe you didn’t find anything yesterday, but there’s always today. If today doesn’t work out, there’s tomorrow. And then the day after that.

The men knew well that the discovery of a vein of gold demands an accumulation of days.

Furthermore, finding gold is not the end of the matter. Next comes the digging. The delightful work of digging out the gold awaits you.

The miners have no time for gloom; in a way, they bear a burden of their own.

Think about it: without them, the nobles’ sparkling jewelry or the coins that change hands in the marketplace wouldn’t exist.

We are the ones who support the kingdom. It’s an encouraging thought in even the most grueling of endeavors.