"Okay," said Ken as he reached out for Thejn's hand. When the handshake ended, Ken's hand was smeared with blood. Thejn was covered head to toe in blood, both his own viscous bright red and the goblins' thin dark red.
"Did you also take this job?" Ken asked as he made his way to a goblin's corpse.
"Job? What job do you speak of?" Thejn asked.
"The one that was requested of the Guild. Are you not an adve-"
Thejn's eyebrows raised considerably.
"Somebody issued a quest? For here?" He seemed to be in disbelief.
"But nobody in our village has the money to hire the Guild," Thejn said to himself.
"There's a village here?" Said Ken, who had stopped looting only to question Thejn.
"Of course, sir. I have lived there my whole life, and as such, I am here to eliminate the goblin threat." Thejn responded, full of pride.
"Some eliminating you were doing. How did you end up so badly wounded?"
"A beast."
"A beast?"
"Aye, sir. Had you been three, no, two minutes earlier, you would have caught sight of my paltry duel with it. It's the reason I came here alone, no other man in my village has the backbone to even come near it."
"Just tell me what it is." Ken requested, impatient.
"A hobgoblin, black as night. We call him Trow."
Ken shot up.
"Black hobgoblin? Shit, we need to hurry this up then." He muttered.
Ken looked over the loot on the ground. Three swords the length of a woman's arm, two makeshift spears, some leather that the goblins adorned themselves in, a handful of metal trinkets, and plenty of rocks. Of course, Ken considered the corpses a material as well, since they housed plenty of flammable fat and could be used as bait.
"You said you wanted to serve me, right?" Ken asked.
"Of course, you have my life, sir."
"Okay, good. My first order is to stop calling me sir. My second is, being as quiet as possible, move these bodies close to the nest. We'll need them."
Thejn shot Ken a confused look.
"Pardon my rudeness, but what do these bodies have to do with killing the rest?"
"Don't ask questions, just do it. We may not have much time."
"Yes, sir."
As Thejn begrudgingly got to work, Ken slipped the cleanest sword into his belt, gathered a spear in his hand, and left the rest of the loot on the ground. He walked towards the small, abandoned mining outpost at the base of the cliff. It was made up of only a couple dozen semi-collapsed thatch-roofed buildings that looked to be many years old.
Ken searched the buildings looking for the materials he needed. First, he gathered the moldy firewood that the inhabitants had left when they moved out. Arms full of firewood, he walked to where Thejn had dragged the corpses of the goblins.
"Help me with this. Gather all the thatch and straw you can." Ken said to Thejn, who was watching the mine entrance.
After ten minutes, they had piles of firewood, straw, thatch, some charcoal, and even some loose support pillars from one of the sunken buildings. With another ten minutes of manual labor, the material was packed a meter deep into the small entrance to the mine. Ken was planning to smoke the goblins out.
"Thejn, when did goblins settle into this mineshaft? The Guild told me it was two weeks ago."
"They'd be right, sir."
"Then they didn't have the time to dig out an exit tunnel, right?" Ken asked.
Technically, it wasn't in the job description to worry about any escapees, but he couldn't help but feel that if they weren't all dead that he had failed his mission.
"No, they should be trapped once the fire starts. If they aren't, I'd be able to finish them off, even in my current state."
Thejn was still low on blood and missing muscle tissue, but the poultices and elixir he carried had magically clotted his wounds within minutes.
"Alright then," Ken said, getting on his knees.
He used his knife to cut off scraps of fat from around the goblin's abdomen. They were naturally greasy creatures, and Ken figured that hay soaked in goblin fat would be set alight at even the smallest spark.
He wrapped the fat in cloth salvaged from the buildings and squeezed it as hard as he could over the thatch and hay. After it was essentially soaked, he threw the fat onto the woodpile and used the flint of his spear and his knife to throw sparks in the general direction of the hay.
It had been two minutes since he had started throwing sparks, and his arms were exceptionally tired.
"Maybe the outpost has a proper flint and steel, sir. Do you want me to-" Thejn started to say but was cut off by the slight roaring of flames.
The fat had finally caught, and it wasn't planning on stopping. Ken blew at the hay and placed kindling on top of the pile.
After two minutes, Ken and Thejn were feeding the mouth of the mine more and more firewood. Smoke billowed out of the front of the mineshaft but much more forced itself inside. The bestial flames lapped the supports of the mine, seemingly waiting to gorge itself on the large morsels of wood.
The howls of goblins were very audible, but their fear of the flames kept them from getting close to the entrance. One howl, in particular, stuck out to Ken, and he imagined that Trow would no longer pose a threat.
Just about when the howls seemed like they'd never seem to fade, they disappeared without a trace. No great, final howl, no last-resort attempt to put the fire out. Just silence. Ken was ecstatic, and for just a split-second, Ken found it odd that the death of dozens of living creatures gave him such satisfaction. He brushed away the idea without a second thought.
After the howls subsided, Ken and Thejn stopped feeding the fire and let it die. They knew they'd be there for a while until it was just coals, so they conversed to pass the time.