Garrick Franticly runs through the mud in the darkness, slipping and losing purchase, using his hands to keep himself upright.
"This fucking village is worse than the wilderness." Garrick thinks to himself. "Less peaceful and more aggravating." He swiftly returned to the ivory Duchess, barrelling through the front door like a bat out of hell. Once inside, the gnome's body is missing, a pool of blood left in their place, soaking into the wood as Krovar, the barkeep, is kneeling with a sponge and bucket, cleaning up what blood he can.
"Krovar, I need a tracker asap!" Jittery and restlessly asked.
Krovar sees how on edge Garrick is.
"A hunter has been staying here a while. Kyra is her name, But she only tracks animals, not goblins." Krovar replies, worried at his current demeanour. "Are you okay?"
"They ARE animals; where is she staying?" Ignoring Krovar's question but not intentionally, he's too focused on this singular task to think or process anything else.
Krovar points over toward the rooms at the back of the inn.
"In room four over there. She's quite a-" Not finishing the sentence before Garrick charges towards the door.
He pounds his fist on the door loudly.
...Silence….
He pounds against the door again, almost breaking it off its hinges.
The door swings open moments before he is about to do it again. An Elf is standing on the other end of the doorway. Pale white skin, piercing green eyes, long red hair, as red as the Redwood forest leaves themselves, tied together with thin leather strips, with a few strands of the hair on either end of her face.
"What the fuck do you want?" asked sharply and angrily.
The demeanour does not match the appearance. Garrick ignores this, again most likely not processing it properly.
"Are you a tracker? I need someone to track those goblins and find out where they went."
Kyra just stares for a second, dumbfounded, before laughing.
"Are you suicidal? No fucking chance. Find another idiot to do it." She tries to close the door, but Garrick's boot blocks it.
"PLEASE!" He Shouts at Kyra. "They took a friend of mine, and I need help getting him back! I can't track them; the longer time goes, the more likely they'll die!" Garrick's throat is hoarse, fighting back emotions, trying to remain in some form of control, albeit as difficult as it is.
"You won't be able to save him 'cause you'll be DEAD, understand now, idiot?" Kyra was bored of Garrick's presence.
"I refuse to let him die like that. Once scared and worried, his eyes showed a certain level of focus and steel. "Worst comes to worst; If I can't save him, I'll give him a quick death to stop those evil bastards from whatever they have planned."
"Good luck with that, then. Now move your boots from my door, or we're gonna have a problem." She agitatedly says what she would consider patience and courtesy has long gone.
"There's a quest out to exterminate them! You get me to their hideout, and I'll do the rest. You can sit back and collect the reward, all of it; I don't give a fuck. I can't have him die like that!"
Kyra doesn't respond for what feels like forever to Garrick. Then she opens her mouth.
"Okay. I'll track them to their hideout, but I refuse to go in." She sternly says." And I get ALL the reward money."
"Deal!" Garrick speedily replies, with no time to waste. "We're already half an hour behind them."
"Meet me outside; I need to grab my gear," She says, unphased by Garrick's plea.
Agitated but reluctant to annoy his only hope of saving Meetlemire, he nods and returns outside.
Too impatient to wait, he paces in the mud, but Kyra meets up just a minute later.
"They went northeast. That's the direction I seen them running to." Garrick says.
"Then we start our search there then. I move fast, so you better keep up." Barely finishing the sentence, she starts running northeast, gliding on top of the mud, hardly being slowed down. On the other hand, Garrick trudges through it, his legs burning from the hardship of moving through the dense ground, trying to keep up. Making it to the treeline in a few minutes, Kyra halts and looks around, taking everything she can to assess where they went.
"Which...way...?" Garrick struggled to speak, desperately trying to catch his breath.
"North from here. Tracks are barely visible, but the stench of these fucks linger for a while." Kyra holding her nose and spitting on the ground.
"I...don't smell...a thing." Garrick, Still panting, hunched over, hands on knees.
"Count yourself lucky. Let's move." She says to him.
Quick as a whistle, they set off again. Through thick trees and vegetation, Kyra makes it look easy, effortlessly dodging in and out of them. While doing well, Garrick looks like an amateur having to slow down and push off the trees to stop himself from crashing into them occasionally.
Again, she stops suddenly. Breathing calm and controlled. Garrick is ten seconds behind but catches up, sweat dripping from his face, coughing and wheezing heavily.
"We go slow now; we're close. Control that breathing, or I'm gone." She says snarkily.
"...sorry…." All Garrick can muster from his burning lungs.
He takes a deep, quiet breath, exhales and nods to Kyra, signalling he's good to go. They slink their way carefully through the forest, noticing markings on the trees. Unintelligible to them but most likely understood by goblins.
Rain droplets begin to fall to the ground, lightly at first, then heavier and heavier. The rain obscured their vision, silencing the noise of the forest.
"Follow my steps as we go."
Garrick intently focuses on her voice as the rain tries to silence everything.
Slowly through the forest, they go, taking more time in this slight stretch than the rest combined. Garrick is restless but focused, itching to get to Meetlemire and kill the goblins.
After a while, they reach an opening in the forest with a cave entrance roughly fifty metres from their position, with three goblins standing guard—two at the cave entrance and one in a makeshift tower.
"This is where the trail leads; if they took your friend, he'd be there. But I've done my job; this is as far as I go." Kyra says.
"Thanks for your help. I appreciate it." Garrick nods to Kyra.
He moves into what cover he can find to obscure his approach to the entrance, behind bushes and sticking to the darkness, the rain playing a significant factor in his success. A quiet draw of his blade as he is less than ten feet away. The goblins speak with each other, unaware of his presence. Nowhere left to hide his movement, Garrick moves into the open and slowly walks closer, only a few feet away. Just as one goblin spots him and lets out a shriek to alert the others, it is immediately
silenced by Garrick, with a swift swing with his sword, decapitating it in one go, but not before following his swing through and catching the other in the neck. It lays on the ground, gargling blood and writhing around, any noise being silenced by the rain.
It can't all go smoothly, though, as the tower goblin walks over and peers over the wall, seeing the aftermath below. An arrow as quick as the wind flies into the goblin's eye and through the back of its skull, followed by another in its chest. The goblin collapses over the wall and plummets to the ground with an audible crunch and thud. Kyra, bow in hand.
"Idiot, pay attention," She thinks to herself.
Garrick looks back toward Kyra's location before finally heading into the cave.
"He is definitely dead." Nonchalantly said, Kyra.
End Chapter