Lucius sat down beside the corpse of the slain beast, greedily swallowing deep gulps of air as he calmed his frantic nerves. The whole experience had been a terrifying blur of danger and violence, and it had all happened too fast. Now that it was over, he allowed himself a few moments for his mind to process. It would be fine to wait here for the others to arrive, then they could decide whether to continue the journey. That's what he thought would happen, anyway. Instead, Lucius' rest was quickly cut short by distant screaming. It sounded like... his own name? Lucius' eyes shot open in realization as he leapt to his feet. The voice was Mary's, he was sure of it, she was screaming for help. Something was wrong.
Darting forward, he retraced his steps back along the path towards the others. It only took him a fraction of the time to travel back—that was the benefit of throwing caution to the wind. Unleashing the full power of his body felt good, and he couldn't help but smile as he weaved past one obstacle after another, thrilled by the feeling of moving with such speed and grace. Less than a minute passed before he began to see Mary's figure off in the distance. She was running toward him, wearing a tortured combination of panic and tears on her face.
"LUCIUS!" The scream escaped her mouth between stuttered gasps of breath. Her lungs burned from exertion, and she couldn't stop crying. Jack and Patrick trailed closely behind her, both of them looking solemn.
Quickly scanning the bodies of his companions left him confused for a moment. "Everyone looks fine, why are they..." Before it could finish forming a different thought leapt to the forefront, "Where's James?", the boy was never far from his mother, but now he was nowhere to be seen. The conspicuous absence of the child, along with his mother's distraught disposition, was enough to begin painting a distressing picture in his mind.
Mary picked up her speed when she noticed Lucius' figure in the distance, a gleam of hope shining through her tortured expression. As the companions rejoined each other, Mary grabbed onto Lucius' clothing as she collapsed to her knees. "Please… James…" she gasped, struggling for breath between sobs, "help… please…"
Jack and Patrick quickly caught up to them. Jack was the only one not gasping for breath, so he quickly filled Lucius in on the events of the goblin ambush.
Now that he had all the information, Lucius suppressed his emotions and focused on quickly analyzing the situation. "They went through the effort to capture him alive, so they probably aren't going to kill him immediately," he said, trying to offer some hope. His words did not have the intended effect. The woman's entire body began to shake with dread as Lucius mentioned killing. He would have to ignore Mary for now, they needed to move quickly to save James. "Show me where it happened!" he demanded, and soon the group was following behind Jack back toward the scene of the ambush.
It took them longer to get back unfortunately. Mary and Patrick were exhausted from all the running, and they couldn't be left behind. After they reached their destination, Lucius examined the body of the slain goblin leader. He was trying to get a sense of how dangerous the creatures were. He had an idea for how he could track them down, but he would need as much information as he could get. Unfortunately, Sense Danger would not respond to a dead creature, so he needed guess how the skill would react to the presence of the goblins. His idea was quite simple, he would move in the direction the creatures had fled, using Sense Danger to try to sense the creatures' location. No danger would be a bad sign, and immense danger was also probably wrong. Of course, the skill wasn't meant to be used in this way, so he would be mostly relying on luck.
Lucius stood up from the corpse of the goblin, turning to his companions, "I can cover ground more safely alone," he explained, "Set up camp in one of these buildings and wait for me."
As Lucius prepared to leave Patrick spoke to him, "We are counting on you, Lucius. Bring James back to us," He said, with Mary wrapped up in his arms. The woman's body trembled every few moments from shock and exhaustion. Patrick's face let slip a rare display of emotion as his eyes filled with moisture. "Please."
Jack had a conflicted look on his face, after taking a look at Lucius he made up his mind, "Wait, take this with you,", he said, taking off his shield and handing it to Lucius.
Lucius wanted to refuse, but he knew James would die if the rescue failed, "Fine. Just make sure you stay hidden until I return." He responded.
Jack gave him a thumbs up before ushering Patrick and Mary towards one of the empty buildings nearby.
Without wasting any more time, Lucius secured Jack's shield to his left arm and set off into the ruined city.
James' head was covered, and his hands were bound tight behind his back. The goblins had stopped to properly secure their prisoner after escaping their pursuers, so James could do nothing but wait. He could feel the creature beneath him moving rapidly, sometimes even dangling him below as it climbed. It was quite uncomfortable, and the ropes kept digging into his skin. Fortunately, they didn't travel for long before reaching their destination. After travelling for at least 20 minutes James noticed a sudden increase in noise. The goblins had taken him to their village, that was populated by hundreds of creatures. James heard a mixture of laughing, screaming, fighting, and even talking in a language he did not understand.
A few minutes after he started hearing the commotion, James felt the creature beneath him come to a stop.
A few softly spoken words cut through the din, "They got another one..." James lifted his head in surprise as he heard the sound of a human, but before he could make sense of it, he was violently pulled down and tossed to the ground. He heard the sound of something clanking shut behind him, then someone pulled the hood off his head and began untying his hands.
James was finally able to take a look around him and discovered that he was in a large cage, he was imprisoned together with over a dozen other humans. A tough-looking man with a thick beard was the one leaning down and untying James' hands, "You're OK, little fella. My name is Paul." He said with a smile that looked forced, and didn't reach his eyes. Paul looked ragged, like he had been through a hard fight—and lost. In fact, everyone in the cage looked bad; it was obvious that they had been dealing with poor living conditions.
"Thank you." James stood up, rubbing the painful rope burn on his wrists, and taking in the scene outside the cage for the first time. Hundreds of creatures moved about busily around him—not just goblins, either. There were creatures that looked like goblins but much bigger, at least as tall as an adult human, "Hobgoblins..." James whispered under his breath. The hobgoblins were much fewer in number than the goblins, in fact James could only spot one or two for every few dozen goblins. The larger creatures looked incredibly fierce, and it was obvious that they were in a higher social class than the goblins. The hobgoblins wore higher-quality clothing, animal skins, and carried weapons that looked far sturdier and more well crafted than what the goblins carried.
"What are they going to do to us?" asked James as he looked back at his fellow captives. No one answered, and the faces of the others turned pale the moment they heard it. Suddenly, a hobgoblin shouted a few guttural words from outside, and the goblins around him quickly scampered toward the cage. The humans reacted like frightened animals, rushing to the back of the cage, climbing over each other, and even fighting to avoid being at the front of the group. The man named Paul grabbed James, quickly lifting him up and rushing away from the entrance of the cage.
The goblins swung the door open, "Dobba Gabra!", one of them shouted as it pointed its spear at the helpless humans. The other two goblins rushed into the cage, grabbing hold of the woman at the front of the group.
The woman kicked and screamed in panic the moment she realized that she had been selected, "NOO!! PLEASE!", the vicious creatures struck her face with the blunt end of their spears, laughing as they broke her nose. The woman covered her bleeding face as the goblins yanked on her hair, pulling her out of the cage.
They took her a few dozen yards away from the cages, where a line of fencing had been put up around stand alone shed with a garage door on the front of it. The moment they noticed what was happening, dozens of creatures came flooding over from all directions. James could see the excitement on the goblin faces, whatever was about to happen, they liked it. As the crowd formed, the goblins shoved the crying woman into the fenced-in area, quickly closing the gate behind her. The woman got to her feet before running toward the fence and trying to climb out, but the goblins on the outside attacked her with rocks and sticks, knocking her back down.
James looked on in shock as a large silhouette appeared at the edge of the sheds shadowy doorway. It was a spider. James could tell that it was the same species of spider as the one he had traveled on to get here, but this one was the size of a bull elephant. The creature moved forward in a blur of motion, much faster than any creature that large should ever be capable of moving. As it reached the woman, it pounced on her from behind, sinking its half a foot long fangs into her back. James expected to hear a scream, but instead the woman's body went stiff the moment the creature bit her, she stayed unnaturally frozen like that even as she was lifted into the air.
"It's the venom..." Paul whispered to James from behind as they watched the spider lift the woman from the ground and press her body against its abdomen, attaching a strand of webbing before spinning her entire body over and over again, until she could hardly be seen beneath the thick white blanket.