The morning came far too quickly, dawn's weak light filtering through grimy windows. Xerum's muscles screamed as he donned his equipment - leather armor worn thin from previous owners, a short sword that had seen better days, and a wooden shield reinforced with iron bands. Standard issue for portal fodder, as the veterans called them.
They assembled in the courtyard, forty-seven gaunt faces all harboring the same desperate hope that they might be among the few to return. The Archmage stood before the slowly forming portal, his dark robes still drinking in the light around him. As the tear in reality stabilized, taking on an opalescent sheen, Xerum noticed something odd - the edges seemed to flutter, like a flag caught in an unseen wind.
"Form ranks and proceed through!" the burly instructor from yesterday bellowed. "Remember your training - secure the area, establish a perimeter, and begin resource gathering immediately!"
One by one, his fellow recruits stepped through. Some strode forward with false bravery, others hesitated before being shoved through by those behind them. Xerum found himself at the back, a position he'd grown used to during training. As the numbers dwindled, that flutter in the portal's edges grew more pronounced.
The Archmage's expression shifted from bored observation to concern. "The portal is destabilizing faster than anticipated. Quickly now!"
When Xerum's turn came, he was the last one waiting. The portal's edges were now wildly distorted, its surface rippling like disturbed water. He took a deep breath and stepped forward.
"Wait-" the Archmage's warning came too late.
The passage through felt wrong. Where others had simply vanished, Xerum felt himself being twisted, pulled apart and reassembled. The journey lasted an eternity in the space of a heartbeat.
He emerged gasping in total darkness, the cold stone floor beneath him the only certainty in his new reality. The air was stale, carrying the musty scent of age and abandonment. As his eyes adjusted to the gloom, vague shapes began to form - a chamber, perhaps twenty paces across, empty save for broken furniture and years of dust. A single shaft of pale light pierced the darkness from a narrow window set high in the wall, illuminating dancing motes of dust he'd disturbed.
This wasn't where he was supposed to be. The briefing had mentioned emerging in a forest clearing, not... wherever this was.
The sound of approaching footsteps froze him in place. Harsh, guttural muttering grew closer - a language he didn't understand but instantly recognized from the warnings they'd received during training. Goblin-speak.
Xerum pressed himself against the wall beside the chamber's only door, his heart thundering so loud he feared it would give him away. The footsteps stopped just outside. A shadow blocked the thin line of torchlight beneath the door.
The goblin that entered was larger than Xerum expected, its crude armor marked with symbols he didn't recognize. It took two steps into the room, sniffing the air like a hunting hound. When it turned its head, Xerum caught the gleam of intelligence in its yellow eyes - these weren't the mindless beasts they'd been told to expect.
It was reaching for the horn at its belt when Xerum struck. His sword, dulled as it was, still opened the creature's throat before it could sound the alarm. They tumbled to the floor together, the goblin's dying gurgle barely audible over the blood rushing in his ears. Hot blood coated his hands, making his grip on the sword slick and uncertain.
His first kill. It should have felt momentous, but all he felt was the desperate need to ensure no one had heard the struggle.
After what felt like an eternity of listening to his own ragged breathing, Xerum finally moved. He claimed the goblin's torch, grateful his trembling hands didn't drop it. The creature's belt also yielded a crude key ring and a water skin that smelled suspicious enough that he left it behind.
The corridor beyond his chamber stretched into darkness in both directions. Distant echoes suggested he was in some kind of fortress or stronghold, but whether he was above or below ground was impossible to tell. The torchlight revealed walls of fitted stone, far too well-crafted to be typical goblin work.
This place was old. Ancient, perhaps. And the goblins were merely its current inhabitants.
Xerum chose a direction at random, moving as quietly as his training allowed. Each intersection and doorway brought fresh terror - would this be where his luck ran out? But the passages remained eerily empty, save for the occasional distant sound of movement or snippets of guttural conversation.
He needed to find his way out, but more importantly, he needed to find his fellow recruits. The growing sense of wrongness in his gut told him that his displaced arrival might not have been an accident at all.