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George, Elena, and Sella
Originally written from April 11, 2026 to April 23, 2026, 12 days, currently on pause

Chapter 1 - Supply Chain Players
George sat on a log and looked around, his arms folded across his chest. One eye opened and peeked at the group of people across the well-stocked stream, his and their boots caked with mud. They huddled around a pink goblin. Right as he was about to shut his eyes for the next several minutes straight, one of them swung around, waving him over. With arms still folded, he stood up, strode across the stream, coming up beside them, and looked between them toward the goblin lying in shackles. “What?” he asked with his gruff grunt of a voice.
Melly made a circle with his finger. “Try using [Identify Core].” His voice stiffened one word after another, testing the dimensions and soundness of each before committing to them fully.
George clasped his hands together, and a burst of particles erupted from his closed palms. It smothered the goblin briefly, fanned out, and vanished.
A blue screen appeared in front of him, which he made copies of, and he swiped them left and right to the others by sweeping his finger around many times. The others leaned into the screens they got and used two fingers to pinch-zoom in on the labels and numbers on the left of a spinning textured black orb with the words “Pink Goblin” over it.
“Interesting,” said Rayla, standing on George’s right, her voice soft like dew in a spring morning, but with a slight roughness like a weathered outcrop drenched in tender grass.
“Well, Rick will take care of this?” said the man crouching directly across from Rayla inside the huddle. 
His and George’s eyes darted to Sella, the one on Rayla’s right. 
She twitched her brows up.
The huddle broke, and the people went their separate ways. Melly and George sat back down on the log. Thorn stood nearby on their side of the stream, head wandering.
George drew his hands behind him, planted them on the log, and leaned back.
Melly crossed his legs, turned his head aside, and gazed off into the distance, stroking his right fingers together.
The goblin was heaving and rattling the chain, drawing the manacle tight against its reddened wrist. Its throat rasped with the strain and drove out guttural groans. Upon going limp, it lay with eyes closed as if dead, like resting cattle.
Its ears twitched often against the mosquitoes. 
Its face was straining.
From across the stream, George pursed his lips, twsisting them into different shapes. He sometimes pushed air out while saying “Pf” like a drum beat. On the left side, Melly hummed drinking songs at a different pace. Farther down his left beside the swishing water, Thorn clapped with the timing of hanging rainwater before it dropped off eaves.
Once the goblin went completely still, its breathing sedimented into a soft murmur. 
A few ants crept across its relaxed hands on the ground like eon-battered dragon bones. Its slightly curled fingers rose like the dragon’s gritty ribs in faint, gassy mist.
To the goblin’s left ran the stream that murmured through an expanding dell. Its low hum snapped whenever Thorn clapped, while the mountains hung far and muted in the haze of clouds.
George sprang to his feet. “I’m hungry! Let’s go eat!” With hands on his hips, he swaggered away, his voice trailing off. “I’m starving…!”
The pair left at their own pace and followed him down the trail home. 
In the city, the door of a tavern hung open. Worn-faced men carrying bulging bags scrambled inside, while guffawing, belly-rubbing men dawdled out onto the grimy, boot-scuffed cobblestones. Gleams from street lamps showed every figure: frayed tunics, buffeted gambesons, a scratched hammer, and sodden, sagging herbs.
Among them, George spread his arms, embracing a girl half his size. The squeals she made drowned in the crowd, but in his ears, she rang continuously. His grin grew wider the longer she romped in his eyes. His free hands only shielded her from the brunt of traffic, and his frame kept towering over her gently. He wiped her cheeks when they grew moist with spittle. They puffed out against his fingers as her eyes crinkled.
To his rear left, Melly bent under the weight of the bags George had piled onto him, his arms stiff and burning. With half his mouth open, he squeaked, “I’m heading inside.”
George nodded, facing the girl.
After offloading the bags back to him and getting his thanks, Melly dipped his head and headed inside the tavern, Thorn following behind. In the hall, high paintings smothered the walls, and heavy-laden tables flanked by aisles spread across the main floor. At one table to the right, Rayla, Sella, and the others chatted, elbows draped over chair backs and legs splayed across the polished concrete floor. They darted glances toward the darkened entryway. One of them waved at the pair, who stopped on one side of the room, still standing. Passing the two, George and his daughter laughed together as they headed to the table. Along the aisle, bags crammed the floor against the wall, where people stood gazing around the room for empty seats. Shoulders overloaded with bags, George blocked the table’s aisle and the group’s view when he arrived. He pointed his strap-strained index finger toward the hall’s main expanse. For a moment, the group shared looks, and questions flew across the tabletop. As soon as heads nodded, they, along with George’s daughter and the pair, got up one by one. They filtered away. People unknown to each other scooped up the newly freed table.
“Ba-da-beem-ba-da-bam-boom-boom,” George’s daughter went on babbling, swaying as she walked.
“Are you going to mass later?” a nearby tall, bulbous-nosed man grunted, his oval head tucked between a wide-brimmed cap and a jutting stomach. Another raddled, cane-hefting man, his spotted skin covered in airy robes, croaked, “Yes.”
“Yuppity-yuppity-yup!” she mumbled to herself, sitting beside her father, whose hand-masked snicker with Aunt Sella petered out in the chatter-dense air.
She rubbed her fingerpad against the edge of the table to feel its tiniest dots. When her father’s arm lay across the table, she rubbed it next, parting and bending hairs. Once she got to his sweat-damp hair, her fingers cooled.
A stubbled, thick-browed man in a gray-edged cloak scurried to the table and plumped onto a cushioned seat.
Sella’s expression vanished as she turned from George. “Rick, what did Leo say?”
He shrugged. “Said pinks don’t have spots. This one had spots.”
“Ah…” She hung on that sound.
Her eyes jumped. “I-I don’t remember it having spots.” She raked through the others’ faces. “Did you?”
“No,” they said.
She twisted her head at him. “What happened after we left?”
“I just saw it like that.”
She thrust herself forward. “Before you arrived.”
“Dunno.” He tilted his head like a shrug.
She leaned back and expelled a huff from her nose. “We’ll just try again then.” She folded her arms and rubbed her left shoulder with her right hand. “Damn it,” she muttered and left her hand up as if about to hurl it.
“I should have had one of you wait for Rick.” She pinched her underlip.
George sank his upper body onto the table. “I made a mistake. I told them to leave because I was hungry.”
“No, no.” She waved her hand. “Need to find out why. How. It doesn’t make sense. What did we miss?” 
George planted two straight fingers on the table, then made it walk along the table toward his daughter, stopping it in front of her right hand. He pointed one of the two fingers at it and wagged it.
Eyes lighting up, she stuck the balls of her hands together, curled all her fingers, and snapped the “teeth” as soon as the “human” fell within its shadow. “Roar, roar,”.
George drew it back by making it run backward and evaded her. Once he had it settle a distance away, he arced it backward, then jerked it back and forth, imitating a guffaw.
Right as she whooshed her hands at the human, he let it get caught and showed it struggle before falling limp.
He turned to Sella. “I’ll show you what I last remember.” He beckoned the others. “Guys, help me out here. Put your fingers on the table.” He made the same human shape with two fingers. “Like this.”
Sella, who was rubbing her finger’s side against her underlip, stopped, eyes tracking his hand.
“The goblin was here.” He extended his other hand toward Melly, whose human he brought to another spot near his goblin. He grabbed three more, then stopped. “This was the arrangement of the me… Melly… Thorn… and the goblin. Wait.” He grabbed Sella’s and Rayla’s hands and had them form the start and the end of the stream. “Rick. Where did you come from?”
Rick jabbed the right side of George’s goblin. “Here.”
Heads raised, and eyes flickered.
George’s daughter crushed his goblin in her hands. “I got you!”
George pointed at her monster. “Now, who… or what… made the goblin get spots?”
Melly frowned. “Can’t it just be some disease?”
“In the span of what… an hour?”
“Maybe?”
He leaned in close to Melly and raised his voice to explain. “No, let’s eliminate the most tangible possibility first, since any problem stemming from the goblin’s body itself could be anything.” The crowd noise flooded back in, but the others’ eyes stayed on his table-staged map made of fingers.
Melly paused, then settled on a nod.
Sella rose to her feet and eyed George, drawing his gaze and twitching her brows at him. “Let’s go back.” She looked at the rest. “Who wants to go?”
Rick left his seat and waved. “I’ll be outside.”
Two others tagged along after him.
Sella and George trickled away. 
Outside, Rick, Sella, and George, along with the other two, set off.  
When this group got to the stream, Rick pointed. “See. Spots.” His finger shook the more he looked.
Across the stream, the goblin stood facing the wall, head down, its pink skin drenched in black spots.
A black film like frozen fog clung to the ground, lay across the stream, and stained both banks. It started here, to the group’s right, where Rick had said he’d come from.
Under the goblin, the film pooled and ended.
“The fuck,” George mouthed. “We have to leave.” 
Sella met his gaze and stifled the shudder in her underlip.
“Now!” He herded them back onto the path.
A flame shaped like a male human appeared beside the goblin and laid a hand on its back.
The goblin burst out swinging. It flailed its arms through the air and danced, its steps alternating between the balls of its feet and the very tips of its toes. Sweat poured down its skin, and tears bit into its chin.
The flame turned its body to the fleeing group, white balls like eyes curling upward like coiling smoke.
It vanished before wresting itself back, appearing beside George.
“Indicate, indication, the being of a sum, the natural order of mar-things.” A man’s voice growled from it, and it spoke so rapidly in a blur of writhing, twisting mouth movements that George’s screaming soared up the hill.
It disappeared.
Breezes tossed through the tall branches, rolled off spreading trees, and crept into the tangle, some summiting the loftiest canopies.
George puked, spittle clammily prickling below his mouth. “Fuck, fuck, fuck…” he squeaked. He hoisted his hand which a worn tremble left dragging and tingling, then banished it from his sight, sending the dirt it scraped away.
Sella dammed up her mouth with her hand, retched, then twisted herself from him.
Rick fell clawing his hands against the ground and uttered brokenly, his shape quivering.
The two others sagged motionless against a tree.
Parching sweat chilled skins it once glossed and sent them shivering.
They got up and returned home together.
On the street in front of George, his daughter raised her arms. He picked her up and carried her with one arm, padding on.
They went inside, climbed upstairs, and fell asleep in their room.
The sun rose.
George bent down against the bedside and peered at his feet, smiling. From underneath, his daughter’s head popped out as she rolled on the floor.
“Ya-herrr!” she crowed.
He burst out laughing.
She stopped to stare at him.
He caressed her cheek, then pinched it as he walked off to the door, opening it, and leaving, letting it shut itself.
In the tavern hall, Sella set ten cups and rotated them until their handles were perpendicular to their tabletops. Rick sipped his steaming mug and hissed when the surface stung his tongue. The other two who came with him yesterday wiped their mouths with their own embroidered handkerchiefs.
When more members appeared, Sella filled their hands with their own sleeved cups. The balmy heat emanated only from the beverage, leaving the handles cool.
Along the same aisle as Sella, George emerged and passed Melly and Rayla, who were chatting and holding cups.
George stopped by Sella, and these two stood staring and smiling. She planted a mug in his rising palms. He thanked her and lowered himself onto a chair near her. The coffee in the cup sat flat.
“How is it?” As she faced away, her smile briefly deepened.
“Fine—good! Very good!” He raised it, spilling a little, which got her turning her head. “Whoops.” He wiped it many times, shifting between his wrist, forearm, palm, and sleeve. “H-how ‘bout you?”
She laughed faintly and brushed her lip. “How’s Baby Elene?”
“She’s good, she’s good.” He propped his elbows on the table, while taking a few delayed sips.
“Okay.” She let her voice hang.
His eyes drifted for a moment, then he looked at her face again. “Where’s… Rick?”
She pointed to the side. Rick lay back in his chair against the wall with one foot hanging from his crossed legs.
“How’s he?”
“Good. Too.” She glanced down at herself.
“Oh? So you’re…”
“Yeah. Well.” She looked down at his cup. “Now, yeah.” She smiled, hands clasped in front of herself.
“No, I mean, you’re… you know? The way you spoke made it sound like you were pregnant with Rick’s child for a second.”
“Huh!”
“Uh. Woohoo…”
“I meant I was doing fine! ‘Too’!”
“Yeah, that’s, that’s what I meant. Originally.”
“Okay.”
He faced forward, nodding as he sipped.
“I don’t get it,” he said.
“You wanna discuss it?” she said.
“Yeah. What… was that?”
“A beast, probably.”
“Well, not all beasts talk like that.”
“You heard it.”
“It sounded wrong.”
“Well… that’s one of the things.”
“It had… what you call it… a body made of…” His eyes went distant. “Fire.”
“That’s crazy.”
“It is…” He stopped, then sipped.
A gasp like a sigh left her mouth. 
He glanced at her. “Yeah.”
He stopped mid-sip. “How about the other two?”
“They’re fine. At least.” She looked at them again. “Well, they should be. So.”
“Yeah.” He finished his sip and drank the whole way.
“Very good.” He got up and put the cup with the rest of the empty ones. Rick’s was coming.
“Hi, Rick,” George said.
Rick nodded and set his next to George’s. “How are you?”
“Doing alright. The other two?”
“Doing fine. I talked to them last night and, well, this morning. They are.” He made a circle on his temple. George’s face scrunched. “Joke,” Rick said. George breathed.
“Eleno?” Rick said.
“Not okay.” George’s face scrunched again.
“What?!”
“Joke!” George got his same tone, but inflated it.
Rick held his head while shaking it. “Boy, oh boy.” He went away with fingertips pressed on his forehead.
“What!” Sella feigned a shout.
George made an X with his arms. “Okay, too late. Joke’s over.”
She chortled.
Rick stopped and eyed her. “Where’s?”
She pointed. “I told them to sit down there ‘cause… you know.”
“The others know?”
“No. I just thought we’d all five of us connect before anything happens. You never know when you’ll get some alone time after all that. I mean… it happens.” She folded her arms.
The other pair passed between her and George and set their empty cups along with the rest, stonefaced. “Yeah,” one of them said.
“How’s the…” George said.
“Good.”
“Hey, that was my answer.”
“But seriously, when are we going to…”
“To them?” She half-frowned, drawing one corner of her lip down. “I don’t know… What do you guys think?”
Eyes everywhere else but each other, the other four shrugged.
“It’s funny, isn’t it?” she tried.
“Nah.” George rubbed his forehead with an upside-down hand and straightened himself in the seat he’d just taken.
“Really?” Rick blurted, and his eyes leapt as he passed his hand over his mouth.
George leaned back against the table edge, hands perched on his hips. “You all are out of sorts today, aren’tcha?”
“Yeeah, I guess.”
Sella tilted her head like a dramatic shrug.
The other two rocked their raised arms back and forth, with fistfuls of their handkerchiefs.
One of the two went to the outer edge of this gathering and imitated Melly, making big strides and cumbersomely swinging his arms. “Yeah, like I didn’t hear all that!” he said in a low-pitched voice.
Sella cackled, then went quiet. “But if he does hear…”
“Well, if he does, it’ll be finished,” Rick murmured.
“Well, if he does, we’ll be finished.” George corrected him, half-pretending.
“What?” She held the sound. “It’s not like we did anything bad,” she whispered.
George’s head tossed left and right. “Well, maybe. I don’t know. What did we do? Again?”
“Get fucked in the ass.” She pumped her fist.
“Well.” He shrugged and grinned quietly. 
Quiet settled on the five of them.
Several minutes later, Melly and Rayla dropped by to leave their empty cups.
Glances shot among the five.
“Yo.” Rick waved.
Sella speared him with her eyes, shaking her head ever so slightly. She let a warm smile blanket her face when Melly and Rayla turned around toward Rick, brows raised.
Rick hummed. “Yam is like my favorite shit!”
Melly furrowed his brows while Rayla narrowed her eyes, tilting her head. When even Rich smiled, they slowly turned back and went on their way. “Whatever you say.” Melly’s voice trailed off.
Sella scrunched up her face at Rick. “Brother,” she muttered. “Stop-eet.”
“I thought,” Rick mouthed, darting his eyes at the others.
She pressed her lips together. “Well… No. Not yet. I decided.”
George stood up and started walking. “Okay, I decided too.”
“What?”
“I’m gonna go to the goblin site. Who wants to come with me?”
“That’s… a little…”
“Well, at this point, it’s either-or. Unless you reveal it or I go check it out for myself. I want to know what’s out there, Sell. You know? It’s the kind of thing you can’t let go.”
“Elene?”
“Elene knows better than I do. I just never stop. That’s my weakness.”
“Well, we all know you won’t be dying alone.”
“I won’t?”
“Come on.” She subtly gestured at herself.
“I mean, I was hoping, but I didn’t expect it.”
“I’ll come.”
“You sure?”
“I will. Come on, let’s go.” She passed in front of him. “See?” She raised her arms.
He grabbed her right hand and shook it. “Thank you.”
“Just kidding. I’ll tell them. Who’d want you to die before your daughter grows old?”
“Me apparently, hehe. But I was mainly doing it for that.”
“For me to give up?”
“Yeah…”
“Well then. Fuck it!” She whooped, one arm hoisted in the air.
She passed Thorn first, then stopped. “Can you help get everyone? I have an announcement to make.”
Thorn nodded and went out to the hall’s main room where the rest of the group was scattered across the packed floor. He discovered their spots one by one and loped over with the order to assemble for Sella’s report.
The whole group, fifty in number, filtered to five long tables connected together.
Sella shifted in her seat, leaned over to George, and whispered, “What should we call it?” 
His eyes swept the members. “Fire-guy? I don’t know.”
She paused. “Fire thing?”
He glanced in her direction. “If it works.”
She sprang back.
“Fire guy, fire guy, fire guy,” she mouthed, feeling it out.
Hands jogged paper stacks against the table.
“Do we even need those?” she muttered.
The other one beside her, Melly pursed his lips as if shrugging.
George put his hand on the back of hers along the tabletop and shook it with a twitching mouth. “Just tell them we got our asses fucked.” He snickered.
She jerked her hand from his, then palmed her face, stifling a grin.
Meanwhile, George’s daughter swayed into the tavern, peeking across the hall at her father’s and Aunt Sella’s backs. Two boys paused mid-trot in the aisle near her and shot imaginary bows. “Fwoosh!” A third boy reloaded his musket and aimed with one eye shut. “Pschow!” She watched as they darted between stately tables and filled chairs drawn out at different angles and distances, forming jagged walls.
When she got to the get-together, Dad swiveled to her, legs splayed toward her. She fell into him, sinking, and his arms swathed her in the snuggest hug. When his sharp eyes opened softly, they dug into the walls behind her, and his cradling crush bunched up her clothes’ folds. Her legs sprawled slack.
On his right, Aunt Sella began, “We came face to face with a flame beast.” 
“What!” someone shouted from across the table, her voice sounding faint.
“A flame beast? Do you mean a wildfire? Or are we talking about a fox with its tail set on fire?” someone else said from her right.
“No, a literal flame… thing… person…” She stopped to close her eyes, then swept her voice over all the members. “It had the shape of a human being, but it was made of flames.”
“A mage?”
“Probably.”
“Do you think it’s a human?”
“Maybe. Likely, now that you say it.”
“What’s our game plan? The guildmaster should know this, and then everyone.”
“Well, we’ll be right on that, but any more questions that I might be able to answer? Actually, I should tell the whole story. Just the flame beast alone won’t cut it. Here’s how it happened.”
After naming the four who went with her, she told the story, from the goblin facing the wall to the group’s flight and breakdown.
“Any more questions? None?” She stood up. “Okay, that’ll be all. Thank you.” She left, and Dad, who was holding his daughter’s hand, followed.
Behind them, conversations among friends resumed, even as questions about the flame beast grew.
“What were you going to say again?” Aunt Sella asked Dad.
“First, where are we getting the next pink goblin from? Second, do they come with flame beasts?” Dad imperceptibly smirked.
Aunt Sella snickered as the three passed the doorway on the way out, where the sun bathed everything. They skirted its rays by pressing along the edges, while they crept past crowds and wheeled around corners, eyes darting routinely.
A vendor beneath a canopied stall hawked fresh produce, jabbing avocados toward them. The stall’s softwood posts relied on a net made of coconut fiber for a roof.
“Dah-dah-ruh, dah-dah-dah-ruh, dah-dah-ruh-ruh.” Elene raised a little kitty with both hands and laid it against her chest, rocking from side to side.
Standing behind the chair beside her, Dad took his hand off the backrest and caressed the kitty’s head. He gazed and nodded firmly at Aunt Sella, who was seated across the table, as she spoke.
Aunt Sella got up, strode back and forth, and pointed and gestured at the air with her hands.
A smile alighted on his face, a grin at times, even a snicker that she mirrored when something funny drew their gazes together.
Elene turned to the window and peered down at the cobbled street, where arms clasped behind necks and smiles filled faces, while carriages and carts rolled past crowds farther ahead and mountains were clothed along the skirts with forests, among which this town blossomed cream, mint, and oxblood.
She let out a graceful breath.
Dad and Aunt Sella stopped, turned, got their bags, waved and said goodbye, and left.
She smiled before turning her gaze back to the window.
In the open air, George laced his fingers and stretched his palms outward. Sella looked at the cobblestones as she plodded through the narrow street. 
Leaving the house behind, the two traveled along one long, busy road. 
Within forty minutes, they turned down several byroads and found themselves in a large, crowded lot. 
A rotunda entranceway large enough to hold half a million books rose weathered and pitted from the side of the lot. The rest of the edifice stretched so far and high that a number of gates and corridors cutting through the interior arcades kept it from becoming a blockade the locals would mine and transform into an exposed warren of passageways. The sign above the entrance read, “Adventurers’ Guild.”
A staircase half-circled before the haggard, beaten doorway. A cluster of luggage-bloated groups buzzed to and fro, where stops meant only one of three goals: check the map, finish up the lingering concerns, or squint at the quest’s fine print for the details missed and prepare to back out if necessary.
In the crammed, rackety entrance hall, George and Sella wandered toward the gleaming, sleek counter edged with two repeating yellow lines.
A clerk blinked at them.
“Oh, right, hello.” Sella almost waved, but stopped herself. “We’re looking to report a finding.”
“Finding? What kind?”
“A ‘flame beast.’ Of that kind.”
The clerk turned aside, grabbed a quill and paper, and wrote. “A ‘flame beast,’ hmm?”
“Yes.”
“Is this… ‘the human shape made of flames’?”
Sella’s eyes lit up, then she knitted her brows. “Y-yes, that’s it. Were you told prior to…”
“Yes. By Mrs. Aileen.”
“Oh, I see.”
“Okay, give me your name. I will add it to the list of confirmations.”
“Uh, Sella Wisher.”
“Okay, is there anything else?”
“No, that was all.” Sella slowed turned and left, eyes distant.
George walked up to her. “Aileen wasn’t in the meeting.”
When they went outside and found a spot, she said, “I had a feeling Rick told someone, but I guess it was inevitable, huh?”
“Maybe.” George was rubbing his chin.
Three days later, the pair met here at the crack of dawn to witness the boards crammed with the first findings from the flame beast investigations. Details ranged from color and size to affected routes and advisories, culminating in potential death counts. A map sprawled over multiple parchments, its areas shaded red based on the last known sighting. Response times dictated future directions and calls to action.
The pair copied the gist onto their own parchments and brought these to the tavern tables.
“Guess group activities are suspended for the time being,” Melly probed, setting Sella’s and George’s cups before them.
“Effectively.” Sella unclasped her hands and raised an open palm like a shrug.
George slurped when his first sip came warm. “How’s Assa?”
Standing to his rear left, Rayla strode up to the table and planted her palms,the left wrapped, the right bare. “Wanna scare off merchants? Another merchant’s been shouting at her in the middle of the day about having the same product.”
“What product?”
“Books.”
George snorted airily, rubbing his fingernail. “So what? I just go there and tell them off?”
“Yeah.”
“Sure.” He turned to the others. “Do you guys want to help? Sella?”
“If talking’s not off the table, sure. I could use some variety.” Sella drummed her index fingertips together.
“Elene-o, wanna come?” George turned around at the child sitting with three other members at their own long table. These three pointed her to him while she was speaking to them. She swiveled in her seat, clenching the chair back. “Hmm?”
“Wanna come with me? Tommorow?” 
“How long?”
“Whole day.”
“Yeah!”
The next morning, right outside the tavern, George grasped his wrist behind his back and stretched. “Fuck…”
Sella adjusted her bag’s strap and stamped the ground three times to test her boots.
Elene laced her fingers inches from her face and peered at the creases between them.
Rayla wrapped her left hand with scuffed cloth and rolled it all the way to her elbow.
Melly rapped his nail against an inkwell he’d raised to his face.
Thorn sank his hands into his bag to re-fold clothes that rumpled on the way here.
Rick swore as the sheath to one of his knives stopped snapping shut, leaving the blade exposed inside his bag.
Rick’s two friends took turns walking through wrestling moves on each other.
The other group members lined the wall, some crouching, most standing. Their chatter filled the air, while some dug into bags propped on their thighs and chests to triple-check.
“Let’s rename to Assa’s Private Army,” George said and snickered, while Sella’s brows were still rising. She tittered along once her eyes got to flashing.
The group got to the bazaar in four hours, around mid-morning.
Assa stopped, squinting at the drove behind George and Sella, who were sauntering toward her. “The hell?”
George bowed toward her, saying “Your Majesty.” Sella mirrored both. The drove bent as one and chorused the line.
“Guys…” Assa drew out.
The other merchants, whose stalls clustered around the bazaar, gawked; one even scratched their head.
“Well, I have no space for all of you guys.” She glanced around at her stall filled with stacks of round, flat footstools.
“I’ll just have them go exploring the city then.” Sella turned to the members and instructed them like so. “You can come back before evening.”
They scattered.
George came up to Assa, leaned behind her, and whispered in her ear, “Who is it?”
“Hmm?” Her eyes went wide. “Who? What?”
“The target?”
She lowered her voice. “Target? What are you talking about?”
“The rude… merchant.”
“Oh, that. I can point her to you if you want.”
“Where?” George went on tiptoe and peered at the stalls across the bazaar.
“Later. Just sit here.” She went to the footstools, bent down, lowered a footstool from the top of another one, heaved it to George’s side, and patted its top.
He settled stiffly on it, taking a moment to spread his legs and relax. After testing the seat’s give, he reached for his daughter and pulled her down between his knees. With the two of them set, Assa walked out in front and struck up a conversation with a customer about the history of her products.
Sella stood watch on the stall’s side.
When her roving gaze snagged on the seated pair, he clapped his knee twice and gestured to his thigh, indicating a seat, nodding sharply with a grin.
Her face crumpled in a mock-grimace as he contorted in his seat toward another footstool, dragged it beside him, and patted it. Sella wavered her way over and sat slumped, laying out her trousered legs and plonking her hands motionless on her knees. When she shifted and the hem of her dress caught between her and the chair, she rose briefly to yank it out.
“How’s your mom?” he mumbled.
“Fine.” She eased her lips together.
“Really?”
“Yeah, she got to eat before I left.”
“Okay.”
Elene looked up at them.
The pair smiled at her one after the other.
Her mouth sat at rest.
“I hope she’s okay,” she said.
Sella looked down and distant. George rubbed his mouth.
“She will be,” he tried.
Sella locked her softened eyes with his.
“I don’t think the situation warranted the whole group, or even any of you, coming at all, but why, here’s something to drink!” Assa stepped before them, passing them each a fruit punch.
The seated trio sipped along.
Meanwhile, Rick stuck his head into a store. Knives hung all over the walls. An older man sat inside beside the door, thumbing through a book. “Do you have a sheath I can replace my broken one with?” Rick said, showing it.
The older man gently handled it and hummed while rotating it. “I have one.”
“Where?”
The older man stumbled to his feet, scuffed across the store, and took one from the display of sheaths. “This.”
Rick went inside and checked it. “Ooh, this fits. Can I try?” He set his bag on the floor and carefully took out the exposed blade.
While the older man held one end of the sheath, Rick put his knife in, and it snapped shut.
“Yes!” Rick stifled a yell.
He paid for it and left, joining Melly and Rayla at the city square, where pigeons roving the ground scattered along his path.
“I wish I had bread right now to feed them with,” Melly whined as Rick sat between him and Rayla on the seat wall with plenty of elbow room.
Rick removed his new knife sheath from the bag and buffed it with the ball of his hand.
Thorne arrived, standing and gazing around near the three.
As dusk came, the group’s members drifted back to the bazaar.
Once everyone was present, they departed and returned to the tavern hall around bedtime.
While the rest got their bags and trudged the remaining way home, George, Sella, and others stayed to review the day. His daughter slept on their table.
Around midnight, they wrapped it up and went home, slumping into their beds.
By noon, George, his daughter, and Sella were in the tavern. A number of the group’s members were also present.
He lay slumped into his chair, clapping a hand over his mouth, one leg over the other, his boots reaching far under the table. On his left, Sella sat suspended in the narrow gap between her chair back and the table. Beside her, Elene mirrored her posture, holding her own chin.
“Let’s take it.” He leaned forward, tapped the poster on the table, then sprawled back into his chair. “We can do it.”
Sella slowly nodded, squinting and brushing the side of her hand across her mouth.
On George’s right, Melly eased along their side of the table and ran his fingerpad across the poster’s parchment corner.
Across Melly, Rayla was straddling her chair and kneading her thumb into her palm, with three papers lined up before her. Melly’s inkwell sat on her left.
George folded his arms, one elbow propped upright on the other, rubbing the side of his finger across his closed lips. He tilted forward.
Rayla raised her fingers, counting. “I have six, seven hundred. We can take Leon Way.”
George’s gaze bore down into the table surface.
Sella sank her elbows into the table, holding her lopsided head in one hand.
Right as George stood up to get a cup refill, her eyes flickered and snapped to him. “Let’s go.”
George stopped and slowly turned to her. “Hmm? Now?”
“You think we can take out three in one day?”
“Take out three?” He rubbed his free hand against his chin. “Well, it’s possible, but we’re not there to take out three, or anything for that matter.” Melly tapped the poster for him.
She flumped back into her chair. “I don’t know.” She stroked her brow. “Do you guys have any suggestions?”
He met the others’ looks. “Well, we can just do as the quest says?”
She sank down further into her chair, covering her face with curled fingers, breaths from her nose sifting through them, her chest heaving gently.
After several minutes of relaxation, she straightened up, grabbing her things and getting up. “Fuck. Fine.”
She called everyone, who already had their bags on their laps, to move outside.
The group filtered across the hall and spilled out into the late afternoon sun. Beams kissed their skin, nurturing them with warmth.
In the back of the group, Rick waved his sheath around as he tromped, while his two friends strode and giggled behind him.
Thorn marched in front of the group, leading the way, with Sella, George, and his daughter strolling right behind.
After leaving the heart of their cobbled, concrete city, the group filed along a dirt path that curved through the hills embosomed in high jungles. Scree littered the edges, and boot-eroded debris dropped from chipped wagons sometimes came up underfoot.
The group drew up midway through the road, settling down on the side within sight of a rift torn into a turf-grown rock face. Bags heaped on one corner, and legs in soft armor lay flat along the dirt that shelved gently into the grass-stippled sunken abyss.
They descended into it in one wave, breaking against its edges as they inundated it with a draining slurp, stomping over the sparse flower patch on the way in.
Their train of torches rolled down inside as dark titans rode along the ceiling. Sand-like dirt crunched and shifted underfoot. Faces faded away, while voices, some chuckles, rang from end to end.
The passage expanded into a cavernous stretch, where azure dazzles flooded their bodies, piercing into their skins, leaving them stinging.
When they gazed again, the crystals doodled on their poster glimmered on the ceiling.
Short figures crept faintly among the stalagmites rising into the glare, one holding a musket. The figure aimed the barrel, and a blast of smoke gushed out, while a projectile slammed into the ground in front of them. A goblin’s oath tore through the fusty air. “Khalagtahg!”
Another gush of smoke crept up into the air, and worn-nailed green hands freed swords from pitted scabbards. A hand raised, drew goblin gazes together, and fell. Guns blasted. Swords ran across the floor. A blade edge punctured into blood, dulling and smearing. “Fuck!” Armor clanked, then shattered. Eyes looked, then glazed over in the corpses that appeared. Tips ran across flesh and slid into the ground as weapons hammered and stopped each other. In helmet holes, screams reverberated. A smile crawled along George’s face when his spear poked into one of the last heaving chests. The humans went out of their way to swarm the skittering goblins.
A jagged human laugh broke out, then a din of them.
“Shit, fuck!” George covered his face, cackling. “Fuck, fuck! We almost fucking died!”
Sella clapped his shoulder. “Good job.”
“You too! Genuinely. Fuck.” He rubbed his sweat-drenched forehead. “Fucking…”
Elene went out from behind a corner. “Dad.” She reached out to hug him, fell into his arms, and bawled.
“I’m sorry, Elene.” He stroked her head.
“I did as you said.”
“You did. But don’t always do what I say, okay?” He smiled lightly.
The group changed out of their blood-fouled clothes, sniffed fresh, sweet ones pressed flat against their noses, and took turns putting them on behind the thickest stalagmite. Thorn even handed Rayla his spare shirt to replace her backup arm wrap, which had broken while she was putting it on.
Someone came up to George. “Narra’s sick.” She showed her to him.
George clenched his jaw, went to Sella, and told her. 
Sella went out to everyone and raised her voice. “We have to go now. Get half and go.”
“Only half?” someone said. “The quest requires sixty kilos, so only thirty?”
“Yes. Go, go.”
“Shit,” someone else said. “Almost died for nothing.”
“And someone could die if we don’t go back now. Fast. Do it now.” Sella clapped at them to hurry.
After thirty kilos of crystals went into sacks, the group strapped on either one huge bag or many small ones. Rick got the former and barely spoke along the way. George laughed with the latter. Sella and Elene shared one weight. They trekked home and got back before sundown.
The next afternoon, George snickered beside Sella, clapping her shoulder. “I thought you said no quests!”
She rocked back from his slaps, her mouth twitching. “There were goblins.”
“You said it, okay?” He turned to the rest of the group. “You guys heard her, alright! We’re going tomorrow!”
The group played along, whooping.
As they settled, rumbles gradually vibrated the tavern, starting as hisses and developing into a sea of drumming clatter, which the faintest, traveling thunder interspersed. Cool air drifted into the building as the entryway grew slick under rushing feet and dripping hairs, with boyish and girlish laughter. Even in here, the fragrant, sighing breath of lush, lofty, busy trees compacted them. Passing chills wove into the group’s pressing, balmy warmth. Men, women, and children like airy presences stood against tables; others loitered toward scattered seats to chat, spar, and rag.
The morning after, Sella suited up and headed to the tavern while it was still dark. 
Baby Elene and George slept inside, her lying on the table and him slumped over it. Papers sprawled end to end, some crumpled under her, others heaped as his headrest. Their dirty, unfinished cups sat on the next table.
Sella poked him awake.
George stared dazed for a moment, looked around the table, then slumped back down, his voice muffled between his folded, ink-speckled arms and Baby Elene’s scratchy worksheets. “I taught her how to write a few sentences.”
She patted him on the back and slunk away to the counter.
There, a group of striped-robed older men thronged, some slumped over the counter, showing each other items and making chitchat. Others paired off and went to one corner.
She stood at the far end and ordered drinks for three.
When she got the tray, she strode to George and Elene’s table and replaced the pair’s cups, separating the last one for herself.
George shifted at the clatter and thump against the wood, tilting his head up toward Sella. He twitched downward, seeing the cup. “Thanks.” He grasped its handle and pulled it to him, letting it sit while he gazed around the hall. “What time is it?”
“Five, five-ten, somewhere there,” she said as she returned the tray with the two’s old cups.
She got back within a minute.
He yawned like he was opening demonic gates. “Where’s-uh-where’s the flame being right now? Did they say?”
She paused halfway through sitting down. Her dark hair fell back into place past the shoulders. “No one’s said anything.”
“Not yet. I expect it to be resolved next week. Hopefully.” His sleeves brushed against hers while he was rubbing his hands. He gasped through a wide-open mouth toward the end of his yawn. He glanced at her hair from behind, then at his daughter, who pushed hers off her mouth while asleep.
Sella’s sip started as a slurp, then went back to silence and the thump of her putting it back down.
He rolled his lips together, sucked in air, and smacked them open, making sounds like bubble pops. Slumping onto the table, he sank his face into his folded arms. “You think Matthew’s gonna do it?” He propped his chin on his arm, eying her.
Her gaze sat distant. She rubbed her other arm. “He said it pissed him off, didn’t it? So maybe.”
“How about us? Goblins?”
She chuckled almost but set herself straight. “We’ll do it. Don’t worry.”
“Well, I’m more worried about you.” He hid his face in his arms again. “You know?”
“Ha-ha.” She scooched back in her chair, pressing her thumbs together, hands on her lap. “I’ll manage. As I do… ‘Ve always done it.”
“Really?” He gently pointed at her as if poking.
“Yeah.” She broke into a crooked smile.
For a few minutes, the two sat quiet, along with the sleeping child, whom Sella squeezed on the shoulder. 
She slowed rose to her feet. “Okay, I’m heading back. Gotta be there when she wakes up or else she’ll worry I forgot to come home.” She chuckled.
He smiled, looking down on the table, stroking its pores and grains.
She slung her bag over her shoulder and kept her hand raised to wave when he met her eyes. “Bye.”
He barely waved his hand over his shoulder. “Bye.”
She wavered along her way from the table, her creeping steps transitioning into strides the closer she got to the entrance. 
George clasped his daughter’s hand, compressing his lips as he smiled. The sound of Sella’s hurrying steps went away.
“Good morning!” Elene sprang up.
His moist eyes crinkled. She scooted forward to hug him. The two softened in each other’s steady arms, her feet pressed against his lap.
By mid-morning two days later, the screeching of a dry, shrunken spoke in a moving wheel punctuated the squeaks, exhales, and rustles from people climbing in and out of wagons. An assemblage of armed groups in mixed armor filled the cobbled entryway ascending into the tavern—a growing hubbub of banter, abuse, and laughter.
Thorn and Rayla strode down the entryway, weaved past the crowd, and continued along the sidewalk. Across this area, the same armored groups, with their rich, brilliant colors, made a din and popped among the city’s drab stalls, smithies, and stores speckled with workshop items: abraded gear, misplaced hand tools, and both clean and dirty clothes hanging side by side from containers. Noses briefly stung with the reek of something like charcoal and goat dung.
In some corner of the city, the pair turned down a doorway and slithered into a room with chairs, flat, empty walls, and a long table fatter than the doorway. Inside, a number of their group’s members hid flumped, slumped, and asleep in their seats.
George set both palms on the table, stroking the edge on his side. “So, wanna try?” He grinned.
“We can try.” The base of Sella’s hand pressed on the table as her hanging index finger flicked along the surface. Her other hand cradled her head while her elbow lay propped on the table.
“I wanna try!” Elene stifled her cry and ran around the room. He propped his elbow on the table and held it up for her. The two clapped their hands together as she passed in a blur.
“Why don’t we try then?” George turned back to Sella.
“You sure?” Sella looked in his direction out of the corner of her eye.
George held his hand up. “Why not?”
She sat there motionless. He twitched his brows up at her before looking around, yawning.
With an inflated sigh, she raised her hand, and the two slapped their hands together, he more than she.
“Okay, guys, we’re going!” she yelled.
Hands went around and woke up the sleeping. Slowly, the group assembled in the street. Within fifteen minutes, they got back to the tavern. By this time, most of the crowd had dispersed. After stopping to eat, update the staff, and absorb any group members absent earlier, they prepared their bags and trekked to the city gate.
From this chokepoint, they called themselves a travel agency to ease info exchange with the armed groups. Which long monster-infested paths were now clear? The next steps of most groups? Their overall numbers? Their current map went through heaps of drafts, and many pre-sketches piled on desks. At least one new main route crammed the top of every parchment. And distinguished among them were “optimal,” “backup,” “situational,” and “hell.”
By the third week, the boom and craze driving the armed groups had ended, and this new broker group went away as fast as it had come.
Just after noon, George, Sella, his daughter, along with the other members who participated in most of it, slouched on the striated nail-holed tavern tables. “Fuck,” he said.
“Fuck,” someone else said.
“Fuck,” a third went.
Cackles burst throughout the hall.
By evening three days later, George sat inside an eatery. Wind-borne leaf cuts, deadwood, and chaff slid along the floor. Blusters beat surfaces until their cold pricked into the feet. The breaths that collected inside undulated around the tables and billowed inside clothes. The hilly glooms rolled and rocked outside, sometimes roaring and rumbling with rupturing trees. So a staff locked the latch windows one by one. Silence flooded inside end to end. One set of ears even rang. The scritching of a broom sweeping and mounding debris in one corner whipped into the air.
The soft, chewy texture of beef and potatoes slid into George’s mouth and stroked its roof, bunching against his tongue. “Hot damn, this shit is good,” he muttered so faintly he practically mouthed it. The nourishing air staggered the crisp sparkle and brisk spring of the beef’s brunt and fused into it. His throat caught, and the crumble like kneaded dough filtered into his stomach, filling it slot by slot as if ants had organized its storage plan. His heart flooded with rains, and the sky faded and dappled in his soul’s lattices.
He let out a pang-like moan.
Elene sat beside him, giggling mid-chew. “Dad, your face looks funny.”
He giggled, licking the softened dregs in his mouth. “It’s good, right?” 
She covered her mouth and swallowed, then said, “It’s deliciosee!”
“Yup, yup.” He took another forkful.
“Hozza damnneea!” She nibbled on hers.
“You know…” A soft smile slithered onto his face. “I never thought I’d say this, but… if anything happens, I want you to know that…”
His head jerked side to side. “Nah, ha-ha.”
Her firm eyes shot into his the whole time. “Okay.”
He tried to hug her, and in his arms, she tumbled against him.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he muttered. Tears dribbled down his cheeks, wicking into her hair.
Her expression settled, and her smile returned.
He parted from her and gave his tears a gruff wipe with the side of his hand as he sniffled.
His gaze glinted piercingly.
The next afternoon, a goblin slouched around with a wide tread and stroked the slashed blue floral wrap on its scabbed elbow. George scrambled from the bushes, riddled it with stab wounds, and trampled its legs into the ground. “Fucker!” He tore the word from his grated throat, huffed, and spurted spittle. His every stomp sent the goblin’s body into a judder. The pucker traveled up the wrap, where the embroidered flowers kinked up and parted in its cragged cuts.
“Was this the scout?” He heaved, smeared sweat on his arm, and hung over the ground. His hands sat propped on his knees. His body sank standing.
Sella stooped, popped her head out of the bushes, and shot him a thumbs-up.
Blood seeped into the earth. The corpse spasmed with half-closed eyes. Its scab soaked under tearing gore. Its wrap had rippled to the ground. Its stooped head and slender legs lay flopped.
She handed him a pouch, and he emptied it into his thirst-squeezed throat in one long chug. A fresh, relaxed sigh, low and guttural like a growl, shoved from him.
The odoriferous jungle launched fruity soughs beneath the sky. Finches shrank into the smallest sheltered recesses and hollows. Stone chips clattered against fissured tree roots. The remotest trees smudged into green apartments that climbed twenty or thirty feet high.
Eyes clambered up the spreading vista and dipped into a sonorous blue.
Within sight, a slanted wooden bridge, close to collapsing into the gritty stream, connected its banks. Overgrown, slick moss grew into the wooden columns’ pores until their scent enriched the replenished air. Its northern side lay lodged in the stream bed, buckled and cracked. Traffic and rainfall had scoured and rotted it away patchily. Sluggish water creased and eddied along gravel-sheeted plant matter underneath.
It squeaked and crashed underfoot when George, Sella, and their group wriggled out of their bags to pad over it. Down the rattled bank, peals of laughter tumbled first, then a string of obscenities, then both.
When they flumped onto their palms and got back up, they wiped themselves off. Some got their hands grubby, and fresh water dripped out of squeezed handfuls of mire.
Six lone goblin corpses dotted the stretch behind them.
George bent down against a downed log, gazed inside for a moment, bore his shoulder against it as he went in for a single lavender, and snatched it in his blocky fist.
After he called Elene, she breezed to his side. When he showed the sprig to her, she jabbed her finger at it and the log and stomped her feet into the exposed dirt. “Put it back!”
He peered down at the flower while the breeze stirred it on his raised palm. “Oh.” He turned to lay it on the top of the log with both big hands, carefully plucked at its petals so it opened into more daylight, and adjusted it perpendicular to the air-fostering nurse log.
“How many more?!” asked someone at the back of the group.
“Two!” Sella raised two fingers overhead.
A human-skull-clad goblin in an oversized breastplate dragged a greatsword from behind a distant tree ahead. A growl hurled from it like a decree.
From the back of the group, a javelin soared through the air, rent into it, wrung its meat bare, and sent it into a thrash that left dirt and spittle flung. The goblin’s coughed cries and crammed huffs hung in the air.
It lay down flat on its back, one knee going down after the other, and its pupils eased wide. Underneath its armor and skull helm, its hair and fabric flitted in the breeze. Blood crinkled and crawled down the sides of its belly. Something like a smile wrinkled its lips. A glint of light shone down through its helm. Moisture cooled its eyes.
Thorn dragged the bodies into one pile, some joining him. After the group ripped apart their rags’ stiff, crusty clots, they wiped the few blades and tips used today, especially the nooks and crannies thick with rust and indurated grime, and worked them clean and smooth with the help of spit, sweat, and drips of water. Sighs spread across the group, which came as huffs at first, then gradually seeped out as their shoulders settled back into place.
They left the last goblin out there when they departed.
To George’s left rear, Elene pranced and rocked her head in a playful sway, a handkerchief rippling from her hand. On his front left, Sella trod on pace with the rest of the group. He filed behind her, lugging a thorn-punctured sack that burned into his shoulder muscles, huffing breathlessly, eyes stinging in sweat. The dirt stippled their friction-thickened ankles.
Past a sweep of trees to the front right, once the blinding edge gave way to rendered green, shrubs and sedges specked a vale bank and glistened with exuded water, coated in windblown drizzle.
The farther they traveled, the more wagons appeared down the path. They rattled and tipped as the group clambered on beside their crates before toweling their necks and faces dry.
The first wagons rolled a short distance and lurched to a stop, but slowly, every wagon rattled away and combined into a single rumble.
Every so often, eyes among the group knifed the sky that shimmered in patches through the continuous overstory.
“Bro, the fuck is Mark doing?” Resse said, lying against the wagon side, his legs atop someone else’s. “He said he’s finally got his head in the game, and now, he’s fucking flipping over… what?”
“Yeah,” Multe said, sitting on one of the crates beside the front.
“It’s fucking insane. Like I can’t believe we’re forced to watch this happen straight.”
“Yeah, yeah.”
“Like, fuck, damn. But yeah, finally.”
“Yeah, I kinda want to join him next time actually.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. I mean, as a side thing. Not as a main thing.”
“Kinda me too actually.”
“You want to go together?”
“Well, if George allows.”
George mock-sighed, smirking underneath. “Bro, as if I ever said anything about not being allowed.”
“Well, he said it.” Resse snickered, brows creased. “Let’s go.”
“You guys want to come too? Maybe, we should take everyone.” Multe grinned.
“You want?” George took off his smirk and glanced around.
“What do you guys think?” Sella, blank-faced, straightened up, cross-legged, hands clasped on her legs.
Eighteen days later, two weeks’ travel away, a town sprawled across a mountain and cascaded down steep roads that flattened along streets, punctuated by patchy terraces. Roads thinned out the lower they went, and travelers coming in groups filtered into rows of inns. 
In the town, a windowless, angular, stand-alone building sprang up behind the corners of the roads converging on it, etched against a clear, blue sky, tempered only by its sole other large counterpart—a bar lined with outdoor balconies across its two floors and contiguous with many other establishments along its block.
Inside the former, a young man strode through a doorway, eyes swiveling around the hall. Packed around were draped, square tables and unupholstered armchairs. To one side, tiered seating for guests stretched end to end. 
In one of the groups standing across the hall, he stepped forward. “Hello, greetings, how’s everyone?” He beamed, then fell back to a smile. “Good, good, good evening.” Going around chattering and chuckling, he shook hands—even over other arms. By the time he got to Sella, she opened her mouth and leaned forward to ask, but he raised his palm. “After.”
Lips compressed, she nodded low even as he already went to the next. Slipping away, she headed back to the tiered seating and, after weaving through the leg-covered row, squeezed herself beside George.
“Okay, so how are we asking him?” She smoothed her dress.
George rubbed his bottom lip as he fiddled with his hem. “Do we even need to? We can just talk to his people and register or whatever through them. I’m sure many like us are trying to join.”
Two days later, they got permission to join and signed their group up name by name.
Once they returned home, the rest of the group was ready, and they left early next coming. This time, they went to another city, much closer, only five days away. As soon as they arrived, they made their way to the guild where other groups were seated in rows.
A woman went out and called group names one by one, guiding them inside the guildmaster’s office.
When it was George and Sella’s group’s turn, the two went by themselves.
A lot of “yeses” was said.
The questions ended, and they walked out with cards each bearing a member’s name.
The group stayed in a nearby inn while waiting for the date.
On the morning of the event, the young man whom George and Sella had met all those days ago stood in the guild as more and more registered groups woke up and came from their accommodations.
By noon, the hall packed with chatter, buzz, and laughter. Bags cluttered the floor beside legs, and cloth-wrapped weaponry sat in wagons and carts lined up outside. Many were holding and eating loaves of bread from the bakery across the street.
“What do you guys wanna try first when we get there?” George said, standing and bent against the backrest.
“Koruol kuitouns,” said someone, sitting sideways with one leg curled on her seat.
“I’m okay with just goblins,” said someone else. “If I had to fight anything else, I’d have to start getting serious.”
A few chuckled.
On the wall behind them, a banner read, “Calamintop Cavern.”
Inside a chamber near the Calamintop entrance, a goblin staggered, buckled, and bled, slamming into the ground with a splatter.
Near the goblin, a broken, waterlogged guffaw ripped from a spear-skewered man slumped against the craggy wall.
From the passage, a young woman bolted to him. “Dad, dad!”
The older man tried to laugh again, but it came out as throat-burning coughs. “Look—” He coughed. “Look, look, Ada, I know, I know.” He wheezed, snickering. “You still love me, right? Right? You love Daddy?” His laugh crumbled, as his head began to sway. “Shit, Ada, I’m sorry. I fucking… I fucking hurt you. I know, I know…”
His breath squeezed out of him one last time.
Screams tore out of her head, echoing across the chamber, clambering all the way up to the entrance, where they wafted through the open air as a faint breeze.
She scrambled for the goblin’s dagger. “Shit, shit, shit…” Tears dribbled down her cheeks. Her hands trembled as she parted the goblin’s clothes. She dashed back to her father, pared the spear shalf off, and tossed it aside. “Dad, dad!” She sobbed, “Please!” She cupped his face and stroked it, smudging her nails in the blood that streaked it.
She sank back, clutching herself and huffing down against her chest. “Fuck…” she whined.
She dragged her hand against the rubbly floor, abrading her skin against the small rock fragments.
Her chest jerked as she sobbed and sniffled.
She lay down beside him.
Back in the guild, George mimicked someone holding a sword and slashed forward. Elene took the fake hit and let out a mock-groan. The two fell back in their chairs, snickering.
“Dad.” Elene raised her arms for a hug, flumping toward him.
George caught and lifted her in his arms, smothering her.
As he was about to close his eyes, her voice rang in his ears: “Do you know when Mom’s coming back?”
He jolted, then smiled. “She won’t approve of this, you know that.”
She made a face. “But it’s not like anything bad’s happening.”
He almost scratched his head, but her weight pulled him down. “Well… I agree with her partially. This—what we’re doing—isn’t the safest environment for a child.”
She barked, “But I like it! Isn’t that enough? And even if something bad happens, you’re there. So it doesn’t matter.”
He tilted his head up and around. “Well, I might… you know.”
“Nah, you can’t.” She clung tighter.
He met the expressionless glances of his fellow group members. “He-he.”
She let her eyes fall shut, and the two stayed like that for a while.
Her head snapped back at him. “Then why do you bring me?”
“That’s only if I know if it’s safe.”
“But still! If you bring me, that means it’s safe!”
“No, not always. No, not at all. I can prepare all I want… but…” He glanced at his fellow members, who averted their gazes. “You know. There will be those days.”
She let what he said sit, face pressed into his chest.
His voice vibrated through her. “But not this time. I can’t bring you.”
“Noooo!” she squealed.
He beamed, laughing breathily.
By late afternoon, the guild gradually emptied, and the passenger wagons outside filled.
Three members of George’s group hung out under a lone tree, staring out at the departing groups. 
“Boy, you think there’ll be a fishman there?” one said, sitting on the tufts of grass directly below the tree.
“In a cave like that? No, nah,” another said, standing, one leg crossed over the other, clinging to the branch.
“Damn it! If I only brought my hooks and worms, then I’d find at least one.”
“You know that’s not how that works, right?”
“I’m fucking joking.”
“Guys, shh. I’m trying to enjoy this moment,” the third said, his boots planted. 
For a moment, the first two went quiet.
“You think she broke him?” the second whispered about the third.
The first broke into laughter, holding his stomach.
The second started giggling, adding more and more details.
The first fell to his knees and slammed the ground, his guffaw stretching.
The third took a breath like a sigh, gaze fixed. “They’re calling us.”
They quickly joined the rest of their group as everyone left.
By sundown, the groups encamped for the night outside Calamintop. The way from the cave spread wide and flat before plummeting behind their camp into a sunken garden hemmed in from above by jungle rises, whose trees formed a continuous canopy that ended around the middle.
The echo of distant tumble and clatter, like hands reaching in the dark and people falling over their equipment, tore through the air. It hung long after the sounds were gone.
The jungle’s murmur sharpened. The sky loomed a decaying blue.
The torches lit up one by one. Chuckles spread. The trees swayed harder and harder.
George’s laugh went on and on in one of the tents. Elene shook her hands in the air. “And then the monster falls!” She imitated a splash and an explosion with her mouth. Sella stood by the door, hands folded, smiling. Thorn went in to her side and said, “The first chamber.”
“We check it tonight.” She nodded flatly.
“Won’t Mark be the one to say it?” He almost scratched his head.
She glanced at three others who were standing outside waiting, Rayla, Rick, and someone else. “Everyone’s already going to check it. It’s better that we’re not lagging behind.”
Thorn nodded and went to the other three, leaving with them to spread the word to the rest of the group.
Inside, George had his hand on Elene’s shoulder. “This time, you really can’t go with us.”
“Yeah!” She beamed.
Watching them, Sella took one of her last deep breaths of the day.
She and George went out to four people carrying a covered figure on a bed.
A young woman hurried alongside it. “Dad, Dad!”
Throughout the camp, everyone went out when they heard, then stopped when they saw.
“Is she with us?” one said.
“Look at her,” another said.
“They were inside,” a third said.
“How long?” a fourth said.
“What happened?” a fifth said.
“Goblins,” a sixth said.
“Why?” a seventh said.
George went back.
“What happened—” Elene peeked out of her tent, keeping her toes inside.
He leaned onto her, enveloping her in his arms.
“What happened?” she whispered.
“Someone…” He stifled something.
“What?” She tried to tilt her head in his squeeze.
“Something.” He breathed past her.
“Yeah?” She almost laughed.
“Something…” He settled like this.
The two stayed there for a while.
“Dad?” She interrupted.
He clenched. “Yes?”
“Want me to come with you?” She was stretching her feet that ached from standing against his weight for so long. 
“Ha-ha, no, no. I’m fine.” He freed her, patted her head, and left.
Sella stood outside, facing him. “Come on, let’s go.”
He nodded, eyes averted.
The two rejoined their group, and Mark was already out front at the entrance. The groups formed the coalition here.
Their numbers poured inside.
The way to the second chamber hung ahead of them.
A screech vibrated the walls.
The ground quivered for a moment, the rock chips skittering up and down; some dissolved away.
Dust wafted down from the pores in the ceiling, settling on heads and helmets.
Someone’s knife clattered and displaced dust after they dropped it.
Someone burst into a cough, triggering a chain of coughs through the coalition.
The passage filled with chuckles and snickers before guffaws erupted. The laughter continued with banter, abuse, and chatter. Groups, friends, and strangers resumed their conversations.
A goblin peeked from inside the second chamber. An arrow sliced through it, leaving a sparkling gash. Its guts spilled onto the floor.
Another arrow flew, eviscerating another goblin behind the first. Flames burst from the wound, consuming the creature. 
A third ran away. From behind a corner, someone swept into the chamber toward it and cut its legs with two daggers, sending it crashing to the ground. From his left rear, someone else lunged with a hammer, smashed it on the head, and staggered as the ground under it cracked, sank, and spat out dust. “Fucker!”
A fourth goblin screeched, raising one palm and clenching it shut, grasping a spear in the other. “Khalagtahg!” A flame sprang from its fist. It ran its burning, unharmed hand over the spear, coating it with fire. It opened this fist, and the flame swirled away.
A third, fourth, and fifth person ran at it.
It thrust forward several times, flame whooshing toward them, halting their advance, then swept its tip around and slashed it forward like a sword, sending its flame in a moving wall.
Four more people whirled their hands, and a translucent, glowing white wall emerged from the ground, blocking the flame. Three more spells appeared: a shard of ice, a flying sword, and a black fog that embrittled non-human flesh.
The first five people charged it.
The spear clattered away.
In places, the goblin had frozen, bled, and lost flesh to shatter, slumping to the ground.
Snarls and gibbers spread through the chambers. Creatures stirred, skittered, and rumbled throughout the cavern.
A giant floating stark-white featureless hand crept from around the corner, smashing someone before scudding away.
The person croaked while a group of green robes extended glowing hands, restoring her bones and the shape of her face.
A tall tree creature blasted over, kicked someone into the wall, and whipped away.
His armor crushed into him. He collapsed, groaning when he should have been screaming.
Glows brought him back to shape, but his eyes lay empty.
A different series of glows jolted him back to cussing and thrashing on his feet.
Two doves appeared on the ceiling and spat fast glowing purple balls that exploded on impact, scorching flesh and paralyzing bodies.
Arrows bounced off the doves, hitting an invisible sphere.
A beam of lightning shattered through it and left falling dust where they hung.
Bolts from the third chamber shot continuously, hissing on impact.
Walls arose, blocking the first attacks, but the coalition slowly backed off around a turn in the passage to wait out the rest. But the bolts stopped only seconds after they retreated.
They proceeded again, and more bolts came, holding them down. But every time the bolts paused, they crawled forward, getting closer and closer to the third chamber.
Then the bolts erupted into a barrage. The tree creature and floating hand charged forward, along with a company of goblins. Already halfway to the human coalition, they were set to rupture it mid-maneuver.
The bolts tore through shields and walls, but a line of people absorbed the damage that should have pierced through them and into everyone behind them. Green robes were shining rays into them, and red potions stained and dribbled their lips. From behind, Mark surfaced, and his line of cannoneers edged their cannons out front and aimed.
Blasts boomed, and round shots flew, making fractured craters wherever they hit.
Battered and growing awkward in its gallop, the tree creature skidded, then slipped and crashed to the ground, twisting its leg with a resounding snap. It lay groaning, shuddering, and throwing its head back while the floating hand and goblins pressed on to maintain their momentum.
They slammed into the coalition’s first ranks, impaling and smashing them into downed, stunned heaps, while Mark hurried from the edge, bringing many others to hack away at the rest of the tree creature.
It cracked, broke, and snapped under abuse, shattering. Goblins turned heads; some of them missed a block, ingested the brunt of a blade’s streaking potion, and flopped dead with a soaked splat within seconds. The floating hand jolted back, and a spear drove through its palm, acid sizzling through it. It coughed, blood streaming from its punctures. Nearby, a goblin slammed sideways into the ground and lay still, wisps of golden light and ethereal choir wafting out of its charred gaping window of a cheek.
A goblin’s eyes crept up the tree creature’s remains, flickering one last time.
A spear ran through it, leaving black rot in the flesh.
The blur of swords that ripped into flesh and tore out more on the way out dissolved into darkness, giving way to an apparition of the boundless sky.
It awoke to sunshiny showers, flowery streets, and clattery wagons.
Back in the cavern, Mark returned and helped catch the fleeing goblins one by one.
Nearby, George and Sella, along with the rest of their group, pressed fists, hardened skin squishing.
After setting barricades between the second and third chamber, almost all the coalition returned to camp and slept. Only a few who had failed to participate earlier stood guard and intercepted any remnants, keeping the field clear.
In the morning, the rattle of wagons, which the locals supplied for hire under official orders procured from the magistrate of the district, filled the camp. Well before the fight, they had been shuttling to town, carrying back the clink of empty flasks and used cleaning and repairing tools, and bringing the nourishment of fresh food and the overwhelming cornucopia of apothecary ingredients like hillwort and horehound to camp. Even stacks of sun-dried, washed clothes and beds came in their own supply run. The cleared route to town wound and knotted, kept safe from steep, slippery forest paths, with armed pickets drawn from different groups scattered along it. Wagons fed them along the way, with salted pottages, sippets, herb-farced fillets, roasted eggs, and raisins.
Around the doodle-charted plain of tent tops, Elene sprinted, the billowing wind at her back, the humid air scented with broth. She veered along ranges of mountainous tents lined with towering gabions, circling them to hide and shake off pursuers. She stopped at the sign-marked edge that led into the bowl. The children behind her stared. The expanse below stretched as far as their eyes could see and sank deeper than they could reach safely from here. In their eyes, hill towns made of grass extended along routes that ascended vast escarpments. A life could give birth, gaze aloft under passing clouds, and expire here.
In one of the pickets, two men chuckled, even with the chewed ball of biting, crunchy endives in their teeth. A goblin lay in front of them, scalded all over. Its boiled flesh could have gone in their soup, they joked.
Sweat lingered on skin. Mud flecked like scratches. Hands shook like wrenches and wrestles. Smiles glided along faces, spreading through groups like a morning breeze. The sky grayed with the clouds, then lit again with their passing. The ground slapped, sucked, and swished underfoot, the bedrock distant like myth. Trees unfolded upon the world in tangled roots, bracing it all together.
Back in camp, Sella let out a sigh before handing George his pouch. She was sitting cross-legged with her back straight and eyes swiveling around.
Their group spread across a whole row of connected tents. Just outside, the whole camp hung smothered inside the breathing jungle and a sprint away from the cavern chambers, with the threat of something breaking through and pursuing retreating fighters back to camp. But people held onto their soft beds and clothes and wrapped themselves snug, slurping from streaming-hot stew that kept their tummies warm and sated. The chatter and chuckles of family, friends, and welcomed strangers wafted throughout the camp. The dripping, slick jungle edges farther out gusted along. The route back to town lingered always with a smattering of coming wagons, an endless hike.
When everyone had eaten their fill, Mark clapped his hands in front of him. “Third chamber,” he declared.
“Third chamber,” chorused tent by tent throughout the camp.
Groups went outside and formed lines.
Drawn from different groups, the coalition officers sorted everyone into tight combat formations based on ability and coordinated with the overall structure. Most were standard infantry and support, even with enchanted weaponry. Those with magical beams and the like were scattered across the front fringes to give them clearance and prevent collision. Cannons edged just behind the front to topple any all-out charge. Half of the healers were regularly interspersed, but the other half amassed behind the front beside the cannons. Those who absorbed barrages of spells like penetrating bolts and overloaded themselves on potions were woven into the front. But most in the front were detached attackers wielding daggers, hammers, and other close-combat weapons or spellcasters with ice shards and flying swords. Crucially, friends, not group mates, were kept as close to each other wherever possible at the very edges of their formations.
The coalition entered the cavern, heading down into the first chamber and continuing into the second.
Skitters kicked up dust across the third chamber, while the rumbling marchers brought mud on their way from the second. With the barricades already removed, the passage opened up, and the shadows crept larger and larger.
At the third chamber, a goblin settled in front, holding a crossbow. It shot, landing squarely into a shield. It looked back and waved at the other goblins, who ran over with crossbows and shields. They all aimed through the entryway and let loose as one. The bolts slammed into a magically created wall and dropped, soon becoming crushed underfoot. Curses shot from their jaws.
Arrows flew from the coalition, shattering their shields and tearing gashes in them.
A taller goblin strode behind the smaller ones and ordered them to move out of the way. But when they already lay dead, it heaved a breath.
Snowflakes swirled around its larger crossbow in a crisp winter-swept cylinder, vanishing at the edges.
It shot at the coalition, and the bolt broke a wall, but plunged to the ground after that. It clicked its tongue.
An arrow from the coalition flew, and it tore another small goblin.
The tall one barked, and every goblin in the cavern came over with different weapons.
It waved its hand and coated their weapons one by one with that winter effect, only much smaller and fainter.
By the time it was done, it shouted at them to aim their crossbows, raise their shields, and clench their swords and spears.
A heavy, tense, breathless voice from the fourth chamber ordered them to withdraw.
It echoed the order in a yell, straining its throat, and the goblins abandoned the third chamber.
A number of goblin stragglers at the back fell to daggers, ice shards, and hammers.
Once the coalition cleared the chamber of traps and set up barricades, they proceeded down the passage toward the fourth chamber.
More goblins fell to arrows.
The nearer they came, the thicker the dead creepers cascading from the roof. Their surroundings soon vaguely resembled a forest tunnel.
From the fourth chamber rolled a thunderous cheer.
A goblin with a gem-encrusted crown tottered out of it, clinging to the wall. 
An arrow flew.
The goblin raised its palm, and the arrow dissolved as soon as it entered an invisible sphere.
Smirking, the goblin shouted as more and more energy surged through its head, chest, and arm into its outstretched palm.
From its palm, a blast ripped through the air and slammed directly into the first ranks. Blood amassed, and eyes and faces blackened. Bodies collapsed into each other.
The blast continued as a constant beam, slamming with an endless force.
A lightning beam shattered the sphere, but the goblin kept healing, absorbing all the damage until the beam flickered out.
“Retreat!” someone shouted.
Someone else pushed his way through his formation and ran off, driving his elbows back.
Glows brought back several others, who fled just as fast.
The coalition fell back and ducked behind the barricades.
The beam destroyed any straggler as they lay screaming with a hand raised toward the others. The passage dotted with corpses. Some even died inside the third chamber when the beam got past a gap.
In full purple and yellow, Mark ran up and sliced the crowned goblin as it turned back. He struck it again and again, using a spear, a blade, a dagger, a knife, and an arrow. He even dumped a crucible of lava he pulled out of thin air.
The crown clattered, and the charring, burning, steaming corpse perfurmed his nostrils. His sweaty face with its small smile turned back to the watching coalition right before he sprinted all the way back, weaving through the bodies. A tenth of the coalition lay among them.
Thorn—along with five others from George and Sella’s group—had stared, sputtering out his last breaths.
George stared. A trickle was tapping the water in the bucket in front of him.
Elene ran past him, squealing.
Reddish clouds floated above. Yellow blossoms swayed on a tree nearby. He glanced at them.
Sella returned with a hot bowl of stew. He took it and held it by the edges, keeping his hand from the heat that crept through the wood. He held the silence for a moment, then said, “Thank you.”
She cupped his shoulder and beamed. “No worries!”
He half-smiled.
As she turned, he compressed his lips. “S-Sella.”
She raised her brows at him, standing there.
A smile flickered on his face. “Ah, a-ha, I…”
She let out a sigh, blinking through it. “It’s okay. I mean, of course it’s not, but we’re here, right?”
He locked eyes with her, peering into them.
“Okay,” he said.
She turned away.
Soft breaths broke behind her.
The next morning, the third day of the operation, George stretched. Though yesterday morning had been full of death, the rest of that day was spent on recovery and review with a dash of tribute and group hugs.
When he strode out of his tent, he raised his brows at choruses of laughter.
Rayla and Melly compared quills on one side while Sella and Elene played clapping games nearby. Elsewhere, Rick and his two friends sat debating the best fighting techniques when Resse and Multe mingled with people outside the circle. Even those least involved with the group’s inner circle, Leo and Mrs. Aileen, chatted in the back. Throughout, the rest of the members had formed similar groups.
George smiled, right as Sella and Elene beckoned him to join their game.
He stepped forward, right where Thorn and those five others had just been.
He played as part of his broader group within the camp.
“Fourth chamber!” people yelled across the camp after everyone ate breakfast.
The coalition assembled.
The third chamber darkened with their presence.
The passage leading to the fourth had long been cleared of corpses.
The entryway to the fourth loomed beyond them.
Mark stood at the front.
George sighed. “Fuck.”
Sella half-laughed.
The marching began.
The entryway remained empty and dim. The passage was still clear. Muted skitters emanated, but that was normal.
They got all the way to the fourth chamber. It was empty.
Someone shuddered.
The officers ordered a halt.
They sent someone inside.
She came back, shaking her head.
They sent another, farther this time.
Same response.
They sent a third, as far as the middle of the passage leading to the fifth chamber.
Nothing.
Everything was quiet.
Everyone was ordered to stay vigilant.
The fourth chamber could be controlled and barricaded, but they were kept just outside it.
Quiet sighs broke up the silence.
The officers ordered a retreat.
Everyone went back to camp.
The officers announced that the operation was ending, citing bad intel.
Everyone stifled their sighs, clapping, and whooping as they went to their bags and tents and got everything ready to leave.
Once the coalition broke up and the groups set off on their separate ways, George laughed alongside Sella, their eyes wet with tears.
Upon returning to the tavern, everyone in George’s group went home and hit the sack.
[TO BE CONTINUED]