The Gilded Griffin roared with the boisterous, unrestrained clamor of Alkaer’s common folk and off-duty soldiery. The sprawling common room was filled with the smell of spilled ale, roasting meat, pipe smoke, and damp wool. Torches and tallow candles cast a smoky light over a sea of battered tables and benches, packed with patrons seeking solace from the day’s labors or the city’s overwhelming press. The menu chalked on a slate behind the scarred wooden bar was simple but hearty: Turgon’s Famous Stew (contents unspecified, but always filling), Roasted River Perch, Hard Cheese and Black Bread, and, for the truly discerning, Mysterious Meat Pies. The ales were strong, the cider sharper, and the wine, a rough vintage from the southern vineyards, was cheap.
Corporal Gregan, sticking out in frontier leathers amidst the more colorful attire of city dwellers, was in his element. Perched on a stool, his fourth (or was it fifth?) tankard of ‘Dragon’s Breath’ ale, a brew notorious for its potency, clutched in his meaty fist, he was regaling a somewhat captive audience with his version of the events at Alderholt.
"...and there we were, lads, just forty of us against what must’ve been five hundred of them green-skinned devils!" Gregan declared, his voice booming over the general din. His audience consisted of a few weary-looking drovers, a couple of apprentices shirking their duties, and two city guardswomen trying, with limited success, to enjoy their own drinks. "Shaman on a wolf, big as a damned bear, breathin’ fire and brimstone – or somethin’ equally unpleasant, I tell ya!"
Ronigren, nursing a weaker ale at a nearby table, watched with a mixture of amusement and mild embarrassment. Gregan’s tale grew more embellished with each retelling and each tankard. The forty men had become thirty, the goblins had multiplied, and the stone guardians now answered to Gregan’s personal commands.
"And Sir Ronigren here," Gregan gestured grandly towards his knight, nearly spilling his ale, "cool as a winter stream, he was! Cut down three of ‘em with one sweep of his blade, he did!"
Ronigren offered a weak smile and a slight shake of his head, which Gregan conveniently ignored. The two city guardswomen exchanged exaggerated eye-rolls. “Another frontier hero,” one of them muttered to her companion. “Give him another two ales and he'll claim he wrestled the shaman himself.” Her friend snorted into her tankard, clicking her tongue in a gesture of amused dismissal entirely lost on the corporal. Gregan seemed to interpret their attention as captivated admiration, flashing them what he considered a roguish grin, which just made him look like he had a cramp.
"Aye, ladies," he continued, puffing out his chest, "takes more than a few goblins to scare the lads from Lastwall, eh?"
Ronigren sighed. Subtlety was not among Greg’s virtues. Still, the corporal’s boisterousness was a familiar comfort, a small island of frontier bluntness in the ocean of Alkaer’s complexities.
But then, as Ronigren’s gaze idly swept the crowded room, he noticed a middle-aged man at the bar, counting out coins to the surly one-eyed innkeeper. Trailing slightly behind him, looking both out of place and self-possessed, a girl.
No, not a girl. A young woman of a stature that made Ronigren straighten in his seat. She was impossibly tall, easily a head and shoulders above her companion, and indeed, above every other man in the Gilded Griffin. Her build had the lankyness of youth yet she moved with unexpected grace as she waited for the merchant to conclude his business. Her long dark hair was pulled back in a simple braid, revealing a determined, thoughtful face.
Ronigren frowned. He’d seen dwarves, of course, and even heard tales of the reclusive elves. But this… this was different. Perhaps it was the recent memory of the inhuman goblins, or the unsettling tales of otherworldly powers Falazar had hinted at, but an uncanny quality in her, a hint of a scale and nature that didn't quite fit, nagged at him. It wasn't just her height; it was an indefinable sense of… something other.
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
As the merchant finished his transaction, he gestured towards a massive iron-bound trunk resting near the doorway. The girl nodded, and hefted the trunk onto her shoulder with an ease that made Ronigren’s eyebrows rise. The merchant, meanwhile, collected a key from the innkeeper and a platter laden with bread, cheese, and what looked like a portion of Turgon’s Stew.
The pair began to make their way through the crowded room towards the narrow staircase that led to the inn’s upper chambers. As they passed by Ronigren’s table, he got a clearer look at the young woman. Her eyes were a startling, clear blue, and they held a spark of intelligence and a restless curiosity that darted to take in everything around her. For a fleeting moment, their gazes met – his, one of puzzled, analytical observation; hers, a quick, self-conscious glance before she focused on navigating the crowded space with her immense burden.
The encounter was brief, unremarkable to anyone else in the raucous tavern. But for Ronigren, the sight of the tall girl lingered, another piece in a world that was turning out far stranger and more complex than he had ever imagined. He found himself wondering who she was, and what business brought such an unusual pair to Alkaer at such a volatile time. He dismissed it as idle curiosity and turned back to Gregan, who was now attempting to explain the precise aerodynamics of a goblin arrow to a deeply unimpressed stonemason.
* * *
The days in Greyfang Tor bled into a grey, agonizing sameness. Nell’s broken leg throbbed incessantly, a dull counterpoint to the gnawing hunger and the ever-present fear. After the conversation between the shaman and the disembodied melodious voice, a new, grim energy had infused the goblin warren. The frantic, haphazard work had given way to a more focused, driven industry.
Nell and a few other able-bodied captives were forced into labor. Chained together at the ankles, they were made to haul heavy baskets of quarried stone from a newly excavated section of the warren towards the cavern where the strange siege engines were being built. His goblin overseer, a vicious specimen with a missing ear and a fondness for using the butt of its spear, had attempted another "interrogation" earlier. Its grasp of the Argrenian tongue was abysmal, a string of garbled threats and demands for information about "shiny man-things" and "paths south." Nell, offering only grunts and confused shakes of his head, had earned another sharp blow for his troubles.
During one of these grueling trips, he stumbled under the weight of his load near a side tunnel that offered a glimpse of the warren’s main thoroughfare, and a sight before him froze the blood in his veins.
Columns of goblins, hundreds of them, armed and armored, snaking southwards, disappearing into the deeper tunnels that led out of Greyfang Tor. This was no raiding party; this was an army on the move. But it wasn't just the goblins that terrified him.
Marching amongst them, dwarfing the smaller creatures, loomed beings of nightmare. Easily two times the height of a human, their forms thick and massively muscled. Their skin a mottled greyish-brown, covered in thick, overlapping scales that looked like shards of rock or hardened bark. Their heads were sloped, almost triangular, with deep-set, off-white eyes that glowed with a hateful, quasi-sentient malevolence. Their faces were rough-cut, angular, with wide, lipless mouths filled with jagged, irregular teeth. They moved with a ponderous earth-shaking tread, their humonguous plate armor clanging with each step. Their massive three-fingered hands clutched maces the size of small tree trunks, their heads studded with sharpened stones and jagged metal.
Ogres? Trolls? Nell had heard tales of such creatures, imbued with a raw, primordial power and a chilling, focused intent. There were only a handful of them, perhaps half a dozen interspersed within the goblin ranks, but their presence transformed the goblin horde into an apocalyptic threat. One of them turned its head as it passed, its off-white eyes sweeping over the cowering prisoners, and a cold dread hit him so deep it nearly stopped his heart. There was understanding in those beastly eyes, a cruel amusement.
The goblin overseer barked, jabbing Nell with its spear, forcing him to move on, his mind reeling. This was what the melodic voice and the shaman had been planning. This was the new face of the war.
