Derek carefully made his way through the forest. The trees were ancient things that had grown to massive proportions, towering hundreds of feet in the air, and with trunks so big around that he thought he could probably carve a full sized cottage into the side of one. Normally nobody came out this far to the north of town, the ancient trees could hide any number of monsters, and their sheer size made it all too easy to be ambushed by something nasty. Every now and then though, the town would send out a scout or two to check things out, usually because they were looking to expand the town again and felling a single tree from this area could produce enough lumber to build several new homes. The lumber was considerably sturdier than the closer trees provided, and the rich red color it had was attractive.

The problem Derek had right now though is that he had found some evidence of something being out here, something nasty and not like anything he had seen in his years as a hunter. Five days ago he had been sent out to scout, only to discover several gore coated skeletons of different animals. Wolves, rabbits, squirrels, and even a few monstrous versions of them. This wouldn’t have been too unusual, the local wildlife seemed to enjoy murdering each other, but these ones had been staked to the ground, and as far as he could tell from the damage to the limbs and torn ground they had been eaten alive and slowly. He had never seen anything that was malicious enough to deliberately torment its prey in the forests and it made him nervous.

He had returned to town immediately after finding a few of these disturbing displays of brutality and warned them of the threat. The problem was that he hadn’t seen what was actually staking the wildlife out like that, and they had to find out if there was a threat to the town. So he insisted on heading back out immediately to try and find it. Which lead to where he was now, carefully threading his way through massive trees in search of a mysterious threat, two full days travel from town.

He had started to feel uncomfortable as he went deeper into the primordial forest, and couldn’t place what was wrong for quite some time. Then it finally dawned on him what was bothering him, it was silent. Forests are never totally silent, there are always birds and other animals making noise, the rustle of the wind through the trees, insects chirping, something is always making noise. This area was dead silent though.

All the hair on the back of his neck stood on end when he noticed the unnatural silence. Yet he still pressed on, the town needed to know if there was danger, and he had a sinking suspicion that there was most certainly a threat to the town in this remote section of forest. Slowly growing accustomed to the silence surrounding him, he was startled when he heard a strange cry he had never heard in his life, and it was followed by a thump, then a pained whimper.

The trees could make sound carry in strange ways, so he wasn’t certain it was as close as it sounded. He cautiously made his way towards the noise, hoping he could get a look at what made it, then get out without being spotted. He came across a small clearing in the trees, and inside it was a squat green thing with a club and wearing a loincloth. It was using its club to pound crude stakes through the legs of a battered, but clearly still living wolf. Derek was stunned by the scene, that’s… that’s a goblin! But they are supposed to have been wiped out with the rest of the Twisted! Shit, shitshitshit I have to warn the town, if the twisted are back we are all in terrible danger!

Derek turned to sneak away, but only made it a hundred yards before he heard excited streams of gibberish sound from the forest around him. He saw more goblins come from around the nearby trees, and they started to charge him. He swiftly nocked, drew back, and loosed an arrow at the nearest one, hitting it dead center in its chest, killing it almost immediately. He had time to loose three more arrows before they got too close to him, and he was forced to drop his bow and draw his short sword. He slashed the first goblin to reach him across the gut, its entrails spilling across the ground, then he spun around it and thrust the sword into the next goblin’s chest and piercing its heart.

He was growing hopeful that he might actually win against them, they were numerous, but they were weak and unskilled, as long as he stayed on the move and took advantage of his longer reach he had a chance to win this fight and flee to the south to warn the town. Carving his way through the goblins was slowly draining his strength however. It also seemed like there were two new goblins for every one he killed.

He managed to fight his way through the seemingly endlessly growing horde of goblins for another few hundred yards, weaving his way from goblin to goblin, killing them with well-placed blows, and leaving the corpse to tangle up his pursuers. Derek was starting to realize that he had to change things up though, at this rate he would never make it the two days travel to the town, and even if he did make it through some miracle, he would bring a seemingly endless horde of goblins to them.

Maybe I can lose them in the trees? I doubt goblins can climb these monsters all that easily. Sprinting at one of the trees nearby and sheathing his sword, he pulled out a couple iron claws used for gripping tree trunks and ran up the side of the tree, latching into the trunk with the claws. Quickly alternating back and forth he climbed as fast as he could up the side of the tree without bothering to look down and see if the goblins were able to follow or not.

When he finally managed to reach a branch he wearily pulled himself onto it to rest. Looking down finally, he saw that the goblins clearly couldn’t climb these massive trees well at all, and in their frenzy to catch him they were scrambling all over each other and pulling down the few that had actually managed to start making their way up. By the time he managed to catch his breath they still hadn’t made any progress, but they also weren’t leaving. Glancing about he noticed that the branches this low on the trees were very thick and got pretty close to each other, relatively low anyways, he thought to himself idly, but I can probably jump between them if I’m careful about it. Just can’t miss, don’t want to fall nearly a hundred feet into a warm goblin welcome.

Carefully making his way along the branch he was on he got near where he thought it would have a harder time supporting his weight, took a deep breath and leapt to the nearest branch from another tree. He landed with a thump, but managed to hang on to it with the help of his claws. Pulling himself to a sitting position on the branch he noticed that half of the goblins still seemed to be trying to get up the first tree, while the rest had followed his progress and were standing below him. If only I hadn’t been forced to drop my bow, he thought ruefully, it would be like shooting fish in a barrel.

Figuring he might get lucky, and that there was no reason to carry extra weight while pulling stunts like leaping from tree to tree like a monkey, he started dropping the rest of his arrows on the crowd of goblins. Throwing them down like they were oversized darts wasn’t particularly accurate, but the number of goblins under him made it hard to miss and he was rewarded with the sound of pained shouts and cries, and angry streams of gibberish. Then, having run out of arrows, he got up and made his way along the branch to the trunk. He had to climb around it a little bit to get to another branch heading southward then he repeated his wild leap to the next tree.

Three more leaps, and the number of goblins following under him had diminished considerably. He began to grow hopeful that he could lose them all and climb down to move faster, but the very next leap he made, he was halfway across when something hit him in the thigh. Pain rippled up his body, nearly making him miss his grab at the next branch. Hanging from it, he looked down and saw crude fletching attached to a slightly crooked arrow shaft sticking from his leg. They shot me? He thought, but none of them have bows! And they seem far too stupid to figure out how to use one let alone make one!

He looked around frantically trying to figure out where the shot came from. When he finally saw it, he saw that it wasn’t a goblin at all. It was much taller and uglier, wearing ragged furs and carrying a rough looking bow. At the same time as he spotted it though, another arrow sailed past him from a different direction. Then another, and another. Then one struck him in the arm and made him lose his grip. As he fell his last thoughts were of his wife and son, I’m sorry I won’t make it home to you.