The next morning, the party rose with the sun. Eager to get going, they went about their morning ablutions quickly, and soon, they were on the road. As the morning wore on, the road wound its way into a dense forest of pine trees and oaks. In Bastion, Zeke had acquired a full parcel of travel rations, which consisted of jerky, dried fruits, and incredibly dense bread. With little else to do in the back of the cart, Zeke started eating.

“I always used to think I liked jerky,” he said, tearing a piece off of the dried meat with his teeth. “I don’t anymore.”

Abby rolled her eyes. “You’ve been eating rations for a single day, and you’re already complaining about it? Toughen up a little,” she responded. “I remember my first real mission for the guild. It lasted for almost a month, and we were in the Firelands, so everything there tasted like sulfur. We were on travel rations the whole time, and not the good ones, either. Like, think of meat that’s barely more than shoe leather, and you’ve got an idea what it was like. Oh, God – and that hardtack? Like chewing a brick, even when we soaked it with water.”

“Sounds fun,” Zeke muttered, swallowing his jerky. “What was the mission?”

“Rescue,” she said. “We were hired by this guy who raised salamanders. And not the kind you know from Earth, either. These things are basically crocodile sized mini-dragons that breath fire. Anyway, somebody stole one of the matriarchs and some eggs, and we were hired to get it back. We got the adult, but the thieves sold the eggs.”

“So…you were like a pet detective or something?” Zeke asked, the corner of his mouth turning up in a half-smile.

“Shut up,” she growled, though she couldn’t keep a slight grin from her own face. “It was my first job. It was horrible, too. There’s a reason nobody goes to the Firelands. Geysers of magma, poisonous reptiles, and these giant, flaming cockroach things that will literally eat you alive.”

“I hope you were at least paid well.”

“Not really,” she admitted. “There’s a good reason a bunch of newbies got that mission.”

“Whatever,” Zeke said. “Won’t be an issue for me going forward, what with the cottage and my storage. Time doesn’t move in that cellar.”

“Really? How do you know for sure?”

Zeke ran his hand over his short hair, saying, “I might’ve left some fish in there for a few months. It was just as fresh as ever. I even ate some of it to check it out, and it was fine.”

“Do you have any idea how nasty that would’ve been if that hadn’t been the case? It would’ve stunk up the whole house!”

“Yeah, no – I know,” Zeke replied. “But it didn’t, right? No harm, no foul.”

“You say that, but –”

“What is that?” came Reginald’s voice from the front of the wagon.

Immediately, Zeke climbed to the front and followed the trader's pointed finger. In the distance, there was a thin ribbon of black smoke rising into the air. Abby, who’d climbed up beside him, said, “There’s nothing around here but fields and forests. There shouldn’t be smoke.”

“Want to check it out?” Zeke asked.

“We don’t have much of a choice,” said Reginald. “The road curves right into it.”

Without any more hesitation or discussion, Zeke vaulted off the cart and took off at a run. Where there was smoke, there was fire – and in the new world, that meant there was probably trouble. Certainly, it was possible that someone was just getting a late start and hadn’t put their campfire out, but given everything Zeke knew about traders, which admittedly wasn’t that much, he didn’t think that was likely. Much like farmers, ranchers, and other laborers, they were an early rising bunch.

“Wait up!”

Zeke slowed his pace so Abby could keep up. When she drew even with him, he asked, “What do you think?”

“Trouble,” she said.

“Me too.”

The conversation lapsed as their strides quickly ate up the distance. The combination of their preternatural strength and stamina gave them plenty of endurance, and even after a mile, neither was even winded. What’s more, Zeke felt certain that he could push himself much, much harder. Even before being reborn, he’d been a good runner, but now, his pace far exceeded even that of an Olympic distance runner. It was a heady feeling, knowing just how far he'd gone past human limitations.

And his journey had only barely begun. He’d been in the new world for close to three years, but he hadn’t even reached level twenty-five, which was the peak of his current plane. What would it feel like when he did? Future skills aside, Zeke was more than a little excited about his physical potential.

Idly, he noticed that Pudge was trailing along behind them; he couldn’t quite keep up, but he was moving far more quickly – and for longer – than any bear had a right to move. Another couple of levels, and the bear cub’s stats would catch up to Abby’s, but how long would it be before he could stand toe-to-toe with Zeke? It was a frightening thought, especially given how effective of a fighter Pudge could be, even with the handicap of his low levels. It was easy to imagine the cub growing into a truly fearsome monster.

“It’s just around this bend,” Abby said, slowing down and keeping her voice low. “You hear anything?”

“Just Pudge,” Zeke said, glancing back at the bear cub’s ambling gait. He was only forty yards back, and he was closing very quickly, so Zeke mentally told him to stay back. The bear was a lot of things – powerful, strong, and, of course, adorable – but he was definitely not stealthy. Pudge drew to a stop and gave a huff, but he obeyed.

Just until you catch your breath, buddy, Zeke sent through the bond.

Abby and Zeke crept forward along the road, hugging the tree line. The woods were dense enough that they couldn’t see much around the bend, so they decided to be extremely cautious as they inspected the origin of the smoke. As they came closer to the corner, Zeke could hear the crackle of live flames.

“Definitely a fire,” he whispered, crouching low. “Sounds like more than one.”

Abby looked at him a little curiously, then responded, “How do you know?”

“My senses are really sharp,” Zeke answered; one of the side effects of evolving his race was enhanced senses. At the time, he’d only focused on his improved night vision, but since then, he’d come to take the strength of his senses for granted. Not only could he see much better than before, with far sharper clarity, but he could also smell, hear, and even feel things he’d never experienced back on Earth. In the caves, he hadn’t had the luxury of focusing on it, and by the time he escaped, he’d long since grown accustomed to it. Most of the time, he didn’t even think about the breadth of his sensory input anymore.

“Of course they are,” she breathed, shaking her head. “Anything else?”

“Cooking meat,” he answered. “I can’t tell what kind. Maybe pork.”

“So, it’s a camp,” she reasoned.

Zeke shook his head. “I don’t think so,” was his response. Something was off, though he couldn’t quite put his finger on it. In addition to the pork, there was something else – something almost rancid. “I think it’s something bad.”

Abby took a deep breath, then said, “Well, we’ll just have to take a look, then.”

With that, they bent low and crept forward. By that point, Pudge had joined them, and he mimicked their caution by crawling along on his belly. It would’ve been cute if Zeke hadn’t been afflicted with an overwhelming sense of wrongness that permeated his entire mind. He’d fought trolls, drachnids, harpies, and a host of other monsters and beasts, and he’d never felt what he felt now.

Finally, the source of the flames came into view, and both he and Abby gasped in surprise. Before Zeke even knew what he was doing, he was rushing toward a caravan of overturned carts. There were at least five of them, and they were all on fire.

“Zeke…”

He paid no attention to Abby’s tone. Instead, he was entirely intent on what he could do to help. He was so focused that he didn’t even notice the small, green corpses surrounding the wagons. Nor did he pay any attention to how low the fires had burned. So, it was a surprise when he saw the first human corpse, blackened and burned beyond recognition. There were at least six of them, two of which were far too small to be adults.

“Oh, God…”

It had smelled like cooking pork.

Zeke vomited so violently that tears came to his eyes.

And then, Abby was there, her hand on his back, comforting him. Zeke had seen dead bodies, both in the troll larder and in the drachnid’s caves. However, none of those had been so fresh. None of them had been children. It was just too much. Months of tension – of knowing he’d been too late to help all those other people – came to the fore, threatening to overwhelm him with despair. He’d killed the trolls. He had eradicated the drachnids. But he’d been completely incapable of saving any of their victims. Hundreds had died, and all he could do is avenge them.

“W-who did this?” he managed, still bent double and with a trail of saliva dripping from his lip.

“Goblins,” Abby said, nodding to the smaller, green corpses on the other side of the carts. None of them had been burned, so it was easy to see that they weren’t human. Green-skinned, with splotches of blue, they were a little bigger than four-feet long. When Abby kicked one over, Zeke saw that its face was almost rat-like, with a huge beak of a nose, giant ears, and beady, little eyes. Its teeth were sharp and jagged, and they stuck out in a multitude of directions. To call it one of the ugliest creatures Zeke had ever seen would’ve been an understatement, but that impression might have been colored, at least in part, by what had happened to the caravanners. Either way, Zeke was disgusted by the little, green-and-blue monsters.

Kneeling nearby, Abby went on, “They’re not normally this bold, especially so close to Beacon.” She pointed into the woods, saying, “They went that way. We’re following, right?”

Zeke nodded. It wasn’t even a question. “But we need to let Reginald know what’s going on,” he said, looking back down the road. “I’ll run back and tell him to wait for us here. Maybe he can…maybe he can do something with the bodies.”

Eager to leave the burning corpses behind, Zeke jogged back the way they’d come, and soon, he found Reginald. He wasted no time in telling the trader what was going on, then trotted back to the scene of the slaughter. On one side of the road, Abby was inspecting the trail.

“I think they took prisoners,” she said. “I’m not the best tracker in the world, but I know enough to tell that something human-sized went through here. But that doesn’t make any sense. Goblins don’t take captives. They attack and steal, but there’s no reason they’d want live people. Either way, this is definitely the direction they went.”

“Is there anything in that direction?” Zeke asked.

“Nothing,” Abby answered. “Not for a few hundred miles, but even that’s no-man’s land. Farindale Forest, and then miles and miles of ruins. It’s kind of like Tua’Ta’alar, but older. And it’s infested with undead. Nobody would willingly go there. Not even goblins.”

“Maybe there’s a goblin village or something,” Zeke suggested.

“They don’t really do villages,” Abby explained. “It’s more like one communal hovel, most of which is usually underground. But it’s in the wrong direction. Goblins don’t go into that territory.”

“Why?”

Abby shrugged. “I have no idea,” she said. “They just don’t.”

“I don’t guess it matters,” Zeke said, pointedly ignoring the charred corpses and the still-burning carts. “If they went this way, we need to hunt them down, especially if they have hostages.”

“I couldn’t agree more,” Abby said, a steely look of determination on her face. “Let’s go.”

She didn’t wait for his agreement. Instead, Abby took off through the woods; the goblins and their prisoner had already cut a path through the brush, so the way wasn’t difficult. They made good time, covering more than two miles before Abby stopped abruptly.

“You hear that?” she whispered.

Zeke focused. He’d been so intent on what he’d just seen that he hadn’t been paying attention to his surroundings. But once prompted, he heard the same thing Abby had. Harsh, high-pitched voices, speaking a guttural, inhuman language. And sobbing. They had found their goblins and the prisoners.

Careful to remain silent, they snuck forward. Abby was far stealthier than Zeke, whose every footfall seemed to snap a twig, but they remained undetected long enough for them to get a good view of the goblins. There were at least fifteen of them, each ranging between levels nine and fourteen. The biggest of them was almost five feet tall, but most of them were a foot shorter than that. They were all wiry and thin, and Zeke could smell their fetid odor from forty feet away.

The captives’ wrists were bound, and they were all strung together via chains that stretched from one collar to the next. Most sported wounds, though to Zeke’s untrained eye, they didn’t seem dire. Emotionally, though, they were wrung completely dry, and they all bore dead-eyed expressions of surrender.

“What’s the plan?” Abby whispered.

“I run in there, murder some goblins, and you get the prisoners free?” he answered.

“Does it seem like they’re waiting on something to you?” was her next question. “It’s not even mid-afternoon, and they’re already making camp. It doesn’t make sense.”

“Does it matter? We need to free those people!” he hissed, frustrated by her lack of anger.

“I know!” she spat in a harsh whisper. “But I want to find out why they’re waiting. Unless you speak goblin, waiting is the only way we’re going to get answers. If nothing’s happened by dark, we’ll hit them then.”

Zeke wanted to argue. He needed to act. It was like his entire body was tensed, coiled, and ready to strike. But he also trusted Abby’s judgment. If she said they needed to wait, then he needed to have faith in her reasoning.

“Okay,” he said, squatting down on his haunches. “But I’m not letting them out of my sight. And if they make one wrong move, I’m hitting them.”

“I wouldn’t expect anything else,” she said, mimicking him.

And so, they settled down to watch, hoping to find out why a troop of goblins were acting so out-of-character.