Minerva was having a bad day.

“Dismissed, Sergeant.”

With a salute, Hogges about-faced and left. Minerva untensed her back, allowing her posture to collapse a bit once alone.

It wasn’t that she minded being teleported to a podunk town in the middle of the night, that she hadn’t slept in thirty hours, or the prospect of a weeklong trek back home - those were just part of the job. She wasn’t the type to complain about what she signed up for. She even accepted the fact that this assignment wasn’t going too well - it happens.

No, the terrible thing about today was people. She had cast a Sending spell earlier - the last one she could muster for today - requesting her superiors to assign a divination specialist to the case, as she was thoroughly stuck. Their response?

Request denied. Cease all investigation, and await further orders.

She wasn’t paranoid by nature, but the thought that the people up top were holding her back had crossed her mind. Why cease the investigation? Even supposing the leaders were content to leave the explosion as an unsolved mystery, why not recall her and her troops? Why have them sit around all day doing nothing? Elves get itchy when troops are stationed along their borders - sooner or later King Eridar would send someone to politely chastise the rulers in Rikston. With an explosion as big as the one last night, she wouldn’t be surprised if half a hundred bowmen were sitting just in the tree line, waiting to pick off anyone who got too close. Were they hoping an incident would happen?

Even if she had brushed up against a conspiracy to start a war and keep her from being promoted to Major, she’d have been her usual indomitable self had it not been for those “adventurers” - that ginger elf, sneering half-elf and the chunky human with the disarming eyes. They said they were innocent. Everything about them was suspicious, the evidence (circumstantial though it may be) was overwhelming, there were no other likely candidates, and she just believed them when they said they didn’t do it. She hadn’t been magicked or anything. They may have given her a distressingly huge hint about the cause of the explosion, but they might have been assuming that she already knew. They looked her straight in the face, said they were innocent, and she bought it.

Now they were missing.

She pounded on the desk before she could remind herself it wasn’t hers. She’d made the Consul’s home her base of operations when he couldn’t be found - another mystery she was certain the adventurers were involved in. She would be looking into their story on this Marisa’s baby, as well. The plan was to rest, prepare Zone of Truth from her spellbook, and question them again before they left. They must’ve known to skip town before seeing her again. When she found them - and she would find them - they’d regret their involvement with all this.

There was a knock on the door. Minerva straightened up. “Come in,” she said. “Sergeant Hogges, have you completed your orders already?”

Hogges stepped in and saluted. “I—no, not yet, Captain. I’m here because you have a visitor.”

She couldn’t help but notice how nervous he was. “Send them in, please, and get back to it.” Most likely it was someone with information on the adventurers or the explosion. She wasn’t sure why that would make him nervous, though. Hogges walked back in followed by a small, robed man, too tall to be a halfling, too skinny to be a dwarf, too ugly to be an elf, too—

Her eyes went wide.

“Good afternoon, Captain Minerva,” the man said. “My name is Everan. I’ll be relieving you of the investigation into this incident.”

This was turning out to be a bad day.

I’d been crawling in tall grass for the last half-hour. Before that, I was sneaking out of town. Before that, I was in a life-or-death battle with an old guy. Before that, I was interrogated by a sadist. That explosion probabably happened after midnight as well, so it was all part of the same horrible day. I was so excited when I woke up, too. And yesterday… was alright. I could’ve done without being knocked unconscious by both Topher and Arcana, but saving a baby was cool. Being transported to Dungeonia only just happened yesterday, too…. I would wait until deciding if that was good or bad. It was at least weird.

My wrists hurt. “Can we move onto the road, yet?” I whined.

“Just a ways longer,” said Kevin.

“You think it’s bad for you,” said Topher, “try doing it in heavy armor.”

“With a shield strapped to your back,” added Jenn.

“Can we at least stand?” I asked. “We should be a mile away from town, by now.”

“A soldier could make out enough detail from a mile to tell it’s us,” said Kevin. “We shouldn’t take chances.”

“But walking would be faster,” said Topher. “Could be useful to put more distance between us and them in case they decide to send a search party.”

“We’d be spotted; they wouldn’t need a search party,” said Kevin.

“They might not be looking for us, yet,” Jenn pointed out.

Kevin sighed. “If they are, standing up would screw us.”

“Can we at least stop going single file?” I asked. “I’m sick of having nothing to look at but your butt.”

“There’s not much else to see,” said Kevin. “So enjoy the view while it lasts.” He punctuated the order by smacking himself on the ass.

“Charming,” I said, suddenly fixated on my hands. “Maybe we should change the subject. Jenn? You haven’t really talked about yourself too much. Anything we should know?”

“Alright,” she said. “Turnoffs: Running from the law and crawling through grass.”

“And turn-ons?” I asked.

“Being home,” she said, with finality.

We were fairly silent for a while after that. Kevin eventually gave the okay to stand up.

I stretched. “God, my back is killing me.”

“We should still stay low,” advised Kevin.

Topher helped Jenn up. “Meh,” he said, “I think we’re good. The town seems far enough away. There’s no one on the road leading to it, either, so it’s not like we can’t outrun anyone. Unless they have horses.”

I looked for myself. We were well over a mile away from Woodsedge - a name that was apparent at this distance. From the horizon at the left to the horizon at the right, the pine forest stretched on. The vast sea of green encompassed towering mountains looming over the distance. I love mountains. I rarely get to see them, as northwest Ohio is probably the flattest place east of the Mississippi. I took in the sight and moved my eyes down to the road, on which I couldn’t see anyone.

“So,” I said, turning around. “Any idea where the road leads?”

“Looks like a lot more plains with a few copses of trees,” said Topher. “But they’re not pine like the giant forest. Can’t see any settlements, but I bet there’s a signpost somewhere.”

We found our way to the road and stomped our tracks into it. There was nothing but tall grass and trees around, so when a ditch formed up alongside, I was grateful for something else to look at.

I was about to ask if anyone wanted to play Twenty Questions when Kevin stopped us.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

Kevin pointed. “Up ahead. There’s some people lying in the road.”

“What are they doing there?” asked Jenn.

“Nothing. They might be dead.”

Jenn started forward. “Or they might need help.”

Topher grabbed her. “Wait! Tall grass, defensible creek, distraction - this whole thing screams ‘ambush’.” He eyed the grass on either side. “We’re probably already being watched.”

She didn’t like it, but she held off. We got close together. “Okay,” said Kevin, quietly. “If we’re being watched, someone should make a distraction while I sneak into the grass - maybe beat them at their own game.” He looked over to me. “Want to sneak with me? You’d be in trouble the most if we’re attacked.”

I thought about it. “No. They might pass off one of us disappearing, but not two. Besides,” I swung my lute around to the front. “Bards make good distractions.”

Kevin shook his head. “Fine. Don’t get yourself killed.”

“Good advice for all of us,” said Jenn.

I smiled. “Ready?”

We were. I took a couple steps toward the people. They were about forty feet away, five of them in total, laying one next to the other. I shook off my nerves. If someone was watching us, it’d be with bows or crossbows. I’d have to be very startling to make sure all eyes were on me, so there was a chance someone might accidentally let fly an arrow. I kept my eyes on the people, thinking they might jump at the noise I was about to make. Time to do this.

My magical limb sunk into my soul, and I was disappointed to see the murk had reformed around it. Within a second I had the correct emotion on hand. Ordinarily I’d need white fleece to cast Minor Illusion, but my lute allowed me to forgo it. I played a quiet string of notes to prime the emotion, inhaled, and let the magic form around my voice and add to it. I bellowed:

—Tcha!

The people on the ground didn’t move, and I didn’t get shot, so I continued like nothing was wrong. After a couple measures of frantic finger dancing, I prepared my voice for some grating falsetto, and laid into Welcome to the Jungle.

I wasn't even to the chorus when Jenn and Topher moved up alongside me, Jenn with amused bewilderment and Topher with pleasant surprise. "What?" I asked, stopping the song.

“Guns ’n Roses,” smiled Topher. “Good choice.”

I shrugged. “Yeah, that song has been on my mind since we appeared here.” I looked at Jenn. “Something wrong?”

“Is that how you always sing?”

“No—God, no. I try to avoid falsetto when I can,” I said. Then, adding in a whisper, “This was supposed to be distracting, remember?”

She gave a reassuring nod. “It was. Kevin’s in the grass on our side of the ditch. Let’s go.”

My heart pounded as we neared. It was soon apparent that the people on the road were dead - two girls, three guys, all laid next to each other, faces down.

“Keep an eye out,” said Topher. “I’ll take a closer look.”

Jenn and I stood back while Topher approached. “Keep your shield handy,” I said. “There’ll likely be archers on the other side of the ditch, if it’s an ambush.” She nodded.

“They were killed by arrows, mostly,” said Topher, kneeling over the bodies. I looked around the grass for signs of movement, but didn’t see any. “Maybe they were lain here to symbolize territory? Jack, wanna take a look? Or both of you, I suppose - there might be a religious reason for their positioning, Jenn.”

We looked at each other. “You watch right, I’ll watch left,” I said.

“Two elves and three humans,” said Topher when we got close. “They were probably an adventuring party, judging by their get-up. Except this guy.” He motioned to a human, thirties, dressed in rags. “He seems more like a peasant. What do you—“

“There! There!” Jenn was tapping me and pointing across the ditch. In an instant, Topher was up with his glaive at the ready. I held my lute as threateningly as I could, but the blood drained from my hands when I saw what was looking back.

Black eyes set in a flat face over a wide mouth were staring through the grass at us. I’d seen hundreds of pictures of them in my long career of reading D&D paraphernalia. Every illustration was somewhere near the mark, but none of them captured the… mischievous malevolence of seeing one in the flesh.

It was a goblin.

And it was grinning.