It turned out that Sergeant Prior was a real chatty Cathy. Literally, Sergeant Prior’s full name is Cathy Prior, and she just would not shut up. Not that Colin minded if people liked to talk, talkative people were some of the best ways to gather information. It was that she didn’t seem to stop long enough for him to throw in his own two cents worth.

“Then I told him, come on, don’t just stand there. Eat it,” the Sergeant said, laughing at her own joke. “Just because its called black pudding doesn’t mean its edible and I know that slimes are dangerous, doesn’t mean we can’t make a joke before combat. Come on; humor can be calming before a fight. Does that mean it’s appropriate? Not according to the Captain. Do you know what else he disapproves of? Bards. Can you believe that? Who can hate those talented minstrels? I once knew a Bard-” she just kept talking and talking until they passed a checkpoint where two large men saluted the talkative Sergeant and let them past without issue.

With the silence, Colin took the opportunity to ask her a question, “can you tell what Armor Rating is?”

She looked at him with a cocked eyebrow. “How could you not know that?”

“I haven’t worn anything that counted as armor until today,” Colin responded smoothly.

She nodded in understanding, “That would do it. Armor rating is complicated, but the simple explanation is that damage you take has to deal that much damage to hurt you. Also, unless otherwise stated, all Armor Ratings only affect the part of the body they cover. So my bracers only impart their Armor Rating to my forearms. Make sense?”

Colin nodded.

“There are a lot of other things to consider when talking about Armor Rating. Like synergy with any other armor you’re wearing, blocking, durability, and several other things. What it all amounts to is the higher your Armor Rating, the better defended you are. This doesn’t mean much against magic, depending on the type. Like metal armor works well against ice and earth magic types but means little to fire and nothing to lightning magic. It all depends,” she said sagely.

“I see,” Colin said, thinking through what she said.

“Glad I could help,” she said, grinning triumphantly. That grin faded all too quickly as they approached the bottom of a hill that wasn’t obvious from anywhere else in the city. Set into the base of the hill was a large white slab of stone shaped like a door. Magical looking sigils were carved into it, giving the whole thing a very ominous vibe.

The Sergeant approached the slab and placed a hand upon one of the sigils in the middle.

Suddenly, a chime sounded in Colin’s ears as a prompt appeared in Colin’s vision.

You have been permitted to enter the Ruins of Old Willows Cross once. As soon as you leave this Dungeon or die within it, all permissions given shall be revoked, and you will not be allowed within it again without getting permission again. !System Warning! The Ruins of Old Willows Cross is a place where all stats, abilities, and skills mean little. Players must rely on their actual skill, not bonuses from skill levels, to achieve victory here. The Ineffable Gaming System is not responsible for your failures within this Dungeon since levels are less relevant here. Good Luck.

“This is as far I go,” Sergeant Prior said, taking a step away from the slab. “We were told that no one other than yourself is to go inside today. Do you have any questions for me before I report back?” She asked, staying oddly quiet as if silence were a thing she was holding at bay.

“Any ideas of what to expect?” He asked simply. Colin had taken time to research these ruins with the internet from the real world, but nothing came up except for a forum post from a year ago. All it asked was if anyone knew whether it existed or not. People had chalked the whole thing up to flavor text eventually, but from what he knew of hardcore gamers and obsessions, it was likely that at least a few people were still looking for it.

The Sergeant shrugged, “it changes from day to day. Yesterday, the first room was a single skeleton knight with a six-foot-long steel pole as its weapon. The second room was a lava pit with islands that were easy enough to get to but had Magma Siren to get people in the heat. We lost a man in that room. Hell, a week ago, the third room had a unit of Goblins.” She paled a little at the mention. “We left at that point.”

“Why?” Colin asked, Confused. “Aren’t Goblins short, weak, and kind of stupid?” He clarified, thinking of Tolkien’s version of Goblins.

“Yeah, the Hobgoblins or Goblin Scavengers maybe. But True Goblins are some of the worst to fight in their territory. For being so short-lived, the abilities of Goblins are incredible. They are as hardy as Dwarves, intelligent as Gnomes, and as unified as Elves. Trust me when I say that all us surface dwellers are incredibly lucky that they haven’t tried to take over the surface yet.” She said, with actual panic in her eyes and words. It was most certainly a fear of hers.

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Colin said honestly. “How many rooms are there? Why are there rooms? I thought this was ‘The Ruins of Old Willows Cross.’” he intoned magnanimously.

“No idea,” she said, answering the first question immediately. “The farthest we, the High Guard, have gotten is the fourth room. We are fairly sure there’s a fifth, but beyond that, we don’t know. There could be no more rooms, or there could be ninety-five more. There’s no way to know for sure. As for your second question, its just what we call the areas where these challenges take place. You’ll understand once you see them.”

Colin nodded; he really wished there could have been more information for him. He was going in blind, and that made him rethink his choice to go inside for a moment. No intelligence reduced the chances of success by a large margin.

“Is there anything else we should know?” Colin asked, hoping for anything that might help.

“We believe that the fewer people that go in there, the less the danger is, but we have no way to prove it. With more people, we’ve avoided so many deaths here that we can’t even count. Hell, the smallest group we allow is five people, so most of us are betting on your death. I have two CC’s on you living though,” she said with a wide smile.

Two CC or Two Copper Coins is roughly the equivalent of two hundred US dollars, according to his research online. Sergeant Prior must have some faith in his…

“On me living? What about me defeating the Dungeon?” Colin asked, suddenly indignant.

The Sergeant looked at Colin for a moment in disbelief before breaking into a loud and exaggerated laugh. Colin knew it was exaggerated because only in old cartoons did someone hoot in laugher while bent over and slapping their knee heartily. It went on for long enough that he wasn’t sure whether or not she was laughing at him or his word choice.

Colin decided to stay here long enough to get his answer; he needed to know now. But when she finally stopped, Sergeant Prior simple answered with, “doesn’t matter. If you conquer it, I win. If you flee, I still win. Just do not die on me,” she said coyly. “Mama needs her cash,” she said, rubbing her hands together greedily.

Electing to ignore the woman since he got what he needed anyway, Colin turned to face the door. He took a step towards it, and a prompt appeared.

You are at the entrance of The Ruins of Old Willows Cross. You have been given one time access to the Dungeon. Would you like to use it now? Yes or no?

Colin selected yes and prompt faded away. As it did, the giant slab slipped slowly into the floor with a sound like grinding stone against stone. It wasn’t loud, nor was it slow, but it seemed ominous enough as it revealed a long dark tunnel downwards with a set of worked and smooth stairs. When the slab finished, crystals embedded into the walls started to light up with pale white light as bright as a torch’s light.

“Good Luck, DevilWalker!” Sergeant Prior called to him. “I hope you find what you’re looking for.”

The hardest part was taking the first step. No intelligence, no forward scouts, no overwhelming force was here to make the next part of his journey easier. Hell, he’d settle for a Wiki that gave him odds on what was going to happen next. He now wished he could have or would have grabbed Rothar and brought the Jotun with him as back up, but he knew this was for the best. From what the Sergeant just told him, fewer people possibly meant less danger, so he put the thought out of his mind.

Finally, Colin took in one deep breath and started down the stairs.

Ten steps down, and the slab closed behind him, allowing his nervousness to rise in volume. Colin immediately stomped out this feeling, focusing on the goal ahead. He was here to explore these ‘rooms,’ get his class, and then work towards getting the strength to defeat Monty and his party. Even if the door had remained open, he would not have left through it at any point.

He was going to get his class or die trying.

Gripping his daggers in preparation, Colin kept walking down the stairs. Several minutes passed, and still, these stairs seemed to go on forever. Colin was starting to get fatigued from the constant movement. He figured that it had something do with his low stats since this would have barely slowed him down in the real world. It was inevitable that he was considering stopping for a moment to catch his breath and rest when red-yellow flickering light started dancing upon the walls.

Taking the time to rest before whatever was before him, Colin sat on the step and relaxed for a couple of short minutes. He’d just walked down many flights of stairs for several minutes straight, and he needed to be in fighting shape for whatever was ahead of him.

He took the time to check his gear and make sure he was ready. Two daggers, check. Pouch of throwing knives with twelve knives remaining, check. Jacket on and pretending to be armor, check. Cheap hand crossbow hanging from his belt, check. Extra crossbow bolts, low but check.

Loading the crossbow, Colin mentally harangued himself for not getting more of these crossbow bolts before he came in. If he was going to make a habit of using them, he needed to keep stocked with the small arrows. Actually, he needed to replace the whole crossbow himself before it broke in his hands, but that was neither here nor there.

Crossbow in hand, he stood up from his stair seat and started stealthing down the rest of the stairs. It was only a minute later when he reached a doorway that was cut directly into the stone with the light spilling out from it. The smell of charred meat and smoke reached Colin’s nostrils, and he looked above the door where a sign caught his eye.

It read, ‘Fralle’s Forge,’ and Colin knew what kind of room he was about to walk inside. Pistol grip crossbow in his primary hand, and one of his daggers in his off-hand, Colin tried to creep into the named forge.

He dropped his stealth with a sigh, seeing that the giant humanoid in the room was looking in his direction.

It had masculine features accentuated by his bare chest and scraggly beard. Colin then noted that it was at least twelve feet tall and had flames writhing on every inch of exposed skin as if it were simple body hair. It wore a helmet that glowed red from the fire and pants that were somehow not igniting under the flames.

It sat at the main anvil of the forge, using it as a table with a leg of something in its hands. It stared at him incredulously for several seconds as if it couldn’t process that someone might stumble into its mealtime. It finished chewing its bite of the meat and swallowed it in one large gulp. It dropped the leg of mystery meat, stood from its seat, and roared its anger at the intruder that interrupted its meal.

For his part, Colin raised the crossbow and fired while the giant roared at Colin. The bolt swerved off course from the giant’s throat and instead sunk into the left shoulder of the creature. It recoiled, and Colin dropped the crossbow before he lost the momentum of the fight. He drew his second dagger and moved towards the giant in a jog, ready to stop when the giant tried something.

Its eyes snapped back to Colin as he approached, and it ignored the wound in its shoulder as it twisted its torso, fist drawn back.

It threw the full right hook, fist on fire, and Colin had to dive to the floor and scramble past it before the monster tried again. Its second blow, however, hit Colin in the form a savage gut kick while Colin was scrambling on all fours.

You have been kicked by the Surtr for 34 points of damage. You now have 106 out of 140 health remaining.

All air left Colin’s lungs as the kick knocked him tumbling several away in a heap. It watched with a cruel smile as Colin stayed still for several long seconds.

When he stirred, Colin rolled his shoulders and simply tried to focus on getting his breath back.

The Surtr, however, didn’t feel like letting its opponent recuperate. It ran the distance between them and raised its leg to the level of its chest. It kicked outward, and Colin observed. Sidestepping the mighty blow wasn’t too difficult since the creature wasn’t that much faster than a human of Colin’s size. With the leg in front of him, he plunged the dagger up into the back of the giant’s knee.

It stumbled back from its attacker after the stab had blinded it with pain. The movement caused Colin to lose his dagger to the giant’s knee. The giant’s blood dripped past the imbedded blade while the creature tried to remain standing. Its blood hissed and sputtered like water against hot iron as it made contact with the air and ran down the Surtr’s leg. It raised its fists weakly as it tried to keep most of its weight on its one good leg.

“Fuck this,” it snarled, and it placed a firm hand on the dagger’s hilt. With one pull and a howl of pain, the Surtr pulled the dagger free from its knee and threw it to the ground behind it. The blood went from a trickle to pouring in a stream; every ounce of it reacted with the air.

“Summon fire armament!” It cried out as it raised its hand into the air. In the palm of its hand, the haft of an ax appeared and quickly formed into a bearded ax sized for it and made entirely out of hardened flames.

“Oh shit,” Colin muttered, as he drew one of his throwing knives. He’d hobbled it alright, but he did not expect it to summon a freaking fire ax out of thin air.

Without thought, he threw the knife at the giant’s head and immediately sprinted towards it. It spread its stance and caught the spinning blade on the haft of the ax, making the blade bounce off harmlessly. But at that point, Colin had dove into a foot first slide between the giant’s legs. He slid the dagger across the Surtr’s Achilles tendon and got to his feet just past the giant.

With another cry of pain, the Jotun fell to its knees, with neither leg now unable to work correctly. It turned around on its knees and swung its flaming ax at Colin. It got close, but Colin swore that he felt it scrape against his jacket and not penetrate. The weird thing was that he was sure he saw the coat emit sparks upon deflecting the fiery ax.

Taking a step back, Colin tried to find something, anything that might be able to hit the giant while allowing him to stay a little away from it. The flames on its torso would burn him if he tried to attack there with his daggers. The first thing that caught his attention made Colin smile vigorously with the idea.

Sprinting over to the main anvil in the middle of the room, Colin hefted up the leg of mystery meat that flaming man had been eating when he arrived. Unlike the Surtr, Colin had to use both arms to lift the large drumstick and rested it on his shoulder while he timed his move. With a smile strained with effort, Colin activated kinetic vigor and spun around in one full circle. At the apex of the spin, Colin released the giant leg meat and sent it flying at the Surtr.

It impacted the fire giants face with a heavy THUMP and clattered to the floor before it could try and raise its ax to block again. Its eyes rolled up into its head, and it fell to the ground, limp and blood leaking from its nose.

Colin waited to see the prompt saying that he’d defeated this thing, but nothing appeared. He considered that it might still be alive but wasn’t sure how to check without getting burned from the flames that still raged around its torso.

After the minute mark, the flames started to sputter and die, leaving Colin to believe that the thing had finally expired. Then where was his prompt telling him this?

Thinking that it was an aspect of this Dungeon, Colin decided to not think too hard on the fact. If he still didn’t get experience prompts when the Dungeon was over, he’d be concerned then. For now, he wanted to loot the body.

He was mildly disappointed when the only thing worth taking from the giant turned out to be a dagger that was strapped to the small of its back. It was oversized for him, and he considered leaving behind only because it would be too awkward to use correctly.

Then, before he set the weapon down at its previous owner’s corpse, the weapon shrank it his hands. The dagger lost a portion of its weight, and its mass becoming a smaller version of the same dagger.

You have looted a heavy dagger from the Surtr corpse. Identify the object to learn more information about this weapon.

Happy to have another dagger, Colin was also disappointed that he couldn’t see its statistics or what metal it was composed of. He was sure though that it must have had a high melting point given that it had been sitting in that fire giants flames for some time. He decided to leave the helmet, given that it was still cherry red with heat and much too big for him. While the dagger was large, it felt more like a large bowie knife in his hand. So Colin attached the sheathed heavy dagger to his right hip, next to the blade that was already there.

Looking behind him, a new doorway that he hadn’t noticed before stood for the world to see. He noted that the door was perfect for him but way too small for the giant to make his way through. He spared it a moment of thought but ended up figuring that it must have been the magic of the Dungeon that allowed the giant to be in there.

He stepped through the door and found himself looking up into the vast blackness of an underground cavern. The ceiling went up so high that even the light crystals that still peppered the walls around him couldn’t illuminate it.

You have completed the first room of the Ruins of Old Willows Cross.

Good to know he was getting somewhere; Colin thought as he walked away from the door. Underneath a layer of dirt and dust, Colin could feel stone brick beneath his feet. He looked to his left and found that the wall wasn’t just a ragged wall of stone. It was rubble from collapsed buildings and walls that had formed a barrier to keep him on a path. It wasn’t so high that he didn’t think he could climb it. The wall stood around fifteen feet tall with jagged points extending out dangerously like one-inch quills.

It was just like a game to force people to follow the prescribed path; Colin mused as he put the world beyond the wall out of his head. He needed to get to the next room and hope it was doable.

The path went straight for a hundred yards before making a sharp right into a wall made of worked gray stone brick. The door was odd for the world thus far; it looked like it was made of pure iron and had hinges that didn’t so much as squeak when it was opened.

Inside the door was a straight hallway extending maybe thirty yards ahead of Colin in a straight line. The hall was five feet wide and ten feet tall and every surface appeared to be as smooth as perfectly made concrete. A door on the opposite side of the hall sat shut as if challenging Colin to come and open it. Figurative alarm bells sounded in Colin’s head as he stared down the supposedly empty hallway. If this weren’t the second room, then he’d sell his firstborn to Rumplestiltskin.

He continued to watch and start for several minutes before giving in and just taking the first step into the hall. Nothing happened. So Colin kept walking, slowly and making each step as carefully as possible to give him as much chance to not trigger a trap as possible.

After a few paces away from the door, it slammed shut, and a thick metal grate slammed down in front of it. Now trapped, everything started to set itself into motion.

The door at the opposite end of the hall opened outwards in a sudden, loud crash that echoed towards Colin. Shapes, dozens of them, flowed out of the open door and seamlessly stuck to the walls. As they got closer, he was able to see that each shape was a dark flat stone no bigger than a single inch across. They arranged themselves around the long hall, each sticking to the flat surface with something like a magnetic force. Several stones passed by his head, giving Colin a quick look at the rune etched surface of the item.

Then, all at once, each of the individual stones lit up with a single point of red light that hovered scant centimeters above each stone’s surface. Then every point of light shot out and impacted the wall in dozens of continuous red lines. Two-thirds of the lasers moved around the room with an electric hum as they traced different patterns across the wall. None of them overlapping or creating visible patterns for Colin to pass through.

Colin watched, and watched, and watched until he swallowed nervously and thought for a second about how finely the lasers could slice him. He then wondered for a split second what kind of creature might want to eat a finely sliced Colin followed quickly by the mental image of the Fire Giant from the previous room. A giant sandwich was in its hands as it munched on a…

Colin then promptly shook his head, cutting off that line of imagining before it got anymore mentally masochistic. No way was he being turned into sashimi or luncheon meat by an old spy movie trope.

His eyes moved around the room, tracking every movement of the lasers, and still not seeing any pattern to the movements. He slipped both hands under his jacket towards the small of his back and withdrew two of his throwing knives. He casually tossed the knife in his right hand up and down in the air idly as he thought about the best way to proceed.

Acrobatics his way past the lasers? No, the lasers immediately in front of him formed a five-part wall with each laser being two feet apart, and it was unlikely he could correctly jump through. Block the beams or divert them? A quick test using one of the knives in his hands proved that it was unlikely given that it started to burn a hole through the knife within the first second. Hell, he doubted that someone in heavy armor could have gove through these lasers without being minced. Break the laser projectors?

Taking the now damaged throwing knife, he approached the magical laser that sat at chest level and held the knife as if it were an ice pick. The laser beam was thin enough that he figured it would be easy enough for him to avoid hurting himself. Pulling back, Colin aimed for the magical device and plunged the small blade at it.

The blade skittered off the side of the rune inscribed stone and knocking it off the wall with a sharp electric pop.

As it clattered across the floor, the entire room seemed to go silent for a long couple of seconds as even the laser hums vanished. An ominous air seemed to vibrate through the room while all his danger senses went off at the same time. He tightened the grip on his throwing knives while he waited for something to happen.

Then a sharp buzz snapped on behind him, and Colin whirled around to look.

The lasers behind him had burst to life and were moving around the floor, both walls and the ceiling. The vortex of lasers made it impossible for Colin to go past them, even if there was a way out behind them. Then they started to move towards him slowly at first, then inch by inch; the beams began to increase their pace.

“Oh shit,” Colin groaned. His mind went from zero to sixty in a moment as he turned back around and faced the long, laser riddled hallway.

Taking one deep breath, Colin took a second to ready himself while shaking his whole body and went for it. He dove through the gap he created in that first layer of lasers and kept moving, and immediately stepping to the left to avoid a quartet of lasers from the ceiling. He took a moment and looked behind him to see that the cyclone of lasers that been following him had started to incorporate every laser emitter it passed.

Groaning internally this time, he put on some extra speed as he slid under one of the array walls like a baseball player going for home plate. The next wall had several sets of lasers, four along half and four along the other half right behind it. Both moved in perfect sync but in opposing directions. Colin threw the knife that was in his right hand at one of the lasers in the middle giving him the space to make it through in time.

Then, Colin realized he was a moron as he looked behind him and found that the lasers behind him were still picking up speed. He activated Kinetic Vigor and felt the now-familiar sensation of his whole body vibrating with potential energy. It wasn’t much, but anything helps.

He was sprinting like a bat out of hell, Colin dove through a rotating pinwheel of red lasers only to next put his back against the wall and shimmy past a laser grid. He dropped to his knees and slid a few feet forward when a trio of lasers shot from the sides at mid-chest level. At the three-quarter mark, he was forced to turn his body ninety degrees and stumble to avoid a duo of lasers that triggered above him straight down and at knee level.

Nine-tenths of the way to the open door, a perfect grid that had three inches of space between each laser sprung into being. Skidding to a stop, Colin turned around, crouched, and spent a second following the dozens of spinning lasers looking for an opening.

Finding one and only one, Colin steeled his courage and took a few breaths in and out in quick succession to fortify it. The one opening he found appeared once every complete rotation around the room and wasn’t sure if he could make it through it before it vanished. Unable to find any other option and the whirling laser grinder coming towards him like a freight train, he had no time to second guess.

Firing off an imaginary pistol in his head, Colin sprung forward from his crouch and charged. A few seconds before the opening appeared, he went from a sprint to a dive and braced himself for pain. Eyes closed, Colin felt the heat circle around him as the lasers got way too close for comfort and even a few leaving cauterized cuts along his body.

You have been sliced by a magic cutting laser array for 20 points of damage. You now have 86 health out of 140 remaining You have been sliced by a magic cutting laser array for 20 points of damage. You now have 66 health out of 140 remaining You have been sliced by a magic cutting laser array for 20 points of damage. You now have 46 health out of 140 remaining

Then he felt his elbows hit the ground, and he quickly changed his dive into a roll and stood. Panting, Colin looked towards the open door and let out a relieved breath as he watched every laser shut down at the same time. Each of the laser rune stones flowed out of the hall and out the way they entered the room, like rats fleeing a cat.

All except the few he’d knocked off the walls.

You’ve found Damaged Magic Cutting Laser X2. You lack any of the appropriate knowledge skills to glean any more information about this device.

Unfortunate, but who knows. It might be repairable, and he might even be able to replicate the laser for his personal use. Anything and everything could prove to be precisely what he needed to exact his revenge. Better to think broadly than narrowly.

Putting the two lasers in his bag, Colin decided to jog out of the room. The faster he was out, the better the chance that he would avoid the room reactivating while he was there.

You have completed the second room in The Ruins of Old Willows Cross

Again, it was good to have to confirm that this was considered one of the rooms. Colin felt like he would have been justifiably upset if that was just a passage to the second room and not the second room itself.

He watched the open doorway for a minute out of curiosity and was glad that it did not start up again. He doubted that it would since he was not in the room but wanted a minute or two to let his health and mana regenerate before moving on.

After letting his health rise to a respectable one hundred points, Colin turned around and again faced a narrow hall with walls that were inadvisable to climb. The floor beneath him was cleanly swept and looked like it had been carefully worked out of the very stone itself to create the path he walked upon

Everything around him was as silent as a closed tomb and it gave Colin the chills. It made even his quiet footsteps unnervingly loud and impossible to hide. He nor anybody listening would have noticed if there had been any background noise. Every scrape of his boots, creak of settling stone or wood beyond the walls, even his breathing sounded loud in the silence.

Time passed by as Colin walked, how much was unclear since the was now sun to track and no clock to reference. Eventually, Colin’s long winding path came to an archway made entirely of many, sizeable, uncut stones. The structure had a mystical feel about it. It felt as if there were a fantastic story behind the creation of this arch that transcended its underground and digitized nature.

It was weird, given that this whole place was a video game. He had to send some positive feedback to the company at some point. No matter how anxious he was feeling from the perpetual silence, the archway gave him a sense of calm.

Just beyond the old archway, rows and rows of raised garden beds sat below arbors and other metal frameworks. Every garden structure, somehow, had plants that even grew in the dim light of the crystals that were still lighting his way. In the center of the garden sat a white stone structure that every one of the garden beds and structures seemed to be built around.

He recognized none of the plants that inhabited the garden, and if previous attempts to identify unknown things held, he doubted anything would be different here.

You have found a Gloom Rose. You don’t know how but are sure that this is a single ingredient of an alcohol type that is highly effective against shadow creatures (Knowledge Spiritcraft).

He glared at the closed bud of a black rose with veins of silvery blue in the stems and thorns. He hesitated to pick the rose for a moment due to the thorns and whatever other unknown properties these Gloom Roses possessed. For all he knew, one prick and the thorn could send a poison that sends a signal to his cells, causing complete and total apoptosis across his entire body. Absolute cell death across his body would not be pleasant.

Deciding to leave it alone, Colin took a step away from the garden bed and looked down the path where he needed to go.

Twenty-ish feet in front of him sat a small marble shed-like shelter with a white marble bench at the end of the path where it circled the structure. Sitting on this bench was a small shadowed figure. In the light the crystals emitted, it was possible to see that the being was short, four maybe four and a half feet tall, wearing a type of black leather long jacket and hood that made most features indistinct.

Colin’s hands immediately went for the daggers on his belt, eliciting a baritone laugh that was both mildly gravely and somewhat cultured at the same time. “What are you going to do with those?” the small figure asked, its amused voice accented with something that sounded like high-class English.

“Let me guess,” it continued, standing from the bench and letting the light pierce its hood. “Were you thinking of trying your hand at gutting a pitiful goblin such as myself? Unprovoked? How rude.” It said, its wide mouth twisting into a smile that showed off its sharp pearly teeth. Amusement played across its green face and reaching even to its yellow, slitted eyes.

It reached back into the shadows just past the bench and produced a pure black cane that it promptly placed in front of it and rested both hands on top of. Its entire posture was both relaxed and amused by Colin, and that made him wary.

If this was the kind of Goblin that Sergeant Prior had warned him about, then he might be in some trouble.