Captured

Inexperience proves to be her greatest enemy. She could have practiced all the techniques flawlessly with her father, but nothing would have prepared her for how it felt to sink the edge of her steel blade into flesh. At the sight of blood spurting from a goblin's chest, Eris flinches and freezes up, a mistake proving to be fatal. That's all the opening a goblin needs to strike her on the back of head. Her vision fades and world tilts, the last thing she sees is her friends desperately trying to hold off the goblin horde.

Eris comes to with a pounding headache. The first thing she notices is the stench. It's a vile smell of filth mixed with rot, like fish left out in the sun. The next thing she sees is the source. Corpses. Surrounding her are bodies in various states of decay. Luckily none of them seem to be human but wild animals caught from the forest. A dim patch of glowing moss above her head illuminates the room she is in. It appears to be a small, naturally formed cave. She examines herself and finds that she's not missing anything. It seems the goblins thought she was dead and threw her 'corpse' into their larder for storage. There's no sign of Brandon or Marcus. Eris can only pray they escaped with their lives.

Cautiously she moves towards the only visible exit, a narrow crack in the cave wall. Squeezing through, she is met with a long passage worming its way through the earth, similarly lit by the glowing moss. At the end of the passageway, she finds a fork. Listening closely, she can make out some sounds echoing from the right tunnel, though Eris isn't sure what it could be. The left tunnel is silent.