News of Captivity

The dream came unbidden, as dreams often do—but this one clawed its way into Grashok’s sleep like a vine through cracked stone.

It began in peace — her grove, as he remembered it: dew-dappled leaves shimmering under moonlight, the hush of running water, the scent of herbs and cool loam. She stood at the heart of it, tall and cloaked in robes the color of new spring, her face veiled with cascading ivy. Her voice, when she first spoke, was soft and green, like wind brushing moss.

But then — the world cracked.

A sharp buzz, like cicadas in metal cages, broke the air. Trees shifted, blinked out of place, then flickered back. Strange glyphs — not runes, not writing — shimmered in the air like burned symbols on the wind. The sky tore open in long, glowing seams of light, and vine-covered boughs twitched unnaturally, stretching through one another like broken reflections in water.

The Veiled Bloom began to stutter, her voice torn into pieces — one moment clear and sorrowful, the next flat and too-perfect, like a spirit echoing off glass. Her movements jerked, as if a great power was both sustaining and unravelling her presence at once.

Then she turned to him, her form glitching like petals caught in a storm.

“The Patch… draws near...”

The trees behind her folded inward, like crumpling paper.

“All things unanchored shall be unmade.”

Her voice dropped — deeper, resonant, terrible.

“Snippa must not be left behind. But sacrifices will be made in the dark, The Vermin King must not win.”

Before Grashok could speak, vines snapped inward from every direction, curling into symbols that pulsed red, green, and grey — then shattered. The grove collapsed into light, and Grashok woke, sweat-soaked and cold, with the faint taste of ash and mint on his tongue.

Grashok didn’t know what the patch was. But he felt it, in the way his dream had frayed, in the way the memory bent strangely around it. The very thought left a sour frost on his mind long after he woke and continued to linger with him.

Two days later, the throne room echoed with the soft scratch of quills on parchment and low murmurs as Grashok, seated before an expansive map flanked by the Goblin Elder and several other advisors, plotted the expansion of the dungeon. The low light cast shadows across the room’s stone walls, and the air smelled faintly of stone dust and candle wax.

The heavy doors burst open. Elenara strode in, eyes wide, her pale features sharply lit by torchlight. She clutched a folded letter to her chest, her breath ragged. The sight of her in full emerald green—her long blonde hair tumbling behind her, knee‑high boots clacking on the flagstones with sharp determination—roused Grashok instantly from his concentration.

He looked up sharply, brow furrowed. “Elenara? What’s wrong?”

She closed the distance in two purposeful strides and dropped the letter onto the map table. Quills stilled. Murmurs ceased. Even the torches seemed to hold their breath.

She looked directly at him, voice trembling. “It’s Snippa. She’s been captured.”

Grashok felt a jolt rip through his chest. His vision narrowed, the map swimming before his eyes. Words caught in his throat as he fought to remain composed. No, he thought desperately. Not Snippa.

A chill prickled down his spine, his pulse hammering as he rasped, “Where? Who?” He forced his tone steady, though fear burned in him—how would he tell Rukk? How would he explain that Mummy was not coming home?

Elenara drew a steadying breath. “The outer woods—east of Ingunde, just beyond the timberline. She was en route to regroup with her scouts, fresh from a night‑watch sweep of the timberline, charting Ratkin tracks and signs. But it wasn’t the Ratkin who took her—it was the humans from Ingunde. She didn’t make it back.”

Grashok’s jaw clenched.

Elenara’s eyes darkened with frustration. “They used a child.”

“What?” The word came out as a growl.

“Witnesses saw it,” she said, voice tight. “A boy—small, filthy, terrified—sprinting down the deer trail with two rough men crashing through the brush behind him. It looked chaotic. Desperate. Snippa didn’t hesitate. She stepped between them, bow drawn, shielding the child with her body.”

She swallowed.

“And that’s when he looked up at her… and whispered, ‘I’m sorry.’”

A cold stillness gripped the room.

“He dropped a smoke‑burst at their feet. Alchemical. Fast‑acting. The fumes hit both of them at once. I don’t think Snippa realised the boy had betrayed her — she tried to fight it, tried to keep him behind her, but it was too much.”

Elenara’s voice tightened.

“The roughs stayed back until the cloud thinned. When they saw her on her knees — barely conscious, still trying to shield the boy — they moved in. They grabbed her, bound her, and dragged her toward Ingunde before she could recover.”

The Goblin Elder muttered a curse under his breath.

Grashok paced a slow circle, fists clenched, heart hammering. Snippa—captured. Played like a fool by those who knew exactly where to strike at her compassion.

“She trusted her instincts,” he murmured. “They turned them into a weapon.”

Elenara nodded. “They planned it. The child came from the Velmarn Foundling House. Trained, rehearsed, and coached for the role. A lie designed to exploit her mercy.”

Grashok halted, facing the map, though he no longer saw ink or parchment.

“Then we unmake their lies,” he growled. “Find out who commissioned the ambush, who’s holding her, and where they’ve taken her within the town walls. I want scouts on every ridge, informants in every inn, and Ratkin patrols shadowed but untouched—we don’t provoke them. Not yet. Not until she’s back.”

His voice dropped, steel beneath velvet. “And when we do, the woods will answer. No one traps one of mine and walks away clean.”

Elenara’s expression hardened, her voice quiet but laced with fury. “It was the captain of the guard—Jorun Thale. A hard‑liner through and through. He’s long despised non‑humans—goblins, trolls, anyone not born of his ilk. With the old mayor ousted by a pro‑Grashok faction and the new one still struggling to assert control, Jorun saw an opening. And he’s making no secret of what he’s done. He’s openly claiming Snippa as his prisoner, using her capture to whip up the humans‑first crowd and tighten his grip on the town. Some in Ingunde fear what you’ll do if she’s harmed… and that fear is exactly why the meat‑headed commander made his move — to provoke you, play the hero, and unite the town behind him.”

Elenara’s final words hung in the air like a blade suspended by a thread. Grashok stood rigid, the muscle along his jaw twitching as he stared at the grand map laid across the war table. Every instinct screamed for action—for steel, fury, and swift justice. He imagined himself marching at the head of his army, his hand resting on his war sword, his mount foaming at the bit, smoke rising from Ingunde’s walls as that treacherous captain begged at his feet.

But Grashok was not just a warrior. He was a hobgoblin. A race of generals. A race that had won hundreds if not thousands of victorious campaigns through strategy. And strategy meant patience. Planning. Precision. And outthinking that idiot of a captain.

His breath hissed slowly through his nose, long and deliberate, as he forced the beast within him back into its cage. His glowing red eyes remained locked on the table, even as the rage curled like a forge’s flame behind them.

He placed both hands on the stone slab, knuckles white. “We will not give him the satisfaction of a rash assault,” he said, voice like iron. “We do this properly. Thoroughly. And when we are done, there will be nothing left of his schemes to rebuild.”

Footsteps echoed from the side chamber. The heavy curtain rustled, and Nyxie and Sylrith entered together—Nyxie’s brow creased in concern, her sharp green eyes flicking immediately to Grashok’s face. Sylrith, ever more composed, narrowed her eyes slightly, immediately perceiving the tension behind Grashok’s controlled posture. Neither spoke, but they moved to flank his throne as if by instinct, knowing this was no idle council.

Only they saw it. The furnace in his chest. The aching restraint behind the calm.

Grashok turned, his deep voice steady but low with menace. “Summon the advisors. All of them. No delays. This is now our highest priority. All intelligence. All contacts. All assets. I want a complete picture of Ingunde and everything within its walls.”

One of the goblin guards nodded sharply and bolted from the room. Grashok remained standing, eyes on the map, silent.

Moments later, the chamber was filled with shuffling bodies. The Goblin Elder, eyes full of worried wisdom. Sylrith and Nyxie stood proud, firelight flickering across leather and steel. The junior officers of the goblin and Xvarts filtered in, followed by runners, scribes, Zarukk the Gnoll shaman, and Tilda, his beast master, amongst others. Grashok looked over at Elenara once more—her green dress immaculate but for a trace of ash at the hem, her boots polished, her posture composed and intent. The look in her blue eyes was icy and burning at once, as though she’d seen the storm coming long before the rest of them.

And before Grashok’s stone throne, Skarn sat.

The great wolf was silent, as always, but his golden eyes were locked on his master’s face, ears twitching slightly. He did not whine, nor growl. Just watched. Waiting.

Grashok rested one hand on the throne’s arm and let his gaze sweep over them all. “We begin now. Everything we know. No detail too small. We start with the town. Elenara—begin.”

The pale spymaster stepped forward, unrolling a newer, more detailed parchment over the main map. Her voice was crisp, professional, but there was a flint edge to every word.

“Ingunde,” she began, “is currently balancing on a blade’s edge. The new mayor—Marlen Vos—was installed following the peaceful coup, helped by by my pro-Goblin factions within the town. He is young, politically inexperienced, but shows a willingness to deal fairly with non-humans. That, of course, made him a threat.”

She pointed to a red inked mark on the paper—a crude drawing of the town centre.

“Captain Jorun Thale—militia commander, career soldier, fanatic—is now making an open play for control. With Vos’s position unstable, Thale is attempting to muscle him aside through fear and show of strength. Snippa’s capture is part of that play. She’s not just a hostage—to many she embodies courage and hope, but to the hardliners she is a provocation, the goblin who fought a bear to save a human child.”

Grashok’s lip curled, but he remained silent.

Elenara continued. “Thale is not working alone. He is backed by a cabal of wealthy merchants and landholders. Human supremacists, most of them, though their true power lies in gold, not arms. Through my contacts, I’ve learned the truth of their funding.”

She paused a moment, visibly bracing herself.

“They are slavers. Secretly. Discreetly. But they are funnelling captured NPCs, and even drugged adventurers, into the Ratkin slave markets. We believe the Ratkin provide them with gold and strange narcotics in exchange. Thale’s faction has kept this quiet, but it is well established.”

Murmurs rippled through the gathered council. One of the goblin captains swore under his breath. Sylrith raised an eyebrow, cool and calculating.

Elenara’s fingers trembled slightly as she rolled the edge of the parchment. “You all know I was a slave,” she said, softer now, her voice brittle. “I escaped the Ratkin pits only because of Grashok. I will see every one of those bastards dragged from their homes and shackled.”

A silence fell. Even the goblin elder bowed his head at her words.

Grashok’s voice was low. “You will get your vengeance. But only when the plan is ready.”

Elenara gave a sharp nod, but her gaze lingered on the map, as if trying to will the pieces into place.

Then she continued, her voice like silk drawn over steel. “There is… one more complication.”

“A new figure has appeared in Jorun Thale’s circle. An adventurer—though no one knows his name, nor where he came from. He wears no guild insignia, carries no known allegiance, and speaks with the calm of someone who’s seen too much and cares too little. He calls himself an advisor, but his presence is… wrong. He asks questions no outsider should know to ask. He walks the barracks like a ghost, and the men obey him without knowing why.”

Nyxie scoffed. “Another sellsword with delusions of grandeur?”

Elenara shook her head. “No. This one listens more than he speaks. And when he does speak, people change their minds.”

A chill settled over the chamber. Grashok said nothing, but the thought gnawed at him. In a game already thick with shadows, another player had stepped onto the board—and no one knew what side he played for.

Nyxie stepped forward, brow furrowed. “What of the townspeople? Surely not all support this?”

Elenara nodded. “The town is divided. Some openly support Grashok. They remember when our clan saved many of their captured friends and family members from the brigands. They know we’ve traded fairly. Some even call for peace.”

Sylrith crossed her arms. “And the rest?”

“Some lean toward the Ratkin,” Elenara said. “Whispers of bribes. Promises of protection. Others are simply… adventurers. They come and go, sowing chaos, pretending at neutrality while pocketing coin from both sides. Many ignore the tensions, chasing relics, contracts, or power.”

She hesitated again. “Some adventurers have been behaving strangely. Staying longer than normal. Refusing contracts that would’ve interested them weeks ago. One of my agents suspects external influence. Possibly magical, possibly chemical. We need more time to be sure.”

Grashok exhaled slowly, drawing his fingers along the stone of the throne’s arm. He turned his gaze to the gathered room.

“So we have a town on the brink. A mayor too weak to hold power. A captain who seeks war. And a network of slavers feeding our enemies.” His voice grew colder. “And Snippa sits at the centre of it all.”

Skarn gave a soft chuff from the base of the throne, as if in agreement.

Grashok stood. His shadow loomed over the table. “Then we plan. We do not storm their gates without cause. We do not crush the town until all cards are on the table. But we will act.”

His eyes had steel in them. “And when we do… there will be no doubt that Snippa was not taken lightly.”

The room responded with nods, fists to chests, and murmurs of agreement. Elenara’s spine straightened with purpose. Nyxie took his arm lightly, her expression unreadable. Sylrith stood to his left, cool and ready.

The low rustle of armour and leather was the only sound in the war chamber as Grashok turned back to the map of Ingunde, his finger tracing the jagged edges where the surrounding hills rose into disputed territory. His order hung in the air.

“Bring me everything you have on the Ratkin.”

For a moment, silence reigned—until one of the younger goblin scouts cleared his throat and stepped forward. His leather armour was smeared with the grime of recent travel, his left arm wrapped hastily in a bloodied cloth, the reward of a brush with something less than friendly.

“Chief,” he said, his voice high but steady, “they’ve been mustering. Ratkin scouts all around Ingunde’s southern and eastern outskirts. Not in one big camp, but dozens of little ones, hidden and shifting. It’s almost constant now—ambushes, hit-and-run attacks, skirmishes in the valleys and gorse fields.”

Grashok’s brows lowered in thought. He knew the pattern well—probing, testing, keeping a foe off balance. But this... this had the hallmarks of a storm building.

“Go on,” he said, motioning to the scout with a tilt of his head.

The goblin licked his lips. “It’s like they’re trying to wear us down. But not just us. Ingunde too. We’ve seen ‘em hitting supply lines, and even tailing merchant carts going in and out of the town. They’re getting bolder. More aggressive. Like something’s coming. Like...” He paused, hesitant.

“Like a precursor,” Grashok finished for him. “To war.”

A grim murmur passed around the table.

Elenara stepped forward then, her long emerald dress whispering across the stone floor. Her voice, calm but urgent, drew all attention.

“And yet, Chief,” she said, “I think there’s more to it. The Ratkin movement isn’t clean. I’ve been tracing the patterns for weeks now. And while their aggression’s growing, so is their unpredictability.”

She placed another parchment on the table, this one showing crude sketches of individuals—humans, dwarves, even a few half-elves.

“These are adventurers. Or... they were. Two of them—Beran the Redblade and Calen Mistwalker—were well known in the area. Independent, vocal Ratkin-haters. Both were captured by Thale’s supporters and sold to the Ratkin weeks ago.”

Grashok nodded slowly. “We know. And we mourned the loss of potential allies.”

Elenara’s eyes narrowed. “Except they’re not lost. They were seen again, three days ago, by one of our scouts. Moving with a Ratkin warband.”

A hiss of disbelief ran through the chamber.

The goblin scout from earlier chimed in again, “Yeah. And they were acting right weird. Jerky. Like puppets on string. No banter, no swagger, nothing like the cocky bastards they used to be. Just... hollow.”

Nyxie exchanged a glance with Sylrith. Even the dark elf’s careful mask of detachment cracked slightly.

Elenara’s voice dropped. “That matches the testimony of three Ratkin prisoners we captured. They talked before they died—some of them screaming about 'the strings' and 'the ritual fire.'”

Grashok leaned forward, frowning. “You think this is magic?”

“More than that,” Elenara replied grimly. “The Ratkin have been using shamans and necro-sorcerers in growing numbers. Not just for battle, but for something larger. My spies say they’ve been experimenting—blending magic, alchemy, and enchantment. The captured adventurers aren’t simply slaves. They’re... components.”

A chill passed through the room.

“For what purpose?” Sylrith asked, voice low.

Elenara looked at Nyxie who spread her hands. “We don’t know. Only that there’s an urgency to it. Something’s coming. A ritual, a summoning, an assault—we don’t know what, but we do know time is running out.”

Grashok folded his arms, the muscles in his shoulders taut beneath the leather and steel of his pauldron. “It fits,” he said, almost to himself. “This whole campaign—too fast, too wide. They’re grabbing territory like they’re on a clock. Not like they mean to hold it. Even the Vermin King—mad as he is—knows overextension brings collapse. So why push so hard?”

The room fell silent, save for the distant drip of water in the vaulted ceiling. No one answered.

The Hobgoblin lord turned his burning eyes toward the table. He tapped one thick finger against the outline of Ingunde.

“Then let’s narrow the focus. Snippa. What do we know?”

Elenara straightened, her emerald-green dress rustling softly as she moved, the black heels of her boots clicking against the flagstones. Her pale face was as still as carved alabaster, but her voice held a sharp clarity.

“We know that even within the militia of Ingunde, there is dissent against Captain Jorun Thale,” she began. “Many of his own guards dislike his methods. Some actively defy him, quietly. That is likely why Snippa is not being held in the garrison prison.”

She turned, her long blonde hair swaying as she plucked a leather scroll case from her belt. “She’s being kept somewhere less… official. More personal.”

Grashok frowned, his mind already racing.

“She’s in the townhouse of one of the cabal’s wealthiest members,” Elenara continued. “Darric Velmarn. Merchant noble of the old class—fat off shipping contracts, land holdings, and secretly, slave trade profits. He’s been funding Jorun for years, giving him coin, influence, and cover. And the Velmarn Foundling House? He owns it outright. The child they used came from there. Velmarn presents it as charity, but it’s a front—cheap labour, pliable wards, and a ready supply of children for Jorun whenever he wants to stir up trouble with a bit of street mischief or a roused crowd.”

The name hung in the air like a stench. Grashok growled low in his throat.

“Darric's house,” Elenara said, “is large, central, and heavily guarded. Not by the militia, but by mercenaries and thugs loyal only to coin. The same coin that lines the cabal’s pockets.”

She unfurled the scroll case onto the table, revealing a rough but detailed sketch of a sprawling town residence, four floors above ground and an extensive series of basements below.

“This,” she said, tapping the lower part of the parchment, “was sketched from memory by a former slave. A young woman rescued by our scouts two weeks ago from a Ratkin convoy. She’d originally come from Ingunde, but couldn’t return for fear of the cabal. She was drugged, smuggled out through the basement of this very house, and woke up in chains on the road to the Ratkin enclave.”

Grashok’s jaw tightened. Nyxie, standing close to him now, laid a hand lightly on his arm. Sylrith said nothing, her silver eyes narrowed as she studied the parchment.

“At the time, I didn’t know how important this intel would become,” Elenara said. “But she had a keen memory. She described the layout in detail—bedrooms above, luxury for show. The basement, however...” She tapped the map again. “...it stretches much further than the footprint of the house would suggest. Hidden rooms, guard corridors, reinforced doors. Cells. Everything about it is designed to keep people in—securely, silently. But for all its fortification, it’s not built to repel intruders. No traps, no outer defences. It’s a cage, not a fortress, an underground staging area for the slave operation.”

Grashok’s gaze moved across the plan, following the corridors and passageways like blood vessels running beneath the skin of the town. “This basement,” he said, “that’s where they’re keeping her.”

“I’m certain of it,” Elenara confirmed. “It’s secure. Hidden. And the cabal has every reason to keep her away from public eyes while they decide what to do next.”

He looked up at her. “Do we know how the slaves are passed to the Ratkin?”

“No,” she said. “Only that they vanish. The woman we rescued remembered being given a drink, then nothing. She woke in chains, on the march. Our scouts hit the convoy just days later. But the hand-off point? Still unknown. There’s no visible tunnel or gate. No magic residue I could trace.”

Grashok let out a low breath. His mind worked like clockwork, grinding through possibilities. Nyxie watched him with a quiet admiration, while Sylrith’s dark gaze flicked to Elenara.

“You said you have contacts in the town,” Sylrith said.

Elenara nodded. “Several. Low‑level militia, merchants, taverners, even a few couriers. They’re loyal—or at the very least, they owe us. But they cannot act openly, not while Jorun holds sway. If they move too soon, they’ll be exposed and crushed.”

Grashok looked up from the map. “So they move when we move?”

“Exactly,” Elenara said. “Their efforts must align perfectly with yours. A moment of chaos—when the house is breached, when the cabal panics—that’s when they act. Otherwise the Ratkin agents embedded in the town may counter them. I have no doubt they have spies and saboteurs already. They’ll try to stop us before we even begin.”

The Hobgoblin commander straightened, broad shoulders rising like a mountain ridge. His eyes, dark with restrained fury, scanned the faces of those gathered.

Skarn, his great grey wolf, sat before the throne, rigid, ears pricked. The beast sensed his master’s turmoil and growled softly—not in fear, but anticipation.

Grashok’s gaze returned to the map. To the basement that might now cage Snippa. To the town that had once lived in ignorance of his tribe, now poisoned by fear and corruption into seeing them as a threat.

His voice was iron. “Then we plan for precision. No wild charges. No fury without aim. When we strike, we strike once—fast, and true.”

The map of Ingunde remained stretched before them, ringed with tokens—pieces of bone, carved figures, and shell‑markers denoting factions, strongholds, and paths of movement. Grashok leaned on the edge of the table, arms folded across his broad chest, eyes tracking the sketched layout of the city like a predator studying its prey.

“Let’s talk defences,” he said.

Elenara stepped back, allowing a different goblin scout to shuffle forward—a wiry creature with soot-smudged fingers and sharp, clever eyes. He tapped one of the wooden carvings that marked the perimeter.

“The town wall’s mostly wood, Chief,” the scout said. “Old wood. Rotten in places. They’ve done a few repairs near the main gate, but the rest’s patched up with little more than hope and wet bark.”

“Could you breach it?” Grashok asked.

“With a barrel of fire tar and a kick,” the scout replied with a feral grin. “Wouldn’t take much. The north wall’s worst. That’d be our hole.”

Sylrith arched a dark brow. “Are they foolish, or just arrogant?”

“A little of both,” Elenara said. “They’ve relied on disinterest and internal threats to keep them safe. Their attention has been turned inward—on politics, on trade. And now Jorun, stirring it all up like a stew left to boil over.”

Grashok grunted. “Still, no surprises. What else do we know? Anything useful?”

Another scout, this one younger, pointed to an outbuilding just outside the northern wall. “There’s an old grain silo. Doesn’t look like it’s in use anymore—roof’s partially collapsed, but the upper platform’s still intact. Might give a good line of sight if we need to coordinate signals.

A different marker moved toward the town centre. “This here’s a tavern,” Elenara added. “The Rusted Flagon. Friendly to us, and likely to stay that way if things go loud. The owner’s one of our informants. Knows how to get messages around quietly, and could be used as a fallback point or a smuggler’s hole.”

Grashok nodded, his mind cataloguing every point, every flaw, every advantage. His gaze moved back to the walls—wood, thinly patrolled, with areas of disrepair. A frontal assault would be obvious, but precision could make the weakness theirs to exploit. With internal agents ready to move and the outer shell ready to crack under the right force, a plan was forming.

The room had grown quiet, the air thick with the weight of plotted war. There were no more scouts speaking, no more maps to be unfolded, no more intelligence left unshared.

Grashok’s voice broke the silence.

“Does anyone know what ‘the patch’ might mean?” he asked, his tone even, but his words curious enough to draw puzzled looks from every corner of the room.

Elenara glanced at him, frowning. “The patch?”

“The patch of what?” asked Nyxie, blinking.

Sylrith tilted her head. “You mean land? Territory?”

“No…” Grashok said, slowly, but offered no more.

The goblin elder squinted across the table, one bushy brow raised. “Why, Chief? Why do you ask?”

Grashok remained silent. His eyes had not moved from the map, but something in him was elsewhere entirely.

Grashok's silence, following his cryptic question, lingered in the war chamber like smoke after a fire. No one pressed him for more—those who knew him best, Nyxie and Sylrith especially, understood that sometimes the Hobgoblin lord’s mind moved along tracks none could see until the moment of arrival.

With the unanswered question set aside, attention returned to the matter at hand.

Elenara unfurled a second, smaller scroll beside the primary map. It held sketches of streets, symbols denoting informant cells, observation points, and timed signals. Her voice, always precise, never rose above a calm tempo as she reviewed assets embedded in Ingunde and how they could be activated to coincide with external movement. She warned again of Ratkin eyes and ears in the town, and how too much noise too soon would see them lose any element of surprise.

Grashok listened with intense focus, interjecting only to clarify timings, fallback routes, and contingencies. His instincts as a war leader warred constantly with the fire in his gut—the rage that someone had dared to take his Snippa. But the strategist in him refused to yield. He would not jeopardise her safety for the sake of speed or vengeance.

Scouts added their observations of the town’s rhythms—shift changes, food deliveries, smoke patterns from hearths and forges. Elenara’s hand darted across the parchment with notes and arrows. Even the goblin elder, normally slow and steady, had come alive in the intensity of the planning.

Still, there were gaps.

Too many unknowns: how exactly the captives were transported, how far the Ratkin network extended into Ingunde, what foul magics were being worked upon the twisted adventurers. But the shape of the plan began to emerge like a sculpture from stone. With each word spoken and discarded, each scrap of information weighed and set, a lattice of possibility began to take form.

Candle after candle burned low. The smoke curled around the war chamber’s high rafters. The parchment grew smudged with fingers and candle wax. But something precious kindled amidst the weariness and frustration—hope.

No one voiced it. No one dared.

But as Grashok straightened from the table at last, his expression—grim yet no longer bleak—spoke of a path forward.

He stepped back from the planning table, breathing deeply through flared nostrils, the tension in his shoulders easing just a fraction. Around him, his lieutenants and advisors watched in silence. He closed his eyes.

Menu.

The inner voice obeyed, and a shimmering pane hovered within his mind’s eye, unseen by all but him. The interface blinked softly—part magic, part artefact, and long-since integrated into his being. He swept through the options with silent thought, selecting Expedition.

A moment later, a series of troop icons manifested—goblins, xvarts, magic users, scouts. He hesitated only briefly before selecting the best mix for a rapid strike. Speed, stealth, and accuracy. This would be the vanguard—light and fast, striking before the enemy could react. It was the same formula he had honed in the weeks spent in the country to the west, chasing Ratkin through Xvart burrows, Tasloi treetop hamlets, and Gnoll encampments.

Then, with a second thought, he queued a second formation. Heavier units, the phalanx and reserves. A slower force, but one that would follow a few hours behind the first—ready to reinforce, extract, or escalate, depending on what the vanguard uncovered.

But just before issuing the final command, his eyes flicked toward the shadowed alcove near the war-room door. Skarn lay there, massive head resting on his paws, golden eyes watching him with the stillness of long familiarity. His ears perked slightly, sensing the moment.

Grashok's breath caught. The wolf had followed him into fire and frost, through screaming dark and arrow-laced dawn. Every mission, every close call—Skarn had been there, a silent shadow at his side.

And yet… this time was different.

“This one must be quiet,” Grashok muttered under his breath. “Fast and invisible. No growls in the undergrowth. No fur to shine in moonlight.”

He didn’t look at Skarn right away, not yet. His mind ticked through the probabilities—the wolf's powerful scent, his size, the risks of detection. It wasn’t that Skarn couldn’t move silently. He could. But this mission wasn’t just about stealth. It was about remaining unseen before the moment of contact. Even the best beast left traces.

The internal magic pulsed. Awaiting confirmation.

Grashok clenched his jaw. He made the decision.

He turned and walked over, crouching down to meet Skarn eye to eye. The wolf rose halfway, expectant.

“Not this one,” Grashok said softly, placing a hand on the thick ruff of his companion’s neck. “But you’re not being left behind.”

Skarn’s ears twitched.

“You’ll come with the second force,” Grashok continued. “Track us, stay just behind. If things go wrong...” He paused, looking into the wolf’s eyes. “You’ll know what to do.”

Skarn whined once, low and quiet, and nuzzled into his chest. Grashok wrapped his arms around him in a brief, fierce hug, burying his face against the warm fur.

“You’ll have your part in this,” he whispered. “Just not the opening move.”

The wolf pressed into him for a long moment before slowly backing away, lowering himself to the stone floor again, resigned but not unhurt.

Grashok stood.

Launch Expedition

The magic sealed the command.

Several hours later, the fortress gates groaned open, and the air in the dungeon was alive with tension. Torches crackled in their iron sconces as boots—leather and iron-shod—beat a steady rhythm across the stone floors.

Grashok stood prepared: clad in full battle leathers, Soulrend at his hip, helm tucked beneath one arm. The mantle of war lay comfortably upon his shoulders. But before the march began, he dropped into a crouch beside Skarn.

The great wolf regarded him with alert eyes, hackles half-raised, tail flicking with restrained impatience. Grashok reached out, his hand brushing through the creature’s thick fur before he pulled the beast into a brief, firm embrace— unspoken, and laden with meaning.

“I will look for you with the second wave,” he murmured. “See you soon, old friend.”

Skarn let out a low, rumbling whine, then turned and padded off, vanishing into the ranks of those yet to march.

Grashok rose without a word and resumed his place at the column’s head. Nyxie and Sylrith fell in beside him, each silent, eyes locked forward, their bond with him—and with Snippa—etched into the marrow of their resolve.

The wind greeted them as they emerged from the mouth of the dungeon, high in the crags. The sun hung bright but lowering in the sky, casting long shadows across the slopes. The world below shimmered in the golden haze of afternoon light—forests rustling, distant streams glinting like threads of silver. Far beyond, tucked amid stone and tree, lay Ingunde.

Their target, and by nightfall, their destination.