Eileen pauses there, one hand braced against the cold stone wall, her breath shaking like a page in the wind. She draws a ragged lungful of air into her aching ribs, then lifts her chin. “Children, my dears, are you here?” she calls. Her voice quivers but holds.
The answer comes not as words, but as sound. A chorus of distant moans, too thin to be screams. Cries like a cracked music box, winding down. One voice sobs, soft and strange. Another laughs in a slow, sour way, shaped like someone who doesn't understand why they hurt. “I’m coming,” she says. Firmer now. “Don’t worry. Grandma’s on her way.”
She steps off the final stair, her boots landing in ankle-deep water with a splash that echoes too long. The air here smells of copper and mildew, and something else. Sweet, like rot caught in honey.
She does not stop. Does not question the water’s thickness or the unseen things brushing past her legs. She simply presses forward, hands steady, eyes sharp. Around the bend, she finds them.
Two children. Small. Too small for how loud the silence feels around them. One crouched in a corner, hands slick with blood, eyes wide but unblinking. The other curled tight in a trembling knot, rocking back and forth, as if trying to become smaller still.
Eileen’s heart softens and tightens in the same breath. “Oh, darlings,” she murmurs. “There you are.”
She wades to them. The rocking child flinches, but Eileen doesn’t reach yet. She simply kneels, easing the basket off her shoulder and setting it beside her with the care one gives to a sleeping cat. “There, there,” she soothes. “We’ll get you patched up. Let’s see what Grandma brought.”
From within the basket, a handkerchief embroidered with violets. A waterskin, still warm from being boiled that morning. A little jar of salve, wrapped in waxed linen. And of course, three jars of cookies, sealed with reverent folds.
Cracking one of the jars, she offers one first to the rocking child. “Here,” she says, gently. “It’s sweet. You’re safe. Grandma is here.”
The child stares. Sniffs. Then, slowly, takes it. Their sobbing falters, muffled by crumbs. Eileen smiles and turns to the bloodied child next. They’re not crying, but their hands shake as she gently lifts one. “This’ll sting a moment,” she warns, pouring water over the wound. “But we’ll get you sorted.”
The child flinches at the touch, then goes still again as she presses the handkerchief to the gash and ties it firm. And then, above her on the wall, something pulses.
Not bright. Not loud. Just present.
+40 Blue & +50 White Motes
The symbols sketch themselves in slow, deliberate brushstrokes. Soft light. Faint shimmer. As if hesitant to interrupt.
Eileen blinks. Once. Twice. With each blink, the letters dim. She exhales through her nose. A quiet boundary. “No,” she says. Not to the children. Not even to the wall. To the idea that kindness could be counted.
Her eyes drop back to the children. The one she bandaged is breathing easier. The bleeding stopped. Their pallor is warming, just faintly, so she gives the wounded one a cookie too. “Let’s get you home,” Eileen says. “Your parents must be sick with worry.”
The child in her lap goes still. The other one, the one still cradling the cookie like a map they don’t quite know how to read, shakes their head. “This is home,” they say. Voice quiet. Not sad. Just… certain. “We live here.”
Eileen’s heart stumbles, frowning in that grandmotherly way that isn't quite disapproval but leans in the direction of you’ve got to be kidding me. “In the dark?” she asks just for a moment until her voice becomes steady. “With wounds, no food, and no blankets? My dear, that’s not a home. That’s ...”
She stops herself mid sentence just as the second child stares at the floor. The first speaks again, their voice barely above the water. “It’s okay,” they say. “Father says that to ask for help is to be weak and that the weak will always die.”
Eileen’s voice lifts, still gentle, still warm, but carrying an edge now, like a spoon tapping the side of a teacup. “Your parents are here, they see you in this, and they do nothing?”
Silence.
“What is their name?” she asks, firmer now. “Because someone needs a talking-to, and it’s not either of you.” The child with the cookie looks up. Their lip trembles but not with fear.
“The Dawk Lorth,” they whisper together. “Hawbwingew of the Cosmic Apocawypse.”
Eileen’s eyebrows lift. Just slightly. “Oh,” she says. “Well. That’s quite a title.” Then, before she can respond further, the second child sits up straighter, cookie crumbs dusting their chin. “Please don’t be angwy,” they murmur. “We were just pwaying.”
Eileen turns to them, crouching low. The water clings cold around her knees, but she doesn’t notice. Her hand finds the child’s cheek soft, careful, mother-warm. “I could never be angry with you, sweet little one,” she says. “What’s your name?”
The child hesitates. Then their voice wobbles, even as their posture straightens, ceremonial. Ears just a little too large. Skin pale green and taut at the joints, as if the light doesn’t quite know where to land. “I am Audry. Fifth Gobln.”
She then points at her brother. “He’s Sevth.”
Eileen’s mouth opens, then closes. And then, with a gentleness that could bend gods, she asks, “Sweetheart… What does that mean? Fifth, what?”
“Fifth Gobln,” Audry repeats. “That’s what I am. Fifth of worthless trash. Fifth in line. Fifth to stay.” She doesn’t sound ashamed. She sounds like she’s reciting something taught by candlelight. Something sacred.
“It’s how the Dawk Lorth keeps us safe,” her brother adds. “It’s how we know where to be. How close to the trash chute we are to stay.”
Eileen’s heart folds in on itself. Not shattered. Just… bruised. The way old paper softens at the edges. She doesn’t correct them. Not yet. She simply says, “I see.” And behind her, somewhere deeper in the corridor, the Dungeon breathes again.
The moment holds. Too quiet. Too still. The children are watching her. The water whispering secrets to the walls.
Twang.
A bowstring sings behind her, high and sharp as a snapped hair. Eileen doesn’t think. She moves. With a speed born not of training but of certainty, she pulls both children toward her, tucking their small forms against her sides, curling over them like a prayer whispered in the wrong language but still understood.
The arrow does not land. It does not fire again. Something shifts in the air, like a ritual being interrupted. Like surprise. Eileen looks up.
A figure stands in the tunnel mouth. Hunched. Wrapped in damp cloth and damp years. A goblin, elderly, with a wooden peg where a leg should be and a bow trembling in his gnarled hands. His mouth opens once, then twice. “By the command of the Dawk Lorth,” he says, weakly. Not defiant. Not angry. Just… confused.
And then Eileen stands. Straightens. Steps forward. And with the calm of a woman who once slapped a goose out of someone’s kitchen, she raises her hand and knocks the bow clean from his hands with a single, open-palmed whack.
The goblin stares at the ground where the weapon fell. Then at her. “Bows.” Eileen says, voice crisp as fresh laundry, “are for targets. And only for targets. Do you understand me, young man?”
The goblin nods. Once. Twice. Trembling. Somewhere behind his wide, fogged eyes, something ancient is cracking. Not out of pain. Out of recognition. “Y-yes, ma’am,” he whispers. The trembling voice dissolving the moment in an instant.
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She kneels again, her knees finding the cold water for the second time that day. And instead of fury, she opens her arms. And the goblin, peg-legged, shivering, stunned steps into them.
“There now,” she says, wrapping her arms around him like a blanket that knows your name. “You were scared. You thought you were helping. That’s alright. But it’s never alright to hurt little ones, even accidentally. Not ever. Do you understand?”
“Yes,” the goblin breathes. “I... yes.” He doesn’t pull away, though his hands shake not from cold. But from not knowing what this feeling is. It isn’t fear. It isn’t duty. It isn’t the Dawk Lorth.
It is something soft. Something warm. Something that doesn’t belong here. And wants to stay. Behind them, the Dungeon does not sigh. But something within it hesitates.
The embrace lingers. The elderly goblin does not sob. He does not collapse. But something in him loosens. A thread snipped. A weight remembered. His hand finds Eileen’s shoulder, as if afraid she’ll vanish if he lets go.
Eileen, still kneeling in cold water, pats his back once. Then again. “There we are,” she says softly. “That’s better.”
She pulls back just enough to look into his face. “Do you have any idea how badly you frightened me?” she says, voice narrowing into a mother’s chiding, warm as balm and sharp as a buttonhook. “You nearly gave me a turn. Honestly, I wasn’t sure… I didn’t know if…”
“I was bein’ brave,” Audry murmurs from behind her, still clutching Connor’s hand.
The elder goblin looks at her. Then at Connor, whose wounds are bound now, whose mouth still sparkles faintly of cinnamon and trust. “But…” the elder says. “We’re goblins. And humans are… they’re adventurers. They hurt goblins. They kill goblins. That’s how it is.”
Eileen turns fully toward him. “No,” she says, not unkindly. “That’s how it was. And even then, only because no one stopped to say, ‘This isn’t how it should be.’”
The elder stares. Not because he doubts her. But because he has no idea what to do with being believed. Then, with a sigh like a door creaking open after a long sleep, Eileen opens her arms again. “Come now,” she says. “You’ve still got some hugging left in you. And I’m not leaving until you’ve used it.”
He doesn’t argue. This time, when he steps in, it’s easier.
Behind her, Audry exhales. Not with relief. Not with understanding. With… release. Like a held breath finally allowed to become something else. And in that moment, just briefly, the walls of the Dungeon do not pulse. The stones do not whisper. The air does not breathe.
It simply waits. And for the first time in a very long time, the system must process something unexpected. Not power. Not prophecy. Just… softness.
Deep in the dreary dark of an ill-kept room, Grandmother Eileen sits beside a heap of tattered rags that once dreamed of being blankets. Around her lie eleven goblins, scattered like forgotten toys, their small bodies scarred and welted from lives too long under labor, too short on kindness.
They do not weep. Children rarely do, when the cruelty is consistent. It wears the crying out of them. It leaves them in silence. And in scars that stay quiet.
Victims of a deadbeat father figure, the so-called Dawk Lorth, who’d granted them no holidays, no thanks, no warmth. Not even the dignity of chores well-done. Not outrage, exactly. Just the kind of ache that sits in the chest and says nothing.
Something colder. Older. A tea kettle left too long on the stove. Whistling as no one listens. But she does not voice it. Not yet. Because they are sleeping now.
They had greeted her with cautious delight, led by young Connor and guided by elder William. She had tended to their hurts, their hunger, their stories. She’d told them of heroes and hobbits, of goblins who saved kingdoms and ate cinnamon toast. And when the last cookie had been shared from the first of jars and the last eyelid had surrendered, they had curled beside her as if she’d always been here. And for a moment, she had been.
The room smells of old moss and sleep. One of the goblins Sevth, maybe, clutches her skirt with tiny fingers, still half-dreaming. Another has dozed off on her shoe. Eileen smiles. Faintly. Then shifts, slow as hush, easing herself up without disturbing the nest of little forms.
She moves through the chamber like memory, soft-footed, shawl gathered and exits into the corridor beyond. William’s directions echo in her mind, and she follows them carefully, passing a lichen-crusted shelf that looks oddly like a cradle. When she reaches the T-junction, she hesitates.
Left would take her back. Back to the stairwell. Back to sunlight. Back to the cottage that wasn’t a home, just a place she had been left in. She closes her eyes. Exhales. Then opens them again, steady.
Eileen turns right.
The tunnel narrows. Then expands. The rough stone gives way to a carved hallway, its walls etched with symbols she doesn’t recognize but feels judged by. At its end, a wrought-iron door perfect for a keep stands like a door that was built to keep the wrong people out, without ever asking who they were. Mana lamps casting long shadows across its reinforced bars.
She raises her hand and knocks. Three times. Not loud. Not timid. Just right.
A shuffle. The scrape of metal. Then the eye port opens with a hiss and a snap, revealing not a face but a pair of crimson eyes too close together, belonging to two jackals jostling for the peephole. “Begone, ye old hero!” they yelp, overlapping. “The Dawkith Lorth is not accepting visitors!”
Eileen squints. The light makes little sense, and the creatures even less. She isn’t sure who to address. So she speaks to both of them and the moment itself.
“Oh,” she says, pleasantly. “I just need to speak to the Dawkith Lorth before I head out.”
She smiles as she says it, the kind of smile used when asking a shopkeeper to refund something they definitely shouldn’t have sold in the first place. And the jackals yelp in unison. Both voices rising at once, scrambling over each other like puppies on slick tile, vying for the honor of speaking first. “What of our envoys? The priests, did they survive?” they cry in overlapping chorus. “What of the armies, the navies… the fleets of the dread cogs?”
Suddenly, both sets of eyes vanish. A commotion erupts behind the door: the sound of objects being tossed, breathless snarling, something breaking. Then, silence.
Followed by a tremendous crash, a lot of barking, the unmistakable scent of urination, and two pitiful, synchronized yelps that seem to mark the end of someone's pride.
With a metallic screech, the slot in the door opens once more. A third pair of eyes now clings to the bottom edge, smaller, yellower, peering up as if barely tall enough to reach.
“You bring news of sacrifices?” the voice quivers. “They are late. They are needed to awaken his core.”
Eileen shrugs, the quiet, eloquent shrug known only to the very elderly and very unimpressed. She doesn’t understand the question, not entirely, but she doesn’t need to. Her nonchalance, mistaken for divine composure, hits like a revelation. The creature behind the door reels, and Eileen, sensing a perfect moment for a tiny white lie, slips it in like a sugar cube into tea.
“You’d have to take that up with logistics,” she says smoothly. “I’m officially unofficially officially part of the Dawkith Lorth’s clandestine services.”
A sharp intake of breath. “Of course!” yelps the voice, its eyes vanishing again or perhaps falling backward entirely, given the crash that follows.
Crack. From somewhere deep within the walls, the sound of old metal groans as if bonds sealed in rust and bureaucracy were breaking at last. The noise crescendos, rattling the floor, Then, with a low groan and a sudden pop, a fracture splits across the door’s center seam.
Eileen steps back, wary but calm, her eyes drawn upward by instinct. And there, written in slow-burning script along the doorframe, another one of those strange declarations:
+1 Yellow & +20 Blue Motes
She exhales through her nose. “So obtuse," she mutters. She waves the apparition away like a moth and turns her attention back to the matter at hand.
The gap between the great doors widens just enough for her to slip through. She moves carefully, not out of fear, but of respect for large things pretending to be still.
Inside, the room opens into mechanical chaos. Three jackal-like figures, fluffy tumblers, smaller than the ones behind the peephole, are locked in frantic motion at the far wall. Fluffy, fast, and poorly coordinated, they yank at a massive steel wheel, which groans beneath their effort. Chains rattle. Gears shift. Every partial turn brings a collective yelp of encouragement, frustration, or both.
Then, on some unseen signal, all three abandon their posts and race for the doorway in a tumble of limbs and fur. The gear shaft spins back wildly behind them, the system resetting before they can reach the threshold. The door slams shut in their faces.
There’s a beat of silence. Then they whirl around and charge the wheel again. Again. And again.
Watching just past the threshold, but just outside their route, she waits, hands folded neatly on her basket. She tilts her head, curious but unbothered, the way one might watch squirrels argue with a birdbath.
“Well,” she murmurs, wobbling a few steps closer, “no one can say they lack enthusiasm.”
She raises a hand, palm out, not in command, but greeting. Like she might to a child mid-tantrum or a raccoon caught rifling the compost. “Now then,” she says gently, “why don’t we...”
One of the tumblers rounds on her. Not mean, not even angry. Just loud. A sharp bark, higher-pitched than a growl but edged like a snapped crayon. Its eyes flaring briefly, unfocused, not looking at her so much as through her. And then it turns back to the wheel, panting hard.
The other two don’t stop. They don’t even seem to notice. Eileen lowers her hand. Not hurt. Just… puzzled. “Alright,” she says, voice softening, “not quite ready. I understand.”
She finds a stool, one leg slightly cracked, but serviceable and settles onto it with a grateful sigh. The scene before her is absurd, but familiar. A kind of energy she’s known all her life.
Busybodies, people used to say, always complain that youth is wasted on the young.
But Eileen knows better. These tumblers are using it just fine. They just needed to get it out of their system.
She’ll wait. She’s good at that.