“Don’t touch me, goblin,” Nana rasped in a voice that sounded like sandpaper.

  A small sheen of sweat coated her forehead, visible beneath dirty grey hair. Wounds and bruises littered her skin; the signs of continuous injury that never properly healed.

  All of those wounds pointed toward torture, and my hands trembled as I arrived at that realization. Nana had saved me in my first few days in Vizhima, yet these monsters had deemed it fit to treat her like a dog. I lost the tight rein that I had been keeping on my emotions, enough for [Silhouette] to rise like a vast curtain behind my back.

  No, I told the monster, even though I longed for nothing more than to let loose on the goblins.

  I wrestled the black tendrils back under control and cupped Nana’s face. She flinched away from me, feverish to the touch. The pillory swayed gently around her neck.

  “Nana,” I managed to say through my tears. “It’s me, Damien.”

  Nana remained silent. She had either dozed off or failed to hear me, which was expected with a fever of that degree. She stirred in time, however, and cocked her head. “Cyran?”

  That was the name of the body I had inherited. The life I’d stolen that wasn’t meant to exist. “Yeah. It’s me.”

  “Cyran . . .” Nana repeated. “No, that can’t be right. You reek of goblin shit . . . sound like one too.” She coughed—slowly, painfully—and hacked phlegm out of her throat. “Have you not had enough of this, cur? Do I need to suffer another one of your curses?”

  “It’s really me, Nana,” I said and retrieved a water skin from my inventory. “I’m here to get you out.”

  Nana resisted at first for fear of poison, but her thirst eventually won out. She lapped up the drink and refused a second one, choosing instead to clear her head. “Prove it.”

  I got her meaning. “We had a final discussion back in Harkonean the morning I left. You urged me to try my chances in Skeelie.”

  “Bah. Anyone could get that by rifling through my head.”

  “What about the marking on my chest? The crest you designed with your hand?”

  “I have a similar one on my chest, numbskull.”

  Right. I’d forgotten how much of a hardass she could be. Sighing, I retrieved The Blackreach Dagger and placed its worn hilt in her hand.

  Nana stiffened. “No . . . It can’t be. It really is, huh?” Her cracked lips parted in a gasp. “Damien! You came back . . .”

  “That’s what I am saying, old hag,” I said softly.

  “But, how? Why here? Were you also captured by the goblins?”

  “No. My friends and I came to help.”

  “You made friends . . .”

  My heart faltered at the emotion in her voice because it sounded like something my real mother would say. I had become something of a loner after mom’s death, not really by choice, but because living with my father had left me fucked in the head. Mom would have encouraged me to go out and make some friends.

  “Yeah,” I said at last. “I did.”

  Nana smiled despite her wounds. “Good thing, then! I was worried about your alien ass. You struggled so much in the village that I considered it a death sentence to send you off to the city.” She shook her head again to clear it and returned the dagger. The chains clanked around her arms. “So, have you resolved that spirit orb problem of yours?”

  “I have. For now.” I frowned at her shackles. “Let me get you down from there.”

  Nana shook her head. “You can’t. There’s an alarm spell inscribed on the pillory, alongside other runes. Should anyone try to break the bindings, the entire army will be notified.”

  I bit my lips in frustration. “I can’t leave you hanging here!”

  “I have hung here for long enough already, boy. A few more minutes don’t matter.” She froze before she could finish. “Galagor! Where’s Galagor? I heard him speak a short while ago, but I was too delirious to care.”

  “He left for the surface. There’s no better time to escape.”

  Nana paled. “No, Damien. We won’t be getting out that easily. Not from him. The goblins aren’t the scariest monsters in this cave. It’s him. Just him.”

  “He’s a silver-ranked monster, isn’t he? We can take him.”

  “Listen when I speak, boy! It’s not about power, even though he has that in spades. It’s the way he thinks that is different. Galagor has more wits about him than most Goblin Geniuses.”

  “But, you’re a Gold ranker. There’s no reason why you would lose to him in a fair fight. The rumors are untrue, yeah? About your defeat. Surely, he used some sneaky means . . .”

  Nana’s features hardened. “I won’t accept that excuse. I lost fair and square on my turf. He’s of Hatred, Damien. That makes him difficult to handle. Even now in his absence, his influence suffocates the entire dungeon.” She shook her bangs out of her face. “You should leave before his demons learn what you are up to. I don’t know how you snuck in here, but a Dark Elf stands out extremely well among goblins.”

  “I’m no Dark Elf,” I said. “Not now, at least. I’m using [Impostor]. Can’t you see?”

  Nana’s lips narrowed into a line.

  “Nana . . .” my voice wavered. “You can see, right?”

  Hearing nothing, I lifted her bangs. Nana’s stately features remained pristine despite her torment, but a hideous burn scar ran over her eyelids from end to end.

  I let out a strangled gasp.

  “Oh, stop your whingeing,” she said. “It’s not like I lost my head.”

  “Did Galagor do this too?”

  “Who else could it be?”

  [Silhouette] escaped my control again. Its long tendrils stretched out beneath me, quivering for blood. I understood now how Galagor had managed to keep a gold-ranker under control. With no vision, access to techniques, and the inability to regain HP, Nana was no different from ordinary regulars. Maybe even worse.

  “We have a healer,” I gnashed out. “Two. I’ll bring them over.”

  You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

  “Needless,” she said. “Once you are ready to move, just break these chains and give me a health potion. I’ll get out on my own. Your friends are the ones you need to worry about. And, the others . . .”

  “Are the other villagers trapped here too?”

  “I . . . don’t know. We were captured weeks ago, Damien. A lot of us Nanduli?. Some survivors made it to the safety of the hills. But, it’s all been a blur. Tybalt . . . Tybalt was taken prisoner too. But, the goblins dislike rankers . . .”

  She didn’t need to finish. The goblins had been eating their captives, using them as emergency rations in the war.

  “I’ll be back,” I said. “I’ll meet up with the others. We’ll get you out, Nana. I promise.”

  “Prioritize the other prisoners over me,” she said. “The instant you break these chains, you will be faced with resistance. It might be prudent to focus on everyone else.”

  “There’s no way I’m leaving without you, Nana. I don’t care who stands in my way. I’ll kill them all.”

  Nana opened her lips to argue, but then she sighed. “I made a grave mistake, Damien. Tybalt was right. We should have evacuated rather than depend on the Hinduli?.” She clenched her fists. “Very well. Run along. Do what you must. Whenever you return, I’ll be ready.”

  I offered her a nod. And then, struggling to keep [Silhouette] in check, I ventured out of Galagor’s abode.

  We only had a little time left on the clock. The goblins could rouse at any moment, and there was no telling when their decrepit old leader would return.

  I wanted to go up against Galagor—to show him exactly what I thought about Nana’s imprisonment. But, all in good time, Damien. I would rescue the prisoners first. After that, I’d punch him in the face.

  The slave pits and the animal pens shared the same chamber, protected by a couple of barely conscious sentries. I let myself in without so much as a glance from them and trudged along a short tunnel that had been kept lightless on purpose.

  Pure misery hovered like a fog in the air, filled with the stench of sweat, waste, droppings, and unwashed flesh. Two large pens occupied the chamber at the end of the tunnel: one for goats, and the other . . .

  Oh gosh.

  The duli? filled the pen, most of them stripped naked, devoid of clothing and armor. A few stood tied to whipping posts while others bled from freshly inflicted wounds. Many of the elves lay corralled in their own filth, chained one to another in rather haphazard ways. The Hinduli? seemed to make up the majority, though I counted a sizable percentage of Dark Elves from Harkonean.

  The captured elves watched a commotion that brewed in front of their pen with morbid fascination. A new batch of prisoners had arrived, stripped of their clothing and dignity. Three goblin jailers—Soldiers by the looks of it—tried to whip them free of health armor. One prisoner resisted.

  “Paz . . .” I said with a groan.

  He grabbed the thorny whip before it could strike him, causing the flustered Goblin Soldier to redden.

  “Stop that!” the goblin said, right before Paz, with the casual ease of [Overpower], drove his fist through the goblin’s chest.

  All three Goblin Soldiers, including the wounded individual, gaped in stunned silence at Paz. The wounded one buckled, and his companions realized rather belatedly that the shackles binding their new prisoners were not truly enchanted.

  Before they could scream, Kajal and Logain grabbed both and strangled them to death.

  “That was not part of the plan, Paz,” Kajal said as she laid the goblin whom she had just murdered gently to the ground.

  “Works better this way,” Paz said. “You heard the little shitbags. They intended to drop us in a torture chamber. Whatever runes they have emplaced there are certainly not fakes.”

  “But, what about the other goblins?” a Dark Elf cried from within the pen. He glanced at Medekeine who watched the proceedings with a wide grin on his face.

  Medekeine kept Kreeta rooted beside him with a large hand around her neck. The female goblin stared at her deceased comrades on the ground and trembled in her leathers.

  “What about me?” Medekeine grouched.

  “He’s with us,” Kajal said. She realized then that she was in her undergarments and retrieved her torn clothes from where they had been discarded. “Paz, Logain, release the prisoners. I’ll dispose of the bodies.”

  “Feed them to the Dread Goats,” I said and appeared from the shadows. “They’re omnivorous from what I remember.”

  Many of the elves gasped and fell back from my presence. “Hagar!”

  I winked at them. “Surprise! You now have a friendly neighborhood goblin working on your team. How many of you are rankers?”

  The elves looked at each other, unsure why a fight hadn’t broken out with my appearance. A short-haired Wood Elf raised her hand tentatively. More followed.

  I counted eight rankers, which was about ten percent of the total elves gathered. Not too bad as far as an attack squad went. But, with most of them being iron-ranked, they wouldn’t do much to improve our chances. Regulars and specialists could defeat lower-ranked monsters if pushed to the wall, but it was a hard ask for them to do so without affinities or combat skills.

  Kajal didn’t care. She ordered the release of the classers first and offered potions to those in need. Armor and weapons were then gathered from inventories and shared among the regulars. Everyone who could hold a weapon was expected to fight, though the rankers would do their best to keep all others alive.

  Kajal frowned. “Damien, the people you mentioned . . . the ones you were searching for. Did you learn anything about them?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I found Nana.” And, just in case—“Hey, Dark Elves. Is anyone among you named Tybalt or Mavari?”

  A frigid voice announced from the back of the pen. “What’s it to you, Hagar?”

  I recognized that voice. I leaped into the enclosure and waded through the jumpy elves until I found the speaker.

  Tybalt had seen better days. His thin frame bore the same scars and welts as the rest of the elves, revealing his harsh treatment at the hands of the goblins. A health potion had done wonders for his wounds, though not for his complexion. His usually rich-colored skin had faded to a pallid tone in his time in captivity. His trademark Irithiel eyes sat sunken in his face.

  Tybalt clutched a longbow between his arms, moving just enough to reveal the two stumps on his right hand. Another example of goblin horror, albeit he seemed unbothered by his condition. His beautiful black locs had been shorn cruelly on one side of his head, following a wound taken to the scalp.

  “Logain,” I said, “please, heal.”

  “Can’t do anything about missing body parts,” Logain answered. “Limbs, fingers, organs—all too complex for my technique.”

  My heart sped up. “What about eyes?”

  “Depends on the extent of damage. The worse it is, the harder it becomes to return to full function.”

  “A goblin concerned about my wounds?” Tybalt smirked. “What a strange day this is.”

  “I’m not a goblin, idiot. It’s me, Damien.”

  Tybalt frowned. “Damien?” His eyes widened. “You were always a goblin?”

  If he wasn’t already in a pitiful state, I would have smacked him over the head.

  “But, how?” Tybalt said. “You attacked us at Harkonean.” He glanced at his hand. “You chewed off my fingers.”

  “That was the real owner of this body, not me.” I steadied my voice. “Nana . . . Nana is . . .”

  “Dead. I know.”

  “No, she lives. Galagor’s keeping her imprisoned in his chamber—” I stretched my arm to stop Tybalt before he could rush to his feet.

  His sunken eyes gleamed dangerously. “You kept the Harkon waiting in chains while we sat here dawdling? Her mere presence could change the outcome of our escape!”

  “I will rescue her,” I said through gritted teeth. “We will rescue her. But, you better calm that hot head of yours. I’m not letting you jeopardize our efforts.”

  Tybalt opened his mouth as if to rebuke me but thought better of it and returned to the floor. He seemed to have matured some during my absence. Though, that probably had something to do with the fact that I had come to his rescue.

  At level 31, I was now stronger than him. [Identify] put him at level 29, which showed impressive growth since our last meeting. He possessed enough levels to match Byron at his peak—probably even best him.

  However, after my encounters with the Samurai and the Wood King, such paltry levels now seemed a huge distance away from true strength. And, that was only compared to gold rankers. How much stronger, then, were platinum, iridium, and adamantium rankers?

  “Damien?” a small voice said from among the gathering. “You’re that Damien?”

  Paz whistled. “Someone seems popular among his people.”

  The speaker, a Wood Elf maiden—though maiden was an ill-fitting term for a hunk like her—with short red hair and a scar across her cheek, lumbered toward me. She had on loose-fitting leather armor which showed off her tanned arms, adorned with tattoos. She also looked mightily familiar.

  “Rizzler?” I asked.

  “It’s Rilwan,” she snapped and slugged me in the gut.