Chapter 9

    The flurry of activity that followed was intense. Mino had run off to make calls, Zach had taken the kid to a hospital, and me…. I was told to sit tight. Do nothing. Wait. I don't know why, but it irked me. Not a lot. Not completely. But a twinge of a feeling.

    So now I was pacing back and forth in my barren apartment, the nails on my fingers being bitten down to virtually nothing. The "living room" I was in, if you could even call it that, was embarrassingly empty. There was an admittedly comfy looking couch, then…. Nothing. Just the couch facing a small window looking into the side of another building, surrounded on all sides by blank white walls. I guess if your resident's die often, then there isn't really a need to decorate. 

    A clock hanging in the kitchen kept ticking onward. Seconds stretched to minutes, minutes stretched to hours, and the sun kept sinking lower and lower, kissing the top of buildings. By this point, I was staring out of the kitchen window, the view better that the one the couch was looking out of. Sunset began to cast everything in an orange glow. I absentmindedly flicked the tip of my blade repeatedly. The dull tink began to encompass my mind, until I thought of nothing, just the sound of my shortened finger nail hitting the blade. Then a knock that sent me flying 3 feet into the air echoed throughout the small apartment. 

    The pounding was coming from the front door that leads into the living room, and I quickly sped around a wall and came to a stop in front of the door. Ripping it open, Zach stood before me, looking clean and freshly showered, his clothes missing some of the grime of combat. He walked past me without a word. He made his way over to the couch and plopped himself down, beckoning me over to him with a quick motion of his head. I didn't really know if it would be weird to sit down directly next to him, so I brought a chair that was next to the kitchen counter and sat in front of him. 

    "So." His voice sounded gruff and downplayed. I don't know what he had heard or what happened to him in the last few hours, but it must've been rough. "The kid told me what was going on when I was taking him to the hospital." He quickly stopped and glanced up at me. "His name is Hic, by the way. Anyway, he told me the scale of what we were dealing with. " Zach held up his hand and began counting off of his fingers. "Four hundred goblin main soldiers, three hundred goblin scouts, two hundred hunting dogs, and one hundred miscellaneous soldiers. Give or take a few dozen in each category." With each subsequent division listed off, I could feel myself slump down in my seat. 

    Four hundred goblin soldiers?! How the hell could we fight that, how the hell could anybody fight that, let alone fucking defeat it! "Zach, four hundred, that's….." He interrupted me. "I know, it's a lot. Mino already knows the details. I don't know how she got a hold of my number, but she did. She told me to get cleaned up and come here, she would be by later." His face then softened considerably as he cracked a small smirk. "You should go get cleaned up too, you smell like the underside of a goblins foot."

    I self consciously grabbed my shirt and brought it up to my nose to sniff. What followed was a full thirty seconds of gagging. I quickly nodded and stood up with a wobble, before stumbling off down a hallway. I hadn't brought a lot of clothes with me, but luckily the government had seen fit to equip the modest bedroom with clothes that were about my size. I grabbed a pair of black sweatpants with a gray hoodie, and headed to the bathroom.

    Fifteen minutes later, I walked out feeling refreshed, though not necessarily ready for what was to come. I threw my towel and dirty clothes into the bedroom as I passed by it, before halting to a stop. Mino sat down in the chair in front of Zach, and Zach….. Looked defeated. His head was in his hands, and his foot tapped nervously against the carpet. "Ah, Alaric, good, come listen."

    I took slow steps into the living room. Dread was pouring out of me. Zach, who I admittedly hadn't known for very long, was usually a very upbeat person. If he was like this… Then I don't want to imagine what she had told him. "So, Alaric, I'm going to relay to you the orders given by the higher ups as I've been given them." Her voice sounded dead, guarded, as if she was trying hard not to let her emotions seep through into it. "We are to engage and," She cleared her throat before continuing, "And attempt to kill all the goblins, including the leader."

    Before I could stop myself from fear, the words "When and how?" rang out. Fear coursed through every inch of my body, and yet I still asked those questions. I don't know how. She looked up at me, her face slightly shifting in surprise, before she guarded herself once again and answered. "Fire. While modern day weaponry doesn't affect any of the monsters in cave systems around the world, fire does. It is one of the most basic of destructive forces, and thus affects the beasts below us." 

    At this, a question arose in my head. While news and talk of all the details surrounding The Selected and the whole situation were censored and heavily guarded, news of their immunity to almost all modern ways of killing were open to the public. However, I had never known that fire could kill monsters, and so I asked "If fire can kill monsters, why doesn't humanity just set fire to every cave and end the whole thing entirely?"

    Mino stared at me like a mother scolding her child, and said in a know it all voice "We have tried that. One, we could never get anybody down far enough to spread fuel to the whole cave, and second, there was always something preventing us from doing that, which, I'm about to talk to you two about."

    At this, Zach sat up straight. Looks like he hadn't been told this either. Mino leaned forward towards us, her eyes turning deathly serious. "This is information is jealously censored from the general public, and if word of it got out, the government would definitely find out who did and would eliminate them, do I make myself clear?" Zach and I both nodded. "Certain monsters have the ability to…. Use special abilities." 

    Confusion over rode my fear for a second, and gave her a questioning look. "What do you mean special abilities?" She looked up at me with the slightest hint of pity. "Monsters from the underground can use magic. We can't."