CHPT 89: Call to Action!

Claude and Frosty left the guildhall practically sprinting to get away from the prying eyes of other Night Runners and Ilka's overwhelming levels of sympathy that seemed to remind him of his own sadness.

As the duo headed down the street alongside other Night Runners and semi drunk citizens, Claude looked over the Quest entry in more detail.

"A small village Northeast of SkyHaven was overrun by a medium to large sized group of Goblins assumed to be of low ranking due to high number of survivors and low reported deaths. Goblins may have kept and used the strongest women to reproduce and increase their numbers."

By the time he finished reading the entry, he was anxious and thourougly disgusted. Not just by the women being used as slaves to produce babies, but also by the fact that this happened six months ago. Six months ago, families were violently removed from their homes and murdered only to be written as a report on a paper nobody cared about.

The idea sent a cool flame of anger through his body and made him question what the Heroes in SkyHaven were doing to let something like this happen.

"Don't worry, I'll avenge you all." He quietly promised before folding the paper into his pocket and heading towards the gates to exit SkyHaven.

***

Once he was out, he felt his shoulders relax a bit from the loss of strong smells of alcohol and people.

Full teams of Night Runners walked off with plans of completing nearby Tangents while others mounted their horses to enter ones that were much farther away.

Claude drew a great deal of attention to himself as he turned off the thick dirt road and started to jog through the grass and wild lands to the right of the road. He decided to go off-road since he would reach his destination faster this way, he also didn't smell any overwhelming scents of water leaving him to believe he could more or less make it to the village without having to make any detours.

"[Nice use of your senses, Claude.]" Arne complimented while he walked through the grass with Frosty.

"Thanks." Claude said before breaking off into a sprint with Frosty running happily next to him.

After the duo ran through the grass and zig zagged through tall columns of trees for an hour, they were approaching the end of the thick forest. He noticed the vast vegetation was thinning until it completely dispersed and left him staring at a beautiful clearing.

The moonlight reflected off of the droplets of water on the grass making the field glow and shimmer beautifully. The area reminded him of The Forest of The Chosen in the Astral Realm, it also convinced him that this area hadn't been touched by anyone in a very long time.

Right when he was about to step out of the forest and into the clearing, he stopped due to Frosty furiously sniffing for something.

Claude copied and began to sniff around the area to see what Frosty smelled. Soon enough, he realized Frosty wasn't sniffing for an odd smell but a common one, Humans.

The scent was barely in tact, but it still lingered in the air around them strongly enough to be followed.

The two began following the scent along the line of the edge of the forest and the clearing with intense focus. After a few seconds, they found the spot where the smell was strongest. They were 40 or so feet to the right of where they previously stood, now sifting through the bushes and plants to find the source of the smell.

"Where the hell is it?" He asked.

A couple seconds later and the hazy camouflaged outline of Frosty's head flew out of a bush shaking some piece of fabric held in his jaws. He quickly trotted over to Claude and dropped it at his feet once he thought he shook it enough.

"Good work, buddy." Claude said before squatting down to pick up the object.

His blood ran cold as he began to realize what he was holding in his hands. It was a dress, small enough for a girl no older than 5. The white dress was so faded and weathered that it was now only a dull grey full of rips and covered in dirt.

"[They must be nearby.]" Arne said.

Claude nodded his head before bringing Frosty over so they could get a better hold on the scent and see where it led them.

He'd never had to focus on an almost dead scent before, so it took him a while to be able to concentrate on the scent and that scent alone, but with Arne's help he was successful.

Frosty was already following the scent into the clearing ahead of him when he eventually tagged along, following the very faint smell of adolescent human and apples.

"[Your doing great, continue to ignore the other scents. If you need to refocus your scent simply smell the dress again so you don't lose the trail.]". Arne instructed.

Claude suddenly felt a wave of interest and curiosity from his link to Frosty. He looked at the fuzzy outline of the PitWolf and saw him sitting in the grass looking down at something. He quickly got up and jogged over to him.

"Woah...wow." He said after skidding to a stop and crouching near Frosty.

He didn't realize it before, but they were at the top of some sort of cliff. That wasn't exactly the surprising part, what was below the cliff off in the distance was.

"That's..."

"[Yep, that's a structure from the Old World. I'm sure the village chose this place specifically to farm the materials the building was made out of and make a decent amount of money selling it. It happened quite often in my time— only problem was most villages didn't last long since the majority of structures from the Old World are found deep in the wild.....much like this one.]" Arne said.

Claude stared at the structure in the center of the village with complete awe. Cracked concrete stairs circled the whole structure leading up to it. It was oddly made out of dark glasses and metals. It looked like the whole building was made out of windows outlined in metal. The structure rose somewhere around 50 feet to where the roof was missing— it looked like it collapsed in on itself.

"People lived in that?" He thought.

"[Or worked.]" Arne added.

Soon enough, he was interrupted from studying the odd Old World creation by an individual exiting the building with a pick axe of some sort in hand and a bag full of something slung over his shoulder.

Even with the light of the moon and various fires crackling below, he couldn't make out who the individual walking was.

The assumed man walked from the structure and headed left, down the street of the village lined with thatch roofed huts and fenced in fields with purpose.

"Hmm, maybe the villagers fought off the Go—" Claude was cut off by his own surprise.

The individual he thought was a man simply farming for resources from the structure at the center of the city wasn't a man at all.

He watched him approach one of the larger huts at the end of the street and remove some sort of hood. Only to reveal a bald head and crumpled pointed ears, they reminded him of an elf's ears— only nastier and withered.

"That's a Goblin....in human clothing...using resources." He thought in shock.

"[They must've learned from the villagers before they attacked. This could be dangerous if they're using the metals to make weapons and armor.]" Arne advised.

Claude suddenly jumped as he heard a number of hideous high pitched cheers in the distance. The Goblins must've been celebrating something.

Suddenly, he noticed more Goblins patrolling the edges of the village in crude armor like little green sentries while others walked the dirt streets aimlessly or entering the huts they claimed as their own.

"They seem to have a system and hierarchy in place that's working quite well for them. There may even be Goblins sleeping in every hut. Shit! That's a lot of Goblins.....that's a lot of progress as well." He thought.

"[It appears it's going to be a longer night than either of us could've expected.]" Arne said while Claude continued to study the low level Goblin society below him.

"Damn right." Claude replied.

He sat on the edge of the cliff, continuing to study the area for any wildcards like high level Goblins or even Hobgoblins— which could be very dangerous. Luckily, it seemed to be only Goblins that walked around the small village and guarded its borders.

Now there was only one problem left, the largest hut at the leftmost side of the dirt road twisting and turning through the village. He knew there was a number of Goblins in that one building. He just didn't know why.

"What do you thinks in there, Arne?" Claude asked.

"[It could be anything. They could be inside torturing an animal, fighting amongst each other or simply making more crude armor. It all depends on their leader and intelligence level.]" Arne responded.

Claude looked at the hut for a few moments thinking of his next move. "Nope. I'm not going in without figuring out what's going on in there." He said with a shake of his head.

He then rested his hand on Frosty's neck and used his skill, (Sensory Focus). In an instant, the smells of the forest behind him emboldened and rushed into his nostrils. He had to fight to ignore them and focus all his sensory capabilities into his acute hearing.

With a bit more time and focus, it worked. Every sound came booming to life before quickly quieting and stabilizing. Birds made themselves known nearby with their wild cries and little rodents tore up dirt and bark as they tried their best to hide from nearby predators. It felt like he could see everything around him with only his ears.

Turning his head so his ear faced the village off in the distance helped him to vaguely hear the Goblins...communicating? They made high pitched grunts and snapping noises between each other like deranged animals. They had to be yelling for him to hear them from such a distance. Suddenly one sounding much bigger spoke, it's voice overpowered the others and made him extremely uncomfortable.

"GRAHAHAHSH!"

Out of nowhere, the voice erupted in cheer, which the other Goblins inside joined in on.

"What the hell is happening?" He asked angrily.

Almost in perfect response to his question, a feminine scream rang out across the village and up the cliff.

"AHHHHHH!!!!"

It was so loud on his ears that he fell back stunned.

"That's not a Goblin!" He thought urgently while crawling back to the edge of the cliff.

"[Your right, that's a Hu—]"

"Human." He interrupted.

"[You know what this means, don't you?]" Arne asked knowingly.

"Mhm....."

Claude closed his eyes and focused himself before tightening his mask and unsheathing his sword. Frosty's ears flattened and he snarled at the Goblins walking around the village.

"It's time to be a Hero."