Goblin Gigs: Dungeon Dasher 1 Preview Chapters

Chapter

Once Heather calmed down again, I was able to explain things — not that she accepted everything.

When I started by saying, no, Grimelia and I had not had sex, Heather looked skeptical, but at least she didn’t ask the little goblin to verify — although, Grimelia’s pacing around the fire muttering about lazy masters who won’t even fuck a new slave properly might have confirmed it for her.

She was still mad at me for leaving her behind, even though I’d been somehow trapped on the other side of the portal door — her reasoning was that I should have woken her up as soon as I saw the door was open. Or, better, when whatever I’d heard in the house went into the basement.

I couldn’t really argue with her about it — that probably would have been smarter. I did vow to give the decisions in horror movies a bit more plausibility, though. Stress, surprise, and anger make you stupid.

After I covered the highlights, we had to decide whether to stay the night where we were or try to get back to the manor house. Even Grimelia, with her better night sight, was against heading back immediately — there was no more urgency, and the risk of one of us getting hurt in the dark wasn’t worth it Not to mention that I’d been awake since before dawn and it was now after midnight.

Grimelia and I moved the other goblin’s corpse away from the fire. We didn’t have the time or tools to bury him, but we did stash him far enough away that Grimelia thought no scavengers would bother our campsite in the night, at least so long as we kept the fire going.

Grimelia climbed the riverbank to find a place to relieve herself and gather some more wood, while I sorted through the food I’d brought, and Heather sat near me by the fire.

“We should put some of the sodas and water in the stream,” Heather suggested. “They’ll get nice and cool in a little while.”

“Good idea.”

I set out some of the canned food, along with the bread we hadn’t eaten the night before, only a little squashed, and the peanut butter, as well as several bottles of water.

“Hand me one of those?” Heather asked.

I did and she drained it in one go, tossing the empty back and holding out a hand for another.

“I needed that,” she said, sipping at the new bottle. “I finished the ones I brought before dark and I was worried about local bugs.”

I nodded. “I want to get a good filter before coming back.”

“Yeah, and a few other things, too,” Heather said, as though not even thinking of not coming back to this world.

I grinned, looking around the firelit sandbar and watching Grimelia return to sit on my other side, setting her armful of wood nearby.

“What happened to your backpack?” I asked Heather.

“I dropped it when I was running from that sick fuck,” Heather said, then she glanced at Grimelia. “Sorry.”

Grimelia shrugged. “Black Mountain tribe all sick fucks.”

“Anyway, I dropped it and once he caught me I figured it might give you an idea of where he took me if you found it, so I didn’t try to get him to go back for it.”

Now that I knew Heather was safe, it seemed like a heavy load lifted from my shoulders and my mind could finally take on tasks other than simply worrying about her and how to get back to Earth to ensure that safety. Yeah, there was still probably a pixie to deal with back at the manor house, but Grimelia said they were more annoying than dangerous, so I wasn’t too worried about what we’d find when we returned. Nor was I worried that the portal-door might disappear or something, stranding us here — Uncle Jack had somehow managed to pass back and forth enough to be called a lord here, so I figured losing the portal wasn’t a thing.

“What?” Grimelia asked, picking up one of the cans and examining it closely.

“It’s food,” I explained. “Packaged in metal to protect it and make it easier to transport. Here —”

I took the can from her — Vienna sausages, something I wasn’t sure why I’d picked up. Probably just because I’d sort of randomly thrown a few cans into my basket at the store and Vienna sausages were a required product in small town groceries for some reason. Not something I was going to eat, but they couldn’t be worse than what the goblin was used to, and she could try whatever Heather and I had as well — she’d already eaten both of the fish the other goblin had prepared while I was apologizing to Heather.

I popped the pull-top on the can and set it on a rock near the fire to heat, along with one of ravioli for me, and then used my trusty screwdriver to get the lid off some beef stew Heather picked out. Heather took the bread and peanut butter and started making sandwiches.

“You washed this, right?” she asked, holding the plastic knife she’d found under my car seat.

“Yes, I washed it last night, both before and after we ate.”

“Good.”

I took a couple cans of soda over to the water and wedged them against some rocks near the shore where the water could run over them — Heather’s idea was a good one and it would be nice to have a cold drink with dinner.

When I returned to the fire, Heather had three peanut butter sandwiches ready. She handed me two and I passed one on to Grimelia.

“What?” the goblin girl asked.

“Bread and peanut butter,” I said. “Do you have peanuts here?” A headshake. “It’s a sort of nut from where I’m from — ground into a paste.” I hesitated, thinking about peanut allergies, but I suppose the whole allergy thing applied to Heather and I eating the food here too.

I took a couple bites of mine while Grimelia sniffed at hers.

“What’s the plan for morning?” Heather asked.

“Drive you home so your dad doesn’t find out you’re with me?”

Heather shook her head. “No way. Maria will cover for me.”

“Nng.”

I sighed. “We go back to the manor,” I said. “I want more supplies before we explore anything more here — and I want to check some things before talking to the mayor again.”

“What kind of things?”

“Nng!”

I turned and found Grimelia making horrifying grimaces.

“Shit! Maybe she is allergic to peanuts!”

I got down on my knees and tried to examine the little goblin’s face to see if anything was swelling.

“Nngnngnngah!”

Fuck! Was I going to have to perform a tracheotomy on a goblin in the fucking dark?

“Heather! You took that LARPAid-thing, what do you do if you don’t have a —”

Heather was laughing — hand over mouth, other hand clutching her stomach, rocking back and forth, laughing.

“Peanut butter,” she gasped, scooting over on the log to hand Grimelia her water bottle. “Here, Grimelia, small sips and swish it around your mouth.” Heather looked at me. “She put the whole thing in her mouth at once.”

Grimelia grasped at the water bottle and took a drink while I breathed a sigh of relief and waited for my heart to stop racing.

“Master trick again,” she accused me once her mouth had cleared.

Heather gave me a look like she did every time the goblin called me that. I’d explained, but she just raised an eyebrow and snorted.

“I swear,” I said, “it wasn’t a trick. Look, both Heather and I have been eating ours. “It’s good, it just sticks to the roof of your mouth like that if you’re not careful.”

Grimelia eyed me warily and sipped at her water.

“So what kind of things do you want to check?” Heather asked.

I opened the pouch of coins tied to my belt and pulled out one of the gold ones.

“This,” I said, handing it to Heather.

“Is this —”

I nodded. “Gold — and I think there’s a value-difference we can exploit.”

“Really?”

I nodded again. “The coin has value here, but I think the metal might be more valuable back home. That might be how Uncle Jack made his money — or a big part of it.”

“We go your home, Master?” Grimelia asked, working her mouth to clear it of the peanut butter.

“To the manor,” I said, “but you won’t be able to go with us out into our world.”

“Why?”

“My world is full of humans who’ve never seen a goblin,” I explained. “They wouldn’t react well to seeing you.”

“Hmph.”

“She could wear a disguise,” Heather suggested, surprising me.

I looked at the goblin — four feet tall, green skin, foot-long ears, pointed teeth, glowing red eyes.

“What disguise?” I asked. “It’s not Halloween — we can’t just drape a sheet over her.”

Heather leaned forward to look at Grimelia.

“Hoodie, gloves, sunglasses, medical mask,” she said. “We just tell everybody she’s a cancer-kid.”

I blinked — that could actually work. I looked at Heather, impressed.

“You seem to be taking all this pretty easy,” I gestured around.

Heather shrugged. “I had ten hours with a rope around my neck being dragged through the forest by a goblin … I’m all out of freak-out.”

“Fair,” I said, checking the cans heating by the fire.

I eased them away from the fire, setting one in front of each of us.

“The can’s pretty hot so you should —”

Grimelia wasn’t listening and had already snagged a Vienna sausage from the can with her fingers. She held the little tube of ostensibly meat to her eyes and squinted at me accusingly.

“Master trick?”

“Not a trick,” I assured her. “You might not like it, but it’s something people eat where we’re from. Some people. I guess.”

She examined the sausage more closely. “Goblin dick. Is why no goblins there?”

“Ah, no,” I assured her. “It’s just a sausage of some sort.”

The goblin popped it into her mouth. “Soft. Mushy. Sure not goblin dick?”

I was starting to feel a bit sorry for the goblin ladies and more understanding of Grimelia’s constantly wanting to fuck.

“Do all goblin males really have…” Heather gestured at the sausage can.

Grimelia waggled a Vienna sausage, sending drops of liquid to sizzle in the fire.

“Smaller,” Grimelia said around a mouthful of sausage. “Goblin men cursed.”

“I’ll say,” I agreed.

Heather frowned. “Do you mean, like, a real curse? An actual curse? Like magic or something?”

“What else?”

“All goblin dudes got the same curse? How’d that happen?”

Grimelia paused in her chewing, then swallowed and looked at Heather. Her eyes were wide and unblinking, causing Heather and I to share a look of concern, but then the goblin started speaking in a dull monotone, like she was reading a particularly boring script.

“In days far past, before humans came to this land — before even the elves — goblins roamed freely and were blessed. Screams of ecstasy rattled the goblin camps of the forest, the deep, stone tunnels where the mountain goblins dwell, even the villages of the sea-faring goblins. Then, one day, the loveliest goblin in the land, a forest goblin named Knella, caught the eye of the orc god Frantag.”

“Knella was a true beauty, with eyes red as rubies and skin green as emeralds. Her ears stood tall with fringes that waved in the wind, and teeth that shone brightly in the dimmest light.”

Heather and I shared another look at this litany of what goblins found attractive.

“Frantag was wandering the world, searching for a new land for his people to rape and pillage, as is their wont, when he saw Knella bathing in a forest pool. The orc god stood transfixed at the sight of goblin’s beauty and all thoughts of pillaging fled his mind.”

“He followed Knella back to her village, then changed his form to that of a goblin, entered the village as a traveler from far away, and began to court the beautiful goblin who had caught his heart … or thereabouts.”

“But Knella was already being courted by Nofu, the village tanner.”

“So Knella did what any goblin would do when two males court her … she had sex with both of them.”

“Knella invited first Nofu then Frantag to her bed, one each night and in the end chose Nofu — for the goblins were always better lovers than the orcs, brutish as they are.”

“Frantag was furious and cursed all goblin men to have tiny, worthless dicks.”

Grimelia blinked for the first time since she’d started speaking.

“Is how goblins lost their dicks.”

Heather and I didn’t even have time to share a look over how the goblin switched the way she spoke before glowing text appeared in my vision.

Quest Available:

End the Goblin Dick Curse

Do you accept?

YES                                  NO

“Do you —”

I interrupted Heather. “Don’t say anything, don’t think anything.”

I concentrated my focus on the button, not wanting whatever the fuck it was to misinterpret my intent.

“Fuck. No,” I said clearly.

The text cleared.

“So … no quest?” Heather asked, seeming to dismiss her query as well.

“I have a policy against taking quests that involve dicks — maybe all quests, we’ll see.”

Heather raised an eyebrow. “No quests at all, really?”

I nodded — this was the first chance I’d had to discuss the weird System that seemed to be in place here. I’d had time to ask Grimelia a bit on the ride back to the manor, but it turned out she knew little, because apparently only “adventurers” got classes and most of them were human. She said there were a couple old tales about goblin adventurers who’d gotten classes, but those were legends. I explained to Heather what I’d learned so far.

“So only humans get classes?” Heather asked.

I shook my head. “Only adventurers — mostly human, but not always, and not all humans. Apparently, it’s pretty rare — Grimelia said there might be one or two adventurers in a town Dunbarrow’s size, and they’d likely be retired.”

“We’ll need to look them up and ask some questions.”

I flinched a bit at the “we,” since it was a reminder Heather would be returning to Arctara with me again and this was a pretty dangerous place. I’d work on getting her to realize that later, though. I still didn’t know what class she’d received, but we could check that out later too.

“Yeah,” I agreed. “In the meantime, I don’t think quests are the way I want to go.”

“Why?”

I frowned, trying to get my thoughts on it into something I could explain to someone else.

“So, when I was talking to the mayor —”

“Yeah — ‘Lord Mercer.’” Heather snorted.

“Hey, I can’t help that Uncle Jack apparently left me a title along with the manor house. Anyway, while they were saddling the horse and finding a bunch of axes for me, the mayor gave me this long list of things going on in the area. Things that, specifically, ‘Lord Mercer’ historically took care of — bandits, monsters coming down from the mountain, stuff like that — and he very specifically said they weren’t quests, just ‘jobs.’”

“What’s the difference?”

I shrugged. “I got the impression quests are a bigger deal — something either the System creates or someone creates by posting a big enough reward or something. So, like, the bandit camp he was talking about was just a job — something he wanted done but hadn’t created a quest for. I think for someone other than the System to create a quest costs a lot … of something, I didn’t get a clear idea of how that part works yet.”

“But this was a quest.”

“Yeah, probably created by the System, because I don’t think the goblins get into the whole create-a-quest thing.”

Heather glanced at Grimelia, who was staring at another sausage. “That was weird.”

“It was, but I think that was, like, the System taking her over to give us the quest information. Why she talked so weird, I don’t know — you’d think it would have been localized into goblin.”

“‘The System?’” Heather asked with raised eyebrows.

I shrugged. “There’s something running things here … whatever here is. Do you have a better name?”

“Oh, I have some names.”

“Let’s not use those — whatever it is, I’d rather not piss it off. Anyway, my plan is to avoid quests, since they’re a big deal. A big deal means big risk.” I shook my head. “Nope, I’m going to stick to the little jobs the mayor was talking about and see where that goes.”

I wasn’t even considering just going home to Earth and forgetting about Arctara anymore. The knowledge of the gold in my pack wouldn’t let me do that — Uncle Jack had managed to get pretty well-off from his access to this place.

Uncle Jack also disappeared without a trace, the little voice in my head reminded me.

Still, that was why I wasn’t getting into the whole quest thing. I didn’t need much and I had the suspicion the gold I already had would be a nice start — not make me rich or anything, but that wasn’t what I wanted. I just needed to find out how much it was worth, do a little calculating, then take the nice, easy jobs the mayor had and … grind it out.

“What, you’re going to start up DungeonDash.com or something?”

I shrugged.

“How do you think it’s going to go?” Heather asked.

“Uncle Jack made a pretty good living here.”

“Uncle Jack is probably dead,” Heather said, echoing my previous thought.

“That’s why I’m not going to do quests — stick to the least risky things. Those goblins had gold coins on them.” I dug in my pack and brought out the coin pouch to show Heather all of them. “I don’t know how much these are worth, but I bet it’s a good payday for the work that went into it.”

“So you’re going to kill goblins for a living?” Heather asked, turning one of the coins over and over in her hand.

I shrugged. “Whatever needs doing, I guess.”

She handed the coin back to me and I returned the pouch to my main pack. “You’re okay with the killing?”

“The band of goblins I killed this morning had Grimelia captive and had just killed a guy —  the one tonight had you prisoner and was planning on selling you.” I’d already given it some thought and was okay with it. “The bandits the mayor told me about have been killing people, destroying farms, and more. So, yeah, I’m okay with killing that type — if I can get paid for it, why not?”

Heather nodded. “It does sound like this world needs defending like that. What about the risk?”

“Are you suggesting we go back through the portal, lock the door, and never come back?”

Heather shook her head quickly — I knew she’d never want to do that. She was too curious, and with our LARPing history, Arctara was a little like a dream come true.

“No,” she admitted.

“So we’re taking a risk just walking on the roads here thanks to bandits and shit — all the more reason to stick to the low-level stuff. Especially until we figure out a lot more of how this place works.”

I returned to “we,” since my own question about whether she’d want to leave and never come back had made me accept that there was no way short of locking her out that would keep her from exploring Arctara — and trying would just hurt our friendship.

“So what class did you get?” I asked after the prior conversation settled a bit.

I was hoping she’d gotten something like “Milk Maid” or some shit that would make it logical for her to limit her explorations to the manor grounds and maybe the town, but knew keeping her safe here wasn’t going to be that easy.

“Something called Streetwarden, whatever that is.”

“Like town guard?” I asked hopefully.

“No, it’s more of a —” Heather’s gaze went blank for a moment, before she frowned. “Is there any way I can just show you this —”

My vision suddenly filled with glowing text.

Heather Gray

Class: Rogue/Streetwarden

‍

Body

Health

84

Fortitude

20

Endurance

28

Agility

51

Perception

52

Understanding

45

Charm

49

‍

Martial

Longbow

57

Shortbow

35

Crossbow

25

Archery (general)

37

Sword (General)

8

Dodge/Evasion

35

Weapon Maintenance

25

‍

Life Skills

Cooking

2

Item Repair

14

Foraging

12

Fishing

3

Hunting

7

Survival Skills

12

Navigation

8

‍

Specialized

Crafting (General)

2

Alchemy

12

Lockpicking

7

‍

Class Skills

Shadowed Paths

Lose yourself in shadows or crowded streets.

Rooftop Dash

10

Agility +10 - 4 hour cooldown

Streetwise

5

Passive. +5 to perception in urban environments.

Quickdraw

Time to reload and shoot a bow or crossbow halved.

Crowdsense

10

Perception +10 when in a crowded environment

“Huh,” I said. “I would have thought you’d wind up a ranger or something woodsy.”

Heather sighed. “I got two options — ranger and rogue — this was a specialization of rogue.”

I raised an eyebrow. “You didn’t pick ranger?”

Heather looked away.

“What?” I asked.

She took a deep breath and let it out in a huff. “My eyes slipped, okay?”

“Your eyes slipped?”

“Yeah … look, when I was picking the class … I glanced at the rogue option just as I picked.”

It wasn’t funny, but I had to laugh.

“Fuck you,” Heather said. “What’d you get?”

As soon as I thought it, my stat sheet appeared before me. It was a little disconcerting — could whatever this System was read my mind? I knew it could to some extent, because sort of directed thoughts could make it answer, but how far did it go? Everything?

“How did you —” I broke off as my stat sheet dissolved into swirling light and streamed toward Heather.

She grinned. “Cool, isn’t it?”

As I nodded, Heather’s eyes went distant.

“Wow,” she said.

I nodded again, a little chuffed that she was impressed with my stats.

“How’d you get such a crappy Charm score?”

Chapter

The next morning we had a quick breakfast of peanut butter sandwiches while we broke camp and started the hike back to the manor. Grimelia admitted she liked them once she followed directions and took smaller bites, but she still thought me letting her stuff the whole thing in her mouth had been a mean trick.

I led the horse while Heather and Grimelia rode. Grimelia rode behind Heather, so I was even more convinced her insisting on the front with me had been about rubbing her butt on my dick.

The little goblin and I were going to have to have a long talk, because she needed to accept that I wasn’t going to fuck her if she wanted to hang around us — and I did want her to hang around. I also wanted to fuck her, don’t get me wrong. She was really cute and adorable in a naive, yet utterly sexual and viscously violent, way — but I just didn’t think it was the right thing to do. Convincing Grimelia of that was on my expanding to-do list.

Heather and the little goblin seemed to be getting along very well — if the whispering and giggling I heard coming from behind me was any indication — and it was, in my experience, not a good sign when girls whispered and giggled behind you. Especially if they went wide-eyed and silent, quickly looking away as though the branch we were passing under was utterly fascinating, every time you glanced back at them.

“You guys should be quieter,” I said, glancing back and nearly causing whiplash as Heather jerked her gaze away from me to stare at a drifting leaf and Grimelia ducked her face behind Heather’s back. “There could be anything out there in the forest — I’d rather not get into another fight before we can get home.”

Grimelia sniffed the air and shook her head, the part of her ears visible over Heather’s shoulders wagging back and forth.

“No danger.” She pointed to our left. “Deer there.” Then to our right. “Rabbit there. We hunt?”

“No,” I said, “we have food at home.”

“Yes, Dad,” Heather muttered.

“Hey!”

“Better be quiet,” Heather mocked me. “The killer rabbit might get you.”

“Your tribe fear rabbit?”

“No, she’s talking about a movie.”

“What moo-vee?”

“Oh,” Heather said, “yeah. We have a lot to show you.”

We’d have to buy some things for the manor before we could show Grimelia any movies, though, because that was going to be a big thing for her and I wanted it to be on a bigger screen than our phones. So a TV and DVD player were definitely on the list of first purchases — we could add streaming later, once we figured out how the manor was going to get internet. There had to be something set up, since I couldn’t imagine Uncle Jack living there with no internet.

On the other hand — I looked around — maybe he spent most of his time on this side where internet wasn’t even an option.

There was something peaceful and comfortable about the forest — despite having fought goblins in it twice — and even the slow-moving travel of walking the horse was nice

We got home and, I have to admit, I was a little wary about Grimelia crossing over to the Earth-side with us. I mean, she was a green goblin, that had to be magic, right? So if magic didn’t work on the Earth-side, what would happen to her?

She’d sort of edged into the Earth side the day before when she was sniffing the portal door, but that didn’t mean crossing fully over wasn’t a problem.

Also, I didn’t remember Uncle Jack bringing any green chicks with him on his visits — no girls altogether, either, once I thought about it, but certainly no goblins — so were there other reasons for not bringing someone from Arctara to the Earth-side?

On the other hand, neither Heather nor I, nor presumably Uncle Jack, had exploded when we came to Arctara, so it sort of made sense the other way would work, too.

“Are you sure you want to risk it?” I asked.

We were clustered around the door. I’d explained my concerns to the goblin on the walk back, but she said she was willing to risk it to see another world. I could understand that.

Grimelia sniffed the air. “Smell pixie.” She pointed through the door. “There.” She shrugged. “If pixie not die, goblin not.”

It was a good argument and went along with my thoughts that the ability to cross had to go both ways.

“There’s a pixie?” Heather asked, excitedly.

“Grimelia said she smelled one — it’s probably what lured me downstairs and locked me over here.”

“What? No!” Heather shook her head. “Pixies are nice! Pixies are beautiful, little —”

Grimelia laughed. “Pixie nasty, stupid, dirty —”

“No!” Heather shook her head. “I don’t believe you.”

The goblin shrugged. “Stupid pixie don’t care you believe it stupid — it still stupid.”

“Well, I —”

“Stupid waste time talking pixie,” Grimelia said. “See new world.”

The little goblin leapt through the doorway and froze, limbs twitching and jerking on the other side as she screamed.

Both Heather and I shouted and reached for her, but I got there first and wrapped an arm around her waist to yank her back through the doorway.

Two things happened.

First, Grimelia’s screams turned to hysterical laughter.

Second … had I mentioned that goblins are four feet tall?

Yeah, I grabbed her around the boobs, not the waist, with one hand naturally cupping the soft, firm, very bare flesh, and a hard little green nipple digging into my palm.

I let go of the goblin, who fell to the floor laughing, while Heather and I glared at her, chests heaving with the aftermath of an adrenalin rush.

“Not funny,” I said, as sternly as I could, because it kind of was — it was just the sort of thing Mike and I would have done … or Heather, if we’d had any reason to expect she might explode crossing to the other side.

“Yeah,” Heather agreed. “Not funny.”

“Not?” the goblin asked, sobering a little.

“Okay, it was a little funny,” I said before she could start feeling bad about it. “We just didn’t like thinking you were hurt.”

Grimelia propped herself up on her elbows and cocked her head at me.

“Master care?”

“Of course I care — we’re friends.” I held out a hand to help her up.

Instead of taking it, the goblin cupped the breast I’d grabbed.

“Master like?”

I groaned. “Sorry about that.”

“Why sorry?”

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath, trying to ignore Heather’s suppressed laughter.

“In my world, it’s not appropriate to grab somebody’s boob without consent.”

“What consent?”

I winced, knowing exactly where this conversation was going — Heather must have, too, because she snort-laughed and held out a hand to help Grimelia up, which the goblin took in favor of mine.

“Ah, permission,” I explained. “Saying it’s okay.”

Once standing, Grimelia shrugged. “Master is Master. Is Master’s tit. Master grab when want.” She grinned. “I not bite dick off in night — that consent.”

Heather was nodding. “Yep. Dick amputation as an indication of lack of consent. I like it — we should normalize that.”

“Let’s not,” I muttered, crossing through the doorway.

“Don’t be hasty,” Heather said. “If all the bad guys in the world become dickless, the good ones could have, like, three or four girls each. You could have your own little harem.”

“No, thank you,” I muttered, climbing the stairs with the others behind me.

It had been my experience, having dated a few women, that one was hard enough to keep happy.

Upstairs, we took some time to show Grimelia the manor and explain the things she’d never seen before.

“What?”

“That’s a fridge — refrigerator — it keeps food cold.”

“What?”

“Bathtub,” Heather said. “You fill it with water and get in to clean yourself.”

“Carry water up stairs? Better clean where water already is.”

Heather grinned and twisted one of the taps and I had to grin, too, as the little goblin got her face right next to the faucet and stared at it.

“Magic?”

I shook my head. “Just pipes.”

“What?”

“Toilet,” I explained. “You, ah —”

Heather flipped up the lid. “You shit and piss in the bowl.” She flushed the toilet. “Then the water takes it all away.” She looked at me. “You get all flustered talking about totally normal things.”

She bit her lip and looked around the bathroom.

“In fact,” she said, “I think the tour should stop here for a while, so Grimelia and I can get cleaned up before we go into town. Out.”

With that, I found myself shooed out of the bathroom, given about three-point-two seconds to grab fresh clothes from my backpack — which were actually what I’d worn to drive up to the manor the day before, because I’d only brought one change with me — and then shooed out of the bedroom with instructions to use a different bathroom and wait downstairs for the girls.

Chapter

It was over an hour’s drive to the nearest town with a pawn shop and a big-box store that would have everything we needed for Grimelia, but at least the little goblin didn’t need to hide the whole way. My Prius’ rear window tint would do a fine job of obscuring her from other drivers. She just needed to duck down at stoplights where someone might get a better look at her.

Once in the parking lot, though, that changed.

I parked far away from the doors, with no other cars around except a new BMW taking up two spaces.

“Remember,” I said, twisting around in my seat, “you need to stay covered up until we get back with some clothes, okay?”

“Yes, Master,” Grimelia said, pulling the sheet we’d brought from the manor over her head so that she looked like a ghost sitting in my back seat.

“Maybe lie down, too — and ditch the ‘Master’ on this side of the portal. People will think it’s weird and we don’t want to draw attention to you.”

“Hmph,” the goblin-ghost grunted.

“Why don’t you stay here with her?” Heather asked. “I’ll go get what we need.”

“Are you sure?”

Heather gave me a look. “I think I can handle a little clothes-shopping on my own.”

“Okay,” I said.

Heather left the car and I chatted with Grimelia, mostly explaining everything she saw when she popped her head up to look out the window. About thirty minutes later, Heather returned with several large bags and I told Grimelia to stay down until I could move the car to an even emptier section of the parking lot where she could change — or, rather, dress, since all she wore to begin with was a loin cloth.

“Okay,” Heather said, pulling things out of the bags and snapping the tags off before handing them back to the little goblin. “[1] Socks … underwear … pants … shirt … hoodie … gloves…”

“Too much clothes,” Grimelia muttered.

“It’s important no one can tell you’re a goblin,” I reminded her. “It’s either this or stay back at the manor.”

Another grunt, but Grimelia started dressing.

Heather’d done a good job of guessing sizes and everything fit okay. When we were done, the goblin still looked odd, but not people-freaking-out monster weird. She looked like a kid with way overprotective parents who’d bundled her up absurdly.

Not a bit of green showed unless you really looked closely into the shadows of her deep hood. Her ears were tucked back underneath the hood, and a virus mask and big, dark sunglasses covered much of her face.

Grimelia touched the sunglasses, adjusting them. “Like this,” she said. “Keep light out.”

I nodded, relieved there was at least something about the outfit she liked, because she outright hated everything else — except maybe the sports bra. After putting that on, she’d spent a full two minutes bouncing up and down in the back seat while looking at her breasts. I figured she either liked the support or was trying to get me to stare at her tits.

It was a thirty-minute drive to the closest pawn shop and Grimelia spent the drive pointing out the window at anything she hadn’t seen before — basically anything that wasn’t a plant.

“What?”

“Car wash — it’s to clean the, um, metal carriages.”

“What?”

“Drive-thru — it’s for people to pick up fast, cheap food.”

“We eat?”

“After the pawn shop.”

“What?”

“That’s a mall — sort of a really big market square with lots of shops.”

Then as we got closer to the pawn shop, the businesses we passed changed.

“What?”

“That’s a … um, a place with entertainment … sort of.”

“It’s a strip club,” Heather put in. “Girls dance naked for money there.”

“I work?” Grimelia asked after a long pause.

“No,” I said quickly, though … she’d probably make a fortune at it. “No. No need for that — I think the gold will probably cover all our needs.”

“Dance for Master?”

“No!”

“Yes,” Heather said, nearly making me run into the curb. I looked at her, shocked. “What? She’s learning about our culture, we should learn about hers. I’m sure there are many goblin dances she could share with you, right, Grimmy?”

I caught the little goblin’s nod in the rearview mirror.

Luckily, we’d reached the pawnshop, and I had an excuse to pretend that conversation never happened.

I parked the car, and we got out.

“Remember,” I told Grimelia, “keep your hood up and everything on, so no one knows you’re a goblin, right?”

She nodded and I hoped she was serious, because the last thing we needed right now was to wind up on the internet or something.

“What?” the little goblin asked as soon as we entered the shop and I could tell by the way she was turning her head from side to side, taking everything in, that there were a lot of whats to follow.

“Heather?” I asked, a little helplessly.

“Yeah,” she said, “come on, Grimmy, I’ll show you around and explain things.”

I paused for a second, taking in both “Grimmy” and that the little goblin didn’t object to it at all. I took another second to watch the two as Heather led Grimelia to another aisle and started explaining what everything was. It was heartening to see the two getting along, because it seemed like Grimelia was going to be hanging around for a while — it wasn’t as though I could just dump her back on the other side of the portal and tell her to go make her own way. Sure the little goblin would probably survive, but … I guess I felt responsible for her.

I made my way to the counter and the guy behind it struggled out of his seat and waddled over. He was big — the sort of big where his arms sort of stuck out from his sides because the size of his torso wouldn’t let them hang down.

“Help you?” he asked as we both arrived at the same spot at the counter.

I nodded. “I … ah, have some gold I’d like to sell.”

“Cash or trade?” he asked.

“Maybe a little of both?” I said, looking around the shop.

There wasn’t much I could be sure I wanted with just  glance, but the manor was pretty empty of a lot of stuff, so maybe I could get a better deal in trade.

The guy nodded and set a little square of black felt on the glass counter.

“Let’s see it.”

I pulled one of the coins from my pocket and set it on the felt — I had twenty, but I didn’t want to show them all here, especially if the guy gave me a crappy price or something. I thought it might make sense to sell a couple at several shops instead of all at one.

The guy picked up the coin and examined it.

“Where’s this from? I don’t recognize it.”

Crap — I honestly hadn’t expected a pawn shop to ask any questions. I figured they’d just want to buy the gold, but maybe he was trying to figure out if the coin was worth more as a coin than it would be if he just melted it down. Or if he could offer me less because it was stolen or something.

“Ah, I think it was some sort of joke,” I tried. “I got it from my uncle and he had a … a pirate thing? I think he had some fake coins made … for … something?”

Okay, my story sucked.

“Fake coin out of real gold?”

I shrugged. “He was sort of the crazy uncle.”

“Yeah … I got one of those too.”

He pulled a device from under the counter — it was flat, with a grey pad and LCD screen, sort of like a calculator with no buttons, and some sort of pen or wand attached to it by a wire. He set the coin on the grey pad and touched it with the pen, then grunted when it beeped.

“Twenty karat, eighty-three percent. Nice.” He pulled out a real calculator and a scale. “Five grams…”

Fingers flew over the calculator.

“Two hundred bucks.”

I did a quick calculation in my head — gold was at eighty-seven dollars a gram, so five grams would be over four hundred dollars.

“That seems pretty low,” I said.

The guy narrowed his eyes, then cleared the calculator and turned it around so I could see the LCD screen as he started tapping numbers again, this time upside down, and speaking quickly, like he’d given this spiel a lot.

“Gold’s at twenty-three seventy-nine an ounce, that’s eighty-six ninety-four a gram, but this is twenty karat, not twenty-four, so it’s eighty-three percent pure, which makes it seventy-two sixteen a gram.” He picked up the coin and set it on the felt. “That’s five grams.” More calculator tapping. “Three hundred sixty dollars and eighty cents — that’s spot. This is a pawn shop, not the international market. I pay sixty percent of spot — that’s two-hundred sixteen dollars and forty-eight cents.”

I blinked, trying to keep up, but everything sort of made sense — except that last sixty percent. Forty percent margin seemed a little high.

“Eighty percent of spot,” I countered.

The guy laughed. “Son, I don’t even sell it for spot myself. I give you eighty percent and I make, like, forty bucks on that coin.” He snorted and gave me a little go-away wave. “That’s not worth getting off my stool.”

He started putting his tools back under the counter.

“I have twenty of them,” I said.

Maybe I did have to sell them all at the same place if I wanted the best deal — it was worth a try.

The tools immediately came back to the counter’s surface, and he tapped at the calculator for a few seconds.

“Twenty coins, all five grams, all twenty karat — I’ll go seventy percent of spot. That’s five grand.” He paused. “You’re sure these are fake coins, right? I’m not gonna wind up with some museum guy coming in and confiscating them as some sort of Bumfuckistanian national treasure or something?”

“I’m sure,” I said, doing some mental math. Yeah, that seemed fair — five thousand for me and he might get a thousand or so when he sold them. “Deal.”

The guy held out his hand. “Daryl.”

“Alex,” I told him, taking his hand for a brief shake.

I pulled the other coins from my pocket and laid them on the felt — Daryl ran each through the same routine, checking their purity and weight, then grunted and worked the calculator a bit more.

“Five thousand fifty-one dollars and twenty-one cents,” he said. “Still good?”

I nodded. “Good for me.”

Heather and Grimelia had approached to stand next to me while we bargained. Daryl raised an eyebrow but didn’t say anything about the goblin’s outfit.

“Cash or store credit?” Daryl asked. “I’ll give you an extra fifty percent in store credit.”

“Did you see anything we need for the … new apartment?” I asked Heather.

She took a quick look around the store. “Take two thousand in credit?”

That’d be three thousand dollars in stuff with Daryl’s offer.

“You saw that much stuff?” I asked.

Heather shrugged. “We need a lot — unless you’d like to go visit three or four stores this afternoon?” She gestured at the far side of the store. “He’s got small appliances over there, and some camping gear we could use, too.”

That made sense — I’d rather not stop too many places on Grimelia’s first visit and we were probably getting better deals here than buying new.

“Three thousand in cash, three thousand in credit?” I figured we could just drop the fifty bucks and change, especially with the extra store credit.

Daryl nodded. “I’ll get your cash — you pick out what you want.”

Heather gestured for Grimelia to follow her and started sending the goblin back to the counter with what could be carried.

By the time Daryl came back with a stack of hundred-dollar bills, we had a 32” TV, DVD player, a stack of DVDs, a toaster oven, coffee maker, microwave, [2] a four-person tent, three one-person tents, sleeping bags, three nice hiking backpacks, and assorted other gear. We still didn’t have any pots and pans or silverware, I guess people didn’t really pawn that sort of stuff, but we were pretty well equipped for both staying at the manor for a few days and exploring a new world.

“I’d like to look at the crossbows, too,” Heather told Daryl.

Both Grimelia and I perked up at that.

“He’s got crossbows?” I asked.

“Yeah.”

Heather led the way and pointed to a trio of tiny pistol bows.

Daryl nodded. “Nice choice — less than three pounds, smaller than the hand-drawn models, almost a hundred-and-fifty pound draw.” He pulled one out of the case and handed it to Heather.

It really was narrower than my spread fingers when it was cocked and it was compound to increase its power.

“Got enough power to take anything up to a small deer,” Daryl went on. “Twenty-millimeter rail for optics or a laser. You hunt?”

“Sure,” I said — we’d probably want to hunt something to eat over on the other side.

The crossbows and a few accessories ate up a little over a thousand of our store credit and the other items took another thousand. Daryl wrote us up a store credit slip for the remaining nine-hundred and change, then counted out three thousand in hundreds for me.

Chapter

“What?”

Grimelia’s voice was far more subdued than when we’d started our trip and I didn’t blame her. If the number of new things in the small pawn shop had astounded the little goblin, then the big box hunting and fishing store we stopped at next came close to blowing her mind. Still wrapped up in her all-covering outfit, she actually took Heather’s hand while we walked down the aisles.

I let Heather explain things, glad she and the goblin seemed to be getting along so well, and concentrated on filling my cart.

First, I loaded up with camping meals — lighter and better quality than canned goods. Add water and heat and you had a meal, and the dehydrated, mylar wrapped packages didn’t need a can opener.

I also got a couple water filters. I suspected, now, the water on the other side would mostly be okay — Uncle Jack must have started traveling there years ago, so would have been eating and drinking the native stuff long before quality filters were as light and affordable as they were now, and neither Heather nor I had wound up on the toilet so far. I was still going to avoid the water in towns and villages, that depended on some dubious sanitation practices, but the rivers and streams were probably okay.

In the hunting department we picked up more bolts for the crossbows and saw we’d gotten the bows themselves for about half the cost of new.

I checked the firearms, but there was a background check that could take a couple days and I wanted to test something before I spent several hundred dollars on a rifle, so I picked up a box of bullets.

“You’re getting a gun?” Heather asked.

“Maybe,” I told her, setting the bullets in our cart. “I want to test if one will even work.”

The physical laws were clearly different between Arctara and Earth, but Rawlin, the attorney, had said Uncle Jack bought a bunch of antique weapons, including guns, so he must have had some use for them.

“With just bullets? Are you going to bang them on a rock or something?”

“No, I’m going to pull the bullet part out of the shell and see how the powder behaves. I don’t want to spend a few hundred dollars and get myself on a government list or something if it won’t do us any good.”

“Huh,” Heather said. “That’s actually pretty — a radio?”

“Yes,” I said, putting the next item I wanted in the cart. “An emergency radio — all analog. Probably the simplest electrical tech we can get to test. Even if the battery doesn’t work, we can try the crank to power it up. If we get static or the emergency light works then we know some electrical stuff will work over there — if not, we know that too.”

“Huh,” Heather said again, and I began wondering just how surprised she was that I actually might know what I was doing.

Grimelia had just grown quieter and quieter as we moved through the store, holding Heather’s hand and staring around. I figured she was overwhelmed and we should hurry and finish up.

I finished loading the cart with some disposable plates and cutlery, as well as a couple sets of nesting pots and pans. We could get real dishes and pans for the manor later, but I didn’t want to drag Grimelia to a home goods store, too.

Checking out put a big dent in our cash, but I looked at it as an investment.

A morning on the other side had netted me five grand worth of gold coins, so there must be a lot of other opportunities over there. Maybe not all fighting off goblin bands, either. There must be things we could trade — even things as simple as the lightweight cookware we’d just picked up.

What would someone over there pay for a nonstick pan?

So our next trip would just be to learn more about the world — I had a whole list of questions I wanted to ask Grimelia once she settled down from being exposed to Earth, to find those kinds of opportunities.

We made a quick stop at a grocery store where Heather and Grimelia stayed in the car while I ran in. The little goblin made no objection at all when I suggested it — she just huddled in the back seat of the car.

With the power on at the manor and the refrigerator working, we could have real food there. Eggs, more bread, some fruits and vegetables, some steaks I could cook on the camp grill, even if I couldn’t figure out how to get the gas stove in the kitchen working, just basic stuff — then I dumped a variety of spice jars into the cart. Those might be tradable, too — hadn’t even just salt been a big commodity back in the day? For all I knew, paprika could be worth its weight in gold over there.

By the time I returned to the car with groceries I knew there’d be no more stops even if Grimelia wasn’t so overwhelmed and I wasn’t anxious to get back to the manor, because nothing more would fit in my Prius — the rear compartment and back seat were filled with our purchases, leaving barely enough room for Grimelia to sit back there.

I drove us back to the manor and we unloaded the car, trying to set the bags down in a rough organization between the manor’s kitchen, stuff staying in the manor, stuff we’d use on the other side, and trade goods.

Heather started setting up some of the things we’d gotten for the manor — the TV and DVD player for the most part — while I started on dinner. Instead of using the little camp stove I’d bought, I brought some of the better wood from the woodpile over and built a fire, putting the cooking grill over that.

It gave me less heat control than the camp stove’s gas, but I thought a nice steak cooked over an open fire would be more what Grimelia was used to, since she hadn’t been too impressed with the fast-food burgers we’d gotten for lunch.

“Bread?” the goblin had asked, picking through the wrapped contents. “Leaf? More bread, more leaf? What? Goblin come?”

“That’s the special sauce,” I told her.

She sniffed at it. “Goblin come better. What?” She was holding up one of the hamburger patties.

“That’s the meat.”

Another sniff. “Not meat.” She glared at me. “Master trick.”

Hopefully a ribeye would meet with more approval, though I expected the potatoes I had wrapped in foil and buried in the coals at the edge of the fire probably wouldn’t.

“How long?” Heather asked, sticking her head out of the manor door.

I gave the steaks a quick poke and thought they were probably medium — the closest I was going to get to anyone’s preferred temp over a fire.

“Right now,” I said.

“Great, I’ll open the wine.”

I spun around to face the now closed door. “Hey! The wine’s for trade and you’re only eighteen!”

I’d picked up four bottles at the grocery store, thinking maybe modern vineyards might have an edge over whatever was being produced on the other side.

By the time I got the steaks and potatoes loaded onto a couple paper plates and made my way to the dining room, Heather already had one of the bottles opened and poured into a trio of red cups. I didn’t say anything about it because I had an even bigger thing I was going to ask her to not do. Maybe the wine would help with that.

“Meat!” Grimelia cried, reaching for the plate of steaks.

Before I could even object the little goblin had one of the ribeyes in hand and ripped a chunk off with her razor-sharp teeth.

For a second, I considered a lesson in Earth-side table manners, but she was enjoying the steak and her teeth were working better for her than the folding silverware for camping Heather and I had to work with. Proper housewares were definitely on the list for our next trip into town.

“I don’t think you should go back over there tomorrow,” I said to Heather, keeping my eyes on my plate as I sawed off another bite of ribeye.

There was silence for a minute and I don’t think it was because she was chewing.

“And why’s that?”

“Just for this next trip. I’d like to take a look at things without, well, being worried about you and then tracking you. I want to, sort of, I don’t know, get a better idea about how dangerous it is, then make a decision.”

“A decision?”.”

“Um, yeah … well, you saw how dangerous it is over there. If anything happened to you … Mike would probably —”

“Stop,” Heather cut me off. “Just stop. Stop talking about Mike like he has any say in what I do — he’s my brother, not my guardian or something, and I’m an adult, not somebody’s ward in a Jane Austen novel. I get to decide what I do. I’m an adult. I can get a job, I can drive, I can choose to drink illegally — which is a fucking stupid decision to have to make as an ‘adult’ — and I can even open a bank account if I want to — you know what? I can even fuck someone if I want to … and if I could find a guy who wasn’t a complete idiot I would.”

“We fuck?” Grimelia mumbled around a mouthful of ribeye.

“No,” I told her before staring at Heather.

“What?” she asked.

Okay, so maybe I was being a little patronizing, but I’d always tried to look out for her like she was my little sister, and the other side of that portal was probably the most dangerous thing she’d ever needed protection from … right?

I opened my mouth.

“Stop again,” Heather said, “and very, very carefully examine what you’re about to say, then think about whether or not it’s just a different way of saying exactly what you just said that I got pissed about.”

I closed my mouth.

Yeah, I’d been about to make the same argument. That didn’t mean it was a bad argument or that I was wrong, it just meant that it wasn’t going to make any difference at all to Heather. She’d clearly decided she was coming along no matter what I thought about it. — and, like coming to the manor in the first place, if I said no, she’d just rush through that damn door as soon as I was out of sight

And she was right. She was an adult — more than by age, she acted like one. Honestly, I couldn’t think of a single bad decision she’d made about her life in years, so she was probably doing a lot better than me at it. Or Mike, come to that, since he’d bet his entire tax refund on a shitcoin a couple years ago.

“Okay,” I said instead.

Heather took a big gulp of her wine. “Good choice.”

Chapter

After dinner and popping the spare potato Grimelia refused to even unwrap into the fridge, we settled ourselves on a couch in the living room. Or parlor, or whatever it was called when the building was called a manor. Heather’d set up the TV and DVD player on a low table in front of the couch.

“A cartoon?” I asked as I saw the case for the DVD she’d just popped into the player.

“It’s the first time Grimmy’s seen a movie,” Heather explained, “so I think something without all the cultural baggage would be a good introduction.”

Since Grimelia was already on her feet and approaching the screen to examine the FBI copyright notice, I decided Heather had a point — something further proven within ten minutes, as the goblin became wide-eyed and engrossed with the trials of a sloth and mammoth trying to deal with a duplicitous pack of sabretooth tigers.

I had to admit it was about all my brain could handle after the last two days as well.

As the movie started, Heather texted her mom to tell her she was going to be at Maria’s for a couple more days, then Maria, who I thought was far too ready to lie to other people’s parents on a moment’s notice. On the other hand, I was far too ready to worry about other people’s relationships.

I was thinking about what Heather had said at dinner.

She was an adult — her relationship with her parents wasn’t my problem. Her relationship with her brother wasn’t my problem. My only problem should be my relationship with Heather — which was a problem, because I had a lot less confusion about her other relationships.

We were all similarly exhausted and midway through the movie, Heather was pressed tightly to one side of me, head on my shoulder, and Grimelia had laid down to put her head in my lap. Without much thought I found myself gently stroking Grimelia’s long, dark hair and pulling my arm from between us to lay it over Heather’s shoulders.

Shortly after that, Heather slid down to put her head in the half-lap I had left.

It was an oddly comfortable position to be in.

Grimelia had started making a noise almost like a cat purring as I stroked her hair, and Heather had grasped my other hand with hers and was cradling it to her chest, probably not realizing how much boob my hand and forearm were pressed against. I was too tired to worry about it, though, and so tired the most reaction my body gave was a little twitch so far inside my dick that it probably wasn’t noticeable.

Since it looked like we’d be avoiding any uncomfortable reactions that might creep Heather out — or have Grimelia demanding that I fuck her — I decided to let it go.

It was still early when the movie ended, but all of us seemed ready to turn in.

I woke the girls and got them stumbling up the stairs to the bedroom — we’d all agreed to sleep in the same room due to the still-undiscovered pixie Grimelia assured us was in the house somewhere.

We’d spent some time trying to track it down, but Grimelia said the scent was simply everywhere and it was hard to tell what was new.

Despite the goblin’s explanation that pixies weren’t really dangerous, I had to temper my thoughts with the fact that Grimelia’s sense of dangerous might not be the same as mine — she came from a culture where one goblin tribe could wipe out another goblin tribe and take the women captive, so for all I knew pixies ate people for breakfast and she thought that wasn’t dangerous.

“I’ll be up in a minute,” I called to the girls, heading for the kitchen.

I got a disposable plate and the bottle of honey I’d picked up with the rest of the groceries, then set the plate on the floor and filled it with honey.

According to Grimelia, she’d smelled nothing but pixie on the basement door and its locks, which meant it was a fucking pixie that had locked me on the other side. She also told us pixies couldn’t resist honey. At first, I’d thought she meant we should do this as a peace offering of some sort — you know, appease the pixie’s wrath or something?

When she stopped laughing, she repeated that pixies just couldn’t resist honey and then chortled when I asked what good it was going to do if not to appease the thing and make friends. Grimelia just said we’d see in the morning, if not sooner.