Chapter 2 - A Grandmother Meets a Dungeon's Hunger

The steps end.

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 jaws 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.

> Blue letters scrawl themselves across the stone. Bright. Sharp. +450 XP

Eileen blinks. Once. Twice. With each blink, the letters fade. 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.”

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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 title fits. It always has. Eileen exhales through her nose so that moment does not have to stay sharp or scolding.

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 not alright to hurt children, 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.

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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 open 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 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.

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