"Everyone listen carefully," Satou said, projecting calm despite the anxiety churning in his gut. "This changes our situation. It doesn't change our approach. We stay alert, we stay ready, we trust each other." He looked around the room. "Double the sentries. I want eyes on every approach to this cave. Nobody goes out alone for any reason. Everyone sleeps with weapons in reach tonight."
"Are we going to fight the orcs?" one of the younger goblins asked, his voice tight.
"Only if they give us no choice," Satou said honestly. "We're not strong enough for an open fight with an established orc tribe. But we're not helpless either. If they come looking for trouble, they'll find we're not easy prey."
The goblins moved to carry out the orders. Some of the fear stayed in their eyes — that was fine. Fear was appropriate. What mattered was that they moved anyway.
Jessica and Kelvin stayed behind as the others dispersed.
"Big brother," Jessica said quietly. "Are we going to have to leave again? Start over somewhere else?"
Satou looked at her. She'd asked the question carefully, like she was trying not to let it sound like she was giving up. He understood the weight behind it — they had just started to feel like this place was theirs. Abandoning it meant admitting all the blood spent getting here hadn't bought them anything permanent.
"Not if I can help it," he said. "We shed blood for this place. We built something here. I'm not giving it up without a fight."
Kelvin's expression shifted from worry to something harder. "Then we fight with you."
"You're Hobgoblins now," Satou said, placing a hand on each of their shoulders. "Strong enough to stand instead of just run. But that also means being smart enough to know which fights to pick and when." He held their eyes. "Don't do anything reckless. Promise me."
"We promise," they said together.
Satou suspected that promise had a shelf life depending on how bad things got. But it was the best he could do right now.
Grimnir moved his team through the dark forest in practiced silence, their Hobgoblin forms letting them navigate obstacles that would have slowed regular goblins. Finn led, retracing the path from his earlier scout.
The night was full of ordinary forest sounds — insects, small animals moving through undergrowth, a distant owl. But beneath all of it, Grimnir's enhanced hearing picked up something else. Something that made the hairs on his neck stand.
Deep, guttural voices.
He raised his fist. The team dropped and went still.
Torchlight flickered through the trees ahead. Three massive silhouettes emerged — each easily seven feet tall, green-gray skin, prominent tusks, muscles that looked carved rather than grown. Crude leather and bone armor. Weapons that could split a goblin in half without slowing down.
But it was what they were dragging that turned Grimnir's blood cold.
A small figure, bound with rough rope, being pulled through the undergrowth like a sack. Green skin. Slender build. Head lolling, barely conscious. Blood matting the hair above one ear.
Kira.
She was alive. She was in bad shape. And three orcs were dragging her toward their settlement.
Finn started to move. Grimnir's hand caught his shoulder before he'd gone two inches.
"Don't," Grimnir breathed, barely audible. "Three of them and we don't know what's behind them. We attack now, we all die and she dies with us."
"We just leave her?" Finn's eyes were blazing.
"We follow. We learn where they take her. We go back and plan." Grimnir's jaw was tight. "I don't like it any more than you do. But charging in blind is how you get everyone killed. That's not how we survive."
Finn looked ready to argue. Ragar put a hand on his arm and shook his head once.
Finn held. Barely.
The four of them shadowed the orcs through the trees, staying downwind, using every available shadow. The orcs weren't watching their backs — confident, unhurried, too used to being the most dangerous things in this forest to bother checking.
After roughly fifteen minutes they reached the settlement.
It was larger than Finn had reported.
A wooden palisade enclosed a cleared area the size of two large fields. Inside: multiple longhouses, storage structures, a communal fire pit surrounded by rough benches. Orcs moved throughout — Grimnir counted at least thirty visible, and the buildings would hold more. The entrance was guarded by two sentries with clubs that matched their frames.
This wasn't a camp. This was a village.
And their cave was three miles from its border.
The three orcs exchanged words with the sentries. One guard laughed — a short, harsh sound. The gates opened. Kira disappeared inside.
Grimnir watched until the gates closed, memorizing the palisade layout, the guard positions, the sight lines. Then he gestured for retreat.
They moved back through the forest without speaking. When they were far enough that conversation was safe, Ragar broke the silence.
"We can't fight that many," he said. "Not even close."
"I know," Grimnir replied.
"So what do we do?" Torn asked.
"We tell Satou exactly what we saw," Grimnir said. "Every detail. He's been right about everything so far. If there's an angle we're not seeing, he'll find it."
Satou was at the cave entrance when they came back.
One look at their faces and he knew before Grimnir said a word.
"Kira?" he asked.
"Captured," Grimnir said. "Three orcs. They took her into the settlement."
Satou closed his eyes. He held it for one breath — the anger, the frustration at himself for sending her out on her first day evolved, the weight of having given her a name and a future and then lost her within twelve hours of both. He felt all of it.
Then he set it down. Getting emotional wouldn't help Kira.
"Tell me everything," he said.
Grimnir delivered the report with the precise efficiency that had become his default — settlement size, visible orc count, palisade construction, guard positions at the gate, Kira's condition when last observed, the direction of approach the orcs had taken through the forest. Satou listened without interrupting, his Pack Leader's Instinct already organizing the information as it came in, mapping it against what he knew about their own capabilities.
Eighteen goblins. Twelve Hobgoblins. Mana at zero. Stone Spit dry until morning. Earth Manipulation available but slow. No ranged capability beyond the scouts' bows.
Against thirty-plus orcs behind a palisade in their own established settlement.
A direct assault was a death sentence.
But leaving Kira there wasn't something he was willing to consider.
"How many guards on the gate?" Satou asked.
"Two visible," Grimnir said. "Could be more inside."
"Did you see any patrols outside the palisade? Orcs moving in the forest between the settlement and here?"
"Nothing on the route we took. But that was one path — there could be others."
Satou nodded slowly. His mind was working through it, turning the problem, looking for the angle.
Brak spoke from his position near the entrance. "You're already thinking about going in after her."
It wasn't a question.
"I'm thinking about all the options," Satou said.
"There's only one that gets her back," Brak said. "Everything else is just waiting for her to die in there."
The cave was quiet for a moment.
Satou looked at the faces around him — Grimnir still breathing hard from the run, Finn with his fists clenched, Ragar and Torn watching him, Jessica and Kelvin close together near the fire, Lyra with her precise eyes already calculating. Mira, near the back with the wounded, watching him the same way she always watched everything — steadily, waiting.
Eighteen goblins. One of them in an orc village three miles north. Mana empty until morning.
"We don't move tonight," Satou said. "We need mana. We need a plan. And we need to know more about that settlement than we currently do." He looked at Finn. "You and Kira were downwind — that means the approach from the south gives us a scent advantage. Is there cover on that side?"
Finn straightened. "Dense brush, right up to about thirty feet from the palisade."
"Good." Satou's jaw set. "We wait until my mana recovers. Tomorrow night — we go get her back."