The inn was dark. That was because the world was dark, at least for the moment. Two moons hung in the sky, one light blue, the other pale yellow. But their soft light was obscured by a shifting layer of clouds overhead. Thus, light was scarce. Which made sense.
However, despite the late hour one figure moved restlessly around the room. A young woman. Her progress left a trail in the dust as she walked around the room. She paced from wall to wall, muttering to herself. Then she tripped over a chair.
Erin brushed dust off her pants and t-shirt in disgust. Well, her clothes were officially dirty now. Parts of her t-shirt were burned black, and her jeans had been cut by the Goblin's knives. But that wasn't important at the moment.
Without thinking, Erin's hands went up to her head and came back full of dirt and dust. Oh, right. She'd slept on the floor. The dirty floor where all the dust had gone.
Groaning, the young woman eventually stood up. She stood, feeling her body protest the natural law of gravity, and sat down. That felt better, but then her stomach objected. Hunger and exhaustion warred and hunger won out. Erin got up, knowing she had to look for food. There wasn't any in the inn; she hadn't bothered checking the cupboards because why should she? Any food that had been around since the inn had been deserted was probably sentient and had legs by now.
So that only left the outside. But Erin hesitated as she put her hand on the door to the inn.
So she opened the door. It wasn't courage that made her do it; just the will to survive.
The day was so bright that Erin was blinded for a moment. She walked outside, shading her eyes. And then she stopped. Because a thought had struck her suddenly. Something she had realized but not taken to heart before.
It was a simple revelation that came as Erin looked up. Up, into a sky far vaster than her own. It was hard for Erin to put into words; she only knew that as she stared up into the vivid blue infinity above her head that this sky was different from the one she had seen all her life.
Erin looked up and saw a cloud floating over a mountain that cast a shadow that nearly reached her inn. It looked huge, and yet she could see the grasslands of rolling hills and valleys stretching for countless miles to its base. The peak of the mountain was so high up that Erin couldn't see it when she craned her head back.
And the cloud was higher still.
How large were clouds? Erin had never had to ponder that question before. But she could remember seeing clouds that were large as…small skyscrapers, maybe? Or hills? Were hills larger than skyscrapers? It didn't matter.
This cloud, this single cloud among many, was the size of the mountain below it. She could see it. Erin's eyes strained as she made out small ridges and layers of cloud, impossibly small from where she was standing but probably plateaus and massive cliffs in reality. The depth of the cloud took her breath away.
And that was only a fraction of the sky. When Erin looked around she realized this world really was vast. Mountains that seemed to reach upwards forever, wide rolling grasslands untouched by civilization…and how far had she run before reaching this point? At first glance, it seemed like the grass stretched out as a single, flat surface in every direction forever, but closer inspection told Erin a different story.
Or did they? Erin stopped as she started to pick out small details on the horizon. Far, far in the distance between the mountain range and the rising sun she saw what looked vaguely like buildings. Was there a town out there? Or a village? A…city?
It was impossible to tell from where she was standing, but the sight of that gave Erin hope that she wasn't alone in this world. However, just the thought of travelling that far on her empty stomach was impossible so she kept looking.
Erin squinted. There was a small collection of trees in the distance, nestled in one of the valleys. They were trees, weren't they? Erin felt they looked off—until she realized she was looking down at them from her vantage point.
There was only one way to find out. And so she began to walk in that direction, her legs and stomach overriding her cautious brain. She needed food. It wasn't hard to walk down the gently sloping hills, and although it was less fun to walk back up the hills, at least Erin could do all of it at a meandering walk. The grass was soft under her shoes and she had good footing. It was…peaceful. Deceptively peaceful.
They were Goblins. And Erin remembered that they'd found her as she was running singed and bewildered from the Dragon.
There was nothing too important about the rock, except that it was more like a boulder, a gigantic mound of stone rounded at the top and like a small hill. It was twice as tall as a normal person and just as long across. In short, it was a big rock.
Two large, long pincers made out of a dark brown chitin were poking out from beneath the rock as the crab-monster scuttled towards her. It had lifted the gigantic, hollow shell enough so that Erin could see countless crab legs tearing up the earth as it propelled itself along the ground.
That was the voice in Erin's head. She couldn't waste her breath because all the air in her body was devoted to keeping her running as fast as she could.
The tree in front of her was thin and squat. Well, squat for a tree. It was still about ten feet tall, but its trunk looked far too narrow to support its weight. And not only that, but its leaves were huge.
So decided Erin after she'd tested the tree, to see if she could push it over. The wood was remarkably hard – even when she went to push at low-hanging branches she could barely bend the thin wood.
Erin jumped and managed to pull herself halfway up the first branch through sheer desperation. But her arms gave out, and she fall on her back with a whumph that knocked the air out of her.
If she was honest, Erin didn't know what she expected. Pain, or shock from the rock-crab maybe. She'd nailed it pretty good on the antennae and she was sure that hard to hurt. But still, it wasn't as if the seed cores were that heavy. She expected the crab to recoil, and maybe get scared off by the scent at best.
How about her shirt then, or pants? But that was a bit…well, there was no one around to see her except the rock-crabs, right? Even so.
The young woman for her part stared in horror for two more seconds and then pointed one finger. She opened her mouth and screamed.
The green skinned monsters stopped and stared as the young woman screamed and took off running at top speed. But they followed her doggedly despite the insane speed at which she sprinted. These Goblins had learned to hunt other species, and knew that Humans panicked easily and grew tired. They'd catch her as soon as she slowed down.
…Assuming she ever slowed down.
It was evening. The sun cast long shadows across the plains. All was silent. Aside from the screaming rock-crab smashing itself in the head and the screaming human, there was no sound in the world.
A single figure sprinted across the grasslands. She was running as fast as she could. Behind her a group of squat creatures followed. It was nearly dinnertime.
Erin Solstice, age 20. A young girl—woman from Michigan with a casual interest in video games and a deep obsession with strategy games. Her hobbies include snowboarding, watching Youtube videos, playing chess, shogi, go, etc. She dreams of one day becoming a professional strategy game commentator.
Only 2 chapters and i'm loving it already.
Have you though of posting your story in other websites so it gains a bit more popularity?. Something like RoyalRoadl.com or similar.
I do post a link to this chapter every time I update to Reddit's novel translations subreddit as well as TopWebFiction, but I wanted to keep my blog separate rather than host the entire story on another site. But I'm always looking to find new ways to get the story out there.
Wi'm really starting to like Erin.
I wonder if she can use that seed pod stuff as some sort of cleaner, or if that would be too easy.
Humans are actually really good at endurance running. Of course, that's not "gamers who only exercise an average amount" so much as it is "experienced hunters", and I have no idea how good goblins are at endurance running, but still.
Absolutely loving this, especially the subtle-but-not-subtle humor in the last paragraph.
This sentence seems a little confused. Should eitherr be you, your and yourself or Erin, her and herself.
Shouldn't fifteen and twenty be swapped in this sentence?
Generally humans have incredibly good endurance in nature so the goblins probably wouldn't bother using that stratagy on a random human, of course this one has probably never even seen an endurance but the goblins don't know that.
This update does a great job of illustrating the strange and dangerous world Erin finds herself in. The strange geography and the odd flora and fauna immediately set this world apart from our. From the sanctuary of the inn (which is the same as our world) to the dangers of the outside.
Self dialogue could use some cutting. The review statement is bad. Some of the dialogue has Erin describe things too much to be natural.
There appears to be a space in yet.