So, quick reminder that the forthcoming (ETA: I don’t even know, man) next Realmgard story will be Captain Goblinbeard.
While the main plotline is Dunstana vs. Captain Goblinbeard (whose legal name is, in fact “Captain Goblinbeard”), Kat meets his daughter Lena and they have a whole little side-story of their own.
I was worried this one was going to be. a spoiler, but reading it back, it really isn’t. All we really learn about Lena from it is that she’s Goblinbeard’s kid and she doesn’t get along with him.
Those aren’t major revelations in the story, so much as foundational aspects of it.
So, like, this is less telling you that Darth Vader is Luke’s father before Empire and more telling you that the Darth Vader is the bad guy.
Copyright
J.B. Norman
It really is just another Wednesday at the Hammered Nail, Kat thinks wearily as she overturns a table and ducks behind it.
What is it about dockside taverns that makes everyone so violent?
“I think they’re mad at you, Lena,” she notes to the Goblin sheltering beside her.
She hazards a peek over the edge of the table, then promptly ducks back down as an arrow comes sailing towards her, embedding itself in the wall behind her.
“Yeah. Definitely mad.”
“Yeah, well, you’d be mad, too, if somebody broke into your groghouse, beat up your captain, and stole your magic key,” Lena says.
“Yeah,” Kat says, flinching at the sound of another arrow impact. “That’d do it. Not that getting shot at is all that out of the ordinary for me, but why did you steal a pirate crew’s magic key, Lena?”
“For my Dad’s birthday,” the Goblin answers.
“No offence,” Kat ventures. “But that seems like a lot of trouble.”
As Kat understands it, Lena Goblinbeard doesn’t have the best relationship with her father— whose name as she understands it, really is “Goblinbeard, comma, Captain.” Largely because, thanks to him, her name really is also “Goblinbeard.”
Lena shrugs. “Yeah, well, he’s had this weird magic book with a big lock on it for years now,” she explains. “I did some research, found out where the key ended up. And figured, ‘hey, may as well take the initiative’, right?”
“And a bunch of pirates had it?” Kat asks.
“And a bunch of pirates had it.”
“It’s always pirates,” Kat mutters.
“I know,” Lena agrees. “They’re the worst!”
Kat turns back to Lena. “So, any plans for how we’re going to get out of this one?”
“Door’s not that far,” Lena offers. She peaks around the edge of the overturned table. “Maybe about eight of them.”
She ducks back behind the table, picks up a discarded water jug and hurls it at one of the pirates.
Kat hears the jug shatter and the pirates crumple to the floor.
“Make that seven,” Lena says. “We can take them.”
“Okay,” Kat says, tightening her belt. “You go left, I’ll go right.”
“Right.”
“Yeah. I’ll go left.”
“Right.”
“No. Left.”
“Right.”
“No.”
“No, I mean, correct.”
“Oh. Right.”
Lena blinks in confusion. “Wait. What?”
Kat sighs. “You go that way,” she says, pointing. “I’ll go the other way.”
“Right.”
“Just go, Lena.”
Kat runs out from behind the overturned table as Lena runs in the other. Ducking another arrow, Kat slides into cover behind the Nail’s bar — where the bartender is hiding hurled up between two kegs.
She reaches up blindly for something to throw at one of the pirates. Her hands close around the neck of a large bottle and she reaches it down from the wall.
“Hey!” the bartender says in a hoarse whisper. “Are you going to pay for that?”
Kat tosses her wallet in the general direction of the bartender, before popping up to fling the bottle at the nearest pirate before ducking back into cover.
Kat flinches again as she hears the door to the Nail being kicked open, expecting she’s about to have a whole bunch of new pirates to deal with.
And she does. Sort of.
“Kat!” she hears Dunstana call. “We heard there were pirates after you! We brought help!”
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