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short, therefore, not epic
. . .
The goblin looked starved. It was just Marta’s height, but gaunt and gray-skinned, and there were twigs matted in its close-cut hair. It snarled. Marta stood and stared. I’m sorry, she thought. I shouldn’t be out here, I didn’t mean to run into you, are you from the War? Are you hurt? But she didn’t know what language goblins spoke. There was bread in her coat pocket. She clenched her hand around it. She wondered if goblins ate bread, and if it thought she had a knife.
The goblin waved a dirty rag at her. “Messenger!” it said. “Message! Safe passage!” Its voice was high, its vowels strangely rounded. The rag smelled foul.
“All right!” said Marta. “Go!”
The goblin fled. Marta heard tearing fabric, a branch snapping, silence. “I’m sorry,” she said aloud. She left her hunk of bread in the grass, and walked home.
***
All her life, she had heard that the Lord of Darkness lived inside a mountain. She had imagined a series of tunnels like goblin caves, only grander, opening out into vast expanses with pillars of rock and water singing in the gloom. She hadn’t guessed at the polished golden door at the bottom of a cliff, the edges faceted off the mountains. She shuddered at the corridors inside. There was nowhere to see, just straight lines for a yard or two and then harsh angles back again, here and there a window slitted to the outside, set high or low or into another angry corner. She had climbed too many stairs, never deeper into stone, only higher. She was too short to see outside, but she felt her extreme nearness to the sky.
The worst thing, though, was the light. Goblin tunnels had a few candles, friendly flickerings, easily snuffed. Here there were windows and mirrors and starkly even orange-blue flames. Her cheeks hurt from squinting. She had never seen so many stairs, and the guard above her laughed as he climbed. He was a human, and he stank.
The Lord of Darkness was human, mostly. They said he engaged in blasphemous breeding projects, organized as only a human would, forcing goblin on dwarf, human on goblin. They said he took notes with a silver quill, that he was so terrible nobody would oppose him, that that made him the best boss. They said he took a special interest in goblins.
And they had told her to recite this message to him personally, and she had nodded, and run three nights to find this place; and now she gasped upwards in an angled chimney. The Lord of Darkness, naturally, controlled light. She might have hated him, if she’d thought he would notice.
The guard left her in a room with one doorway and a bent steel chair. She stood on top of it and, holding her breath, peeked out the window slit. She wasn’t even halfway up the mountain. She couldn’t breathe.
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:)
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I'd say go with that. I'm concerned for the goblin girl. Worried about what will happen to her once her message is dispatched.
Wondering what her message is. It could set in motion any number of plots. A message, two characters, a nameless, powerful villian, and the threat of sexual exploitation... aw yeah. what're you talkin' about, no plot?
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