Arthur was bored. He had been looking for a trailer that could be used as a makeshift wagon for some time now and he swore he had been in every damn street of the ghost town that was Newport. Unsurprisingly there were none left in the abandoned parts of the city. They had likely been taken by the people who ran away, which left Arthur empty handed.

He couldn’t just take the wagons that were in the real parts of Newport either. Well, he could, but then he would have to deal with the angry wouldbe merchants and the guards that actually helped them because they brought money.

He could only sigh dejectedly. Here he was, having thought that he would get to have some quality time alone when Argul asked him if he would be willing to search for a damn truck trailer. 

Arthur had no idea how they were supposed to move such a large thing though so he had added normal sized wagons on his search list. Even though he didn’t know how they would use a large trailer, that had actually been one of his least worries. If Argul asked then she would have a way, he didn’t really doubt that. That woman was just scary, even if you ignored that she wasn’t human.

Her daughter was scary too, but she was more approachable than her mother and that made it easier to deal with it. It was a lot more difficult to speak with her mother when it wasn’t about magic and business. Arthur knew that the woman just had trouble articulating her thoughts and feelings to others, but that didn’t help when they sat next to each other in awkward silence and he knew she could blast his brain away without even looking at him.

He arrived at a crossroad and chose to turn right and back towards the inhabited parts of the city.

The problem wasn’t really Argul if he was honest, the problem was that he had grown up on the street and that had left habits and mental scars. He was just used to making a run for it the moment he saw someone carrying a weapon, it was even enough if the person had some muscles. One might call him a coward, but there wasn’t really much a person could do against adults as a malnourished child so the best thing to do to avoid pain was to avoid the adults altogether.

Arthur rounded another corner and had the joy of seeing one of the goblins munching on something that looked a lot like a pigeon, at least going by all the feathers that were scattered all over the place.

The name goblin was a bit misleading in his opinion, because the things didn’t look like the little green fuckers that he knew from fantasy games. Calling them living ghuls might be a lot more appropriate. They walked on all fours and grew hair all over their body though it wasn’t enough to call it fur. It was like looking at the feral version of a human, but Arthur didn’t feel like fighting the official name the things had been given.

He remained silent and prepared a magic missile just to be safe. The goblins tended to run away if they were alone so hopefully he wouldn’t need the spell.

It took Arthur quite a bit to remain in control over the spell and when the abomination of a human perked up he lost it. Argul always made it look easy, but not actually activating the spell was pretty difficult.

His blob of white magic whirled through the air and struck the ground next to the goblin. The creature turned around abruptly and stared at Arthur for a second before it abandoned its meal with a mad shriek.

He watched it disappear between two houses, but remained vigilant with one hand on the hilt of his dagger. There had to be someone or something else around that made the goblin perk up in the first place.

Nothing happened for a few moments so he carefully went to the fence next to the street. He checked one more time that the street was still empty and vaulted over the fence before he took cover between two shrubs. They were somewhat dry and he could see through them, but it should be enough to hide him as long as he didn’t move.

10 seconds or so later he could hear a faint cackle from someone closely followed by a pained cry. Arthur remained still, not wanting to have anything to do with what was going on. He could see a group of 5 men round the corner in a mad dash, all of them with frightened expressions. “How are there two of them?!!”

Arthur couldn’t tell who had spoken, but the guy was despairing. “Fuck! Why would I know?!! Just shut up and run!”

The group was closer to Arthur now and by the looks of it the guy that was lacking behind was the one who had spoken first.

Someone came racing around the corner the group had come from and laughed in delight when he spotted the running group. Then he took off at a speed that was definitely not normal and couldn’t be healthy.

Arthur watched the person and began to doubt that that was still a human being. The jerky way it moved and the wide smile on the face were just off. A second thing followed the first and he began to hold his breath, not wanting to be discovered.

The group of men breezed past him audibly panting and huffing. One of them looked over his shoulder and his eyes widened as if he hadn’t expected anything to be behind him, yet. “Oh Fuck, oh fuck, oh fuck!!”

They ran into the street Arthur had come from, but the things hunting them were gaining ground fast. He remained still, straining his lungs till it hurt, but he preferred that to being discovered.

Unbeknownst to him he wasn’t really in any danger as his mana signature wasn’t full of evil bad intent. While it was difficult, you did not have to be an asshole to work for the darker side of society.

Staying still was ironically the easiest way to escape the two creatures inhabiting human bodies. They didn’t really know how to use their eyesight yet and were more focused on the moving forms of intent so it was likely they would have ignored Arthur even if his mana signature was more delicious.

The two things flew past him, leaving a trickle of blood behind and rounded the corner a moment later.

Arthur let out a pained breath and held his chest, desperately breathing in and out. He could still hear the group of men running away, their shouts becoming more and more desperate.

Arthur couldn’t care less and the moment he was able enough to make a run for it he bolted out from his cover. He jumped over the fence and hurriedly got as far away from whatever he had just witnessed, not even giving the unmoving bodies in the side street the men had come from a second thought.

There wasn’t much that could be done there anyway and while the bodies were still alive, the owner was long gone, not that he knew that.

Arthur continued running for around 10 minutes before he stopped to take a breather. He wheezed a bit and cursed to himself. “Fuck whatever that was!”

He leaned against the wall of a random multistory house that didn’t have much in the way of a garden and shook his head. “The world is getting freaking weirder every day.”

He might have not found a truck trailer for the group, but at least he had one hell of a story to tell to little Mia. Arthur smiled weakly at the thought and got up. There was still some distance he had to travel before dusk, but because of his run he would get to the inn earlier and he would use the time to drink down what he had just witnessed.