GLINT's Arc

Chapter 1 of 10

Glint had walked three days to reach a gate he wasn't allowed through. The goblin stood before the Gates of Scraptown, a wall of welded spaceship scrap and humming machinery, and grinned his jagged grin. Behind those gates waited the Adventurer's Academy. No goblin had ever studied there. No goblin had ever graduated. Glint planned to be the first, then the most famous Dungeon Delver in the world. He pushed his goggles up his bald green head and clutched his mother's letter to his chest. His adopted mother was a famous adventurer. She had written the letter herself, her signature pressed into red wax. It said Glint belonged at the Academy. He only had to show it. Two guards saw him first. The nearer one lowered a halberd built from scavenged machine parts. His stubbled face twisted under his helmet. "Monster at the gate!" Garrek shouted. He swung before Glint could speak. Glint yelped and jumped back. "Wait! Wait! I have a letter!" He thrust the paper forward. "My mother wrote it! I'm a student!" Behind Garrek, something enormous stirred. An iron golem rolled forward on a single tank tread, its other leg clanking, its mismatched arms wider than Glint was tall. One huge eye burned orange. Bitzo. The ground shook with each movement. Glint's knees went soft. "Bitzo, hold it!" Garrek barked. The golem reached. Glint ducked. The halberd whistled past his ear. In the panic his fingers opened, and the letter slipped free. It fluttered down between the guard's boots. Glint dove for it. So did something else. A crab of rusted scrap scuttled from under the gate on clicking metal legs. Its claws snapped shut on the paper. Teal lights blinked along its patched shell. Before Glint's hand closed on the letter, the crab yanked it away and skittered sideways. "No! That's mine!" Glint scrambled after it on all fours. Bitzo's great arm slammed down where Glint had just been. The impact cracked the ground. Garrek lunged, halberd leveled. Glint rolled under the strike and sprinted after the crab. Its legs blurred. It vanished into a gap in the scrap wall beside the gate. "And stay out, monster!" Garrek yelled, breathing hard. Glint stopped at the edge of the rubble, chest heaving. The gate towered behind him, closed and guarded. The letter was gone. Without it, no one would believe him. No one would ever let a goblin in. He wiped grit from his cheek. Then he looked at the gap where the crab had fled. Thin teal light glowed inside, leading somewhere under the wall. Glint's grin came back, smaller now, but stubborn. The front way was closed to him. Maybe the back way wasn't. He pulled his goggles down over his yellow eyes and crawled into the dark after the crab, and his mother's letter.