Shaker

"I'm telling you there's something DIFFERENT about these goblins!" shouted the youth, his eyes desperate as he looked from face to face with the rest of the party. He had been hired to pick locks and snoop - not for battle strategy. But after their third bloody encounter with this goblin band, which had ended with the pompous wizard dead, drowning in his own blood with a goblin crossbow bolt in his throat, someone had to say it. "They... they aren't stupid. They're playing us!"

The fighting woman snorted with disgust, spitting with in the direction the band of little freaks had retreated. "Coward. They're goblins. Just nut up and fight instead've hiding in a tree or whatever the hell you were doing last time. Coriander might still be alive if you had been there." 

The boy could see that the rest of the group seemed to be more or less on the same page - some looking at him with open contempt, the elven priestess with something like pity. Her white robes were dotted with blood - in the last sortie numerous small darts had been thrown at her as she tried to approach the dying mage to heal him. 

"Please, my child, do not surrender to fear. Our group has triumphed over much worse odds, time and again... these small fiends pose little true threat." Her eyes were wide, pupils enormous - even for an elf, something seemed off, her speech slurred slightly. Oh gods, he thought. They put something on the darts.

"They flanked us! They isolated the wizard, disabled him, and used him as bait! That's not 'goblin mob', that's tactics! Please, please - look at her! We need to withdraw, we need to-" He broke off, hearing a twig snap. They were being watched. The fighter followed his gaze to the underbrush, where suddenly a little figure began to loudly flee, laughing nastily and scuttling through dead leaves. 

"You'll die for what you've done to my friend!" she roared as she tore headlong after it, ignoring the boy's cries to let it go. The twin rangers looked at him with disgust before they moved to follow, hastening when her distant footfalls became a crash of collapsing wood and stone, her shouted challenges become shrieks of agony. No sounds of battle followed - the screaming simply continued, cries for help, for rescue, echoing through the unnaturally silent wood. 

"I must help her," The elf said dreamily, turning slowly in that direction and taking a wobbly step before he caught her wrist. 

"Lady - no, sister. Sister. Please. Please, don't." He placed himself between her and the woods beyond. "It is a trap, and she is the bait. Our comrades have been killed. We need. To leave. We need to leave, now. Please, believe me." He looked directly in her gleaming eyes that looked through him, beyond him, imploring her silently to see his sincerity, to understand their situation. He swallowed, and tried to look as young and frightened as a human child (a child in the eyes of an elf, anyway) could look. "Sister, I'm scared...!"  

It finally seemed to reach her, and she shook her head as if to clear cobwebs. Her voice, while still slurred, regained a bit of clarity. "...yes. I will escort you to safety. I will return with aid." 

As they began to withdraw, as quickly as the youth could guide the unsteady priestess, he felt his skin crawl with the sensation of being watched, a dozen ugly little chuckles drifting around him. When the fighter's distant screams suddenly peaked and cut off, the two of them began to run.