The dwarf chuckled darkly about how his carefully constructed plans had fallen apart so spectacularly. The goblin lost to a prison he couldn't track, the armor removed and discarded, the elves more prepared than anticipated—everything had gone wrong in ways he hadn't accounted for despite decades of meticulous preparation. But failure was simply data, another variable to incorporate into future calculations. He'd survived this long by adapting rather than despairing.
He used the cover of night to return back to his tunnels, slipping into hidden entrances that dotted the landscape like wounds in the earth's surface. The transition from above-ground to subterranean was seamless. Within moments he had disappeared completely from the surface world, swallowed by darkness and stone.
