"Nice work," he remarked, studying the craftsmanship of the portal.

No goblin doors those; the creatures had likely pillaged them from the ruins of some castle or another in the bogs of Vaasa. He had to give the goblins credit, though, for they had fit the portal quite well into the wall.

The dwarf knocked, and called out in the goblin tongue, in which he was quite fluent, "Hey there, ye flat-headed walking snot balls. Now ye don't be wantin me to ruin such a fine door as this, do ye? So just open it up and make it easy. I might even let ye live, though I'm suren to be takin' yer ears."

He put his own ear to the door as he finished, and heard a quiet whimper, followed by a louder "Shhhh!"

He sighed and knocked again. "Come on, then. Last chance for ye."

As he spoke, he stepped back and rolled his fingers around the leather-wrapped handles of the twin morningstars, willing forth their magic. Liquid oozed from the spikes of each ball, clear and oily on the right hand one, and reddish and chalky on the other. He sized up the door, recognizing the center cross of perpendicular metal bands as the most important structural point.

He counted to three—he had to give the goblins an honest chance, didn't he? — then launched into a ferocious leap and swing, left morningstar leading, and connecting precisely at the juncture of those two critical iron bands. The dwarf kept jumping and turning and building momentum with his right-hand weapon, though he did whack at the door a couple of times with the left, denting wood and metal and leaving behind that reddish residue.

It was the ichor of a rust monster, a devilish creature that made every knight in shining armor wet himself. For within moments, those solid iron bands began to turn the color of the liquid, rusting away.

When he was convinced that the integrity of the iron bands had been fully compromised, the dwarf jumped into his greatest leap of all, turning as he went so that he brought all of his weight and all of his strength to bear as he finally unloaded his right-hand morningstar at the same exact spot.