I watched from the corner as the goblin sharpened his knife, preparing to cut the fresh stew meat for the eagerly simmering cauldron nearby. As the blade was carefully honed on a well-worn strop of human skin, a fresh wave of horror passed from head to toe as my fate to become boiled meat and bone for this creature's belly became ever more imminent.
Goblins, however, have poor eyesight and their long fingernails can be cumbersome when performing dexterous tasks. The knots binding my hands were not as well-made as the gleaming knife, which was clearly of Dwarven origin and forged with great skill.
I twisted and pulled and with no time to spare, pulled a hand free of the cords! Frantically but silently, the other bindings were loosened from my limbs even as my eyes darted left and right, searching for anything to use as a weapon against my hungry captor, who stood with his back turned, happily humming a ghastly Goblin tune.
The cookbook! Thick with countless pages of recipes, the book was doubtless a compendium of centuries'-worth of knowledge of the tastiest ways to cook the flesh of men. I crept up behind the goblin, holding the book high at the ready. The humming and stropping stopped - with a whirl, the goblin wheeled around just as I brought the cookbook down upon his furious face. With a shriek he dropped the knife, and I swooped down and grabbed the wicked blade the instant it clattered to the floor. Freshly stropped and sharp as an Elven sword, it took just one clean strike to put an end to the evil creature's nights.
Shaking with the relief a narrow escape from a terrible fate, I vowed to keep the special knife forever. On the way out of the goblin den, I threw the evil cookbook on the couldron's cooking fire.