Without conferring with the party, Vong ties up the goblins that are still alive: four in total, though I’m not sure the one that was incapacitated from a blow to the head will pull through.
Ralith tends to the relatively minor wounds that Vong, Pil, and Twitch received in the melee. Rakatha and myself are unharmed.
The two conscious goblins are letting loose an endless string of insults and threats so creative, it’s a shame no one understands them but me.
“Like not me peel your eye skin! Take me your peeled two eye in hand, squeeze me your two eye like grapes, put me your two eye mush in your mouth. Make you your two eye mush eat. Bad taste say you! Say me taste you now what is me see. Taste you shit! See me shit! Be you shit!”
“What’s the plan, man?” Twitch finally asks.
Vong purses his lips and a small furrow appears in his brow. Perhaps he hadn’t put any thought into it until now. He says, after a moment, “We should question them about the poison curse. Zer, what—”
“Zer Khaldun,” I correct.
“—are they saying?”
It occurs to me that I could easily lie. I could make up anything I wanted to tell Vong, and he’d never suspect. I could set us on a wild goose chase, give him bad intelligence he’d happily feed back to Level, or any number of things. I weigh my options, since whatever I choose to say could come back to haunt me. After all, if I make up that there’s a hidden lair thirty miles away, I will, more than likely, have to walk thirty extra miles. If the bogus intelligence is too compelling, it could undermine the Adventurer’s Corps’ mission and put my plans in danger.
I decide to bide some time while I think if there is a better way to use this opportunity and just answer with the truth, so I say, “Threats.”
Vong nods, as though he expected as much, and paces, his hand rubbing his chin. “Ask them about the burned farm,” he says, ordering me as he would a servant.
I take offense. I am, and never will be, this boy’s inferior. I glare down at him.
He seems oblivious, continuing to pace thoughtfully.
Some of the others in the party, Pil and Ralith, seem to pick up on the tension change. Pil says hesitantly, “What if these aren’t those goblins?”
Vong turns to him and says, “Yeah, but they probably still know those guys.”
“Goblins are very tribal,” I explain. “Isolated pockets appear all the time.”
“These ones had dogs though,” Vong counters, “Hordian war dogs.”
So he had noticed.
“Coulda stole ‘em,” offers Twitch, trying to rub the sap from her palms but mostly rubbing them raw in the process.
“No,” snaps Rakatha, smoldering into the distance, “those beasts are broken. They will only obey their master.”
I wonder if Rakatha knows how obvious his past is laid bare to anyone who spends more than a day with him. Even though I didn’t need any further confirmation of his life as a slave, fighting in the pits, this certainly punctuates the point quite thoroughly.
I glance at Pil who, admiring Rakatha and believing him to be some kind of rare hero of legend, is positively thrumming at the deep wisdom he just received. I wonder about these tales of Rakatha and the Griffon Talon Knights. Perhaps they are an underworld code for advertising the pit fights. If so, it’s quite clever.
“Perhaps we should take them back to town?” Ralith suggests weakly, his hands tucked into his tabard once again. He looks just terrified being out of the safe walls of the Glen once again. The horrors of the medic tent are so passive in comparison to field work and witnessing the gore first-hand. Seeing his resolve crumble is almost worth this entire expedition.
Risha is such a weak, pathetic god. Her lie is a sickness. Peace among the living cannot be obtained except through domination. She dominates her followers and forces submission, forces blindness, forces inaction. Without even realizing it, they volunteer for bondage. Her way is one of oppression and apathy, where those who don’t follow should be indoctrinated and those who tear the volition from free men are applauded. Even the worst tyrants have the decency to be forthright about it.
True peace can only be found in Ner Ngal’s embrace. Simple, eternal stillness. Any other promise of peace than the one offered by the Void is false. Why can’t all the fools of the world see this naked truth which makes no effort to hide? Yet they cover it up and obstruct the truth themselves, preferring to wallow in lies and endless slavery.
The Wordbearer Chronicles is a dark fantasy web series with new passages on Tuesdays.
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