Never before had Ren seen such naked hopelessness etched into her features, the clan’s de facto leader easily the most stoic of them all. But a few more steps, and it was plain to see why. The plant at her feet was not so much dying as already dead, brown and shriveled right down to the root. Its neighbors fared no better. In all these rows of mottled leaves and desiccated vines, not a single hint of green remained. A whole season’s worth of crops – decimated.
But by what?
“Is it some sort of rot?” Ren asked, grimacing as their path cut through an especially tenacious stretch of sodden earth. It sucked at their boots like a starving animal, desperate for prey, rendering each step a struggle that could only be solved via brute force. Some level of damp was expected; this was a network of caves, after all. But by the time they finally reached Nana’s side, Ren was practically panting for breath.
“I was hoping you could tell me,” Nana said, turning towards them. Up close, her weariness became all the more apparent, unfurling across the whites of her eyes in jagged webs of sleepless red. “Hello, Ren. I’m sorry to drag you down here as soon as you arrived. But no one else has even come close to figuring out what went wrong here.”
“It’s all right, Nana,” Ren said, forcing a smile. “You know I’m always willing to help. When did the ground turn like this?”
Nana let out a breath, her eyes fluttering shut. “We assume sometime in the night. But, given that this cavern’s yields have been declining for months now, it’s entirely possible that we’re only just becoming aware of a long-standing problem.”
“What about the other caverns?”
“Thankfully, unchanged – though who knows for how long.” Nana’s voice dropped as she said this, the words plummeting into the space between them with all the leaden weight of an anvil. It was all Ren could do to not allow themself to be dragged down along with it.
Hopefully, this is just an isolated incident, they thought, squatting down so that they could get a better look at the dead plant and the surrounding soil.
The plant, itself, proved unremarkable – apart from being dead. No sign of pests or any sort of disease; nothing that would fell an otherwise normal Running Bean sprout. Ren prodded lightly at the black earth surrounding it, so choked with moisture it had turned into tar-like sludge, then frowned when foul-smelling water rushed to fill the depression their fingers had left behind. A strange, iridescent film undulated across the water’s surface, ribbons of pink, blue and yellow cutting across otherwise murky brown. It might’ve been beautiful had Ren not immediately recognized what it was – and its origins.
Dwarves.
“The earth’s been poisoned,” they said, brushing their fingers off on their trousers as they straightened back up. “Run-off from a dwarven refinery. Adamantite, I assume. Nothing will grow here so long as it’s in production – and, most likely, not for some time afterwards.”
A clamor rippled through the small crowd that had gathered around Ren as they’d conducted their examination, other members of the clan eager to hear what had happened to the crops they’d been tending to. Now, realizing that this loss, like so many others, had come from beyond their borders, that worry turned to anger.
“So, it wasn’t enough just to kick us out of our home?” demanded one of the goblins, exploding forward from the rest, her golden eyes bright with fury. “They had to poison what was left of it too?”
“Never ascribe to malice what can just as easily be attributed to disregard, Briar,” Nana said with a tired sort of sagacity, the kind that flowed from years of choking down your own outrage, no matter how justified. All because it wassafer. And Nana would know. She was the oldest goblin in the entire clan. At seventy-two years old, she’d reached an age almost unheard of among goblins. So, when she spoke, people tended to listen.
But not this time.
“No,” Briar said, shaking her head. “I’m done with standing around and hoping that other people stop hurting us. It’s time to stand up for ourselves andmakethem stop. We should go up there and tear down that refinery and—”
“Absolutely not.” Nana’s voice was firm, cleaved from the same stone as her expression. “There will be no sabotage of any kind.”
“Maybe we could ask the dwarves to shut down the refinery, instead? Let them know that it’s destroying the soil here,” Thorn suggested with a half-hearted shrug. No doubt just a harried attempt at defusing the snarl of agitation already snaking through the rest of the crowd. Ren was certain he knew just as well as they did that any attempt to treat with the dwarves would only end with a hammer to the face. Although it had been years since the last dark lord rose and fell, the Realm’s perception of goblins had not changed: they were evil, closer to vermin than to living, thinking beings, and any sort of mercy was wasted on them.
“No,” Nana repeated, more forcefully this time. “No one will be doing anything to the dwarves – talking or otherwise.”
“But we can’t keep letting them get away with this!” Briar snapped, tightly balled fists trembling at her sides.
Nana’s gaze sharpened, the gray of her irises glinting like polished steel. “And what do you think will happen after you set foot in their fortress, even if only to ‘talk’? They’ll come down here, and they’ll do what they always do: scour us away with fire and iron until there’s nothing left but ash and bone dust. We saw it happen to the Rivermud Clan thirty years ago, and I’ll bedamnedif I’ll allow the seeds of another such tragedy to be sown on my watch.”
By some miracle, Ren managed not to flinch at the mention of the clan of their birth. They’d been only a small child at the time, barely out of diapers, and still the memory of that night remained, seared into their psyche with all the permanence of thickly roped scar tissue.
“I—” Briar faltered, her mouth devolving into a pale, thin line as two red blotches bloomed high on her cheekbones. Nana was right, and she knew it.
“What matters now,” Nana continued, straightening up asmuch as her aching back would allow, “is making up for what was lost. Do we still have enough seeds for that?”
Briar nodded. Although she’d conceded in their argument, her discontent persisted, made manifest in the subtle flexing of her jaw.
“Good. If what Ren says is correct – and they’ve never been wrong before in these matters, much like their late teacher – this cropland is useless to us now. We’ll have to sow whatever seeds we have left elsewhere.”
“Except the other caverns are already at capacity.”
“What if we buy food instead?” hazarded another goblin from the crowd, who Ren recognized as Briar’s younger brother, Bramble. “You know, from one of the villages near by. The gnomes will sell to us, right?”
“Only if you can pay them in coin, which we don’t have,” Briar scoffed.
