Ruin had come for the cottage, stretching across every square inch. It had gathered up everything the two of them had come to treasure and crushed it without a second thought. Now, instead of joy and comfort, Ren saw only wretchedness. And amid that dark, churning sea, one particular loss stood out: the small house Pansy and Ren had constructed for the mice. Someone had thrown it against one of the bookshelves, dashing it to pieces along with anything vaguely fragile in its path, including all of Pansy’s glass baubles.
The mice, at least, seemed to have escaped unharmed, from what Ren could see. A small mercy, desperately needed at the heart of all this grief. For once, the cottage was unbearably still, free of the usual buzz of insects and the soft scuffle of small mammals underfoot. There was only the distant groan of something deeper down, as if the cottage itself was crying out for help.
Hopefully that meant Mushroom and Pig had gotten outsafely too, the pillows they’d napped on during the laziest hours of the afternoon tossed aside like trash.
“Mushroom! Pig!” Pansy called out, frantic. “Where are you?”
“Somewhere far away, I hope,” Ren said, their stomach plummeting when neither one made a miraculous appearance.
Pansy let out a choked sound, hands flying to her mouth. “How could someone do this?” she asked, her eyes shining wetly in the muted morning light, dampened both by cloud cover and the pall of loss that had drawn over their home.
“Because they hate us,” Ren said simply, the words cresting over their tongue like hot bile. “To them, goblins are nothing but pests, taking up space they believe should be theirs. Everything we do is wrong; our existence, in of itself, is already a problem. They don’t understand us, and they never will. You wouldn’t try to understand a fly or a mosquito, would you?”
“But you’re not a fly or a mosquito!” Pansy protested, her voice cracking. “You’re aperson, Ren.”
“And that’s precisely what sets you apart from them.”
Heat, protective and fierce, bloomed inside Ren’s chest as they headed for the stairs, ignoring the crunch of ruined plants beneath their heels. They didn’t even need to think, their pupils flaring wide against the approaching gloom.
Unfortunately, this part of the cottage hadn’t been spared either. Whole chunks had been carved from the walls and floor only to be dumped elsewhere in a spray of dirt, rock and frayed moss. Although the anxious knot rising in their gorge screamed at them to make a left at the upcoming junction, desperate to ascertain the status of their potion room, Ren ignored it. Instead, they turned right, following the low groan of shifting ground, echoing ever louder.
At last, they reached the source: the hallway that went nowhere, the archway at its end as impassable as ever, filled with solid stone. Dozens of halflings, enough to leave the reasonably wide space feeling cramped, turned to stare at them, their eyes, bright with fear, shining in the gleam of far too many lamps.
Ren flinched, the sudden transition from dark to light stinging their over-wide pupils. As they raised one hand to shield their aching eyes, vision bleached white and useless, Pansy took the opportunity to push past them, taking to the new light source like a moth to a flame.
No. Don’t, Ren started to say, lips parting around the first of only two syllables, but Pansy was already speaking.
“Agvaldir!” she shouted into the cavernous hall, loud enough that Ren could feel the reverberation against their skin. “What do you think you’re doing?”
“Exactly what you asked me to do, Miss Underburrow,” Agvaldir said, so devastatingly smug that even with their eyes pinched shut Ren knew that he was smirking.
“I didn’t ask you to do any of this!” Pansy snapped, her voice a bright spot of heat at Ren’s front. “And why would I? You broke into my house, destroyed my things—”
“Ah.” Agvaldir clicked his tongue. “To think you would forget our conversation about those runes of yours so swiftly. Perhaps I should be hurt. I’m only here for your sake, you know.”
It was then that Ren finally managed to crack open an eye, the lanterns still bright but not painfully so. “What’s he talking about, Pansy?” they asked, seeing the way she’d gone stiff, her jaw flaring stark white beneath an angry, mottled flush.Just like at the Harvest Festival…
She ignored them. “I didn’t ask for this,” she repeated, now with the slightest tremor.
Agvaldir smiled, placid as ever, his face devoid of even a shred of kindness. His entourage was no better. Four men stood at his back, dressed in hard leather and steel. Three were human; the last was a dwarf, and though he stood a full two heads shorter than his compatriots, he easily outmatched them all in sheer breadth. His muscles flexed as he hefted his war hammer over his shoulder, perfectly shaped to crack open a door.
Or a goblin skull, Ren thought, stomach souring as the dwarf’s eyes swiveled to them with razor-tipped sharpness.
Swallowing, they forced themself to look at Pansy instead, the dwarf’s bearded face dancing in front of their eyes like a hazy, sun-spotted after-image. “Pansy,” they said, more forcefully this time, an edge of something like hysteria scraping across their fraying vocal cords. “What’s he talking about?”
For a moment, it seemed like she was going to respond – how sheshould’veresponded the last time Ren had asked her this question. Then, her gaze dropped; not to her feet, but to a point on the ground further in, near where Agvaldir himself stood, so tall his buoyant hair nearly flattened against the ceiling. Her mouth snapped shut.
Ignoring the way their stomach churned, Ren followed the direction of Pansy’s stare and found a rug, old and dusty and balled up to one side. But it wasn’t the rug that was important; it was what it had once covered: a small raised platform, barely wider than a stepping stone. Although it was difficult to see from their present angle, it looked like something had been carved into the smooth, gray surface. But as to what exactly, Ren couldn’t say.
Agvaldir shrugged, infuriatingly casual as he passed his staff from one hand to the other. “A bit clumsy, hiding them underneath a dirty old rug, but I suppose I can’t complain. You did manage to keep that unwanted houseguest of yours away whileI made my preparations.”
“I didn’t—” Pansy choked, her hands trembling at her sides.
“Then why ask me about the runes?” he intoned, head cocking to the side in a display of mock innocence. “You were so desperate when you came up to me in the town square that day. You were practicallybegging me, asking if I was certain that I didn’t know what these runes meant, if I didn’t have any books. Youasked, Pansy. Youwantedmy help. And more than that, you wanted that goblingone.” He grinned, lips peeling back with a serpent’s grace, needle-bright and slick with venom.
Ren wanted it all to be a lie. Every last word. But as they looked to Pansy, saw the recognition twisting across her features like the final throes of a dying animal, they knew that it wasn’t.
Acid burned up Ren’s throat, sliding across their tongue in a fetid tide. They staggered backwards, their legs unsteady beneath them. “Why?” they demanded, hating the way their voice cracked. “Why did you bring him here? Why didn’t youwarnme? I could’ve – I could’ve saved the garden! My clan—” They choked, their horror a noose around their throat, tightening with the weight of every new realization.
