"I never understand why you people are so upset with me. Do we not all profit off of death in our own ways?"

Skulker, ghoul

---

Kelk was definitely lying about being an impatient teacher. He had a hard time stopping himself from smiling whenever I managed even a little bit of his hand language. Thankfully, my state of mind didn’t prevent me from learning. 

It was mostly intuitive, although a little hard to get used to the use of a finger I was only pretending to have. The grammar was overall the same as the spoken language we already shared. It was almost like learning the written form of a language when you already knew how to speak it.

I wasn’t sure exactly when it was that I had a breakthrough. I had drank the rest of the toxic-smelling wine, hoping to keep my mind open. My own form seemed to flow at this point, one with the infinity of people fading in and out of the shadows. The potion was an acid that had dissolved the barriers between me and the rest of reality; I had shattered my umwelt.

I looked into Kelk’s eyes and became him. He looked on in shock as I took his face. I adjusted the mental image of my vision to match the extra few inches he had on me and sealed away sound. I let my world be one only dominated by other senses. Wasn’t it strange to see the birds flying overhead without hearing the beats of their wings? Ah, but I could see the pattern of their flapping, clearer than ever.

Kelk fell away and I imagined myself taller, stronger. I placed my eyes nearly twice as high as they truly were. The world looked nothing like it did normally. I could see so much farther, looking down on Kelk and his steed. My body had not changed, but somehow I was still seeing him as if I truly were Maarken. I felt how differently I moved with only one arm. The independent movement of each finger to compensate for their missing partners. There was a tiny imbalance that he must correct by instinct, a microscopic shifting of my axis.

I saw the world through the eyes of Ki’pokiki and Mal’oko and a dozen others I had known, feeling out differences large and small. At the end of my cycling of forms, I came to the last person I wanted to understand. Green became blue, but my vision was grey. I saw the faint, mingled souls of trees, bound up in the endless network of fungi that connected them and the brighter, blazing souls of animals.

Then I blinked and I was only myself again. I looked down at my hands and saw my own slender talons. They were my own slender, sprout-green fingers, if coated in a fine layer of dirt. Like the rest of me. Had I been thrashing around on the ground? I spat out dust, mixed thoroughly with my own blood, and I felt my tongue had been pierced a few times over by my teeth.

And despite it all, I had never felt better. I had shattered the umwelt. I had seen the world through hundreds of eyes and knew how to shape it before them. Once again I cloaked myself in the form of a squirrel man. 5 fingers stretched and a tail curled. A glance told me it was a touch too late. Kelk sat with his reclining unicorn, leaning back into its fuzzy underside.

“Good show.” He signed.

“Uh, thank you. How long was I out?” I looked up the canopy and saw it was dim. Was it evening already?

“This is the evening of the second day. You’ve been up and down ever since you chugged the sacred wine. I don’t think it’s made for goblins.” Kelk taught me in that moment you can convey a touch of sarcasm with your hands alone.

“Alcohol in general isn’t.” I rubbed my head, which had definitely taken the brunt of it. “Right. Me being a goblin. Did Mal’oko tell you? You don’t seem surprised.”

“It’s not interesting enough to be surprised by. I work with all sorts. Werewolves, a feral ogre one time. Even centaurs. Shiro here didn’t like them much.” Kelk scratched his unicorn’s chin, eliciting a reluctant huff of acceptance. “If the Gurngamosi sent you to be a spy, they did a terrible job. You’re too nosey and rude to be any good.”

“I’m not rude.” I mumbled, ears low and twitching. Wait, he was being sarcastic again. I really needed to learn to read that.

“Now that you’ve had your little breakthrough, I think it’s time we get a move on. We’ll eat on the way.” Kelk tossed me a roll of the same chewy nut-bread I had eaten at the fortress, reminding me that I was ravenously hungry.

“Are we close? To Ki’margarhara?” I nervously asked.

“To where he was last seen, yes. We should be there before nightfall. From there, well, he’s easy to track, although it may take a while to find him. His strides are wider than the Pinewood Fortress itself.” Kelk wiggled a finger in a random line. “And he wanders like a fly, looping and rolling wherever he pleases.”

“Then let’s get a move on.” I shuddered and bit into my bread. I wasn’t tasting anything again. Despite my breakthrough, I was still facing despair itself, something that people far stronger than me feared. That wasn’t the thing that worried me. Above it all, I wondered if perhaps the creature I was approaching was too stupid to fool.

—

A few hours later, I stepped out of the trees and onto… nothing. The hills before me were empty of trees, but also everything else. Nothing but rough soil. For a moment, I wondered if we had wandered back into Gurngamosi territory and the region of plowed fields, but I quickly realized that couldn’t be the case. Cresting the first hill, there were no houses, no fences, none of the little villages that should nestle in the landscape. Just miles and miles of bare dirt, punctuated by not even a solitary boulder.

“He even eats the rocks, you know.” Kelk said from behind me, out loud. At this point, we were swapping between gestures and vocal speech where I didn’t know the hand words. “Spits them right back out when people piss him off.”

“Sounds about right.” I already knew that from what I had read. That didn’t make it better.

He walked past me and looked over the hills before pointing. I looked out until I spotted where he was pointing. There lay a hill, a slouched thing with half its side carved away, spilling into a lumpy little pond. At a glance I saw similar features scattered, these little circular depressions, some filled with water, some just empty craters.

“Are those craters from his breath weapon?” I asked Kelk.

“Hardly. Those would be much bigger. Those are his footprints.” Kelk came up from behind. “Come back to the woods. We’re setting up camp.”

“In a moment.” I looked out at the darkening hills. It was practically night already, long shadows turning the valleys between hills into inky pits. Without clouds, it would be a bright night, with at least one full moon in the sky. More than enough to navigate by for a goblin. But Kelk had human eyes, and I wasn’t even sure if Ki’margarhara was the only thing out there. With no cover, wolves and griffons would be on the prowl for exposed rabbits and deer. I scurried back to the treeline.

Kelk was already setting up a simple campsite. He cleared out a spot to make a fire and tossed out two thick rugs on either side. I helped gather wood while he set Shiro off to feed himself in the woods.

“Will he be alright alone?” I asked.

“Shiro? There isn’t a wolf in these woods clever enough to get the best of him. He doesn’t just have good senses, he’s smarter than any horse. Think he reads minds, too. Not sure how else he’d know you weren’t a virgin.” Kelk snorted.

“What? Wait, is that why he shoved me!? You judgemental horse, I’ll shave your beard!” I looked up to glare at Shiro, still lurking within sight. He looked right at me and dismissively twitched his ears.

“It’s a unicorn thing. Couldn’t tell you why. If anybody should know, it’s you. You’re a fae too, right?” Kelk shrugged and paused to pick up a flint and get the fire started.

“You and a deer are both native to Midgard, but I don’t ask you to explain them. How did you get a unicorn anyway? I’ve never heard of them showing up in Gurngamos.” Down in elven lands, there were portals to what they called Alfheim and the Gurngamosi called the Greenblood Garden, but there weren’t supposed to be any of those this far south.

Kelk hesitated a moment, glancing around the campsite like somebody else might be lurking just out of sight. He looked long enough that my own ears began to twitch, but all I heard was the lonely cry of distant wolves and the closer, insistent hoots of an owl.

“Got him from a traveling elf. Shiro was just a colt, and the elf lady brought him up to show off for little lords in Gurngamos. My old tribe raided her caravan and took everything, and the little guy took a liking to me. That’s all.” Kelk finally said.

Kelk wasn’t a particularly good liar it seemed. But I was getting better at reading the tone of his gestures, and I could tell he didn’t want to talk about it further. That too was a hint. Were there portals to those distant lands lurking in the forests of Gurngamos? That led to another thought. How did goblins live in our place of origin? Did we form our own nations? There were Gurngamosi stories of great goblin kings, but they were always satirical, less about us than about skewering the follies of human rulers by painting them green. What would a land by goblins, for goblins actually look like?

It was absurd to think about. I was dozens of steps ahead of myself. No, I wasn’t even on the right route. None of that mattered. If I got in good with the Loki tribe, I might be able to find Maarken and Esen. If I found them… I wasn’t sure. Would I simply abandon Ki’pokiki? It wasn’t like I could actually fix any of the problems her tribe faced. 

Eventually, they would be destroyed, by the province she raided or by the one she worked with, or even the full force of the Emperor. I shuddered to think of the last option. An entire company of bonegrinders, supported by war machines and every cataphract who could make it, would raze the forest itself. Every captured beastfolk would be sold, every hut burned, whether they were involved with Ki’pokiki and the raids or not. The entire forest would be torn down and burned, because Gurngamos would rule over ashes sooner than it left anywhere for its enemies to hide.

But what better was it to serve under Ki’pokiki? Would I put begging merchants to the sword? Or would I help Mal’oko hang them for the gods? Was there no path that was not paved with the bones of the innocent? Or was the world made of these cold white walkways? In that case was anybody truly innocent, or did some of us just not look down at our feet?

"You're getting too buried in your thoughts over there. Eat something and try to sleep. We do nothing but walk tomorrow." Kelk tossed me a few things. Some heavily-salted fish, more bread… and cheese!

"You had cheese!?" I sniffed it maniacally, making Kelk laugh hysterically. "I thought squirrelfolk didn't have any dairy animals! This isn't unicorn, is it?"

"Ahahahaha! No, no we don't. I traded some venison for it at the Gurngamosi outpost. They're always dying for fresh meat. Also, Shiro is male.” Kelk’s laughter was the most natural sound he could make. Deaf or not, it seemed everybody knew how to laugh.

“Hey, humans can’t even tell what a sex goblins are. I don’t know if you’re any better with other fae.” I began nibbling my cheese. It was soft and a little bit tart. Goat cheese! My very favorite! Well, Gurngamos was worth something. They were the ones with the cheese.

We ate quietly and watched the moons rise over the empty hills, painting them silver. Havernus, the carved moon, spiraled low as it always did, its cleaved halves circling around its center. Some goblins served as court astrologers for governors, but the only thing I knew about the sky was that Havernus was an ill omen. It had been split in half by the same godly blade that had carved the cursed Boreal Rift to the far south, and was just as haunted a body as that bleak canyon.

As I wiggled under my blanket, my mind was filled with thoughts of this sundered world and what it might take to make it whole. After running over a dozen peace deals that could be made, and why none would be accepted, I gave up. I was too small for such things. Leave that to the fools who actually ran the world. I would simply do what I could for my friends.

My dreams that night were troubled. I saw the inky darkness behind the stars swallow them all up, then pour down. It flowed through the center of Havernus and poured onto the land in an endless stream. In the strange logic of dreams, I knew that I had to enter, and so I did. Instead of darkness, there was a flash of light, and I blinked awake in the early sunlight of morning. Day was upon us, and it was time to go.