“What are your demands?”

“Everybody in this city, stripped naked and thrown into the wild. Let me watch them survive as I have.”

Only record of rebel ogre “Nameless Terror” negotiating with a besieged town.

—

Back in his vital-guarding tackle stance, the ogre rushed Kelk again. Shiro rushed forwards, towards me, and the ogre missed by a wide margin. Shiro hopped up to my side and Kelk struggled to turn around and attack again, but the ogre continued moving and crashed into another grove. Nearly instantly, he was lost in the thick patch of trees.

“Fuck! He doubled back and let us pass him! He must have known we were on his tail!” Kelk yelled out loud. “What were you thinking, sending us into the territory of a galki’oker!”

“I thought I could talk to him, but then he attacked and you attacked and now I don’t know what to do!” I wanted to cover my ears and curl up, but what good would that do? I reluctantly drew my sword for the first time.

The forest had gone quiet. Silence and damp hanged equally in the air.

"Maybe if I approach alone I can talk to him." I ventured.

"Yes, good idea, do that." Kelk had read my lips. I decided not to do that.

I stared into the thicket where the ogre had vanished, but I didn’t hear nor see anything. How did something that big hide so easily? Humans were like half that big and they never stopped stomping around. Shiro had his neck stretched out and his ears extended, but even he didn’t seem to know what was happening.

I glanced down the hill and across the water. This was a tight spot. Fleeing wasn’t really an option. Shiro wouldn’t let me ride, so while I struggled through hip-deep water I would be easy pickings. That meant we had to fight, but that wasn’t want I was here to do. Even if I didn’t need him, it didn’t feel right to walk into somebody’s territory, then kill them for reacting. Anybody walking into his territory as heavily-armed as we were (well, as Kelk was, I only had my sword) was reasonable to treat as a threat. And food.

So we had to end the fight with nobody dead. I hesitated a moment, then dropped my pack and knelt, digging through furiously. Quickly I found what I was looking for. Rope came out in strands, what was left over from trying to climb Ki’margarhara. My hands were shaking, getting my claws caught in the strands. I already wasn’t great at knots, but operating under this kind of pressure was impossible! Every knot I tried looked like it would come undone in an instant.

Nervously I glanced in every direction, not a bit of motion until suddenly the birds behind us speared up into the air, wingspans dimming our position. The ogre erupted from the water behind us like a living tsunami. Shiro reared in mad panic and Kelk whipped around, but the ogre was already moving. His spear left his hands and soared right past me. Kelk was knocked clean off his feet, and I could only watch as he tumbled down, down out of sight as the ogre took another step up the hill.

Shiro shrieked. It was a noise I had never heard from a horse. More like a rabbit grabbed by a hawk than any equine. He wheeled to face the ogre, forked horn aimed low. There was a moment of stillness as the ogre considered his options, but it didn’t last long. He scooped up a rock bigger than my head in his six-fingered hand.

"Wait, Shiro! I need you to get Kelk out of the water.  If he isn't dead, he's drowning. Leave the ogre to me." Shiro and the ogre both hesitated, staring with all the intensity of dueling knights. But finally, Shiro broke away and left me alone with the giant.

He eyed me warily. I wasn’t acting like prey. That was plenty to give a predator pause. But it wouldn’t take long for him to realize it was a bluff. The only thing keeping me in one place was simple prey instincts. You don’t show your back to something that saw you as a sandwich. If only I had somebody to protect me. Somebody big enough the ogre would see them as a viable threat.

Wait.

I could do that.

“We’re just hear to talk, and I’m willing to do that at spearpoint if you want. Wild one! Meet Ergor!” Behind me rose up a shining titan, taller than the feral ogre and clad head to toe in mail fitted with solid plates mingled in.

The ogre balked and sized up the new enemy. It was taking me more mental energy than usually to keep this illusion up. This wasn’t some basic animal. The glint of the sun off her axehead and every link of chain, the little clinks as she shifted her position, they had to all be right to keep up the illusion. Although perhaps it only needed to hold a moment.

A smile crossed my enemy’s face, split by the cleft in his lip. One massive arm cocked back, and like a catapult, the rock went flying. Directly through “Ergor”. There was a guttural cough that might have been a laugh and the ogre was upon me. That massive palm grabbed for me like a rabbit, but again he found only air. Air and the lasso I had just tossed around his wrist. Ergor vanished, and my true self stood where she had been, the illusion I had left in my place vanishing with her. With a tug, the rope was tight around his wrist.

“Haha! You should have paid more attention to the goblin than the-” I didn’t get to finish boasting. The ogre yanked his arm back and I, still holding onto the other end, went flying up and over. Oh. I hadn’t thought of a second step.

I hit the water face first, nose-first in particular. It was like being slapped with a plank of wood. My eyesight failed for a moment, lost to the pain of impact and murky water flooding my orbits. I tumbled, water already in my nose and mouth and not sure which way was up. Blind limbs reached out and my clawtips touched mud. Desperately I pushed the other direction and my nose found air. I was able to get my head up long enough to spit up what seemed more algae than water.

I could barely see through my waterlogged eyes, but I saw the shoreline, including the island I had been thrown from. A fuzzy green blur went darting past, an apricot-colored streak in hot pursuit. I spat up more water and did my best to thrash way way to land, with as much grace as a fish flopping towards water.

I finally made it to water shallow enough I could stand up and took a brief moment to breathe. Apparently I wasn't actually part grindylow, academy rumors be damned. I could hear Shiro and the ogre rampaging around me, but they were out of sight behind the trees. I had a moment to think, as difficult as that was. Running was one option. Not a good option, given I had nowhere to go, but very tempting in the moment.

Come on, I already have one arm wrapped up. Finish the job! If you run you'll die anyway! I slapped my face and grit my teeth. Okay. I had something. This had better work.

Earlier, I had made Kelk smell bad to bugs to defend him from the endless mosquitoes and biting flies of the swamp. Could I do the opposite?

I threw out a connecting line to a million tiny minds and flooded them with every human stench I knew. All that reeking sweat that drew in the biters, the sensation of body heat they needed to know they were biting something alive. And at the center of those sensations, the ogre. I closed my eyes and raised my ears to track by sound. He may have been sneaky normally, but he was in an all-out chase.

Black clouds of insects rose up around me, clearly interested, but they only milled about in confusion. Why wasn’t that working? Were they stupid? Was I stupid? Wait, maybe it was a bit of both. I wasn’t thinking like a bug. Small as I was, they were much, much smaller. What felt like a few feet to me was a much longer distance for them. Goblins were a touch nearsighted compared to humans, anything more than 100 feet away growing blurry until they were more painterly strokes of color than anything tangible. Maybe for these things, scent worked the same way. Instead of a central point of origin, I started the scent closer to them and moved it inwards in a contracting ring. The black wave quickly dissolved into the woods.

Reluctantly, I followed, shuffling into the prickly bushes that clung to the muddy banks. They grew so thick they were like miniature hills all their own, tall as a man. I hacked my way through the outer wall and slipped into the center. The interior was mostly empty of branches, arching cleanly over the water like a covered bridge.

Slowly I pushed through water up to my knees, creeping so low my shirt touched the stagnant surface. My narrow fingers, like knobby twigs among the foliage, slipped between vines and pulled them apart to peer into the next clearing.

A massive foot slammed down just before me with the sound of a fat giant slapping their stomach. I yelped and fell back into the other wall, but it seemed I wasn't discovered. With a staggered step, the ogre shuffled on, more mighty smacks coming from his body where he pawed at the tormenting insects. His stumbling revealed Shiro, standing proud with his horn set for jousting. Atop him rode Kelk, looking like nothing had happened. Chainmail dimly glinted through the hole in his jacket.

Kelk's bow was nowhere to be seen, but his axe was proving its worth as backup. Red stripes showed when the ogre turned his arms towards me, targets for the more voracious insects. I knew how this would go. Kelk wouldn't stop when he had the advantage. With all the strength I could muster, I ripped myself from the bramble’s thorny grasp and charged through.

The rope thrashed with the ogre, dancing like an angry snake. But I had grabbed faster things, and my claws were around it in an instant. The ogre saw me for just a moment as I ran around his legs, looping the rope once.

“Kelk!” I tossed the rope to him and he reflexively caught it. 

Kelk looked at me with surprise that immediately became annoyance, but he knew what to do. A tap of his heels and Shiro wheeled about and charged the other direction. The rope tightened faster than the ogre could react and he found himself with his feet suddenly yanked out from under him. A thousand biting insects died when he fell, crushed beneath his titanic form. There, he thrashed, grand arm making furrows in the earth itself. And that was what I had to jump into, if I didn’t want him undoing the hold the ropes had on him.

Desperately I leaped onto his body, clinging to the rope tangled round his feet. He bucked at my touch, trying to fling me off like a catapult. My sword fell away so both hands could hold on, claws deep in between fibers of hemp, but he wouldn’t stop writhing. I couldn’t even begin to tie the knot I needed, and I could feel the rope loosening. I grabbed at it and tried my best to form a solid knot, but every time I tried, my grip loosened and the length of rope would slip away. Breathing only came in gasps now, taken with shaken lungs. One hand lost its grip, and the other began to ache, until finally there was a crack and I was thrown for the second time today.

This time I landed in mud, the force of my landing half-burying me. The entire right half of my body went cold and numb from the impact and the soft mud seeping around me. I felt like my energy was seeping out into the mud, being stolen by the earth. It could have it. I was too tired to fight back. Climbing, swimming, grabbing people’s senses and shaping them to my will. It was all exhausting, and there simply wasn’t anything left. I had thrown everything I had into it and it wasn’t enough. Time to admit that and give up.

But from my perspective, I saw something. Shiro returning, carrying Kelk. He jumped to the same spot where I had started and rode the bucking ogre with such grace it didn’t seem to be moving at all. His own claws, shorter and broader than mine, kept a flawless grip on the rope as he worked it into multiple knots, each stronger than the last. By the time the ogre’s flailing slowed, he was kept more tightly bound than before, three limbs inextricably stuck.

Kelk stepped off of the ogre and made sure he could see his axe was at the ready before turning to me.

“I’m glad you’re not dead.” I pointed at the hole in his jacket and noticed one of my claws had broken off.

“It was just a pointed stick. Cracked a rib, but it wasn’t going to penetrate. Now get up. You need to talk to him.” Kelk didn’t help me stand, but instead turned back to Shiro to unload his packs.

“Thank you for not killing him. You really could have, but you didn’t, for me.” I said, but Kelk didn’t see my hand signs or my lips. I just smiled and approached the bound ogre.

In full view of the captive, I set my sword down on the ground. He growled and strained, but with his eyes on Kelk, he made no attempt to escape or attack. I hesitated at the edge of his reach. It was a leap of faith. But I needed him to make one for me in turn. Let him see how much this goblin would risk for him. I took a deep breath and took that final step. If the ogre wanted to crush me, he could in an instant, and Kelk couldn’t do a thing. I felt eyes on me from front and back, surprise radiating from everybody watching. The ogre made an odd, low grumble and held deliberately still, like he was doing his best to relax me as well. Huh. That didn’t make me more relaxed at all.

“What’s your name?” I sat down for my chat with the feral ogre.