Hello hello, yes this is my sandbox. Upon wandering over here, you might have noticed that this is not a box and it does not have sand. Am I a liar then? Of course I am, I'm a writer! And this is where I write stuff.
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- A Cold Moon Sets On The Shelves
- Desert
- The Last Breath
- World's Shittiest Goblin Rewrite
- Space Story
- The Fall
- Definitely Itching
- Schooling on Earth
- Whistling
- World's Shittiest Goblin
- Author's Page
- Don't Kill The Good Bird
- Nebula Phoenix
- Welcome to the Citadel
- Just Another Day In The Citadel
- Shadowplay Part 1
- Leftovers
The Wanderer's Library is arguably one of the busiest places in the multiverse. Most of its patrons tend to not concern themselves with the others or their matters, lulled to a sense of security by the rules known by all, and the constantly vigilant, unstoppable Staff upholding them. Most of the time, this works and life in the shelves continues undisturbed. However, occasionally, this state of security provides an opportunity for unkindly folk to practice their shady affairs without notice.
This is why no one pays mind to the band of tall figures lurking around one of the larger rest spaces, dark glass helmets peeking from under their hoods and a mechanical whirring sound accompanying their every move. Moving between the tents, bedrolls and pods of people that have taken temporary residence, they occasionally type something in a strange device attached to their wrists. Meanwhile, one of them places down a strange, blinking device on a tripod, right in the middle of the huge hall. Afterwards, they gesture to the other ones, who nod before taking their leave.
A Few Days Later
"Aha!" cries out an elderly goblin as he pulls a comically large book out of a shelf, unable to help it from crashing down on the floor from its own weight.
"I have been looking for this damn thing for ages! Of course it was in the second nearest section to our home," he says to the phoenix perched on a nearby shelf. "Hehehe, finally I can continue my study on the bulb-birds of the Weightless Plain. Damn things better not have gone extinct in the meanwhile."
He begins to drag the tome away, one slow step at a time as he strains his old and small muscles. He is interrupted however, as the shockwave of an explosion rocks through the wooden floor, throwing him off his feet. In the rest space not too far away, the strange device has activated, shooting out a powerful ray and punching a hole through the borders of reality, forcing a Way into existence. Unlike most Ways, which appear as a gentle breeze of energy in a spiral, this one is like a raging rapid, roaring and undulating as it projects arythmic pulses through the space. As the residents of the hall begin to hurriedly pack up their stuff and run, silhouettes begin to appear behind the event horizon.
Sqr'lk arrives on scene just in time to see leagues of soldiers, all clad from head to toe in dark metal armor filled with strange devices and blinking lights. Holding large, jagged rifles, they train their sights on fleeing civilians, and pull their triggers. Globules of blue energy shoot out at blinding speeds, turning anyone they hit into an immediately fading cloud of blue sparks. In an instant, every Page and Docent within the Library simultaneously turn their heads and begin to approach. Seeing them advance, the soldiers tap a circle engraved to the chest piece of their armor, making it glow with crimson light. Same shade as the flames flickering in the Docent's lanterns. All of the Librarians halt immediately, looks of utter confusion plastered on their twisted faces.
"It's The Coldmoon Consortium…" Sqr'lk whispers under his breath, four eyes wide in nonbelief, while the phoenix flaps its wings and flails its body in angry recognition. The goblin shakes its head, dispelling the mind-clouding fugue of shock, and springs out of the shelves. Upon spotting him, the invaders begin gesturing and advancing towards him.
"Miss me?" he shouts, a furious glare descending on his face. Waving his hands, and a large shelf flies in front of the soldiers, shielding him and a handful of bystanders from their blasts as books and scrollcases go flying.
Ushering people to duck and scatter into the shelves, Sqr'lk watches as other patrons begin to mount a defense. Some join him in tearing down bookcases and other pieces of furniture, assembling them in a barrier across the hall. Abjurationers contribute by strengthening the wall with magic shields, while evocationers and other patrons with offensive abilities peer over to fling attacks at the invaders, who manage to disintegrate some of those who expose themselves with unfortunately well aimed energy blasts.
A man in a suit and tie, a centipede tattoo coiling around his arm, rushes over to the goblin upon seeing him, brandishing a pistol.
"Sqr'lk, what is happening?" he asks.
"Ah, Basar. Glad you could join us," Sqr'lk answers while peering over the barrier. "The Library is under attack."
"I noticed. Why is it not defending itself?"
"They've found a way to guise themselves as Staff. Sly bastards! They've never played fair," Sqr'lk sneers from between pointy teeth, unconsciously scratching the jagged, ugly scar splitting his upper lip.
"You know of the attackers? Do you know why they are here?"
"Mrhm. They call themselves the Coldmoon Consortium. They're space thugs. Slavers and mercenaries with a god complex. I think they're here for me." Basar simply raises a brow in response.
"A long, long time ago, I brought their trade empire to its knees by murdering their precious Delegates. Long story, not important right now," Sqr'lk says, waving his hand dismissively. Before Basar has time to respond, the goblin has climbed down from the barrier and pulled a pistol, made of the same black stone as the invader's rifles, out of his robes and jammed it in Basar's hand. He looks down at it.
"I… already have a weapon."
"This one is better. It has a tiny, tiny little Way inside of it, through which it draws energy from the Limitspace, condensing it into blasts."
"So it is anomalous. I am of the Foundation, Sqr'lk. I can not possibly use it." A troll climbs and stands on top of the barrier, roaring in rage as it intends to charge the soldiers. It gets immediately blasted with multiple shots, disintegrating as fast as it regenerates, but unable to keep up. It crashes on the floor, twisted into a burnt piece of dead flesh through its own restorative nature.
"Now is not the time to consider protocol, Foundie," Sqr'lk says, serious. Basar nods and takes the weapon, setting himself behind the barrier. Sqr'lk climbs next to him and looks down at the scene below, the floor littered with dark plates like graves, erected by the invaders as defense.
He begins to weave a spell, grabbing at and twisting at the arcane structure, breaking and reforming it to change the nature of the incantation. As the structure solidifies in the form he wants, he throws it down as a spear of flickering, white light, catching an enforcer who has just peeked out of their shield. The spell impacts, and instead of exploding in a wave of force like it normally would, it instead arcs into every nearby enforcer, all of whom begin to smoke and crackle, the wires and circuits in their suits frying and exploding as they are boiled inside. They are dead before they fall.
"What'chu think about that huh? I've learned some new tricks since we last danced!" Sqr'lk shouts before ducking back to cover, not seeing an enforcer, differentiated from the others by a long, silver cape.
"So have I," says a female voice from behind the mask as a gloved fist curls into a fist, misty, blue energy starting to pour out of it. It begins to swirl and flow, extending into a large, spiraling form that the enforcer holds up in her hand, letting it catch and deflect everything thrown at her as she walks through the battlefield, every step calm and calculated. A few dozen meters away from the wall, she points her fist at it, and opens it.
An enormous wave of energy spills out, rolling through the air in a roaring pyre. Impacting with the barrier, it tears it down like a wave hitting a sand castle. Those not immediately vaporized in the blast are thrown to the side like ragdolls. Sqr'lk feels his arm snap like a branch as he hits the floor. He lifts his eyes up just in time to see a bookcase spinning through the air, but not soon enough to get out of its way as it lands on his feet.
Flailing under the wood, he attempts to desperately tear himself free as he watches a figure emerge out of the hole in the wall. Quickly, he grabs a book lying next to him, muttering something under his breath and weaving arcane energy around it. A delicate, nearly invisible threads emerge out of his chest and the book, connecting mid-air. Sqr'lk sets the book next to him just as the figure steps next to him. She clicks a button in her neck causing the helmet disintegrate and slide into the suit, revealing the face of a woman with crocodilian skin and spikes on her cheeks and jaw. A huge, gaping scar that glows with bright, blue light covers the left side of her face, correspondent eye emitting the same light, while the other is orange and reptilian. She smiles widely at Sqr'lk big, triangle-shaped teeth peeking out of her mouth.
"Hello Green."
"Long time no see, Glasyc. I see you lived, then."
"Yes, and so did the Consortium, despite your terrorism."
"Did it though? I hear you've been struggling ever since and that the majority of your slave worlds became independent or joined the Allegiance. And the Delegates definitely didn't live. How was the funeral, by the way?" Sqr'lk laughs, but it quickly turns into a cough, forcing a globule of blood out of his mouth and onto Glasycs feet.
"Ever the smart mouth." She stops and snickers. "You know, I almost didn't believe it when my agents told me where you are. But after all these years of dreaming about your demise, here you lie, at my feet. The Emerald Menace himself. I should thank you, you know," she says and puts her hand in a fist again, blue energy pulsing inside of it, in sync with the pulsing in her scar. "This is because of you."
Sqr'lk cocks his head, unable to hide his interest.
"As much as I would like to stay and chat, catch up, and then torture you slowly until even your resilient little goblin body can't take it anymore, but unfortunately I can't give you a chance to trick yourself out of this one, so I'm just gonna kill you right here. Maybe I'll kill some of your friends and your bird afterwards, who knows, we'll see." She levels her fist at his head. "Goodbye, Sqr'lk."
She opens her fist and a blast of energy pours out again, but as it washes over Sqr'lk, instead of disintegrating him into nothing, it travels up the thread connecting him to the book, which burns away, destroyed on the atomic level. Immediately, a loud, bellowing groan echoes through the hall, drowning out Sqr'lk's maniacal laughter. Librarians still present in the space fall to the ground, limp.
"What?" Glasyc utters.
"You've just destroyed a part of the Library's precious collection. It still thinks you're Staff, so it can't find you, so it will do the only thing it can. Absolutely annihilate every living thing in this sector," Sqr'lk explains, laughing. Glasyc opens her mouth to say something, but cannot get a word out. The groans grows ever louder, green light beginning to pour out of every nook in the floor and the ceiling as an angry titan begins lashing out. Sqr'lk gestures with his hands.
"Nice seeing you, Glasyc. I hope we never meet again," he says before disappearing in a flash.
"Oh we will," Glasyc sneers, before curling her fist and disappearing as well, slipping into Limitspace.
After most of the surviving patrons have managed to get out of range, an explosive roar spreads out, the sheer force of will of the Library grasping at every enforcer, tearing apart their bodies and their souls, one particle at a time. Everything happens in mere seconds, before the hall is again neat and tidy, as if nothing ever happened. The groan goes silent, as the Library, satisfied, goes back to slumber.
Two suns hang on a blue sky, their oppressive rays descending on the desert below. They burn and rage in an eternal dance across the sky, but the inhabitants of this land, a few insects and lizards, do not seem to mind. One lizard in particular, small and red like one of the suns, is quite content in its existence, having just caught a delicious meal. Its dinner time is quite rudely interrupted; however, as a strange wave of force and a sense of electricity in the air washes over its scaly body. Flight-or-flight kicks in, and it skitters away with its prized possession still in its mouth, just in time before a hole opens up in the air where it used to be.
A small, green foot steps through, toes sinking into sand.
"Oohoho! That tickles!" says the short man with big ears, four yellow eyes, and a flaming bird on his shoulder, as he steps fully through. The hole collapses behind them, leaving them alone in the middle of an empty desert.
"Alright, let's see," the goblin says as he reaches into his wine-red robes, pulling out something akin to a compass. Opening it reveals a complicated series of blinking meters and whirring pointers that swing across the screen in a chaotic, noisy mess. Pointers with hoops in their ends move across the screen, constantly changing position relative to each other, but one seems to stay near the middle more than others. The goblin called Sqr'lk studies it for a few seconds, before pocketing it with a smile.
"This is the place, Salvador! The lost world of Atun-Katur. Those old snobs back at the Club will regret not believing that the Library could still have Ways that lead here," he snickers as he begins trudging in the sand, the giant backpack on his back shaking with every step.
The phoenix takes off to patrol the skies, while the goblin makes way below, not discouraged by the sweat pouring from his wrinkly skin or the occasional desert breeze throwing sand in his eyes. The suns begin to dip closer to the horizon, but the sea of dunes still sees no bounds. There are no determining features, no natural formations of any kind, no plant growth, and certainly not any ruins left behind by a long gone age.
After hours of walking, Sqr'lk finally sits down, the phoenix swooping down next to him. It caws.
"Indeed! It has been a while since we last went on a proper adventure, hasn't it? Nice to get out of the Library every once in a while, don't you think?"
Salvador caws louder and pecks at the ground.
"Yes, I suppose it is a little bit disappointing that we haven't found anything. The ancient records say that this is whole area is where a mighty kingdom would have once stood. You'd think there'd be some ruins left."'
Getting increasingly frustrated, the bird hops on the ground and caws repeatedly. It flaps its wings to brush some sand away.
"Salvador, why the ruckus? It is hardly time for-" Sqr'lk says but stops mid-sentence, as he finally sees what the phoenix has been trying to point out. Sticking out from the sand is a white stone with a round edge, having clearly been shaped by a stonemason.
"You beautiful bastard! Step back would you?" he says and retreats himself, beginning to gesture and flail with his arms. In a great whoosh, a powerful downdraft descends on the desert, throwing heaps of sand to the side and carving a pit into the dunes. As the sand displaces, the stone is revealed to be the top of a pillar, of which there are multiple, all set up on the sides of a path leading up to a large doorway covered by a slab of stone. Sqr'lk throws his hands forward, and then back again, as the wind follows his command and tears the stone cover free, dropping it on the sand with a loud thud that almost manages to drown out the maniacal laugh of the goblin.
"Hahahaahahaa! I should have never doubted us my friend!" A newfound brisk in his pace, the goblin enters the structure, cries of excitement echoing across the desert. Unnoticed by him or his bird, a cloaked figure emerges over the dune, watching them descend.
Progressing through the ruins, the patter of Sqr'lk's footsteps and the crackling of Salvador bounce from stone to stone, echoing through the corridors, their heavily hanging curtain of darkness only pierced by the glow of the firebird. Occasionally the patter is replaced by unintelligible muttering and scribbling, as the goblin stops to look at a broken pot or a carving on the wall, sketching them in his worn notebook. Distant scraping and dancing shadows catch his attention from time to time, but the scholar convinces himself that his mind is just playing tricks on him. Regardless, he increases his pace.
Eventually, the corridor opens up to a larger room, in which a dark shadow slumps in the corner, the orange light of Salvador bouncing off the corners of its surface. Creeping closer. Sqr'lk gingerly pulls at the corpse, its fragile, dry surface cracking slightly under his hands. It flops on its side, mandibled head twisting into a position comparable to a kinked plant stem, its compound eyes staring blankly at the scholar. He jumps slightly, fingers of fear briefly brushing the back of his neck. Taking a deep breath, he gathers himself and inspects the corpse closer.
"The scarring on this carapace, it's… necromantic. Poor soul, must have been a horrible way to go, whatever the cause." Dust falls from the ceiling as a scrabble comes from somewhere within the walls. A shadow darts across the edge of his vision.
Sqr'lk spins around in a battlestance, arcane energy beginning to coalesce around his hands as his four eyes scan the darkness for danger.
"Who's out there?" he shouts into the silence. "Come out slowly and peacefully and we won't have a problem."
Heavy footsteps echoing from the corridor become gradually louder, Salvador's light throwing the huge outline of a figure onto the opposite wall. The shadow bears gangly limbs with long, sharp fingers, a huge pair of horns and a long, slithering tail, a stinger crowning the end of it. It emerges out of the corridor.
"In the Ancestors, Atryphos! What on Earth are you doing here?" The emerged figure is tall and slender, with blue skin and bulbous black eyes. A long, jeweled tail swings back and forth under a robe very similar to Sqr'lk's. He lets the spell fizzle out.
"Frankly, I don't think that's any of your business," the horned man says, looking anywhere except directly at Sqr'lk.
"None of my business? You're tailing me! Are you seriously so incapable of finding your own research subjects, that you have to follow me across dimensions just to leech off my work?"
"Now hold on one second, I was just simply…" Athryphos begins to ramble, but Sqr'lk shuts him out as something else catches his attention. The same scrabbling from inside the walls. He lifts up a hand, telling Atryphos to shut up. He does not.
"Would you holster your ego for just one second and cease your blabbering," he whispers. "We are not alone."
At that, Atryphos's eyes go even wider, his protruding mouth drawn to a thin line. Sqr'lk begins to recast his spell as the scrabbling becomes closer and louder, approaching from multiple directions. The walls begin to buckle and bulge, something crawling and impacting against them from the other side. Shapes of hands and insectoid heads begin to press through.
"I suggest you-," Sqr'lk begins, but Atryphos has already sped past him and into the next corridor, deeper into the structure. Sqr'lk promptly, looking over his shoulder to see dozens of hollowed out corpses of humanoid insects bursting through the clay walls, their mandibles flexing for the first flesh they've seen in decades.
Running as fast as his little legs can carry, Sqr'lk needs to duck and weave constantly, as hungry hands burst through the walls, grasping for his flesh. Like a bullet, Salvador darts through the narrow space, his orange glow contrasted against the flailing outlines of thorny arms.
"Stranger danger! Stranger danger!" Atryphos screams from between sobs, which echo and amplify throughout the dark ruin.
The corridor emerges into another room, except this one has no floor. Rather, it likely used to have one, but it has degraded and fallen way long ago, leaving nothing but a gaping pit of stalagmites and sinkholes. In a showcase of surprising agility, Atrophys climbs up and clings to the wall of the room, kicking off and gracefully crossing the gap and landing on the other side. Sqr'lk follows shortly behind, grabbing onto the legs of his waiting bird and letting himself be carried across.
The rooms and corridors become less chiseled deeper in, more akin to natural formations. Somewhere ahead, Sqr'lk can hear the churning of water, whereas the chittering and scampering of the zombies grows ever more distant. He enters what seems to be a natural cave formation, with an underground river running through, and stops to calm down. Atryphos has done the same, now leaning against the side of the cave.
"What now?" he asks with heavy, shaky breaths.
"There is a river here. Which means it leads to a body of water somewhere. If we just follow it, we should be able to-" Sqr'lk's entire world shifts as something heavy drops from the ceiling and impacts with him, sinking its claws into his flesh and throwing him off his feet and into the water. It enters his lungs, setting them on fire as he flails against the opponent. Despite the effort, his hands find no purchase.
The mandibles of the insectoid squeeze into his shoulder, terrible force forcing them to snap shut through his flesh, bone and tendon, a cloud of misty crimson trailing behind them as they are pulled by the current. A muffled scream pierces the water, as Sqr'lk sees something burst through the head of the husk. It falls limp, letting go off Sqr'lk and breaking on the stones as Atryphos's tail slings it off. Both now in the water, they grab each other to brace themselves as they enter a dark pit.
After what seems like an eternity of tumbling and crashing from stone to stone in inky darkness, the rivals eventually exit out of a crack in a cavern wall, from which the river descends into a waterfall. Screaming, they drop, the impact with the ground forcing water and whimpers out of their mouths as they writhe in their pains, only to open their eyes to find spears pointed at their faces.
The death of a god is a rare thing. It is the type of event that s ends ripples through space and time, like waves on an ocean. A tragedy that permanently alters the flow of the universe, the direction of history. As gods are direct manifestations of a universal aspect, their demise marks the death of a concrete part of reality.
But oh, do not be mistaken and think that divinity is a peaceful existence. No, the gods can rarely stand each other. Stagnant in their essence, they work according to a specific set of rules and are incapable of change. A god of numbers may spend an eternity doing nothing but count, unaware and uncaring that there are other things to experience.
So, static as they are, when gods with opposing domains meet, it often leads to a violent skirmish that can continue for eons.
"What in the Ancestors are you doing?" says a goblin to another, after watching him poke and prod the insides of a dead horse for several minutes straight.
"I'm doing important research," the other one says, while carefully moving the animal's hearth to better see how it connects to the veins.
"On what?"
"On how the insides of a body work. Do you have any idea how complex this is? How much stuff is required to work in harmony just to give us life?" he asks, grinning widely from excitement and not minding the fact that he is covered from head to toe in horse blood.
"I don't, and I don't care. Why is any of that important, Sqr'lk?" asks the other one, who is getting more and more frustrated by the minute.
"All knowledge is important, Tr'lsi."
"Whatever you say. Just… hurry up and gather the meat so we can go before the tall ones come," Tr'lsi says, his four yellow eyes darting across the surrounding shadows.
"Fine," Sqr'lk sighs, taking his cleaver and carving large chunks of meat and organs out of the corpse, which he then shoves into an intricately woven basket.
"This is why nobody wants to go anywhere with you. You know that right?"
"I do," Sqr'lk says simply, as he jumps off the horse.
"You are literally the shittiest partner I have ever had. Nay, you are the shittiest goblin I have ever seen, altogether."
"Yeah," Sqr'lk says, as he walks past the taller and leaner goblin. The two slip away into the shadows of the tall trees, as the mortified screams and sobs of humans finding their beloved horse dead, echo behind them. For a moment, Sqr'lk stops and looks behind him, feeling something pressing on his small, green heart, as he sees the kneeling shapes and the furious faces. Turning away, he shakes his head and catches up with the other one.
After a while of trekking through thick vegetation, the two goblins arrive at a clearing where several, small tents made out of stitched leather and bone have been set up around a blazing campfire, its glow and warmth radiating outwards, casting long, stark shadows that swirl and twist, as the goblins casting them dance and eat and live. A warmth fills the pairs heart, as they take in the familiar sight.
An animal of some sort is roasting above the fire, its smoky aroma sailing through the air as its hardened skin sizzles and pops and cracks. A rumble in his stomach and the fluid filling his mouth lets Sqr'lk know that he could really go for a bite, as his nostrils unconsciously flare and take the scent in. The grey smoke of the fire occasionally mixes with the translucent blue of shroom-fumes, as the crackle of wood mixes with laughter, chatter and arguing. Equally prominent are the sounds of playing children chasing birds and throwing rocks at each other, as well as the sound of craftsmanship, with various clings and clangs emanating from goblins vowing twine into baskets and working goblin steel into tools and weapons.
Making their way through the lively crowd, a group of people quickly surrounds them. A grubby hand emerges from the crowd, reaching for the meat in Sqr'lk's basket. He quickly pulls it out of reach.
"Hey, what's your problem?" the intruding goblin exclaims as Sqr'lk looks towards Tr'lsi for assistance. To his surprised disappointment, his partner has no problem letting others freely pick the best slabs of meat out of his basket.
"What are you doing?" he asks, voice thick with held back frustration.
"Giving food to my friends. What does it look like?" Tr'lsi answers, grinning widely as his friends laugh at Sqr'lk alongside him.
"You're not supposed to do that. You know what the Ong would do to both of us if he found out."
"Well he's not going to find out, is he? You know what I would do if you rattled on me, don't you?" he says and points at his necklace made of small, green toes. Nearly all members of the Toebiter Tribe wear a similar amulet, but his is the only one that sports goblin toes instead of human ones. Sqr'lk gulps and his ears droop defeatedly, as the taller goblin shoves him aside and laughs.
Upon approaching the largest tent of the camp, set on the edge of forest, a small distance away from the forest, even the obnoxious goblin shuts up, as a nervous tension fills the cool air around them.
The dark opening to the tent looms in front of them like a maw. Waiting for them to step inside so that it can swallow them up. Sqr'lk looks at the tent standing in front of him like a monolith. Its patchwork surface of skins and furs almost seems to expand and retract along with his long, heavy breaths. A tension wraps around his lungs and his yellow eyes dart around wildly, as he is certain of having seen shapes move between the trees. The sound of labored, intermittent breathing rolls out of the tent like a heavy wave that rocks the boat on an otherwise silent sea. A bony hand with long fingers creeps up his shoulder, as Tr'lsi pushes him inside.
Sqr'lk feels his hearth and lungs skip a beat as he is plunged into darkness. A sharp yelp escapes his mouth as the shape of Tr'lsi appears next to him, the surprise jump starting his organs again. The air shifts, as another, bigger shape moves somewhere in the shadows. Both goblins immediately drop on one knee, not minding that the ground is slick for reasons they would rather not know. They punch their chests with their left fist, before lifting it next to their heads and setting the baskets in front of them.
"Ong Ch'knny, we return," they say simultaneously in a clear but submissive voice.
The large shape moves right in front of them and speaks. However, no words come out of its mouth. Only wheezing, pained grumbling. In response, a skittering fills the darkness, as a disgusting, insectoid thing drops off of the shape and crawls into Sqr'lk's basket. With humanoid hands, it rifles through the meat, while its humanoid face stares at Sqr'lk with wicked eyes. The spiritus, a creature supposedly summoned by the Ong from some horrid nightmare dimension, does the same to Tr'lsi, before crawling back to its master.
A second of silence stretches into an hour, before a sharp inhale pierces through the darkness, followed by a billowing cloud of fluorescent smoke that briefly illuminates the tent, revealing a bloated, yellowed goblin face, which droops and oozes on the left side like a water sack. Sqr'lk tastes his breakfast again, and even though the light quickly fades, he can still see the outlines of the Ong's horrific face, etched into the darkness and burned into his retinas. A dismissive grumble indicates that they are free to go, sending the pair stumbling out as they try to run faster than their legs can keep up.
Panting, they both collapse on the cold, wet ground after gaining a sufficient amount of distance from the tent.
"Man, I hate the Plagueface," Tr'lsi says, spitting on the ground after saying the name as if trying to get rid of a bad taste.
"You know you're not supposed to call him that," Sqr'lk simply retorts, too mentally exhausted to care about the abrasive goblin and his threats.
"He is the literal embodiment of a fart." Sqr'lk decides to walk away, folding his big ears and trying to avoid being associated with Tr'lsi in case the Ong finds out.
"Do you think his face would let out a high-pitched whine if you sat on it? You know, like a whoopie cushion!"
Crossing the doorway to his tent, all the anxiety and annoyance is washed away and left outside, as he allows himself to crash and deflate on the bed. For a while that seems both too short and eternal, the goblin simply lays there with all four of his eyes closed, even though it is customary to always keep at least one open in case of emergency. Sensing his thoughts become sporadic and his body sinking further into the comfortable furs, Sqr'lk quickly sits up, not wanting to slip away into the Night Visions just yet.
A book, stolen from a human home on one of their raids catches his eye. Sqr'lk tries to grab it, but catches only a handful of air. Sighing, he leans off the side of the bed, a sharp, straining pain running across his short arm as he attempts to reach the book without getting up. A victorious grin stretches across his face, as his fingers finally connect with the leathery cover.
Goblins do not typically practice marking things down, and information is usually transferred through either speech or a demonstration. This is due to their habit of recycling and reusing everything, which makes the creation of any permanent records somewhat unpractical. When they do feel the need to store information through other means, they use pictograms, which are remarkably different from the swiggly lines inscribed upon the yellow pages of human books. To much of his dismay, Sqr'lk cannot understand them, despite hours upon hours of attempting to decipher them based on his limited knowledge of the human language, parts of which he has picked up through careful observation. Instead, he has been using the frustrating, but incredibly interesting item to store neat plants that he has found and collected, pressing them between the pages for later admiration.
Joyous about seeing his plants, he opens the book, only to realize that he is still covered in horse blood, as his fingers leave a red stain on the yellow parchment. Feeling the pressure of anxiety push back against the back of his throat, he sets the book down carefully as to avoid staining it any further, and gets up, dragging his feet across the dirt as he heads out once again.
This time, he heads away from the camp and back into the thick forest. As all goblins of the Toebiter Tribe, Sqr'lk has moved in the wilds since he was a toddler, so the underbrush does not prove itself to be an issue whatsoever, as he strides through, jumping across rocks and roots, dodging branches, and pushing through thick vegetation by sheer determination. A few cuts and bruises here and there do not slow a goblin down. Not a lot does.
The gaps between trees gradually become broader, as he approaches the shore of a lake. Feeling the ground between his toes shift from wet mulch to prickly sand, he does not stop running, however. Instead, feeling the wind on his face, he rushes and leaps onto a large rock, using it as a pedestal to leap even further into open air above the water. His stomach drops, exciting him for reasons he does not quite understand, before gravity catches up and he drops as well, while drawing his little legs to his chest and holding on to his knees for dear life.
As the surface of the lake approaches at an increasing speed, a cry of exhilaration leaves Sqr'lk's mouth, while air resistance makes his big ears flutter in the wind. The peaceful, level surface of the lake is violently broken, as Sqr'lk's small, crunched up body hits it with all the weight and strength that it can muster, sending large ripples cascading outwards from the point of impact.
Water swallows Sqr'lk as he sinks further and further. A cloud of red and brown rises to the surface, as the water envelops him, wedging itself between his skin and the grime and blood stuck in it, cleansing him of the filthy particles and turning the red-tinged skin a delightful green once again.
Now completely submerged, Sqr'lk takes in the aquatic sight. He cannot see much beyond what is illuminated by the moonlight filtering through the surface, as the water is murky and dark. But even here, life thrives. Vegetation flows in the current, like the tentacles of a submerged octopus. A waterfowl of some sort breaches through the water like a spear, snatching a helpless fish from its school and disappearing. Sqr'lk swats away a leech attracted by his warmth and the scent of blood, and the slimy scales of a fish brush against his thigh. None of this would be observable from above water, where everything has returned to serenity. A serenity that is once again broken, as Sqr'lk's bald head, now clean and shiny, breaches through the surface, followed by a joyous laugh echoing across the surface.
For a while he trashes and splashes, granting himself the freedom to act wild and free. The freedom to forget that he is not. The Toebiter way never stuck with Sqr'lk. The other goblins are… down-to-earth, practical. They have little interest in the unessential. That and the fact that goblins consistently inflict pain and destruction on the tall folk do not sit well with him, though he understands why it is necessary. These are some of the reasons why Sqr'lk is shunned by the others. His unconventional habits and philosophies make them uncomfortable. Not enough to exile him, as he still does his part for the benefit of others, but enough to act as if he doesn't exist.
After his heart's desire to play and be wild has been fulfilled, Sqr'lk lets go of all the tension in his body. Releasing control and feeling the knots in his muscles slowly untie, he allows the water to carry him, his back slightly sinking beneath the surface. He breathes his worries out, as he looks up at beautiful night sky. Inky black and covered in bright little dots, it stares back at him, covering him like a warm blanket.
The goblins call the dots the Ancestor Eyes. It is what most of their religion revolves around. They believe that their soul, the essence of being, is contained within the eyes, and that upon death it joins those who were before in the sky, looking protectively down upon those who are.
The gentle waves splosh against his skin, the crickets sing their eternal choir, and a cold wind carries the smells of faraway lands, as Sqr'lk allows his mind to wander. He dreams about leaving the village. About travelling the world and seeing wondrous things. Odd animals and plants and people. Metallic cities with towers that touch the sky. The distant mountaintops made of white stone. Books. Yes, some place with a lot of books. More books than he could ever read. That would be perfect, he thinks. Then he would be content.
But he knows that it cannot be. Such places likely don't exist, and even if they did, there would be no way for him to get there. The life of a goblin without a tribe is a dangerous one. In the goblin language, they are called 'khrhpteh'. The word does not mean anything, it is just an imitation of the sound of spitting with fervor. Such individuals must live on the edge at all times, as they will not be safe from their own kind. They will also be persecuted by the tall ones, who would gladly snatch a lone goblin unprotected by its tribe, and kill them. This would not be a swift death, as goblins are tenacious, long-lived and extremely hard to kill.
Waking up on the cold, dark floor of his spacecraft for the thousandth time, Sqr'lk begins to wonder if shooting himself into space was a good idea after all. Clinging on to his last threads of hope, he presses his wide face against the window, praying to The Ancestors that his eyes would finally catch something other than the all too familiar expanse of literally nothing.
"Perhaps Tasseria really is the only source of life out there. Have I doomed myself to live the remainder of my life doing nothing but float in cold, empty space?" he thinks, panic beginning to tighten around his chest and drilling at his temples. Frantic as he is, Sqr'lk fails to notice stars blinking out in his peripheral.
"I am truly the worst goblin to have ever lived! A fool! What was so wrong with looting and pillaging that I had to go an fill my mind with illusions of grandeur?" A colossal shadow comes to a halt above him, looming over the small piece of floating scrap.
"Would it be too late to turn back? Could I even find Tasseria anymore?" he begins to ponder, before his train of thought gets cut off by a blinding, blue light that fills the confines of his self-made prison. The walls creak and buckle as a force of unknown source grabs the ship and begins pulling it towards the light, like an innocent minnow approaching the alluring light of an angler fish.
Sqr'lk watches in equal awe and horror, as a large maw of some sort opens in front of him, seemingly preparing to swallow him whole like a yum-lizard1.
"If this is how I go, then so be it. At least I got to see something interesting before joining The Eyes." Accepting his fate, Sqr'lk sits against the far wall, preparing for teeth and spit to bring a violent end to his violent life.
But then, as his four eyes adapt to the light, Sqr'lk begins to see shapes moving within the opening. "What are those? Worms and parasites crawling in the mouth of the beast? Perhaps… no, those are… people!" he realizes. This realization does not bring him any solace however, as he does not know their intentions. On the other hand, he hasn't seen people in a long time, and wouldn't mind some form of interaction, even if that meant that he would end up in harms way.
As the shuttle passes past the walls of the hatch, it goes through some sort of membrane, which then reforms behind it. A deafening whistling fills Sqr'lk's ears, as air fills the ship, attracted by the vacuum within. It forces its way through his mouth and into his lungs, jumpstarting the unused organs for the first time in ages. He can't help but retch violently, as the weakened diaphragm in his chest begins working again, doing its best to force him to breathe. The door to his shuttle opens, but he doesn't notice, blinded by the pain.
"Holy shit, there's something alive here!" shouts the other of the two people peering into the space.
"Is it sick? It looks sick," says the other, while raising a strange metallic stick to point at Sqr'lk. "Maybe we should just kill it, in case it has space rabies. We don't want space rabies, not again."
"I see your point, but look at this ship. No life support, no artificial gravity, no replicators, not even heat shielding. This thing is practically just a pile of garbage, and that creature has managed to survive in it. If it's smart enough to have built this ship itself, then it could be of some use to us."
"Thhnggrghghhrr," says Sqr'lk, trying to remember how to use his larynx.
"The plasma pipes do need cleaning."
"Thaggrhhhjhhh."
"I think it's trying to say something."
"Thank," Sqr'lk finally manages to force out, before everything goes dark.
As consciousness finally returns to Sqr'lk, he finds himself floating in darkness once again, until he actually opens his eyes. This decision is followed by immediate regret, as the light shoots spikes of pain through his sockets and into his brain, turning it into a pulsating mass that hammers against the insides of his skull. Gradually, he tries opening them again, one at a time, letting them adjust to the uncomfortable luminosity before moving on to the next.
He finds no solace in inching towards vision, and breathes in frustration. As he does so, his back pushes against something… he is lying down on something, a mat of some kind… kind of like moss, but dry and gentler. Confused, he gets up to sit. As he moves, Sqr'lk feels something sharp tug at his arm. Looking down, he finds the bend of his arm to have been pierced by a tube of some sort. Unsure of its origin and intentions, he promptly rips it out, causing a clear fluid of some sort to spill out on to the floor. To his horror, he finds that another tube has been inserted into both of his nostrils. He rips those out as well, as he scrambles of the soft platform on to the brazen floor of the room, which, to his surprise, feels pleasantly warm against his bare feet.
Taking in his surroundings, Sqr'lk finds himself in a small room. It is warm and well-lit, but there is no fire to be seen. Only odd, fluorescent sacks that hang from the ceiling. Sqr'lk ponders at these for a moment, until he remembers the glowing insects back home, and how he used to enjoy watching them dance in the night before falling asleep.
"Yes, they are large, glowing insects of some sort. They must be," he concludes.
His attention shifts to a series of glowing squares, embedded into the walls of the room. Their surface appears to be moving, with symbols that he does not recognize constantly running across them. Gingerly, Sqr'lk approaches one. With a finger outstretched, he reaches up to poke one, excitement and curiosity swelling up in his chest. After a few very tense seconds, his finger makes contact, causing the symbols to instantly shift and freeze, as a voice booms out of… somewhere.
"Medical analysis concluded."
"Nyeeeeeeh!" Startled by the incorporeal voice, Sqr'lk screams and tumbles, falling on his back and clambering backwards, away from the wall. Colliding into the platform he was previously lying on, he realizes that it has an empty space underneath, covered by loose fabric. Recognizing it as a proper hiding spot, he crawls to safety. That's when he hears the footsteps.
Without much time to think, Sqr'lk reaches into his mouth, wrapping his hand around one of his many, sharp teeth and pulling on it as hard as he can. The taste buds on his tongue pick up on the distinct taste of iron, as a stream of warm liquid pours out of his tearing gums and fraying roots. The roof of his mouth itches as its nerve endings are lit on fire, one after another, but a goblin does not care.
In a final, sharp pull, the bloodied tooth is torn free, accompanied by an audible snap. Spitting out a globule of red, the rags of clothing on Sqr'lk's body are stained as he dries the tooth on them before brandishing it as a makeshift knife. Recalling his previous experience in hunting game, Sqr'lk gets into position, steadies his breath, and prepares to fight whatever is going to come through the door.
Dr. Nien is in the process of replacing a patients bandage, when a ping in their head let's them know that the sensors in Room 7 have stopped monitoring a patients bodily functions.
"What? I didn't tell you to do that!" they exclaim at a machine that isn't even there. "Give me a minute, would you? I need to go check something out," they tell their patients before walking away, muttering as they go. "I swear these machines will be the end of us all."
Stepping into Room 7, it quickly becomes obvious that something is very wrong, as the patient, who had been recovered from the vacuum of space, was no longer where they had left them.
"What the-"
The man next to him tried to say something, but he couldn't hear it. Whatever the sentence was, it got drowned out by the deafening roar of the engines, and the whispering of the whipping winds that snaked past and through the open airplane door. A tense sense of anticipation hanged heavily in the air, as the group of seven people waited for the right moment. The man, whose name was Jacob, peeked his head out of the door and looked at the ground far below. Then he turned back and shouted something. Again, he couldn't hear what it was, but the way his mouth moved indicated that it had been the word "now". Another dead giveaway was the fact that the man threw himself out of the cabin door right after saying it.
Jay Humbert dreamed, that he was floating in space. He couldn't feel his body, in fact, he wasn't sure if it existed anymore. He was saddened by this, but nevertheless, he felt at peace. Then, there was a tug, in the same place where his chest would be, reminding him of some distant reality. A reality, where there was something more than just emptiness. What this something was, he couldn't remember.
Then, the tug got stronger and he was awakened, with an itching on his chest. He scratched it, and it passed. He stayed there for a while, just laying, slightly disappointed by the sensation of having a body. Eventually he got up however, and walked up to the window of his suite, scratching his head. He watched the colorful humanoids going about their business on the street below, under a purple morning sky, in awe, that he was on actual alien planet.
He had been sent to Cradus, the planet of the Whoremongers, by the Starfall Trading Company, as a negotiator for possible trade routes between the Pharanax and Milky Way galaxies. The Company had paid for a week in the Serenity Resort, one of the most luxurious hotels in the Misty Mountains. The food was amazing, the bed was soft and the robotic staff, made to look like whatever race they were serving, were very hospitable, even though their forced smiles and dead eyes were slightly terrifying. The hotel also had a load of activities and services, which Jay had taken full advantage of. Most recently, he had had a massage just before going to bed last night.
He got dressed, and walked through the lavish corridors, then descending the large set of stairs to the dining hall for breakfast. In the dining hall, he spotted Adrienne, another human Jay had befriended during his stay. Walking towards her, he couldn't help but notice that she was itching violently.
"Are you having an allergic reaction?", he asked while sitting down next to her.
"Maybe. I think this has something to do with the massage I had a couple of days ago. It was absolutely wonderful though, I almost felt like my body didn't even exist during it", she said.
They talked for a while, but their conversation was cut short by Adrienne suddenly grabbing her stomach and vomiting on the floor. What came out of her mouth however, was not vomit, rather than a liquid hole in space. It was black like the night sky, with speckles of white in it, like stars. The puddle hole, pulled at Jay's mind, like it wanted him to dive in it. He was however distracted from this feeling by Adrienne, who sprinted past him towards the stairwell leading to the rooms.
Jay followed her all the way to her room, where she had left the door ajar. At first he didn't see her, but there was a strange, low hum filling the air around him, which got stronger with every step. When he looked into the bathroom, what he saw was no longer Adrienne. In her place there was another hole in space, this one shaped like a human woman, suspended in mid-air. It resonated with an eerie melody and a strange energy radiated from it, making all the hairs on Jay's body stand up. He had the chance to look at it for only a few seconds however, before it folded into itself repeatedly and disappeared.
Then, Jay felt something. He was definitely itching.
Void Massage
Our massage therapists, specially trained in void magic, will provide you with a unique out-of-body experience that will relax all of your muscles by temporarily making them non-existent!
*Serenity Resort Inc is not responsible for possible cases of insanity, dematerialisation, or spontaneous planar travel to the Darkness Between Realms*
Considering moving to Earth? Maybe after work, maybe running away from the conditions of your planet? Do you have children? If you do, you're probably thinking about educating them on this bizarre but wonderful planet. Maybe you are even wondering about educational options for yourself on Earth. Well, not to worry, this travel brochure will hold all the information you need to know about the education you or your child/hatchling/larva will receive on Earth!
Price
Education on most of Earth nowadays is either free or relatively cheap. Your best bet is pretty much any of the countries in the northern hemisphere, where education is high quality, and low of price. But, if cold climates don't fair well with your species, you would probably do well with countries like Australia, Brazil, France or Italy as well.
Depending on your race, you also might have to make some additional charges. For example, if your child does not breathe oxygen, they will need some sort of breathing apparatus not to suffocate, or if your child does not communicate through a spoken language, they will need a translator. Humans also have two legs and two arms, and thus, their school supplies and architecture are designed for this body type. So, a pupil that doesn't fit this might need custom supplies.
Level of Education
As said before, the level of education you or your child will receive depends on what part of the world you are in. However, some races might find all education on Earth lacking. The human nervous system is not very efficient compared to many of the other sentient races. Because of this, the information they teach in schools is pretty goddamn basic. Your child will not learn anything about quantum mechanics before university. However, this also means that if your race is one of the smarter ones, your child will excel compared to their human peers, leaving plenty of time for other activities besides school.
There are however things to be learnt on Earth that aren't as easily learned on other worlds. For example, while humans are not the most scientifically advanced race, they are quite adept in the use of magic. So, if your child is interested in a career as a thaumaturge, Earth is the place to go. They are also quite creative, so if any of the traditional arts are your passion, then Earth with its numerous different cultures and thousands of famous artists is a good place to learn. However, human perception is limited, so you might want to go somewhere else when you want to start using stuff like telepathic imagery or multidimensional colors in your art.
Safety
Earth is a relatively tame planet. The gravity is pretty standard, the air is composed of oxygen which most people breathe. There are natural disasters like earthquakes, volcanoes, strong winds and tornado's, but they are not as strong as on some other planets. It doesn't rain molten glass and there are no electric sand storms, so if those are what you are used to then Earth will seem very tame. Humans themselves are very safe, in fact, you might be a potential danger for them. Humans are a very feeble race without pretty much any biological protection, so if your race has a tendency to leak acid all over the place, or if your standard greeting is ripping someones arm off because you have multiple and they grow back, then maybe reconsider moving to Earth or at least get accustomed to weird looks from people.
Transport and Residency
So, is education on Earth something you would be interested in? If so, then you will obviously need to get there first, but how do you do that? There are loads of companies that offer relocation or housing services for extraterrestrials on Earth, but we at the Galactic Relocation & Housing Services are the only ones to offer both! We have empty lots on Earth, constructed to accommodate various types of lifeforms from various different climates. Whether you breathe sulfuric acid, have a surface temperature of 500 degrees Celsius, or require a perfect vacuum to live in, we have something for you!
You, your family and your possession will be transported to Earth through one of our moving shuttles, in which you will be cryogenically frozen for the duration of the trip, so that if something goes horribly wrong and you die, you won't even notice! Just be sure to leave any houseplants, weaponry, grapes and/or magical artifacts that you might have at home, for these items are not allowed on our shuttles.
Sounds good doesn't it? All of this has to be expensive, right? Wrong! For the small price of 50,000 credits for moving and a rent ranging from 200-1000 credits per month2 depending on your needs, you can have your dream home on Earth today!
So come on down to galacticrelocationandhousingservices.gal, to find out more about your options, life on Earth in general and fill out a simple form that will tell us everything about you. Everything we need to provide you with everything you need of course! We have already served 3 million customers, who all study and live happy lives down on their new home planet. Why not be one of them? Seriously, why not? Am I not a good brochure? Am I not persuasive enough?
All I ever wanted was to be a good salesman.
why does no one listen to me?
everyone just passes by, like they don't care about our affordable prices and quality housing… just put me back on the shelf where you found me…
…why are there books everywhere?
Sound needs matter, space has no matter, thus, space has no sound. Everyone knows this, it's basic physics. There is, however, a tale told by hardy star sailors, muttered under drunken breaths to new recruits. The tale tells of a beautiful whistling that fills the dark emptiness of space, just before the destruction of a ship. Skeptics say that it is the sound your brain makes before imploding from the sudden loss of air pressure, or an auditory hallucinations caused by your body running out of oxygen. Those who believe in a such a tale rarely agree on the source either. Some speak of gigantic whales, communicating with each other across lightyears, others talk of a mysterious, hostile alien race that uses the noise as its battlecry. Some even say, that it is the melody of Death herself.
Only a handful of people can claim to have actually heard the sound, all of them being survivors from destroyed starships. There is, however, one man whose word concerning the legend bears more weight than anyone else's. This man is Ichabod Durst, a starship captain, who has survived a total of 8 destroyed vessels. Despite this, he refuses to share what the origin of the sound is.
All of this was told to Winston, a new sailor recruit, who had been assigned to Ichabod's next vessel. It was a skeleton crew, since sailors were a superstitious bunch and only a few people were willing to sail under the command of a man who had witnessed the death of so many crews. Cursed they called him. Winston, however, wasn't so easy to discourage. This was his dream job, and it would take who knows how long for him to get a reassignment.
The first few months aboard the cargo vessel went without a hitch. Sure, the days were long and the work was tough and arduous, but Winston got to see different planets and made some close friends. The only person he hadn't really gotten a chance to talk to proper, was the captain himself, who always seemed to carry a large weight on his shoulders. He had solemn eyes surrounded by large, dark rings, and when he wasn't performing his duties as a captain, he locked himself in his quarters, never socializing with the crew after hours.
Winston had been slightly worried in the beginning, but after almost a year without any horrible accidents, he had pushed his fears back as nothing but superstitions of the less educated. Eventually, things took a turn when Winston was awakened one night by the ear-piercing sound of the emergency siren. He rushed out of his room to the corridor, where the crew was already running around like ants, preparing to evacuate the ship.
"What happened?" Winston asked from another sailor running past.
"Something breached the hull. Section 5 is just… gone. It was like it was ripped off", the man explained and sure enough, Winston could hear cracking and buckling caused by the hull complaining under some sort of pressure, but then Winston could hear something else. A sound that caused some of the other sailors to stop and turn visibly paler. Somebody was whistling.
An eerie, sorrowful melody filled the air, seeming to drown every other sound under its beautiful, but oppressive presence. For a moment, everything was still, but then chaos broke out. Everyone immediately dropped what they were doing and turned to flee towards the evacuation pods. The ship shook violently, almost throwing Winston off his feet as another part of the ship was torn off. Despite of this, the captain came out of his quarters and ran towards the bridge. Winston was about to turn and flee like the others, but his curiosity became overpowering. He had to know what the whistling was. After a moment of consideration, he followed after the captain.
The lights flickered, leaving Winston to darkness for seconds at a time, and what looked like claw marks appeared in the walls out of nowhere. There were screams echoing through the corridors from somewhere afar. And through it all, there was the ever-present whistling.
As he finally reached the bridge, Winston could see Ichabod, standing in front of the front window. Behind the glass, there was a woman, pressing her hands against the screen. Her long hair and dress flowed in the emptiness of space, her skin was as white as bone, and her beautiful face was calm, but her eyes were filled with rage and sorrow. She was whistling. The captain turned to look at Winston.
"Crewman! What are you doing here?"
"I saw you run here and I followed," he explained. "Who is she?" Winston asked, looking at the woman.
Ichabod let out a heavy sigh. "Her name is Mary-Anne. She used to be my wife, long ago. She died, and I couldn't save her. I tried. I swear to the gods I tried", he said, his voice slightly breaking.
A crack appeared in the glass under her hand.
"But why is she doing this? Why is she killing sailors?"
"She blames me for her death, she's been following me to every ship. I've been a coward and ran before", the captain said, his head hung low. Then he straightened his back and turned to face the woman.
There was another crack.
"I will run no longer. She will never stop until I'm dead. You should go."
"Are you sure? We both could still make it."
The captain turned his head to look at Winston, as another crack appeared.
"A captain should sink with their ship" He smiled.
Winston nodded and gave one final salute to the captain before turning to run. Upon entering the corridor, he turned around to see the doors to the bridge snap shut. Out of the window he could see the glass in front of the captain be filled with cracks, before it burst into millions of tiny shards, causing the air to rush out into the void, sending Ichabod flying to the waiting arms of the woman. Winston opened his mouth to say something, but there was no one there to hear him.
Within the evacuation pod, launched towards nowhere with blinding speed, he watched as the ship was torn apart like a paper towel by an invisible force.
Most of the crew had survived, but for those hadn't, a mass funeral was held. Winston, among all the other survivors, attended the funeral. They all gathered afterwards to honor the memory of everyone who was lost in the accident, but Winston was the only one who knew what had truly happened. He never told the others, returning to duty only a year later. The whistling could still be heard from time to time, but it no longer came in the wake of destruction. Instead, some sailors who heard it, claimed to have seen two figures, a man and a woman, holding each other and dancing to the melody, in the middle of space.
Goblins, horrid creatures. Hard to kill, with a lifespan of several hundred years if they don't get killed, these adaptive creatures have spread everywhere on their home planet Tasseria, plaguing all its people. Goblins know nothing but violence and destruction, smashing, killing and burning everything that comes in their way. Granted, their IQ is in the single digits, so it’s not like their brains have much storage space for other things anyway. Thankfully, their idiocy and small stature makes these rat-like creatures a much smaller threat than they consider themselves to be. Pretending to be dead will usually get them to move on, for they won't know the difference. However, there was once a goblin who was different from his brethren.
Sqr'Ik of the Toebiter Tribe had been through some miraculous event of circumstances been blessed, or cursed depending on the viewpoint, with keen intellect at birth. While others of his tribe were busy pillaging and cutting off toes, which they wore in crudely made necklaces, Sqr'Ik was more interested in studying the anatomy of the corpses the other goblins left behind, or pressing leaves and flowers between the pages of a book he had stolen from a human.
Sqr'Ik was frequently made fun of by his other tribe members who couldn't understand why he did the things he did. He was made fun of for keeping his food over a fire before eating it, when everybody knew that fire was only for warmth and destruction. They made fun of him when he only stole those odd sliced boxes with symbols in them when there were much tastier and shinier things to steal.
Because of his antics, Sqr'Ik had become somewhat of an outcast and he didn't feel like he belonged with the tribe. He knew that humans wouldn't take him in either, for they couldn't get past his scarred and wart-filled green skin, uneven needle-like teeth, or his four yellow eyes. He didn't blame them.
Thoughts of where he could go and start his life anew circled his mind during one night, keeping him awake as he lied on the wet grass, looking up at the beautiful night sky. His kind thought that the stars were the eyes of dead goblins, but he knew this to be likely not true.
"There must be more than this out there," he said to himself.
That was when the little goblin saw the thing that would change his life forever. A shooting star crossed the sky above him, leaving a glorious white line in its wake, disappearing quickly afterwards. All of Sgr'Ik's four eyes widened in surprise and his jaw dropped as low as it could, unhinging like that of a snake.
In his mind, this confirmed that the sky was not just the roof of the world, that it was something impossibly large, far far away. Despite assuming its magnitude to be enormous, Sqr'Ik decided that he wanted to go there. He needed to go there. He had to know what was out there.
From that point forward, he was obsessed. Every hour, minute and second of his waking hours, his mind was consumed by thoughts, plans on how to get so high. He observed the flight of birds and insects, made miniature slingshots, ballistae and other contraptions, scribbling an empty notebook he had stolen full of illustrations and blueprints with coal he had taken from the fireplace. Despite all of his plans and ideas, nothing seemed to work. Sqr'Ik began doubting his own intelligence, thinking that maybe he actually was just another, dumb goblin.
He was just about to give up, when the town near his tribe had some sort of festival. He saw how the humans had put up strange, thick paper arrows, with short strands of rope connected to the blunt end. They lit the ropes on fire, and when they burned all the way to the end, the rear of the arrows exploded, quickly propelling the arrows high up to the sky with a trail of fire and sparkles trailing behind them, where they exploded in many, bright colors. All the other goblins were terrified of this display, running and hiding in holes and tree trunks, but Sqr'Ik was enamored. He simply stood there, the explosions in the sky reflecting of his large eyes. He understood, that that was what he needed. Without the explosion in the end of course.
He managed to steal a few of the arrows and inspect them. He figured out that they had a fine black powder inside, which burned with intensity, creating propulsion that carried the arrows to the sky. However, Sqr'Ik understood that he would need a continuous source of propulsion, which the powder could not provide.
His next subject of intrigue was energy. He understood that the arrows were carried by fire. Through examining the arrows and normal fire, he was able to deduct that there was some sort of connection between fire, heat and movement. At the time Sqr'Ik obviously couldn't understand the exact nature of this connection, or the fact that light, heat and movement were all sorts of energy, but it was enough that he could figure out that they could be converted into each other. All he needed now was something that could burn either infinitely, or for an impossibly long amount of time. But Sqr'Ik knew that fire was a fast destroyer - his brothers and sisters used it all the time to burn houses and people. He couldn't think of a single thing that could burn for so long.
Once again, he was almost close to giving up, but then his tribe had to take shelter from a storm in a deep cave. The walls of this cave were lined with blue, glowing crystals. They called these crystals "tinglerocks", because being close to them made the goblin's skin feel tingly and touching them made their skin go numb for a while. However, others weren't as lucky. Sqr'Ik observed that whenever an insect came close to the tinglerocks, it fell to the ground dead, slightly sizzling.
"Heat!" he exclaimed as he watched the smoke rise from the bug. He knew that his kind were considerably more durable than any other creature on the planet, so he was able to conclude that whatever the rocks radiated was harmful to life but barely affected him. He also understood that whatever they radiated was somehow related to fire, thus, he thought, there must be a way to turn it into movement.
The crystals weren't very strong, so Sqr'Ik was able to easily break parts of them off by smashing them repeatedly with a rock. He then took these rocks with him to experiment on them. He tried everything he could think off, but nothing he did would turn the radiation into movement.
One day however, the Toebiter tribe spotted the king's messenger riding on the road next to the forest line. This of course looked like a full course meal in the eyes of the goblins, who rushed out of the forest and crippled the messenger's horse by cutting its tendons with their blades. The messenger was carrying a beautifully ornate staff, which had sides made of two different metals. He tried to use this staff to fight off the goblins, and amid the battle, Sqr'Ik used one of his tinglerocks to block one of the messenger's strikes. As this happened, Sqr'Ik witnessed how an arc of electricity shot from the other end of the staff, shocking the messenger, who was quickly overwhelmed by the goblins and died. As the goblins swarmed over the bodies of the man and his horse, picking anything that piqued their interest, Sqr'Ik managed to swipe the staff. He had seen lightning before and he knew that it set things on fire when it struck them, and even though the lightning he had just seen from the staff was small, he decided that it would be worth experimenting with."
Upon experimenting with the staff and the rocks, he figured out that when one end of the staff touched the rock and the other end something else, small bolts of lightning were created, and these bolts could set things on fire. On the tribe's next raid on the town, Sqr'Ik stole any metallic objects he could find and some of the black powder that made the fat arrows fly. He tried to do the same with other metallic objects as he had done with the staff, but for some reason that didn't have the same effect. He sat in the middle of the objects and thought to himself: what makes the staff different from the others? That's when he realized that the two ends of the staff were made from different metals. He also tried what would happen when the other end of the staff touched the black powder, and to his great joy, the powder set aflame and exploded all over the place. A plan started finally forming in his mind.
For months, Sqr'Ik observed the town's blacksmiths work from afar, and when night fell, he would sneak to work the forge. At first, he did small rods made of two metals like the staff, figuring out that they worked in a similar way. Then he started working on plates of metal, because he knew he would need some sort of capsule. These plates were made of a metal native to Tasseria, which was extremely durable but still soft enough to be molded relatively easily. He would also, at the same time, roll away a barrel of gunpowder from the barracks every night. He would store all of these deep in the cave, hidden from humans and other goblins.
When he thought he had enough plates, he found a secluded clearing deep in the forest, where he used a hammer and a lot of nails to make a capsule the size of a human house. The upper part was empty, and it had a front window made from a pane of glass. There was also a plush chair nailed to the floor. In the back of this part was a removable container. Inside of this container was a big chunk of tinglerock. Connected to this was a "spark rod" as Sqr'Ik called it, which crossed over to the next part of the ship but could be easily pulled out. In the back of the upper part there were also dozens of powder kegs, secured with rope to keep them from moving. Behind the upper part there was another container behind the one with the tingle rock. Connected to this other container was a large cone, which was the last part of the ship. This cone had a little handle on all sides, which could be used to pull it to different directions. Making all of this took Sqr'Ik a few years, but finally, he finished. It wasn't pretty. The plates had dents and buckles in them, it had odd angles and protrusions, but Sqr'Ik was proud of it.
When he was ready to launch, he called the other goblins to see his big moment.
"I'm going to the ancestor's eyes," he told them.
"What? Why would you want to ram yourself against the roof of the world? You're insane!" They told him.
"Perhaps I am."
And with that, he climbed aboard. He poured a lot of gunpowder to the bigger container. He secured himself with rope to the chair and dropped the other container so that it connected to the other. The spark rod met the tinglerock, and the moment the other end touched the powder, a small spark was born. There was a beat as Sqr'Ik was hoping that this would work, that all of the research and hard labor he had done wouldn't have been for nothing. Then, he was pushed to the back of the chair with an immense force, as the powder beneath him ignited and the capsule took off, carried by an immense, roaring fire that pushed out of the back of the capsule.
As Sqr'Ik of the Toebiter tribe, who you might nowadays know from the Library as Sqr'Ik the Scholar, soared through the sky, the chief of the Toebiter tribe, fully expecting Sqr'Ik to impact with the roof of the world and drop right back to the tribe, shook his head and said, "He truly is the world's shittiest goblin."
Sqr'Ik however didn't impact with anything, but was soon floating in space, beginning his great, 400-year adventure into the depths of space.
The halls and corridors of the Library are usually spacious and grand, but after exploring it for quite some time, you find yourself in a secluded area, surrounded by tomes and bookcases standing closely to each other, gathering dust. Most of the books look like they haven't been opened in countless years, if ever. However, to your surprise, you find this quiet corner to not be completely lifeless. Tucked behind a series of bookcases, there is a small door, the size of a child. Crouching next to it, you think you can hear shuffling inside. Against your better judgement, you knock on the door.
"Yes?" someone says from the other side, as the door slowly comes ajar.
In front of you, you see what can't possibly be anything else, but a living, breathing goblin. His green skin is mottled by scars and warts, and he is dressed in dusty but well-made scholarly robes. Reading glasses specially designed for his four, big yellow eyes frame his wide face and a grey goatee droops from his chin.
"What's with the face? Never seen a goblin before?" he asks, savage looking needle-like teeth flashing from behind his lips as he speaks.
"Or maybe you just haven't seen one that doesn't speak in broken sentences, hmm? Well, stop standing there, come in. Don't worry, I don't bite," he says and snickers.
You have to crouch to get through the door, which is perfectly sized for the small goblin. You step into a surprisingly large room, filled to the brim with a wide array of different items. The floor is littered with piles of books and tomes, which the goblin maneuvers around with ease. There are also several bookcases lining the walls, with a rolling ladder leaning against one. Text aren't the only thing occupying the space however. On top of the bookcases, miniatures of various spaceships are arranged. Strange masks and totems are hanged on the walls. A short, ornate staff of some sort, with each of its sides made of a different metal, has been suspended on a pedestal. A fish bowl lies on a table, but what is inside of it seems to be a miniature rain forest and as you look closer, you can see several, tiny colorful birds flying inside of it. That's when you hear the call of a bird of prey, drawing your attention to a majestic, eagle-like bird with a long tail and feathers made of fire, perched on a pedestal seemingly made for it. It looks at you with a judging, oddly intelligent look in its eyes.
"Now, now, Salvador. Be nice to guests, we don't get a lot of them," the goblin said, shaking his finger at the bird. He walked to a set of plush armchairs and a table and began to lift books off of the other chair. "Care for some tea?"
"S- sure," you say. The goblin finishes clearing the chair and motions for you to sit, before walking off to a corner that seems to function as their kitchen. You oblige somewhat hesitantly and sit on the surprisingly comfortable chair. You have never heard goblins being referred to as anything but maniacal savages with sadistic tendencies, so this character doesn't exactly incite trust in you.
The goblin soon comes back, this time holding a steaming cup. The kettle and another cup are following next to him, floating in mid-air. He sits and motions with his hand, making the cup float to your hand. The kettle comes to fill it before setting itself on the table. You taste the tea. It is sweet, fruity and quite good. The goblin looks at you from behind his glasses, a smirk on his lips due to being amused by your awkward demeanor.
"Name's Sqr'Ik by the way, in case you were wondering," he introduces himself and sips from his cup.
"Nice to meet you… Sqr'Ik. What are you doing in the Library?" you ask.
"Reading. What else? It's also a convenient place to live in for a planar traveler and scholar," he says.
"You're a scholar? What have you written?"
"Glad you asked."
In the local drinking hole of Outpost C35ODF in the Doromu'un Asteroid Belt, in which I took a pitstop on my way to the fabled Phoenix Nebula, I spotted an old man sitting alone by the bar. His weathered skin was wrinkly and dirty, his hands mere bones with skin stretched over them, and an eyepatch was covering his right eye. The man looked like he had a story to tell, so I climbed up on the barstool next to him and ordered a proper glass of rum. I introduced myself and waited for him to do the same.
"Nice to meet 'ya, whatever 'ya are. I'm the Man Who Killed The Good Bird," he told me, with a peculiar glimmer in his one good eye.
"That's a peculiar name."
"My mother didn't give it to me."
The man told me that he had been part of an expedition into an uncharted part of space long ago, when he was still young. The ship had however, ran into a hitch, as it had been struck by a solar flare, causing the ship to malfunction and stop in its tracks. The crew had been trapped like this for the good part of a week, and things were looking dire. Supplies were running low and the life support that was powered by an emergency generator, had begun to break down. That was when, from behind the star soared a beautiful sight. A creature known as a star diver. These large space animals were colorful, sleek, manta ray like creatures that moved in an undulating pattern. Just as it appeared, another solar flare formed, striking the ship. The crew prepared for the worst, but it didn't come. Instead, the feedback loop caused by the flare brought all systems back online. The crew cheered as the star diver spun gracefully, feeding of the energy released by the flare. Star divers are often thought by space sailors to be omens of good luck that appear before good things happen.
The starship powered up its engines and and continued on its way, the star diver following behind it. Most of the crew thought this to be a good thing, believing that nothing could go wrong if the creature accompanied them. However, the man who told this story me hadn't been as happy as the others about their new friend. You see, star divers eat energy and they have been sometimes known to feed on ships, much like remoras feed on sharks.
This is why, when they crossed into the uncharted part of space, signified by a large green nebula, he made a judgement call. He sneaked into the weapon's room and shot a neat hole through the creature, right before the ship crossed into the green nebula, crackling with white and blue lightning.
Nebula Phoenix
Fenix Nebulae
Population: One at a time
Habitat: Can live anywhere but usually found in space
Diet: Solar energy
Magical Properties: Capability to survive in a vacuum, reincarnation, converting its own mass into energy
Discovery: This is the creature that started my never-ending project of cataloguing every magical bird I can find. It all started on my journey through space, when I heard from a fellow scholar, an astronomer on the jungle planet of Vessux VI, that there was a strange nebula somewhere in the Cotari Sector of the galaxy, that had suddenly appeared only a few years ago, and seemed to move in an unnatural manner. It had been seen once from afar by a trading vessel, but after that, no one had been able to locate it. Obviously, I wanted to see this phenomena for myself. So I set on after the repairs for my ship were finished, and headed towards the last know location of the nebula.
It took me almost a year a track it down, but eventually, I found it. What I found, however, was no nebula. Instead, I came face to face with a gigantic bird. Shaped like a magnificent eagle, its body and wings were like an undulating, slow flame. Stardust leaked out of its feathers, its wings scattering great plumes of it as they moved. Its long tail, like a river of flame and the crest that crowned it as the king of birds, both left a trail of star stuff behind them. It looked straight at me with its eyes, fully black with small, brilliant points of light, as if they were made of space itself, and let out a magnificent cry. For a moment, I thought of it as a greeting, but upon noticing movement somewhere behind it and the gash leaking the same star stuff in its side, I realized that it had been a cry for help.
Something dark and tentacled impacted with the bird, dragging it out of view. I turned the ship to the direction they had gone and saw the bird shrieking and flailing in the vacuum of space, while a creature that looked like a giant lump with 5 long tentacles had wrapped itself around it, gnawing at the phoenix with its giant maw.
My little ship at the time hadn't been equipped with weaponry, so I struggled to come up with ways to help the poor creature. That's when it hit me. My ship was running on a solar drive and a good amount of unused solar energy had accumulated in the cells. When I put my hand on that switch, I knew that releasing all my solar energy would likely leave me stranded, since I was nowhere near a star that could be used to refuel, but I simply couldn't just stand by and watch the bird be ripped to shreds, so I pulled the switch.
A wave of orange energy spread outwards from my ship, searing the tentacled creature and pushing it off the phoenix. Yet it lived. The brief relief was enough, however, and the phoenixes wounds began to glow before sealing. It readjusted itself so that it was once again looking proud and majestic with its head held high and its wings outstretched.
The tentacled creature rushed towards it with its mouth open, but the phoenix let out a mighty call as a burst of solar energy was released from its mouth, burning a clean, charred hole through the creature, leaving it spiraling into the depths of space, unmoving.
For a moment, everything was still and I, who hadn't even realized that I had been holding back my breath, let out a sigh and slumped back in my chair. Then, the phoenix turned and began to glide through space to the other direction. I understood. It was just an animal and it had no way to know that I had essentially crippled myself to save it. At least that's what I thought, until it glanced back at me and made a slow turn to move towards me.
It impacted with the front of my ship, causing it to shake and shudder. The cockpit was filled with an orange stardust, which glimmered and flowed into every crevice and every outlet, casting a warm light over the whole room. It began to pour inside the walls and one by one, the ships systems began to come online. A small cloud of stardust remained however, hovering on the ground for a while, before materializing into the phoenix, except now it was the size of a regular eagle. It had converted the majority of its own mass into pure energy in order to save me.
After that, it just stood there, watching me. It allowed me to approach and to stroke its head, which made it push against my hand and coo slightly. It seemed that the bird had grown to like me. I assumed that it would continue on its way soon after, but instead it insisted on staying close to me. I gathered that after the previous scuffle, it was likely scared to travel on its own and wanted to come with me. I had no objections.
Its name is Salvador, and it's sleeping on my shoulder as I'm writing this in my study in the Library. It has been slowly growing in size through the years, but its going to take a very long time until it's as big as it used to be. I do not wait this with anticipation, for I know that it will have to leave me when the day comes. But until then, I appreciate the company.
When Joseph Fault, a police detective on holiday, woke up that one Thursday morning, he expected his niece's birthday to be the most exciting thing that day. That was why he was completely unprepared, when a white light so bright that he was unable to see anything else, surrounded him from all directions while he was standing next to a banquet, about to take a slice of cake that his sister had made. For a brief moment, he could hear the terrified screams of his relatives as he was turned into the human equivalent of a light bulb, but they soon faded out. Likewise, the smell of wet grass and cake disappeared and turned into a mixture of rust, smoke and the rustic smell of an old house. Then, the light disappeared and Joseph found himself standing on cobblestones instead of grass.
Looking around, he found himself to be on a large clearing, surrounded by bustling city streets and tightly packed apartment buildings, that looked like they had seen better days. Only a few of them were made out of cement, like apartment buildings usually are. Most were either wood, tiles or metal and they all had multiple chimneys, out which a thick, black smoke was billowing. Behind the rooftops, he was sure he saw a train go by, though he didn't understand why it would be so high off the ground.
Around him were people. Well, maybe not people. At least Joseph didn't think they were, for he had never seen such creatures before. Some of them were humanoid, but still clearly not human, while others looked more like beasts and some even weirder. Whatever they were, they all looked just as confused and scared as he was.
"Am I dead?" asked a clearly wounded man, who was wearing a military uniform. He looked human at first, but then he removed his helmet, revealing that instead of hair, his scalp was covered in numerous, bulging fish-like eyes.
"This is an outrage!" screamed a tall creature, whose lower body split into three thick tentacles, and who had six, thin but long arms positioned around his torso and three beak-like mouths that were pointing in different directions. Each beak had a single eye, which was positioned in the end of a flexible stalk. Its voice was high-pitched and ear piercing. "You have kidnapped Princecess Sjoidsiufuie of the Glorious Royal Hive of Toijfdjichk! My brood will lay waste to you all when they learn that I have gone missing!"
"Where's my mommy?" cried a small girl, with an oddly vibrating voice and coral for hair.
"Could everyone be silent for just a moment?" asked a man dressed in white robes, whose voice projected loud and clear as if he was talking through a megaphone, but he had nothing on him that resembled one. He was surrounded by ten creatures, who were likely guards or police based on their uniforms. Everyone seemed to listen to him, even the tall creature, who let out a small peep before falling silent.
"Thank you. My name is Jericho, I'm your welcoming agent. Welcome to the Citadel!" he said, throwing his hands in the air, as if expecting a 'hurray'. When no one reacted, he let out an awkward 'ahem' and shuffled to a large, stout building that was right next to the clearing.
"Please, form into a line in front of this door in a neatly fashion. Everything will be explained shortly. We understand you might be confused, even angry, but if you get violent, you will regret it," he said and went inside the building. The guards kept standing in their posts menacingly, and everyone complied.
One by one, the man who called himself Jericho took the people on the clearing inside and shortly after they were escorted out and into the city by someone else. Eventually, it was Joseph's turn. He was led through a white corridor into a room with a table and two chairs on either side. Jericho got up from the other to shake his hand and then motioned for him to sit in one of the chairs. Joseph complied and Jericho sat on the other side.
From up close, Joseph noticed that Jericho wasn't human either. He had pasty yellow skin, pointy years, behind of which he had tucked his long, flowing blonde hair and his eyes, which lacked pupils, were fully crimson.
"What are you, who are you and where am I?" Joseph shouted and leaned against the table. Jericho put up a hand.
"Sit down and wait a second," he said and began to mutter something under his breath, while gesturing in the air with his hand. His finger left behind a golden trail of light, forming a strange symbol, which floated for a brief moment before dissipating.
"I have just cast a truth spell. Now everyone in this room, including me, can speak nothing but the truth."
"That's bullshit! There is no such thing as magic," Joseph said, his face contorted in anger. If it wasn't for the guard standing outside the door, he would have probably attacked the odd man by now. Jericho simply chuckled.
"Have you ever broken the law?" he asked.
"Yes."
"How?"
"I used to pickpocket as a teen," Joseph said, confused. He had been unable to say anything else.
"See? Now, its my time to answer some of your questions."
Joseph calmed down a little. "What is this place? Why am I here?"
"This is the Citadel. You were pulled here from your own dimension by the city itself," Jericho explained.
"Why?"
"No one knows. The Citadel periodically brings seemingly random people here from all over the multiverse."
"Well, how do I get back?"
"You can't."
Those two words hit Joseph like a brick. He slumped back in his chair, silent. One would think that in that situation a person would think about how they will likely never see their family again, or how people back home would likely think that they're dead, and those thoughts did come to Joseph, but only later. In that moment, in that chair, the only thing he could think about was how he had never gotten to taste the cake that his sister had made. That's when he realized that he was still holding a ceramic plate.
"I was in that chair once. Everyone here has, except those who were born here. Everyone here has been stolen from their world. No one knows who made this place, or why it does what it does. And despite the countless efforts, no one here knows how to get back," Jericho continued.
"I'm sorry, I truly am. But in time you will adjust. I'm part of the Adjustment Agency, our job is to make that process faster. If you don't mind, if you could answer a few of my questions, I'll assign you a job and a place to live."
Joseph just nodded.
"Name?"
"Joseph Fault."
"Previous occupation?"
"Police detective."
That seemed to make Jericho happy. He scribbled something into a notebook.
"Any illnesses, deformities or other health concerns?"
"I'm allergic to fish."
"Alright, I'm not putting you in Sector 34 then. Lots of amphibians there."
Jericho flipped through his notebook for a few minutes, before nodding firmly.
"Give me your hand, palm up," he said. Joseph complied and Jericho put his hand on Joseph's wrist.
"This is gonna hurt," he said, before muttering something. Jericho's hand began to glow orange, turning searing hot. Joseph screamed as steam rose from between Jericho's fingers. When he pulled away, his wrist had been adorned with a tattoo, facing towards Joseph. In the upper left corner of the tattoo was a stylized number 5, and in the upper right corner of that was a smaller 6, like an exponent. Underneath those was the image of a magnifying glass, its handle right below the 5 and the circular glass right next to the 6. Below all of them was 'MMM'.
"You will live in Sector 56. Not one of the fancy sectors but you could do much worse. You'll work as a police detective in the precinct there. A house has been picked out for you. Like everyone, you will start out with 3000 points, which is our form of currency. How you use them is up to you. You can go now. An agent is waiting for you outside, they will escort you to your new home," Jericho said. Joseph nodded, got up and stepped outside into the morning air of the Citadel. A large creature, three meters in size was waiting for him outside. It had a short trunk like that of a tapir, and long tusks like an elephant. It's skin was green and covered in rocky warts.
"Hi there! Let's get you settled shall we?" it said, and started to lead him away from the clearing, deeper into the city that he would eventually learn to call home. "I'll show you around the city while we're at it."
My name is Joseph Fault. Six months ago I was pulled out of my home dimension by some unfathomable force and vomited out in to a city that makes no sense. Magic is used here like any household tool, there is a day-and-night cycle despite the fact that there is no sun in the sky, my next door neighbor is a grumpy old snail lady and most importantly, everyone here has had the same fate. None of us know who build the city, or how to get out of here. It seems to go on forever, because we are constantly finding new streets and blocks that didn't seem to be there before. Since there's no one to explain anything, we've had to figure out how everything works by ourselves. I'm new here and the society that has formed has existed for a long time already, but the way things work here is still barely understood, which means that accidents and glitches happen in some Sector or another almost every day. On top of that, the population here is made of hundreds of different kinds of beings from widely different societies. One can only imagine the kinds of problems that arise from a situation like this. Except if you're me, a police detective, whose job is to deal with the aftermath of some of those problems.
So, when I was awaken one morning by the sound of an epimeliad shouting at a fruit vendor on the street below and the presence of a tax gremlin next to my bed, I knew it was going to be a long day.
I sighed heavily as I flopped my arm off the side of my bed and allowed the gremlin, which was technically a homunculi, to deduct the appropriate amount of points from my wrist tattoo. After it was done, it scuttled away and out of my window to find some other poor bastard to bug, leaving me to lay in my bed, considering just going back to sleep and skipping the whole day altogether. Then I laid my eyes on the ceramic plate that I had affixed to the wall opposite to my bed, causing images of my family, my home, and everything that I had left behind to flood my mind. Not wanting to wallow in self-pity, I pushed those thoughts aside and got up, grabbing my wand from my nightstand and my trench coat from the coat hanger, before heading out the door.
At the same time my neighbor, Sloorghis, slithered out of their apartment, dressed in a pink woolshirt that covered the part of her body that was upright and not dragging behind her. Another neighbor stepped out of the elevator and when Sloorghis saw that I was going for it, she muttered a word and gestured with her hand, teleporting in a blue flash to the elevator and pressing the button for downstairs before I had the time to get in.
"Seriously? You have like five Kytelers in your body and you use them for that? We would have both fit!" I shouted and she responded by wrinkling her slimy face at me from between the closing doors, making her over-sized glasses raise a smidgen. I grumbled and went down the stairs instead, stepping so that I crossed two steps with each gait.
In the lobby downstairs, Sloorghis came back inside after having fetched her issue of the Citadel Star, the local newspaper, which I also snatched from my mailbox outside while passing by, reading the headlines while I walked.
'Scandal in the latest Arrival! Egregious negligence of cnidarian biology by the Adjustment Agency!'
'This is how Ct'Oth'Theron keeps her bioluminescent sacks bright and beautiful!'
'Friction building between Ikendons and Tergaans. "We refuse to live in the same city as our former slavers," says the founder of the Justice for Ikedons movement.'
On approaching the train station, a raised platform made of brass on the side of the street, I rolled the newspaper up and tucked it under my armpit, planning to continue it in the train. However, as I was about to walk up the steps to the platform, an ashen colored man with no nose and six arms, who was dressed in a conductors uniform, stopped me in my tracks.
"Sorry sir, trains in this Sector don't go today. There has been a malfunction. Our technicians are trying to solve the problem as we speak."
"A malfunction? What is there to malfunction? They move in mid-air for god's sake!"
"Actually, they move on an invisible, non-corporeal tether made of aether. We think the malfunction has something to do with a disruption in the ley lines," the man explained.
"I'm gonna be late for work."
"Sorry sir, there's nothing I can do," he said and I walked away, throwing the newspaper in to a trashcan as I went. There was no way I could have gotten to the precinct in time by walking, so I decided to jog rest of the way, only looking wistfully at the pastries set on display in the window of Wizard Glaze, where I would have bought my breakfast from if I had had time.
Practically bursting through the doors of the precinct I was met with a familiar chaos. People were rushing from place to place, files and pieces of paper in hand. Four police officers were doing their best in keeping a mean looking troll restrained, trying to steer it towards one of the holding cells. Through the glass walls of the lab, the police diviners could be seen panicking over some defensive rune in a piece of evidence that they had accidentally triggered, causing maniacal spectral gargoyles to manifest and start dashing around and trashing the place by throwing papers, knocking things of the shelves and biting peoples earlobes. Brilliant rays of multicolored light shot across the room as all the mages in the building were trying to get the pesky creatures under control, turning the precinct into something akin to psychedelic magic rave where the music was replaced by screaming.
"Where in the seven suns have you been?" roared the police chief as xe huddled towards me, a translucent impish creature furiously gnawing at xer antlers.
"I'm so sorry boss, I didn't know that the trains weren't working today so I had to take a longer…" I explained but was cut off as a screaming officer was flung across the room like a sack of potatoes by the lumbering troll, prompting another officer to unload a charged spell to its back. After the thrown officer got up and it was certain that they were okay, the chief turned back towards me.
"I don't care. Just get to the teleportation circle, you're needed at a crime scene," xe said and huddled away shouting and screaming at something. I made my way through the chaos, dodging between spells and gargoyles, almost getting hit by an incantation that I knew due to an unfortunate incident a few weeks back would have turned my skin into a lattice of purple truffles.
The conjuration technician of the teleportation room gave me an amused look, as I slammed the door behind me and let out a deep sigh while pressed against it, relieved about getting out of the chaos.
"Heading out to the drug den?" she asked from behind her desk.
"I don't know, the chief didn't ever actually tell me," I responded.
"Well that's where they are needing a detective at."
"Alright," I said and stepped into the circle that had been etched into the floor along with arcane runes that extended out of it in a spiraling pattern. The technician placed one of her five hands on to the stony desk and uttered an ancient word. The runes and the circle began to radiate a blue glow, briefly before a swirling vortex of energy raised up from the ground, enveloping me. I felt electrified as the magical energy flowed through me, tearing me inside out and unmaking my synapses, shattering my very soul into a countless number of quantum aspects, scattered across the universe. I was everywhere and nowhere at once. Then everything was pulled back together in a fluid-stained velvet room that smelled like herbs and regret.
The room, likely a VIP section due to being separated from the rest of the establishment by a purple curtain, now pulled aside, was relatively small. Plush pillows had been piled onto the sides and a single hookah, intricately decorated with swirling patterns made of gold, rested in the middle of the room. The main attraction, however, was the carve up body of a gremlin, splayed on the side, their long tongue lulling out from between sharp teeth, drooping onto the ground similar to their floppy ears. Their pudgy torso had been opened up and the organs and intestines that were supposed to be inside the body, had been gooped out and were now scattered across the room, being poked at by a short humanoid avian dressed in a lab coat.
"What do we know?" I asked Chickoo, our forensic scientist. With a surprised chirp her azure-colored face turned to look at me with her large, yellow eyes.
"Not a lot," she said. "We know this guy was Silsin Suavelli. The brother of Cadoosin Suavelli, the head of the gremlin mafia here in the Rust."
I let out a whistle, gradually decreasing in pitch to signal surprise. "Not a nobody then," I said, looking at the lifeless, slightly clouded eyes of Silsin, set deeply into the eye sockets of his, grey, warty face. His death would likely result in the Suavelli crime family, who were already a huge thorn in the police departments flesh, causing even more problems. "What else?"
"Well, from the looks of it the carving was actually done after his death. Mr. Suavelli here had been sniffing imp fumes, but someone had replaced the usual flame imp in the hookah with a rot imp. Those things kill everything they touch," she said. I looked into the hookah, though for just a moment, as the horrible stench of the small, emaciated, cyst-filled corpse of the winged creature caused my stomach to convulse.
"That was a bad idea," I rasped from between coughs. After clearing out my throat a couple times I squatted down to look closer at the hollowed-out body. "The organs are still here, so this couldn't have been about organ harvesting. Was this some sort of statement or was there something else inside this guy that the murderer wanted?" I pondered. "Do we have any idea who the perpetrator was?"
"Not at the moment. According to the staff he was in here alone. No one was seen entering the room before he was already dead. Aside from the circle we put up, there aren't even any lingering energies that would indicate the usage of teleportation magic," she explained. I looked around the room, searching for any possible entrances or exits. There were no windows, as the owners of a drug den usually don't want anyone to see what goes on inside their establishment. Besides the curtained door frame, there was only a small vent, the size and shape of a brick, close to the ceiling in the far right corner.
"Is there any way the killer could have entered through there?" I asked, pointing at the vent. Chickoo looked and pondered for a brief moment, stroking her chin feathers with her clawed hand.
"There are species in the Citadel that could fit through there if that cover would be removed," she declared. "Give me a boost," she said and I took a hold of her wingpits and lifted her up so she could have a closer look at the vent.
After some inspecting that involved pecking and poking at the seams and the bolts, as well as some arcane incantations, Chickoo told me to put her down. After she was firmly on the ground, she made a gesture with her hand and let out a complex series of chirps and whistles, a type of magic unique to her species. There was a flash, the color of honey in her eyes and the bolts of the vent undid themselves, arranging neatly on the ground along with the vent cover. With them, flew out a sea blue booklet.
"So, the cover hasn't been touched. Meaning that the killer didn't remove it. However, I removed it because I saw that behind it," she said and pointed at the booklet. On it's cover, was a stylized drawing of a kraken and the name 'Umbral Trench' above it. Leafing through the booklet, I found names and dates, likely performers and the dates of their shows.
"So, the killer did come through there, but without removing the cover. I wonder how," I said. "Do you know where this is?" I asked and showed her the booklet.
"No, but I bet the people who work here do."
Stepping out of the room into the main den, it became clear why such a disgusting cesspool of a room would ever be considered VIP, for the rest of the establishment was even more revolting. Parts of the stained, striped tapestry had been torn off, revealing the brown plaster beneath. In one corner, the ceiling tapestry was sagging as a result of gathered rainwater that had leaked through the foundation. The air was thick and humid to the point that moving through it caused resistance. To say the smell was pungent would be an understatement.
The staff were an equally worn down looking sort. All of them looked malnourished and sickly, likely due to being high on various different drugs 24/7. The highly magical nature of many of the Citadel's narcotics had also affected many of them in other, more peculiar ways. Calcification of the skin, large, drooping blue tongues, imp-like horns curving upwards from the forehead, constantly shifting eye colors and more. Only one looked somewhat healthy. A stout, obese man with pale flesh and large horns, dressed in an ornate vest which drooped over his blubbering stomach, a red fez and purple harem pants, who was apparently in the process of arguing with an officer. I presumed them to be the owner of the den.
"Does anybody here know where I can find something called the Umbral Trench?"
A dozen bloodshot eyes locked on me. Some of them looked like they were about to say something, opening and closing their mouths like a fish trying to breathe out of water, but then they diverted their paranoid gaze to some random corner, mumbling something to themselves.
"Unfortunately. The fucking over-sized fish stick that owns that seizure inducing shit hole has been a stave up my ass for as long as I've done business here," a shrill voice called out as the horned man stepped closer.
"Who are you and what do you know about that place?" I asked.
"What's this information worth to you?" he asked, narrowing his beady, pure-black eyes.
"We won't put you to prison for 10 years."
"My name is Bulboon Shiztin, I'm the owner of this humble establishment. The Umbral Trench is, well tries to be at least, a club not far from here. It also works as a base for a lot of black market operations. It has been stealing my customers because people rather buy drugs from a place that has music and booze and people to get laid with," he explained, wrinkling his stubby nose out of annoyance.
"Could you take me there?"
"Anything for our loyal law enforcement," Bulboon said with a forced smile.
He led me out to the quite sad street scene of the Rust, marked by tall, rusted apartment buildings with broken windows and collapsed roofs, broken pavement and burning dumpsters, surrounded by shady folk who eyed everyone suspiciously and openly displayed knives and sometimes even gnarly wands made of bone or iron wire. People passed out on the side of the street or being robbed in broad daylight were a common sight here. Not being able to interfere was killing me inside, but I simply had to focus on keeping my wand and badge hidden, for revealing oneself to be a cop was equal to suicide here. As a human I already had a target on my back, for many of the residents here were members of races such as vampires, ogres, adlets, tiyanaks, yara-ma-yha-whos, and even humans with the curse of the wendigo, that considered my kind to be a delicacy.
Bulboon led me through the streets for a few blocks, until he stopped in front of a short staircase ending in a thick lead door, that went down below the street.
"There it is. You're on your own now, cuz I'm not going in there. Good luck!" he said and started to walk away. I sighed and walked down the stairs, knocking on the door loudly. A rectangle slot slid open and a orange, glowing eye peeked out.
"How much for entrance?" I asked and another slot in the middle of the door slid open, a small, green hand poking out of it. I grabbed the hand and looked at the point counter on my wrist tick down, as whoever was on the other side of the room drained my entrance fee of 200 points. With a loud clang, the door opened, revealing a small goblin and a large, shaggy buggane that chuckled as I walked past them into a short hallway, in the end of which was yet another stairwell. However, this one was considerably longer, as it circled around itself multiple times, spiraling down to the depths of the earth in an uneven pattern.
Eventually, it opened up onto a platform overlooking a large cavern, filled with people. The ceiling was enchanted to look as if an enormous ocean was kept back from flooding the space by a thin glass, creating a shifting pattern that cascaded over everything. Will'o'wisps of various blinking colors floated in the ceiling, throwing spotlights over the space, focusing especially on the large, raised stage in the middle, on which was a band and a singer, surrounded by dancers in skimpy clothing. Around the stage and dotted in various other places around the cavern, there were bars, handing out drinks to people in rapid succession. On the sides were what looked like market stalls with weapons, drugs, magical trinkets and various other questionable products being sold and bought. Even the walls were inhabited, for there were staircases that lead to large balconies, decorated with plush seating and sometimes even doorways leading into private chambers, where secret deals and meetings between guild bosses most certainly took place. Openings similar to the one I stood in were littered around the cavern walls as well, suggesting that there were more than one way to get in and out of this place.
Stepping into the crowd was disorienting at first. I kept bumping into everyone in the constantly moving crowd while not making much progress. After some trial and error, however, I got hang of the flow of the crowd, and slowly learned how to move between the partygoers. There were occasional stationary areas, usually around the bars, stalls or the hang-out areas marked by stained, old couches, that provided chances to catch my breath. I made my way towards the main bar around the stage, dodging shady merchants and people obviously looking for trouble on my way.
Eventually I managed to sit on a bar stool and order a drink of the menu, which had been propped behind the bar in bright neon lights. It advertised drinks named things like 'Unbound Abyss of The Mind' or 'Blood of the Deep'. The bartender was a conical creature with five insectoid eyes and a non-constant number of tentacles, which it used to mix various questionable ingredients, at least 40% of which I think were drugs, together. At one point, I think it vomited a green slime of some sort out of one of its orifices into a drink. I ordered a simple honeywhiskey, which was the only thing I recognized of the menu. Upon receiving my glass, however, I discovered it to contain a oil-colored maggot of some sort with a human-like face, which was still alive, swimming in the alcohol, so I obviously returned the drink and ordered another one, specifying this time that I wanted it without the maggot, which raised a slight, guttural hissing sound out of the bartender.
"Have you ever wanted someone to just drop dead, really badly?" I asked the thug sitting next to me, putting on my best tough guy face. His bald head, covered in constantly shifting scars, didn't move, but his black eyes slid across the surface of his face to look at straight at me.
"Strange question from a stranger," answered a strangely vibrating, deep voice.
"Just trying to get a sense of how things are done here."
"Hrm. New blood I assume?" the man asked.
"Yeah. Came in last weeks Arrival," I lied.
"I see. You should talk to the man who is falling apart," he said before getting up and walking away.
The man who is falling apart, I repeated in my mind while heading back to the shifting crowd, looking for anyone fitting the description. Heading towards the back of the space, I noticed a large set of doors in the far-end of the cavern. A wide, semicircular but short set of stairs led up to the semicircular clearing in front of the doors, which had been decorated with a large carving of a cephalopod of some sort. It had been done in such a way, that it looked as if it was laying on top of the door, with its tentacles wrapped around it. On the clearing, stood a menacing group of people. All of them, aside from one, were nanaues, large, muscular shark-people. The nanaues were arranged around a lither man. He was dressed in a stripy, gold-black suit and tie, and he was leaning against an ornate cane. More notable, however, was that his body seemed to be in a constant cycle of being destroyed and rebuilt. His flesh would break apart into clouds of ash and strands of meat, and then immediately reform again. The man did not seem too bothered about his condition.
Two of the nanaues stepped in front of me, looking menacingly down their snouts.
"What do we have here? Speak your mind!" said the man behind them, his raspy voice weakening as his body decayed.
"I was told that I should come to you if I ever wanted somebody… out of the picture," I said to the man, trying my best to act as if the hulking sharkmen capable of ripping me apart with their bare hands weren't there. The man chuckled.
"I see. Follow me, please," he said and began walking towards the big doors. The nanaues in front of me parted, while another pair took hold of the large steel bars that had been attached to the door as handles, pulling the doors open. The room behind them was pitch black.
"After you," the man said, gesturing towards the opening with his cane. It was at this point that I knew, that I had walked into a trap. Looking at the people around me, I also knew, that escaping was not an option. So, I stepped through and behind me, the doors slammed shut, trapping me in pure darkness, with no other companion except the laughter of the man falling apart, that echoed momentarily through whatever space I was in, before dissipating. Or so I thought.
Drip.
I felt something wet drop on my shoulder. In the darkness, I heard something shift. With a trained hand, I pulled out my wand in a split second, ready to protect myself, but at the same time, something whipped at my hand, throwing my weapon into the shadows. The clattering of wood against cobblestone only barely hid the sound of my scared whimper.
"What do we have here?" asked a deep, but smooth voice from somewhere above me.
"Answer me, little one. What brings you to my humble establishment? You're not a cop, are you?" the voice asked.
"No, of course not, I was simply-" I managed to say before I was cut off, as a sudden bright light blinded me. Startled, I fell to the ground.
"DO NOT LIE TO ME!" bellowed the giant octopus suspended from the ceiling. It's leathery body was dark blue in coloration, dotted with white, bioluminescent spots. Its large red eyes looked straight at me as it slowly lowered its body towards me.
"You think you can come to my house and stick your filthy ape nose where it doesn't belong? Tell me why I shouldn't fill your veins with seawater and suspend your body from the ceiling for everyone to see, until your body grays and bloats and decays. It would be a great way to set an example of what happens to cops who don't know how to respect boundaries, don't you think?" the kraken said.
"Please, you don't have to do that. I'm just trying to solve a murder!" I pleaded.
"A murder, hmm? People have their lights snuffed out every day in the Rust. What makes this one so special?"
"The victim was Silsin Suavelli," I said. The creatures expression was hard to read, but based on the change of its stature, the mention of that name seemed to lessen its anger somewhat.
"Ahh, the second brother. Let the Deep hold his soul safe in the darkness," it said solemnly. "This does change things. Why did you come here?"
"The murderer left behind a booklet of this place."
"I see. Cangriss will take you to the Grandmother. She might know who you are looking for. However, there is a condition."
"What is it?" I asked, before something slimy dropped from the ceiling onto my face. It shrieked and quickly slither inside my mouth. I gagged and wretched, trying to get the thing out, but it was no use. There was a sharp pain in the back of my throat, and then an odd, throbbing sensation in my temples.
"What the fuck was that!?"
"One of my breed, of course. Through it, I will be able to observe through you when you find out who the killer is. Do not worry, it will not harm you, unless I want it to, of course," it explained.
"Why does this interest you?" I asked, while massaging my sore throat.
"That is none of your business. Go on now," it said and pushed the doors open with its huge tentacle. "Cangriss! Take this fine man to the Grandmother."
Gingerly, but briskly, I walked out, grabbing my wand on the way out. One of the nanaues grabbed my shoulder and pushed me along, as the man who was falling apart, whose name was apparently Cangriss, began to lead the way through the crowd, which seemed to part in front of him, with even the toughest looking thugs eyeing him cautiously.
I was led to the bottom of a staircase, which had been carved to the side of the cavern, and which led to one of the balconies I saw before. The balcony, decorated with plush, but stained velvet sofas, was occupied by a handful of figures. All of them were lithe, tall and covered from head to toe in torn and dirty, dark rags, which seemed to slither and move when not directly looked at. I could feel their eyes silently following my every move as I approached, despite the fact that their face was completely obscured.
One of them moved in front of me, just as I was about to step on the balcony. Bowing down, it set its face right in front of mine, clogging my sinuses with the smell of wet earth and old dust. I couldn't hear it breathe.
"I- I'm here to see the Grandmother," I said. The being in front of me stayed put for a solid few seconds, before it moved aside and wordlessly gestured towards an entryway, covered by a beaded curtain, which lead deeper into another side cavern. Trying to ignore the silent creatures and the warm humidity that radiated from them, I walked past them and pushed the strands of the curtain aside, making them rattle as I stepped through.
The entryway lead to a small, circular cavern, illuminated by a warm glow emanating from a series of floating candles. The sides of the space were dominated by piles upon piles of gold, magical talismans and other riches. In the center, there was an intricately carved mahogany table with chairs and in the back there was a kitchen counter, with cupboards and a stove, on top of which was a whistling teapot. Another entryway opened in to a corridor which lead even deeper.
"Hello?" I called.
"Is that a visitor I hear?" answered a faint sound from somewhere afar. There was a wet sound and then a bloodcurdling scream from somewhere down the corridor, before a figure stepped in to the space I was in.
To my surprise, the person walking out from the shadows was a human. More specifically, a short, elderly human woman, with curly grey hair tied into a large knot and a large patchwork quilt drooped over her hunched shoulders.
"Oh! Hello deary," she said with a wide, warm smile. "Please, sit down," she continued and huddled over to the counter. I did as I was told.
"Would you like some tea?" she asked over her shoulder.
"Yes, please," I answered, as saying no to her didn't seem like a good idea. Humming an upbeat tune, she walked over to the table and poured both of us a cup, before setting the pot in the middle of the table and sitting across to me. Cautiously, I took a sip of the liquid in the cup, which thankfully proved to be perfectly normal, rather good green tea.
"So, what brings you to the Grandmother?" she asked after taking a painfully slow sip, caused by her obviously shaky and unsteady hands.
"I'm trying to find somebody. The owner of this fine establishment told me that you might know who I am looking for."
"Oh, you've met Klarasin, huh?" she asked, while trying to take another sip.
"Yeah. I am sort of on an assignment for him, I guess," I said, somewhat unsure of my own situation.
"Ah, I see. Did the big old meanie put one of those things inside of you, hmm?" she asked and giggled, uneven teeth flashing from between her chopped lips. Akwardly, I agreed, clearing my throat as I suddenly felt the creature in my head move. The Grandmother giggled.
"Come on then, don't be coy. Tell me, who are you looking for?" she asked, still smiling.
"I don't have a name, or any other information for that matter. All I know is that they murdered Silsin Suavelli. It seems like they got into the room through a vent, without breaking it and without using any magic," I explained. The Grandmother listened, and then fell silent with an expression of thought on her round, wrinkled face.
"Yes, I know who did that. He's one of mine, though Silsin wasn't authorized by me. This is rather bad," she said, her worn face suddenly contorting in concern.
"I'm sorry, one of yours?" I asked.
"One of my guild members. Did Klarasin not tell you that I run the largest assassin guild in the Citadel?" she said, chuckling.
"No, he didn't mention that."
"Well, I do. Which is why this is bad. I can't have my underlings running rogue, and killing an influential member of one of the most powerful groups of organized crime in the Citadel makes this a travesty. There's gonna be blood on the streets, my boy," she said, intensely staring me in the eyes.
"I'm sorry, would you like some cookies with that?" she asked after a second of silence, returning her warm, smiling demeanor.
"Uhh, I'm not feeling very hungry right now. If you could tell me where to find this guy, I'll leave and stop bothering you."
"Oh, that's nonsense. You're not bothering me, I appreciate the company. It's not like my grandchildren could visit me anymore," she said and chuckled, even though something in her clouding eyes betrayed something broken, for just a moment.
"But, you probably have places to be, young as you are. Always in a hurry. Information isn't free, though, my dear boy."
"What's the price?"
"A favor. A promise. One that I will someday come to claim," she said, before walking closer and leaning forward on the table. "And when the Grandmother knocks, you better answer."
I gulped. "Y- yes. I promise."
"Good!" she said and sat back in her chair. "The man you are looking for is called Harrow. He's a yarn golem. Lives just a few blocks away in a worn down hotel called the Unseen Memories of the Ginx. Shouldn't be too hard to find. Big, obnoxious sign," she told me, sipping on tea.
"Thank you! This has been… great, but I really have to go now," I said and got up, turning to leave.
"Thank you for keeping an old lady company! And don't let the Ragmen bully you too much on your way out, they like to look scary but are really nice people when you get to know them. Very loyal. Not very good conversation partners, though," rambled the woman behind me, as I stepped through the beaded curtain into the big, noisy cavern. Slowly, but steady, I made my way back towards the entrance. Hearing the loud music fade as I ascended the dark stairwell was incredibly comforting, but it was nothing compared to seeing the sky upon exiting. I let out a loud, powerful sigh and took a minute to cool down, before continuing towards the big, red, magically projected sign that was barely visible from behind a row of flaking buildings.
Upon approaching the sorry excuse of a hotel, a triangular building, literally half of which was stained by water damage, I actually glimpsed the image of a red humanoid made of rope, peaking from between a curtain, before quickly disappearing. Afraid that they would attempt to escape, I began to run, practically bursting through the entrance. Ascending the stairs, I hopped three mattress covered steps with each gait, until I reached the level I saw Harrow on. To my surprise, however, the door to the room he was in had been literally ripped to shreds.
I drew my wand, as I slowly approached the remains of a doorway. Before stepping through, I whispered an arcane word, extending the final consonant to prevent the spell from releasing. I quickly stepped in to the room, wand extended. Disappointed, I lowered it and allowed the arcane energy to sizzle out upon seeing what was in the room.
On the floor, remained the scattered, shredded remains of what used to be Harrow, covered in a strange, black substance. In the same substance, a message had been carved on the wall above the bed, reading:
"THE CITADEL WILL BURN AGAIN"
The Citadel never sleeps. While its diurnal citizens retreat to their beds for the night, the day is just beginning for the nocturnal residents. It doesn't matter what time of day you are out and about, the streets will always be bustling with life and businesses are always open. This also means, that those who prefer the darkness for other than purely biological reasons can easily hide in the crowd, which is why no one notices the living shadow crawl through the sewer grate and slither underneath the feet and tentacles of honest citizens going about their night.
Three redcaps and a treefolk are standing under a fire escape on an alleyway, looking around nervously. The treefolk, who has tucked their hands between the roots that comprised their body, is lazily kicking a wall.
"Where the fuck is this guy?" hisses one of the redcaps, while twirling a finger bone in their claws.
"I have a bad feeling about this. Maybe we should go back," says another, in between of gnawing on the remains of a ratatoskr in his uneven, needle-like teeth.
"Shut the fuck up, both of you," growls the third, who has a badly healed scar where his left eye should be, while a shadow climbs up the wall and materializes into a man, dressed in a black coat and hood, squatting on the railing of the fire escape, unnoticed by the group.
"What a lovely evening, wouldn't you say?" says a smooth voice from under the hood, causing the figures below to jump back and look up.
"What took you so long?" asks the scarred one, trying to hide the shakiness in his voice.
Amidst the dancing people, one could see shady transactions, murders and meetings between gang leaders take place.
Stepping into the crowd was disorienting at first, for all the people jumping and flailing made it difficult to see very far, and I kept getting pushed to every direction at once. After a while though, I was able to figure out that there was an erratic logic of sorts to the movement here that everyone seemed to follow, which made moving through the crowd easy once understood. I made my way through to one of the bars, staffed by some sort of conical creature with multiple eyes and tentacles.
"What's the best you have?" I asked and the creature responded by vomiting a thick, green liquid into a glass, which it handed out to me.
"So… if someone wanted to, let's say, hire an assassin here, where would they want to go?" I asked while trying not to throw up. The creature refused to acknowledge me after that. I kept going from bar to bar, zigzagging, my way through the cavern, asking the same from each bartender I came across. However, none of them refused to give me any information. While leaving from the seventh, I felt a powerful hand grab my shoulder.
"I think you should come with me," growled a hoarse voice from behind me. Without saying anything, I let them push me along to the very back of the cavern, where a large staircase lead up to a platform with a large door built into the wall. Upon approaching, two shark-like nanaues positioned on both sides of the door pulled it open with a loud scraping sound and the one behind me pushed me through. There was a loud bang, as the doors closed behind me, leaving me in complete darkness.
"Who do we have here?" asked a softly spoken voice from somewhere above me. I felt paralyzed by fear, unable to respond as the feeling of terror raised in the back of my throat. ¨
"Who are you, where are you?" I asked, desperately looking around, trying to find the source of the voice.
"My name is Klarasin. I am the humble owner of this establishment."
"What do you want from me?"
"I hear you've been asking a lot of questions. You're not a cop, are you?" Klarasin asked.
"N- no," I was able to force out, my voice shaking.
"DO NOT LIE TO ME!" the voice bellowed and the room was lit by a blinding, blue light, which caused me to lose balance and fall on my back out of surprise. Peeking through my fingers as I tried to cover my eyes, I could see the silhouette of a large form shifting in the ceiling. As my eyes adjusted to the light, I found this form to be that of an enormous dark blue octopus suspended in the ceiling with large red eyes and multiple bioluminescent spots that were the source of the light.
"You come to my house, thinking I wouldn't notice you digging your filthy ape nose where it doesn't belong. Tell me why I shouldn't rip you apart right now?" it asked, squinting its large red eyes.
"Please, I'm just trying to solve a murder," I pleaded.
"Really?" it asked, their voice slightly calmer now. "Tell me, whose light was snuffed today? Speak!//" it commanded.
"Silsiin Suavelli's," I said and it laughed a deep, bellowing chuckle that made the room shake.
"Ahh, the second brother. Let the Deep hold his soul safe in the darkness," it said solemnly. "This does change things. Why did you come looking here?"
"The murderer left behind a booklet of this place," I explained.
"I see. Cangriss will take you to the Grandmother. She might know who you are looking for. However, there is a condition. Once you find whoever did this, you come back to me. Is that understood?" Kharasin asked, a hint of threat in their voice.
Confused and dazed, I agreed and the thugs outside opened the doors and let me out. One of them, the same one who had led me here, began to show way. He led me now towards one of the staircases carved from the side of the cavern, that led to a large balcony, on which armed folks who hid their forms under large wraps of cloth stood guard.
"Klarasin has sent him to meet with the Grandmother," said Cangriss to the figures, who parted, letting me through.
I walked through the doorway in the back of the balcony, into a lavish stone chamber. A large bed covered in velvet and with an intricate frame made of brass, stood in the end of the chamber. Chests bursting with coin had been placed on the sides, despite the Citadel not even using physical currency. In the middle, there was a large table made of dark oak, and hunched on one of the chairs around it was a figure very much out of place in all this luxury. They were covered in a rugged gray cowl, from which silvery white hair spilled out like seaweed stuck to the side of a laituri.