Path decided, I hurried out from the mountain. I doubted the tribe was organized enough to mount a manhunt just yet, but no sense giving them extra time.
For further safety I did the exact opposite of any sensible goblin and hooked straight for the east. There wasn’t a hard border to the human and goblin dominated areas of the Devlon mountains, but that didn’t mean there were no trends. The further east the more humans, and the quicker they’d rustle up some adventurers to sic on your ass, or just raise their own posse.
The mountains made them tough. A Devman could put an arrow through you from the next mountain over, so any goblin knew better than to head east without keeping their head down.
Not only was it a good opportunity to test out my disguise, but any large hunting patrol following me would be quickly noticed.
Calling it a disguise might be a bit generous. Really I was just wrapping rags around myself somewhat more than usual. The important part was that none of my skin be showing. Folding back my ears and bandaging over them felt like tying my legs together, but hobbling myself would be worth it if it blinded the humans as much as I hoped.
With that done and my face completely covered I could pass from a distance, especially from the corner of the eye. Not great, but about what I was expecting. I was sneaky, not invisible. All I needed was for a single glance to not raise an immediate alarm. If I added some padding for a hunched back I’d actually be closer in size to a short human than a tall goblin.
With that tested I let my ears loose again. Any disguise was better in crowded areas with less individual scrutiny, but the better hearing was better in the woods. I kept my hood over my ears, which combined with my half-finished transformation to break my silhouette away from the goblin standard.
And tying my ears down itched.
I hit the earliest Devlon settlements and circled them by a few miles. Their thatched roofs stuck out from the melting snow, woolly herds huddled around them to shelter from the wind. Even those sheep were brave enough to charge a lion, and their shepherds were no better. They’d seen enough goblins in their day to be suspicious, disguises were better suited to stopping suspicion from arising than they were stopping it once it’d started. They were best given a wide berth.
A day after that I hit the road and trailed it out of the mountains. It settled in at their base and hugged their curves as it circled around the peaks, little offshoots branching out to the other Devlon villages above.
The road only widened as the mountains drooped. It was at their lowest point that its largest off shoot sprouted. I was already walking on the south edge, but as the first sign of massed human activity came into view I edged off into the full brush.
Even planning to enter a human city, I still couldn’t bring myself to walk openly where so many men had tread.
And many men indeed had tread here. The rock hard dirt was ended, pounded down to mud beneath countless boots.
Slipping around the crossroads I got a good vision of their destination. It was clear to see that they’d not taken my path, but had turned north here, at the shallowest point in the range. It was the only place on the south side that could possibly bear the passage of so many.
Of an army.
And an army was exactly what I could see. Ancient towers rested over the pass with the hurried scaffolding of new construction clinging to them. Below it miles of tents spilled down the mountain like blood from its corpse.
From the peak of the tower hung a dozen banners I neither knew nor cared to know, but above them all hung the banner of the Dawngold Church.
The humans were rallying to retake the Iabian isthmus. Everything Drakul had fought to take snatched back. The great tribe of conquest broken and sent scurrying back into the mountains.
If Drakul’s death hadn’t broken them already.
I turned and moved on. I’d been right to go for a human city. Their was no way I’d evade them forever with an entire crusade dedicated to rooting out goblins.
The fear put me to flight, and I even tied down my ears properly. They ached after just an hour and itched like hell, but the memory of that banner killed any foolishness. Any god was bad news, but human gods were worse than most and the Dawngold Church was the worst of them all. Most gods would only hunt goblins in their territory, where their worshipers lived and could hunt them. The Dawngold decreed its faithful do far more, go far further, than any local god. They hadn’t been unheard of even before Drakul’s war, their zealotry sending the occasional fanatic haring off into the mountains where any old goblin could smack them in the back of the head with a rock and score some great loot.
It appeared that sending in idiots to die alone was no longer sufficient. Now they had to send in an entire army of them. I hoped they met the same fate, but I wasn’t about to make this my problem.
I hung by the side of the road as I trekked onward, popping back into the woods to dodge a handful of troop columns. I didn’t recognize any of their banners, but I did my best to remember them. If I was going to be spending more time in human lands it would do me good to know which factions were most eager to kill goblins.
None of them had more than two hundred men, and none of them saw me. They seemed more concerned about being left behind than any chance of goblin infiltrators behind their lines. After a week or so even that tapered off.
I was meditating hours every night just to keep my soul stable and I knew I couldn’t keep it up forever. I could only double down and hope I reached Seagri before I lost control for good. Now had those soldiers been complaining about a week long march or two…
Tragically the state of goblin cartography was not up to the task.
That night I was trying to squeeze out a few extra miles before stopping when I saw a hazy light spilling out onto the road.
I fell into the darkness on the east side and killed my speed. I moved like molasses, taking great care to dodge every single branch, avoid every leaf and twig so not even the earth itself could hear my passing. I certainly couldn’t. I’d never felt more deafened by my disguise and it had never been more critical to maintain it. Over the next thirty minutes I inched closer to the camp.
My worst fears were allayed instantly, this was no military camp. Instead two humans sat by the fire, neither very impressive. The bandaged man flipping a pan over the fire was completely unarmed, while his companion bore the sort of bow and knife that any Dev might have. Neither said much about their combat ability. Humans could be like that, without the decency to display their status through outward mutation like a Hob.
Still, this was useful. This was exactly the sort of practice run I was looking for. The woman was Dev, but she was still human, her bow not even strung. Even if they made me I would be long gone before they could hurt me. This was the best practice run I was likely to get.
With that I turned around and crept back the way I came. I’d need to think this through very carefully.
----------------------------------------
“For the hundredth time, why do you think this is anything close to a good idea?”
Hayden considered the question as he flipped his pan, sending a sizzling mass of dough, meat and cheese into the air. “It doesn’t have to be a good idea, it just has to be a good enough idea.”
Tharri threw her hands up in the air. “Good enough for what, death?”
Hayden shook his head. “You wanted to come, remember?”
“I wanted to apprentice to a successful merchant, not follow a madman on his deathwish.”
Hayden sighed, flicking the food out of his pan and onto the waiting plate. “You’re welcome to leave, but if you stay, I assure you that nothing will happen to you.”
As Hayden leaned over to pick up his plate of uncooked food a trailing bandage caught on a branch and came half unwound.
“Fucking hells.” Hayden dropped his plate as if it had turned into a live viper, flinging uncooked calzones over the ground.
Tharri jumped from her seat. “Are you alright!?”
Hayden clutched his wrist, pressing the bandage tight against the skin. “I’m fine.”
Hayden lifted his legs into an awkward crab-walk shuffle until he’d spun to face the other way on his little folding camp stool. He peeked under the bandage, unsure of what he’d see. Nothing much was the answer, still the same burnt skin as always. That was good news, sometimes his painkilling Skills worked a little too well.
Of course, given that he couldn’t stand up without them, it was still a trade off worth taking.
Hayden rewrapped the bandage tighter, taking care to tuck it in snugly. He really couldn’t afford to contaminate the outside environment any more than he already had, let alone Tharri’s food.
“There.” Hayden spun back around and showed off the fixed bandages to his ‘apprentice’. He still wasn’t sure what he was supposed to teach her. Playing at being a humble tinker was one thing, how was he supposed to train someone else to be one?
Tharri eyed him skeptically. “Are your injuries really so horrifying that you can’t bear them to be seen?”
Hayden waved off her questions. “Don’t worry about what’s wrong with me; you’d die of age before you reached the end of the list. Just help me pick up these calzones.”
Tharri frowned but obliged, loading the plate back up and brushing off the dirt and twigs. “You’re not going to throw them out?”
Hayden shrugged. “I know I talked a big game about uncleanliness contributing to disease, but the fire should burn off the worst of it. Anything that survives will be used to a forest floor, not a human body. It won’t be able to adjust faster than your body’s defenses.”
That at least he could feel good about. Even if Hayden had difficulty imparting the sort of knowledge that a real tinker would teach he could always ramble on about some subject that her village upbringing had denied her any real education on and call it teaching.
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“Oh?” Hayden perked up.
Tharri glanced over her shoulder to see what had caught his attention, then shot to her feet. “Old man, are you alright?”
The hunched figure started, taking the cane that he’d been using to feel his way along the road and waving it around him as he searched for the noise. “Hwuh?!”
“Here, let me help you elder.” Tharri approached the figure.
“What?” The old man swung his stick wildly. “Get back!”
“Whoa!” Tharri spread her hands apart. “Its alright, we’re just a pair of traveling tinkers and merchants. No harm will come to you.”
Hayden shook his head and flipped the calzone over in the pan. “Not any we start at any rate.”
Tharri shot a glare over her shoulder. His apprentice needed to stop making promises that she couldn’t keep.
“Oh.” The old man lowered his trembling stick back to the ground. His voice was reedy and wavering, bearing all the signs of age. “Then could I share the warmth of your fire for but a moment? I’ve come so far in the cold and dark.”
“Of course, elder, what is your name?” Tharri stepped up to guide him in only to meet the point of his stick.
“I can walk on my own. Wouldn’t want you to catch something.” His voice came out in a whisper, thin and reedy as a broken tree fit to be knocked down by the wind. “Call me Zhen.”
And walk he did, walk right up to the fire that Hayden had not invited him too. Tharri hovered behind him all the while, as if he might fall apart at any time. Elders were rare in the mountains, with any tough enough to survive accorded great respect. In an environment where lives could be snatched away preserving what wisdom you could took great importance, great enough to make the lives of the very old treasured second only to the very young.
It was everyone in the middle who were expendable.
As the elder reached the light of the fire and was beckoned into Tharri’s own seat Hayden saw the bandages across his face. They were practically a mirror to his own, save the strangers eyes were still covered.
“Goblins take your eyes?”
Tharri gasped at the rude question and the stranger jerked and shivered at the memories.
Hayden laughed. “I’ll take that as a yes. Would you like some food to go with the comfort of our fire?” He might judge Tharri for inviting a stranger without so much as seeing his face, but he wasn’t completely heartless. Besides, the girl was his apprentice. So long as that remained the case her actions were his own and if she declared the stranger a guest to their fire, then it was so.
The hooded and bandaged stranger murmured his affirmative even as he hunched further in on himself. No sign of exposed skin, even if you could say the same about Hayden it spoke differently on a lone figure at night. Very differently, but it was too late to change course now. Even on the off chance it was a spirit, that would be the exact worst thing to do and if he wasn’t there was no reason to be a dick.
Hayden slid the freshly fired calzone onto a plate. “Here you go ol’ timer.”
The bandaged old man snatched the plate away like Hayden was going to change his mind and clutched it in both hands. Still, he didn’t actually eat any.
Hayden slid in the next calzone, making sure to hit every side. He’d still need to cook it for longer, but it was best to kill off anything it may have picked up from the ground right away. “Not hungry?”
“Excuse me, I’ve walked a long way and I just need to catch my breath.”
Tharri sat down next to Hayden, giving the old man his space. “Take as long as you need.”
“Thank you.” The hood bobbed up and down as the old man nodded. “Tell me, are you to join the army gathering at the pass?”
Hayden shook his head and Tharri echoed him before speaking. “No. Did you pass by them on your way through?”
“Yes. Too many young men and no effort to spare for a poor old refugee like me.”
Hayden grunted and spun the calzone in the pan to make sure it wasn’t sticking. “Not unless you have any intel for them. But with the amount of refugees who were fleeing in the early days I imagine they already have more than enough of the ground level perspective.”
“No, no use for this old man at all.”
Tharri scowled something fierce. “But the whole point of the crusade is to help people. How could they possibly ignore a man in need?”
Hayden opened his mouth, but the old man beat him to it. “Help people? Pfah!” He froze, as if shocked by his own words, then continued when nobody contradicted them. “I’ve lived through a war or two young woman, and if you ask me they’re just here so they have an excuse to pump up their own levels on the death and suffering of others.”
Tharri scowl deepened, but she bit back her initial response and circled back around to something more reasonable. “Surely you don’t think they’d be so shortsighted as to feed their own troops into the goblins for a cheap experience farm?”
The old man shrugged, but something about the bile in his voice made Hayden doubt Tharri had understood him correctly. That wasn’t what you meant was it? You weren’t talking about human death and suffering at all were you?
Interesting.
Hayden opened his [Inner Eye]. That wasn’t the skill’s true name of course, he had long ago evolved past the ground level Skill, but self-censoring your own thoughts was standard practice for telepathic defense. Hayden had his hackles more than a little raised.
The old man hunched further, hands disappearing entirely. Reaching for hidden weapons, has advanced perceptive abilities. That was one point towards the spirit hypothesis.
Yet nothing of the sort revealed itself to his sight. The old man had perfectly ordinary soul levels, of roughly the number you’d expect from a long but peaceful life.
Except for two things.
Hayden dismissed the skill and blinked away the ache in his eyes before the stranger could grow even more irate. Tharri was visibly confused on why things had suddenly gone so tense, and it really was rude. One. “You have some great senses for someone of your years. I apologize for the intrusion. I was simply being over cautious on these cold roads. Surely you can forgive such indiscretion?”
The bandages shifted ever so slightly on the man’s face and Hayden could practically feel his glare. “And are you satisfied with what you did?”
Hayden winced and offered the old man an apology calzone. He took it, his previous having disappeared at some point. Quick for an old timer. “Quite. You’ve got all the levels of a normal human, so you’re no spirit or wraith, but…”
Two. “You do have a serious, uh, issue. I’m sure you don’t need me to tell you this, but you should seek out a cleric as soon as possible. The worse it gets the more it’ll cost you.”
Hayden ducked as Tharri’s slap sailed through where his head used to be. Nice try kid.
“Master! You can’t just look at another man’s soul! Why would you even waste a level on such a horrible ability? The only people who should ever behold another’s soul are priests!”
Killing ghosts. Well that wasn’t an answer he could give. “You should tell the necromancers that.”
While she sputtered on that Hayden turned back to the old timer. “Anyways, just tell me if there’s anything I can do to make it up for you.”
“… more food.” His second calzone was already gone.
Hayden grinned. He loved a practical man. “Sure enough.”
“Are you sure I need a cleric to solve my problem?”
Hayden shrugged. “There ain’t much I’m sure of. But I can tell you that a cleric’s the best solution you’re likely to get. That kind of soul disruption isn’t the kind of thing that you can just shove back together on its own, and only an experienced expert is even remotely capable of working on another’s soul.”
Hayden rolled his eyes and hooked a thumb at his apprentice, who was still glaring at him. “You see how scandalized she got to hear I could even see someone else’s soul, how many do you think are going out to learn the whole package?”
“Not many.”
“Yeah, you want your soul trimmed down or put back together and you basically have two options, the officially sanctioned and the outright blasphemous. Between the two, you’re better off with the first. A necromancer would be as likely to steal your soul as fix it.”
The old man hunkered down on himself, tucking in his arms against the cold wind. “Trimmed? What manner of mutilation is that, to lose a part of myself?”
“That isn’t what you mean, right master?” Tharri shifted nervously and bit her lip. “Removing a part of your soul couldn’t be considered a treatment for any ailment, surely.”
Hayden pursed his lips and stared into the fire. Tharri only knew the simple story, the straightforward self-improvement that human soul magics were designed to enable. Like any child, she didn’t know any better, and neither the church nor nobility had any desire to see the more difficult truths unearthed.
“Sometimes you have to let something go. Even if that thing is a part of yourself.” His scars ached to say it, and the physical scars ached least of all.
Hayden shook himself. Navel gazing wouldn’t answer his apprentice’s questions, and he owed her real answers. Tharri may have expected to travel with a normal tinker when she demanded an apprenticeship, but she’d got him instead and until he managed to fob her off on a real tinker he was obligated to teach her as best he was able.
“The soul always grows, its a part of it’s innate potential. A human’s soul levels are designed to harness this by containing and directing that potential in a structured way and as long as your growth is along that path everything works. But there are actually a million ways that it can go wrong. Exactly how his went wrong… well the first ‘level’ is just divine energy layered around your original soul, and the original soul contains your mind, personality, the entirety of what you are.”
You can stack extra supernatural power on top of that all you like, but what happens if what you are changes? What happens when someone’s original personality is so thoroughly altered that it can no longer be compared to their original self? If your personality is greatly altered by, say, a great tragedy, then the soul will no longer fit within the bounds laid out for it.”
The old man clutched at his cloak, fingers like claws as fabric stretched nearly to the breaking point. Blind eyes stared downward, towards sights the traveling ‘tinker’ and his apprentice could only imagine.
“Oh.” Tharri spoke softly, then glanced back to her master. Even continuing she spoke in a whisper, as if that would somehow block out the old man’s grief. “So does that mean that…”
“That every bard song with starcrossed lovers has some truth to it? Only a little. You really need a comedy of errors for things to go this badly wrong. Not to speak ill of the dead, but whatever priest oversaw his first level was probably a stingy bastard. Your first level is supposed to be big enough to survive change.”
Tharri frowned. “That wasn’t what I was going to ask. If the soul was changed by grief, wouldn’t changing it back mean—”
“The loss of those feelings?” Zhen’s head was up once more, staring Hayden down with a barren, sightless face.
“Yes. A loss of connecting memories and thoughts could be expected as well, depending on the skill of the soul surgeon.”
Silence fell over the camp, unbroken save for the sizzling of the pan.
“I’d understand if you preferred death.”
“Is there not another way?”
Hayden started to shake his head, then stopped. He set his pan down over the coals and sat with his elbows resting on his knees to support his weight. He hadn’t lived enough years to feel this old, but the old man had lived through more and suffered worse, so he couldn’t bring himself to deny him. “Maybe.”
The elder leaned forwards, so eager his voice rang with the vigor of youth. “How!?”
Hayden shrugged, but he was in too deep to stop. He couldn’t turn his back now and if his apprentice tried to report him for it then that was that. “Who says your soul can only grow in one direction?”
Zhen was all but growling with frustration. “Just say what you’re trying to say! I’ve tried expanding my soul level, it isn’t stable enough. Even if I could get the energy to reforge myself like that it would only leave my soul unbalanced and listing.”
“And why is that?”
Zhen growled for real now, a deep ugly thing that made even Hayden question if he wasn’t a spirit after all. “Stop answering my questions with questions! You can’t tell me there’s a solution in one breath and yank it from my fingers in the next!”
Hayden tapped the handle of his pan. “Is that what you heard?”
Zhen stood. “Fine! If you’re just going to toy with me then I have no further need for your company.”
Hayden lifted his pan from the fire and set it off on the tripod trivet next to the fire. “Do you think that skills running deep as your soul can be taught with fucking words?”
Zhen hesitated.
“You ask another why your soul works as it does. Maybe you ought to give some thought to answering that question yourself, as only you can. Go back to the basics, the very nature of what it means to have soul levels.”
Zhen raised one hand as if to respond, then awkwardly turned it into scratching his chin instead.
“Then ask yourself why. Why did the gods design it this way? What underlying mechanics propelled their decisions? Once you’ve asked those questions you can ask yourself another one; how can I do it better?”
“Once you’ve found some real answers something as simple as why you can build up but not out will be child’s play.”
“That’s heresy.” Tharri covered her own mouth as if she could capture the words, eyes darting back and forth between the two older men.
The old man didn’t bother with the girls concern. “It’s been more than a few decades since I’ve let a priest lecture at me. Any help on where I can find a refresher on the basics?”
“Too proud to sit in on a child’s lessons? Good. You’ll need to move a lot faster if you want to live. Pick up a written primer from the church, then go after the real stuff. Anywhere power congregates you’ll find exceptions to what most belief to be rules. Adventurers, priests, mage libraries. Easier said than done, but I wish you the best of luck in it. Remember, nothing on a page can solve the true mysteries of the soul. They can only help you start looking.”
Hayden turned to his apprentice. Perhaps his erstwhile apprentice if she proved as devout as her words suggested. “Tharri.”
She flinched at his words, and he felt his posture soften. “Its alright, I’m not going to do you any harm, not even if you draw your bow and plant an arrow in my breast. Certainly not for disagreeing with me, however vehemently.”
Tharri nodded hesitantly. “I’m sorry, I… I’m not going to call the witch hunters on you or anything— its just, why say those things? What good could be born of such hubris?”
Hayden shook his head ruefully. “Why do I believe what I believe? You don’t ask any easy questions, do you?”
“A full answer would be my entire life story, but the best argument I have for it… its simple.”
Hayden turned to look at the departing Zhen. He was already disappearing in the darkness, it was easy to see why the old man had toughed out a goblin invasion with nothing worse than scars.
If indeed he had toughed out a goblin invasion at all.
Hayden looked down in Tharri’s eyes as he stood. “Even if the gods who designed the systems were beyond us in every way… well they still died didn’t they?”
Tharri broke eye contact and Hayden continued. “So we’d best hope we can do better. If not, well we might as well not be alive at all.”
Hayden walked over to their little cart and dug through the front of it. “The Firstborn and Forgotten might be gone but we’re still here. And until proven otherwise I’ve got to believe that we have it in us to do better. Until then…”
Hayden found what he’d been looking for and yanked it out, spilling everything atop it in the junk pile he called storage across the campsite.
Hayden twirled it in his hands, flicking it back and forth, ratcheting smoothly. The little metal latches hidden inside caught at the proper times and locked in the proper positions until he released them with the little buttons. It was a prototype, something he’d made in pursuit of memories from home.
“Until then we can only be kind to one another and make the world better as best we can.”
Hayden turned and hurled the pan. It wasn’t an easy shot, with Zhen barely visible even in infared, but he’d made harder.
“Catch!”
The old man threw himself to the side, which in retrospect was the smarter thing to do when metal projectiles came arcing down out of the sky.
Hayden could just barely make out him come out of his roll with blades in hand. Spry for an old guy. He cupped his hands around his mouth.
“No one should travel without a hot fire and warm food! I can’t do the rest, but this is a start!”
Tharri was looking at him like he was crazy and Zhen had hidden behind a tree, but Hayden sat down smiling anyway.
He’d seen Zhen’s hand snake out to grab that pan.