Reis was out in the orchard, pushing mana into the roots of the trees and into the heartvine cutting when he saw a figure creeping slowly towards him. He unwrapped his weapon from around his shoulder and took a defensive stance before he was able to discern the nature of the threat.

A small Goblin was creeping his direction, looking carefully in all directions, moving forward twenty or thirty feet, and then looking around again. About fifty feet behind him was a group of six or so Goblins, one he recognized as part of the group he’d hosted for dinner the night before. The others only moved when the Goblin at the lead did. Reis shouted to grab the lead Goblin’s attention and waved him over. The Goblin looked around again, and then back at the group behind him, and then shrugged.

He broke from his crouch and began walking towards Reis. By time he’d closed the distance the Goblins behind him had caught up to him. They stood around awkwardly for a minute, until Reis decided to break the silence.

“Can I help you?” The Goblin who’d been in the lead looked back at the rest, and they immediately began to jostle him, and then one pushed him forward, leaving him standing right in front of Reis.

“fast-knee says you feed Trekuta’s throushk”

“I feed Trekuta’s…” Reis recalled Trekuta’s warning, that had seemed like a joke at the time, that if he offered to feed his men then Reis might find more Goblins than he can feed at his table. “Oh. I can definitely feed you guys tonight, but I can’t afford to have you coming out every ni-” The Goblin cleared his throat and held out a bag with a sheepish grin. Reis’s jaw went slack when he looked into the open top of the bag, filled with heartvine. “Absolutely, there’s always room for member’s of Trekuta’s throushk at my table,”

The Goblins began laughing and shoving one another, and followed Trekuta to the kitchen. They were just as rowdy and thankful for the food as the group from the day before, and once they’d eaten they even went out onto the farm with him and while he planted the new cuttings of heartvine, began work on a paddock he’d started building a few days before. When he finished with that he joined them working on the paddock, much of which they’d already completed.

“What you put in?” One of the Goblins asked him. Reis shrugged.

“One of the other farmers in Culceth has a mare that’s too aggressive to stable with the others, so I’m going to take it, but I want to eventually have some sort of magical beast. Magic plants and animals are kind of my specialty,” The Goblin got a very serious expression as he nodded.

“Should build two,” Reis laughed

“I should fill the first one before I do that,” The Goblin shrugged.

“Sometimes fills faster than you think,” he said sagely.

When they finished the paddock the Goblins departed, still laughing and shoving each other.

Reis went inside and took stock of his kitchen. He’d had a couple months worth of food stored, but he’d made that calculation assuming that he would only be feeding one. If the last two days were anything to go by, he’d be feeding a lot more than that. He had almost told them he couldn’t keep feeding them after tonight, but the heartvine that he’d been given was worth its weight in gold, more to somebody like Reis, who could properly grow the stuff.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

Two days later, and in the early stages of building a second paddock, the Goblins returned. There were a dozen of them, most he had never seen before, with a couple familiar faces. The lead Goblin was the same who had been scouting for the group that last visited.

This time he was directing some bizarre creature that laid somewhere between a horse and a turtle on the taxonomic scale by a lead that was attached to it’s shell, and a few of the others seemed to be carrying youth from the same species, all with their limbs pulled into their shells. When Kurge, the scout, neared, he spoke to Reis.

“I was told you wanted to keep magical beasts,” Reis gave a quizzical look at the creature they’d brought to him, but was not surprised at them bringing a beast in general. He had an inkling that they would at the Goblin’s cryptic comments while they were building the paddock.

“What, uh, What’s its affinity?”

“Remote movement. They’re strong too. Can pull more weight than an ox, if slower,” Reis nodded and opened the gate to the paddock. Kurge led the creature through, and the others placed theirs throughout the pen.

“So what does this thing eat,” Kurge shrugged.

“Grain. Fruit. Grass. I saw one eating a fox once,” Reis laughed,

“At least it’s not picky,” He cooked for the Goblins once more, helped him finish most of the rest of the paddock, and left.

The next two weeks were similar, every few days more Goblins would show up, offer him cuttings of plants, mostly magical, seeds, and one time even brought him a large quantity of what they claimed was magical fertilizer. He could feel the mana in it, but could not yet vouch for the veracity of the claim, though he had started some of the plants they’d brought that he was familiar with in pots with the fertilizer.He thought he should know how it affects the plants that he was familiar with before he began growing plants he had never seen or heard of before in it.

Trekuta had even stopped by with Kurge, and told him of how the martial that had stopped by during their first lunch, accompanied by two others, had rather unskillfully hunted a fire breathing bird that had been hunting monkeys. When I’d asked them what was unskillful about the hunt the two had begun laughing hysterically, and regaled Reis with a tale of the trio. Their ‘scout’ had gone most of the hunt, the better part of a day, without noticing any tracks to follow, and when he had finally found tracks, it was those of him and his friends. They’d gotten turned around at some point and made a wide circle back to their own path.

Then he’d led the three of them on the trail of their own tracks, only stopping when the largest and oldest of the men, who they said had been called Gan, decided to look at the tracksand saw that they were the group’s. He’d scolded the scout for sending them on a wild goose chase after themselves, and they’d broken from the tracks to continue their aimless wandering.

When I’d asked about Gan they’d got serious and said that he was dangerous. At the very least, more so than the other two that had been bumbling through the woods with him. When I asked how they knew, they said they could tell by the way he walked. I tried to get them to explain, but it seemed like it was an entirely intuitive deduction. I told them that he probably couldn’t be that dangerous if he was so inept on the hunt and they shook their heads, and Trekuta spoke.

“He is just not hunter. At least of beasts. He walks like a killer of men,”

Three days after Trekuta and Kurge had told him about the Martial’s hunt, Mathias returned to the farm to try and make a deal for the heartvine for the second time.