The edge of the glamour was more like a dream than a memory.
Ratface waded through the fog of people in front of her. The group of goblins parted like mist. The images of people she’d known her whole life so weak in her mind as to be nearly formless.
From what she’d read, the second glamour in her mind was a sophisticated one. It didn’t take away all her memories, it just obscured them. A normal glamour would have just blocked the memory off. It wouldn’t have worked with such an important memory. Her mind would keep bashing into the glamour until either she or it broke. The person who’d put the glamour in her was cannier than that. Instead, it just made her doubt herself. Did this goblin have a big nose, or maybe it was little? Maybe they had funny ears? Had she heard that saying from her friend, or read it in a book? The doubt obscured the memory until her brain couldn’t tell what was true.
All of it in service of obscuring one memory. The last one.
Even that wasn’t completely obscure to her. She could remember the feeling, the dread. The screaming.
This time, she had a light with her. A gift from her night with the goblins.
A glamour like this should be subject to her mind, given that it was woven within it. The goblin party had reminded her that even a small light could keep out the dark, so here she was carrying a candles memory through the glamour. The memory of the light, of the goblins supporting it, cut through the glamour and let her walk a little closer to the truth behind it.
There at the middle of the glamor, Ratface found herself. She was only a little bit younger than she was now. This was the last moment before she left.
Her mother was there, holding her hand. She couldn’t recognise any details, couldn’t make any out but she knew it was her. Even the glamour wasn’t strong enough to erase her completely.
“Do you know the story of the last great goblin magic?” Ratface’s mother asked her.
The image was violently pulled away. In its place was the glamour of the elf girl. The two looked at each other in surprise.
“What are you doing here?” asked Ratface.
“I could say the same thing, I thought I warned you away.”
Ratface snorted.
“I’m not going to take advice from the glamour someone else put in my head,” she said.
The elf girl rolled her eyes.
“Aether, forbid I try to help you.”
“Aether” Ratface said with a sneer, “just say god like all the other races.”
“You’d think a goblin would be more particular,” grumbled the glamour.
The two stood in the emptiness, it was slowly filling in with the street they’d last stood in. Ratface could even see the performer.
“I don’t suppose you know what she meant by the last goblin magic?”
“I’m in your head, most of what I know is from you.”
Ratface paused. She’d said that like common knowledge, but Ratface hadn’t know that. If she only knew what Ratface did, could she anticipate her? She also noted that the glamour hadn’t said it didn’t know.
“How long have you been here?” Ratface asked.
“Obvious ploy,” the elf said.
The image around them stopped and she was pulled out of the dream. Ratface smiled, the break was as much of an answer as if the glamour had told her herself.
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Claudette watched over her again. She didn’t have a book out this time which meant Ratface didn’t hadn’t been under as long.
“What was the last goblin magic?” Ratface asked.
Claudette raised an eyebrow.
“To my knowledge there was none,” she said.
They’d attempted the glamour break outside this time and Abigail was close to them working on her armour’s runes. She’d have an easier time of doing it inside, but she’d wanted to spend time with Claudette. Something about working together being better than working alone.
“I’d think if it was a goblin magic, a goblin would know about it,” said Abigail.
Her graver moved with surprising grace over the armour as she engraved it with new runes. It was a mind-boggling complex set of runes all connecting to the middle of the armour. Right now, Abigail was trying to put more fail-safe’s in. Well, that’s what Ratface assumed by the different lines across the armour. Without a sense of magic, she couldn’t follow the circuits which made understanding how it worked difficult.
Ratface blushed as she realised what she’d just done. She’d ask people, one of them an adventurer, for help without even thinking about it. The fact that they hadn’t known meant it was a secret as well. She got up and left without a word.
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“Goblin magic? Sounds like some Lurian legend. You still tell that one about Halmir?” Dirthand asked.
They were in her shop and Ratface was sitting in a chair next to the counter. Dirthand talked to her between customers. Ratface frowned at that Halmir comment.
“You mean the true story,” she said.
Dirthand chuckled.
“Look at that little pout! Well, something about goblin magic sounds like a Lurian story, all the oldest stories usually are. The only person I could think of that’d have any better chance at knowing than you would be Suncat.”
Ratface slouched into the chair she was in and absentmindedly rubbed at her face. She didn’t pout, she frowned.
“We’re not really speaking right now,” said Ratface.
“Yes, that girl Tiffany’s been coming in. Good with plants that one.”
“Druid.”
“Cheater,” Dirthand grumbled.
She said it with a smile so clearly Tiffany had earned her good graces. Hopefully dealing with the other goblin was helping her with impression of goblins in general. That was probably why Claudette or Isabelle had sent her, in hindsight.
“If you don’t have any information, you should go ask her,” said Dirthand.
“What if she doesn’t want to talk to me?”
“You’re a rat, you’ll figure something out.”
Ratface grumbled at that, but the vote of confidence was nice.
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She’d gone with being annoying again.
She was knocking on Suncat’s door and had been for a while now. Her hand was sore and she had already had to switch the one she was knocking with once.
The door opened a crack.
“What?” said Suncat.
She was speaking in common and Ratface grimaced. She wasn’t about to fix this any time soon.
“I’ve come to check on Halmir,” said Ratface.
It wasn’t completely a lie, but it wasn’t her whole reason for being here. The other girl sighed but let her in.
Halmir looked fine. He was a chubby rat that was sleeping. If Ratface hadn’t seen how active he usually was she would have thought he was living the good life. Suncat’s frown didn’t bring her any confidence either.
“How is he?” Ratface asked.
“Bad,” said Suncat.
She crossed her arms but eventually she wavered under Ratface’s stare and elaborated.
“His body will be okay, but his mind won’t be. Right now, his mind is like a potted plant. He wants to grow more but his ‘roots’ keep running into the ‘pot’ and getting stopped.”
“The pot is his body?”
Suncat shook her head.
“It’s his aether shell.” She looked at Ratface’s confused expression and sighed before continuing. “Like his soul, it’s the soul of a rat, right? But he wants to be more.”
Ratface didn’t really understand the aether shell, but she got the gist.
“He needs help to grow?”
“Something is stopping him.”
“So how do we help him?” asked Ratface.
“If we were elves, we could send a glamour in, it could help fight whatever was in there.”
Ratface thought to the glamour sitting inside her head. It could probably help. She just had to find a way to convince it.
“If I get you a glamour, can you transfer it?”
Suncat looked at her in concern. Ratface had two glamour in her head, and they needed a glamour to do this, even an idiot could figure it out and Suncat was by no means an idiot.
“It won’t get rid of your glamour, eventually it’ll snap back. It’ll hurt a bunch too.”
Ratface shrugged.
“He saved me, I don’t mind being hurt.”
“I mind you being hurt!” yelled Suncat. She was shaking again. “I don’t want to hurt more goblins,” she whispered.
Ratface didn’t reach out to her, but she did lower her voice. Like she was trying to lure in an animal.
“Suncat, do you know what the last goblin magic was?”
The other girl glanced at her in confusion and shook her head.
“Dirthand said you might,” Ratface explained, “She said if anyone knew it would be someone from Lurian or you. Where are you from Suncat? Why are you so scared?”
The other girl tried to yell again but Ratface interrupted her.
“I can’t help Halmir without your help and you won’t help me. So, tell me why. I deserve that much.”
The other girl watched her for a long moment. Ratface didn’t say anything, just waited. She knew the other girl would talk, because she knew what it was like to be alone. No race was meant to be alone, but goblins especially weren’t. Eventually Suncat reached out because, even if she didn’t know it, at her heart she was a goblin.
“Okay,” she said, “Let me tell you about the Never City.”