Suncat wasn’t in the mansion itself but instead in a building a little further from it. The walls around it were thick and it had a chimney that look designed to actively extract the air.

Isabelle opened a tray on the door and put the bag in. It rattled as it made its way in.

Ratface knocked and Isabelle smiled.

“She wont answer while she’s at work,” Isabelle said.

Ratface looked at the other woman and continued to knock. Isabelle shrugged and walked off.

Ratface kept knocking for a solid five minutes. The door was metal, so it let out a little clang with each knock and her knuckles were starting to hurt but she didn’t stop.

She was good at weaponizing being annoying when she had to be. While she’d been an only child, she’d also been sent as a messenger around the village for her mother.

When her mum wanted and answer she wanted it now, so Ratface had gotten really good at straddling the line of polite and aggravating. What you needed to do was do something polite, like knocking, then keep pushing it to the point of madness.

Either someone would come to answer her or to yell at her, either way she got them to talk to her.

The door was pulled open and a glowering Suncat looked at her. The woman was wearing goggles over her face and had a white apron on. Her clothes covered all her skin, and she even had a mask that she’d pulled down just to emphasise her annoyance.

“What?” she asked.

“Halmir is okay?”

“Yes yes,” Suncat said. She went back into the building, but left the door open. Ratface took it for the invitation it was.

The inside of the building was immaculately clean. It shined a little like someone had gone over it with a level that bordered on obsessiveness. The room itself had an undercurrent of alcohol but it smelt more sterile than what a bar would.

The alchemy building wasn’t anything like she’d expected. When Ratface imagined alchemy, she imagined a big cauldron. To be fair one of those was in the room, but it was put to the side and didn’t look like it was used very often. Instead, there were a lot of strange glass cups littered around the room.

Ratface went to walk in further, but Suncat stopped her.

“Safety gear or no coming in. Wash your hands too,” said Suncat. She pointed to the sink that was next to the door with a set of goggles and clothes next to it. Ratface was amused to see that they’d already been pulled out as if anticipating her. She glanced at Suncat who waved at her before she could say anything.

“Rats always curious, always nosy,” the woman explained. She made it sound like a complaint.

Ratface wanted to object but given she was literally using the stuff she probably didn’t have a leg to stand on. She couldn’t help it, goblins named after rats were expected to check on their fellow goblins. It’s why she’d been sent off as a messenger in the first place.

She put on the gear and joined Suncat. The woman had Halmir on a bench, but she’d put a blanket under him. She was prodding Halmir in different places. The rat barely responded to any of the pokes, even prodding him in a sensitive area didn’t get a grumble out of him. He didn’t look to be having a lucid day.

“Weird,” Suncat muttered. She went over to one of the draws and opened it to reveal a neat stack of papers which she rummaged through until she pulled out a book.

The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

It was bound in leather and the paper was thicker that any paper Ratface had seen. Runes lined its spine and the edges of it were singed.

Suncat flipped through it until she came to a picture of a rat. It seemed to screech in pain in the picture which scared Ratface. The writing in it was in common so she couldn’t read anything other than the word rat.

“That seems bad,” Ratface said. She tried not to let her worry show in her voice.

Suncat shrugged.

“This is from an experiment from rats drinking different creatures’ blood.” She pointed at one picture that had a rat growing a bunch of growths of it.

“That was from a rat noble.”

Ratface’s stomach dropped as she turned to Halmir. Suncat saw her face and clarified.

“This was from half an hour after drinking the blood. Halmir is stable.”

“But he sleeps too much,” Ratface said.

Suncat nodded.

“Too stable, he should be changing but he only grows bigger. His body is still the same. Do you know the legend of how Rat Nobles came to be?”

Ratface shook her head. Suncat snapped the book shut and put it to the side.

“Once, in legend, a rat fought a Dragon. Somehow it won and it gorged on its blood. Afterwards it burned away, and the rat grew into a humanoid with new intelligence. It brough its other rats to feast on the dragon and thus the rat people were born.”

“Bad storyteller,” Ratface observed, and the other girl hissed at her.

“The point is rat people supposedly can be made through magic instead of through biology. There’s some truth to it. Rats are some of the most susceptible to different magical creatures’ blood, though usually it kills them. Goblins are the same.”

Suncat looked troubled at that but gestured to Halmir.

“Physically he’s okay. I think he wants to change but can’t. It’s faint, but in the aether you can feel him tapping.”

“The aether?”

“Magic,” Suncat said. Ratface looked at her and she sighed.

“I can see magic,” she admitted.

Ratface moved closer.

“Can do magic as well? Same thing that turned you red?”

Suncat nodded and Ratface felt something in her shift. That was magic. That was what separated her from being the best goblin and the best creature. She thought back to her mother who’d been able to go toe to toe with adventurers without a drop of magic in her. Imagine if she had access to it. She might have been able to even challenge an elf. She might have been able to save them from whatever had attacked the night Ratface had disappeared.

She grabbed the other goblin who flinched.

“How?”

“Demon blood,” said Suncat. She hesitated before adding, “Don’t.”

“Why?”

“It’s bad, it changes you.”

“Why?”

“It just does,” Suncat replied. She switched to common as she got more agitated. Ratface kept getting in her face. She knew she was making Suncat uncomfortable but at the mention of magic it was like a hunger she’d never known opened in her and she was ravenous. Still the other woman tried to brush her off, refusing to look at Ratface.

“Why?” Ratface pleaded.

Suncat raised a fist to strike at Ratface and Ratface flinched. She froze. She’d never flinched from a goblin before. Not from thinking they were going to hurt her. The two girls looked at each other in shock.

“That’s why,” Suncat said. She lowered her fist and Ratface relaxed a little. The two girls stepped away from each other.

“Magic… it’s good. It saved me when I needed it,” Suncat said. She leaned against a bench and switched exclusively to common now, even her accent had changed. She hesitated before she said the next words.

“But.” Her voice shook and she hissed in a way that sounded like a sob. “But it takes something from you. I’m not really a goblin anymore.”

She started to cry and Ratface reached out instinctually for her, but the other girl pushed her away.

“It was nice having a goblin who didn’t know. Go.”

Ratface tried a couple more times, but it was clear the other girl wasn’t going to let her engage. She realised that her presence was only making things worse, and left the building as she processed the new information.

It explained why the other girl was so careful with her. Ratface never really worried when she was around another goblin. She didn’t think she could hurt one, even accidentally hurting one was difficult to manage. It’s why she was so quick to be comfortable with them. Every goblin was a part of the same family. She knew she always had support so long as a goblin was around.

Even this new information didn’t change her mind. Suncat had been nothing but good to her since they met. She trusted her even if the other girl could hurt her.

It was Suncat she worried for. Most of the races treated goblins them like pests, or monsters. Some were ‘nice’ and tolerated them as people. Barely.

It was isolating to be a goblin, but at least they had each other. A friend every time she saw another goblins face.

How much worse it must be for Suncat. To never have anyone she could just trust. No one she could be relax around.

It pained her that she didn’t know how to fix it. She was a rat; it was her job to protect her other goblins.

But how did she help a goblin who didn’t even think she was one?