Azarus watched as Granon climbed the stone steps, Moka in hand. They ascended the mountain slope until they approached the pillar of clouds. Up close, the pillar almost looked like a wall of undulating white flesh. Fearless, Granon carried Moka through a shrine gate that held back the encroaching clouds. The gate offered a doorway to the heart of the storm. The clouds split before them, forming a corridor of white with purple shadows to give it depth. Azarus could see flickers of passing shapes poking at the boundary of clouds, spirits swimming in the mist. If the mortals under his supervision noticed the supernatural beings circling them, they showed no sign.

Every sixty steps, there was another shrine gate built into the mountain. Each one had matching grain patterns, implying to Azarus that they were all built from the wood of a single gargantuan tree. The gates stood strong and straight, with two pillars supporting a curved crossbeam resting at the top. Beneath the curved beam, there was a shorter, straight beam roughly three-fourths of the way up the pillars. At the base of the gates, stone crawled up the polished wood like vines to anchor the wood to the earth, with carved flowers to match. Granon could have passed beneath the gates with himself on his shoulders and still had room to spare.

By the time they passed the third gate, it was clear to Azarus that the gates were holding back something more than curious spirits. As a god himself, he was particularly concerned that the dangerous path was purposeful. He felt like he was missing something obvious about how a god should behave. It made Azarus wonder if the skinwalker had come to the mountain, or wandered off of it. After some thought, he decided it did not matter. Moka would try to kill it regardless of its origin. The real question was, how?

Now that [Through Mortal Eyes] had faded, Azarus could no longer peer through Moka’s thoughts to understand her plans. He knew her class had twisted her soul into shape, giving her experience and understanding beyond her years. She scribbled nearly legible notes on a piece of parchment she’d found in her bag as Granon carried her. Azarus had already tried to use his new ability again. Mainly to figure out what she was plotting. Partially to read her handwriting. It had failed, but not before wringing his soul dry. He would need to rest and recharge before he could use it again. However, Azarus was not sure if he should. The desire to live through Moka’s eyes gnawed at him like an itch he couldn’t shake. Opening himself up to repeated use felt like the first step down a very hard road.

By the time Moka and Granon reached the peak, dawn was breaking. They stepped through one more shrine gate and entered the shrine proper. The peak of the mountain was flat, smooth, and bare. Smooth was a deceptive term, in Azarus’s eyes. The polished stone looked as if someone had lovingly cared for it for decades. Or as if someone had severed the peak with an impossible blow.

Around the edges of the oddly flat and smooth peak stood seven statues. Each statue depicted a guardian of the long past, doing their part to guard the shrine from the encroaching mists emanating from the mass of clouds. Azarus judged Granon was roughly the same height as the shortest statue’s knee, somewhat ironic, in Azarus’s mind, considering Moka came up to his knee. Above the protected space, a ceiling of violently disturbed clouds, dark purples and whites stained with the yellows and oranges of a new day, writhed as if aching to reach down and claim the shrine. The bubble of protection created by the guardian statues held the clouds at bay.

The shrine itself was a simple thing of wood and stone. Four ancient and withered trees with unmistakable umbrella shaped leaves stood at the center of the peak. Vines ran between them, holding massive, crude-hewn chunks of granite suspended in the air. Between them, they formed four splintered walls. A final gate led the way inside. Azarus noticed that the trademark sprawling roots of the trees were missing. Something had seamlessly embedded the trees into the polished stone.

Granon bowed low before he entered the shrine, whispering words of supplication that Azarus could not quite hear. Moka climbed down from Granon’s grasp and peered around the entrance with wide eyes, intermittently scribbling something down in her notes. They entered the shrine together. Granon held an expression of awe and reverence. Moka looked like she was searching for a giant-sized axe to make the tree removal easier.

Inside the roofless shrine, light shone down from overhead, illuminating a large altar of pitted, shimmering metal. The altar had a pole, cast from the same material as the altar, the width of Granon’s wrist rising straight up from it, as if to reach the clouds above. Granon moved to kneel before the altar. Moka ripped a sheet of paper from her booklet and shoved it in his face as soon as it was close enough for her to reach.

Granon took the piece of paper with a delicate pinch of his thumb and forefinger, laid it on the ground, and took several steps back. He squinted at it for a long moment before turning to Moka, questions pouring from his body language. Moka beat him to it.

“Why did you put it down?” Moka looked at the piece of paper, pointedly. “I wrote big for you to see.”

Azarus nodded to himself in his cage of stars and stone. He had not noticed Moka rewriting her notes in oversized block letters while he was examining the shrine, but it made sense.

Granon waved away Moka’s interrogation with an oversized hand.

“We giant kin are built to see things far from our eyes. It’s hereditary,” he said, by way of casual explanation. His brows furrowed as he read the list again. “What exactly are you trying to accomplish here, Moka? You wish to destroy our place of worship?”

Moka rolled her eyes at the villager and began to unpack her bag of tools. Azarus chuckled to himself at her show of false apathy. Even if she would not admit it, he knew she had a soft spot for the sad giant. Azarus did not blame her. He also thought Granon was a fine fellow, if a touch depressing.

“What part of ‘we need materials’ was confusing to you?” Moka double checked her tools with a satisfied nod. She scurried over to the strange altar, tapping at it with a small hammer she’d retrieved. “I want this too. Add it to the list.”

Granon bent his knees, rolled his shoulders, and slammed a hand down onto the stone. It sounded like a thunderclap. The trees swayed, hemorrhaging leaves that floated to the ground at a pace that would make a feather feel fast. Moka stumbled a few steps. She braced herself with a hand against the altar to remain standing. With his long arms, Granon only had to hunch to reach the ground.

“This is not a game, Moka!” Granon said, his voice deafening as it bounced off the stone chunks that formed the walls of the shrine. “Elder Orestilla’s ancestor forged that hammer from the heart of his mother and used it to shatter the spines of dragons in service to our god! You cannot rip everything from us and expect us to be grateful to be saved.”

Moka turned around from where she leaned against the hammer-turned-altar. If Granon’s outburst had phased her, she did not show it. She squared her shoulders, stuck her chin in the air, and glared at her distraught companion.

“Who will remember that ancestor when you’re all dead?” Moka leveled a finger at Granon and took a menacing step forward. The giant took an instinctive half-step backwards. “Your elders said your god forsook you. I disagree. Your god left you the tools to solve your problems. My god sent me to show you the way.”

Granon stammered about sacrilege from behind his bushy, reddish-brown beard. Moka shut him down, fast.

“Either help or don’t.” Moka walked past him, head held high, to her collection of tools. “I will process the materials here, then carry them back down the mountain. If I can prepare by tonight, I will. If not, I hope you survive.”

Azarus watched as Granon gathered himself up, turned on his heel, and exited the shrine to organize his thoughts. Moka eyed one of the ancient trees, a sharp-toothed saw clutched in her gritted teeth and a hatchet tucked into her belt. She used her sharp claws to dig into the bark. Her fancy leather shoes struggled for purchase until she finally kicked them off, opting to use her toes instead. As Granon paced outside, stopping occasionally to pay his respects to the statues of his heroes, Moka sat on the lowest branch, her back against the trunk of the tree. Thankfully, these trees were smaller than the towering behemoths in the forest. With a few quick flicks of her wrist, she marked the branch she was sitting on and several vines with a piece of charcoal. Wasting no time, she started sawing. Azarus judged it would take her hours to get through the branch. It was easily as thick as a horse.

Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more.

After quarter an hour of hard sawing, with a thin cut and clothes drenched in sweat to show for her efforts, Moka changed tact. Abandoning the branch, she went to work on the nearest vine in reach. Azarus wondered if it was [Course-correct] at work or if it was his champion’s natural ingenuity. He attributed her endless stamina to her minor gift of Vigor. Even when slaughtering the human villagers, she had not seemed so inexhaustible. The human village on his mind, Azarus felt a growing concern that the current, insightful version of Moka had something to do with her moderate gift of Reason. He hoped he was worrying over nothing.

Moka cut through the fifth vine, causing a massive boulder to come crashing to the ground. It bounced off the polished stone of the peak, spiderweb cracks growing from the point of impact. Moka ignored the boulder, instead choosing to climb down the tree and up the next one over. She made quick work of the other end of the loose vines, taking care to untangle them and lay them out end to end. Sap sprayed like blood as she hacked a vine into twenty-foot lengths with a hand-axe.

Once the vines were split, Moka took a quick rest. She felt her pulse with a grimace as she took deep, slow breaths. In through her mouth, out through her nose. After a minute, she stood up straight like she was trying to shake her weariness loose. Claiming a few chunks of bark and a handful of sawdust, Moka built a fire. She hit her hammer against the blade of her chisel for sparks. When the first spark caught, she blew with cheek-bulging might to incite it. Soon, a fire danced merrily by the altar as she quartered the vines, length-wise. One by one, she dragged the quartered vines through the fire, burning away the sap and turning the vines into something approaching rope. To Azarus’s eyes, the process worked far better than it should have; Moka’s [Good Enough] Skill and her major gift of Savvy at work.

By the time Granon had returned, Moka had rigged herself a harness from the impromptu rope. She was using it to hang beneath the large branch she’d marked. With heavy, upward strikes of her axe, she chopped a notch into the underside of it, intent on using gravity to do as much of the heavy lifting as she could. Granon stood at the entrance to the shrine, beneath the gate, for several long minutes, watching the goblin at work.

Granon lifted his chin and squared his impressive shoulders. He took several halting steps forward before finding his stride. His long steps ate up the distance until he was nearly face to face with the suspended goblin. He clutched a tiny, wrinkled piece of paper in his hand.

Moka did not stop chopping as Granon grew near. Azarus was under no illusion that she had simply not noticed the giant.

Granon spoke, his voice hesitant and gruff. To his credit, Azarus did not think Moka would realize he had been choosing the right words outside for the last hour.

“You will never finish in time, at this rate. I’ll gather the materials, and you process them.”

Moka’s earrings jangled as she hid a small, knowing smile. Azarus decided he needed to either reevaluate Moka’s natural hearing, or he had underestimated the abilities of a moderate gift of Foresight. Without a second thought, Moka yanked on a protruding rope. The knots holding her makeshift harness aloft gave way with a whisper. In an instant, Moka was falling. Azarus jolted, his hand slamming against the hard surface of the mirror as he reached out on instinct.

Thankfully, Granon had the same thought. The crumpled paper in his hand fell to the polished stone as he scrambled to catch the free-falling goblin. He missed his first attempt. His open, palm-up hand brushed against Moka’s legs, sending her into a wild head-over-heels spin. With his other hand, he snatched her out of the air, his fingers closing around her to form a fist.

“Too tight! Too tight!” Muffled, urgent cries emerged from Granon’s fist.

With a panicked expression, Granon flipped his fist over and opened his hand to reveal a motionless Moka laying on his palm. Granon sniffed, tears welling in his eyes. A soft chorus rose from him; the word ‘no’ repeated over and over until it lost its meaning and only the emotion remained.

“Oh, relax,” Moka said, propping herself up on her elbows, a wild grin spreading beneath her too-wide eyes. She tilted her head back and let out a laugh, her sharp teeth on full display. “That was fun! But we have work to do.”

“Moka!” Granon said, looking as if he had seen a ghost. Azarus joined Moka in a small chuckle at the softhearted giant’s expense as she hopped down from his hand. “I thought you were dead! I — were you pretending to be dead to upset me? I’m sorry I left, but that is cruel.”

“Me? Pretending? Naaaah.” Moka put on an entirely too innocent expression as she adjusted the pencil that kept her messy bun in place. “Just making sure no ribs were broken! Anyway, we have work to do!”

Granon groaned and grumbled, prompting Moka to hold out her hatchet, grip first. The giant took the small implement with his thumb and forefinger. He looked at it in askance. Moka just smiled and gestured to the branch she had been working on. Granon gave her a long look out of the corner of his eye. Moka stuck her tongue out at him and scampered away to make things to kill a skinwalker with.

With a heavy sigh, Granon put the hatchet down and set about ripping apart sections of his people’s holy place. When he ran into a problem his strength could not solve, he pulled the large stone axe from his belt to make quick work of it. Moka ran around collecting fallen leaves and lining them up so they overlapped. She stripped the stems into thread-like strands and stitched.

Many hours later, when the sun was past its zenith, Azarus watched as Granon stacked a last load of supplies into his cart. He had already deposited a few cartloads to the village. His woven thread shirt was soaked with sweat and the bags under his eyes looked like they could store an extra half-cart of materials. Moka stood on his shoulder, looking equally worn, using a handful of Granon’s coarse hair to balance herself.

Azarus admired them from afar. Between Granon’s massive strength and Moka’s uncompromising attitude, they had gathered far more than Azarus had thought possible in such a short time frame.

“You said you left the instructions with the stuff, right?” Moka pestered Granon for the umpteenth time. “We will be hard-pressed to finish this by ourselves.”

“Has anyone told you that you’re awfully bossy for someone so small?” Granon groused as he adjusted one of the stacked bundles of leaves. “I left the directions and told Elder Orestilla your plan. Everyone was discussing something the last time I went down, but I don’t know if they will help or not.”

“My mother always said I have the traits of a chieftain.” Moka boasted, shamelessly ignoring Granon’s negative connotations. “And you gathered rope from the village?”

Granon pulled the cart down the mountain, doing more to slow it down than drive it forward. He rolled his eyes at the goblin, but something about him radiated a sense of exhausted satisfaction. Azarus’s domain thrummed at the sight, filling him with a pleasant energy.

“I put it right where you said, running from the main street all the way up the mountain as far as it will reach. Five lengths of many ropes tied together.”

Moka rubbed her hands together, a dangerous glint in her eyes.

“That’s our first stop!” Moka leaned forward, as if eager to face the skinwalker that haunted the mountain. “If this doesn’t work, you will need to throw me at the spirit so I can stab it in the eyes.”

Granon had long adopted the presence of a patient man dealing with an unruly child. Azarus thought it suited him.

“I will not throw you at the thing that has been eating my friends and family. Stop asking.”

Moka shrugged and sat down as they walked toward the foothills.

“Well, I will not let you die without trying everything, so stop resisting.”

Granon had no response to that. Azarus clenched his fist in silent support of his champion. There was a hopeless village to save and a skinwalker to kill. If anyone could do it on his behalf, it was Moka.

Azarus winced at the thought. Even in the sanctity of his mind, it sounded hollow compared to the ominous feeling eating him up from the inside, made worse by his inability to actually do anything to help. He was stuck behind the mirror, nursing the feeling that he had under prepared Moka with his choices.

After a moment of shared silence, Moka spoke again.

“I am glad you helped,” she said, her posture uncharacteristically meek. “Without you, these plans may as well have been wisps in the woods.”

Granon was quiet for a long time as he gathered his thoughts. When he finally found the courage to speak, his rumbling voice was soft and wistful.

“No matter what happens,” Granon spoke to the air, not daring to face the goblin on his shoulder. “I am glad I met you.”

Moka leaned against Granon’s sweat-streaked neck, resting her head as close to his as she could. Her reply was a whisper that made Azarus’s heart ache.

“Me too. Even if you’re too soft to be a goblin.”

The wind was picking up.