When Zraih had finished making her new tools, I relit the forge using aether, it burned with a deep cerulean flame that seemed to feed itself. Zraih began forging an armor while I pushed aether through Ultai and her desire for a safe home into it. Every blow of Zraih’s hammer left rippling rainbows of color running across the metal’s surface, filigree patterns of flowers and vines seeming to rise out of the metal on their own.

When Zraih finished with the armor, she began on a sword and Shield, a matching affair showing odd geometric patterns across the whole of them. When it was all done I reached in and pulled the aether flame out of the forge, causing strange ephemeral after images to trace my movements. The forge immediately re-lit itself, as flames started by the aether are want to do. Slamming the aether flame through the neck hole of the armor it began to heat stain the metal of the armor sword and shield a rosy pearlescent sort of pink. The fire roared to greater life, and then the armor stood. The flames coalesced into a head, a soft featured female face I could see traces of Ultai in, with long hair rising upwards, flowing along the heat currents. The armor took its sword in shield and marched out of the room heading for the entrance to the caves.

“What was that?” Ultai asked

“A dullahan, an old weapon of war, something wizard aren't really supposed to make anymore but I won't leave our tribe undefended.”

“Why not make anymore?” was Ultai’s next question.

“A dullahan will learn and develop a personality with age. If the wrong intent is used when giving one life they can begin to crave war and bloodshed instead of preventing it. Not something we need to worry about with this one, it will want to defend what you want to defend.”

“I’m keeping the hammer, also your weird ghostly after images aren't going away you fucking ghoul.” was Zraih’s input.

“Fuck”

With the work for the day done we headed to the reservoir to wash off and just enjoy soaking in the warm waters for a time. I was finally starting to relax, watching Ultai and Zraih horsing around and trying to dunk each other, it was hard not to. Looking down at my reflection in the water I could finally see what I'd done to my eyes using the aether, they had a constant mist of aether leaking out of them now. Zraih was right, with my scorched skin and all the other side effects, including the weird ghostly after images my movements were causing, I really did look pretty ghoulish. I suppose it was lucky the goblins had taken an interest in me as any conventional hopes of having a family one day were pretty much gone looking the way I did now.

I heard a manic cackling from Ultai and looked up just in time to see her on Zraih’s shoulders who was currently completely under water holding her breath, and through some combination of her tail and powerful legs was charging me at speed. They bowled me over and under the water, taking turns using my head as a springboard to get away. When I managed to come back up, I found the two of them on the other side of the reservoir barely managing to stay afloat from laughing so hard, I could only shake my head and smile.

If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

For a lot of the goblins the dullahan was the flashy display of aether they had ever seen. They spent a lot of time staring at it, especially since they weren't going on nearly as many hunting trips now. Almost the whole tribe was calling me the spicy chief now and that was starting to worry me about the tribe's population but when I brought to Grak’s attention he just laughed stating “Grak is bunny goblin, not because Grak raises bunny.” and then I laughed too.

Everywhere I looked there were signs of Zraih’s addition to the tribe, small metal tools here and there, a large grate resting over the fire Sazz had been enamored, with and a box resting against the wall filled with an ever-growing pile of nails. I probably needed to head out soon and start gathering wood for furnishings, with the new hatchet Zraih had made me I didn’t have much of an excuse left not to. It wouldn’t be long at the rate things were going before the tribe started to rival many of the normal villages in the world, sure they’d never be known for their creativity, that was mostly a human affair, but they were a good family and were patently close with each other.

It didn’t seem to matter what you set in front of the goblins, once they decided it was theirs, they adopted it almost instantly. New tools were spread amongst the tribe as soon as they had them, and even new members such as Zraih were basically slotted into place right away. The goblins knew how to survive, and they did it by overwhelmingly taking advantage of everything at their disposal. If their previous chief had been made to challenge for the right to lead instead of being born into the role by nature of his species, I might not be leading the tribe now, the goblins were getting frighteningly efficient at using their bows.

“Why make serious face” Viess had asked me, catching me lost in my thoughts.

“I think I need to start making regular trips to the city to keep us updated on the wider world, maybe trade some wood while I'm at it, we are low on money.

“News smart, money eh.” was her opinion.

“Either way, I'll feel better staying ahead of things.”

“Have kobold, Maybe dig deeper, keep outside, outside.” she suggested.

“We might to have but I'd rather that was a last resort, things are good for us here. Digging deeper might bring its own problems.”

She didn’t respond to that, just crawling into my lap and leaning back against me, further driving home the point that things were good here. While the goblins were working hard to make sure the farms got up and running and we had enough furs to get through the winter, I'd have to work hard to make sure things outside the tribe didn’t get in to cause problems.

I headed out again the next days, loading down the handcart with lengths of felled trees. Zraih’s hatchet had made cutting the trees down and to length a swift affair, and I was definitely appreciating it. Hopefully there would still be a few kobolds willing to do business and not all holed up in their mountain. Fully loaded down I headed off expecting the trip to go slightly slower dragging all the extra weight.

The whole trip, trip the forest animals seemed to always be just at the edge of my vision, staying close just never willing to actually approach. Small sciuvis flitting back and forth among the tree branches overhead, supposedly they brought good luck, but id personally found the little red winged squirrels to be better at stealing meat left out to dry.

The trip ended up taking closer to two days, and when I arrived at the city it was obvious only the poorest merchants had remained to do any business, trying to scrape the last bits of coin they could before the war spread this far north. I managed to trade off the lumber id brought for bolts of cloth and picked up news along the way. The Lamia city, only about a week's travel from here had fallen, and the Ephemeral Valley had sealed itself off.