Dunkblat’s eyes opened wider with every word Ikni spoke. Raz knew better than to interrupt the feisty girl when she was waving her arms around animatedly like this. Her face twisted and turned, and her voice went from high-pitched yelling to dropping into a whisper. She reenacted the most gruesome scene of the night by slowly looking at her hand and imagining the blood on it, the disgust visible on her face.

“His eyes burned with fire, they were red, like hot coals and he stared straight into my soul!”, Ikni jumped up as she shouted the words. “I knew better than to stick around, he would have cursed me if I had stayed, this human was clearly a magicker!” Raz rolled his eyes. Ikni’s imagination was giving a colorful twist to the events of the night before, but Dunkblat was clearly hanging on her every word.

Raz couldn’t help but stare at Ikni as she told her grand tale. She held a vibrant expression with a smile he could look at for hours. Her baggy brown clothes from the night before had been swapped out for a bright blue dress, tied around her waist with a golden rope belt. The trimmings on the short-sleeved dress were yellow and followed a snaking pattern everywhere but on the deep-cut v-neck, where it was a straight line.

The one thing that stood out were the black, ankle-high swamp boots she wore. They had been mended a dozen times over, but that was hard to spot, it had been done with care and craftsmanship. No matter what outfit Ikni chose for the day, Raz had never seen her in any other shoes or boots.

He knew the boots used to belong to Ikni and Dunkblat’s grigri, and they meant a great deal to Ikni. Their grigri had passed away several years prior, snatched by a bog lord. He didn’t know any of the finer details of what happened, not for lack of trying to find out though. Nobody would speak a word of it, regardless how much he inquired.

Raz wished a bog lord would snatch up his grigri, there was a blood debt for his ear.

Whack! Ikni twirled and her rope belt hit Raz in the face. He was comfortable lying on a hay filled bag until that moment. He was about to protest when Ikni let herself fall onto her back, into the vacant hay-bag next to Raz. She swung her arms wide open and laughed at the sky. “I like your hat Raz,” she said.

Raz couldn’t believe his ears, well, ear. Had she just said something nice to him? Was she setting the scene for an impending ear-jibe? He wanted to reply but decided to stay quiet. Not merely because he was puzzled, but because her left arm had landed on top of him and she hadn’t moved it. There was nothing Raz would risk that might wreck the moment.

Ikni rolled onto her side, and suddenly her face was very close to Raz’s. He met her gaze in return and could feel her warm breath on his lips and nose. “I mean it Raz, it suits you,” she said softly. If Raz thought his heart was beating fast the night before, it was nothing compared to the adrenaline rush he felt right now.

A loud drawn-out smooching sound came from behind Ikni, where Dunkblat was making animated kissy faces. Ikni jumped up, “Oh piss off, Dunkbladder.” She followed her favorite sisterly nickname for Dunkblat with a swift kick in the shins and walked off.

Raz was sitting upright now, still in disbelief. “I should have gotten rid of my ear ages ago Dunk,” he said softly. Dunkblat, still rubbing his lower leg, burst out in his signature bouldering laugh and hit Raz on the shoulder with a rough smack. “By the Dawnling Raz, you should have. By the moss-eating Dawnling! Haha!”

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Raz had gone to bed with magical dreams of hopes and futures he had never had before. Slipping into the realm of sleep had been easy, but barely two hours had passed and he had woken up from a nightmare he couldn’t remember. Something was gnawing at the back of his mind.

He couldn’t stop thinking about the human. The parched prisoner had asked Raz for help. He was desperate, lonely, and missing an ear, just like Raz. Perhaps that wasn’t the end of the world, it may work out quite well for Raz. It could work out well for the human as well.

Raz furrowed his brow, he knew it wouldn’t work out for the human. He was being treated horribly and Raz knew the human would not be alive for much longer. But why did Raz care? Why should he care? He didn’t want to care, that man was not a goblin, it was a monster! Every story Raz had ever heard that involved humans, was one of death and violence.

So why did it feel like was there a big, stubborn lump in Raz’s throat?

His inner voice was strong, it wasn’t as much an active decision as it was instinct. He knew what he had to do. He jumped out of bed and grabbed the water pouch lying next to his bunk. He slowly slid out of the bed and put on his full black outfit, this time he left his hat behind and pulled a hooded cloak over his shoulders and head.

Raz had to be quiet, he was sharing the room with five of his brothers. He had proven himself to be quite capable of sneaking the night before and a proud grin appeared on his face at the memory. Just then did he bump into the nightstand beside his eldest brother’s bed. The sound of furniture being dragged over a wooden floor filled the room. Raz stood motionless, silence had returned to the room and he waited to see if any sound would alert him to one of his siblings waking up.

After a short while Raz was certain none of them stirred. He continued his journey to the door and for a split second, he thought he saw Zunt sitting upright in the bed. Raz refocused his vision in the dark room, and his little brother was definitely sleeping, the shadows were playing with his mind.

Finally out the door, he sneaked past the dining room and heard Grigri giggle. The door to the room was slightly ajar and a sliver of light fell onto the worn wooden floorboards of the hallway. The floor creaked ever so slightly under Raz’s weight, but he moved at a snail’s pace, one step at a time. Hoping to go unheard, he kept hunched over and kept low, peering through the opening.

“No, no, no my dear. I need more time. Meanwhile, you need to finally take your rightful place as mayor. Your beloved husband is stalling on the plan, he is too slow to act,” said Grigri as she took a bite from a round muffin-shaped mooncake. She only had three teeth left, one up top and two down the bottom. Cursed to a life of eating soft, sweets, like mooncakes. Raz’s mouth started watering, that was a tasty-looking mooncake. He wondered if she had a secret mooncake stash hidden away, so he could find it and steal some, and impress Ikni with his awesome mooncakes and … “Dat will come through, I know it,” his mother said. "Old Mayor Rehk is on his last legs. I’ve entered his dreams twice now, he’s clearly looking to join the Dawnling in his garden. He just needs some,” she paused and then emphasized, “encouragement.”

Grigri’s heavy eyebrows lifted, three coarse white hairs sticking out unevenly. She wasn’t wearing her wig tonight, Raz found it disconcerting. “Dat has too many doubts and fears, you should have never bonded him,” her eyes gazed up to nowhere in particular. “Remember his brother Ringdum? Those toned muscles, and that nose. A twelve-ringer!” Grigri was getting excited at the memory, she made a tiny hop on her chair, lifting her bum off the seat for a short moment before dropping it on the chair again.

“Ringdum was an oaf and a buffoon, I wouldn’t have bonded him if the Ogre Queen herself bit off my foot,” Raz’s mother said with disgust on her face. “Back to the point mum, we have less than two days before Raz’s Dawn Day, he’s the only one out of twenty-four painful labors that has the spark of the Dawnling in him,” her eyes turned pleading and repeated the words slowly and emphatically, “Twenty-four, mother.”

Raz’s head was spinning, he took a step back and tried to organize his thoughts. Unfortunately, that would have to wait, the loose board under his foot groaned a little too loud and the voices went quiet. “Dat, is that you?” his mother called out. Raz took three big leaps and ran out the front door, not bothering to close it behind him. He knew he would have his fair share of explaining to do in the morning. Again.