12th Transmission:
…a novel medium for arcane inscription, with a specificity that belies a wide range of functions and applications.
Before addressing the various practical schools of Plate Painting, their rivalrous nature and the wild variations of their respective underlying theory, a brief summary of the fundamentals and the typical manufacturing process for the necessary materials:
The plates themselves are smooth stone discs about the size of a dinner plate, and the paint, a pale gray silty paste. They are both derived through the use of a “Master Mill Stone,” which themselves range in size from several miles to…
* A Practical Guide to the Impossible
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Accretio’s flinted teeth arced sparks about his mouth as he chewed the fibrous wood. His gut steamed as he began to move with locomotive weight. Little streams of steaming water poured from his lower body as he rose from the river bank. I could see that the river had cut a channel clear through their shell while they had rested overnight.
On their left side, at about my shoulder’s height, an arched cave mouth had opened up where the water had flowed out of them. With new flame now within their gut, flickers of domed oven heat danced out of the hole; a flat floor of eroded stone lay within.
“You’ve turned into a furnace.” I told them
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We walked directly toward the coast now, winding around hillocks and gullies across thinning grass and crumbling stone. The coast of hazardous rocky cliff gave way to an inlet of soft sand a ways in front of us, the beach attaching a forested peninsula flooded with churning ocean water.
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I placed a loaf of bread at the mouth of Accretio’s new forge cave, which radiated a calm oven heat. I took my new baker’s peel and slid the bread just to where the stone underneath would harden the crust and start to steam the innards. The smell was nice. Grainy.
Thremp trotted up to Accretio’s left flank, where I perched on the rocks and tended the oven, with pointed sniffing.
Pointing at the waterlogged beach we approached, he said, “Goblin Kin like to use natural defensive points like this to fence out their labyrinthes. I should have thought to check this place. Whatever blood magic you’ve conducted, my big large friend, is surely a boon to me and the community I serve. Let us eat and steel ourselves for the culling ahead of us.”
Accretio did not speak, did not glance back. I think Thremp expected him to stop or slow down at some point but we kept moving.
I tore open the steaming bread and Thremp and I sat precariously among Accretio’s cliff sides, layering cheese and aged meat onto it. We both ate quickly and messily. Thremp could only take small decisive bites with his toothy mouth at the end of his equine snout. He clamped down on his lunch and ripped his face to the side to tear off what he then spent some time chewing.
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There had been some words from Thremp to try to belay Accretio’s descent toward the awaiting peninsula and supposed Goblin Labrynth, but the words elicited no response from the moving mountain and he had switched to relaying a hastened strategy to me.
“They build the walls of their fortress low within the ground and camouflage them. They are all connected into one extended maze structure. They like to stay hidden from each other, and anything that might stumble over top of the labyrinth is typically large enough to get tangled within these hallways. The Goblins swarm from all sides and their victim is defenseless.”
Accretio breached the shallow stretch of water, approaching the sparse forest land. We would quickly be upon them. I gripped my baker’s peel and Thremp quickened his words with haste and only a light trace of panic.
“Our best strategy is to plant ourselves at an outside edge, breach into the labyrinth from one contained position and funnel our quarry toward us, slaying them as they come.”
The first heavy footfall onto clumpy soil. The first sound of bending branches. Accretio continued his titanic march forward, unaltered. I glimpsed the snake of pale white ash that echoed our approach to this place. We entered the choked forest.