It took a few more hours for Tiria and her two companions to get close enough to land at the village. By the time they did, the goblins below had noticed them and had gathered on the shore.

The vast majority of them held a startling array of weapons, and while most of them were green, they were still many that were a rainbow of different colors. With the sheer variety of goblins present, she doubted they were a single clan, but all of them stood behind one goblin slightly taller than rest.

Unlike the others, she didn't have any weapon. Instead, she stood casually with her arms crossed. Her attire was just a touch nicer than the rest of their group. A tunic and pants made from rough materials fit snuggly to her frame and looked relatively new.

Tiria checked her compass and it still pointed directly ahead. She placed it back into her [Expanded Pocket] as the Toucan landed and she, Chum, and Orchid jumped off.

"Whew, I'm pretty tired," the Toucan named Billy said. "I'm gonna take a nap for a bit." Without another word, the Toucan laid out on the shoreline, closed his eyes, and started snoring with his wings spread akimbo.

The goblin leader snorted. "If you're coming to fight, you really should have brought more monsters."

Tiria looked to the monsters arrayed against her and thought that Kumo might have been up for the challenge. The fight obsessed otter had actually thought she'd win against the Fighting Drakes after all. Tiria didn't have the same drive for battle anymore. She clutched one paw to her chest.

"We're not here to fight. Just moving through."

"Moving through to where?" the goblin asked pointedly and Tiria could tell she was trying to lean on them for something, but she honestly didn't have an answer for him. She sighed.

"I'm not sure. We're not from this part of the world either before or after the Surge."

The goblin leader didn't reply and continued to study them with a suspicious gaze. "Are you familiar with an otter named Gi?"

That snapped Tirira out of her depressed daze. "How do you know our Progenitor?"

"I thought so." The goblin chuckled. "Name's Nori. He helped me conquer the Child Stage. I used to hate that damn dragonfly of his." Nori shook her head, thinking about her old memories. "Is Gi making a claim on this continent? I might be willing to ally for old time's sake if so."

"He's dead," Tiria said. Nori seemed a bit taken aback by her blunt statement, but Gi's death clearly didn't upset her either.

"Well damn. Some more troops would have helped against the Empire. The humans will only be able to hold them off for so long."

Empire? Orchid asked.

Nori cut her gaze towards the Hidden Spider. "The Demon Empire."

Memories of Galvina forcing Gi's mouth open with her foot drifted through her mind. She'd just stabilized him and if Galvina had the good decency to die, they could have escaped with Gi and the Twins still alive. Her paw pulled on the fur of her chest.

"I see you're not fans either. They have that effect on most monsters," Nori tapped her chin thoughtfully. "You're welcome to join my clan. We can always use more bodies to fight the demons once they remember we're here."

Tiria shook her head. "We can't. There's something we have to do."

"Something you have to do? Most monsters only have enough drive to feed, fuck, and fight. Without your Progenitor, what is it that's so important to you?"

Tiria stared long and hard at the goblin. Nori obviously didn't care that much about Gi, but ambivalence was better than malevolence for a monster and far less common. She'd just have to take a chance.

"We're going to bring him back," she said, pulling the compass out of her [Expanded Pocket] which still pointed out of the village. "I need an entity of chaos. Do you know what that is?"

Nori didn't even seem surprised that Tiria thought she could bring Gi back, but the "entity of chaos" seemed to bring her up short. "Maybe..."

"What is it?," Tiria pressed.

"There's a forest further inland. There's a cliff on this side, but that forest extends pretty far into the Empire. The demons sent their armies to stop... something in there, but whatever they tried didn't work. We used to be slaves of the Empire and we thought to travel through the forest to escape them. It worked, but we lost half our number in that forest. I can't imagine that you mean anything else than that horrid place."

Tiria again looked back down at the compass and it did seem to be pointing directly towards the forest, though she couldn't see it in the middle of village. Nori sighed and then turned back towards the village.

"Come on, let's get some food and I'll tell you more about it." Nori clapped her hands loudly. "Come on you lazy louts. Break it off. No fighting to be had here."

Some of them cheered while other grumbled, but all of them respected Nori's commands and immediately moved off to other chores or to idle somewhere else. She wasn't sure if this hodgepodge group was truly Nori's clan, but the goblin was obviously a Progenitor.

Their group left the Toucan where he lay and followed Nori towards the only two story building in the village. Some of the buildings were practically destroyed and it wasn't until Tiria saw a large rift leading out of town that she hadn't noticed from the air that she realized this must have been where they arrived in the monster surge, but that didn't quite make sense either.

"How did you guys get here?" Tiria asked as Nori opened the door to the two story building and led them into what had to have once been a tavern.

"Fell into the sky and popped out of that crack outside." Nori hopped over the bar and then started to pulled out a sack of bread and a sack of some type of nut from behind it. She tossed both on one of the larger tables and gestured for them all to sit.

"So did the forest come out of the ground then? You made it sound like it was back in the monster world as well."

Nori shrugged. "No fucking clue. We went through it back in the monster world, but we weren't even in sight of it when the monster surge happened. Feels like that damned thing keeps following us. Reminds me way too much of the Eldritch Forest back in the Child Stage."

That familiar feeling that she'd had when looking at the forest suddenly made sense. Gi hadn't talked much about the Child Stage, but Poe constantly talked about everything. She and the other otters had secured the river right where it connected with a forest in the Child Stage. A forest that had once been "haunted", but had been cleaned out by Gi, at least according to Poe.

"I know a bit about that," Tiria said, "Does this forest also corrupt monsters?"

Nori pulled a piece of bread out of the bag and tore off a huge bite. She pointed at Tiria. "You can bet your furry cooter it does. All of us heard some kind of whispers when we went into the forest, but others went completely mad. When they did, they were as strong as any two others and started trying to slaughter us. With the Empire at our back, we had no choice but to push through. There used to be over a thousand of us."

Nori stuffed almost a third of the loaf into her mouth before biting off another chunk. "Fuck that place."

Orchid was primly deshelling the nuts with her front limbs and fangs into a small pile for her to eat while Chum had already helped himself to a loaf of bread. Tiria didn't want to risk either of their lives. "I can look for the entity of chaos alone."

Chum, who'd been focused on being a quiet steadiness for her to rely on, scoffed. "There's no way I'm letting you go into the corrupted forest by yourself."

Danna will protect us within the unholy reaches.

She knew that there was no hope of them letting her go alone. If they were willing to do that, they'd never have accompanied her. Nori, on the other hand, popped the last piece of bread in her mouth.

"So when you say, 'bring him back,' do you mean like back from the dead?"

Danna's powers transcend both life and death. Through her wisdom, Gi shall be made whole.

It was a little more eloquent than Tiria would have said, but it was the gist.

"Interesting...," Nori said, reaching into the bag of nuts. "How big is this clan of yours?"

Tiria had been more focused on the upcoming mission, but something in Nori's tone brought her attention back. "A few hundred. Why?"

"You got water in your ears? The Empire. Their goal is to conquer the entire world so their Emperor can ascend into godhood. That means there's no room for clans like us to actually exist and grow on our own. If we don't fight the Empire, we might as well put the slave collars around our own necks."

Tiria filled in the gaps. "You want our clan to help you fight back? Our clan has been scattered and I don't know where any of them are. I doubt they would even want to team up again unless Gi came back."

"Tensions were high after his death," Chum added helpfully.

"Doesn't matter," Nori countered. "At some point, they're going to have to fight back or submit. Who knows how much time we have until the humans are dealt with. It's in your clan's best interest to ally with me."

"I don't speak for the clan any more," Tiria snapped before grabbing a piece of bread from the bag on the table as well and started to rip it apart into more edible chunks. "I'm going to go in that forest, find a stupid entity of chaos- whatever the hell that is-, and revive my Progenitor. That's all I have the capacity to do."

"All right, all right," Nori said, "I didn't realize you'd be so broken up about it. As long as you'll fight if the Empire comes, you can stay here as long as you want, but think about what I said. If you manage to bring Gi back, it's only going to be into the Emperor's world unless we do something about it."

Nori grabbed another loaf from the bag and just left them to an empty tavern. Orchid had started on eating her small pile of deshelled nuts, but Chum looked at Tiria thoughtfully as he chewed his bread. "She's got a point. Back home, the humans were closing in hard. Even if the humans can defeat the Demon Empire on this continent, they won't be friendly towards us. Slavery might be a mercy rather than getting hunted down."

"Please, Chum, I've only got enough conviction for one thing right now and that's bringing Gi back. If we manage it, he can decide what to do about the Demon Empire."

"I'm sorry for pushing," Chum said, but Tiria couldn't really fault him for it. The old her would have been able to handle two urgently pressing needs without issue. She just wasn't that same monster anymore.

"Let's rest here a couple of days and you can try to get whatever information you think is important from them. I'll make sure Billy stays with us. We might need him after we get the river stone filled and have to move onto the reflection."

Chum looked deeply into her eyes. "As you wish."