Noz hardly dreamed. And when he did, it was less of dreaming and more remembering; experiencing memories, most of which he’d much rather forget, as if they were happening for the first time.

He was in a massive stone brick room, dim torchlight giving way for shadows cast by crude wooden arches and slashed pillars. Four different straw mats, separated by two intersecting walkways of unpolished pine, lay flush into the floor, dusted and thoroughly beaten down from years of thrashing and sparring. Noz stood at the corner of one, leaning against one of the nearby banisters and weakly clutching a practice dagger. Sweat poured from his brow and flowed into his tunic. He doubled over, panting, each breath taken on the tail of the last.

Torchlight swayed and danced in an invisible wind, and the shadows followed suit. The light gave way to the silhouette of a new figure, arms crossed, standing straighter than a plank of wood. Both were of similar stature, however one exuded prodigious expertise; the other was lucky to be in its presence.

The figure had something in its hand; a Jabal Creep, a doll they used for disarming practice. They were effigies made of some magical material (He’d long forgotten his lessons), and their forms shifted every second vying to escape the grip of anyone who held it. Yet, the figure toyed around with it, letting it curl across his fingers, balancing it on his knuckles, before tossing it into the air catching it with a strict hold. Noz winced at the sight.

“If you can’t take even this from my hand,” The figure said. “Can you even call yourself a goblin?”

Noz grumbled to himself. A blacksteel dial on the far end of the room showed they’ve been here for hours. “I’m more of a goblin than you are.” Noz said. “Since you’re more of an asshat.”

Even cast underneath a shadow, Noz saw the figure’s face scrunch in contempt. It tossed the Jabal Creep into the air, and it landed before Noz with a squelch. Noz knew what they were going to say before they even said it.

“Daft-handed garbage.” The figure sneered. “Pick it up.”

Noz never did.

…

He jolted awake, gasping for air as if he’d fallen under a fever; It was that dream again. Noz made an irritated sound to himself, wiping beads of sweat off his brow. Every time he’d thought he’d forgotten, it surged back to him when he least expected it – like the memory purposefully did so just to unsettle him. Damn that Akarn. Noz thought. Haunting me postmortem. Go to hell already.

He felt a cool sensation on his left forearm, faint at first, but growing by the moment. A paper patch wrapped around it, damp with some kind of fluid. On the paper was a painted sigil, and it pulsed with a faint light; each time it did, he felt his arm go cooler and cooler until it became numb. Noz looked at it puzzlingly. Magic like this didn’t exist in Jun’anil.

More importantly, who put it there?

Groggily, Noz swept his eyes over the environment. He was in a camp of sorts. Laying before him was a great bonfire, flickering in the center of a stonepit. Hanging directly over was a steel cooking pot with the lid closed, supported by a surprisingly well-put together tripod of wood. The goblin’s nose twitched as the aroma wafted towards him: Rosemary, beef, and… he barely stifled his gasp. Salt? Was that salt?

“If stew was all I needed to get you up,” A voice grumbled from across the firepit. “I would’ve led with it.”

Noz had to do a double take. He’d studied the human language in Jun’anil and he’d gotten rather fluent at it. There were times he’d wished not to, for it was so dissonant from goblin tongue, but he’d figured it would help his thieving. However, the voice was not speaking the human language. She was speaking goblin.

The voice’s owner picked up something beside them: Some kind of misshapen staff. A walking stick, by the looks of it. They slowly skirted around the fire with an awkward gait even the stick couldn’t remedy. Draping the figure was an alarmingly intricate black and silver robe, frayed at the edges. Graying hairs, split at the ends, spilled from the hood and settled at their temples while wrinkles tore through their mottled skin like tiny ravines. Noz couldn’t help going slack-jawed; it was his target. It was that hag.

She sat down on a fallen log next to him. Almost instinctively Noz reached for his dagger – except his muscles barely responded. His arm felt as if it were sinking into the grass, and it was a great labor to just lift it off. He tried the same with his other arm, but it hung limp at his side, unresponsive. No doubt because of that patch.

The hag sighed. “You goblins are all cut from the same chaff. Your first waking thought? Immediate violence.”

“Don’t tarnish my language with your tongue, hag!” Noz switched to Emperor’s Word. He found his voice shaky, strained, and surprisingly hoarse. “Who are you? What’d you do with my stuff?”

“And the second, of possessions.” The woman muttered something else to herself. She still spoke in Jun’go, much to Noz’s annoyance. He quite couldn’t tell what she said, but that bite in her tone said it all. “I’m the one who made you that stew and the reason why you’re not unconscious in the middle of the road. You will address me as Reyn.”

Noz narrowed his already slit eyes. He looked further around the camp and saw his satchel leaning at the far end. It looked untouched. But near it, rolled out on a cloth, was an arrangement of glass bottles filled with different herbs and liquids; he knew only a scant few. The rest looked plucked straight from an apothecary’s shelves. Some of them had their tops off, while others looked undisturbed. Noz’s stomach dropped.

“You hag, you tried to poison me!” The goblin screeched. He tried to thrash around, but again found no response to his fatigued body.

Reyn only looked at him with a mix of pity and contempt. She hobbled over to the pot, producing a bowl and spoon, and filled it. When she sat back down, she began slowly spooning it into her mouth, savoring the taste between languid breaths. “I did no such thing,” She said. “The Inokkus rune – spectacularly rare, but prolonged exposure leads to permanent perceptual maladies. Xue’fokate – more common since all it does is muffle the senses, and less lethal. Still plenty dangerous, all things considered.” She took another bite of the stew, pointing the spoon at a bewildered Noz afterwards. “Most people I’ve treated had only one or the other, and sometimes even they didn’t come out the same. You can consider yourself lucky.”

“That’s not human magic,” Noz whispered. He blinked once, then twice, then shook himself furiously out of his shock. “That’s not human magic. That’s goblin magic – my magic! How do you– Who are–”

“By the end of tonight we will know enough about one another to be more than strangers,” Reyn interjected, her rasping voice suddenly domineering. “And yet, less than acquaintances. The perfect medium – that is, if you’re willing.”

Noz kept quiet. His mind was churning a thousand answers a minute trying to figure out how this woman, this hag, got a hold of goblin magic. Humans were arrogant and prideful, touting their superiority not just in the arcane arts. Going on about their glistening cities of light, their magic circles, the grimoire of this, the theory of that – all the while they had no knowledge about basic runework. They didn’t even call it magic – just ‘shoddy goblin happenstance.’ So for this hag – Reyn, was it? – to know; It’d be a lie for Noz to claim that he wasn’t slightly curious.

Reyn took this silence as a sort of affirmation. She procured another bowl and spoon from somewhere, filling it to the brim with the wonderful stew, and slid it over to Noz. He remained anxious; until he caught the first whiff of Gattledew and rosemary and he turned ravenous. But before he could even lay a hand on the spoon, Reyn spoke. “First things first: What were you planning on doing with runes like that primed?”

The goblin remained silent, instead reaching for the bowl. Reyn pulled it back just as his fingertips brushed the spoon handle, much to Noz’s irritation. “A-a-ah,” She said. “Equal exchange, dear.”

“It’s not dear, it’s Noz.” The goblin spat out. He grimaced upon realizing how bratty he sounded – but he was speaking to a human. Their kind merited only the barebones of respect. “You think I’m gonna tell you? A hag, a dark forest, and a goblin armed with runes; what do you think I was gonna do? How about you use that mass of meat in your head and figure it out?”

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“I had an inkling, but I wanted to hear it from you.” Said Reyn, languidly stirring her own bowl. She sighed. “Apparently a luxury I cannot afford. Oh well.”

Reyn took another bite from her stew, and Noz found his eyes wandering towards the ladle. He made an attempt to tear his eyes away, but it only drifted onto his serving – or rather, what was to be his serving. He also found himself drooling. The goblin scowled; he had to take his mind off his hunger! Off that chunk of beef just barely dangling off the rim, dripping with dripping with oils and juice – off the potatoes and carrots strewn about a sea of broth, swirling around like the Shifting Archipelago. A voice in his head shamed him. A real goblin wouldn’t bow to a human, much less over food!

But Noz hungered. And with that stew before him, he starved.

“Fine. Fine!” The goblin groaned. “I was going to rob you. Was gonna take that bag of yours, sell it off, pawn the contents, whatever. Happy now?”

Reyn raised an eyebrow. Skepticism crept across her aging wrinkles, but she surrendered the bowl nevertheless. Noz tore into it, and before long, realized he was scraping the sides for the most meager broth droplets. This too is its own magic. He thought to himself.

“Wasn’t expecting that honest of an answer,” Reyn said once he finished. “Expected more snide, snark, screaming and kicking. That sort of thing.”

“Tch.” She was right. If it were Akarn, he would’ve spat in her face, too. Noz had been too easy. But the taste of food brought clarity to what happened earlier, and even lingering on those remnants brought a shiver to his spine. It could’ve just been an effect of the Inokkus rune, but to a degree that terrifying? Doubtful.

“Did you come alone?” Reyn broke the creeping silence.

“‘C-course not!” Noz lied through his teeth. He did his best to sound a bit haughty. “It’s a good thing you left me alive, actually. My horde would’ve gutted you like a fish if they found me dead!”

“I’m not even going to pretend that was a threat,” Reyn’s face remained unchanged, but something else glinted in one of her weary eyes – something that put Noz on edge. Perhaps a trick of the light? “Dear, it’s been hours. Either they gave up on looking, or…” She frowned. “Maybe they never looked in the first place. Maybe you weren’t that important to begin with.”

“The hell do you know?!” Noz exploded. Though given his current state, it wasn’t so much an explosion as it was a tiny outburst. “I’ll have you know that I’m a damned bigshot in my horde! They treat me like the chief!”

“So where’s your horde now?”

Noz’s voice died in his throat. Every borne word splintered before it could escape his lips so that all that exited were incomprehensible grunts. For his own pride, Noz had to retort somehow; yet the two of them fell silent, save for the clattering of Reyn’s spoon against the side of her bowl.

“And you?” Noz jabbed. “You look bound for a coffin any day now. Humans’re really shitty, letting a hag like you stumble through the night.”

Surprisingly, Reyn said nothing. She turned to the campfire, interlocking her hands, gazing into the small flames barely licking the bottom of a pot.

“You’re right.”

Noz almost did a double take. “Come again?”

“You’re right,” The woman said. Her eyes never left the fire. “I knew a knight once. Not just any knight, too. The ones you see in stained glass ‘n paintings. The ones written in legend. She was–”

Ugh. Lady, I didn’t ask for your life’s story. Noz thought. Except Reyn narrowed her eyes at him, looking down in contempt, and he realized he’d said it aloud. His heart beat just a bit faster – that was far from the wisest thing to say given their positions.

Reyn’s arms folded over each other, crossed like a disappointed parent. “I suppose you still remain a goblin,” She huffed, shaking her head slowly. “Yet I remain curious. You differ from those I’ve encountered previously.”

“How so?” Noz snorted. He quickly followed up with, “Not like I give two shits, anyway.”

“You’re not trying to flay me alive. You accepted my meal, so you must trust me on some level. And…” Reyn switched off from Jun'go. “You know the Emperor’s Word. How did a goblin like you ever figure that out?”

Noz flinched. “Well, you pick up a word or two between robberies. You’d be stupid not to.”

“You don’t know just a ‘word or two,’ dear. You are nearly fluent.” She leaned forward in her seat, sweeping her gaze over him. “I do wonder how that happened.”

“Feeling’s mutual, lady!” Noz fired back. “I’ve no clue how a human like you managed to ‘learn’ mine, if you can even call it that. You butcher every syllable, overextend every grunt, mispronounce everything; it’s a disgrace. An insult, even!”

His words hung in the air for a moment, growing tense. Then Reyn chuckled. She chuckled. “Then I suppose we’ve both secrets we’d prefer remain unspoken,” said Reyn. “But I shall divulge one, nevertheless. An answer to your question previously: I am an alchemist. I am Reyn of Liugo.”

Noz couldn’t care less. While he itched to make this verbal, he suddenly felt a horrible tightening in his chest, like a claw grasped from the inside and balled his flesh into a knot. He choked on air, rolling over to his side, sputtering and coughing. His blood vessels felt on the brink of bursting; and yet, only a few moments later, the sensation passed. It passed, yet Noz lingered still on that horrible feeling. Poison, he hashed out with what meager reason he could muster. Fucking poison.

“YOU–”

“There it is,” Reyn said. A sly glimmer danced across her weary eyes. That hag – she knew this was to occur! “Yet a bit earlier than expected. And before you speak, no, I did not poison your food.”

“POIS–” Noz couldn’t finish his words. It was a struggle even to recuperate his breathing.

Reyn frowned. She rose, making her way back to the other end of the camp. Opening her case with a few melodic clicks, she began plucking her bottles from the cloth and packing them back in. When she spoke again, her voice suddenly took on a more didactic tone, much to Noz’s surprise. “Now normally, symptoms of the Inokkus rune disappear within a month’s time. Same with the Xue’fokate rune. Individually, of course. And provided consistent treatment.”

Noz’s words came out as a series of strained coughs. “The hell… are you saying?”

“You must know. This is goblin magic, after all.”

“I know,” Noz said. “But…what the hell’s a ‘symptom?’”

Reyn paused her packing. She looked back at Noz, the look on her face expecting him to be jesting; when she realized he wasn’t, she heaved a heavy sigh and muttered something to herself. For some reason, Noz couldn’t help but feel a twitch of irritation.

“Hey! I asked you something!”

“You are still sick,” Reyn said. “That tightening you felt – if left to fester, it’ll only get worse until it’d be as if you hadn’t been treated at all.”

“Because you poisoned me!”

The corner of Reyn’s mouth twitched. “I did not poison you. That was medicine, a mere tincture.”

“What’s the difference?” Noz said. To that, Reyn had no response. She seemed to continue packing from the sound, but with how the bottles clanked and jostled, with considerably less care than before.

“It is my code,” She finally muttered. “That no death shall spring from my negligence. But from ignorance–” Reyn stared down Noz sternly, making his blood run just a bit colder. “That is another matter entirely.”

“You can go screw yourself too,” Noz said meekly. “Shamans could’ve fixed me right fine, probably. Maybe you messed up and now I’m to pay the price!”

Reyn went still, and the night air went quiet. The stars became dimmer by the slightest margin. Noz felt the hairs on his arms rise, standing on end, as silence pulsed throughout the camp – an uneasy, supernatural silence. “You insinuate that an alchemist would dare harm her patient?”

“W-Well.” Noz felt his bravado vanish, yet managed to summon back fragments. “You are a human, after all.”

“I see.” Reyn said. “You’ve quite the gall to come out alone, fail a theft, and bite back at the woman who healed you. Quite the gall – but I will not let you die. You will come with me tomorrow, to Liugo.”

“Like hell I’d do that,” Noz said. “I’d much rather peel my skin off.”

“That was not a request, Noz.” The goblin jolted. It was the first time she’d actually said his name, and it wasn’t in amity. “Or would you prefer a slow spiraling into madness? Death, perhaps?”

He gulped. Was that a threat? Or worse – a promise? His first instinct was simply to say no, but he knew that the goblin shamans only dabbled in real medicine. They mostly operated within the bounds of hexes and curses, boons and blessings. It was no small shame in admitting that what he’d said before was a lie; he’d much rather make the winding trek back to Jun’anil than flay himself (Wouldn’t anyone?). Yet his pride as a goblin would not allow it! If the horde were to see him now, what would they think? What would they do?

Nothing worse than they hadn’t done already.

“What do you want?” Noz mumbled. “You want a ‘thank you?’ Gold? Something stolen?”

Reyn answered with silence, pondering for a second. “No, dear,” she said. “You will work for me.”