For once, I decided not to make a speech.

Not that I didn’t make a spectacle—reassuring my new gang about their decision and securing their loyalty was a priority—but in show business you have to be able to gauge your audience. In my professional opinion, the last thing any of these folks wanted right now was more pressure of any kind. It was a moment for calm and a much-needed sense of security.

So I simply told everyone, in a quiet and empathetic tone, that we were going to be moving as fast as we could on foot without exhausting anybody. I gave instructions that anyone should talk to me if they needed healing, to Zui if there were any other material needs or issues that had to be sorted out, and to Yoshi if Flaethwyn caused them any problems.

Flaethwyn very nearly caused a problem there and then, but Nazralind turned her head to stare, and she subsided, visibly seething.

“You’re coming along, then?” I asked Gizmit. “I know the original plan was for you to rummage around this place and find your own way back, but…”

“But that went down the crack as soon as we found it abandoned,” she nodded. “Yeah, I’m sure I could turn up something else in here with time to work at it, but nothing more valuable than what we’ve already learned.”

“I’m almost disappointed,” Zui said sweetly. “You know this guy asked me earlier why I was even along? I’ve been waiting for the moment when he realized he had nobody else to navigate back to Sneppit’s place with you gone.”

“Obviously I had considered that,” I lied with my customary aplomb. “For somebody who lives to dish out the snark and banter, Zui, you sure can’t seem to take it.”

“Listen, boy,” Rizz cut in. “You didn’t win that fight, Hoy lost it. That guy is an infamously self-centered shithead, to the point I wonder if he’s got a legit brain issue. When you face Jadrak, it won’t go down like that. I’m very curious how much Jadrak actually believes his pro-goblin talk, but whatever the truth he is very good at presenting himself that way. He’s charismatic, strategic, and commands a lot of fanatical loyalty. He won’t mistreat his followers so badly they’ll turn on him mid-fight. Do not try to repeat what worked before.”

“Disagree,” Zui stated, all the jocularity gone from her tone. “Don’t try hitting Jadrak where he’s weak; whatever weaknesses he’s got are out of your reach. You’ve been hitting him where he’s strong, and that’s your best strategy. The whole time you’ve been down here you’ve been sparing goblins when you can, listening to goblins and respecting goblins. All these folks turned against Hoy, yeah, but they turned toward you, and it wasn’t for no reason. Every time that happens, the word spreads. Keep laying that groundwork and when it comes time to confront Jadrak, you can give him a real fight in the court of public opinion.”

Rizz stared at her, pursed her lips once, and then turned back to me. “Well, I can’t tell you what to do, Dark Lord, and wouldn’t even if I thought you’d obey me. You asked for my input, and now you’ve got it.”

“And I appreciate it,” I said, not having to fake the sincerity. “I may or may not take any particular piece of advice, but I want to know as much as possible about goblin society before doing anything that’ll change the course of it.”

“Be careful about Sneppit. She’s sly, and self-interested. So’s that one,” Rizz added, tilting her head toward Gizmit, who just looked amused. “Zui here’s got questionable judgment sometimes, but she’s still worth listening to—just like those other two, if for different reasons. I’d recommend you take the time to get input from all these new faces you’ve just picked up, too.”

“Not like we won’t have the chance,” I said, glancing back at the crowd of goblins shuffling about the corridor, waiting for us to get underway. I did not raise my voice, but also didn’t trouble to moderate it, trusting those big ears to do the trick. “I’m always open to input, from whoever’s got something of value to say.”

Hopefully that wouldn’t come back to bite me. As long as they came one at a time and didn’t suggest anything too insane, I shouldn’t have to walk back that assurance later.

----------------------------------------

As we set out through the tunnels with Gizmit and Zui in the lead, I was indeed approached for a discreet conversation, but not by any of the goblins. To my surprise it was Nazralind who eased up next to me and spoke in a tone low enough to be not easily overheard.

“Hey, I know it’s hilarious and deserved and all that, but…may wanna ease off taking shots at Flaethwyn.”

I gave her a surprised sidelong look. “Is this elven solidarity?”

“Hah! No,” she snorted. “Call it threat assessment. She’s fun to poke at because she overreacts to everything—which makes her dangerous to poke at. Potentially, at least. I’m not saying Flaethwyn’s gonna murder somebody, but mostly because I think most of us could take her. Someone that high-strung can snap, and it really doesn’t seem like we need the extra drama right now.”

“Mmm. I suppose it makes sense to hold back a bit when it’s not strictly necessary, we wouldn’t want her to get desensitized to being slapped down when it is.”

“Which is fairly regularly, yes.”

“Since you brought it up, why is she so afraid of you? Did you murder somebody I don’t know about?”

Naz grinned. “Heh, nothing so romantic. Nah, she just hasn’t adjusted to our new situation. That’s a case of highborn power dynamics being applied where they don’t belong.”

I raised my eyebrows, glancing at her again. Nazralind carried on walking, eyes front. After a momentary pause, she continued her explanation.

“Clan Adellaird has holdings on one of the outlying regions of Dlemath; they control the other end of the landbridge from Dount. It’s a somewhat prestigious holding, but they’ve never held an island governorship like Clan Aelthwyn does. Flaethwyn is the fifth daughter of a branch family, and so about as unimportant to the succession as possible. She’s so far down their list of priorities she was only assigned one maedhlou, which is… I don’t want to say ‘unheard of,’ because it does happen, but most highborn families don’t squeeze out so many daughters that they entirely give up caring about their prospects, which is what that signifies.”

“Hang on.” I started to glance back, but decided against it. No reason to let the volatile object of our discussion know she was being talked about. “Are you talking about Pashilyn?”

“Yup, that’s the one,” she nodded.

“That’s so much detail. What are you, her biographer?”

“Clan Alethwyn and Clan Adellaird have been enemies at least as long as I’ve been alive. Tensions over actual, material concerns from the last generation escalated into outright antipathy thanks to my uncle being… Well, himself. You’d better believe I was briefed on the political details of that family. Everything that’s public knowledge and even possibly useful.”

“I wouldn’t have thought there was so much hostility between Clans, what with that prohibition on bloodshed.”

“Oh, trust me, there is no hatred more bitter than between aristocrats who aren’t allowed to murder each other,” she said in a particularly wry tone. “Anyway, Flaethwyn is as lowly ranked as you can be in Fflyr Dlemathlys and still be an elf. I am the oldest of my generation, a member of the main family of my Clan—which is its only family, currently—and since my uncle and aunt have no children, I’m actually in the line of succession for Dount’s governorship. Not at the top, since I have brothers, but I am as highly ranked as an unmarried woman can be among highborn, without being royal. So if we were still back home in polite society, especially with this island being my family’s fief, I could ruin her life with a few well-chosen words. And given the relationship between our families, she would have to expect that I’d do so at the first pretext.”

“And…does any of that apply at all…here?”

“Obviously not,” she chuckled, then her expression quickly sobered. “Which is why I’m suggesting taking a somewhat gentler tone toward Flaethwyn. I only know the public, political details, not what her home life was like, but I’ve met a lot of people like her among highborn. People who were raised to think power is the only dynamic that exists between people, who embrace rank and privilege where they should consider friendship, familial affection, or love…and also who depend on that social power for what they see as their very survival. In her way, Flaethwyn has given up everything to follow the Hero, just as your followers have. If you threaten her standing in his eyes, she’s going to react as if you’d threatened her life. So…maybe tone it down just a smidge?”

“I’ll take it into consideration,” I conceded. “Whew, though. I gotta say, none of this would’ve occurred to me on my own.”

“Yeah, nobles are crazy. Be glad you’re normal enough not to have to think like this.”

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Just ahead of us, Zui turned her head to give me a thoughtful look, just for a moment.

“What?” I demanded irritably.

She just smiled, shrugged, and turned back around.

----------------------------------------

We tried to stick roughly to the path of the tram tunnel, but just trudging along it wasn’t an option as parts of it had no bottom, just an endless fall to the core—or down a crevice so deep it wasn’t much better. Apparently there was also a general lack of sufficient access corridors bypassing these sections, as such would have to be tunneled right out of the rock and Sneppit’s company didn’t have many rock-digging specialists. She had mostly contracted that work out to, you guessed it, Jadrak’s mining company—and apparently relations between the two had been getting frostier since before this Goblin King business started.

So, in addition to not having the convenience of trams to ride, our course was somewhat more meandering as we had to straggle through a combination of side tunnels and natural caverns passing in and around the main tram corridor.

None of these had light sources, since goblins didn’t need them. For the rest of us, I obligingly used my light spell—as did Pashilyn, who it turned out had one—and Flaethwyn and Nazralind lit up their auras for us. I was still holding back the revelation that Aster and I could now do that too, both on general principles that the Hero party didn’t need to know all our business, and specifically because after my chat with Naz I was concerned that revelation would cause Flaethwyn to have an aneurysm, or an attack of homicidal mania.

“Guess our dark elf buddy got lost at some point,” Biribo commented.

“What? How can you tell?”

“The light elf aura counters dark elf stealth.”

“What? When the hell were you going to tell me this?!”

“As always, boss, when it became relevant. You specifically said you didn’t wanna push at the dark elf, remember? You were gonna wait and let ‘em come out on their own. Anyway, it’s not like I’m the only one here who knows this. Right, Nazralind?”

I turned an accusing look on the glowing elf and she raised both hands in surrender.

“Hey, it’s not as simple as having a magic stealth-neutralizing effect! Our auras tend to counter their stealth, but how that actually plays out in practice depends entirely on the parties involved. Both kinds of gifts come in different strengths and, uh…flavors, for lack of a better word. And both can be trained in different ways. An actual, professional shadow scout like we’re assuming this one is won’t be so easy to reveal.”

“Well, still,” I grumbled. “This one I’d’ve liked to know ahead of time. It will be nice to have a firm counter if I run out of patience with our stalker before they decide to be sociable.”

“Yeeeaaah,” Aster drawled, “maybe that’s not an argument in favor of telling you stuff.”

“Shut up, Aster.”

Gizmit had warned me before we set out that we weren’t going to make very good time with close to forty people on the move, which made sense. We scrounged some leftovers from the mining company base, and both our strike force and a lot of the new goblins had brought some basic supplies, so we should be fine for as long as it would take to get back to Sneppit’s on foot. Gizmit estimated that we’d need to stop for the night and should get there fairly early in the morning.

I was worried about the defenses around the North Watch tunnel and what else Jadrak was up to in and around Kzidnak, but there was nothing to be done about it but hustle. Besides, as a silver lining, this gave us time to work on the new hires. Maizo should have plenty of time to rustle up some good intel, and given how outspoken goblins in general were I expected they’d take up my offer to come talk to me about whatever was on their minds.

But for the first three hours of our long hike…nope.

“This surprises you?” Zui scoffed when I commented on it—very quietly—during a short break. “You’re the fuckin’ Dark Lord. You just fought the scariest bastard they’ve ever known to a draw, right in front of ‘em. These people have been swept up in a revolution and then press-ganged to raid their own former HQ by a maniac. Nobody here is gonna want the personal attention of another powerful magic man with designs of conquest.”

“Hmph.” I frowned at the far wall of the smallish cavern we’d stopped in, considering her point. I’d positioned myself some distance away from the big cluster of goblins, largely because I had noticed they seemed a little nervous with me too close. I hadn’t thought it was as bad as she made it sound, though.

“What’s that expression?” Zui asked incredulously. “Are you sad?”

“It’s not like my feelings are hurt,” I retorted, a little defensive despite myself. “I just…want to ward off any future problems, that’s all. I’m accustomed to being on decently friendly terms with my followers. It worries me a bit that they’re just scared of me. Fear’s a useful tool, sure, but…only in a very particular way, y’know? You can’t maintain authority through fear alone, that’ll backfire.”

She stared up at me through narrowed eyes.

“What? What is that look?”

Slowly, Zui shook her head, then hopped down from the ledge on which she’d been perched to get a little closer to my eyeline. “Goblins are inquisitive and assertive, but building actual loyalty or camaraderie takes time. Don’t push at ‘em, you’ll just scare ‘em more. Keep being a reasonable dude and they’ll come around.”

She hesitated, opened her mouth as if about to say something else, then closed it, shook her head, and walked away.

“I don’t get that girl,” I complained.

“People have hidden depths, boss,” Biribo said sagely.

“Is that a cleavage joke?”

“You said it, not me.”

It was another hour after we got moving again before I had my first positive interaction with one of the ex-Jadrak loyalists. I recognized the guy who came up to walk alongside me; he was the first to have turned his slingshot on Hoy. After staring fixedly at a fresh corpse he recognized. None of us were having a great day, but I had the impression he had it worse than most.

“So…what’s gonna happen to us at Sneppit’s place?” he asked by way of opening.

“You’ll all get what you need,” I said. “Food, treatment, a place to rest. I understand it’s a bit crowded in there at the moment, but when I checked in with Sneppit the supply situation was stable. Everybody should be okay.”

He nodded. “And then we gotta fight King Jadrak.”

“I have to fight Jadrak. Me and Yoshi over there, maybe some of the other Blessed. You have to fight his followers, at worst.”

“My old coworkers, a lot of ‘em.”

“Yup. It’s a real motherfucker of a situation, isn’t it? Civil wars are some ugly shit. My strategy is still being built and has to adapt on the fly, but I promise you my main focus is to minimize casualties. All this will settle down once Jadrak’s out of the picture. I just have to find a way to do that which causes the least possible dead goblins.”

“He doesn’t talk like that,” he said suddenly, after pausing just long enough I wondered if the conversation was over. “The Goblin King. Nothing about minimizing casualties. It’s all about…sacrifice. How we’ll never be free unless we’re willing to die for it.”

“I mean…he’s not a hundred percent wrong,” I admitted. “I’m running into the same problem up top. When you’re fighting an entrenched power structure, there’s just no way to make gains without casualties. Damn, though, I can’t imagine ranting at everybody to throw their lives down for the cause. And I love ranting. I think I’m one of Ephemera’s premier ranters. Right, guys?”

“It’s true, he rants like a champion,” Aster agreed.

“But, like, in an entertaining way,” Adelly added. “It’s like seeing a bard work, or a preacher. It’s a show.”

“Sending people into the grinder like meat isn’t the thing to rant about, though,” I said. “If you’re wanting an explanation of Jadrak’s thought process, I cannot help you. I don’t know what he thinks his endgame is, unless he’s really counting on his pet devil to pull something out of its ass. He’s got goblins out there wasting each other’s lives as if his next step wasn’t starting a fight with the Clans—which is a fight you have to know Kzidnak has zero chance of winning. Maybe if he’d allied with me first, but if that was the plan sending his henchmen to slaughter the goblins I was doing business with was a strange move.”

“And he’s a Void witch,” my new acquaintance said in a dull tone, staring ahead. “The Goblin King is a Void witch.”

“I’m…not sure, completely,” I admitted. “Hoy is a Void witch. We found that Spirit, Digger, which they corrupted into a Void altar. It’s not like we’ve actually seen Jadrak using Void magic himself, so…I can’t say. At the very least, he’s been trafficking with devils and wasting goblins by the fistful like they’re candy. I’ve got more than enough reason to put his ass down without blaming him for stuff I’m not completely sure he’s done. Yet.”

“And what’re you gonna do for us, then?” He looked up at me, and I couldn’t see either condemnation or hope in his eyes. He was just blank, and tired. Resigned. “What happens after we throw in with the Dark Lord? Glorious victory, freedom? Conquest?”

“Fuck knows, man,” I sighed. “The only thing I’m sure about is it’s all going to get uglier before it gets better.”

We walked in quiet for a moment, then I felt strangely compelled to speak.

“I’ve been telling my people…well, not dissimilar from Jadrak’s line. I don’t promise anything except revenge on those who’ve wronged us. Because I can’t promise anything more than that, and there’s nothing I hate more than being made a liar. It’s a violent, ugly world out there and everything’s stacked against us. We have to fight back, because the alternative is just…lying down and waiting to get ground up by the system. Yeah…I can see where Jadrak’s coming from, up to a point.”

He looked up at me again, silently.

“But now that I’m seeing where that leads,” I said slowly, “I’m reconsidering. This can’t be the best we can do. Just…everybody dead and nothing gained. In a twisted way, I kind of owe him thanks for the important lesson.”

“You got a better idea?” he asked.

“I don’t know any more than you where all this is going to lead,” I admitted. “But I know the first step. All of this is happening to all of us because we’re all turned against each other instead of the people who are out there doing it to us. Step one is unity. Solidarity. Goblins, lowborn…bandits and whores and exiles, women and queers and beastfolk, everybody who’s not given a chance or a fair shake in this country. Because, when you actually start to list them all, you can’t help noticing that is almost everybody. This miserable, unjust mess of a country only exists to benefit a very tiny number of assholes. They only get to be in charge because we’re all fighting each other instead of them. Just like Jadrak. If we can get everybody on the same page, pointed in the same direction…”

I realized I had everybody’s attention, not just the goblin’s I’d been talking to. The soft buzz of conversation had vanished, leaving only the sound of our footsteps. Yoshi’s party in particular were staring fixedly at me, all of their expressions intent and hard to interpret.

“Well,” I shrugged, and put on a little smile. “Then you’ll see some real shit.”

“You want my advice,” my new goblin friend said pensively, “that’s a better angle than promising revenge. We’ve heard that before, and damn is that not a good deal now that we’re seeing it in action. We all need something better.”

“Yeah. Yes, we do. I am definitely going to need a lot of help to make that happen, though. Tell you what, I know you goblins are good at building stuff. I definitely need some good minds working on solutions. You in?”

He looked up at me again, and finally cracked his lips in a smile. “That’s the best idea I’ve heard in forever. That, or the worst.”

“It’s a little of both, isn’t it,” I chuckled.

“Hey, Omura?” I looked up to find Yoshi had approached me, wearing a concerned expression. “I need to… I mean, not urgently, but when we stop to camp for the night. Can I talk to you? In private? It’s important.”

Oh, boy, I did not have a good feeling about this.

“Sure, Yoshi.”