“We got activity ahead, boss,” Biribo reported as we marched, zipping up to my ear and just barely beating Radatina to making a similar announcement to Yoshi, to her visible annoyance. “The tunnel opens up into a cavern with goblins all over it. One goblin’s in a high position at the tunnel entrance overlooking it, obviously a lookout. They don’t seem to have a ranged weapon but that’s a perfect sniper’s perch.”

“Okay, here we go.” I inhaled and exhaled slowly, then turned my head to address those marching along behind me. “Everybody remembers the Hoy Directives?”

There was a chorus of agreement, the desultory tone of which I did not like.

“Then repeat them to me.”

“Oh, come on!” protested two different goblins in perfect unison, to the accompaniment of groans—two of which belonged to our resident elves—and eyerolls from others. Even Aster shot me a skeptical look. Then again, it was Aster, her face might just be stuck that way.

I opened my mouth to deliver a retort, and happened to catch Zui’s eye. She was giving me a particularly fierce stare, and when she saw she had my attention, shook her head once.

Right. Zui herself had taken the time to caution me that goblins would not respond well to a heavy-handed style of leadership. In truth, I didn’t favor one for my human followers, either, but those at least were trained by Fflyr culture to obey when given orders. Goblins didn’t feel compelled to do anything they were not contractually obligated to, and my volunteer force would resent being pushed around.

“I know, I know,” I said, deliberately moderating my tone. “But you all saw what Hoy can do. This fucker fought both living Champions to a draw, and I don’t intend to lose any more lives to his bullshit. So yeah, you’re damn right I’m gonna be paranoid and overly concerned about this. Humor me, please.”

She was right, that got me results. The exasperated expressions were immediately replaced by thoughtful nods and downcast eyes. All the goblins with us save Zui and Maizo were recruits we’d gained from Hoy’s own troops, who’d turned on him after he turned on them first. They’d all lost friends to him.

Still, it was Nazralind who piped up first. “Hoy Directive One: Corner him! The limitation of Flicker is that he has to see his destination to teleport. We need to wedge him into a spot where he can’t retreat, with walls behind and enemies in front.”

“Hoy Directive Two: keep up ranged pressure,” said Kuriko, quiet and solemn as always. He was the first goblin who’d turned his slingshot on Hoy, the one who’d first spoken to me on the long walk back to Sneppit’s place, and I didn’t know yet whether this grave demeanor was just his personality or the result of recent trauma. “His Void power may be inexhaustible, but his Blessing of Magic is weak. The more we force his Repulsion Aura to react, the less he’ll be able to cast offensive spells or Flicker.”

“Hoy Directive Two Point Five! Press with kinetic attacks only!” called Ritlit, whose name I was never going to forget because when I’d tried to call her by it she had howled with laughter and spent the next five minutes running around introducing herself to people as Rito Twice. “We hold munitions in reserve until we have him cornered someplace without a convenient tunnel he can scurry off through. Then we blow him right to hell, drop the walls and ceiling on his ass!”

“Good. Thanks for indulging me, guys.”

“I still say that’s just Hoy Directive Three,” Yoshi muttered.

“Please don’t start that up again,” I begged. I agreed with him, personally, but it had become a whole thing with the goblins, who were culturally obsessed with laying out terms and conditions precisely, and after much debate had concluded that the third point was just a subset of the second. I’d let them, because I didn’t actually care how they classified it as long as they fucking did it.

We’d set out after a short rest—a rest because one was needed, and short because we didn’t have the luxury of more. I’d been able to check in with Madyn and Ydleth, who were thriving among the goblins as Aster had predicted, and in fact had somehow managed to find all our new recruits in just the short time we were in the planning session with Sneppit and company. Apparently they’d been shown right to our assigned quarters at their request and were sharing a meal when I found them. That had led to a bunch of them volunteering to join up with me when I’d mentioned my intent to strike out against Jadrak’s forces as quickly as possible. Many had just wanted to rest and take on whatever quieter, safer work Sneppit found for them, but I now had a force of ten goblin volunteers backing me up.

It seemed this lot were somewhat suspicious of Sneppit—understandable, really—and more willing to align themselves with me than with her. I embraced this, remembering Gizmit’s advice about Maizo, who had decided to stick with me for similar reasons. It worked out particularly well as these goblins still had the explosive munitions I was planning to use to finish off Hoy, having been very reluctant to yield those to Sneppit’s engineers.

We were also stuck with Zui again, because Sneppit had wanted one of her ranking people to represent her interests on this mission and had assigned Gizmit elsewhere this time. Which…yeah, the organization’s top spy probably wasn’t best suited for a frontal assault. Still, I couldn’t help wondering whether Sneppit suspected Gizmit was angling to get promoted over her head.

This whole topic worried me. It had been a while since I’d had a flashback; Minfrit’s unconventional therapy really was helping, and here in Kzidnak the matter was more political than actually sexual, which helped me compartmentalize it. But sooner or later, either Sneppit or Gizmit or some other Goblin Queen candidate would make a serious play for me, and that…was probably going to cause some problems.

As discussed, we shifted formation as we drew up to the bend in the tunnel around which the opening would be found, with Yoshi and Aster taking point, me and Pashilyn right behind them. Neither I nor any of the Hero’s party particularly liked this arrangement, but the logic was irrefutable: they could take hits better than any of us, and better still with the aid of my healing and Pashilyn’s shields.

Up ahead, the tunnel did indeed open out into a cavern—the prettiest one I’d seen in Kzidnak, from the slice of it visible from back here. It was downright lush, in fact, featuring some kind of hanging greenery and…was that a waterfall? I couldn’t see it but something was making the characteristic roaring noise in the distance.

Closer, though, was the goblin Biribo had predicted would be on watch. At the sight of her, we relaxed.

“Oh, hey,” I said, stepping out from behind Yoshi and taking in the long brown coat, wide-brimmed hat, and bladed polearm. The purple bands were around her arms, not her hatband, so… “Arbiter… ?”

“The name’s Fram,” she said, grinning toothily and waving so hard I thought she’d pitch herself off her narrow perch. “And you must be the Dark Lord! And the Hero. Hot damn, what a day this is. That’ll teach me to think I’ve seen it all just cos there’s a Goblin King rising.”

“I take it Judge Rizz told you to expect us,” Yoshi said warily.

“That and more!” Arbiter Fram flung herself carelessly off the ledge, which was a drop of at least five times her height, and hit the ground in a roll. She came up right in front of us, arms outstretched like a dismounting gymnast and brandishing her polearm. “Welcome to the shitshow, citizens!”

Yeah, Arbiters were clearly the younger apprentices. This one was also an adolescent; unlike Rhoka, she acted like one, too.

“Wow,” said Yoshi, “you’re not much like Rizz and Rhoka at all.”

Fram snorted. “Yeah, I’ll bet. Rumor is Judge Rizz actually catches on fire if you can make her smile. Anyway, you lot didn’t march down here to get the gossip—c’mon, you should talk with my boss.”

“Is everything okay here?” I asked, falling into step behind her as she braced her polearm over her shoulder and went swaggering off into the cavern beyond. “Any sign of Jadrak’s forces?”

“Yes and yes,” Fram practically crowed. “It’s handled, Mister Dark Lord, sir. We goblins won’t turn down your support if there’s Void magic afoot, but we’re not helpless, either. You should really talk with Judge Gazmo, for the sole entire reason that he’s the expert and in no way because he’ll blow my ears back if I brief you in a manner he considers incorrect, no sir.”

“By all means, let’s not get you in trouble,” I said solemnly. “That is, I mean let’s hear it directly from the expert.”

She shot me a cheeky grin over her shoulder. “You’re all right, Lord Senji.”

“Seiji.”

“Oop, sorry. I dunno what language that is, even.”

Aster lightly touched the back of my shoulder, not that I needed the reminder. I’d been in more than enough battles by now to recognize when one was not worth fighting.

The view was enough to distract me, anyway. This was another cavern open to the outside, with the far wall ending in a massive crack through which daylight streamed. We must be right up against the edge of the island, here. There was indeed a waterfall, pouring out of an aperture high up on the cavern wall to our right to thunder down into the pool which covered that entire half of the floor. From there, the water streamed away into four other tunnel mouths—at least, four above the waterline and who knew how many below. The left half of the cavern’s flooded floor from the entrance was a series of islands scattered around the surface of the water, on which grew the first khora I had seen since coming underground. In fact, the root systems of what had to be other khora poked through the walls, dangling down and crisscrossing the space, with actual leafy vines of some kind bedecking the khora roots and protrusions from the rocky walls, dangling in lush curtains wherever they had enough light from the opening to flourish. The air was cooler and more humid than the rest of Kzidnak, and even more windy. To walk in this cavern was to get lightly sprayed by the falls. It wasn’t unpleasant.

“This is beautiful,” Yoshi observed.

“Sure is!” Fram said brightly, while leading us along the trail which clung to the right side of the wall toward the only structure in sight, a surprisingly steampunk-looking combination of stonework built right into the living rock and worked metal extensions, complete with a big paddle wheel being turned by the waterfall. “Some of the best scenery in Kzidnak, not that just any old gob’s been welcome to wander in here and gawk for—well, actually, the Judge’ll probably need to explain that, too, given what he’s got on the docket for you. And speaking of. OY! They’re here, just like Rizz said! I brought that shipment of gobs and butts and Champions you ordered, big daddy!”

We’d come within shouting range of a wide stone platform in front of the structure, which jutted out further in a metal dock, where a few goblins were waiting for us at the top of a short flight of broad stairs. Stairs which we navigated with extreme care, as they were built for goblin-sized legs and slick with spray from the falls. The only goblin who had not already been staring at us finally deigned to turn around—the one also wearing the brown coat and hat, his with a Judge’s purple hatband.

“Fram,” Judge Gazmo growled, “if you call me that in front of clients one more time, I am gonna boot your green ass into the core and get a bucket of fried crawns to do your job. It’s not like they’d be much slower or less thorough.”

This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

“Shut up, you love me,” Fram cackled, skipping up to him from the top of the stairs. “That one in the red coat is Lord—wait, I got it, Seiji. Shorter one is…yeah, I don’t remember his name, but he’s the Hero. And the rest of ‘em didn’t introduce themselves.”

Gazmo lingered only long enough to give his apprentice a long, scathing look before turning his attention fully to us—specifically, after a quick glance around at the whole assembled crew, at me. His reddish-orange eyes darted up and down me once before he spoke.

“Rizz says you’ve got solid healing magic.”

“I do. Who needs it?”

The Judge jerked his head once toward the stone-fronted building abutting the small plaza. “This way.”

“Just a second, Judge,” spluttered one of the goblins behind him—the best-dressed of them, who like Sneppit had dolled himself up in a gilt-trimmed approximation of Fflyr highborn styles, though his were an eye-gouging mismatch of red, purple and yellow. “This is him, right? The matter I asked you—”

Gazmo turned a look on him which stopped him cold and made the other three goblins hovering nearby back up a step.

“In. A. Minute.”

The well-dressed goblin swallowed heavily and nodded once, surreptitiously moving the piece of paper he’d been holding out behind his back. Gazmo held his gaze for a second longer before turning without another word to stalk into the building.

Fram pointed two fingers at her eyes, two at the rich-looking goblin, then back at her eyes, before following her boss with an exaggerated swagger. I liked Fram. I could already tell I was going to get tired of her very quickly, but for now, I liked her.

This structure was also goblin-sized, meaning I had to duck to get through the door, but at least I didn’t have to bust out the magic lights on the inside. They had asauthec torches burning, which meant there was work going on in here which required the goblins to be able to read and/or distinguish color. That made sense, given that this space was currently serving as an infirmary.

“No need for a crowd,” Gazmo said pointedly when Aster crouched and started to follow me in. I nodded at her and she shuffled back out, whereupon there came an immediate complaint from Flaethwyn which the others had to soothe. I ignored the byplay, fully occupied with the contents of the room.

Desks had been shoved against the wall and blankets laid out as improvised resting spaces. There were thirteen goblins in various states of injury laid out, ranging from bandaged and splinted to a couple who were unconscious and looked half-mummified.

Judge Gazmo turned and gave me a single expectant look, not bothering to say anything else.

“Okay,” I said briskly, “any foreign objects embedded in flesh, or broken bones not properly set?”

“You mean, anything basic triage wouldn’t have sorted out well before you sauntered in?” snapped a particularly sharp-faced goblin woman who had paused in mixing bottles of fluids to give me a piercing stare. “Not having big fancy magic doesn’t make us incompetent. This guy is supposed to be the Dark Lord?”

I decided there were more important things to do than converse with snippy nurses.

Heal. Heal Heal Heal Heal Heal…

One pink flash after another, I set right every injured goblin in the space of seconds, and only then turned back to the woman with the alchemy set.

“Administering magical healing with something like that not tended to could make their injuries orders of magnitude worse. Which is why I check first, because I am also not incompetent. Yes, I’m the Dark Lord. Pleased to fuckin’ meetcha.”

For some damn reason, this made her relax and smile. “Good, that’s good. I don’t usually expect conscientiousness from butts.”

“If anybody was missing anything, like digits or teeth, my spell won’t fix that. Everything else should be taken care of.”

“Really?” The nurse, looking skeptical, set down her bottles and trundled over to the nearest patient, who still seemed asleep. “It’s all burns, one concussion and two fractured limbs. How much could—”

“Holy shit!” exclaimed one of her erstwhile patients, who had already pulled off his bandages. “I’m fixed!”

“The hell you are!” she barked. “Your skin was off, there’s no way—holy shit.”

Even the sleeping goblins were rousing now, and the room was becoming steadily louder as the injured goblins discovered that they were all just regular goblins now.

“Let’s not crowd the infirmary,” I suggested to Gazmo.

“Mn,” he grunted, turning with no further commentary and striding out.

“So, burns?” I said, following. “That must be a story.”

“Fire Lance,” he said tersely. “This location got hit by a team from Jadrak’s forces, including a sorcerer. Fairly small, just a dozen warm bodies to back up the Blessed. Three dead, and we’ve got the rest secured. Seems they were counting on magic and threats to intimidate Goggin here into signing over his property.” He jerked his head toward the expensively dressed goblin, who was hovering anxiously nearby but not venturing to intervene again. “He probably would’ve, too, if Fram and I hadn’t got here first with some civilian volunteers. They weren’t expecting determined resistance.”

“I wouldn’t—”

“Shut up, Goggin.”

“You said you have prisoners,” I said. “Did you take the Blessed alive?”

“We did.”

“And…you’re holding them? Successfully? You’re sure?”

The Judge slowly tilted his head up so he could stare at me through narrowed eyes under the wide brim of his official hat. “You think I dunno my business, tallboy?”

Note to self: don’t expect any Judges to be impressed by the Dark Lord.

“Well, I’m sorry to step on your toes. Let me put it this way, Judge Gazmo: when you go to a new place and meet new people, do you find it pays to blithely assume everyone is trustworthy and competent?”

He stared at me a moment longer, and then finally I got a smile from him. It was just a brief shift of one side of his mouth, but I counted it.

“All right, fair enough. Yeah, we don’t deal with Blessed often, but the basic procedures are known. We’ve got him tied hand and foot to disable gesturing and he’s gagged. You may be able to cast silently with nothing but eye contact, but this chump is no Dark Lord. Immobilizing the hands and mouth is plenty for most sorcerers. Right, familiar?”

“He’s right, boss,” Biribo agreed, upon being directly addressed. “It’ll be dangerous to assume that later, when we start dealing with more powerful Blessed, but for the kind of talent Jadrak is able to gather, it should be plenty.”

“Would that work on Hoy, I wonder?”

“What difference does it make?” Yoshi asked. “It’s not like we’re taking that bastard alive.”

“Typical Sanorite bloodlust,” Fram said piously. “Ow!”

Gazmo had whacked her on the back of the legs with the haft of his polearm. “Is what we might ordinarily say, but we do not fuck around with Void witches. Hoy dies at the first opportunity, and anybody who’s not down with it had better get outta the way.”

“Agreed,” I said. “All right. You’re Goggin, right? Since your cavern is secure, we can send a messenger back to Sneppit and she’ll send out personnel and materials to seal off the tunnel accesses to protect your Spirit. Free of charge; I talked her out of demanding any compensation. For the duration of the Goblin King crisis, that is.”

“Wow, you got a freebie out of Sneppit?” Goggin was visibly impressed. “You really are the Dark Lord. Ahem! I appreciate that very much, my lord. And, under the auspices of Judge Gazmo, here, I would like to make you an offer of business.”

He stepped forward and presented the sheet of paper from before, which I accepted. I didn’t know what they were making their paper or ink out of, but it was none the worse for wear for being damp from the spray.

“This…is a contract,” I said, quickly reading over the terse paragraphs. “Huh.”

“The terms aren’t to your liking, Lord Seiji?” Goggin asked nervously.

He was basically offering me access to use his Spirit once, now, and again at my discretion for the duration of my reign as Dark Lord, provided I allowed him to continue carrying out business as he had been.

“I’m just surprised. There’s no legalese, no fine print…”

“We’re not Fflyr,” Gazmo said with withering contempt. “No goblin Judge would validate a contract that wasn’t clear, concise, and readily comprehensible to any layperson. Contracts are the embodiment of the trust between people that’s necessary for a society to exist, not mechanisms for assholes to exploit each other.”

Funny how, after all this time, I’d finally found people on this barbaric world who’d worked out how to do something not only as well as the Japanese but arguably better, and they weren’t even human.

“The contract I signed with Sneppit was more elaborate than this by far.”

“Sneppit likes to push limits to the very verge of breaking,” Gazmo retorted, curling his lip. “And I’m willing to bet she wanted a more complex deal than this, too.”

“What’s this Spirit of yours do, exactly?” I inquired. “Sneppit didn’t get around to mentioning it; we were in a hurry to organize and deploy. I note that your contract doesn’t say.”

“Oh!” Goggin perked up at the chance to brag. “The Counter is one of the best spirits in Kzidnak! The best, in my opinion, not that I’m unbiased. But ahem, yes, it’ll ask you to solve a puzzle and if you do, it will tell you one piece of information that will lead you toward whatever it is that you most need.”

Typical Goddess bullshit. Completely open-ended and impossible to verify, enabling them to grant any given petitioner as perfect or as crappy a reward as they felt like. Well, considering that Champions tended to get better rewards from Spirits, this did indeed sound like it was worth my while.

“Your terms are reasonable,” I agreed. “I’d like to add something, however.”

“Of course,” Goggin said, nodding. Either he knew better than to try screwing over the Dark Lord, or this was expected in goblin contract negotiations. Probably both.

“In addition to me, I’d like to let Yoshi have a go at your Spirit.”

That caused a ripple of visible astonishment from everybody except the tallfolk I’d brought down here with me. In particular, Pashilyn’s eyes felt like they were burning a hole through my head.

“Really?” Yoshi asked, blinking at me. Ironically, he seemed less surprised than his friends.

“You wanna…help the Hero?” Fram demanded, tilting her head so far to the left it looked like her neck must be in pain.

“Yoshi’s good people,” I said. “Besides… Look, I wouldn’t say the Sanorites came down here with the best of intentions, but they’ve been helpful and quite reasonable, once the situation was explained to them. I thought the reality on this world was that we all put aside our differences and cooperate when there’s Void shit that needs to be put down, right?”

“That’s right,” Gazmo said, nodding once.

“Well, we’ve fought Hoy once and it was a draw. That’s me and the Hero both, and we didn’t manage to finish him off. And that’s just Hoy—we haven’t seen this devil in person, and still have no idea what kind of Void craft Jadrak’s using, himself. I’m not shy about wanting my strongest ally here to be as prepared as possible to finish this.”

“Mm…” Gazmo turned a long, skeptical look on Yoshi, eyeing him up and down, before nodding once more. “Sensible. I think it’s a good idea, Goggin.”

“I mean,” Goggin hedged, “you know how it is with Spirits. I have to limit access, if it gets overworked it’ll start to—”

“I think,” Gazmo enunciated very precisely, turning his head in a slow arc to pin Goggin with his stare, “it is a good idea. Goggin.”

The Spirit’s owner opened his mouth, closed it, swallowed, and smiled weakly up at me. “Aha…well. Let me just scribble that in, shall I? Pleasure doing business.”