The soft plum and apricot-colored sky gave way to a bright glint as the dawn cast lengthy shadows across the still dunes of the desert. Light crept around an outcropping of sandstone where a small family huddled together. Sniv and her twin brother Rudd snoozed around the embers of an exhausted fire, their bodies overlapping after tossing and turning throughout the night. Their grandmother, a considerably older goblin with a convoluted scale pattern across her back from years of uneven shedding, threw a ratty blanket over them after they settled into a deep sleep. The desert, as harsh as it was during the day, was just as likely to freeze you at night, a fact their grandmother had seen first-hand during her childhood.

Merrow watched over her grandchildren during the night; she’d discovered how to sleep with one eye open to watch for prowlers and bandits. After the loss of Sniv and Rudd’s parents when they were tiny hatchlings, Merrow took to sleeping with a loaded rifle in her arms. The first glimmers of the morning broke Merrow out of her slumber. 

She stretched and let out a gurgled yawn as she acheily crawled over to the dying campfire. Merrow tossed in a few dried-out cactus leaves and a handful of lard to revitalize their heat source. She hobbled around, using her gun as an impromptu walking stick, looking for small tunnels that could house snakes, rodents, or tarantulas. Whatever she could grab would suffice for a morning snack; those two ravenous lizards could devour a sandworm in the blink of an eye. She knew Sniv and Rudd were desperate for a good meal, and she was too, if she was honest; hopefully, when they earned enough, they could get a suitable meal at the Aravenda Lounge.

She skewered what she could find and roasted it over the open fire: a pit viper and a clutch of its eggs. The meaty aromas tickled Sniv and Rudd's noses, snapping them awake. Groggily, they stumbled over each other, reaching for their breakfast. They basked as they ate, raising their body temperatures before the midday sun of the desert made them detest the heat. 

“Up and at ‘em, you lazy skinks,” Merrow remarked. She sliced the roasted pit viper with her claws and distributed the pieces accordingly. “We’ve got another long day ahead of us.”

Sniv, the older of the two goblin grandchildren by about two minutes, lazily picked at her meal while her younger brother scarfed down his portions. Sniv would’ve preferred to have stayed in her dream a few hours longer; it was the only time she could picture a landscape that wasn’t just variations of dull yellow and orange sands that stretched as far as the setting sun. She dreamed of locations she’d overheard in stories told by the older goblins at the Lounge—vistas of endless green with plants that bloomed all year and not just after a long-awaited storm. She also heard tales of far-off northern regions covered in white sand that was cold to the touch. Oh, what she would give to visit places like that instead of combing through the desert for the fourteenth year in a row. 

Rudd had always been amused by his sister’s whimsical ideas of wandering the world, but he tried to keep his attention on their aging grandmother and their work. Merrow struggled to keep up with him and Sniv, and that was becoming more apparent year after year. If it wasn’t the blazing sun that sapped her strength, it was their exhausting scavenging. Usually, he and Sniv would have to pick up her slack while she kept watch with her rifle in hand, but even then, there was hardly enough scrap for them to turn a profit most days. Rudd also had to play peacekeeper between the two whenever their tempers flared, and they chose to take it out on each other; that was exhausting in its own right, but he put up with their drama since they were all he had left.

After breakfast, Sniv and Rudd helped their grandmother set up their sand skimmer, a specialized wooden boat adept at traversing the desert landscape. A critical part of ship maintenance required them to wax the bottom of the hull every morning, allowing it to glide across the sand. Without it, the hull would eventually ground down until holes started forming. Once the hull had been adequately serviced, they tipped the boat over and gently eased it into a particularly loose area of sand, deep enough to bury the rudder.

Merrow placed their meager supplies into the boat's center as the three scaley goblins piled into the skimmer. Ready for another adventure, Sniv and Rudd shared a nod before donning their goggles. They alternated duties depending on the day or if the other complained loud enough. Rudd took his spot at the boat's bow and spoke a single word. It would've sounded like gibberish to the casual listener, and it wouldn't have stayed long enough in their head to repeat. Godspeak, or speaking the true name of an object, would allow you to control, create, or destroy that object. Knowledge and usage of these words was a privilege given to the elves; they closely guarded these gifts as they came directly from their creator, the Goddess Maelonia. However, coin still carried enough influence to sway those willing to teach the true names to the so-called inferior races. Godspeak allowed the lives of the goblins scavenging the desert to be tolerable. 

Much of Merrow’s initial savings had gone to teaching Sniv and Rudd two words of Godspeak each, Wind and Earth. She assisted them with the basics as she also had learned both words as a young hatchling. From there, she let them discover the intricacies that came with each fragment of Godspeak. She emphasized two crucial lessons: control over both would allow them to travel to any part of the desert they needed and they should never reveal to any elf outside Aravenda that they know Godspeak. It was safer that way.

Rudd uttered Godspeak: Earth. The young goblin had to expend a sliver of his soul to fuel the magic in the word. He let the energy flow from his chest down his legs, where it met with the ground. The magic radiated outward in tune with his heartbeat. Rudd let the pulse travel well over a kilometer, ignoring the reverberations coming off the rock formation behind him and focusing on smaller echoes until he locked in on one. 

“Thataway!” Rudd yelled, pointing northeast of their current location.

Sniv unfurled the sail, which caught a faint breeze but nothing substantial enough to get them moving. She adopted a wide stance, pointing her right hand at the sail's center and left at her feet—one deep breath in and another out. Invoking Godspeak: Wind, a current of air spun around the boat’s hull until it partially sunk into the sand. She aerated the sand until it surprisingly behaved like water. Then, from her right hand, a powerful air jet collided with the sail, puffing it out, and after a sudden jerk, they were sailing across the desert. 

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When translated from elven speech, the Great Wasteland was unbelievably vast and bisected the two elven nations, which were already large places to begin with—or so Sniv was led to believe. After fourteen years, Sniv was sure she’d only seen a small fraction of what the desert offered, although that wasn’t saying much. She was also sure her grandmother hadn’t seen half of it in all her years. Whenever Sniv inquired about the world beyond the wasteland, her grandmother deflected or simply reiterated that goblins were meant to scavenge off the scraps of the humans, elves, and orcs—nothing more.

Sniv felt peace while traveling from spot to spot, the breeze zipping past her face and flittering through her ratty clothing. She felt in control during these moments, even though her grandmother controlled the rudder to follow Rudd’s guidance. She wondered if she could travel the whole world by boat using only her two words of Godspeak. Unfortunately, the travel always seemed so short because, after no time, Rudd would tell his sister to slow down as they rapidly approached their target. Her blissful entertainment was more or less over for the next hour.

Sniv cut her wind magic a few paces from where Rudd sensed their potential payload. They each took an armload of supplies off the boat; Sniv grabbed two shovels and a rake while her brother grabbed their portable awning. After their little spot was set up, they began the arduous task of digging and combing through the sand for what Rudd tracked. After a while—and plenty of sighs, scoffs, and whining—they unearthed a small metal container. The cover was pressed with a military symbol, meaning that this had to belong to an officer at the least. The two goblins let their minds wander; could it be a soldier's pay, some precious stones, or even orichalcum? They undid the latch and found—cigarettes. Some had unfurled themselves with the tobacco falling onto the sand or dispersing into the wind by a light gust. Fairly worthless.

False hits were all too common a struggle during their time scavenging. Of the two, Rudd had the better sense of what was buried underground, and even then, he couldn’t tell what it was or how large it was. Merrow was more adept at finding bigger payloads, but she barely had much energy to locate more than three per day. Resting was the best way to allow one's soul to recover from the stress and draining effects magic caused—Merrow's night watches took more out of her than she would ever admit.

For the remainder of the morning, it was just Rudd and Sniv taking turns hoping to find decent targets to dig up. If they were lucky, they’d stumble across relics of the old war between the humans, elves, and orcs, like small caches of buried gold or silver, crates of ammunition, or discarded weapons. More often than not, they’d find small trinkets like the cigarette container. 

Around the time that Sniv would get frustrated and start throwing the tools about was when Merrow would take over tracking. After a false positive, they finally found a series of three crates filled with ammunition. Some of it, Merrow kept for herself as she’d been using an old war rifle, and the caliber was perfect. The rest could be resold at Aravenda. Speaking of which, Merrow felt it best to head in that direction as it approached noon.

Aravenda was the proverbial oasis for any goblin wallowing their days in the Great Wasteland. It was a trading hub among the goblin scavengers and elven black market. As shady as Merrow made it out, they could always guarantee they’d have someone willing to buy what they found—even if the payout for some items was abysmal. Usually, a spot like this would attract any number of outlaw types, but the goblins did well to police themselves, as many were just like Sniv, Rudd, and Merrow—families trying to survive.

First, they unloaded their hard-earned precious and not-so-precious cargo at the market. Their morning's haul was enough to pay for their lunch, a resupply, and maybe ten elven banknotes to go into their savings—which inevitably would be used on repairs as it always did. They could groan about their payout later because it was lunchtime.

The atmosphere in the Lounge was very relaxed due to all the magic flowing through the walls. From what Sniv could gather, the establishment's owner was proficient in ice magic, but it wasn't through Godspeak; supposedly, he could use complex symbols to do the magic instead, which confused poor Sniv. The cooler environment also eased tension among the goblins inside as it helped them regulate their body temperatures, especially during the hottest time of the day. The meals were on par with what Merrow could forage and cook for them, but the ice-cold water was nothing short of rejuvenating. It was something all three of them could agree upon.

Rudd and Grandma Merrow loved the long perches made from cactus wood; it was the one place where Merrow could squeeze in an hour's nap before getting back to work. Sniv preferred to sit at the bar once their family meal was over; some of her favorite people congregated there, and she would catch their harrowing tales—even if most of them were a load of bunk. It allowed her to forget about her meager existence for at least a brief moment.

On this day in particular, she heard some elves discussing something nearby—quite the rarity to see elves in the Lounge. She initially paid them no mind until one of them said something that snatched her attention.

“So, you’re saying there’s an abandoned military base out west?”

She almost leaned out of her seat. Sniv grabbed the bartop, eased herself back up, and continued eavesdropping without drawing attention to herself. They were gruffer sounding than the usual elf.

One elf spoke, "Past the Indigo Oasis, west-by-northwest, there's this massive field of glass and iron spires. I hear one of the last fights of the war happened there—"

Another one added, "I heard a human swung an axe that brought down the whole complex, and then a massive lightning bolt blew everything to hell."

It sounded like the perfect spot to loot. Sniv nonchalantly waltzed over to her brother; she shook him awake and covered his mouth before he could protest. She whispered, "These elves might be on to a new spot we can scavenge."

Rudd rubbed his eyes, looked where Sniv was nudging, and then ducked. "Elves? Sniv, you can't be serious." 

She motioned for him to come over behind a small divider between the seating areas. Rudd reluctantly followed her, and they pressed themselves against the short wall, listening in on the conversation.

"From what I can tell, no one goes there because the area's still so electrified."

"Not even the military?"

"No, as far as I know, it hasn't even been picked clean yet."

Sniv flashed a devilish grin to her brother before mouthing, "Let's try to beat them to it."

Rudd reluctantly looked back and forth between her and their snoozing grandmother.

She whispered, "C'mon, this might be the biggest payload of our lives."

"What about grandma?" Rudd asked.

"Let's just leave her to sleep."

Rudd vehemently shook his head. Sniv rolled her eyes, "Then I'll go it alone."

Rudd snatched up Sniv's right hand. "Over my dead body."

Sniv muttered, "Fine, then come with me."

The twin siblings glared at each other before Rudd relented, as he normally did. Sniv hugged her brother. "Look, we can apologize when we get back with a boatload of weapons and scrap metal."

"I still think grandma's going to kill us anyway," Rudd replied.