A hush fell over the cavern. Even the goblins reduced their nattering to a low muttering. Which, for goblins, was as close to silence as one could hope.

The curtains parted to reveal three figures: A burly dark-skinned man in a polished steel breastplate and baggy trousers, a smiling and beautiful orange-haired woman in leather armour who held no mirth or empathy in her eyes, and a scrawny man who was gagged and bound with ropes.

Coin watched silently, motionless as a normal treasure chest. Seemed he hadn't lost any of that skill, at least.

The dark-skinned man strode to the head of the stage, watched by the crowd in silent awe. "There was a time, long ago, when the Brotherhood of the Dagger was revered as the personal blade of the royal family. The most respected wing of Arcadia's army, who personally snuffed threats to the crown."

A few mutters of approval broke out among the humans. The goblins couldn't have looked less interested.

"But when the royal family fell, so too did we. Velasco, the pretender, saw us as a threat to his usurping rule. A representative of the true, natural order of Arcadia who could bring his tyranny to a halt. And so we were hunted, driven to the shadows by his bloodhounds. Yet, ultimately, the shadows are our domain. We rule, undeterred by their vain efforts!"

A chorus of shouts rose among the crowd, several men pumping their fists in the air enthusiastically.

"They robbed us!" one shouted.

"Death to Velasco!" cried another.

A third man said something so obscene that it would offend the eyeballs of most decent readers, but it involved applying a sausage grinder to a specific part of Velasco's anatomy.

Meanwhile, the beautiful girl on stage smiled and adjusted her ivory scarf. She said little, but there was a predatory glint in her eyes as she scanned the crowd.

"Though we have been driven to obscurity, we are not bested. And in our suffering, we have found kindred spirits among our... goblin brethren," the man said, forcing a smile. "Two groups of people, marginalized and maligned. Yet now, united under Lord Bleak, we have a common leader and a common goal. To exterminate the current order, and established a new reign!"

The cheer in the cavern was nearly deafening, even the goblins getting involved this time. Coin was fascinated, lifting his lid in the way a normal man would let his jaw drop.

In all his dealings with goblins, he had known them to be aggressive, stupid, and violent. They cared only for their own kin. Evolution had thoroughly bred that belief into them, where any non-goblin was a prospective threat.

Not that other goblins weren't a prospective threat, some goblins would kill their own mothers to have an extra rat to eat, but they could trust each other more than any other species.

Yet here they were, cheering alongside other races, aligned to the same cause. It seemed impossible. It should have been. Yet here they all were, under the banner of some... 'Lord Bleak.' The name gave Coin pause. Another royal was causing all this?

The concept of a glamorous, ego-stroking nom de guerre flew directly over Coin's head.

"Kill 'em good!" one goblin snarled, shocking Coin all the more. He'd never known a goblin to speak common.

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

The speaker on stage sauntered over, making for a table partially obscured by the curtains. A cloth was draped on the table, disguising a bulging shape.

"So far, we have fought harshly against our foes, striking towns and convoys where possible. But this is not how wars are won. Alas, even united, our numbers are slim when compared to that of the Arcadian army. Things being as they are? We would lose in a direct conflict. Unless..." He gripped the sheet and threw it aside.

"Unless we had the means to even the odds."

Coin strained his vision to get a better look at the... thing resting on the table. It was, at a glance, unremarkable. A strange metal tube roughly the length of a man's hand, bolted to a wooden stock like that of a crossbow.

The speaker lifted it into his hand. Coin tilted his lid forward, trying to better understand what he was looking at. It did not look much like a weapon. Most weapons Coin knew of were defined by sharp, pointed edges. And the few that weren't, the bludgeoning implements, tended to be massive. This thing was smooth, steely, unassuming.

Coin watched, transfixed, as the speaker lifted a lead ball from a pouch on his belt and slid it into the mouth of the tube.

"The man kneeling beside our lovely Leona is a spy. A dog in service of the crown, caught while trying to probe our network. He will suffer the fate that all rats should suffer." A few goblins chattered excitedly, perhaps elated at the mention of the word 'rat', expecting a hot meal to come their way.

"What I hold in my hand is the newest gift from Lord Bleak. Masterfully crafted, a weapon of unparalleled lethality. The weapon that will be the death knell of Velasco's regime." He motioned to Leona, who pulled the man's head back and forced him to look the speaker in the eye. Now Coin had a better look at the man, and paid particular focus to the dense steel breastplate lashed to his chest.

It too was masterfully crafted, the kind of armour that could take a blow from a warhammer without even furrowing.

The speaker's finger caressed the trigger of his weapon. "He calls it a hand cannon." A flash erupted from the weapon, near blinding in the murk of the cave, joined by a deafening bang. What happened in that instant happened so quickly that Coin's mind briefly struggled to interpret it.

But, in a single instant, the lead ball had exploded from the mouth of the hand cannon and cleave the air in twain. It struck the prisoner's breastplate, tore through the dense steel as if it were mere cloth, drilled through the flesh beneath, and exploded out the man's back in an eruption of gore that dripped across the stage.

The man fell with a thud, twitched briefly, and bled to death then and there.

A hush fell over the chamber, widened, shocked eyes affixed to the hand cannon. "A weapon with much more power, range, and accuracy than a crossbow. Strong enough to punch through the sturdiest plate. Imagine an entire army of our fellows, armed with such weapons. A single salvo, and we could cut down a swathe of our enemies."

The speaker pulled a small pouch from his belt and slowly tipped a serving of black powder into the opening of his weapon. "As we speak, we have groups of labourers steadily constructing more and more of these weapons. Our dear friend, Ser Irons, is already preparing more ammunition for us."

A chill raced through Coin's body. The mimic stirred, despite himself. Irons was involved? Elijah had been wary of the man, but ultimately had chosen to trust him. And now he was supplying materials to people like this?

His mind reeled, shifting toward their mission. They'd come out this way to get black powder for Valle, and there was no doubt in his mind that it was connected to this strange, secret group too. That any powder given over would be repurposed by these people.

Without even knowing it, they'd been roped into plot to bring wholesale slaughter to Arcadia!

Cheers rose from the crowd, goblins jumping up and down with rabid excitement. Even the humans were nearly dancing where they stood. A weapon like that, it was the kind of advantage that could greatly make up for a gap in manpower against their opponent.

Leona, meanwhile, scanned the crowd with a small smile. She seemed to inspect the entire room with uncanny quickness, even toward the shaded storage area that overlooked the stage. And there her eyes beheld something that really shouldn't have been there.

Evolution was a strange process, having a different effect on every species. Some creatures, such as mimics and sloths, had evolved to be able to remain completely stationary for hours at a time, uninterrupted. Academics of arcadia had taken to calling this evolutionary trait the 'lazy bastard gene.'

For a normal mimic, being as stationary as a statue (or, a treasure chest more commonly) was trivial. They had no thoughts in their heads beyond eating and hoarding, and could gladly sit around and await an opportunity for either, unless they were gripped by a truly desperate hunger.

But Coin, burdened by a brain full of thoughts and ideas, could not be as motionless as he used to be. His active mind and restless limbs simply couldn't abide it. And in his fascination, and mounting horror, he had leered forward where he sat, creating a gruesome fanged shape, protruding in the darkness and breathing uneasily.

The speaker, who had been in the process of loading another lead ball, followed the path of Leona's eyes. He paled, his jaw briefly loosening. "What in the Bleak is that?!"

All eyes turned to Coin. The mimic froze in place, his fanged jaw rigid in place.

A shocked clamour rose from the crowd, many of them reaching for their weapons. Swords and hatchets glinted in the firelight, while the speaker finished reloading his hand cannon.

Coin lurched onto his elongated limbs, just as the crowd started surging to his hiding spot, and did the one thing he could think to do in that moment:

He ran for dear life.