When the goblin healer strode into the room with the sick, she brought with her a sense of assurance. In but a few moments, Läker assessed the true extent of Damon's condition. A glance was enough to tell it was bad, but he'd be dead already if it was as bad as it looked, so she took that as good news considering how he was still breathing just fine.
The sick hut, which was a proper hut, but whose second half was sealed from the patient cots and open-ended—to help with the preparing of supplies—had allowed for Billy the chimera to also stay together with his new, strange friend. The very first thing Läker reacted to was how they had left the whole tarantula head stuck deep in the man's calf.
"Twats, twits and tits you better not have killed this man, or I swear to the heavens I'll get you when you sleep," She glared.
"Don't be daft! You can see for yourself we've left the fangs in, aye?"
"You have indeed, as if that doesn't increase the chance of infection! For how long has he been passed out, and running a fever?"
Lila pointed to a goblin in the back of the hut without looking, who had been nervously whispering in the corner for hours. Suddenly called upon, he shot up and called out two times that he'd clearly been memorizing continuously, and then collapsed in a heap, sweat pouring in relief.
Läker raised her eyebrows, looking reluctantly impressed, while Lila smugly crossed her arms. "We awaited your return, and left the fangs in to avoid him bleeding out. Just as you may have advised, had you been able."
There was a pregnant pause. "Ok. I see, you've done quite alright. In fact, you were taught well, lovely daughter of the tribe. And you were of course planning to remove the head tonight, regardless of my presence or continued absence, since the wound getting infected would become an increasingly certain matter—once the first 24 hours had passed?"
Lila leaned over to thump her chest and cough, all to avoid blanching and losing all the green color in her face—then came back up, having recovered beautifully—
"Clearly! Who'dya reckon you're talking to? Your Redcap, that's who!"
Läker smiled and patted her reassuringly. "You did very well, better than your father would have, he'd be the first to say."
Lila barely let her relief show, gave a curt nod, and walked off—leaving the expert to her business.
Läker immediately called for her assistants. "You'll bring me the sponges, then fruits and syringes, I'm talking lots."
She looked down at the two patients grimly for a while, then declared. "This kid and his Billy may just have spotted the culprit atop of the hilly, but they both look ravenous, that's what we shall remedy first." Before recalling she'd just sent everyone away on errands, and no one was around to hear her dispensing wisdom. Daft old bird… I'll repeat it later, that one was too good.
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They held a meeting with every important goblin in the tribe a day later, to assess the current situation which had befallen them.
The seniors had brought news, but also a lot of new questions.
Lila was glad to first and foremost receive a proper explanation for their leaving.
As it turns out they had been called to an information meet by a fellow land tribal senior, who truly had no clue of who the current Redcap among the Verdant Black Hills goblins was, and so had no way of knowing who specifically should be alerted to the news. The fellow had not even been aware of the tribe's specific location at the time, but the mighty being needed nothing but their magical signature to relay the message. Yet without the turtle getting into specifics, the seniors had no way of knowing if the message was perhaps mischaracterized so that they were called on to satisfy a curiosity about the latest happenings instead, since the Rex turtle often mixed up his code signals and had a habit of spending longer periods in hibernation. They lacked any method of confirming if their eldest fellow senior truly did have news to share, as the signal had indicated.
[Welcome to the Machu Summit]
Upon arrival the goblin seniors had seen many tribes represented already, with quite a few higher levels to be found amongst them. There'd been all kinds of tribal leaders present, both from among the tribes and the wild hordes in the area. The [Leatherhide Rex Turtle] was friend to most everyone, but so many would not be needed for mere gossip; and so it became evident how it was the Rex himself who had actual news to share for once.
Apparently the Rex had been awoken when strange energies began permeating the ground, energies he could recall but which were far too weak to place at the time. The very flavour profile had still been enough to awaken him, and within an hour the first sign of what occurred had come walking by.
Now, the Rex spent several long minutes providing caveats that its memory was far from as sharp as it used to be, and that many years had passed since the last sighting—so, had a mistake been made, they requested enough leniency to not be consumed.
Some of the predators present had been eyeing it quite greedily as it spoke, despite the intriguing nature of the message being shared.
What the turtle finally revealed was how an ancient Human had come walking by, striding along like it was yesteryear. It had even had the audacity to simply walk right up upon the Rex, and then had supposedly stayed there in order to show the turtle quite clearly how his kind was returned, and ready to stand above all once more.
The Rex had freaked out at this sign of the end times, escaping for dear life in a desperate craze, heading in a straight line for its ancestral oceans, before recalling the vital obligations which it still held true to, from the very first era when its life had been spared that grim day on a beach where so many of his first siblings fell. All turtles remained sacrosanct to a degree as a result of his many alliances from the old days, even to this day. The reason why was forlorn to most, but the habit was enough, and had allowed for many of the guardians to survive over the years, despite their lovely taste.
And what did they guard against?
The dreaded System Shuffle, of course.
That greatest upheaval ever recorded, bringing chaos on a level which even the mightiest remained wary to see repeat. It was akin to even older legends of tremendous floods, gleefully shared by the ocean tribes, except this tragedy had truly befallen all. Sure, the System had not Shuffled the oceans themselves… the ocean floors, however.
Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
All were stricken.
It was a calamity which put the term global into a different context everafter.
Even then, all that was so long ago. Only the land truly remembered the full details of how its present form came to be.
As a result, a large portion of the tribes’ elders had been especially confused. Ancients? Humans? Even the fabled Shuffle, that was actually real? These matters were of a time even further back than their eldest written records spoke of. Yet some of the eldest among the wild hordes recalled, and heeded the words of the Rex.
They were back.
And though the goblins had failed to understand the full significance, what signs they saw painted a clear image. From how some of the beasts were panicking, to how some simply nodded and went about their apparently monumental tasks. Among them a [Leatherwing Rekey Bat] who recalled her people being treated as poorly as the loathsome rats, at the hands of these ancients—and who proclaimed she would fly off immediately, to warn the local eyries, the creature's 30 foot wingspan leaving behind a disturbingly powerful gust.
The goblins did not know enough to tell what sort of danger they were in, or how much. It was difficult to believe all this commotion was truly over one single individual, one who the turtle had even neglected to [Identify], despite being the local known for having one of the highest level versions of the System Spell.
Now, with the speed that the meeting was breaking up, there appeared to be no further information forthcoming. The goblins amounted to small potatoes, forced to be grateful for what little had been deemed vital enough for all to hear. "A pale white ape little goblins, look out for a largely clothed ape, possibly wearing crafted materials. We shall need reports of each sighting!"
No mention of to whom, they simply expected for every Rex to benefit. The collective was quick to assume you would lend aid, yet goblins were often excluded once the other shoe dropped, and it was the individual tribe in need. Oh, they all agreed someone should help, always easy to agree that ‘someone’ should.
Just never them specifically.
The whole matter certainly sounded unsettling. The smaller tribes would have to figure out what it meant on their own though, and go see what exactly might have changed in their specific regions with this supposed ancient having awakened.
The twelve seniors would need to head home for now, and share this important news with Redcap Lila. But on the surface level, without having actually been here to see the most senior of seniors looking like they were caught up in traumatic flashbacks, including one mighty [Elefant Bull Rex], known for being a stalwart defender of the land tribes… it would still be far from convincing to the Redcap, in all likelihood sounding like nothing but the worries of a bunch of old farts.
The non-goblin tribes were known to be worrywarts who barely knew how to relax, after all.
This was why the goblin seniors opted to take the meandering route home, in order to check on the local environments for any signs of this new supposed strangeness, only for their group to stumble upon a pack of hounds, who had appeared to be completely unaware of the goblins observing them. They spotted them acting skittish, avoiding the area of what looked like just another small hill—but with some telltale black sand at the top—looking like it was about to possibly erupt with their doom.
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Yeah, they'd been properly spooked at the time, but then failed to find any signs of nude monkeys out on walk-abouts.
Only now that they had gotten a night of proper sleep were some of the seniors starting to connect the dots with that stranger they had seen in the sick hut, and only with the help of Lila.
"Look here you lot. He showed up astride Billy, talking about how he was lost and only helping out a newly met friend, when the two of them had just been bleeding attacked by the [Motley] hound pack. Should I have driven them off on account of not spouting answers to questions never asked? No. And we’ve learned lots since as a result," Lila pointed to the sick hut and tried to look properly convincing.
But the lack of specifics was loud indeed, the seniors all retaining skeptical looks. "You must have questioned his appearance though, his prowess?"
The Redcap eyed them all dubiously. "What tribe doesn't look weird? So he's an outsider, could be from a dozen different far flung provinces, and he came riding in on Billy like he belonged there. I figured he was an Oblast yeti, who'd somehow lost his fur and kept the skin."
There were whispers all around at the reasonable explanation, so the Redcap kept going. "As far as the prowess, what was I to go on? His aura? Hah. He was level 27, and it was not until he rescued the little one that we first saw him fight. And only a day after that, he did… this. How was I to know what that thing was capable of? Frankly we still don't know, we need more info 'afore he wakes, which should be soon, due to Läker's ministrations," She gave the old healer a nod to go ahead.
Läker spoke up next. "This kid and his Billy may just have spotted the culprit atop of the hilly!” The room went quiet.
“What?”
“What nothing. His body is certainly unlike lilything I've ever seen before. The bones? Unbreakable. But without an interview, there is little I can say for certain, yet his body takes to the sponges very, very well."
They reflected over that for a minute, but then it was time to address the elephant in the room.
They turned to the beaker urn hiding the newest member among their council, who was still on probation.
And Blåberry finally spoke the words she'd been determined to make very sure of before she even hinted at them. "I am positive. He resonates with my Daos."
The seniors all looked stunned, and pure satisfaction radiated from the next clearly pre-prepared line: "All three of them."
The revelation echoed from the small urn; last night, somehow Berry achieved her third Dao at 14 years of age.
The youngest Goblin to achieve her Dao Class in history.