---Change---

---Jackson’s perspective---

Now… that’s interesting…

That city on a hill across the river definitely doesn’t look like it was made by whatever those goblin children I’ve spotted around grow up into…

Looks way too grand and flashy for the impression they’ve given me!

Great big yurts, made of nice looking, colorful silks, line the streets.

Regularly spaced torches light up the night with the glow of their flames.

To my right is a port with an honest to god pirate ship anchored in the river(!)

The rest of the far shore is lined with defensive stake barricades, all except where the road meets the water where… oh…

I see two of them…

Soldiers guarding the ford. I’m absolutely certain they’re not the same kind as the goblins…

Not unless they go through some gross cocooning stage where they transform everything about themselves!

Would explain why I haven’t seen any goblin adults yet if they all turn into gigantospiders… but still kinda farfetched!

Anyway, as interesting as it might be that this gardenworld apparently has two xeno species, I’m not here for anthropology(!)

I look up at the biggest yurt, on top of the hill.

If anyone’s gonna have a translator, its whoever lives there!

All I’ve gotta do is get there…

I run through a few different visual spectra to scan the water for anything like that thing that attacked me the other day.

I know I can kill them but I don’t know if I could do it quietly enough to avoid waking up every subHuman in this city.

I see nothing.

I look up at the two moons in the sky, the bigger one in a waning gibbous, the smaller basically full.

I wait for cloudcover to kill the light they were shining down, then raise my left hand to about a foot away from my face, covering the two soldiers so the glow of my eyes won’t be visible to them.

I begin walking forward into the deep water, careful not to splash.

I’m fully submerged now but still easily able to keep my course as straight as an arrow as I stride across the rocky riverbed.

After a few hundred feet, the gradient changes and I’m walking uphill under the water.

My head quietly breaks the surface, about 10ft from a steep, 6ft high bank, topped with a line of half buried chevaux de frise.

I don’t hear the sound of any alarms, so I climb up the bank and through the sharpened stakes (good for keeping out attacking armies, not so much lone infiltrators(!))

My feet come to rest on the ground within the city limits and I look around before quietly making my way uphill, through the tents.

---Aghogh’s perspective---

I awake on my throne pedestal.

I’m not alone in this room.

I freeze as I hear the noise that must have disturbed me from my slumber… heavy bipedal footsteps, clinking metallically as they approach me across the cobbles.

Enjoying the story? Show your support by reading it on the official site.

Slowly and carefully, my right hand reaches for my breast pocket.

The flesh of my finger and thumptips close around a metal coin, smoother and thinner than any my kingdom mints.

I withdraw it and bring it to my temple.

I indicate it to stick there and translate my words, which it does.

“I believe you are rather lost, child…” I say, gently.

“Naaah… I think I’m right where I want to be right now… at least, until you’ve told me what I wanna know…” answers back a cold, cruel, pitiless voice, its accent like that of the man, Leon, making me recall that the two are from the same realm of the Terran territory.

I shake my head in what my daughter tells me is their gesture for ‘no’ “No, Sir Stetter… I believe you are very lost…”

I hear him stop dead in his tracks.

He pauses for a few seconds before resuming his approach.

“If you know who I am, why haven’t you already shouted for your guards, old timer? Our… mutual acquaintances surely told you I’m a dangerous man?”

I make a dismissive gesture and answer “That’s precisely why I haven’t called for my daughters… If the delegation are so afraid of you then I have to assume that killing me before any help arrived would be a trivial matter for you to achieve… and of course you may well dispatch whomever arrived with as much ease… I would prefer to talk, Sir Stetter… I believe we two are capable of reaching a common understanding.”

He scoffs “Funny how gardenworlders always wanna talk as soon as they don’t have the upper hand anymore(!) Funny how none of them wanted to talk about it before they bombed my house, killed my wife, killed my baby girl and left me under a pile of rubble for 4 days, taking my arms and legs in the process(!)”

Gardenworlders?

He thinks this is a gardenworld?

If the differences are as obvious as I’ve been informed, it’s surely readily apparent that it’s not?

I decide it’s best not to correct him and instead commiserate “What happened to you was an injustice, Sir Stetter… Truly, it was!… I know the pain of an unjust loss too well myself… Had I known of this War and had I an army worth sending to your aid, I gladly would have sent it!”

“Would you?!” he spits, accusingly “’Cause that’d’ve made you the only ones!… Nah… I think you’d’ve done what every other species ‘opposed’ to the War did; sit back and just be glad it wasn’t happening to you!”

I do not answer, simply staring back, neutrally, which, in my experience, is the only diplomatic response to an accusation of being a liar.

Eventually, he ceases waiting for an answer and says “Alright, blindman! Cut the crap! You know who I am, which means you know why I’m here! Tell me where they are!”

“Why?” I ask, simply “What will you do if I tell you?”

“I’ll go there and kill them all!!!” he scoffs, seeming insulted that I even had to ask such an obvious question.

“Then I’m afraid I cannot tell you.” I answer, keeping my voice stoic.

“Old man…” says the killer as I feel the tip of a metal claw press into the bare flesh at my throat “…you realize it’s them or you, right?… Actually, no! If you don’t tell me, I’ll kill you and find them anyway. All your death would do is inconvenience me! Is that really worth dying for!?”

“Sir Stetter, listen to me! Your life is not over! If I understand your people’s laws correctly, they shan’t kill you for all the things you’ve done… only take your freedom until they’re reasonably certain you won’t do anything similar again! Admittedly, that would be a long time in your case but it would not be forever! After you were, once more, a free man, you could build your life again! You could live another 1,331 lifetimes if you wanted! Of course the pain will never be completely gone but with enough distance you could maybe stop allowing it to rule you the way that you are! So long as you are alive, it’s never too late for a change! It’s never too late for you to decide to be better than you were! Your people taught me that!… Taught me that the hope of tomorrow always shines brighter than the despair of yesterday! I beg you! I implore you, in the name of your Humanity! Surrender yourself to my daughters… I promise, no harm will come to you while you are in our custody and you already know that you won’t be killed at the delegation, don’t you? They can take you somewhere where you can get the help you need to heal, Sir Stetter!”

There’s a pause.

Then the man presses the needle sharp claw harder into my throat.

“Last chance… tell me where they are… or die…”

I sigh, defeatedly “I have lived a good long life… I had been looking forward to having my sight back, my youth back and getting to live a longer one as I watch my people grow and come into their own among the stars but… if my choice is to die here or to live another 14,641 years with the shame of knowing that I had once betrayed allies and friends to save my own hide… then my choice is to die.”

“Have it your way then…” he sneers as his hand thrusts upward.

The pain barely registers… the overriding sensation is that of just how cold his fingers are in my flesh.

My lukewarm blood floods down my throat and spills down my front as he withdraws his hand.

My vocal chords destroyed, I don’t say a word as my body collapses like a puppet with its strings cut.

As I lie on the cold cobbles, gurgling and spluttering my last breaths while my life’s blood leaves me, I hear a scream.

Distantly, I register that the one who is thundering across the throne room to battle my killer is my daughter.

I want to tell her to run, to live, to save herself… but my voice is gone… and my mind is fading… There’s nothing I can do…