"I am Pest, by the way," said the elder goblin as he led Stump and Morg deeper into the isle. "The very same Pest of the Wasp and Pest Brewing Company, as seen… oh…"
He had gestured to a wide brick and clay building beyond the charred edge of the woods, where a hefty sign displayed the name of the company. 'Wasp', '&', and 'Brewing Co' were untouched, but his own name was coated in a thick layer of soot.
Pest grumbled something to a nearby goblin, who hurried off.
Morg and Stump followed as they made their way through the frenzy of the island denizens, who ran about, snuffing out the few flaming bastions that remained.
A whole island of goblins, Stump thought, awestruck.
Some were feral, tribal-like, but many appeared as though they'd grown up among the tall men and knew nothing of the wilds where their vicious brethren lived. And they dressed surprisingly well. Many of them were clad in linen or leather and wore sandals or buckled shoes and boots, all things the matrons would have demanded as tribute for their thrones.
Do they even have the curse of the bloodlust, like I do? he wondered. Stump would have given so much to have been raised among them and the tall men, among all the books and civility he could ever ask for. Yeza would have loved it too.
Pest attended to a number of the brewery workers while he walked in a hunch, hands clasped behind his back. One of the assistants was reporting on the state of the malthouse and glow garden, which sustained no damage.
"Good, good," he hummed.
The brewhouse suffered minor aesthetic damage, but the storage houses suffered the worst, with the entirety of their Jailburn ale stock having gone up in explosive fashion.
"Cock!" Pest swatted the assistant away and tallied the financial cost under his breath.
Stump hurried next to him. "I'm sorry to hear about the damage to your brewery," he said.
"Fourteen…no, sixteen casks… ten—what?" Pest peered through his wired spectacles at the younger goblin. He sighed. "Oh, yes. It is at the end of a long line of misfortunes. Don't open a brewery on a chain of broken isles with ghosts and spirits and whatnot, I told her. But she insisted. Oh, she insisted. She likes the spooks, she said. Adds flavour to the brew. Bah!"
They rounded the back of the building with the company sign and moved between two smaller structures of the same material. From their lighted windows swelled scents of malt and honey.
"I heard something about that," Stump fished. "The Spits are haunted, aren't they?"
"Yes, yes, everybody knows that," said Pest. "It is the degree of hauntings that's changed. Used to be there'd be voices rolling off the sea, whispers inviting our workers to join the dead below. Only a handful ever accepted, of course. But now? Every other day there is something! There are reports of a ship made of fog, with sails draped in seaweed and no one at the wheel."
Stump's eyes widened in wonder. He looked back to Morg but found the dwarf more interested in the panicked goblins. "A ghost ship?" Stump pressed.
Pest kissed what few teeth he had left. "Real or imagined. Only a fortnight ago we hired three swords of the Iron Fleece to investigate why the hauntings have intensified, but they have not returned! We might as well have thrown silver into the sea."
The Iron Fleece? The badge rattled in Stump's pouch, as if Garron's soul was lock inside. He didn't mean to bring it with him to Seabrace, but he found the item hard to part with. Without it he couldn't be sure he would have made the decision to trek through the Shadowlands.
"I know them," he said. "Well, I know of them. I could help you find out what happened, if you needed."
Pest's laugh came out half a wheeze. "Sure, sure. Ride out in your little dinghy for all the good it does you. I'm sure you'll find them on the seafloor, right next to your own sopping sarcophagus."
 

 
The air buzzed.
Pest stopped before an open field, where rows of wooden boxes on posts hummed with bees. Patrolling between them were floating globules of white light, identical to the lumens Stump had summoned.
His mouth hung open at the sight of them. There were six, eight, twelve, and no one in sight to control them. "How?" he blurted.
"You can take it from here, surely," said Pest, urging Stump ahead. Morg followed to the edge of the bee farm, but remained clear of the lights.
It was only as Stump moved beyond the first several posts that he spotted a female goblin leaning heavily on her cane and hunching over a hive licked black by fire. Shiny trinkets and colourful baubles dangled from her ears.
"My dears, my poor dears," she said and hobbled to another box. She peeked inside and brightened at the buzzing within. "Oh, not all is lost. Curses upon the wretch who sought to harm you."
Stump gaped without saying a word. A matron, he thought. He made to clear his throat, but choked on the attempt.
She turned at the sound of his gagging. The treasures adorning her ears clinked together. "Eh? You're not one of mine." Three of the nearest lights broke off from their paths and surrounded him.This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.
They're all hers, he realized. It was said that a goblin only grows old as the well of their wisdom deepens, and Stump could see under the harsh and powerful glow of her magic that she was very old, indeed.
He fought the desire to prostrate himself. "My name is Stump," he said, his voice squeakier than normal. "Stump of the Nobodies. It's a mercenary company. I've heard a lot about—"
"Not interested," she said and turned away. "How does Pest let these beggars into my presence?"
"It might interest you," he countered.
Wasptongue spun swiftly on her heel, surprising for her age. "And why would that be? Are you here to march the progress of time in a backwardly direction? To save my stock? No? Then piss off."
The weight of her words struck him like a mallet. "No," he dared. "But I have come to warn you, and maybe… well, maybe I can help you. It's about the Midnight Ocelots."
She appraised him closely, as if now only seeing him for the first time. She inched closer. So did the lumens. "The Ocelots, eh?"
"I spied on them."
She paused. One eye watched him, wide and unblinking. The other drifted aimlessly in its socket. "Who did you say you were?"
"Stump."
"No, the other part."
"The Nobodies."
She considered it. "Hmph."
"It's a mercenary company."
"Indeed," she said, and rapped her staff on the ground. "It's no matter to me. Those midnight vermin visited only hours ago with threats and promises aplenty. Now look at my poor dears. My operation. Thwarted!" She gestured wildly.
"They did? The Midnight Ocelots?" I'm too late. Stump looked back to Morg for some direction only to find his round shape in the gloom, watching the passing lights from the safety of the shadows. "I can help. Somehow. I can figure out if…"
"If nothing. Of course it was they who started the fire," snapped Wasptongue. "I don't need to empty my coffers to have some tribal outcast tell me which way the wind is blowing. I've already hired a pack of mercenaries, and now they go missing! Not days later the rats of the Ocelots burn my hives and my brewery. I've nothing but contempt for you rented gutter thieves. Begone before I've lost my temper."
Death, he heard, ringing in his skull. Death, death. A matron's word was final. To speak against it was sacrilege. Tribal Stump knew that and abided by it, but he was tribal Stump no longer.
She had already turned away and resumed the inspection of her hives. He needed something to grab her attention, something to offer—an offering, in goblin terms.
"It wasn't the Midnight Ocelots who started the fire," he ventured.
She stopped in her tracks and sighed threateningly. "You're still here."
"When I spied on them I overheard them talking about you. They were threatening a dwarf named Daggan. He owns the Cantankerous—"
"I know who he is."
"They told him not to have his hands in the pockets of another mercenary company, and then told two of their members, uhh… Germott and… Sylas. She told them… their leader told them, I mean, to make sure your supply levels returned to normal. It would be strange, I think, maybe even a very bad idea, to hinder your operation further by burning it down."
Wasptongue leaned on her cane with both hands and smacked her ample gums together. "What is it you want?"
Stump's lips had gone terribly dry. "I want to help you figure out who started the fire. And to find the members of the Iron Fleece you hired."
"Yes, yes, in exchange for what?"
"Coins. Silver, I mean."
She groaned. "A value, little one. Have you not haggled before?"
"No. I mean yes, I have not," he admitted, then contemplated by looking at his feet. "Five silver."
"Done," she said, without hesitation.
Stump cursed under his breath. "I could have asked for more, couldn't I?"
She shrugged. "Five silver if you discern the cause of the fire and find these missing sellswords."
"And you will teach me Lumenurgy," he added hastily.
There was a pause. "Oh?" she asked, amused. She turned her chin up at him. "And what would you know about that?" The lights drifted closer.
"Not very much. I'm only level two."
Her eyes sparkled with mild curiosity. "Demonstrate."
"Uh…" his face went hot. He looked around, and noticed Morg still lingering some feet behind. "I can only cast a lumen."
"Then cast one."
She watched him like a bird of prey as he held one arm aloft, palm open to the sky. The hum of the bees gave way to a second sound buzzing within his chest. There was a flicker. Then another. A bulb of light popped into existence above his hand, floating amidst her own luminous arsenal.
She suppressed a yawn. "Now shape it."
"Shape it?"
"Yes, into a goblin."
"Uh…" He focused hard on the ball, ordering it down to the ground as he moulded an image in his mind. The globule bubbled and shifted like a heatless candle. A head began to form, then legs. The goblin made of light sprouted its limbs slowly, agonizingly, with each new addition needing to be concentrated on simultaneously.
"That," Wasptongue nodded to the amorphous blob, "is your best effort? Where's the colour? The definition?"
Her interruption caused the arms to fold back in. "It doesn't work like that," he huffed, trying to reform the shape.
"Oh, it doesn't? Tell me more about how Lumenurgy works, I've been dying to know." She shuffled towards him, leaning aggressively on her staff. All around him the lumens contorted themselves into goblinoid shape without her attention, trading their luminous glow for all the colour and detail he recognized in himself, down to the very cloak around his shoulders.
"You and all your knowledge," she went on, now close enough to knock him on his ass with her hooked nose. "Tell me, how many skills does Lumenurgy synergize with? Can it synergize with Thermalurgy? What about Chronurgy? Very basic knowledge. What about Umbramancy? Have you dipped your toes in that?"
Stump backed away, but she closed the distance, commanding the clones to follow. "I… I don't…" he tried to swat away her battery of questions, but each time he opened his mouth she had volleyed several more.
"How many lumens can you create at once? How many without concentration? It's not a hard spell. What Lumenurgy tier are you? How many focus trees do you have unlocked? How does one tier differ from another?"
"Stop it. Stop," he said. Sweat beaded on his forehead. He was beginning to feel queasy.
"What benefits can you gain from a second focus point? A third? Because I've forgotten." Spittle sprayed from her lips. The illusions closed in.
His ears curled inward. He wanted to plug them. He wanted to scream. "Stop!"
Stump swiped out at the false versions of himself. All three collapsed into their bright spherical forms. With a wide swoop of his arms he directed them to swirl around Wasptongue, hijacked from her control.
A confused garble escaped her lips. One by one the lights popped without a sound, bursting into flashes of light and then nothing. She recoiled from each one, dropping her staff and collapsing in a heap.
Stump staggered back. Did I do that? He looked back to Morg for clarification, but instead spotted Pest, who had been watching from a safe distance.
His mouth was agape. "You… you…"
Wasptongue groaned and struggled to her feet. She glared menacingly at Stump through wispy strands of white hair.
"Sorry…" Stump said. "I don't know how I did that. You—"
In a blink she was gone. Vanished. Dissolved without a ripple in sight.
"What?" breathed Stump, before he heard the patter. Something cracked hard against his chest. He barrelled over his shoulder and sucked air as dust settled around him. When he blinked the dirt out of his eyes she was standing above him, back straight as an arrow.
Wasptongue grabbed the end of her cane and drew, showing her staff was no staff at all. She slid the blade from its scabbard, swiping it deftly through the air before holding the point a mere inch from Stump's nose. She looked down at him, her scowl slowly curling into a smile.
She chuckled. "Good, little one. You'll make a fine student. Find these mercenaries and the source of this fire for me, and I'll teach you."