Stump woke to the unsettling grin of a much older goblin. He groaned, and tried to stir, but a biting pain in his abdomen kept him down.
"Ah, ah," came the whistling voice of Pest. "You mustn't open your wound." He waddled to the bedside and leaned heavily on his cane. "The Stitchbloom potion will take some time to seal it."
"I…" Stump blinked against the light. He raised his hand above his eyes to give them some relief, and spied the floating lumen in the corner of the room. "Where am I? How long was I asleep?" He looked around, but the wide open temple chamber with its broken walls and slowly advancing underbrush had given way to a cramped wooden interior.
Pest rested a wrinkled hand on Stump's chest. "It's been a day. You are safe," he said. "Your friends, as well, though they didn't suffer quite the injury you did."
Stump summoned enough energy to force himself upright, biting his lip to stifle the burning in his stomach. His shirt was missing, and he was half swaddled in bandages.
"Quite the tale, from what I've been told," Pest went on, his words whistling through missing teeth. "The hauntings, caused by a wizard! And one trying to reach his hands into another world. Ha! Who could've known?"
Stump gave him an odd look. He's being too nice to me. "Yeah…" he said, his throat tight. "What happened?"
Pest squatted deliberately into a nearby chair and rested his hands on his staff. Stump wondered briefly if it too was a sword in disguise. "Well, to hear your friends tell it, it sounds like this arcane agent has fled the isles through a portal or some such. And the hauntings have fled with him, we can hope. My wife will be sending an official report to the council of Aubany. They take this cult business quite seriously."
Stump nodded weakly. "That's good."
"Oh, who am I to keep you adrift when all you want to know is when you'll receive your reward?"
"Right." Shards of memories arranged themselves in his mind—Morg, mask off, eyes red, teeth. He… did he try to bite me?
"Where's Morg?" he asked. He felt around his neck, looking for any puncture wounds, and sure enough, his fingers traced two bumps under his ear.
Pest's bushy brow lifted enough to reveal his sunken yellow eyes. "Morgish is, I'm afraid, still in recovery," he said, and then added, upon seeing the worry drain the colour from Stump's cheeks, "But not to fret, my wife is tending to him."
Stump tried to piece together the rest of the battle, but his mind moved as if swimming through honey. He remembered Sylas taking a wound to the chest, and Denna being knocked out, but he couldn't place what might've happened to Morg. "Was he hurt? Is he alright?"
"Well, his condition requires a certain kind of attention," said Pest, choosing his words carefully. "It's not every day you run into a vampire, you know."
 

 
Stump had never seen the dwarf so underdressed.
He lay beneath nothing more than a wool sheet, wearing a loose linen shirt that barely clung to his shoulders—surprising for his generous size—and wore no mask. Empty vials stained with blood cluttered the counter next to his bed.
Denna, clad in nothing more than a loose shirt and breeches and dressed here and there in small bandages, sat on a chair in the corner of the dimly lit room.
"He'll live, as far as I can tell," Wasptongue was saying. In stark contrast, she was layered in fine silks of gold, black and red, and her ears hosted all manner of sparkling ornaments. They announced her presence every time she turned her head.
"He saved me?" asked Stump, rolling the conversation back several exchanges.
"He fed you much of his own blood through that bite of yours to stop you bleeding into the dirt," she said. She uncorked a bottle at one end of the room, then hobbled over to the bed with it. "Hence his own severe blood loss. But you may still have died if not for the concoction Bug-Quasher fed you, which sped the healing of your wound." She rudely nudged Stump aside with the butt of her cane-sword.
"When will he wake?" he said, making enough room for her to stand next to Morg and tip the fluid into his mouth.
"Hard to say. Could be hours, days." Once she emptied the bottle, she set it on the counter and turned back to Stump with a twisted frown. "You could've warned me he was of a vampiric disposition, you know."
Stump lowered his head. "I just found out."Stolen story; please report.
A deep sigh escaped her as she crossed the room and rummaged through a sack. "You'll not turn, as far as I'm aware. Though we shall know for certain in a day or two. Anyhow, it's just me running the operation today. All my little ones are asleep. They parted with quite a lot of blood." She produced five silver coins glowing white and slapped them in Stump's palm.
He looked down at the things, round and shining. It was more money than he'd ever been able to call his own—not that his experience with owning anything for himself was very extensive. He quietly pocketed the coins and looked over to Denna, who was staring vacantly at nothing in particular.
"Your Ocelot friends are recovering elsewhere, in case you wanted to know," said Wasptongue, standing uncomfortably close. "The ugly fellow with the scars seems quite alright, but the felari suffered some extensive burns."
They're not my friends, he wanted to say, but the memory of Sylas tackling the cultist when Stump might've lost his eyelids, or his life, stayed his tongue.
"Now you, young lady," said Wasptongue, almost threateningly. "You'll have to escort me to my own domicile. I'm afraid I don't have the required coinage here."
Denna stood shakily, and for a moment it looked like Wasptongue would be the one doing the escorting, but after a few steps Denna found her stride. As she passed Stump, she gently squeezed his shoulder. He winced.
"Sorry," she said, and pulled her hand away. "Just wanted to say he'll be alright."
"Hurry now," Wasptongue said from the threshold. "I get bored easily." As the two of them ducked outside to leave Stump alone with his dwarven friend, she turned back one last time. "Oh, you'll want to talk to that phantom of yours. He's looking out to sea rather sullenly. It's making me feel glum."
Sir Halwyn was indeed looking out to sea. He stood with his hands clasped behind his back, and didn't register Stump coming up behind him.
"It's nice without all the fog," Stump observed, jolting him to attention.
"Oh, yes. It is, isn't it?" Halwyn said, and looked to the waves, where the misty veil had parted, revealing the sea in its full expanse, flecked with golden sunset. "Much like I remember it."
He was mostly corporeal, but the evening glow gave his skin a flickering complexion, and a thin aura of grey fog drifted behind his eyes.
"I wasn't sure you'd still be here," said Stump. "I mean, if we actually got rid of the magic at the temple."
"We did. He fled once you'd fallen."
"Then why…"
"I think there's one thing left for me to do," the lighthouse keeper said sadly.
 

 
Sir Halwyn steered them ashore beneath the lighthouse. It was easy enough to see in the twilight, as it was one of the only relatively intact structures left in the Spits. He stepped out after Stump and Denna disembarked.
She'd wanted to come along after tucking her fifteen silver pieces away in her pack and storing it under Morg's bed, and told Stump she needed to stretch her legs and get some air, but he knew it was to get away from Wasptongue.
She wasn't the only one. With most of the goblin staff napping and Morg in recovery, the Ocelots didn't want to remain at the brewery alone with her, either. They followed along in a separate boat, and remained outside while Stump and Denna took Halwyn to the beacon.
"I remember the fighting," he was saying as they reached the top. "I was here, lighting the beacon. For my family. For Seabrace. It had to stay alight, you see, for the ships to navigate, for them to get away."
"Did they?" asked Denna, helping Stump up the ladder.
"I remember seeing them pass beneath me, using the light as a guide. It was shortly after that…" the ghost trailed off, gazing longingly out to sea.
Stump didn't press further. He did as he had done the night before and conjured a light in the bowl.
"Think it'll work?" Denna asked as it washed over them, revealing Halwyn's true ghostly presence.
The three of them turned their heads to the sea and waited. A cool wind swept up from the base of the lighthouse and tugged Stump's cloak. Somewhere a flock of gulls circled. Waves crashed below, spraying sea foam, and out over the blue came a ship made of fog.
Stump pointed. "There."
The Spirit of Dusk drifted along, charting a course for the lighthouse. When it neared, it turned, navigating around the isle. Shards of sunlight rippled along its sails and scattered through the hull. Figures huddled together on deck, and at the wheel the captain steered them on to Aubany.
Halwyn leaned over the wall to watch them go. "I can't see who's leaving," he said, squinting. "Old eyes, I suppose."
Stump struggled up the wall for a better view. He spotted the captain, the one who had arrested them. Ulith was there too, and much of the rest of the crew. There were families side by side, and old couples and young siblings. He described to Halwyn the clothes, the strange loose tunics and billowing frills, the feathered caps and long boots. Humans, all of them, from a time before goblins and dead gods.
Soon the ship was too far away even for Stump to see clearly, and his listing of its passengers trailed off. It drifted farther into the fog, and slowly the Spirit of Dusk and all aboard dissolved into sea mist, rolling gently over the waves.
When Stump turned back sir Halwyn was fading. His clothes and skin curled off in delicate wisps with a passing breeze.
"It's time, I think," said the ghost. "I should thank you before I'm off. Without your help I may never have seen my family again." He removed his hat and held it against his chest and bowed. "Denna of the Iron Fleece."
She returned the gesture, somewhat awkwardly amidst the pain of her injuries.
"And you," Halwyn straightened and refit the feathered cap over his head. He offered his hand to Stump. "If you are any indication of your people, the goblins of Aubany must be among the finest of her citizens."
Stump's heart sank on instinct. He thought of his tribe and the matrons who condemned him to death, of Griza and Little-Bear and Rat-Squealer who hunted him down for glory, and he thought of Thrung, worst of all. The burned goblin's roasted eye, and the hatred in his voice. He remembered the fire. The finest of her citizens.
But they weren't the only ones. There was Wasptongue and Pest, who were respected among the inns and breweries of the city, and there were all the goblins who worked on Seabrace, unaffiliated and unbound by tribal allegiance.
There was Yeza, his very best friend.
And there's me, too.
Stump smiled and clasped Halwyn's ethereal hand. "Thank you sir Halwyn of Seabrace," he said. "I'm Stump, the shortest of goblinkind."
"I'm glad to know your name, Stump, the shortest of goblin—"
Stump's fingers curled around mist.
In a blink the keeper of the lighthouse was gone, carried on the breath of the sea.
Tenet of Lumensa Fulfilled - Virtue +1 (7/8).