Chapter 26 - The long last night and lore: Part I (Pre-evolution arc)

　　There was no way to tell time in these halls. The same putrid green glow pervaded at night as well as day—the goblin moss growing clustered on the walls and the carved-out damp ceiling. Only in the elite quarters had he seen sunlight, filtering faintly through the rents and cracks of its craggy hewn end. The prince longed to go there now. But he was sure it was night.

　　Slowly, the door to the scholar`s hall slid open, latticed wood creaking from the prince`s hard grip. He tried to be silent—he was not meant to be here. When the rules go unstated, they are all the more clear.

　　The prince strode through to the back, ran his hand along the bookshelves, feeling dust and the heft of its leatherbound tomes. He caught himself wanting to indulge—grabbing books at random like a scholar`s buffet. But he saw his own green hand reaching out. And it was back to business.

　　On myths and malice... he had almost not seen it. Placed far back in the rack, here was a handbound antique, the spine creased with old lettering. He would have worn a cloth glove not more than a week ago—the book was so old, the pages so frayed.

　　There was a flayed broken god that graced the front cover. He bore the form of a man, though his face was vile green. He was alone and grotesque and in a way outright splendid; he stood tall as a mountain, could bear nothing around him but the sin of his kin. Halflings he made, the prince presumed—they were people and goblins. Holding knives and green hands, they formed a half-hearted circle, flowing freely and wildly as the lay of the land. It was raw and unsightly, how they wove round their god at a deferential enough distance. The prince thought it mighty; he felt a brute sense of awe.

　　Kageru.

　　He sat down in the same pew as before... but then decided against it. Though a slave to most things now, routine was not one.

　　Far removed from the realm of true study—both the prince and the book, for there was no author listed. No year and no references. Musings of a madman for all he could tell.

　　In truth, it was a stark disappointment. He thumbed through the pages, finding little of worth. Here was a collection of folk tales and worse, just discarded flawed notions. How the air was miasma, the true cause of disease. How gold could be grown from the alchemist`s pot—the high from the lesser. The prince let his gaze drift. From the text to his hand. No, if matter was transmuted it would never be better.

　　The glossary of terms, then. Under G` for goblin. Page thirty-eight.

　　More dumb old fables—how goblins grew from the moss in their caves. An old illustration, no mention of eggs.

　　Enraged with the folly of what he was seeing, the prince closed the book.

　　Then he saw the back cover. His breath stopped.

　　There was a grand table pictured, long and broad; it was rife with food and drink, with swords and gold—all things that mattered to the people of old, heaped in large piles bleeding into each other. Commanding attention, at both the head and foot, two towering chairs stood vacant. Fit for a Lord and a Lady. Then four smaller chairs at the far end; the four forged gods sat them—those worthy of veneration, their divine faces clearly on display. The prince knew them well enough. Their tales at the least. Rugged and handsome, the two men, Reduvex and Eteraenem, though they went by many more names. Graceful and gleaming with the force of their aura, the two women, Paldufaer and Maienexis, also graced with a multitude of monikers.

　　Then on the near side, only three chairs, with the last one half-crumbled. All of them sat by a fallen forged god, the disreputable bastards of this exalted assembly. They were Yulvolde and Faruikis, both broken beasts that had stood with Kageru at the Battle of the Gods. Yulvolde was only visible from the back; she had repented, and the others had forgiven their sister`s sin... to some extent. She was much reduced in stature—no longer a god, but a high-ranking servant. Faruikis was pictured likewise from the back, but with a shame-red face turned toward us, testament to his sin. He was reaching out and trying to help the last god, the one sitting on the half-crumbled chair and falling. This was Kageru. Neither of these last two had repented. Kageru was beyond redemption, and thus not welcome at the table anymore.

　　The prince thought of the table in the great halls; it unnerved him so that the thought stayed hollow and remote, like a still landscape painting left deliberately unfinished. No life and no colour.

　　Thankful for him, there was a source of distraction. At the bottom of the book, right below the image, the artist had tacked on a frilly banner with his name. Haldonn the wise.

　　Two true thoughts shot through the prince, both vying for his full attention.

　　The first:

　　The goblin lorebook he had seen when he was still whole, his summer as a scholar at the magetower. The author`s name—here it was. Haldonn... something. The surname was lost to his mind and perhaps to history. But he went by his self-stated title, usually in mockery. The wise.

　　The second:

　　A thought more potent still than the first, the longer he pondered. Artisan`s words in the hallway: I was not yet wise when I read On myths and malice`.A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

　　The man spoke in riddles, but this one seemed solved. A goblin by any other name... would be nothing more than a goblin still. How many did he have to spare—Gavrilon, Artisan... and now Haldonn?

　　Now the search was on, the prince scouring for clues. But the books were all filed according to title, not author. A deep sigh. Knowledge did not come easy in the goblin world.

　　Ferignost—that would be an apt title. The blade that had brought him low, god-shard of the god-blade. Ziegb鰈t.

　　But no. No book with that title.

　　How about The Lost Prospect. The forged title given to Baldirk of the mire, son of Feldirk, in the Edict of the Crown scroll—the one the prince had seen right enough to translate, for the furtherance of knowledge. No. For his own gain and standing.

　　This did not serve either, the insight. Too many books starting with The. And not all were stored in alphabetical order.

　　It shamed the prince somewhat to know what he tried next. He closed his eyes, pulled Artisan to the centre of vision. His mind`s eye in search, an attempt to recall. Soulgazing. The prince had seen Artisan`s form—the true depths of his soul raw and battered.

　　Nothing.

　　To see as far as he had before, that one time... he could not do it. Not on command.

　　Another approach then. Think away the goblins—a feat he could not quite manage, so he acted as if. Where would he find this information in a proper library? The magetower staff kept a handwritten catalogue, documenting all of the manuscripts... could it be?!

　　The schoolteacher`s desk was a touch elevated; it looked quite like a lectern. They were green and savage and ugly as sin, these goblins. But they took the best things of man for their own, be it in pale imitation. The culture, the heart. The soul.

　　Though the drawer was locked, there was a big book on the desktop. Ledger of Tomes. Master Grok, that old fool... at least he kept affairs in steady order.

　　Leafing through the ledger, the prince noted the author list—it was not long. The goblins did not care much for academic renown... no, quite the opposite. Only third-grade theses were given attributions. The seers and statisticians, an ode to their prowess. The most evolved of the scholars.

　　Haldonn the wise—here it was, his name. He had been a statistician some ten, twenty, thirty lives ago.

　　Crucible. His dissertation. The one book registered under his name.

　　The prince went to the bookracks, stifling the beat of his breath, so hard and so shallow.

　　There was no front cover and nothing on the back either. Only the title on the spine. Big daunting letters, though the book would not pass muster at a doctoral defence—not at the magetower. It was fifty pages perhaps, if that. But the prince felt its heft in a way; there was weight to these words.

　　The first page was a mottled grey, creased and tattered like the soul who wrote it, for there was a well-ripened beauty here as well: the calligraphy was a master`s, a broad yet delicate Blackletter script—the title in gold. The true and full title. Crucible of the Neophytes. The rest of the page left empty. Stylish and bold, like the man himself, or what remains.

　　Instantly, the prince`s mind went there—Crucible, meaning trial... Neophytes, meaning novices. Trial of the novices. Or how about Rookie Games.

　　His heart was beating something fierce now, proof enough he still had one, however foul and rotten it may be.

　　Turning the page, the prince felt his eye glide to a crude illustration on the bottom of the third page; the penmanship was too fine, too faded... but the essence remained. Here were goblins, or perhaps brutal half-breeds, for their features were warped—the gruesome fangs and the beady dead eyes, goblin through and through... though their frames were still slender and not at all unsightly. The first of the goblins. Those deformed by Kageru himself, his slicing of the mind and heart. Some were bent to the ground, digging. Others sat holding boxes.

　　Finally, he would learn what it all meant—the rookie games and the damn boxes.

　　The prince started reading the foreword text starting on page two. Artisan speaking to him directly, piercing the veil of the ages—a century-or-so of time—before the words had reached.

　　--

　　Preface and no dedication

　　This dissertation has cost me blood and sweat, but not one tear—this form of weakness I will not grant to my captors. The chapters herein were duly recorded by mine own hand; this I declare. No courtesy praise is given to others: if I were to dedicate this work to someone, it would be to Thanell of the Celestials, the last lady-sovereign and wolf in the west. Leader to the ragged strong mages who roam—they had no name, and it was just that way, though now they are deemed wildkin by the magnanimous masters of the land. The archmage and his sycophants sitting high and remote in their magetower vestiges. A curse on them for their peevish self-righteousness—they are one and all the same. And a thousandfold curses more for their ultimate sin: the mindful obfuscation of veritably priceless knowledge on the goblin death and how to avoid it. But then, their incursion alone is half the story... no, less even. A greater part was played by the greatest of kings, who I am wary to slight, for his grandeur vexes me in death as it did in life...

　　What you will find is the culmination of my dutiful research activities, which began as a scholar, then lorekeeper, and now, finally as a fully-fledged third-grade statistican.

　　I present it now unabridged, the truth as I have seen it, for it is from conjecture that I have gleaned... certainty. Or something close enough in its orbit.

　　And as a final note to the will-be reader: I pity you as you should me. If you are my elder, know that I will walk these halls until the gap in our time spent serving is so minute relative to the unending nature of our plight, that I may as well call you brother or sister, and not senior. And to those who are my junior, know that I will walk these halls forever alongside you, though our minds and souls will inevitably give out, and we can hope that we are made savage and low enough to be finally unaware of our greatest torment.

　　We are in hell. That is not a metaphor; it is the conclusion of my thesis. Our souls are chained here forever, toiling under the watchful one eye of the fallen god Kageru`s lesser brother.

　　We are in HELL.

　　--

　　The prince felt a strong surge of emotion—too many things to outright name as one. There was anger aimed at all, deep hatred reserved for some, and a lonesome hard fright that cut him to the marrow and he could not breathe; he could not breathe.

　　Where was the warrior-poet now, that damn dead man who had never existed? The wise grand-uncle Gustave—a goblin over and over and over, until now there was no trace left of the man but only anguish. And that was the best possible outcome. Perhaps fragments still lingered in a dead-rotted soul... failing but ever-flailing grasps to sharded relics of a prior cognition.

　　He wanted to beat at the walls and cry in the night. He wanted to hunt and stalk and maim and pray. Gods, he was scared.

　　But he read on.