We stood there for what felt like an eternity. The glowing eyes of the eldritch guardian were still and focused in contrast to my racing heartbeat. What was it doing here? There was no thaumaturge near that could have drawn the being with his forbidden knowledge. The node was gone for over half a year as well. Had somebody come to this place and drawn it in? My thoughts went in circles, not coming closer to any kind of solution.

At some point, I felt an itching feather. I shifted slightly, slowly, trying to avoid spooking the fog monster in front of me. It looked down at my body when I used a tendril of shadow to scratch and preen the problematic feather. That was it. I found some more courage and turned my body around to align with my head. More shadows slowly seeped into my feathers, darkening my appearance.

Then, it moved. At first, I barely spotted the change, as the being slowly floated towards me. As it got closer, it sped up a little. I could have easily made an escape with my [Eldritch Shift]. It simply seemed inappropriate at the moment for reasons I could only guess at. The eldritch guardian was slow. As if a child was taking the fastest steps that would not scare the bunny. Or the deer, caught in the headlight of yellow eyes shining through an unnatural fog.

As it reached one metre, just enough to touch me with an outstretched gauntlet, the being stopped abruptly. I looked up at the looming form. It was at least two metres tall and floated another thirty centimetres above the ground. From this angle, the yellow orbs were barely visible behind the helmet’s visor. Then, it raised its hand. Once more, very slowly, it moved it towards me. When it came to a stop, I was faced with an open palm and slightly curled fingers. Did it want me to sniff it? I was no dog. I scoffed. The hand flinched back a tiny bit. Were my eyes any less spectacular, I would not have spotted the movement. Luckily, they were impeccable. The being’s reaction gave me all the confidence I needed.

I took half a step back and opened my storage to pull out the supersensory matrix. Holding the item to my chest with a band of darkness, I activated it and felt for the guardian. I found nothing. There was no mind, no soul. Not in the Empty, at least. I closed my eyes and felt a surge of vis flow through my body. Shocked, I opened them again. The guardian was gone from my eyesight. And it had appeared in my mind, shown by the supersensory matrix. I blinked once, twice, then tried to connect with it.

The guardian was somewhere close to my soul in the Empty so it was rather easy to find it. When I pushed, I felt its armour open up. It was not actually real over there but that was the sensation I got from the response. Then we were connected. A garbled mess of thoughts and feelings rushed into me. They were decidedly simple in nature. Something like ‘protect’, ‘find’, ‘return’ and the one dominating them all, ‘gratitude’. They were no words and I found it useless to ask with words. My only answer was confusion. I tried feelings instead. Questions like ‘why’ ‘how’ and ‘what’ went unanswered but something more general like ‘confusion’ elicited a reaction. The response was, again, simple. Just a single concept. ‘Path’. Along with a feeling that was: ‘me’. Had it used me to get back home? What was going on?

That seemed to satisfy the being’s curiosity and it retreated from our connection, closing up again. Within moments, I felt a part of my soul surrounded by an army of entities, mind spiders and eldritch guardians alike. They observed the one I had returned from reality and just as quickly, I was alone again. The tugging on my soul felt like I could go there right now, meet these beings and learn what they were. I ignored it. I had other obligations. Ones I had brought upon myself but also ones I wanted. This eldritch mess was yet far beyond me. It made my whole body shudder, down to the very Core.

I looked at the supersensory matrix. Was this item capable of communicating with eldritch beings? Even if they had no connection to reality at that moment? Did I even want to know the answer? I felt I would be lost forever if I went there. Only a coincidence would be capable of returning me to reality. Not the risk I wanted to take right now.

I looked around the room. There was nothing useful anymore. I had everything I could get. A look through the upper floors showed me they were completely ransacked as well. On the top floor, I found the mangled body of an ork. She was wearing a ripped robe I quickly associated with thaumaturges. There were wounds all over and a small pool of blood had formed. I only found why it was so small when I inspected the body more closely. It was frozen solid. It was not simply cold, though. There was also a distinct lack of essence in the remaining flesh. To my magical senses, it might as well be not there at all. If this was what the eldritch guardians did to their victims, I wanted no part of it. Other than the corpse, there was nothing of interest up here either. While I was a little curious and almost put the body into my storage for later research, I decided to let sleeping demons lie and made my way out.

It was dark by now but I decided to get away from the abandoned mansion anyway. My flight brought me up the valley to the goblin mountain. They really needed a proper name for their village, especially if we were going to improve it this much. Looking down, I saw a lot more orks than expected out and about. While the snow had mostly melted, the weather was still cold and it was already night. Still, torches moved along through the forest and plains north of the town. The plains an eldritch being had created so casually. The orks were getting awfully close to where I knew the entrance to the goblin town was. I decided to investigate.

Getting close to a patrol in the darkness proved trivial. The orks were loud and focused on the ground, not expecting any threats from above. There were three of them in every group. I was surprised to not see a single goblin anywhere. Had the little greenskins denied their help?

I listened in and quickly found the reason from their grunting complaints. The orks were suspecting the goblins to have tamed a beast to harass them. A flying monstrosity that killed their last thaumaturge and now stole from the current one. And they suspected the ones that had escaped a long time ago to be working together with those currently in town. Preposterous. I would not be tamed! I was a strong, individual owl!

Nevertheless, I had created a problem. That it had taken two weeks and they were still searching prevented me from taking any rash actions. Had they already found the village, there would not be much left for me to do than get revenge. Since it was still night, I was able to slip into the tunnel unnoticed. I quickly reached the current guard, which was Grag, and connected to his mind.

“They orks are searching for you guys. And for me.”

“What? The… What now?”

He was completely overwhelmed.

“I… made a mistake. They think I’m your tamed beast and I stole from them because you want to annoy them.”

The goblin shook his head.

“Hold if, Fio. I have no idea what you’re talking about. Go see Roguk. He’ll make sense of your nonsense.”

I clicked my tongue.

“Fine. Just be careful. There’s orks looking through the valley. If they find the tunnel, they might come up.”

“I know.”

He nodded and I was off. Reaching the village in a flash, I located Roguk. He was not outside but I heard cutting noises coming from his hut. I stepped in.

The goblin was working on some alchemical concoction and I decided to let him focus, lest he hurt himself. After a few minutes of impatient waiting, he sighed and turned around.

“Fio. What’s up?”

“The orks are searching the valley. They might stumble upon the village.”

“Yes, we noticed.”

Oh.

“That’s… good? Well… It might be my fault. Sort of…”

Roguk blinked. Then he cleaned his ear with a finger.

“What makes you think that?”

“I stole from their current thaumaturge.”

“Well, fuck.”

“Yup.”

Silence took over for a moment as the goblin processed the information. Eventually, I could not stand it anymore.

“Look, I’m sorry. I didn’t think they’d retaliate like that, if at all. We should look for a solution, right? I can help?”

He looked down at me. The size difference was far less pronounced than when I first came to the village. He was less than a head taller than me. That made me feel far more like an equal. He also looked less condescending.

“Right. [Assassin]…”, he murmured.

“What’s your plan?”

“I’ll take out the thaumaturge and if that doesn’t stop them, I’ll start picking off the patrols.”

“That might only make it worse. What if they call reinforcements from down the valley?”

“Well, it would buy us time, at least. Maybe?”

I was not very confident but slowly, a plan was forming in my head.

“What I need right now is to finish my workshop. It would be very useful to loot the thaumaturge’s. Then, when I can move a node, we can clog the lower tunnel while opening the one above. I only need enough time to get to that point.”

“And you want to do that and buy the time? All by yourself?”

I nodded meekly.

“Don’t be ridiculous!”, he scoffed, “Where’s you’re workshop? Can you even do that?”

I shrunk in on myself. Maybe, that was not as well thought out as I hoped it to be.

“Trust in us a little! Steal your things, if you need them, and do your magic! We’ll hold the line.”

I looked up. The goblin’s face was stern but not aggressive. He looked ready to take on any challenge to protect his community. His village. In the face of his resolve, I had to trust him.

“Alright. Three days. I’ll be back in three days with a way to clog the lower tunnel. Hold out until then.”

Roguk smiled.

“We will. Oh, be careful when you come back. The tunnel might be full of traps and poison.”

His smile was rather evil. I simply nodded and made my way out. It was time to save my friends. Once more. Maybe this time there would be no losses. I could only hope.