Back on the street I headed towards the smithies, which were now almost all quiet as they finished work for the day. Sure enough a tall and narrow building had a lightly glowing blue star on the spire. The sign on the door still said it was open, so I knocked lightly and went in. The shop was long but narrow, the walls lined with glass cabinets. Very few things were out in the open. I could see wands and jewelery and horns and teeth, all manner of occult objects or components. Several of the cases held shelves of monster cores.

"I'll be with you in a moment." A man called out from the back room.

One core in particular caught my eye, shimmering with greenish energy. My own core stirred in response, and the label confirmed it

[Lesser Monster Core(Goblinoid)]

"One caught your eye?" I turned and raised an eyebrow at the man. "He wasn't using it any more." The shopkeeper awkwardly added.

"How reassuring."

"I am Nathan Toremont, what can I help you with?" He either had a youthful face or prematurely grey hair. His ears were slightly pointed.

"I'm Karl. Heard you worked with Teefies."

"I did. Why do you ask? If you're worried about the quality of my wares I am certified by the Imperial Ministry of Enchanters."

"I'm trying to find her. I have a message for her."

"She hasn't returned since the Alliance took over a decade ago. I don't think she's coming back here."

"Do you have a way to contact her?"

"No. I haven't even heard any news of her in years, when some of the hunters who supply me saw her camped near the giants to the south east across the river. What sort of message do you have? If it's from another god surely they could contact her themselves."

"It's private. Did you say you were an enchanter?"

"The only Imperially licensed one in town, and I daresay the finest in the county."

"You buy monster cores for enchantments?"

"Yes. Though if you're curious about that one there I don't know the particulars of it. I just buy them from hunters, so I don't even know what tribe it is from."

"That's not a problem, I'm not looking for any lost relatives. How much would you pay for a similar one?"

"A lesser grade, seventy five gold. Greater grade, one hundred fifty. Not that I expect either of us to ever see one, but an Epic grade would be five hundred, and Legendary would be one thousand."

"I'll keep that in mind. What sort of qualities could you get out of a lesser core?"

"Minor enhancements for the most part. Blades that never need to be sharpened, clothes that mend themselves, rings and amulets to provide minor boons such as slight strength. I have a few here if you care to look." He indicated a row of cabinets containing several knives, spears, a few broadhead arrow tips, clubs, staves, and a motley assortment of clothing.

The cabinet itself displayed something curious

[Fine Display Cabinet, Lesser Ward, Lesser Alarm(Glass) Durability 75/75]

That was much higher durability than I expected glass to have. Maybe that was the effect of a ward. The labels for the items inside were fuzzy and indistinct, but I was looking at them through glass. The arrow tips interested me, being fine steel with a bleeding enchantment.

"How long do they hold the enchantment?"

"How long? I am not some hedge mage! My work is permanent."

"Sorry, I didn't mean to offend you. How much for those arrowheads of bleeding?"

"What did you say?"

"The arrowheads. How much?"

"How did you know the enchantment?" He squinted at me, a shimmer covering his eyes, and then a faint rainbow shine. "Who are you? None of my items are labelled. All my cases are warded." His eyes widened "Did that bastard Reginald send you to spy on me?"

"I'm just a goblin. Don't think I've ever even met anyone named Reginald."

"Then how did you know? Surely you're no master enchanter. Are you a thief?"

"Lucky guess? No? Let's just say it's part of what I need to talk to Teefies about."

"What would she have to do with...oh mother of gods what has she done now?" He quickly grabbed a monocle of some sort and peered at me through it, and then flipped open various lenses. "No enchantments, not a polymorph, not mind control, not true sight. Touch of the Old Ones, but every goblin has that." On the last lens he froze "What the fuck is that?"

"What are you looking at?"

"Oh gods that's awful." He shoved the monocle back in his pocket and slumped against the wall, hands pressed against his head.

"What did you see?"

"You're broken. Just thinking about that hurts me." He fumbled behind the counter and pulled out a flask, taking a long pull.

"Broken?"

"Your spirit, your psyche. That shouldn't even be possible. Not even that twisted bitch could do that and leave you alive. Why aren't you a drooling idiot? Oh it's in my head." He quickly drained the rest of the flask.

"I have no idea what is going on. Nobody explained any of this to me, I just woke up one day."

Nathan leaned heavily on the countertop, taking slow breaths. I felt something stirring in the air. A faint energy swirled and started to build in his core.

"What are you doing?" I started to back away from him.

"Hold still. This is for both of our sakes." Thrusting a hand out, he jabbed me right in the forehead and a wave of energy rushed into me, swirling through my body like oil and then settling around my core in an intricate mesh. It felt good, a tension I had gotten completely used to faded.

"What did you do?"

"Veil. That...corruption hurts to even think about. Be honest here, do you know what that is? Did Teefies do some experiment to you?"

"No idea. I woke up in a cave last month, wandered around the forest, met a blacksmith, and he recommended I go to the castle to get more information."

"Last month? You grew a lesser core in one month?"

"I ate a Barghest core, and from some giant birds. Also a different Stag one."

"Oh. That might be the only reason you're still alive. By all rights with a spirit like that you should be dead. A normal goblin body would not have sustained you, even now your spirit is warring with your core, doing untold damage. Teefies always was trying to push the boundaries of magic and science, doing experiments on herself that would, and often did, kill her. She was brilliant, and a little mad, but this would be beyond her. It must be beyond her, or else she's broken the fundamental laws. Your spirit is trapped in the moment of death, tearing itself apart, and only your core has sustained you this long, but not in any way like necromancy. You must have felt some sign of this."

"I've felt something. Frequent headaches, strange feelings. I get...confused sometimes."

"Anything else? How is your hunger, I'm surprised you're not mad with it."

"I've gotten very hungry sometimes, but it hasn't been bad lately."

"How long has it been since you ate?"

"Um, I had some stew yesterday night. Oh, I guess that was a while ago."

"Gods defend, any other goblin would have eaten his own hands by now. How have the Old Ones not driven you mad?"

"They peeked in my head and I don't think they liked what they saw any more than you did."

"It's too much of a risk, you're on a razor's edge. It seems my lot in life is to forever clean up after Teefies. Come." Nathan flicked a hand in some gesture and the sign on the door flipped over and the deadbolt slid shut.

He lead me into the back room and up the stairs, to a cramped apartment. A chest in the corner wafted a cold mist when he opened it to pull out a chunk of ham, a wheel of cheese, and a sack of potatoes.

"Eat these. It should help slow the damage and keep the madness at bay if the Old Ones start paying attention to you again."

"They're the ones who make goblins hungry enough to eat dirt?"

"It's their curse. Trapped deep below as they are, they created goblins from their own bodies, and you inherited their hunger. They steal your energy to sustain themselves, and if you don't eat they drain your core until you die."

"Oh. So I've been starving without even realizing it?"

"Enough talking, eat."

The more I ate, the hungrier I became, a disturbing sensation.

"Any ideas how this happened to me?" I asked between bites of cheese. Nathan was sitting at his desk with several books spread out in front of him.

"I would hazard a guess it might have been an experiment with souls. That has always been a major frustration for her, that enchantments and their qualities are so tied to the nature of the soul. Goblin cores for example naturally lend themselves to enchantments that absorb or devour, while the core of a Sylph would lend themselves to enchantments of growth or renewal. Even if the goal were to heal you, the two would do it in very different ways, a Goblinoid ring of healing would do so by making you ravenously hungry to build up excess vitality, or by stealing the energy from nearby things, a Sylvan ring of healing would be slower but let you heal with little other than sunlight and water. It has long been an obstacle of enchanters. If there were a way to create a pure soul that could be used for any purpose, or to transform a core, it would revolutionize enchantment. But that is just a guess. Your soul is...chaotic. I could not identify it, which might explain your differences.

"I can see how that might be tempting. Though, I've never met her. If I were an experiment wouldn't she want to check the results?"

"She very well may have done so without you noticing. Cloaking is a particular talent of hers, but she has never been so haphazard as to just let her experiments run unchecked. It is possible that whatever method she used may have had unforeseen consequences for her as well."

"Some gods die permanently, right?"

"Oh, someone's been telling you stories. Their bodies can indeed die, much as any other, but their spirits are eternal. That is what makes them gods, and not just powerful mortals. If you're talking about Jinglehammer that was symbolic as much as anything else. His old body is in a tomb, but his spirit just formed a new body and he went on his merry way with a new name and face. Sometimes the gods want to experience childhood again, or want to live as a different race or gender." Nathan went quiet, tapping the side of his chin.

"Does that mean they can change their cores?"

"They can...take a new body, within certain limits, which will grow a new core according to its nature. They retain many memories, but typically lose their abilities. Teefies never went that far, she preferred potions and spells to try to adapt herself. She had started to grow horns last I saw her, even though elves are not known to do such. I believe that was alchemy though. Their divine methods are somehow different and she never explained the secrets. Gods can be infuriatingly vague and even ignorant about the ways of their own talents."

"I know how that feels. I don't understand half of what happens to me, like how I know you have the Signet ring of House Toremont on your necklace that is enchanted with warding and healing. I couldn't always do that. Or maybe I could but couldn't understand what I was seeing. I've been getting fewer headaches lately."

"By the divines. Do you remember such a thing as a previous life? A world other than this one?"

There it was, the big question I had been dreading.

"Yes."

Nathan sucked in a breath through his teeth.

"Can you access the divine 'system'?"

"No. But I know what it is, or at least what it has been like in other cases."

"What other cases?"

"In my...old life, I played games in many worlds. None were like this one though, something like what has happened to me was considered only a dream, our games were far more basic, like children playing pretend. We weren't living in their bodies."

"Fascinating."

"This is beyond anything we were even close to." I held up a hand and clenched it, watching the tendons move underneath the skin. "Sure, there were a few radical innovators who have been claiming we were on the edge of the impossible, but they've been saying that for decades. I even went to a school that had an amazing program specifically studying brain interfaces and consciousness. Things like being able to detect if someone in another room was looking at a flashing light was considered advanced from what they told us during the study."

"You studied this magic?"

"Not magic, science. They would use machines to detect brainwaves, have us focus on flashing lights or colours to try to read our thoughts. One really wild one was when we were in separate rooms and one of us would look at a puzzle and another would look at a clue, and the machines were able to sort of trick our brain into thinking we were looking at the clue by showing us a light. But that's it, just really basic concepts like simple yes or no answers. I hadn't thought about that in a while, but it's actually pretty similar to what happens during my headaches. Phosphenes? Why does that sound famili…"

Fire ripped through my mind and I fell out of the chair. I couldn't even move as my head crunched into the ground. Nathan was leaning over me, saying something I couldn't hear over the roaring in my ears. The phantom lights were expanding, blinding me. Everything went white.