Under the Newest Offerings

aka the older offerings, fed before the warren

At the very bottom the tribute changes. The goblin junk sits on top; a hand's-width down it gets older, and against the far wall are marks cut long before any goblin denned here — in a hand a scholar of Vallen's Barrow would stop cold at.

At the very bottom, in the den itself, the offerings tell time. The goblin tribute lies on top: coins, filed teeth, spilled lamp-oil, a shiny crystal that will not stop humming. Push a hand's-width down and it changes. The bronze goes green and strange — coin the goblins never minted and could not. The bones get bigger and too neat, laid rather than dropped. And against the far wall, under all of it, cut into the stone long before a goblin ever denned here, runs a line of marks: patient, even, made by a hand that took its time — not goblin-work, not anything the warren could make or read. A scholar who had stood in the eastern barrow and seen the Asheni sealing-walls would stop cold at the shape of them, and not be able to say why the two are the same. Something was being fed in this dark before the Skritch came. The goblins only found a mouth already open, and did what the frightened do. They fed it. They called the feeding theirs. They were not the first.

This world ships in Valenfeld. Play the game →