Gnom kept going over it again and again in his small head. The answer seemed so obvious, yet he couldn’t pull it from his screaming subconscious. Why was it that everything in the book was accurate to his dad’s travel accounts except the College of Aril? Several of the other scattered parchments on the desk, ones which were written in plain Dennish, mentioned it in passing. So, it must be real, he thought. But the question still remained:

What?

And of course, the secondary question which always goes along with it:

Huh?

The door flew open, shattering Gnom’s monosyllabic thoughts. It was Voolio, red-faced and sweating profusely.

“Where’s Vix?” he asked, panicked.

“Hi, Voolio,” Gnom said, laying down in a pile of parchments. “I dunno, I’ve been in here all day.”

“He’s gone, Gnom! Gone, I tell you!” Voolio picked Gnom up by the shoulders and shook him in the air. “Gone!”

“Didn’t he go with Dylk and the lizard guy to the arena?” he asked calmly, voice faltering from the shaking.

“He wasn’t with them! Oh, he wasn’t with them!” He yelled dramatically at the ceiling.

“Hey, hey! Calm down, man, it’s gonna be alright! Why are you getting yourself all riled up about Vix like this?”

“Well, Bauwls and Salman seem stressed about it,” he said, putting Gnom down, “so, I thought I should be, too.”

“Good thinking, Voolio,” Gnom said, quickly breaking a sweat just thinking about all the things Vix could be up to, which included but were not limited to:

Blasting a hole through main street;

Forgetting he could and getting robbed for all he’s worth;

Annoying someone who isn’t as forgiving as his friends;

Annoying someone who’s more forgiving than his friends and leaving their sorry asses for them;

And unleashing some sort of secret power and destroying them all.

“We better go looking for him!” Gnom said, shivering. He started looking around the room, opening cabinets and chests, lifting cushions and pillows, but he was nowhere to be found.

“He’s not here,” Voolio said, also shaking, “so he must’ve left!”

“Left! But where could he have left to, the little rascal?”

“I may have an idea of where our destructive half-elf friend is,” Salman said, coming up the stairs behind Voolio.

“Really?” Gnom yelled, hopping for joy. Voolio nearly squashed Salman with his hug.

“Yes. Follow me,” Salman said. He led them to a window in the front side of the mansion, a window which was positioned in such a way so it could only be viewed properly from the middle of the stairwell. There, Gnom could see, was a view of the distant high street, all soaked through and dripping. And between them and it, balled up in the downpour, was a familiar silhouette. “No time to lose,” Salman said, finishing his walk down the stairs and sprinting outside. Only a few minutes later, they were all back with the soaking Vix in tow.

Rather than interrogate him as was Gnom and Voolio’s plan, Salman led everyone up to the sleeping bag room on the second floor. He left the three of them there to fetch something, allowing them some peace.

Their room was pleasantly warm against Gnom’s wet clothes, and the sleeping bags were numerous enough to risk soaking one through. The three of them sat there on the carpeted floor, wrapped in goose down filled white linen, and took the time to enjoy the quiet. Such is the nature of rainy days on the edge of summer. It was late morning on the Seventh of Fifth Moon, and all was quiet.

Salman slammed open the door, bringing Bauwls in and shattering the peace. But behind Bauwls was someone Gnom didn’t recognize; a tall, muscular someone with a scalp like a baby’s bottom and the smile of that same baby. He was like a misarranged baby on top of the body of a god, and Gnom immediately liked him.

“This is Balder,” Salman said, “the man who saved my life.”

“Hi!” Balder said, not moving.

“Hi, Balder!” Gnom said, returning a grin of his own design. For a moment, peace came back to the room. And not the uncomfortable quiet that comes after everyone in a conversation runs out of information to exchange. No, this was the warmth that had invaded the room before; the feeling of friendship that rarely appears outside of deep reflection. But here it was now, coming from this statue of a man looking down at him.

“Will you be my friend, too?” the statue asked. Gnom looked around the room to a series of nodding heads, all of them confirming his thoughts.

“Yeah, dude, sure,” Gnom said. “Everyone get in a sleeping bag, come on!”

They took up sleeping bags one at a time and made themselves into a nice circle, a veritable council. And that council was now in session.

“Vix,” Salman said, wasting no time, “where have you been, my friend?” Vix’s face, which had remained still since they’d brought him in, lit up.

“Guys!” he said. “We have a quest!”

“A quest?” a few of them asked.

“From the council!” Vix said.

“The council?” all of them asked.

“The council! They told me… we have to… find people that went missing at… Crescent Lake! That’s it! We have to go to Crescent Lake!”

“It’s a myth,” Salman said. “An old wives’ tale from the forest villages.” He pounded his fist against his sleeping bag. “They’ve given us an impossible task so they may be rid of us. Maybe Garrel still has power here after all.”

“So, whadda we do?” Gnom asked. If they make us leave, he thought, where will we go?

“I know the way to Crescent Lake, gentlemen.” At the door, next to the newly arrived Dylk and Ballin, was the speaker, a flamboyant man carrying a box with “Bets” written on it.

“Who’s this, Krerrhenthes?” Salman asked.

“This is Banan. We saved him from the riot at the arena,” Ballin said.

“Riot?” everyone yelled, once again simultaneously.

“Tell me of this riot, Krerrhenthes,” Salman said, shuffling in his sleeping bag.

“No time to explain!” Ballin yelled.

“We have plenty of-”

“Let’s go to Crescent Lake! Sounds like a good time to me!” Ballin walked out the door, followed by a sighing Dylk and their new partner in crime. The rest of them funneled out at their own leisure.

Through the rotten, stinking, flooded streets of Rattwater they walked. And past the rotten, stinking, flooded meat market and the rotten, stinking, flooded arena they went. They came to and walked through the rotten, stinking, flooded outer gate and out into the not rotten, not stinking, but still flooded forest. It was so flooded, in fact, that the journey was arduous and attention-sucking. They didn’t talk much, so don’t even ask.

On the path was a fork, and a few minutes after that the path split in two. To the left was a continuation of the dirt road upon which they were already traveling, going deeper into the forest. The way there was well-trodden and even named. They called it the West Road, Ballin had explained, even though it was east of Rattwater. To the right, though, was a far rougher path along the foot of a steep cliff. It was almost hidden from view, but Banan didn’t falter as he turned into it. Salman, however, did.

“Wolves!” he whispered, ducking into a bush. Everyone else tried to follow suit as best they could.

“Erm, where?” Gnom asked from some particularly prickly brush. He couldn’t see much from his less-than-ideal vantage point.

“There are prints leading to and from a place further down this path. Their territory is close.”

“Whadda we do?” Voolio asked from a bush opposite Gnom.

“We must bait them out from their hiding. We can’t risk an ambush.”

“They won’t be easily fooled,” Ballin said. “They’re myleswolves by the looks of the prints. Smartest of all wolves.”

“Then we need live bait,” Salman said.

“Live bait?” Gnom yelled, and was met by an avalanche of shushes. “Live bait?” he whispered.

“Yes, but only for long enough to kill them. The wolves won’t see the bait for longer than five seconds.”

“And if they get to it- them before we can kill them?” Dylk asked from a tree.

“It won’t happen,” Salman said. “Any-”

“But what if it does?” Gnom asked.

“It won’t,” Salman said firmly. “We won’t let it. We need a volunteer.”

“I can do it!” It was Balder, standing right on the path as if nothing had happened.

“Are you sure, Balder?” Bauwls asked. “You could die.”

“I don’t know what that means,” he said.

“It means you go to Oth with Moosa,” Bauwls said, obviously satisfied at the opportunity.

“Why is that bad?” he asked.

“What do you mean?” Bauwls asked.

“If Moosa’s real, miss Bauwls,” Balder said, “then why are we afraid of dying? Why don’t we welcome it with open arms? And open hearts? Is it that our faith is so weak that we can’t wager our lives on it? Is our resolve so stretched and withered that the very best part of existence can be hidden, even delayed, by our weakness? Our cowardice? Tell me, why should I fear to meet our god, the source of all benevolence? He, if we believe in his friendship, would make the afterlife beautiful and free from pain, so fear of death is nothing short of blasphemous. We are now but flesh and bone and spirit, but eventually only our spirit will remain. When we meet again in paradise, will we despair at the loss of the flesh? Over the pains of this mortal place? No. It will be a distant memory by then. For in the face of eternity, this world is not a drop in the ocean.” He leaned against a rock with his hands behind his back. “Tie me down so that I may meet him all the sooner.”

The rest of them looked at him in shock. Gnom’s jaw dropped to the ground once again. Dylk had fallen out of his tree. Bauwls shed a tear. Salman, after a minute or two, tied him to the rock in silence and went back into hiding, stunned. Gnom’s head swam with thought.

So, they waited. After nothing came for Balder in the first two minutes, Ballin made a wolf call to draw them in. Then, the fun began. That’s right, more waiting. And more waiting. Then, to spice it up, some more waiting.

Gnom, having had enough, stood up from the brush and untied Balder, and on some level everyone else, from having to participate in the plan any longer.

“Did it work?” Balder asked, rubbing his stomach where the rope had lain across.

“No, dude. No, it did not.”

“I don’t understand what could’ve happened,” Salman said, pacing the path. “The bait was clear, I’m sure of it. They noticed for certain.”

“Why don’t we just get it over with and go in?” Dylk asked.

“No, that’s stupid,” Ballin said, starting a chain of arguments and insults that made sure that every wolf within three miles knew where they were. All of the company participated but Balder, Vix, and Voolio, the latter two of whom Gnom had caught glances of shrugging to each other silently.”

“Why don’t we let Vix decide?” Bauwls asked, followed by a series of “no!”s and “boo!”s.

“No, I agree,” Salman said, raising his hands in mock surrender. “Vix will choose wisely, I’m sure of it. I will accept whatever decision he makes.” Everyone nodded and turned to the poor guy.

“Um… maybe we should… I don’t know, go in, I guess?”

“You brainless- no, no, I accept it,” Salman said. “But know that this is not the way of caution, as I would have hoped. Prepare yourselves. And sharpen your eyes.” Then he walked down the path with Banan at his side.

The foliage thickened as they penetrated deeper in. Gnom found himself at times unable to walk without being poked on either side. Right as he was on the cusp of passing a rough patch, Banan stopped and signaled the rest to do the same. A branch bored lovingly into Gnom’s arm as he waited impatiently for another signal to free him. But it didn’t come. What did come was a systematic, almost synchronized, rustling in the thicket ahead, though Gnom couldn’t see what was causing it. He did see Salman, though, who had noiselessly drawn his bow and notched an arrow.

Gnom blinked and the arrow was gone, replaced by a shouting and Salman’s quick steps. Banan, luckily, had gotten the idea and ducked before he was thrown into the brush.

The rest of them realized what was happening and rushed behind Salman without a moment’s hesitation - or that’s what Gnom thought, at least; he himself hesitated for a fresh moment or two. He cleared the thicket into a flat, treeless nook populated by nothing but grass and goblins emerging from the other side of the clearing. One laid on the ground, dead from an arrow to the pinky toe.

“Get ‘em, Green Sicklies!” said one of the living ones, who was a strange shade of blue-green. Although Gnom had no idea what a Green Sickly was, he knew they sure could punch hard. He was quickly subdued after a brief tussle with one, resulting his falling to the ground with a goblin breathing in his face. Just as the goblin was about to make a finishing blow on Gnom’s gnome noggin, he made a face like he’d just peed, and fell to the ground.

“More like Green Dead… ly,” Dylk said, kicking it off his rapier.

“Hey, that was a good one, dude,” Gnom said, getting up.

“Thanks, Gnom,” Dylk said, bouncing for the next goblin.

There were only two of the little suckers left. One green one, as is usual, and a blue-green sort of a… turquoise kind of deal going on with the other one. They stood back to back in the middle of the group, sneering insults at them.

“Bunch-a bunglebugs, the lot-a ya’s!” the green one said in a high, squeaky voice. “Stay back or we’ll cut ya! Right, boss?”

“Yeeeah, Pickis, keep ya eyes on dem! Don’t let dem take ya by surprise, now. We got dem right where we want ‘em!”

“Yeah, boss!” said the one presumably named Pickis. “Let’s win this thing for ya little brothers!” Little brothers? Gnom thought.

“And ya ma and pa too!” the teal-ish one said. <Ma and pa? It was at this point that Ballin, seemingly having enough of it, would have run up from behind Gnom and slew them both. Would have, that is, but for Gnom’s split second decision to hold out a leg in his path, bringing him sliding face-first to the ground. A few of the others, not registering what had happened to their scaly friend, rushed to back his attack.

“Wait a minute!” Gnom yelled. By some miracle, they all stopped at his signal, and waited.

“Ok, little guys,” Gnom said to the goblins. “We can work this out, right? We don’t want to - some of us don’t want to kill you, so you have pretty good odds. Blue guy, what’s your name?”

“What’s it to ya?” the blue one asked.

“I’m Gnom Orcman from Orctown. Could you tell me your name, please?” He crouched to get to eye level with them, being that they were about a foot tall and all.

“My name,” the goblin said, hesitating, “is Chubark of-”

“Your name is Hob!” Gnom said, pointing, then turned theatrically to the other. “And your name is Gob!”

“But my name is… Pickis,” he said, slowing down as he went.

“And you two,” Gnom said, undeterred, “are the goblin brothers, Hob Goblin and Gob… Hoblin.” He stepped back a stride to survey his work, and found that he was the newest in a growing line of his friend’s sources of confusion. It was a foreign and uncomfortable feeling which Gnom had gnome stomach⁷ for.

“And now,” he said, breaking the deafening quietness, “you are, erm… you are both… members of our group! As long as… as long as we vote you in!”

Another few moments of uneasy silence.

“So, guys, let the voting begin!”