Born a Monster

Chapter 36

Language

In spite of its name, the Guild of Guardsmen, Porters, Drovers, and Linkboys will either subcontract or help to subcontract any manner of service not expressly covered by a local guild.

“I need someone to translate some goblin for me.” Said Adara. “From an ancient scroll.”

“I’m sorry.” I said. “I can speak goblin, but I am untrained in their written language.”

“If I have someone to read the words, can you tell me what they mean?”

.....

“Some of them. My experience with the language is mostly simple words and those needed to express magical concepts.”

She snapped her fingers. “Exactly the skills I need.” She placed three silver coins onto the table. “I will need him for two days, and this afternoon as well.”

Reynald looked covetously at the coins, but his voice remained level. “The contractor will be in no danger? Not asked to work any magic himself?”

“None.” She assured him. “But I need him to swear to ten years of secrecy. For this and any related work I later hire him for.”

“Translation is normally a copper a day. What you speak of is ten years of service. Even at a tin a day, that is 365 copper, or 37 silver, or four gold coins.”

“I do see what you did there. Three gold coins, six silver, and five copper.” She counted them out, placed them on the table in nice neat piles next to the three silver already there.

My stomach chose that time to grumble.

“You are aware of how much this translator eats?”

“For the coinage we are discussing, you can afford to feed him. Meals are to be delivered to the stable at the Brutal Boar.”

“The delivery fees-”

“You would quibble over that?” She moved the three silver toward me. “Give him an advance, and let him pay his own delivery fees.”

Reynald blinked, and steepled his fingers. “When we have the contracts ready, I’ll send a runner by the inn to have them signed.”

“That is acceptable to me.”

“The Guild thanks you for your contract, Lady Adara.”

“The pleasure is mine, guildmaster Reynald. Those coins are the only equipment you’ll need. Let us make haste, I’ve paid well for your time.”

I was in shock. The world was wrong, and I was somehow adjacent to its wrong-ness.

“What is worth the greater portion of four gold coins?”

“The only prize worth spending millennia searching for – immortality.” She responded happily.

“I would think you just buy that through your System.”

“Ah, to be young again. The closest the system offers is Innate Longevity, like a divisor against aging. Nothing so worthless as the perfect flower, but not what I seek. Legends tell us the ancient Alves, the actual fae themselves, did not age at all. Complete and total invulnerability against the ravages of time, and the other weathering of the mortal world. That is what I seek.”

“So you seek to become a god?”

“Nothing so mundane. I’ll not be swept off into the heavens, abandoning my body to live out the rest of my existence addicted to mortal faith; that is a fool’s game. I would have in my hands the gateway to a permanent life here, in the living world.”

Intriguing, but I had plenty of time. “I look forward to our research together.” I said.

#

The scroll was on ox-hide poorly preserved, and pieces of it were already brittle and cracked. Gustavian held what I now know as a magnifying lens above it, slowly transcribing symbols onto a sheet of vellum.

“I have our goblin expert.” She said. “Where is Philecto?”

“He’s in the tavern, said he needs a break from this.”

“Okay, let’s try a couple of the words giving us problems.”

Gustavian had excellent pronunciation of the goblin tongue; I began to doubt that I was needed.

“That one sounds like moon-person. It usually means shaman, or sometimes one who keeps the calendars. It depends on the context.”

“And greed-person?”

“I’ve only known that to apply to humans.”

“Sun-wolf?”

“Sun-wolf is a divine destroyer, destined to end the world.”

Gustavian rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Yeah, the human ridden by the divine destroyer has eaten the shaman; it still doesn’t make sense.”

“We still have two days before we need to head out again. We knew it wouldn’t be easy.”

And the work, such as it was, was merely providing them the cultural context of terms. I wouldn’t have known any of it if Red Hare hadn’t taught me; some of it I didn’t know at all.

“This may be a pictogram; it’s always near the human word.”

“Show me.” I said. “Setting sun. Dusk. The start of the goblin day. Early, or urgent.”

“Or first?” Adara asked.

“The First Men.” Gustavian said. “The First Men came from the sky in caves of iron, and were friends to the people.” He began frantically working on his vellum.

“Come. He will need to be alone, and if I watch you eat any more hay, I’ll be tempted to put you into a bit and bridle.”

She guided me to the tavern itself. Philecto was not there, so we got our own table.

I had to water down the ale twice; humans seemed to enjoy poisoning themselves, but I didn’t need to join them. I’d had quite a bit more poison than I wanted recently, thank you.

The food, I remember, were tiny birds, with their insides removed and replaced with spiced bread crumbs. Eight servings worth six biomass each; I had two, and was sated.

“I admit, I’ve never seen someone devour the bones before.”

I shrugged. “I’ve always been able to digest bones, if I can swallow them.”

“How curious. Most species can only digest the marrow.”

This led to a pleasant chat about titan-spawn, and by extension the titans themselves. She knew far more than I did, but I listened with rapt attention.

“We’ve been away for too long, let us get back.”

#

The First Men, I learned, had come with a variety of miracles, things long thought impossible to magic. Their steel was better than any other, their magical houses flew through the skies, and they had thunder wands that killed at ranges beyond that of any other weapon.

And their medicine seemed miraculous; if they could get to the life-rooms of their homes, even fatal injuries could be repaired.

But they lacked the magic to repair their devices; one by one the homes became immobile, began malfunctioning, and in the end rusted away in the cores of human colonies.

In other words, the First Men became just normal men. Except – except for those who ascended to godhood. It was known that the System pre-dated humankind, and debate still rages whether the gods created the System, or whether they used it to attain peaks of power just not available to the rest of us.

But the ox-hide revealed something else; the First Men hadn’t originally had Systems when they arrived. The goblins (or possibly orcs) had given the First Men Systems, but something went wrong. Something that broke the sun of the world, the source of all magic. Apparently, before the arrival of mankind, magic had been safer to use, and capable of more.

The theory that mankind stole something from the world was a common theme in barbarian race lore.

“This scroll, though, purports to say what that something was.” Said Adara.

“Mankind made the star-knives.” Gustavian added.

“I’ve never heard that term.” I admitted. “What else does it say?”

“It says they made three hands of star-knives, one for each warrior type they endured. But such was the sun-wolf of them that they burned all who used them.”

“A hand is four, so that is twelve of whatever they created.”

“I know I’ve heard that.” Adara said. “I’ve heard of this before, but I can’t place a finger on where.”

And for hours, we talked around the words, and their meaning, and what goblins would have meant by them.

It wasn’t until after we were asleep that it came to me.

I was in my goblin form, at a time when goblins made manor-houses and filled them with hungry children. I was chopping vegetables and moving them into a stew pot as quickly as I could.

“That isn’t a star-knife.” Said Madra, who for some reason was kneading out dough for a loaf of bread.

What WAS a star-knife? I looked up to the heavens, because the kitchen suddenly had no roof. I held the knife up to the stars. No, there was something else. Something obvious.

The fires were burning low, so I walked out to the woods in back, and used the knife, which was now an axe and yet the same, to chop a tree into firewood.

“That still isn’t a star-knife.” Eihtfuhr told me.

I needed to haul the wood back to the mansion, so of course there was a cart right there by the wood. Because dream logic.

I put the cart into the axe, just like I would into my inventory. The axe was then both the cart and the knife, so I used my System to tell its System to assume the cart form.

.....

I was loading firewood onto the cart when I realized what a star-knife was.

#

Breakfast was an omelet, cooked with thin-cut mutton and various vegetables.

“I don’t know why they call it a star-knife.” I said. “But I think they mean the twelve Legendary Weapons. If the First Men made them, it would explain why the first generations of heroes summoned to wield them were all humans.”

“I don’t follow. I thought the Legendary Weapons were gifts of the divine?” Philecto said.

“How would you make a System and bind it to an inanimate object?” Gustavian asked.

“What makes you think they were made?” Adara asked. “What if they stole those Systems? What if they fumbled the creation, somehow broke magic itself to empower those tools?”

She looked thoughtful. “That might explain why heroes needed to be summoned at all. If the Systems created for the Weapons are incompatible with the System of living beings, that would explain the need for summoning Legendary Heroes at all. You’d need beings without Systems for the Weapons to conflict with.”

“That sounds messed up. If they broke magic, why wouldn’t they try to fix it?” I asked.

“Vanity.” Philecto said. “Greed. Sloth. Take your pick. They needed something done, and didn’t care who or what got damaged to get it done.”

“By the time they realized their magical homes were part of that cost, it may have been too late.” Gustavian said.

“Supposition and guesswork.” Adara said. “What does the scroll say?”

“The human ridden by the divine destroyer has eaten the shaman.” Gustavian said.

“Wait, didn’t the sun-wolf have something to do with why they couldn’t use their own weapons?” I asked.

“Yeah, such was the sun-wolf of them that they burned all who used them.”

“What if sun-wolf is the power they used to create the Legendary Weapons?” asked Philecto.

“Maybe.” Adara said. “Maybe we should just come back to this part later. Start from the beginning, Gustavian.”

“The First Men arrived from the sky,” he began.

The Sky! “It’s not Legendary Weapons.” I said. “The sun-wolf, star-knives, moon-person... these are all celestial objects. The Twelve Weapons are Celestial Weapons. Weapons of the Cosmos. Cosmic Weapons.”

“Facts only, please.” Adara said.

But I was a Truthspeaker. My own System would have shut down my vocal cords if I were wrong. I don’t know how I knew this truth.

Certainly, my Insight score was the lowest in the group.

But I knew it was true, just as circus acrobats knew the ropes they were on even though blindfolded.

I knew that the group was on the verge of something monumental, one of the few golden truths of the universe. It was hidden inside the story, and the story within it. It was more than a story of human greed and violence against trusting goblins.

But we went around and around and around, only slowly spiraling closer to Adara’s goal.

#