Shaded from the moonlight, Wagga creeps beneath the trees, the handle of his axe slapping against his thigh. His hands clutch a scroll and a couple of bags, the contents of one stirring noisily in an attempt to escape, but he strangles the opening shut. He arrives at his hidey place, a tight clearing enclosed by prickly shrubs. Indenting the grass are several stones neatly arranged in a circle, with a big rock in the middle, each one bearing symbols carved by flint. The grass around them and between has been trimmed down or pulled out of the dirt. With one hand free, he carefully picks each object from one of the bags. Salt. Flower pollen. Water blessed by the shaman. Horned beetle entrails. Smelling sticks. Wax candles. Minutes pass as he arranges or pours each item; on the stones, or between them, to form in a mystical pattern. Various trinkets and fluids of both pleasant and obscene variety now decorate the circle of stones. Striking a piece of flint, he flicks sparks onto a twig dipped in rat fat, causing it to burn like a tiny fire stick. As he lights the smelling sticks, the shadows from the flickering twig candle play across his features and dance among the prickly shrubs. Lastly, he pulls one final object still kicking and whimpering from one final bag: a worg cub.
Several agonizing, heartwrenching moments later, Wagga's hands are scratched and bloody, and so is the stone acting as the centerpiece of his preparations. He doesn't pause to clean his hands. Instead, he adopts a cross-legged sitting position at the edge of his prepared circle. He reaches over and takes the rolled up parchment he brought with him, staining it with his hands, and begins to chant in Faerie, the communal tongue of the realm between realms, the land were all goblins came from. So said the spirit guide, anyway. The words come out coarse and screechy, a far cry from their pretty speakers' singy voices, but he enunciates them with confidence, starting slow, then building in harshness, as if verbally commanding his assemblage to function. In reply, the runes on the stones begin to faintly glow with voluminous light. He gazes with wonderment as the air begins to shimmer. Something small begins to fade into this world, appearing to swim. With a shimmer, it bursts from the light with an audible splash of radiance: a dragon! A tiny dragon, with bug wings. It rears its head with a giggle, a huge smile plastered around its snout. It appears unphased, although Wagga could swear that he saw it contort, just a little.
"Why, hello there!" It spoke with a dramatic flair, overtly pronunciating its words, in a smoky voice that carried a ponderous resonance. Wagga winced slightly. "My, you finally finished, did you? It took you for-EVER to finish your revolting little circle, but, here I am!"
"Uh--HEH?" Wagga gapes at this buzzing insect-size dragon.
"Ah, yes, you are wondering who I am! My name is Nathair Sgiathach, advisor to the radiant lady Titania of the Seelie Summer Court. At your service! How did you like my ritual?"
Wagga stares down in horror at the beheaded cub and the bloody circle, and back up at the dragon
"Yes, I know what you must be thinking: 'THAT'S not Maglubiyet!' No, just a dreadfully bored God of Fairy-and-Pseudo-Dragons. But you went through so much trouble to summon me, and I would be tickled pink to know: do you still have something you wish to say?"
Wagga stutters, too dumbfounded to form an immediate response.
Nathair tsks, then laughs. "Oh dearie me, your poor goblin mind must be broken! What a riot! You have given me a lovely tidbit to share with my friends! Ta!"
"WAIT!"
Wagga finds his voice again, before the dragon can zip off. It sails back around to look at him, still smiling. "This ought to be darling. What is it, my little green glob?"
"I... I want to make a deal!"
Nathair quirks his scaly brow. "What kind of deal, Wagga?"
"Er--!" It knew his name? How?
"Is it a surprise to learn that a god knows your name?"
Wagga shakes his head. "Uh, well... I wanna know things."
The dragon contains a chuckle behind its beaming mask of mirth. "Like what?"
"About the humies. An' the elfs. An' the horn-head humies. All o' thems. Years ago, there was a war, y'know, an' we lost. Natla, our spirit guide, says it was pretty bad. Many goblin slaughtered. I think it's cuz thems 'get' things we don't. Like, how to make walls o' stone."
The dragon waits in silence. It shouldn't be possible for its smile to get any bigger, but it widens just a little more. "This is the wrong place to discuss terms. Follow me. I will channel my power into the gate and hold it open for you."
With that, Nathair glides toward the portal and swims through it with another splash. He is transparent on the other side, beckoning Wagga with a wiggle of his tail. Wagga, oblivious to the implications, follows...
Beyond the shimmering threshold, Wagga's feet touch grass softer and more pliant than he is used to. The soles of his feet never touch the dirt. He is greeted with a wider enclosure than his hidey place, a green field flanked by tall oaks. It is twilight, and many fire bugs wink in an dout on blades of grass with their glowing thoraxes. He is enveloped in a sense of privacy and an alien calmness.
The dragon hovers above the grass and glides across the field. Several fire bugs take flight and join him, until he slows to meet the stunned goblin near the portal.
"Did I hear you correctly before? Elves, dwarves, humans, tieflings, halflings, gnomes - all civilized races. You wish to understand them?"
Wagga snaps out of a trance. "Y-yes!"
"You wish to understand what drives them? How they make their stone walls? How and why they live, how they accomplish all that they set out to do?" The dragon purs. "So that you can beat them the next time your tribe gets it in their head to go rattling your sabers at them?"
"Uh, yeah? Yeah."
The dragon glides closer to Wagga's face. "In return, you must abandon Maglubiyet. You, little Wagga, and your tribe, must change who you fight for. You must fight in MY name instead."
Wagga looks down, fidgeting. What the dragon demanded is a big bad thing. Traitor stuff. What did Natla say again... right - heresy.
"I wanna win... Maglubiyet ain't winnin'. I..." He fights the lump in his throat and the pit forming in his stomach. "I will."
"You will... what? Do you agree to my terms?"
He nods firmly to himself as much as to Nathair. "Yes!"
The dragon almost shudders in reply. "Swear it."
"I... sw....I s-swear."
The dragon beams even harder, containing yet another burst of laughter. "Swear it three times, Wagga, and we have a deal."
Wagga swallows another lump. He swears thrice, as the dragon wishes.
Fri 25 Aug 2023, 10:40 pm