Imagine a dark place. A dark place with the smell of dust and mold and water. The rocks here silently converse about their crazy days when they were molten. When they were loose and free. When they mingled. It wasn't like that now. Everyone had settled since then, and all that was left for them of those hot, steamy, youthful days were memories. It was peaceful now. Respectable. No major upsets in at least a couple thousand years. The rocks remembered that, too. A great slam from above had rattled their neighborhood. It had been quite upsetting, and it was still a point of contention among them. But peace had returned quickly and the complaints faded. There wasn't much for it. For those thousands of years the rocks were left with their memories. And the new folks, the ones that appeared after the upheaval. Now, a new rowdiness was slowly building from those, geologically speaking, new arrivals. A faint glow, visible only in this complete darkness, pulsated a gentle blue, distressing the rocks with the hubbub. A mind turned over in its grave.

“Hey,” the orc voice said, “You’re Skullcrush, aren’t you?”

Penelope regarded the squatting orcs. One was Marrowcrack and the other was Bloodboil. Fearfully, she drew her goblin sword, and the Marrowcrack laughed. “Not here, not here,” he said mirthfully, “We don’t do that no more. What, you think I’d be just hanging around with a Bloodboil? It’s different now.” This gave her pause.

The other orc nudged his companion. “Wait, if she’s Skullcrush… I thought Lord Kairon beat old Justafar just last year.”

In the confusion, Chicken ran to Auntie, who was tied up and gagged in the tent along with Salander.

“Yeah? And?” The Marrowcrack got up and idly ambled over to Chicken. The orc caught him by the shoulder before he could draw his dagger and cut her bonds. With the skill of a corn husker, he disarmed the kobold and tied him up with a length of rope.

The Bloodboil continued, “How wouldn’t she know, then?” The Marrowcrack gave this some consideration.

“You’ve been out here hunting since then, right?” he asked Penelope.

Chicken and Penelope shared a glance. In the moment, her brain caught up with current events. She gave him a look she thought would tell him to trust her.

“Umm..Yeah. That’s right.”

“Been doin’ the rite of the nameless god, then?”

The rite of the nameless god involved living naked in the wilderness for months at a time. It was a good way for lesser orcs to cut loose and build respect among peers.

“Yup. That’s me,” Penelope said with feigned certainty. Satisfied, the Marrowcrack gave the Bloodboil a smug look.

“Well, that’s all fine, then,” he said. “We got word from this one,” the Marrowcrack pointed to Salander, “that you were here. You ain’t been doing a good job imprisoning’em.” He sounded like a teacher chastising a below-average student.

Penelope gave a pained look at Chicken, saying, “I was getting around to it.”

The two orcs each picked up a kobold. “Well, you take this one,” the Marrowcrack said, gesturing to Chicken, “and we’ll check on how the goblins are doing. We gotta head back to Hurraggh in the morning.” The two dipped under the door of the bivouac.

Chicken hissed a whisper. “What was that?”

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” she said hastily while kneeling down to examine his ropes, “but I think I know how I can get you out of this. Can you play along until then?”

“Why did he say Salander did this? Oh, Auntie,” he moaned. Penelope shushed him to no avail.

“Chicken, you have to trust me. They’ll kill you otherwise, and without a moment’s thought,” and then added, “They may even kill Auntie.”

Chicken’s blood froze at the thought. “Ok, alright,” he said. It didn’t make him feel better in the least, but he could keep it together for Auntie’s sake.

“There’s a lot going on I don’t understand, but I’m doing my best,” Penelope explained. “They’re not of my clan, so they don’t know I’m a Not-An-Orc. We can use that, at least until we encounter any Skullcrush.” She stopped to think about what had been bugging her. “Usually, if you get any Skullcrush, Marrowcrack, or Bloodboil together, we’d fight to the death. I wonder what happened.”

Chicken added, “Did he say they don’t do that any more?”

“We’re not dead now, so let’s just keep going. Here, I’ll carry you out like they told me.”

With Chicken over her shoulder and the makings of a plan budding, she stepped outside. There, a commotion had picked up. Goblins were milling about the tents and bivouacs, herding bound kobolds, scavenging, and smashing. The kobolds were being tied together in the center of the village and being sat down. Auntie was set down among them, but the orcs kept Salander. Penelope caught them saying, “This one gets special treatment.”

When Penelope went to set Chicken down with the rest of the kobolds, she found all of their eyes on her. They looked up at her with expectant faces. No, wait, it wasn’t her. They were looking at Chicken. Pithy whispered, “You can do it Chicken.”

Light dawned for him. He had the power, after all. The crowd urged him silently in their restraints, and he in turn felt empowered. He could do it. They didn’t need Penelope to plot on their behalf. He could really do it to save them from these orcs. Penelope was confused, feeling left out of the loop. She looked to Auntie for guidance, but the old kobold was out cold from the stress.

“Cut my ropes, Penelope,” he whispered to her.

“What? Why? What’s going on?” she whispered back.

“I need you to trust me.”

This gave her pause. Was there something she was missing? Some vital piece of information? What did these kobolds know? Could she afford sacrificing this tenuous charade with the interlopers?

Her hands held his restraints, motionless, as she looked in his eyes for answers. She snapped the cord with a pained expression that had nothing to do with the effort. He thanked her and scrambled away.

She whispered to Pithy, “What is he going to do?”

Her eyes glittered with hope and whispered back, “He told us before, lots of times. Chicken has natural magic.”

To play it safe, Penelope kept by the kobolds amidst the goblins’ shattering spree.

A few moments later, the two male orcs looked up at a kobold standing above them on a rock. One pointed and started to shout, “Hey, gobbos! You missed one!” but Chicken boomed, “Stop what you are doing, you filthy orcs and goblins!” He pointed a claw at the two orcs. One was sitting on a tent like a hammock seat and the other had just stood up from sitting on the ground.

“Yeah? Or what?” said the orc. Half the goblins had heeded Chicken and looked up at him. The other half were oblivious.

“If you will not stop,” Chicken replied, pausing for dramatic effect, “then I will be forced to use magic on you.”

The orc didn’t guffaw. He didn’t scream or cry, either. He stood there in defiance of Chicken. Only a few goblins were surprised by this. They’d been there when a kobold had blown up one of their own. The orc just frowned.

“Do it then,” he said.

“What?”

“Blow us up. Do it.” The other added, “If you can, you should.”

This staggered Chicken for a second, but he regained his poise quickly. “This is your last warning.”

“No it isn’t.” The other added, “Yeah, our last warning was when you told us to stop. Now you’re just putting off the work.”

Chicken took offense at this. These two, sitting calmly amidst the growing chaos of panicking goblins, defied his abilities.

“On the count of three!” he shouted, redoubling the effort of his pointed claw.

“Just do it!” the orc shouted as it kicked a passing goblin. He mumbled something to it as it lay on the ground.

"One!" shouted Chicken, as doubt creeped into his mind.

The orcs started ignoring him.

“Two!”

He didn’t notice the squad of goblins had grown less messy and fewer in number.

“Three!” and as he shouted, he was tackled down by the sneaking goblins behind him. They tied him back up and dragged him down before the orcs. Penelope tried to hide her face in her hands without the other orcs seeing.

“Lesser races,” the orc spat. He regarded Chicken. “Couldn’t do it? Didn’t have the nerve.”

The other one said, “Kairon told us to be on the lookout for-“

“Shut up! How did this one get out, anyway?”

“Wasn’t that the one the Skullcrush brought in? You tied that one up.”

“You sayin’ my shackling isn’t good enough? Those were good knots and good rope.”

The other just snorted.

“You do it then,” and threw the rope at him. “I’m going to sleep.”

As Penelope and the Bloodboil started wrangling goblins, one had made his way rather far from the camp. He hadn’t seen the whole affair with Chicken, and was digging in a few suspect nooks in the rocks when he hit pay dirt. Out of the cubby he pulled several strange items. One was a wrapped bowl that contained some tasty ant larvae, which he ate. They were dead and a little stale, just like he liked them.

There was also a shiny rock, which he pocketed. At the very back, he touched something fleshy, and he pulled back. He tried again. It didn’t struggle or bite him, so he took hold. He pulled out the mushroom. The goblin squealed with delight. He thought it had been gone forever! Looking around, he stashed it in his chef’s hat and continued rooting about.

“You there!” the Bloodboil shouted, “You ain’t leaving! Get back here!” With no more food and no water, he drudged back to the orcs for the night.

****

Out in the wastelands, a kobold was looking down at his own body.

“Shrub,” came a voice from behind him, “you are dead.” It said it with the blunt force of a textbook swatting a fly.

After what he and his companion had been through, he didn’t turn around. He just said sadly, “I didn’t know they’d spotted us.”

The voice behind him listened.

“We were trailing them. Oreson said we could stay just out of reach and lead them back to camp.” He said this sadly, as well, but there were no tears.

“It didn’t work out that way.”

The kobold sniffled. “He didn’t deserve to suffer like that.”

“Neither of you did.”

“And now those monsters know where camp is.”

He imagined the voice nodding. “Would you like to know how it ends?”

Shrub shook his head. “I can guess.”

“Are you sure? You might be pleasantly surprised,” the voice tempted, “Oreson was.” A new voice, a recognizable voice, said, “It’s not what you think.”

Shrub turned around to see an old woman, sitting on an invisible chair and holding a smoking white stick between her fingers. Oreson was standing beside her, holding a cookie.

This time, the tears came.