Isse stepped out of her room.

  And immediately stopped.

  “Now now, my young lady,” said the crow, “our journey in search for the most exquisite crackers will be a rather long one if we are to stop at every corner.”

  The arachne glared down at the crow sitting comfortably on her shoulder, its little clawed feet digging into her dress and not reaching skin.

  “I can’t just leave my… my –” she didn’t manage to finish the sentence for some reason. She knew that those eggs, those beautiful, off white, spheres were her children but, at the same time, something in her screamed against the idea.

  An old, near forgotten, part of her being, one that had slowly disappeared in these last few months, absorbed into her new her, pieces of it rotting off every time tragedy struck. She’d thought that part of her dead by now.

  And yet, here it was: her humanity. A small part of the seventeen year old girl who’d died powerlessly in that hospital back on Earth, a girl who was way too young to be a mother. She reared up her ugly little head and shouted that no, they couldn’t possibly be her kids – despite the quite obvious contrary – saying that she couldn’t accept it.

  Isse silenced that part of her and, for a moment, she wished she’d just… disappeared. It would’ve been better for both the new her and the old one. She wasn’t a human anymore, after all. Not by a long shot.

  “My children… I can’t just –“

  “As I said, there is no need to worry, young woman. Your unborn progeny will be completely safe here. My King has sworn to protect you and yours, and that means your eggs as well. Trust the word of a father.”

  Anxiety clawed at the back of her mind, trying to carve its way in but, for once, failing miserably, for the walls of her Castle had been repaired, the taint of Blood washed out.

  We’re safe, Isse, added her soul half, attempting to calm her down ever further.

  And, for once, succeeding.

  She heaved a big, long, sigh, tasting the air travelling through her mouth, feeling it travel towards her lungs for a few moments, and then letting it all out, her slightly more closed mouth turning the ‘puff’ into a light whistle.

  Then she nodded: “Show me the way.”

  The way, as it turns out, was… extremely simple. Whoever had designed this castle had put a lot of thought in making life simpler for the people working here, for she only had to travel down three long corridors and down a set of stairs before she reached the kitchens.

  She stood in front of the simple door, the wood only slightly aged and lovingly well kept. She was quite sure she could still see the light sheen of oil that had been applied recently. Her hand rose to the doorknob, a simple thing of… at a first glance it looked like brass, it certainly had its color, but she’d worked with the metal enough to recognize it. This was copper. Actually, even the hinges and the nails were made of copper.

  But why was that? She couldn’t think of a single valid reason for that.

  She tried to turn the doorknob but, it turns out, it was there mostly as a decoration in this case, for it didn’t budge. The door required someone to merely push it.

  In she went, into the silent kitchen, and immediately she was struck with how… modern, it looked. Staring at the room, it felt like she’d stepped back to Earth, into the kitchen of some kind of michelin restaurant right out of television. Every surface looked clean enough that she half expected sparkles to start appearing on them. And in regards to the surfaces, they were all marble, except for a few that had sheets of metal on them, steel or iron she couldn't tell (she’d worked only with brass, she wasn’t a [Blacksmith]’s apprentice!). There were pans hanging in near rows on the walls, going from small enough she doubted someone could’ve put three sardines side by side in them up to so ridiculously big she couldn’t fathom what someone would cook in them. Which went to show how little she knew about cooking.

  Two of the walls sported cabinets that, she imagined, were filled with pots of all sorts and spices and, maybe, simple foods.

  Like the damned crackers the crow on her shoulder had so insistently requested she get him.

  But, in truth, the thing that truly surprised her was the single figure standing in the room, on the other side of the central island, looking at her with a raised eyebrow as it, no, he munched on… a sandwich.

  His skin was green from head to toe, a darker green that reminded her of the grass in the Forest of Tusca after it rained. His eyes were a deep red, without any sclera to speak of but, other than that, he looked… normal. Like any other man she’d ever encountered. His nose was on the small side, although it pointed upwards slightly, and his lips were so thin they may as well not be there. His hair was a dull red, complimenting his eyes, and cut short, exposing his pointy ears. For some reason there was a pencil tucked behind each one.

  They stared at each other in silence, both absolutely not caring about how awkward the moment was becoming: the arachne because she was beyond caring, the goblin… well, actually for the same reason, but the way he’d gotten there was completely different!

  Finally, Isse spoke: “You’re a goblin.”

  As far as first impressions went, this wasn’t looking like the start of a good one.

  Said goblin kept on chewing on his bite of sandwich, taking his sweet time grinding it to a pulp before swallowing.

  “And you’re an arachne,” he stated matter of factly, as if it was the most boring thing to happen to him that day.

  Isse felt a wave of outrage trying to worm its way up to her face at how dismissive he was being: he couldn’t have possibly met another arachne! How could he act as if this meeting was nothing?

  Then she took a deep breath, calming down.

  “Sorry, that was rude. Hi, I’m Issekina Silksoul, but you can call me Isse,” she introduced herself, bowing her head slightly in hello.

  The goblin, who, meanwhile, had taken another bite out of his sandwich, again, took a while to chew. The sound of him swallowing filled the room and, this time, Isse actually felt a bit of awkwardness.

  Finally, he said: “Well, you found your manners. The name’s Archie. I’m the local [Architect].”

  Isse heard Siidi snort in the back of her mind: An [Architect] called Archie. Abso-fucking-lutely fitting!

  Then she started laughing and Isse had to fight hard against the chuckle bubbling up in the back of her throat. That was one of the problems – if it could be called that – of having someone living in your head: they could be a bad influence on you.

  So instead she decided to continue the conversation and, while pointing at the surprisingly silent crow on her shoulder, said: “Huginn here wanted crackers and wouldn’t leave me alone if I didn’t follow him.”

  The goblin raised an eyebrow at that: “How did you find out his name? Did you see some of the staff while coming here?”

  Another bite. She noticed there was something green between the slices of the sandwich.

  “Uhh, no, he just told me.”

  This time around Archie didn’t gulp down his food, his mouth opening up as a low, long, chuckle left his lips: “Heh, he sure did, and I’m the King of Dwarves. Nah, that dumb bird can only say one thing, and it’s ‘I want a cracker’.”

  As if to confirm what had just been said Huginn spoke in a much more ‘cawish’ voice than the one he’d used with her, screaming to the ceiling (and right into her ear, making her wince): “I WANT A CRACKERRR!”

  Archie gulped down his bite of food and nodded: “See, told ya.”

  He pointed towards a cabinet near him: “The crackers he so loves are in there. Give him, like, three and he’ll shut right up. Stars know why the [King] likes him so much.”

  “CRACKER! CRACKER! CRACKER!”

  “Oh shut the fuck up, I just wanted a snack, not a hearing check!”

  Isse was stuck in place, extremely confused by the current situation. She was sure, completely certain, that she’d heard Huginn speak to her in some of the poshest and most refined jargon she’d ever had the distinct displeasure to hear… oh Airm he’d infected her.

  Anyways, she was sure she’d heard him speak, but now… now she was starting to question her (admittedly debatable) sanity.

  “CRACKER!” somehow the crow seemed to be slowly becoming more agitated.

  “Ok, ok, I’m getting you the crackers, calm down,” she said, more out of impulse than anything.

  Immediately Huginn seemed to settle down, its puffed up feathers going down as he comfortably sat down on her shoulder.

  Archie raised his eyebrow again: “Huh, he actually listened to you? Every time he does… that,” he made a wide gesture with the hand holding the sandwich, encompassing all of her, “with me, either I start running for the kitchen or he tries to kill my hearing. You got some [Trainer] Class or something?”

  Unauthorized usage: this tale is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings.

  “Err… no. I just have a [Pet Owner] Class,” she said, shaking her head as she skittered around the central island and reached the goblin, who didn’t seem to be the least bit intimidated by her presence, or the fact that she practically towered over him.

  “Hmpf, well, maybe it’s that. I don’t know and, truth be told, as long as he shuts up I don’t care.”

  He raised a hand and snapped his fingers, the cabinet door opening up – it didn’t impress Isse – and showing a lot of breadstuff, among which was a tiny basket where, she could see, were being kept a bunch of crackers. She raised a hand up towards them, ready to get a few of them and be done with this whole charade – she missed her children – but then she stopped, her eyes alighting on something at the very top of the cabinet: some sort of sigil that shone dully in the bright light of the room.

  Although, to her eyes, or rather, to her [Mana Sight], it shone as bright as a small star. Immediately she retracted her hand, instead forming a thread with her own mana and sending it up towards the strange sigil she’d never seen.

  It made contact.

  Her magic was poured into the strange carving – which she’d feared was some form of trap – and suddenly her vision of the kitchen disappeared, in its place a breathtaking sight.

  For she was now standing in an endless field of wheat. Everywhere she looked she could see bright yellow stalks rising up towards the skies, like hundreds of thousands of fingers pointing towards the unreachable skies out of mother earth’s gentle hand. Her fingers moved in that reflection of the purpose given to this fragment of the world’s soul, trailing through the wheat, feeling its gentle kiss and light prickliness. A young boy stood by her side, admiring the scenery with a beatific smile. They watched in want of change as the Spell unfolded in front of their eyes, the fields endlessly growing, endlessly expanding, promising fertility and abundance, promising that none would ever go hungry so long as even a fragment of the world’s soul kept on existing.

  She felt like laughing in glee, like jumping around and running.

  For a moment, she felt like a child again, both the human and the spiderling, and she hadn’t realized she’d actually started running around and cheering, Siidi by her side with Baron Bloodsworth the First, Destroyer of Flies and Savior of Our Sleep on her shoulder.

  Then a loud sound snapped her out of this vision of what she imagined Heaven, or Larnos, should’ve looked like.

  She blinked, her vision returned to the castle’s kitchen, her eyes focusing on a green hand that was right in front of her face. Another blink. Yup, the hand was still there.

  “That right there, arachne, is a Rune of Preservation. Don’t worry, it won’t burn off your hand, it’s just there to keep the food fresh.”

  For a moment, she stood there, her mouth opening without words managing to leave it, her brain still trying to reconcile the beauty of the Spell and the absurdly normal reality around her.

  “Hoy, you alright? Did your brain just decide to give up?”

  Those words, finally, managed to shake her awake. She looked down at the goblin, shaking her head: “No. As far as I can tell my mind’s still my own.”

  At that Archie smirked, his throat bobbing up and down as he kept down a chuckle: “That’s more than can be said for most, then.”

  He then went rose to the tip of his toes – she noticed only then that he wasn’t wearing any shoes – his arm seemingly becoming longer than it should as it reached for the basket of crackers, before in the blink of an eye it went back to normal as she watched him offering it to her.

  “Give one to the crow so that he won’t start again, then try one yourself. Everybody says they’re quite tasty.”

  A question rose unbidden to her lips then as she did just that, grabbing two crackers, which were simple squarish things, and reached up with one for her, hopefully temporary, feathery companion.

  “Everybody? And what about you?”

  He shrugged: “I’m no judge of taste. When you spend half your life living on military rations everything tastes like Larnos. And I’ve been told I have strange tastes.”

  As if to prove the point, he shook his sandwich left and right towards her, as if that could explain his strange statement.

  Her raised eyebrow probably was more than enough to express her confusion, because he explained: “This is broccoli,” he raised his sandwich and took off one of the bread slices, showing her the vegetables… and nothing else, inside. Calling what he was holding a sandwich, she thought, would’ve been a disservice to sandwiches all over the world that would’ve caused every baker alive to cry bloody murder. This thing… was just pure sadness.

  Archie looked up at her, narrowing his eyes: “There we go, already judging me. Well, you and everyone else in this castle can fuck right off!”

  That said he slapped the slice of bread back in place and took a vindictive bit out of his crime against bread products that not even a dwarf could’ve ever approved of.

  “In my defense,” said Isse, her tone completely unapologetic, “I’m a carnivore.”

  And she distinctly remembered absolutely despising broccoli even back on Earth.

  “And I’m a ‘food-i-vore’,” shot back the goblin through a mouthful of not-yet-a-war-crime.

  Throughout this conversation Huginn kept on eating the cracker she’d handed over, leaving behind not even crumbs, which she guessed was proof enough that they were good. For a moment before she’d thought about the possibility of them being poisoned, but then she’d remembered that she was completely immune to all types of poisons so it would’ve probably just added to the taste.

  So she went to take a bite.

  And immediately her mouth was filled with the taste of childhood memories.

  Not that she thought childhood memories tasted like a lightly salted flatbread, no, but… in its absolute simplicity, this mere cracker brought back memories of days spent with friends and family out camping or just walking around aimlessly, watching the clouds as the sky slowly changed color from bright blue to purplish with hints of red and gold to a stygian black dotted with lights.

  A tear slid out of her eye and she didn’t care to keep it in.

  “Heh, always has that effect the first time. All thanks to Nivera, I tell you. She’s got some Skill that makes food made with things grown in the kingdom just taste better. We’d probably make a killing just by selling these, but we can’t produce them fast enough.”

  A chuckle left him as he went and got a cracker himself, taking a satisfied bite out of it as a smile spread on his face.

  Isse had to agree with him: if she had a way to get a near unlimited supply of these crackers she’d still keep them to herself.

  Still, all good things had to come to an end, and as she turned towards the crow she saw that he looked extremely satisfied – also prim and proper, much more so than when it had started screaming about crackers.

  She poked him in the… probably the chest, she wasn’t sure if it was called the same for birds or if it had another name. Anyways, she poked him there and, upon seeing it open an eye, she raised an eyebrow questioningly.

  For an answer, Huginn cawed in a low tone, seemingly pleased, and went back to napping on her shoulder. She still wasn’t sure about the whole talking thing: she was certain the bird had spoken, even Siidi had heard him, but now he was acting like an absolutely normal bird, albeit an absurdly loud one.

  “Well, now that this one’s satisfied I’ll be heading back to my room. It… it was a pleasure to meet you…?”

  It sounded like a question more than she wanted, but she hadn’t spent that much time with this goblin. She didn’t know much about their race, about their history of bloody war that had lasted for decades, about the hate that was still reserved for them even though they’d demonstrated that they were as much of a civilized race as anyone else.

  She didn’t know that the goblin standing in front of her was the one who’d designed the entire kingdom she now found herself in. Nor did she know that he was one of the main reasons why the goblins had ever even won the wars, his fortifications and Skills having saved the lives of thousands, tens of thousands, of his kin.

  If she’d know, maybe, just maybe, she would’ve tried to spend more time in his presence, she would’ve talked longer, asked him how he did it, how he managed to move on every time he wasn’t good enough, where he found the strength to keep trying during those long decades. She would’ve heard, then, the tale of how he survived where his brothers-of-battle died, of the struggles of seeing the purpose of his work after that, of how he did it. Really, of all the people in the kingdom, no, in that castle, he was probably the one who could understand her more than most.

  But she didn’t know, and history, as we all know, sadly isn’t built on ‘maybes’ and ‘ifs’.

  So instead she rose to her feet and turned around.

  She stopped only when she went to open the door, noticing that the little man was following her, the last few bites of his sandwich firmly held in hand.

  “Uhh… what?” she asked.

  “Coming with you,” he simply said, “Can’t have you losing your way around the castle now, can we? Otherwise you’ll take longer to go back to your nap.”

  She frowned: “I found my way here, I can certainly find my way back. It’s a pretty straightforward route.”

  And there it was again: the smirk.

  “You sure?”

  In lieu of answering, she turned around and began skittering down the corridor to her left… but wait, hadn’t there been a set of stairs leading up that way? There was only a corridor now. A windowless corridor illuminated brightly by [Light] Spells hanging from the ceiling on fake candelabras.

  “What the…?”

  The goblin tottered up to her side.

  He had finished his sandwich.

  “The palace sometimes likes to change,” he said, as if that was the most normal thing in the world.

  “Stairs don’t just move around!” she nearly shouted, her hand shooting up towards the corridor, pointer pointing accusingly at the empty air as if she could force the stairs to come back.

  “We live in a world where magic can cause an entire continent to fall underwater and then bring it back up in a matter of hours, and you think that moving stairs are strange?”

  “Wait what? A continent underwater?”

  “Rodar is a very unlucky place.”

  I’d never heard that one, thought Isse

  Honestly? Me neither.

  “Follow me, I know the way.”

  And like that he began calmly walking down the corridor, whistling a rhythmic tune that, for some reason, made her heart beat faster and her blood boil slightly in… indignation? Determination? She couldn’t quite tell.

  “How will I move around if the place just keeps on changing?” she asked after they’d turned down the third corner.

  “Seeing as you haven’t left your room in the past few days, I’d wager that won’t be much of a problem,” there was quite a lot of sarcasm in his tone.

  She opened her mouth to shoot back something, anything, but nothing came to her, so she just closed it back up, letting silence fall on them like a heavy, wet, blanket.

  “Don’t worry, I understand. And as for the how, well, people just deal with it. They treat it as a sort of game. The throne room always stays in place, and from there, well, as I said, a game.”

  “Really?”

  “I’m not much of a liar, you’ll find out.”

  Then they turned another corner and, suddenly, they found themselves someplace rather familiar: the corridor that led to her room.

  “Wasn’t this a floor up?”

  “As I said, the palace likes to change. Don’t worry, I’m sure finding your way around won’t be too hard for you: the corridors and rooms may move around, but the outside stays the same. You could probably just climb the walls or something and look through the windows.”

  He wasn’t wrong about that, now that she thought about it. Well, except for the places with no windows.

  “Well… thank you,” she said, turning back towards him when they reached the door to her room.

  “No problem, arachne. No problem at all. Welp, I’ll see you around.”

  Isse nodded, a small smile forming unbidden on her lips.

  She opened the door.

  And her eyes immediately alighted on something very big and very green floating over her nest on the ground, moving towards her eggs.