The gods of the bolus lived in a state apart from the physical. For those who do not comprehend the deific waveform of reality, it could be described as an apartment. In this apartment, a man with the head of an eagle sat on something here represented as a couch, his feet up on an ottoman, lazily watching images on what was in essence a TV. Behind the eagle-headed god, whose name was Outeb, in an attached linoleum-floored nook, was the analog of a kitchen table, on which were two mouse-sized mice, white of fur and clad in robes. They were busy coordinating a full-sized quill to write on a full-sized roll of parchment.
Stormhaegan stormed in, as only a storm god can, turning the atmosphere tumultuous.
"I'm back from my walk!" he proclaimed. "Don't bother getting up, Outeb, I can see you're comfortable."
Stormhaegen skirted the bird-headed god of travel to sit on the far side of the couch. He waved a hand purposefully at the screen across from them. The image changed. It is important to note here that though the device looked like a TV, it was to normal televisions what omnipotence was to mere mortal perception.
What it showed was entirely unmoored from not only the limitations of space, but also those of time, freely moving its perspective through the higher dimensions with a minimum of advertisements. It could show not only what is and what was, but also what could be, and what number to call to purchase such novelties as the Knife Genie, with a bonus set of collapsible colanders, for several easy payments of $19.99.
"I have urgent business," Stormhaegan said hastily to his couch companion. "I hope you don't mind."
"Urgent business?" a voice squeaked. It didn't come from the vegetative deity. One of the mice had squoken. "Are you finally doing something about my prophesy?" it asked scornfully, "The one at the top of your To Do for a millennium now?"
The images on the screen rapidly shifted as Stormhaegan flicked them by, barely allowing each to register. "Yes, your damned list. I said I would get around to it."
The mouse huffed and returned to its scribbling. "It's a miracle the world hasn't drowned yet. Or frozen."
"Or melted," the other mouse added. Outeb watched in stony silence, his beak partly open like an avian filter feeder. Stormhaegen grew impatient, his cosmic power limited by simple disorganization.
"Aha!" he announced. He nudged Outeb and said, "Great advice on the air travel. Missionaries, tactically deployed. Scribb? What am I looking at?"
"It was in the prophesy I wrote for you," said one of the mice.
"I couldn't read your handwriting. Footprints were all in the ink."
The scratch of quill on parchment stopped, replaced with a tense silence. This faded and was followed by a squeaky sigh. "Let me come over there. I'll walk you through it."
They scurried to the TV and climbed up to the screen. The two mice studied the moving picture, a sunny desert vista overlooking a great clay cooking pot, a small ugly humanoid in a chef's hat dancing on an adjacent mezzanine. A reptilian humanoid, its hands bound, was secured nearby.
"That's him," one of the mice confirmed. "Your chosen one."
"That thing in the hat is a kobold?"
A mouse shook its head. "The other one is a kobold."
Stormhaegen panicked.
"I'm too late! Those goblins are going to eat him!"
"No, no," one of the mice said, "This is now. When did you send your herald, his guide? You may have sent him in time to change the present."
Stormhaegen scratched his scalp, stirring the clouds there.
"Oh... Yesterday?"
One of the mice grimaced and sucked its teeth. The other covered its eyes with a paw. "It's going to be really close, then. We need to get you caught up. We can squeeze a day's recap in the few minutes of real time until he makes his appearance."
The scene on the TV started moving backwards.
****
While a gnome and nurse shark defended his coral reef, millions of other things were happening at the same time. There is nothing particularly unusual or noteworthy about this, as millions of things tend to happen simultaneously all the time. For instance, two snails fell in love after a chance meeting while crawling over a garden pumpkin. A convict was wrongly hanged in front of a jeering crowd. A priceless vase was smashed. A stoic achieved enlightenment, the result of years of study. Someone fended off an attacker using a priceless vase which happened to be at hand.
Few of these things are directly related, with most of them being separated by vast distances. They just happened at the same time, and it's comforting to know that when one thing is happening, millions of other things are happening right alongside it in a great chaotic orchestra. And one of those, far away from the gnome and shark, was a kobold filling a niche. He muttered to himself, twisting inside the mouth and destroying his homemade canvas tunic as it was ground between the rocks and his durable goldenrod scales.
"I'm going to fit. You're going to let me fit," seemed to be his mantra, despite the evidence to the contrary. The niche was large enough on the inside for this kobold to curl up within. It was the entrance which was giving him trouble. If he put one arm in, he could fit his head, but then his other shoulder could go no further. If he put both arms in like a diver, he could reach the far side of the niche, but his leather satchel got snagged and he could go no further. It also denied him any leverage to draw in his back half.
He had been away from home many days, picking his way through the wilderness, when he had stubbed his foot. His resulting shriek startled a small deer, who bolted at the shock. Holding his foot and cursing under his breath, his eyes backtracked to the place from whence the beast had come. He would never have seen it if the small deer hadn't fled, and got to work claiming it for his own.
Still half in the hole, he scratched his lizard-like snout and licked his eyes as he studied the far wall, thinking. Thinking was not a kobold strong suit, a majority of the species getting by on their reflexes and gut instinct. But Chicken was raised by his Auntie, which means, like it or not, he was held to a higher standard in the brain department. This was a nice hole, according to his long experience of foraging for his tribe, and he wasn't going to leave it so easily. Something like this might help him out of dire straits in the future, hiding him from the elements, or from an aggressor, or simply by holding a cache of supplies.
"What would Auntie tell me?" he mused. A hand fished in a pocket on his rough tunic and pulled out a white rock. While the brain had the rest of the kobold on standby, it needed something to do. "She would say that it's ok not to give up, but-... but..."
He started drawing on the wall of the niche. An hourglass, four lines, a curve at the top, a dot, and a tail at the bottom came together to signify as simply as possible that "Chicken was here".
He mentally leafed through his Auntie's fables. For not being a strong thinker, Chicken was an encyclopedia for his Auntie's fables. His memory threw a card.
"But like Eagle said when trying to eat Tortoise, I shouldn't break my beak upon a shell. I need to find another way."
He pulled himself out and dropped his pack on the rocky ground. The contents – everything a resourceful scout needs on long trips in the bush away from home – went clink. It wasn't full, a term implying it contained nothing but objects, but it was certainly well-populated. Chicken was in the business of ferrying information. Weather patterns, herd migration, territorial encroachments. Some of this he carried in his head, but kobolds needed physical proof. A kobold would refuse to believe you if you told one the sky was blue, until you dragged it outside by its elbow and pointed. Even then, it might argue that it wasn't blue all the time.
So Chicken sampled his environment. If the rains moved through the Jutterling rock fields to the east, he brought back a prickly pear. If the herdbeasts were on the move through the Dishpan grasslands, he brought back cow chips and horse apples. If the neighboring goblins were foraging more actively....
It took but a moment for Chicken to find what he was looking for. He hefted a conveniently shaped stone.
There were stones aplenty in the wastelands. Big ones, little ones, yellow ones, red ones. Ones with strata and ones with helixes. Ones which shone and ones which crumbled. The steppelands around the plateau were supposed to be flat, but to Chicken, it looked like some god or other smashed it all up. Probably with another stone.
If an observer from above were to place a dot on each niche and hideyhole claimed by Chicken on his scouting trips, that observer would notice many things about Chicken's habits. For one, they would congregate about a focal point, forming a dense ring. At the center of this point is Chicken's home, the kobold village of Very Small Numbers, named such after a misunderstanding of a conversation among those who sought kobolds, which had been watched by those same kobolds unseen. Another thing such an observer would notice when looking down on Chicken's hidey-hole history would be the dead-zones where there are no dots amidst the dense ring. These are dangerous areas he avoids, most of them being geyser fields, unstable areas of high magic and explosive water jets.
Gripping his new tool until he found a comfortable way to hold it, he glanced around like a thief. It looked like he was alone. Just him and the bugs – there's always bugs – and the gently baking rocks.
Auntie said that rocks are terrible gossips, and they'll repeat anything they hear as soon as they hear it. Make a sound in the wrong part of the steppes and they'll carry the echo overland, bouncing it through the crags, and take it down deep into the caves that riddled the steppeland's underground. The places where things sleep which eat kobolds. And there are things which eat kobolds, despite their tough scales.
It was the underground water which fed the geyser fields that carved the tunnels in the steppeland rock. And it was this water which absorbed the natural magic deep beneath the land. Kobolds knew geyser fields as the hazards they were, blasting sporadically the super-heated, slightly acidic, and very magical steam, coating the parched land, warping what grew there. One of these fields Chicken had very carefully avoided on his journey today. You only had to watch a friend be blasted apart once to learn the geysers were dangerous. That had been a formative day for young Chicken.
Mysterious sleeping beasts from the underground, on the other claw, were a closed door to Chicken. Had anyone ever actually seen these mysterious slumbering things? There was hearsay, but no actual proof.
"Just something Auntie tells the creshlings to get them to behave," he reasoned, "I'm as alone as I can get around here."
He hefted the stone and brought it down hard on the mouth of the niche. The crack reverberated. Some stone flaked away, and the entrance became that much more Chicken-shaped. Chicken smiled and began working the opening wider.
****
Pkhk poked a resting Ichrokik on the cheek when the repetitive knock of stone on stone alerted him. Ichrokik 's ears perked and he confirmed Pkhk's observation. They crawled silently crabwise over the rocks in the direction of the noise.
Down below, they watched a lizard in crude clothing steadily pummel a rock with another rock, brushing away chips as it went.
Ichrokik pointed at it and spoke to his companion, making a noise like dropping a bowling ball on a box of wineglasses, but which inflected like a question. Goblinspeech, called Gobbeldygook, was infamous for its offensive nature. The goblins themselves were known to disemvowel innocent words, as well.
Pkhk hefted his spear in response.
****
"There. Now are you going to let me in?" Chicken asked the hole. It merely gaped at him.
Something poked Chicken in the back and he brushed it away, preparing to see if his alterations were sufficient.
He crouched and was about to put his head inside when he was poked again. He looked back as he brushed it away, but froze as he saw what was doing the poking.
Two goblins stood behind him, one wielding something as part-time spear, part-time pokey stick. Each had a football-shaped head with wide mouths laden with triangular teeth. The one without the stick stood there, breathing through its mouth, its nose slits flaring. The tips of their pointy ears bobbed with every movement, and Chicken couldn't tell how much of their irregular reddish-brown-green skin was caked mud or actual skin.
Chicken, still on his knees with one hand on the mouth of the niche, smiled nervously at them. "Looks like you caught me. But, do you think you could let me go with just a warning? I wasn't supposed to see any goblins until tomorrow, heh heh."
The rocks gossiped the sounds of a scuffle.
When it was quiet again, Chicken was led away from his niche, bound in crude rope. The goblin in front held the other end of the lead while his companion walked behind Chicken, brandishing the stick.
He turned to look at the stick-goblin to ask where they were going, but got switched in the neck. Again.
It left a stinging lash on his unscaled skin there.
He gagged and sputtered as the lead goblin tugged him, who was chastising him in gobbeldygook. Chicken didn't speak the language, which sounded at times like bubbling tar and at others like the muffled breaking of bones, but he thought he understood the gist.
Despite their armor, kobolds were a victim of their environment. While it's speculated that rough-and-tumble daily lives had driven nature to select them for their tough scales, that school of thought is patently wrong. Something else in their lineage was attributed to their defenses.
Not that tough scales were much of a defense in the steppelands, where it was rumored there were colonies of acidic oozes, beasts with jaw strength to crush iron snails, and anything with an eye for weak spots. And goblins were known to have wickedly sharp eyes.
He took solace in his predicament in the sheer outlandishness. Caught by goblins. That would be one to tell Auntie and them back home. If he ever saw home again, that is.
****
The walk took the rest of the day. The creatures gibbered in their gobbledygook, making his ears itch. Goblins are incredibly offensive creatures, and have developed not only an appearance and smell, but also a language to match. Comprised of complex grammar and a vocabulary from which every word could be used as a curse, the effect of listening to goblins speaking is not dissimilar to liberally coating the ear canal in acid.
He only tried to escape once, managing to get a loop of the coarse rope between his teeth, but was caught and penalized before he could do any real damage to his bindings. Soon after that, the group was joined by other clusters of goblins, all carrying to varying degrees a load of resources. There were bundles of twigs, baskets of grasses, an armload of fruits, fist-sized crystals and shiny rocks, and, Chicken noted, several carcasses of small lizards. And as the troupe grew, so did the talking.
Then finally that day's sun set, first becoming an orange disc before dissolving into the heat shimmer of the horizon. Night had come again, reaching westward, spreading its star-studded cloak over the world. And the group came upon the goblin camp.
Chicken first noticed the stakes. Posted randomly, each held the rotting head of some large creature, or the sunbleached skull of a much older kill. Most were lizardfolk – a race of lizard-likes which merely converged with kobolds, though they were twice as tall on average – but there was the occasional orc and roc. Some couldn't be identified. Trying not to look, and failing due to a rising sense of morbid curiosity, Chicken saw a particularly ripe lizardman head being pecked by a vulture. The lizard's eyes were gone.
That's going to be me soon, Chicken thought.
Surrounding the camp, which rested on what could only have been a clearing made bare of rocks artificially, was a crude stone wall studded with more spikes. The wall, Chicken gauged, was likely made from the rocks which formerly littered the now boulder-free campground. The spikes, wedged between the boulders, were bare of any ghoulish trophies. The wall was interrupted by a rickety gate, from which hung clusters of skulls strung together like white grapes. The group passed through and made their way into the goblin camp.
Chicken, being a kobold, had been raised in a kobold camp, which could be described as a scattering of tents. Tents made of whatever cloth and canvas was at hand, but in a design which had been improved over the years in little ways from your basic "stick propping up a sheet". There were, in kobold tents, modifications which introduced ventilation, catching any breeze and using it to air out the structure, or ways for smoke from an indoor fire to escape. There were large versions almost like circus tents, partitioned for private spaces. There were versions with no walls, made for blocking the sun out in a public space.
The goblin camp was wholly different. Here and there were small lean-tos, tattered sheets and poorly tanned skins stretched between rocks to form basic roofs, and everywhere tripwires of the coarse rope which still bound Chicken. It looked like the webbing of a spider that spun rags instead of silk, weaving a nest among the rocks and posts.
And everywhere was activity in two extremes. Some goblins bustled past the group with loads of timber and grasses, and some goblins lay sleeping among the rag-bound tents, difficult to spot in the twilit shadows, almost camouflaged. Several times Chicken was struck on the back of the legs or between his shoulders, urged to move forward through a stringing of ropes or hanging cloth. He could make no sense of the highways and byways of the goblin encampment.
If I try to escape here, I'm sure to get caught up in all this stuff, he thought as he squeezed through a mesh of ropes.
The only order to how the camp was laid out, that Chicken could see, was that it centered around a great big landmark. There was one proper tent, nicely built by goblin standards, erected adjacent to a huge clay pot. This pot, which was easily fifteen feet tall, complete with ramshackle scaffolding on one side allowing access to a mezzanine at the rim, was nestled on a roaring bonfire like a brooding bird on its nest. It was toward this great pot that Chicken was being ushered. But to his mild surprise, his captors stopped him at the entrance to the tent.
Two goblins standing guard talked to his captors, and from what Chicken could gather, it was made known that an audience had been sought with the denizen of the big tent. Standing with him and his captors in a semi-circle, all waiting for whomever within to come without, was a goblin with an armful of dead lizards, a goblin with a bushel fruits, and a goblin with a strangled rabbit.
It was the rabbit which caught Chicken's eye. His knowledge of Auntie's fables threw a card, and it was a big one.
That's a descendant of Hare, the trickster, Chicken thought with horror. They've killed him, the one who brings the rains and gave Hyena her laugh.
It was one thing for these goblins to capture him, Chicken. To torture him and bring him here to kill him. But it was a sin to kill a rabbit in the dry season. A messenger to the gods to beseech them for rain. He could almost cry.
He watched the goblin place the limp body on a stone before it turned its attention to the entrance to the tent once more.
But then Chicken saw a leg twitch on the strangled rabbit and he had to swallow a gasp. Could there be hope this trickster yet lived?
The flap to the tent flew open, revealing yet another goblin. This one, however, looked different. Not only did it wear a chef's hat, but it carried an air of importance. Chicken could see it in the way the other goblins looked to this one, and in its responding arrogant glance. It regarded the offerings and the goblins presenting them with careful impassivity bordering on disdain.
The goblin with the rabbit lifted it off the rock again in both arms, holding it up to the chef goblin eagerly. The chef stroked the creature's fur and then tasted a finger, the on-looking goblins eagerly awaiting a verdict.
It was in this moment of uncertainty that the rabbit sprang to life in the goblin's hands. It hop-hop-hopped off the hands of the goblin trying to grab it, rising almost like a bird. The goblin in the chef hat, frozen with its finger in its mouth, moved only its eyes to follow the rabbit.
"Yes!" Chicken shouted, tugging at his lead. The creature kicked off, startling the goblin proffering it. "Go! Flee! Be free!" he encouraged from the sidelines. In that moment, only the rabbit moved, arcing gently through the air, front paws held out to rebound off the landing.
But the guards fell on the creature the moment it landed among the rocks, and Chicken's spirits came crashing down. Seized once again, it dangled by its ears from a fist. It kicked slightly, but Chicken could tell its little heart wasn't in it. The chef goblin, having initially frozen at the escape attempt, now made a gesture, and the rabbit was bound in coarse rope like Chicken.
The goblin in the chef's hat looked at the dead lizards and bushel of fruit. It waved these away. Then it looked at Chicken, as though for the first time.
Chicken glanced at the rabbit. What would Hare do? And an answer came to him. He stood up straight and squared his shoulders – as far as the rope would allow anyway – and through hooded eyes looked down his snout at the chef.
"Yes, finally," he said with exaggerated relief, "someone in charge here." His tone gave the chef pause, but Chicken couldn't tell if it understood him. He decided it was best to press onward.
"Your lackeys," and here to gestured with his head to his captors, "have made a terrible mistake. I am a powerful spirit, and have restrained myself so far in sparing their lives and the lives of everyone here. If things go on like this, and you do not release me and that creature there," he indicated the rabbit, "I'm afraid that I will be forced- Oof!"
Here he was cut off by a cudgel to the back of the knees, spoiling his speech and sending him to the ground. The chef goblin knelt down over him and began to sniff, looking contemplative.
He looked at Chicken's captors, and at the goblin with the rabbit, and gabbled a few short commands.
Chicken was tugged back on his feet, and he and the rabbit were led once more towards the big clay pot.
"No!" Chicken cried, all composure lost, "I'm completely serious here, you don't want to eat me! I don't taste good!" He struggled against the tug of his captors, who were then assisted by the guard goblins. "Let me go!"
But his cries fell on deaf ears, and he was goblinhandled up the scaffolding. He and the rabbit were secured to the railing and were left there overnight. Chicken, as his mind always did in times of strife, defaulted to his Auntie's stories.
"We've got a hero – that's me – in the clutches of the enemy," he muttered to himself as though ticking off a checklist. "Certain doom hangs over him. Got that, too." He couldn't see over the rim of the pot, but he could hear the gloop of the bubbles and smell the noxious haze that rose from the gently boiling liquid.
Curiosity getting the better of him, Chicken edged towards it for a better look. At the end of his tether, he could barely see into the bubbling brew. It was grey with swirling wisps of green, like rusty mercury, and occasionally an eyeball or piece of chitin or some gizzard or such would bob to the surface. The smell of the tincture climbed in his nostrils and settled in, watering his eyes and making him gag.
Chicken had once come across the carcass of a coyote in a sealed crevice after a rockslide, the creature having succumbed by stages to a broken back. It had died in the relative cool of a watering hole, and instead of desiccating in the sun or eaten wholesale by some scavenger, it served as food source for the tenacious fungus which grew there. The damp, dead air of that coyote's tomb, unearthly and sickly with the accelerated decay caused by the culture of fungus was a smell Chicken would never forget. That smell was this smell's younger brother. With a hint of chicory.
He slumped back against the railing.
"So then what happens to our hero? Does he give in?" He looked at the rabbit. It had kicked a lot when they first tied it to the scaffolding, but now it seemed to have tired itself out. "No. Never. Because he knows that just when things look worst, it'll get better, right?"
It felt easier to talk to the tired rabbit than to himself. It was like talking to a friend. He could recite all of Hare's escapades through Auntie's fables from memory, so it was like he had known him his whole life.
"I'll just have to wait on my loyal sidekick to make an opening for me to make my escape."
Try as he might, he couldn't think of anyone he would label as a loyal sidekick. Mostly the other kobolds avoided him, aside from a couple younger ones who would listen to the stories of his adventures in foraging.
"Ok, so no sidekick," he said half-heartedly, "but at least I've still got my trusty weapon."
He remembered his encounter with the goblins that captured him. They had left his pack on the ground next to the niche he'd been working on, so he was bereft of any tool, much less some magical weapon.
"No trusty weapon, then," he added dully. He sighed and looked to the stars.
"It's a shame to die on such a beautiful night." The stars seemed to twinkle in agreement, but without any conviction of purpose and distinctly lacking any intent to help.
"Something will happen, though, I'm sure of it. I'm the hero. Without me, it would be over too soon, right? If I keep thinking positive, I'm sure I can work something out."
Andthere Chicken stayed all night, his mind weaving through unpleasant thoughts,as he waited to get made into Chicken soup.