>>6057296It takes the better part of six months to organize the demiplane into its final state, a stone palace of learning amidst a cultivated grove. By that pint, you travel freely between the two, spending almost as much time in the demiplane as on the Hill. You don’t forsake the world for your partitioned portion thereof, though… And even if you wanted to, you can’t. Reality finds YOU, as it always does.
“Hey! We got a letter from Sunset Lake!” Costella greets you, as you and Izirina return from one such visit to your sanctuary of scholasticism.
“Who do we know who lives THERE?” you ask, confused, for Sunset Lake is a distant, western barony which you can’t even remember thinking of.
“Well, like, you know what’s NEAR Ssnet lake?” Costella asks, tone suggestive.
“The Bloodrise Mountains,” Izirina quickly supplies.
“Zith-Zi and Carazzi!”
Your goblin (nilbog? demogoblin?) companions departed for that mysterious realm on the frontier of Man’s civilization many months ago now, to find sanctuary for their fellow goblinoids where Hawksong’s aegis could not. You are immediately at Costella’s side as she opens the scroll-case in which the missive was delivered, and unfurls it. Your face immediately scrunches up at the contents.
“I know she was only ‘born’ a year or two ago, but did Carazzi not inherit any memories of penmanship? Or… Well, I guess her hands have those oversized claws, don’t they?”
“Uh, Ez?” Costella says, squinting. “I’m pretty sure ZZ wrote this.”
“…Oh.”
It takes all your talents at deciphering obscure scripts (despite being written in Common), but you’re eventually able to make out the contents through the sloppy, smeared ink and frequent misspellings. Zith-Zi and her succubus-splinter ‘sister’ have apparently been able to leverage your reputation with the Dragon King of Bloodrise—the monstrous alter-ego of Hawksong’s Prince Consort, through this known only to a select few—and in exchange have been granted the ruins of some old, abandoned frontier-town to make a place for goblins to dwell. It’s not exactly a part of Blodorise, but neither is it an intrusion upon humanity’s own settlements.
‘So those big pink fuckers won’t come fucking with us, at least not by accident, and even then they got nobody to blame but themselves for strolling into the woods that are all famous for monsters and shit,’ as Zith-Zi puts it.
“Isn’t she, like, DATING a human?” Costella points out.
“Isn’t she pinker than any known subrace of Man?” Izirina adds.
You sigh, and shake your head, but can’t help smiling. That’s Zith-Zi for you. You’re just glad she and Carazzi are seemingly doing well, not to mention the other goblins who you saved from the slavery of their own savage kinfolk.