>>5806767Well, you still have a pouch>>5806763“We’re not going to do that!” you shouted back.
There was a dread silence from the half-hidden goblins, their silhouettes shifting slightly. They didn’t immediately reply, though, so you filled the silence.
“We acted only to free your prisoner, my… KIN,” you said. “The goblin Yok-Brot, when I healed and freed him, made it clear that you goblins value family. Do you mean to tell me that if you saw one of your brothers or sisters in chains, you wouldn’t have done the same to free them?”
It was a careful manipulation of the facts at hand—not quite the whole truth, but not a lie. You barely knew Nemenmo, and could barely now recall the name of the male Ashurati who you had helped her liberate from goblin slavery… But you WERE all children of the Bonum Chaoticum, the fairy-gods of sun and moon and sea and woodlands. And Yok-Brot… Well, you had mended that goblin, returning his arm to its rightful place and saving him from bloodoss, but primarily to help cure the poisoning which his fellows had wrought upon Pearce, and it had been Rudolfo—your human parent—who had delimbed the little green man. Stil, it didn’t hurt to remind them of the good you and your magic had done for one of theirs, right?
>19“…Alright!”
You resisted the urge to pump your fist in victory.
“Well come down to you,” the talkative goblin shouted down. “SOME of us. ARMED, like you lot are armed. And some of us will be staying up here with our SEVERAL crossbows.”
You frowned. That… Was fair enough, perhaps. The fairest deal you were likely to get. Still, something about the way the goblin specified ‘several crossbows’ told you more than he or she’d intended. Crossbows were expensive. They’d either know how many they had or not, you suspected… And if they had many crossbows trained on you, you strongly suspected they would be ROBBING you, not negotiating. Rather than call them out on this lie, though, you allowed it to pass ‘unnoticed’.
Four goblins descended the hill—one for each of you (not counting Muffins or the horses). There was Yok-Brot among them—short, stocky, freckled face cleared of the scabs and scarification of his hard living thanks to your <Monstrous Regeneration>, supremest of your healing arts. He regarded you suspiciously in spite of this benevolence, as well you might have expected considering he’d last ‘thanked’ you for your mending magic and your offer of rapprochement with a knife pressed to your flesh and a demand to be freed and left alone. With him was a familiar female goblin with an eyepatch and her hair pulled back in a too-tight ponytail, seemingly little older than him. Two other, older-looking goblins attended this meeting with them, both male: a balding one with thick mutton-chops and an upturned snout, and a notably tall individual (about four feet) with a ruddy, splotchy complexion and fierce eyes.
