>>5810412“You write like a ponce,” the goblin-girl on your desk said.
“I thought you couldn’t read.”
“You move your lips when you write,” she pointed out. “I can read LIPS, kid.”
You glowered, but made a note of this; something to work on, perhaps. You folded the letter, and tucked in in an envelope, which you sealed. With a casting of your <Summon Elemental I> spell, you materialized a tiny earthen creature from soil and stone, to which you handed the missive and instructed to deliver it.
“What now?” Zith-Zi asked, as soona s it had departed.
“Now,” you said, “we wait.”
The goblin groaned, and slump off of the desk.
Time passed, but eventually—and almost to your surprise—you heard a rapping at the window. There, you found an elemental of air, whispy and scarcely material… Yet strong enough and stable enough to carry in its bosom a rolled-up note, tied with fine string. You opened the window and allowed it in, whereupon it exploded outward not the immaterial shapelessness from which it had been derived, a gale that swirled upon the room and briefly startled Hershy. The letter fell to the floor, and you scooped it up.
‘Come alone,’ it said, and was signed ‘Izirina Henzler.’
“Come on!” you said to Zith-Zi for, despite what the note said, you knew you NEEDED the goblin there for this to go as intended.
“Sure thing, boss,” she said, and followed you with a casual indifference as you hurried to don your day-off attire and to hurry out the door.
The Mirror Maze was where you and Izirina Henzler had first had a heart-to-heart, perhaps first moved towards friendship. You’d hoped the choice of venue would help to remind her of that, and to ameliorate any wounded feelings. However, as you approached her, you saw her expression was anything but warm—rather, it was almost as frigid and unmoving as her adoptive mother’s own eerie visage, cold with an unreadable emotion that you worried was anger.
“You didn’t come alone,” she said, though you saw her blank expression turn briefly to curiosity to see that your companion was a rough-looking goblin-girl.
“I know, I know,” you quasi-apologized. “but you’ll understand when you hear what the goblin—ah, what Zith-Zi—has to say.”
“‘The goblin’,” Zith-Zi scoffed. “Honestly.”