"I doth feel a presence of great evil approaching." The elf spoke from her couch.

Barbara, sitting in front of the room's one window, groaned. "Shut up Fi. We don' wanna to hear that from you."

"Barb. Please!" Their third roommate, Missy, admonished her. "Fiora, please tell me what you feel."

-

They were the three remaining prisoners of a goblin nest.

Goblins are considered rank F monsters, they're looked down upon by adventurers as not a threat, but for regular foot folk a large enough collection of them was overwhelming.

All three of them had ended up the prisoners of these monsters as a consequence of underestimating them.

The humiliation and shame of having their bodies so freely used by such low creatures was immense. But after years of confinement the shame had dissipated (or perhaps they'd gotten so used to it that they couldn't feel it) and all that was left was an empty despair.

-

Missy stood up to approach Fiora and the elven girl grabbed her shoulder. "A presence that is damned by the gods. One that seeks death on our premises."

"Good." Barbara said. "Maybe it can kill us."

"Barbara!" Missy flared up in anger. "Don't even joke about that!"

Barbara only looked away with an annoyed look. Missy was the eldest member of the goblin wives currently alive, but she acted like the newest. Like she hadn't gotten used to omnipresent death yet.

-

Before Fiora arrived there had been twenty women held in the village, some of them since childhood. It was almost every month that someone would die, used up by too many childbirths or caught trying to escape. In an uneven pace they would be replaced by newly captured victims. After Fiora birthed the first of her abominations the violence only started to increase. Fiora's hobgoblins started a struggle for control, dividing the nest into factions. The wives were being dragged all over as prizes and weapons, getting caught in the crossfire of the goblin's own inner strife.

With the little civil war done there weren't enough goblins left to easily replenish the stock of women, however, they were surviving. If they continued to make it through the winter so easily and evade the attention of Eston's thinly spread adventurers they would no doubt grow to be a ravenous power once more. Stronger this time, with goblins evolved by the power of an elven mother. It would truly be better for the last of the wives to die, so this wretched evil could go extinct.

-

Their attention was peeked by the raspy and child-like shouting of goblins. More than usual it sounded like fighting.

But after just a few minutes it stopped.

"What was that?" Missy whispered.

Fiora said nothing.

From her window Barbara could see goblins running all over, they seemed lost and confused and scurried around to various directions in a panicky manner. She had long ago given up on trying to recognize which one were hers. None of them were hers, they had simply used her body as incubation.

-

There was a loud thrashing at the door.

It wasn't Horns this time.

"The way is free. They can't stop you now!" A voice called.

None of the women moved. They had seen plenty of others lose their life trying to take advantage of a situation like this.

What had the voice sounded like? It was coherent speech like they hadn't heard from another living being, other than each other, for a long time, but it had the high-pitched quality of a goblin. No, not a goblin, a child. They hadn't seen human boys in so long they had almost forgotten what they sounded like.

Missy cautiously approached the door and gave it a push. With the old bookshelf removed it easily swung open. But their rescuer was nowhere to be found.

"Are we going to do it? Are we going to leave?" Missy looked over her shoulder to the others.

"I dunno about you guys, but I'm definitely going." Barbara said as she pushed her aside.

The others hurried after her.

-

The goblins had fed them for years, despite their abuse they had kept them alive. In the forest there was no such guarantee, they would have to face monsters, bandits, and the elements and somehow find the way home. But none of them even considered the idea of staying among goblins.

The brothers celebrated their victory with a feast. Fire had made a comeback and it was now being used for cooking.

Trees chopped down with the axe produced the logs required for a blazing campfire and a flat stone slate from deeper in the cave was laid over it as a barbequing furnace. This hot surface allowed them to bake meat and vegetables for their celebration.

Although previously it had been normal for the children to just grab food whenever they were hungry and their alpha male allowed them to, with the invention of cooking they shifted over to a single large meal eaten together daily. With some small miscellaneous snacks throughout the day.

Although Scratch had sparked the initial idea for this furnace, the initiative and invention where all Second, for which he received a great deal of praise from his older brothers.

-

Scratch was still not healed. His fever had gone down but the festering eye wound was only getting worse. To him it seemed like the infection was slowly making headway, deeper into his skull. Braving the pain he was sitting near the others, listening to them talk over each other and watching them wrestle and chase each other. The food was served in bowls. Scratch had explained that when a clay shape is heated in the fire, to the point red glowing intensity, it becomes fired, with properties closer to stone than mud. These objects were now used to carry food and water. So the kids could freely take their plates with them as they spread out over the clearing and eat from them at their own pace.

It was rather like a barbeque.

-

Scratch turned the good part of his face towards the sun to bask in its warmth.

Is it me, or are the days getting shorter every time?

Without him noticing it, Dumb had come up to him and sat down next to him.

"You look worse every day."

"Huh, what? Oh, it's you."

"It looks like it's rotting off."

"Thanks. That's... that's real nice."

Dumb shrugged and took a bite out of a rabbit foot. "I don't get why we saved you if you're going to die anyway."

These callous words made the corners of Scratch's mouth curl up and reveal his teeth. "And yet you came along anyway." He smiled.

"Uh, yeah. I mean. Yeah." Dumb's antagonism was punctured and deflated and he was left with not much to say.

"Thanks man." Scratch punched his shoulder playfully. "I'll be sticking around for a few days. Get some things done before, you know..."

They both went silent as they watched Teeth and Yeller play out their heroic deeds with imaginary weapons in front of the others.

After some time Dumb spoke. "You told First that-"

"Second First?"

"Yes. You said if the water was cleaner you could wash away the bad stuff in your eye."

Scratch hovered with his hand over his eye, wishing there was a way to scratch the itch without touching the painful wound. "That might have been too rash a comment."

But Dumb pushed the issue. "Can you do that? Can you wash water?"

"Well... you can't wash it, but there are ways to clean it. You need to filter it, or better yet, distill it. But for that you'd need..." He touched his chin. They did have that, didn't they?

Their mother never had had a very elaborate funeral, in fact it could be said she was unceremoniously dumped in the woods. But now they were going to have to dig her up again. Scratch was interested in the fabric of her clothing.

It was good being the alpha male. He simply send out Kicker and Biter to do the heavy lifting while he worked on extracting the iron from the cave wall with Yeller. Which consisted mainly of smashing it with stone implements until the nuggets fell out.

The rest could continue their daily activities in supporting the group, which was now a lot easier as Scratch had taught them how to recognize edible plants and construct snares for small animals. It was only because of their deficiency in passing knowledge to the next generation that goblins had led such a primitive existence, in fact their memory was perfect and they retained information splendidly. Scratch too seemed to be able to easily recall random facts he had come across in his previous life in this goblin body, that was how he was able to help the tribe so much. Even when wilderness survival had never been his main expertise before.

-

After rinsing the human woman's undershirt close to a hundred times (It had lain in the dirt for ages and who knows what Drool had done with it?) they cut it up and used it for filtering their drinking water. Although it removed the sand particles the water still had a faint yellow color. Not that anybody other than Scratch had ever seen cleaner water before.

For the last phase in his water purification scheme Scratch wanted to reshape the iron into a metal bowl. However, the campfire would not burn brightly enough, the iron nuggets barely glowed brightly enough to be wrought into shape, never mind melded together into a larger object. So he recruited Second and Dumb to build a bloomery with him.

With the ability to carry water they could wet the earth in front of the cave and shape clay there, so there was no objection to building the bloomery right next to Scratch's workshop. It didn't need to be a very good bloomery, just a clay shape for directing air and allowing for a fire hot enough for shaping iron.

Together, under Scratch's directions, the boys build a large conical shape, almost half their own height, with an entrance at the bottom leading into a small clay airway. They were able to blow air into the cone using a tree bark fan but still the fire inside didn't burn at a high enough intensity. They made some small adjustments to prevent air escaping but in the end Scratch had to set his mind to creating charcoal for his fire.

-

A primitive charcoal kiln simply consisted out of a pile of small wood items covered in clay or earth with air holes at the bottom. The idea was that by igniting the wood while it was in such a covered up state one could drain it from all its moisture and carbonize it, turning it into a superior fuel.

However, it was very inefficient and after dismantling the first one to get the charcoal out Scratch had to to remake it with more of their wood for another time. Both times the smoke creeped eerily out of the bottom of the kiln, bathing the ground in a gray mist that made the clearing look haunted. The others ate their meals some distance away in the forest while it was burning.

Eventually it took them three days to fulfill Scratch's vision, a hump of misshapen blackness, vaguely resembling a bowl due to the hole in the top. With some reheating and pounding it started to look more like something artificial, rather than a funny shaped rock. The shine of iron shone through in places.

"Look at this you bunch of troglodytes. I have tamed the three states of matter." Scratch boasted to the ones happening to be standing around while putting the object, which he had filled with filtered water, on the campfire. Second was helping him span one of the larger pieces of cloth over it.

"I should hope so. You rebuild our entire home." First noted.

"What are the the three states of matter?" Dumb asked.

"Very good question, Dumb. I'm glad you asked." He said, ignoring First completely. "The three states of matter are solid, liquid and gas. And, I know you didn't ask this, but, the key to altering them is temperature."

"Okay." Yeller said, then he thought about it. "I don't get it."

"Remember the iron?"

"Yes"

"Remember what we did with it?"

"Put it in some fire."

"Well sure, if you want to be reductive about it. But what we did was to raise the temperature. Turning it into a..." He waited for Yeller to complete the sentence.

"What?" Yeller still didn't understand.

"Liquid!" Dumb exclaimed, eager to be the one to call it.

"Right, 15 points to Hufflepuf. Or close enough to a liquid to reshape it anyway. After that, it cools down and it becomes a solid again."

"So what about the third state?" First cut to the chase to get to the end of Scratch's rant.

"You're looking at it." He pointed triumphantly at the metal cup from which thin wisps of steam were rising up. "With a material that can heat up so quickly and safely I have created a distillery that boils water into its gaseous form. Steam.

Hopefully the various impurities in the water won't travel along with it as it makes its journey up into the cloth."

He got some wows from his brothers, but they weren't really impressed until they saw the finished result, when he squeezed the distilled water into a clay bowl and they first laid their eyes on pure and clear water.

The pure water ended up being a scarce resource. They refined the distillery a bit more, giving it its own place and fire and a basin for the product to slowly drip into, but they didn't manage to produce enough for all their water needs and only drank from it. Cleaning their body and teeth was still done with regular and filtered water.

Scratch was apprehensive about letting it near his face. His wound was too painful to even rinse and the distilled water was going to waste whenever he attempted to put it on himself but spasmed at the sting.

Instead he spend the day grumbling and complaining about it, until First and his minions conspired to hold him down to forcibly clean it. They ambushed him when he came back from defecating in the woods, Yeller and Teeth grabbed him by the upper arms while First held his hair and assaulted him with a wet rag.

The pain was intense as his throbbing eye hole was forced open and the dead tissue and dried blood was scooped out. At first he screamed, but after a few seconds he fainted.

Kicker and Biter, who thought the their leader had been killed again, came rushing over. Yeller had to clumsily try to explain the situation while the other two rinsed out the last pus out of Scratch's open wound.

-

When Scratch came by his face wound was cleaned out and his eye had been bandaged with the last usable cloth on hand. He looked around the cave, where everyone lain down to sleep.

"Guys?" He said.

"Yeh" Yeller said softly.

"Thanks. Also, don't ever do that again."

"Okay."

"Ever."

"Okay."

It wasn't an illusion. The days were getting shorter.

It was hard to estimate without time-keeping devices, but the time the sun was visible above the horizon was decreasing. If this world was in any way similar to his previous one Scratch estimated that their location had to be closer to the arctic than to the equator. Winter was coming, and it was having a significant impact on the hours of sunlight.

-

Over the past two weeks after Scratch had recovered the group had settled into a comfortable rhythm of hunting, gathering and developing amenities. However, as the temperature continued to drop their routine became disrupted.

Animals were appearing less and less, plants became harder to find and more difficult to dig up and the well-digging operation Scratch had instigated had to be halted as the cold ground became too solid and snow started falling.

At first everybody was delighted by the appearance of snow, including Scratch. Most of them had never seen the substance before. The boys were running around the clearing in front of the cave, which they had recently paved with shale tiles from the deeper tunnel, throwing snowballs, making forts and snow angels and playing around. However, they eventually noticed their fingers numbing and their green skin turning a more blue turquoise hue. A big bonfire had to be started for all kids to warm up and be saved from hypothermia.

After that outside renovations had to be put on hold and Scratch set his sights on creating clothing.

-

Every one of them was still prancing around in the loincloths Drool had made for them. For some time now they had to huddle together during the night for warmth, but now even the days were getting too cold for going around uncovered.

Scratch now had to reconsider his priorities and the role of clothing. Rather than a luxury for modesty or comfort, to be developed at some point in the future when other matters are taken care of, clothing was now a priority for survival.

No more than the clothes on their backs. The words echoed in his mind.

He rubbed his painful jaw, his old injury would flare up whenever he got tense.

As he lit a cigarette for himself he let his eyes wander over his bulletin board, it had a map of the area with pictures of syndicate street sellers.

"Who are you? Who oh who?"

"Talking to yourself?"

His partner in crime had come out of the shower, her body wrapped in one towel, drying her hair with another. He had almost forgotten she was there.

He leaned back and took a drag on his cigarette. He blew out the smoke before speaking again. "Tell me, how much do we traffick in this neighbourhoud?"

"How much? I don't know, two million worth each year?"

"Not our biggest operation then."

She put her hands on her hips. "Not by a long shot... Why are we even here, getting into shootouts?"

He held up two fingers. "Two reasons. First of all, we need to project our power. We're acting without knowledge from the syndicate, so we can't use their enforcers. If we want our runners to respect us, and I mean runners everywhere, we need to go out and whack dissidents ourselves."

"And the other reason?"

"Running is a scam. Who'd risk their life selling drugs for three bucks an hour? You make more flipping burgers at Mackie D's. If we want to keep this operation alive, there can be no alternatives. The hood needs to stay a hood. Poor."

"Yikes. Tha's heavy. So we don't just whack a kid for shorting us, we're whacking 'im for giving back to the community."

"Well... haha." He stood up. "They're more similar than you think. Keeping the underlings under our thumb is always a priority, that's how the business goes. You don't let them rise up, that's fatal. Once you gain control, you have to keep them down. I don't want to see any schools, factories, or good houses here. The clothes on their back, that's all I want them to have."

She looked at the board. "But first we need to find out which of these pizza faces has been slipping our money to charity."

He put out his cigarette. "Get dressed, you'll catch a cold like that. After that we'll go out and do some questioning, we'll tell them if the perp doesn't come to us we'll kill his friends from social services."

"Will we?"

"I don't know yet. Probably. Probably do it regardless."

She walked off to dress herself. "You're really draconic, you know that?"

"Not draconic, darwinian." He called after her.

Ivory is easy to carve, but bone will also do for the purposes of a sewing needle. Together with Quiet and Second, Scratch would thread thin rope through cut hide to produce robes.

The military trio was the first to experiment with it, and they were very happy with it. They were able to venture all the way to river to spear fish.

However, Scratch wanted clothing that fit the body more closely underneath, to minimize places for heat to escape. So he sacrificed hides they were using as bedding and furniture to develop shirts and pants. After some failed experiments and wasted material he succeeded. He and the other crafters were also able to put together better shoes, with actual soles, made out of plant fibers.

-

"Like humans..." Teeth muttered as he tested his movement in the attire.

He didn't look very fashionable. The clothing was held together by very obvious rope stitches and made up out of an eclectic arrangement of fur from various sources. But he did look more like a human boy, shoes, pants, a shirt and a mantle or coat to cover it all up.

"Thanks." Scratch said, tugging at Teeth's covering to see if it wasn't tight or loose anywhere. "Humans are an advanced species. We'd do good to imitate them."

"Hrrm." Was the response. He didn't really agree.

Scratch took a step back to address everybody, who were fitting and admiring their new clothing. "Guys. Yeah.. yeah.

Looking great guys. Listen. Do me a favor and wear this when going outside in the cold okay? I'll feel better knowing you all aren't killing yourselves. If you're willing to die, please be willing to live and all that."

Frozen in place the others were waiting form him to continue.

"Uh. That was it. That was all I wanted to say."

As the kids went back to their business in their new clothes, chatting among each other, he almost slapped his forehead over what he forgot to say.

"Oh. Right. No. The miners. We're not digging today, I have a special project outside in the forest."

The official mining group consisted out of Fat and Dumb with occasional help from First and bossing around from Scratch.

Their purpose was to widen the tunnel and extract materials for the group to use.

-

To Fat and Dumb this was an lousy job. It didn't seem to be praiseworthy in the eyes of the others and it was monotonous and strenuous work. So they were somewhat annoyed a being send underground.

First had lived for longer than them and had other thoughts occupying his mind when working in the tunnel. He had to wonder how long this tunnel had been there. They had lived in that cave for countless days without ever letting their gaze fall on the other end of it. He didn't know much about the world, but he knew that was not something that was supposed to happen.

-

The only explanation could be Scratch. The eternal enigma. The mad genius. He really was an anomaly. (These were not words First had in his vocabulary, but they roughly portray the sentiment he was feeling.)

He felt that Scratch was opening paths for them that nature had kept locked out. There were many reasons why First had decided to hand the leader's knife to Scratch.

First of all, it was the only coup he could justify to his brothers, secondly, there was probably some truth to the idea that succession based on violence could only tear them apart.

But most importantly, Scratch was special. It could very well be that this strange talking one-eyed inventor was given to them to grant them a greater destiny. If that was the case they had to follow the path he laid out for them.

"Dumb and I have prepared some specialized tools. See if you can derive their use." Scratch proclaimed, as he gestured theatrically towards an array of smelted and shaped iron implements with wooden and clay frames and handle holding them together.

"Just tell us." First said immediately.

Scratch sighed. "Fine. I've invented some tools for us to make proper use of wood."

"We've got no problems with fire, do we?"

"Hush. Not fire. Let me explain it to you."

-

There were three goblin-sized hand axes with dried branches as handles and crude iron axeheads, a clay block plane with a sharp iron razor inside (a block plane being a tool for shaving wood and making it smooth) and a long see-saw.

It had been a small adventure molding these metal parts into the right shape and sharpening them over a smooth stone, but as they were now their creator had faith in their usefulness. He had also brought the big rope.

The big rope was the longest and thickest rope they had by a large margin. It had been a communal project to see how long they could make a rope, it was made up out of various materials, like bark, plant stem and hair and changed color partway through. What they had created had to have been at least 20 meters of sturdy rope and a few more of less strong material at one end.

-

Together they sought out an oak tree that wasn't too far away from the cave or too big to cut down and Scratch proceeded to boss them around. He wanted to create planks and for that he had thought up a series of steps.

First they had to cut down a tree, for this they used the long rope, to pull the tree down once it had been hacked through partway.

Then, to strip it of its branches and saw off both ends to make them flat.

The resulting round pillar had to be hewed into a square beam, it wasn't the saw that was used for the part but the axes.

Only after the lumber had been properly created like this could the saw be effectively used. And with it they would be able to saw the object into planks.

They only came halfway through hewing before everybody was exhausted. They had kept their shirts on but had removed their cloaks due to the building heat of the exercise.

"Don't slow down now. We're halfway!" Scratch said as he took over for Fat who had been the one going longest without a break now.

"I don't want to anymore. Can't we finish tomorrow?" Dumb complained, lowering his axe.

"We can't finish before dinner anyway." First agreed.

"Quiet is making soup!" Fat said. (The bowl at the center of the distillery would occasionally serve as cooking kettle so they could make use of rest meat on the bones of slaughtered animals.)

"Well. Fine. Since I'm in the minority. But we're really going to finish this tomorrow. I want to do this with multiple trees."

-

Despite the unfinished work the four goblins went back with a sense of accomplishment in their chest.

Life had improved since the days of Drool. When they had been born the cave had been the stinking hole of a recluse, now it was filled with hides. The patch of empty earth in front of it was paved with elegant stone and furnished with various workplaces for bleeding and carving animals, purifying water and creating weapons and tools. At the center was even the beginnings of a well.

They would be slurping their soup with dignity and pride. Satisfied in the midst of their accomplishments.

-

This peace of mind would be shaken up the next day when they went back to the lumber site to find a pack of strange goblins.

The World

The world is made up out of six layers, or planes.

The highest plane is the astral plane, the realm of the gods. It is unreachable by mortals, the stars are forever beyond our reach and understanding and we know very little about it. Only the names of the gods that reside there.

Below that are the heavens. Sky serpents reside here, as well as the floating islands of the Lost Civilization. There exist skyships with the capability to reach this height, but it is rarely visited for any reason other than adventuring.

The third plane is the overworld, the home of humans and elves as well as the majority of evil races. The lands are divided into the 5 nations, and the seas (sometimes referred to as the 7th plane) belong to sea serpents.

The fourth plane is the underworld, home of dwarves. A complex system of caves and caverns with no comprehensive record of its geography. The 5 nations have no authority here and generally only adventurers make the descent.

Below the underworld is the abyss, a large connected cavern held in place by ancient titanic pillars. It is the home of demonkind, the place from which they're summoned and to which they're banished by magic spells.

The lowest plane is hell. A sea of magma filled with epic level monsters such as magma wyrms and fire demons. There have been instances of demon kings making this their home.