Bug-Eater’s spear struck the floor. Among warriors, it was a motion as simple as breathing, a demand for attention.

The other goblins heard it and flinched; it was a miserable sight. They were already weak, and skinny, malnourished in ragged clothes. There should’ve been no part of them they could make smaller, and yet, they seemed to shrink into themselves to escape his gaze.

That was how they survived. Not being seen when the warriors came looking for someone to feed to the beasts below, someone to beat.

Only there was nowhere to hide now, in the low ash-ruins of the tribe’s huts. Children gathered under their grandmother’s arms. The whole scene was cut with a kind of sorrow so palpable Bug-Eater felt like he could smell it. His nose twitched.

“You lot-” He pointed, and they shifted not to be the one he was pointing at.

“I need help. Shine-Catch, the people who came to rescue us from the dragon, they need help. They’re gonna be slaughtered. The warriors are gonna cut them down soon as they come up from below.” The words just tumbled out of him. It seemed impossibly vital, dizzyingly important, that they stop this; it was beyond him to imagine anything more important, in that moment.

And his words meant nothing to anyone else.

They stared at him, half-confused, half-scoffing. Like he was saying they had to stop the sun rising. It was the sun.

What could they do? The silence was deafening.

“Aren’t you sick of this?” He cast an arm out at the ruins. Embers still burned beneath the ash, creating crackling pockets of orange within the grey. “Your house is ashes, you have nothing to eat, ain’t you tired? You don’t have to just have to take this. There’s no reason.”

And still, nothing.

What did they see? They saw him. Someone who’d maybe been kind to them, once or twice, in small ways. But not someone who’d cared to change the order of things. Not until now.

He was just an opportunist. Looking to put himself on top with their blood.

The sickness in the song - the lyre in the drums, weaving in and out like a whisper - told him they were right. That’s all he was, and that’s all there was to be. History was a succession of petty tyrants grinding the people down, and liars promising they’d be better if only they had the throne.

He swayed on his feet, a hand over his eye. The ancestor-song was angry like he’d never heard and the sound threatened to drown his thoughts.

“Come on! Mebbe yesterday, this made sense. Maybe yesterday things really couldn’t get much better and it was all just fighting for scraps.” That’s how it was. The world was harsh. They believed in small gods and took the abuse of weak leaders. “It isn’t that way. You’ve seen trees grow from the ground, full of fruit, you’ve heard the voice of the spirit who’ve made them. Some of you saw the water and the grass and all those good things.”

“You’ve seen a goblin who left us come back riding a beast nobody’s even seen, carrying a spear made of lightning. If you didn’t see that and wonder what it was like- what she got to see out there, when the rest of us hardly leave these caves- you’ve forgotten how to live.”

He hadn’t gone with her. He hadn’t even looked her in the eyes.

“You’ll never get the chance to. They’ll kill anything they think might give you a better life, just to keep you small. I don’t wanna live like that. I’ve seen miracles, and I believe they mean there’s a new world out there for us.”

And he had to believe he was telling the truth.

---

Shiny felt the ancestor-song writhing like an animal in pain. It twisted in the air, haunted by the invading force of that foreign song, the sound of the lute. She was struggling to keep pace with the stoneskin ahead, the wind only barely pushing her to match their longer legs, their stronger stride. She could only see them for a moment as she broke through into each cavern - their lanterns and torches casting their shadows back as they vanished ahead.

The caverns slid past. They were high up now, where the air was dry and full of the desert’s distant heat.

She knew these paths.

She knew the ambush was ahead.

“Stop, godsdammit!” She shouted out, but she was out of breath, leaning against the walls - her voice died without reaching them.

And then she heard the screams. Finding her second wind, she flung herself down the last few steps, the last turn of the winding underground path.

The stoneskins had reached the ambush. Boulders crashed down, rolling down the incline with a speed that struck sparks and chips of stone from their sides as they tumbled towards the caravan soldiers. Spears and arrows hammered down on their shields as they tried to retreat from the avalanche trap, and although their skin was hard, their armor better than the simple bone weapons the goblins had - even then there were enough missiles in the air for a few to cut into the softened joints of the stoneskins.

One went down, just for a moment, staggering as an arrow bit into his hip. Another soldier reached for him moments too late. Before he could be dragged free, a boulder smashed into him and shattered his right half. That brittle skin was tough - but when it broke it shattered to pieces. There was no arm past the shoulder, no leg past the knee.

The ones trying to retrieve him were forced back by another volley of arrows. And he wasn’t the only casualty. Another stoneskin had been pinned by the first volley of boulders, trapped against the wall. The only saving grace was the same massive stone holding him down was sheltering him from the barrage.

“Lock shields!” The second-in-command called Together, they lifted their shields and made a wall. The sound of spears rattling against the wooden bodies and metal rims filled the air with thunder.

For a moment it sounded like drums.

Ahead, they were trying to rescue the half-broken stoneskin and the pinned one. The whole formation moved awkwardly, arrows hissing through the gaps, every strike bearing the potential to open a hole in the ranks if it bit a joint just right.

Shiny pushed into the space behind them, shouting for the lieutenant’s attention. “Hey! I need you to make a space for me. If I can get through, I c’n stop ‘em!”

The wind would carry her. She could get through. She had to.

It could only be a few dozen steps. But already, the goblins perched at the tunnel mouth on a raised lip of stone were pushing new stones forward. They used long sticks as levers to roll the boulders forward, getting ready to launch them down and crush the shield formation.

An arrow slashed through the air and landed in one of the stone-pusher’s throat. An archer crouched behind the shields, firing through a thin gap between.

For a moment the rockfall was held off.

The lieutenant turned to her, his face masked, and called out. “Avorin! Fall in and lend me your shield!” The far left edge of the formation stepped back, and handed over a small buckler. The lieutenant thrust it into Shiny’s arms. “When I give the signal, run fast.”

He turned back towards his men. “On three, open middle, prepare to rush them!”

“One…”

Shiny braced, slipping the shield onto her arm. Letting the wind gather around her and lift the tangled locks of her hair.

“Two…”

She did everything she could to ignore the drums. She knew they’d be beating in the hearts of their enemy. For the first time in her life, she was fighting against the ancestor-song.

And at the same time fighting to save it.

“Three!”

The ranks split and she kicked forward, moving so fast her feet barely seemed to touch the ground. She saw the arrows fall towards her in slow motion, saw the tip of a spear turn as it hurtled through the air, blade catching the light.

She twisted, lifted her shield, kicked sideways. She struck the earth with her spear to slow her own momentum enough to kick into a different path, zig-zagging wildly underneath the volley. She raced up, limbs burning, breathing in snorts as her teeth locked. A goblin ahead of her, eyes going wide. Not believing she could be alive - much less coming this fast.

He reached for a blade and her foot hit the cavern wall, sending her up, managing to take three steps before gravity pulled her on a twisting path back to earth. She landed behind him.

The spear sung and ripped his calf into pieces with a lash of lightning.

In the flash of light she saw them. The thunder peeled out, echoing in the stone walls, and the whole group of ambushers was forced to turn. They saw her. She saw them, and felt the fear in her hearts through the thundering drumbeat of the ancestor-song.

She reached down, pulled Tusk-Mouth’s shining dagger from her belt, and flung it point-first to the earth. “It’s over, y’uh idiots. Every time we’ve shown you mercy, you’ve shown you’re a bunch of clawing, greedy, snail-brain shitheads.”

She lifted her spear and shield. “This time I’mma break a few of you and you can see if y’still feel testy.”

She was just one. They were twelve. But they were pinned now, the formation moving forward, climbing. They’d only have moments to kill her and turn back to launching their stonefall traps.

Moments she’d make them pay in blood.

The drums made a single beat, and then a long, terrible silence. She heard the lyre again, that corrupting song. She saw a shadow drifting behind the warriors, playing golden strings, infecting the song.

“And you can get fucked too, whatever y’are. I fuckin hate stringy instruments, they sound like a fairy farting.”

The drums beat again. A slow, deliberate sound.

And a voice spoke from behind her. “You can all get fucked. I don’t know why the song is sick, I don’t know why you chose what you did. I just know this ain’t the way.”

Shiny had been ready to fight them alone. She’d been ready to be alone, oh, from the day she’d left the tribe behind. Long before the drums had been infected by whatever fuckery this was, she’d cut herself off from the pack, from the shared heartbeat, the single triumphant scream of the tribe in battle together. That thought had quietly twisted like broken glass in heart.

It was a whole different kind of heartbreak to see them stand beside her. To see Bug-Eater beside her, grinning hopefully, like he thought maybe she’d kiss him, and behind that big beautiful idiot, the damn tribe itself. Not the few who were strong enough to fight, the few who got to swing their weight around. The tribe. The sick and the old, the many.

She saw fear in their eyes - the warriors and the ones behind her. It was a scary thing. Only, the tribe was used to living in fear, and the warriors were used to getting their way.

One of the warriors paused, and, trying his luck, put down his spear.

She shook her head from side to side till her pointy ears flopped about, grinning wide as a wolf. “Nah, you’re gonna need that.”