I wanted to ask her more questions, but the look in her eyes surprised me, and I closed my mouth. It was fear, plain and simple, after ripping a goblins head off with your bare tail that was the last emotion I expected to see on her face. As she looked at me, she sighed and said.

“I can see you have questions for me, but you are going to have to ask them on the way to the village. I fear what we will find there,” I nodded at this, not truly understanding the gravity of the situation, but trusting Rulan. If she had been under the control of the goblins for five days, she must have some insight into their plans. What must it have been like? I had only been affected for a little bit, but to be affected for five days and not being able to do anything about it was unthinkable to me. We moved into the forest, back towards our tribe, and I asked my first question as I moved at speed beside Rulan.

“What did that little goblin do to me? Was it the same thing they did to you?”

“He tried to enslave you, using that little stone, he could have told you to do anything, and your body would have obeyed. Imagine being trapped inside your head while screaming at yourself to just kill the little green shit standing right in front of you. Luckily it didn’t put a rune on you, or we both would have been enslaved by now.” Rulan said in response to my question, and I shivered at how truly close we had come to disaster. The goblins must have ordered her to keep quiet and not reveal anything, and to distract me. It unnerved me that the goblins knew of me and wanted me out of the way. Being unable to control her own body, she had led me out here to distract me from whatever the goblins had planned for our tribe. The thought sickened me I had been entirely unaware of Rulan’s predicament, could I have helped her if I had known though? I thought not, but I would have had some warning about the goblins, surely I could have done something.

“Do you know what that red light was, of how that other goblin shot ice out of his staff? They have never been able to do these things before, not to my knowledge at least,” I asked, and if they had, the elders would have told us, or there would be stories about it.

“Oh yes, I sure do, goblins love to brag and gloat as it turns out, and they told me all about their red stones and what they plan to do with them. It’s all because of those red stones that they can do things that shouldn’t be possible,” she took a break after this, and then the words seemed to pour out of her as if they were trying to escape. “The goblins found those stones deep underground when one of their diggers broke through a wall and found some sort of cave system. After some exploring they found some of those red stones, I don’t know how many they have, but I don’t think it’s that many luckily. The stones infuse them with a power that allows the goblins to do amazing things, like what you saw, and with them, they plan to wipe the Naga off this island.”

I became silent for a while after that, continuing to move beside Rulan. Could the goblins do that? The thought seemed impossible, they were only goblins, after all, stupid, lazy little goblins. With these red gems I wasn’t so sure anymore, it wouldn’t be easy for them, we wouldn’t just lay down and die, but fight back. The goblins would lose many, of that I was certain. We might lose people too, however, how many I wasn’t sure, it depended on how many gems the goblins had.

“What were your orders exactly?” I asked and tried to move a little faster. I wasn’t sure what we would find in the village. Would there be a battle still raging or would we arrive to find our tribe completely frozen over? That seemed unlikely, but the thought still wormed its way into my head all the same.

“They asked me who the strongest people were. They didn’t seem interested in how many of us there are or what weapons we used, only the strongest. I thought of you and was compelled to answer. I’m sorry, I gave them your name, and was ordered to keep you away when the time came for them to attack.”

“It’s alright. You couldn’t control anything. We should hurry up. Hopefully, the warriors could hold their own,” I said, and we were silent for the rest of the journey. We made good time and were greeted by a hive of activity in the village. Naga were slithering frantically between the mud huts of the village picking up green goblin bodies and throwing them in a pile away from the houses. There were Naga corpses too, both young and old. They were treated with a lot more care. Lifted carefully to be taken to the home cave at the base of the bone tip mountain to be prepared for burial.

Rulan and I rushed up to the nearest person and asked what had happened here. I did not like the answer. The goblins had attacked during early morning and as I had suspected the warriors had underestimated them. When the first ice spike had come flying, it had taken the Naga precious time to get themselves together and fight back. That first confusion had cost us dearly as nearly fifteen people had lost their lives to the ice flying at the village during that time. One of our archers had managed to hit a goblin carrying a red gem, and when it had died the rest of the goblins had fled.

I thanked the woman, and we continued to the middle of the village where important meetings were often held. A crowd of people had gathered there and were listening to two people arguing. One was the leader of the warriors, Nala, and she was shouting at one of the elders and pointing a finger at her chest.

“We can’t just sit here and wait for them to attack us again, we need to strike now and wipe their filth of our island for good.”

“That would be equal to suicide, we don’t know how to fight this new weapon of the goblins,” the elder answered in a calm voice. Visra was her name, and the only sign that she was an elder was the fact that her hair was completely white. Nala clenched her fists in frustration before saying.

“What do you suggest then, we can’t just do nothing.”

“I think that we should send someone to the land beyond the water,” there were gasps from the crowd at this, and the onlookers started talking furiously over each other, Visra held up a hand, and they quieted. “The mainlanders have always held strange knowledge of many things, whoever goes can gather information about this new threat and maybe even come back to us with some new weapons of our own.” The crowd murmured excitedly at this, no one had been to the mainland in a long time, and the stories about it were hazy and often contradicted each other. Nala crossed her arms over her chest, giving the elder a skeptical look.

“Who would go on such a perilous journey and even have a chance of surviving? The mainlanders hate us or have you forgotten that in your old age?” I had pushed myself into the crowd, and finally, I made it into the circle the two had formed. Visra pointed at me without looking and said.

“Eshanai will go, she is our strongest, and will have the best chance of survival. The rest of us will relocate to the home cave. There is heat radiating out of the lower caves there. The goblins will find it hard to use their ice on us in such conditions.” Everyone looked at me after the elder's declaration, and I nodded my ascent.

“Fine then, but if this plan doesn’t work and we lose too many people before she makes it back I am taking things into my own hands,” Nala said resolutely and stormed away from the crowd, a scowl on her face.

The crowd dispersed, and I made my way to Visra, Rulan following behind me. She was probably right when she said that I would have the best chance of returning from the land beyond the water, but what could I hope to find there?

“Elder, I mean no disrespect, but what could I possibly hope to find that could help us here, wouldn’t it be better to attack as Nala said, instead of waiting for me to return bringing some miracle that I may or may not find?” I asked when I made it too her.

“I fear we would lose too many in the fighting, child. The mainlanders have always had better weapons than us, but that’s not what I am hoping you will find.” She paused, and she gazed at the horizon and sighed heavily. “When I was younger, a strange creature came to us from beyond the water. It was like a goblin in that it had no scaly tail. Instead, it walked on two legs as goblins do. It differed from the goblins in many ways, however, for one it was much taller and not green. It looked like our upper bodies do, but it had no breasts. I’m rambling, but the point is that this creature could do things that seem impossible. Such as shooting fire from its hands and make rain fall from the sky at the snap of its fingers. It’s something like that I’m hoping you will find.” I understood better now why she wanted someone to go. This power seemed quite useful. I would have said she had just imagined the fire shooting out of the creature's hands, but if goblins could make ice appear, why not fire? “I suggest you prepare yourself for the journey, tomorrow I will show you how you will cross the water,” Visra said before she slithered away.

The goblin corpses were burned that night, and I started packing what I thought could be useful on the journey. All the other Naga in the village were doing the same, but for the relocation to the home cave. I had one last wrestling match with Rulan before we fell asleep in each other's arms. I let her win this time, it got boring being on top all the time, and I thought she deserved it after what she had been through. She would not be coming with me on this journey. I would be going alone. Rulan was probably the person who knew the most about the goblins now, and she wanted to make up for the part she played in the goblins attack, even if she was unwilling. I fell asleep with Rulan wrapped around me, after worrying about the land beyond the water and not being able to sleep, she had squeezed me tight in her sleep, and I had felt safe, and decided to enjoy this while I could. Tomorrow would be my last day on the island, and I might not come back.