After exiting the Sanctum Kai and the Elder traveled back through the glowing mushroom lit hallway and ascended the tree via the pulley system. They exited into a wide, open room that was empty save for an elevated podium and a bell hanging from the ceiling in the center. The Elder went up to the bell and pulled on an adjacent rope. The bell swung back and forth producing a clamorous, ringing chime that echoed throughout the rest of the tree. The Elder then beckoned for Kai to stand with him on the podium.

“Uh, are we doing a speech?” Kai asked. “Cause the last time I was at a public speaking event there were tomatoes involved...”

“No, nothing like that,” the Elder replied. “I just need to gather everyone to make it clear that we’ll help you find what you seek. Let me do the talking.”

After about ten minutes of bodies filling into the room the whole goblin village was present before the podium. In all there were around 100 goblins standing in front of Kai and the Elder, with many more of them hanging from the walls and peeking out from the stairs.

“By now I am sure that you have all heard of the Uluanwen Warrior,” the Elder’s voice projected across a room of upturned faces. “The dead Facestealer outside was his doing. Without his help many more of us would have died. No, perhaps all of us would be dead, our spirits forever cursed to wander their stomachs while they use our skins to lure other victims. In the same way that he helped us, we owe it to the legacy of our Ancestors to help him.”

The Elder brought a hand onto Kai’s shoulder and presented him to the crowd. All eyes shifted attention onto Kai. He smiled and flipped his spear into the air, making it spin across the room in a circle before shooting back into his hand. Cheers and clapping emanated from the crowd before being silenced by the Elder with a loud, exaggerated cough.

“I need volunteers who will lead him further into the forest to the Telwyrn village. It will be a dangerous journey, one that can very well result in death. I will not force anyone to go, but one from our village must accompany the Uluanwen even if that person must be me.”

The room descended into animated murmuring. Taking a glance at some of the goblin’s minds Kai could tell they were confused. Had the twins not said that the outlander would help them to create a Warrior of their own? If he was to leave so soon how were they going to defend themselves?

Eventually a hand was raised above the crowd by a goblin with a familiar patch of red hair. A path was cleared and Xitana made her way through the room until she stood in front of the Elder and Kai.

“If you leave, Elder, and the Facestealers come back, who will be able to protect us?” Xitana asked. “We have no Warrior, no Healer, no Shaman and now you would have this outlander take our Elder from us! We cannot afford to help the outlander when we can barely help ourselves!”

The goblins around Xitana nodded and voiced their agreement. Though some of them wanted to help Kai, the fact was that they could not spare even a single one of their able fighters, much less their Elder.

Despite their protests the Elder shook his head. “I am not asking you all to leave the village defenseless, just to escort him to the Telwryn and come back. Besides, the Uluanwen has scared off the Facestealers for good. They won’t be coming back so we should not keep him any longer like children clinging to their mo-”

Kai interrupted the Elder mid-sentence, “Uh, I hate to be the bearer of bad news but those Facestealers are coming back in about a week.”

A muted hush descended over the room as the goblins in front of Kai processed the meaning of his words. Then like a growing wave the message spread outwards into the crowd before the room exploded into an uproarious panic of shouts and hollers. Just as the terror was reaching its head, the Elder slammed his staff into the floor and bellowed “Quiet!”. The room grew silent, but a growing dread still weighed heavily in the minds of the goblins.

The Elder turned to Kai and asked, “Please, what do you mean when you say that the Facestealers will be back? In such a short time as a week no less?”

Kai shrugged. “I mean what I say. I may have scared those Facestealers off but they have no intention of leaving you alone. They’ve got a ‘big brother’ that they plan on bringing here along with his lackeys. It’ll take a few days for them to get him and then a few days to travel back. So we’ve got a week more or less to prepare for a siege.”

The Elder cast a glare at the nearby goblins to remain silent while he sank into thought. However, his reverie was interrupted by Xitana who said, “If what the outlander says is true then we should be leaving the forest instead of heading deeper into it. Even a blind Ximati can tell that the balance of the forest has been thrown into chaos.”

Xitana turned to face the crowd with her hands lifted above her head.

“Creatures that once stayed only inside the deepest parts of the forest are now roaming our territory. Will we stay huddling in our tree while monsters prowl outside waiting to pick us out from our home like newborn chicks from a nest? We need to leave now or we’ll be eaten, if not by the Facestealers then by whatever other monsters come out of the forest!”

Uncertainty began to take hold over the edges of the crowd, their nerves held together by a fraying thread. Xitana’s words had spooked them and the goblin’s minds were filled with images of Facestealers and many mouthed monsters knocking at their door. Xitana turned back to face the Elder but before she could say any more Kai spoke up.

“If you’re worried about those oversized lobsters then I’ve already come up with a plan to take them down.”

“That’s impossible,” Xitana scoffed. “You may have taken down one of them, but if 5, 10 or 20 of them attacked you all at once even you wouldn’t be able to survive.”

“Xitana is right, Uluanwen,” the Elder said. “Though her words are harsh I think you underestimate the strength of our foes. If we were to stay here we would only be awaiting our deaths.”

Kai did not say anything but instead tilted his head and looked beyond Xitana into the crowd to search for the two goblins he first met. They weren’t hard to spot as they were the only goblins wearing red painted masks in the entire room.

Kai beckoned them forward. “Hey, you two, come up here.”

The two goblins came up to the front and stood before Kai.

“Now that I think about it I never asked your names. What are you guys called?” Kai asked.

“Xitam and Xilam. But the village just calls us the twins,” the two of them replied in unison.

“Alright, Xitam and Xilam. Now, you two saw me take down that giant Facestealer, right? So that makes me stronger than a Facestealer, right?”

“Right!” the two replied enthusiastically. “You are a strong Warrior! Stronger than any Facestealer!”

Kai shook his head and positioned his arms into an X. “Wrong answer! The Facestealer is bigger, stronger and faster than I could ever be with my small body. If that’s the case then it doesn’t make any sense that I could kill it, right?”

Kai took out his black spike and twirled it around his fingers for the goblins to see. It was still stained with blood since Kai hadn’t had time to clean it.

“But I did kill that Facestealer and not because I was stronger than it. Now, when I killed the Facestealer I told you something. Something very important. What was it?”

The twins thought for a moment as they whispered amongst themselves. Eventually they replied, “You said something about advantage, right? That the Facestealer gave it to you and with it you killed him.”

“That’s right. Big or small, strong or weak, it doesn’t matter. In that situation it came down to who was the first to give up their advantage. If the Facestealer had stayed underground I wouldn’t have been able to kill him. But above ground I had an advantage over him. It’s the same thing here.”

Kai spread his arms wide and made a show of marveling at the walls around him as though they weren’t empty but held some unseen treasure. He turned side to side and the goblins followed after his gaze.

“Here you have the food, water, resources, tools, an armory and above all a high ground advantage over the surrounding area.”

Kai jumped off from the podium and waded through the crowd while lining goblins up and separating them into groups. As he did so he kept his eyes glued to the invisible wonders that surrounded him.

“If you stay here and build up your defenses no one will be able to touch you. But,” suddenly Kai whirled around in a circle to face his rapt audience, “if you leave you will be like a turtle taking off its shell. You’ll have no way to defend yourself and if you fight back the Facestealers can just burrow underground and pick you off one by one.”

Kai then continued to separate the goblins, taking their hands into his own, sizing them up and looking into each and every goblin’s eyes. When he was done the room had been separated into five distinct groups and Kai went back to stand on the podium.

“Stay here and the Facestealers will have to come to you. By doing so you’ll have a strategic advantage over them. I’m smaller and physically weaker than a Facestealer. It doesn’t take a genius to see that. But so long as you have a strategic advantage even a weak guy like me can prevail over the strong.”

Kai looked out over the crowd, but they still seemed unconvinced. The Elder shook his head.

“I know you mean well, Uluanwen, but you saw the memories of our Ancestors while they lived in The Pit. It took many sacrifices to kill just one monster. Hundreds of kin died if they ever came in a swarm. I refuse to ever have to return to such days of reckless sacrifice. We cannot fight if it means having to sate the appetite of monsters with the flesh of our kin.”

Kai thought about the Elder’s words and considered the memories of The Pit he had seen. It was true that back then they had to sacrifice people to survive but that didn’t mean that now-

“Huh? ...Oh! You’re assuming that I’m just going to throw you all down there to fight them off? No, no, no, you’ve got it all wrong! Wait, right here. Elder, come with me, I need you to show me around your storage area.”

Kai sprinted up the stairs with the Elder following close behind. While they were gone the goblins spoke amongst themselves.

“That outlander is mad,” Xitana said. “If we stay here we’ll just be waiting for our deaths. We could barely hold off five and now he wants us to hold off a swarm? It’s impossible!”

Goblins around her nodded in agreement but the twins spoke up soon after.

“The outlander speaks the truth you refuse to see. If we run the Facestealers will hunt us down and we will be able to do nothing. We can’t run! We must fight!”

“Oh, shut up. You twins always wanted to become Warriors anyway. You two can die for your dreams of glory and honor, but don’t drag others into your fantasies.”

“Fantasies? You’re just mad you can’t become a Healer while your mother is away. Don’t blame us for that.” The twin lifted up their masks and stuck out their tongues at Xitana.

Heated arguments spread out from the center of the room like a wildfire as the goblins waited for Kai and the Elder to return. At first, the combined voices of the goblins was a steady thrum that gradually grew in volume until it was impossible to hear even an adjacent person. Opinions were voiced, then shouted, then screamed. Eventually the room became so loud that the walls began to vibrate.

It was then a carapace from the corpse of a Facestealer was flung down the stairs into the room with a thump. Over the course of a minute the crowd grew into silence, but even after everyone had quieted down neither Kai nor the Elder descended from the stairs. It was just as the goblins were about to go back to arguing when-

A boulder rocketed down the stairs, crashed into the carapace and bounced off where it then lodged itself into the floor with the splintering of wood. Large, jagged cracks bloomed across the surface of the carapace. Kai then descended from the stairs. In one hand he had a large sling made with rope and a thick patch of leather. On the other hand he had a stone sledgehammer that had one side honed down into a pointed end.

“And that’s just from flinging a boulder down a flight of stairs. Imagine what would have happened if you’d flung this boulder from the top of the tree. Now, I know it’s hard to aim and throw far when you’re just flinging rocks with your bare hands so I made this.”

Kai lifted up the sling in his hand for the goblins to see. It was around two meters in length with the leather patch in the center wide enough to accommodate a heavy boulder with ease.

“With a sling you’ll have range and a bit more accuracy. As for more close engagements-”

Kai lifted his sledgehammer over his shoulder and brought it down onto the carapace. After two strikes it broke a broad hole into the armor with a sound like the snapping of bones. Kai then brought out a familiar looking spike lined with black ooze.

“That being said, I don’t expect you to take down a bunch of two story lobsters by hand so after we punch a hole into them you can poison them and whittle them down over time. However...”

Another carapace was flung down the stairs and the Elder followed after while tentatively carrying a pot filled with a bubbling black liquid. He then poured all the liquid over the carapace and immediately the smell of acrid smoke and burned Facestealer flesh soon filled the room. For added effect the Elder tossed a lit torch onto the carapace and fire spread across its surface. Even from far away it was easy to tell that the heat radiating off the carapace was enough to melt flesh off of bones.

“That’s assuming the Facestealers can even get up here,” Kai said with a smile. “Trust me, I’ve got more tricks like this up my sleeve. Those Facestealers won’t be able to take a step towards this tree without paying the price for it.”

Kai and the Elder walked back up to the podium and stood before a crowd stunned into silence.

“Now,” Kai began, “I’m not going to say that none of you are going to die. That’s what liars say. Instead I can guarantee that you’ll have a fighting chance if you listen to what I say and help me prepare. You can do this. You don’t have to run and you don’t have to wait around to get massacred.”

“I agree with Uluanwen,” the Elder said. “He has convinced me and I will support him. However, I cannot force anyone to fight who does not want to. We must come to this decision as a tribe. Will we stay or leave?”

There were some mumblings of disbelief, mainly coming from Xitana, but for the most part the sight of the breached and burning carapaces had convinced the majority of the tribe. The decision was made to stay and fight.

“Great!” Kai exclaimed. “Now, I know half of you were expecting to be equipped with weapons and armor but we are not doing any of that. Best case scenario is the Facestealers don’t even get anywhere close to the tree. To achieve that we’re going to need resources.”

Kai pointed to one of the groups he had arranged previously.

“You guys are group 1. You are in charge of getting wood. Fresh wood, no dried stuff. That means you’re going to be chopping. We’ll also need giant logs as well, the bigger the better.”

Kai then pointed at three other groups in quick succession while listing off their tasks. Group 2 was in charge of gathering poisonous materials. Group 3 was in charge of weaving ropes and lengths of cord. Group 4 was in charge of gathering rocks, enough to fill the entire room the tribe was currently in.

“Group 5 is on standby until I have the time to teach you how to turn sap into pitch and heat tar out of wood. Otherwise, everyone else knows what they need to do so get to it. We only have a week so we need to hurry it up!”

With that the goblins dispersed and soon Kai was left alone with only the Elder and Xitana staring defiantly up at them. The Elder said nothing and after a minute of silence Xitana stomped off after her group.

“Well, we should get to work, too,” Kai said.

Kai and the Elder ascended up the stairs into the armory Kai had seen before while riding the lift. Inside was a single goblin hammering pieces of metal on an anvil in front of a small forge. At a glance Kai could tell that the goblin wasn’t trained to work with the equipment he had in front of him. It was more like he had been told the general idea of what he was supposed to do and had to work from there. The evidence was apparent from the various warped and discarded pieces of equipment that lined the floor of the armory.

“Hey,” Kai said as he lifted a paper thin metal blade off the ground. “Making swords are we? That’s fine, but against the Facestealers it won’t do much.”

“I know,” the goblin smith replied. “But it’s the best I can manage without knowing what I’m doing. It’s hard to figure out when all I’ve got is a book that I can’t even read. Thank the Ancestors it’s at least got pictures. I’m Xigan, by the way.”

“Xigan, huh. I’ve heard you're not a smith but the local Builder around here.”

“Correct, I’m the one in charge of carving the wood and making sure that the tree won’t suddenly fall on top of our heads one morning. Only started using this forge since the Facestealers started attacking. Why did you even bring this thing back with you, Elder? We don’t even know how to use it and it's a fire risk just waiting to happen.”

The Elder shrugged. “It seemed useful.”

“Every piece of junk you bring back is ‘useful’. We have a whole armory full of weapons that we can’t even use!”

Xigan pointed to a pile in the corner of the armory that was filled with all kinds of weapons. Swords, spears, knives, axes, scythes, tridents, pikes, scimitars, khopeshes, javelins, glaives, whips and all manner of exotic and foreign implements jutted out from a hill of gleaming edges and spikes. Kai went up to the pile and took out the few weapons that would be useful against their armored opponents. Out of the entire pile Kai only selected three weapons, a steel warhammer with a lion carved on its hilt, a rusted pickaxe and a harpoon.

“Wow, I have never seen an armory so well stocked and yet simultaneously so useless,” Kai said. “Where’d you even get this stuff?”

“My travels,” the Elder said. “Same as with my magic cloak. All this is just stuff I’ve gathered over the years.”

“Huh, this is one interesting world if it's got such a diversity of weapons.”

“It is. It can be cruel at times but if I had to wander it again I would.”

“Well, next time bring back some ranged weapons. We’ve only got a week so I figure the best we can do is twenty or so small ones and a big one? Hm.” Kai turned to Xigan and asked, “Do you have any paper?”

Xigan went to a desk and brought out a sheet of paper and a piece of charcoal. Kai took it and started drawing over it as Xigan looked over his shoulder. When Kai was done he showed it to the Xigan who only looked at the schematics with confusion.

“Bows won’t work against the Facestealers,” Xigan said. “The arrows just bounce right off their armor no matter how sharp you make them.”

“First off, who said we’re shooting arrows?” Kai asked. “And second off, this isn’t a bow, it’s a siege weapon.”

Xigan looked over the schematics again and smiled.

“Ah. The rope twists around the wood and that gives it power. More than a single string bow does. But we would need a lot of rope for this.”

“Already on it. I’ve got a group weaving rope for us. After the logging team is done I’ll have them help us in making these. Also, I’ll need your help in cutting a hole into the tree.”

Xigan looked up from the schematics with an expression of suspicion and doubt.

“Why? I won’t have you endangering the integrity of the tree no matter how sound your plan is.”

“Oh, no, of course I’m not going to touch the main tree. I just need to make one of the bigger branches hollow is all.”

“If you make it hollow, then it runs the risk of snapping off the tree.”

“I know. That’s exactly why I’m doing it.”

Xigan looked down at the schematics again and sighed before turning back to the Elder.

“I saw you two lighting the tree’s tears on fire. Are all outlanders as crazy as this one is?”

“No,” the Elder replied as he stared at Kai who was already hammering away at something on the forge. “This one is special, but whether for good or ill of the tribe that is yet to be seen.”