Allologue 1

*4th Wheel of Numrenth, After Calamity 923*

Dort the Elocutioner sat gazing into the fire as he absentmindedly
sharpened his greataxe. He watching the flames licking at the edges
of the logs, consuming it and growing stronger- it was like himself,
a fury contained to a firepit a spark from which could fell an entire
forest in its conflagration. Distracted in his distant
philosophizing, he dragged the whetstone across his knuckles.

"Elf pudding!" he cursed and spat. His companion stirred at
the noise, having been lost in his own contemplations.

"You seem distracted, Dort," Kitano asked in his clipped,
direct way. The man's unyielding steel eyes above his bescarved nose
and mouth fixated on Dort's own. "Are you well?"

Dort held Kitano's gaze before looking away and up at the night sky.
"Yeah," he said. "I've just got this nagging feelin'
I'm forgetting something important."

"You *are* forgetting something important." Kitano
reminded him, as if it hadn't been Dort himself who explained his
quest.

"Yeh but not that. Something else. Maybe," Dort sighed,
"There's this goblin named Veggrek, I feel like I should know
him."

"Maybe you do? Is he the one you seek?" Kitano asked.

"No, can't be. The Veggrek I knew is..." Dort looked
pointedly at Kitano, "Anyway it can't be him. I remember that
much. I remember the chief screamin' his name. Over and over and over
again."

"The
chief then?" Kitano offered, again as if it wasn't something
they'd discussed dozens of times.

"Maybe? Probably. It were just the three of us in the dungeon,
least before we met up with them humans. But the chief I knew...
wouldn't just have done what he did."

"Which was?"

Dort threw a rock at Kitano. He'd stopped throwing them with anything
less than all his strength awhile ago, and yet that Kitano caught
them effortlessly surprised him still. He had a weird kind of faith
in the strange human's abilities.

"I don't know and you know I don't know. Quit bugging me about
it," Dort said.

"As you wish," Kitano said, rotating the rock between his
steel claws for a moment before discarding it. "Do you remember
the humans, then? perhaps finding them could lead to something?"

"Not really, could hardly stand to look at them," Dort
chuckled. "They're disgusting. and almost as bad as the dragons.
Dragons'll at least eat a fellow, but humans... they just kill what
they don't like. And no human's ever liked a goblin."

"Do
goblins not kill normally?"

"Not like humans do. We kill when we're hungry, or when we're
attacked, or when it's fun and when we might as well eat anyway. But
when goblins feel threatened, we usually just run and hide."

"But not you."

"No, not me." Dort rocked on his seat. "If someone's
going to try and kill you, you gotta try and kill them back. It's
rotten, but someone's gotta protect the clan. Someone's always coming
after us."

"Always struggling."

"Yeah, I guess."

"It
would be so much easier if everyone would just stop struggling
against their fate." Kitano said, with a little more
exasperation, indeed more emotion at all, than Dort was used to
hearing from the man.

Dort
stared at Kitano as Kitano now stared into the flames. "You
know, Kitano, every time I get to thinking you're all right you go
and say something that freaks me right out."