The red mist clung to Goburo's skin like a second layer of dirty cloth.
He walked through the twisting streets of the Conjurer's Crane, the puppet healer trailing a few metres behind him. The city was a labyrinth of rust and iron. The buildings loomed over him, dripping with condensation. The few people he passed—mercenaries with glowing runic blades, hooded mages, ragged peddlers—looked at him with the same mild disgust the innkeeper had shown. They didn't attack him. They simply looked through him, as if he were a piece of trash blown in by the wind.
Goburo didn't mind. He was used to being invisible.
He let the root-line guide him. Kenji's presence in his head was a quiet hum, a map drawn in vibrations. It pulled him away from the main thoroughfares, away from the bustling markets and the noisy taverns, into the industrial district.
The air grew hotter. The smell of sulphur was replaced by the sharp, acrid scent of coal smoke and burning ore.
He turned a corner and saw it.
A smithy.
It was built into the side of the canyon wall, a squat, sturdy structure of black stone. Unlike the other buildings, which were cramped and vertical, this place had a wide footprint. A massive chimney rose from the roof, belching black smoke into the red sky. The rhythmic *clang-clang-clang* of a hammer on steel echoed out through the open double doors.
Goburo stopped.
He looked at the puppet. She stood motionless, her violet-lit eyes staring blankly at the sparks flying from the forge inside.
"Stay," he whispered.
He walked to the entrance. He hesitated. He had been rejected three times tonight. He was tired. His missing eye throbbed with a dull, phantom ache.
But it was cold, and the mist was chilling him to the bone.
He stepped inside.
The heat hit him like a physical wall. It was glorious.
The interior was vast. The forge dominated the centre, a roaring pit of molten orange and yellow. To the left, piles of scrap metal were sorted by type—iron, copper, bronze. To the right, finished weapons hung on racks—swords, axes, maces.
A large man stood at the anvil. He was shirtless, his skin glistening with sweat, covered in old burn scars. He held a glowing bar of metal with a pair of tongs. He brought the hammer down.
*CLANG.*
He didn't look up.
Goburo stood there. He felt like an intruder. He prepared to turn around, to slink back into the cold.
"Excuse me," Goburo said, his voice small against the roar of the fire.
The man stopped. He lowered the tongs. He turned around slowly.
He was huge. A mountain of muscle and scars. A thick black beard covered his jaw. He wiped his forehead with a rag.
He looked at Goburo.
Goburo braced himself for the insult. For the 'no rooms'. For the 'get out, rat'.
The smith looked at Goburo's bandaged eye. He looked at his dirty, torn clothes. He looked at the desperate, exhausted set of his shoulders.
"Yeah?" the smith grunted. His voice was deep, like rocks grinding together.
"I... I was looking for a place to rest," Goburo stammered. "Just... out of the rain. I can pay... a little."
The smith stared at him for a long moment.
Then he shrugged.
"Yeah, okay."
Goburo blinked.
"Okay?"
"You deaf? I said okay. You look like you've been through a meat grinder. Rest. Don't touch the tongs. They're hot."
The smith turned back to his work.
*CLANG.*
Goburo stood frozen for a second. No insults. No disgust. Just... acceptance.
He stepped further inside.
It was a typical smithing place, or at least, what Goburo imagined one would look like. It had the standard fireplace, the roaring heart of the operation. But in the back, there was a structure that didn't fit the industrial vibe. It looked like a rocking barn house—a small, wooden annex built against the canyon wall, aged and weathered.
"Back there," the smith said, pointing with his hammer without looking. "Left side. Go on. I don't like people hovering."
Goburo nodded quickly.
"Thank you."
He walked past the forge, feeling the intense heat dry his damp clothes instantly. He reached the wooden annex. He pushed open the low door.
He stepped into a round bedroom.
It was a strange, cozy space. The walls were circular, made of smoothed river stones. The ceiling was domed, with a small hole in the centre to let the smoke out from a small, central fire pit that had burned down to embers.
But it wasn't the shape of the room that made Goburo stop.
It was the view.
The outer wall of the room was made entirely of thick, crystal-clear glass. Or some sort of reinforced resin. It looked out directly over the abyss. The entire canyon was spread out below him—a sea of lights, the distant roar of the waterfalls, the red mist swirling through the spires of the city.
Goburo walked to the glass. He pressed his hand against it. It was warm from the forge on the other side.
He looked at the corner. There was a pile of blankets, a crate that served as a table, and a pillow stuffed with straw. It was simple. It was rough.
But to Goburo, it was a palace.
He walked over to the corner. He collapsed onto the blankets. They smelled of coal and iron and old sweat. He didn't care.
He lay down.
"Amazing," he whispered.
He looked out at the canyon. He watched the lights flicker in the red dark.
The smith didn't come back. He didn't ask for money. He didn't ask for a story. He just let him be.
Goburo closed his eye. The hum of the roots in his head quieted. The puppet stood guard outside the door, a silent sentinel in the heat.
For the first time since the village burned, Goburo felt safe.
At the inn—the Rusty Spigot—the atmosphere was entirely different.
Watabei lay on the small, lumpy bed in room four. She had bathed. She had scrubbed the blood off her skin until it was raw. She had changed into a clean tunic from her pack.
But she couldn't rest.
She tossed. She turned.
She kept looking at the empty space on the floor where Goburo should have been sleeping.
*Is he okay? Is he dry? Is he safe?*
She sat up. She groaned.
"Stop it," she told herself. "He's fine. He has a zombie bodyguard. He's fine."
But the worry gnawed at her. She had left him out there. In the cold. In the racist city.
She couldn't take it anymore.
She stood up and opened the door. She walked down the narrow hallway and down the creaking stairs.
The common room was full now. The noise was deafening. Laughter. Shouting. The clinking of mugs. A bard in the corner was playing a lute badly. The air was thick with pipe smoke.
Watabei walked up to the bar.
The receptionist—the same woman who had checked her in—was serving drinks. She was a middle-aged woman with tired eyes and a permanent frown.
She looked at Watabei.
"What'll it be?"
"Just... a cider. Something warm."
The woman poured a mug from a steaming kettle. She slid it across the counter.
Watabei wrapped her hands around the mug, letting the heat seep into her fingers.
She took a sip. It was sweet and tart.
She looked at the woman. She seemed bored. She looked like she had seen everything.
"Can I ask you something?" Watabei said.
The woman looked up. "Ask away. Costs extra to answer, though."
Watabei fished out a copper coin and slid it across.
The woman pocketed it instantly.
"Go on."
"The people here," Watabei said, lowering her voice. "The innkeeper. The people on the street. Why do they hate goblins so much? I mean... I know there's prejudice everywhere, but this..."
She gestured vaguely at the room, at the hostility that seemed to radiate from the walls.
"This feels personal."
The woman sighed. She leaned her elbows on the counter, coming closer.
"You're not from here," she said. It wasn't a question.
"No."
"Well," the woman said. "It's just the fact that..."
She paused, wiping a spot on the counter with a rag.
"Ten years ago," she said, her voice dropping, "this wasn't the Conjurer's Crane. It was just the Crane. A mining town."
"We had a deal with a local tribe. Green-skins. Goblins. They worked the lower mines. We worked the upper. Good deal. They got shafts we couldn't fit in. We got the big veins."
She stopped wiping. Her eyes hardened.
"Then the Goblins found the Core."
"The Core?" Watabei asked.
"A mana vein. A big one. Pure. Worth a kingdom."
"The Goblins... they didn't tell us. They dug it out in secret. They were going to sell it to the Mage Guilds in the capital. They were going to buy the whole town. Enslave us."
Watabei blinked.
"How do you know?"
"We caught them," the woman spat. "A runner. With a sample. We went down to confront them... and the shafts were trapped. Collapse. Killed thirty men. Good men."
She looked Watabei dead in the eye.
"The goblins didn't die. They knew the way out. They left us to rot in the dark."
"So yeah," she said, straightening up and picking up another mug to dry. "We don't like goblins here. To us, they aren't cute little merchants. They're backstabbing thieves who would bury you alive for a bag of mana crystals."
She turned away to serve another customer.
"So if your little friend is out there," she said over her shoulder, "he better watch his back. Because around here, 'accidents' happen to greenskins all the time."
Watabei stared at the back of the woman's head.
She looked down at her cider.
Suddenly, it didn't taste sweet anymore.
TO BE CONTINUED...