10/02/2024 Snippet, THE GOBLIN.

I don’t know whether to put up the truly horrible bits here. Because some horrible bits are coming.

You didn’t want to dry-gulch an elf while he was inspecting an elf-wood clearing, because that was exactly when he would be paying most attention to his surroundings. Picking him off before or after he got there just left you the vist to deal with anyway. So you needed the two together, only both distracted. There left a couple of good times to intervene, but you had to be careful then, too. Elves can move fast, when they’re not distracted. The important thing was to call your shot, so I waited until things just felt right.

I don’t know why the elves make vist do either submission ritual out in the open — no, wait, I do. No elf would ever drug or swive a vist in a vist shack, or really do anything else in one. If you think my contempt for the vist is vast, it’s nothing compared to the elves. They never miss a chance to demonstrate just how more important the elves are than everything else on this world, and a vist drug submission pushes a lot of elvish buttons. Probably even more than the swiving does, even. Alas for the elf, he was too engrossed at the sight of a vist writhing in ecstatic delirium from the drug to notice my approach until I was two feet behind him. That’s the nice part of an elf-wood. No leaves, no loam, just hard-packed dirt that soaked up sound.