Grax the Light Titan sat at a table he did not want to sit at, in the middle of open lands far from Goblinhome. He should have been at his estate, where his previous life had been, and where he had the resources to actually influence what was going to happen here at this meeting, but no. The meeting was happening now, specifically to thwart his ability to influence the situation. He should just turn titan and rip them all—

Old Slave glanced at Grax, and Grax felt a primal fear that cut right through his thoughts and pinned him to his chair.

Old Slave was a dangerous bastard, even to someone like Grax. What was even more surprising than that, though, was that Old Slave's name was actually Old Slave. Grax hadn't realized that until he came back to Goblinhome, until he was reintroduced to society. But Grax's previous lives, recorded in his estate, had all known Old Slave by 'Old Slave'; he had known the biter by his real name all this time.

Grax had had many names over the years. According to 'his' records, 'Grax' was one of his earliest names. One of his most wild names, too. A lot of the goblins of Goblinhome were worried to find out that 'Grax the Conqueror' was back, but a few were happy.

Grax was still reorienting himself to the fact that he had a thousand-year lineage. It didn't feel real. His name in his last life had been Grazis, but it had always been some version of 'Gra-something'. That was who he was. Ever since he got back home and started reading about his pasts, sometimes, when he dreamed, he experienced other lives. Those other lives had helped to ground his worst excesses. He still wanted Total War with the humans, but Total War would happen when it could happen in goblin-favor, and not a moment before.

There were a lot of problems to clear away from the humans before Total War was on the table.

Mark Careed was one of those big problems.

Ha!

'Mark Careed', as if that was a proper name for the Black King.

Grax was pretty sure that Mark was someone else reborn from another time and place, too. Probably that Dragon King the humans had in their deep history, but no, the Witches of Goblinhome told Grax many times that humans didn't work that way.

… Anyway.

The meeting.

3 goblins and 3 humans, all of them trying to work out a treaty, because Goblinhome had real power and the humans were afraid.

Old Slave was there, sitting all prim and proper in his human-clothes. According to what Grax was learning about him, Old Slave always revived the fastest of any of the True Elder goblins.

Until now.

Grax had laughed himself silly due to that fact at several parties already.

A newcomer! Born from Grax's Bite and the thresher at the settlement. Grax had yet to talk to that son of his, and he had problems with the guy's name, but… That could change. 'Glorious Goblin'? Bah! No. Grax hated that whole idea. But… the goblin himself had merit, if only because of his power. No doubt Old Slave had already visited him, though. Old Slave was twisty like that.

BiggestBaddest was also here at the table, all fat and happy.

BiggestBaddest had no reincarnation timeline or previous lives because BiggestBaddest simply never died. He was a Hive Mind, spread out through a thousand bodies. He connected Goblinhome to the world, organized all of their coordination, and he was the most entrenched goblin around.

And, well, correction: BiggestBaddest died all the time. But you'd need to kill 1,000 bodies, scattered across the globe, all at the same time, and if you missed a single one then he'd just go out and Bite anything at all and rebuild his entire self. He had done that many times already, according to Grax's records.

Grax's previous lives were big allies with BiggestBaddest, but right now Grax himself was 'just another goblin' to BiggestBaddest.

Grax was also the one who wanted Total War, so he was kinda on the outs with BiggestBaddest.

The three of them sat on one side of a stone table.

Three humans sat on the other side.

Two nobodies, but still relatively high up, and one centerpiece.

One of them was from Okuana, across the big water. He was Inquisitor/Sentinel Walter, who had ties with Mark due to that shit that had gone down in Memphi, across the Veil. Walter was big as a wall, and he had the markings of a wall used for target practice, too. Scars everywhere. Grax felt that if he even touched the guy, he would suffer big injuries. It was probably a true feeling. So Grax didn't touch the guy.

The other nobody was some guy from the Grand Guard, which guarded Crytalis's… northern shores, or something. Down past the Meteor Sea. Grax wasn't sure about all of that. He didn't even know the guy's name. He was sure someone had said it, but who the fuck cared about him. At least Walter was important because he had ties to 'Mark'.

The last human was the important one.

First Prince Doomo Aluatha.

Red hair, red eyes, skin white as milk and with fangs big enough for any goblin to find him respectable. He looked vicious enough to be a goblin, too, but that was just his Power—

Doomo glanced at Grax, but then he looked back to BiggestBaddest and he said something…

What were they even talking about right now?

Grax had tuned them out.

BiggestBaddest said, "And that's not good enough."

Doomo spoke in that way where he was being condescending without crossing any obvious lines, as he asked, "Agreeing to your sovereignty of your territory to an extra 50 kilometers past the Greendeath line, to make a new Greendeath line, granting you a majority of the mountains, isn't good enough?"

"We want the corridors to remain open. You keep ignoring that part of this conflict resolution, but we need our brothers to be able to come back to us without your interference."

"And we only interfere in those corridors when your brothers go out of their ways to go human hunting." Doomo said, voice sounding tired and bored. "There is no safety for your kind outside of those corridors, and you know this, and we are not budging."

They were going back and forth.

BiggestBaddest had a retort —no doubt one that made sense, that tried to get Goblinhome things it needed— but Grax was done.

Grax said, "I want to talk about Mark. I want his head. Give us his dead head and we call off the Total War. He's the greatest threat you have against us and I want him gone. Otherwise I'm going to zip by all of your settlements out there and encircle them all, and Mark won't be able to respond to all of that, at all."

BiggestBaddest sighed.

Doomo looked upon Grax, and simply said, "Try it. Let's see how far you get before we catch you outside of this sacred meeting space."

Grax snorted. "I can change the calculus of war all on my own. I've done it before, and I'll do it again."

And then Old Slave spoke up, "And I will help him with this Total War, of course."

Grax was openly surprised.

BiggestBaddest frowned. And then he said, "We'll all stand with our Light Titan." And then he said to Doomo, "Unless you guarantee the corridors remain open, and the full Greendeath Territory is ours, AND you open up travels from Earth to Daihoon from the Settlement Gate."

Grax sat up straighter. "We want that?" He softly asked Old Slave, "We want gate passage?"

Old Slave nodded.

BiggestBaddest scowled, saying, "If you paid attention sometimes you'd know that yes, we do want that." And then he said to the other side, "And we're going to get it."

Doomo easily said, "Build your own gate, BiggestBaddest. You will not be using ours. But when you do build your gate, know that we'll do to you and your 'settlement' what Grax here tried to do to our gate. We won't need Mark and his kaiju to be able to throw you off if you dare such a thing." He smiled, and his grin was full of fangs as he added, "Though I do truly appreciate how well he made his kaiju specifically hunger for goblinflesh. That was a neat trick."

Grax countered, "Give Mark to us for lacuna purposes and we'll give you half of Greendeath and all of the corridors."

Doomo counter-countered, "Relocate the entirety of Goblinhome and assorted locations to another continent, perhaps on the other side of the world, and I will consider handing Mark over to you."

Everyone paused.

Walter simply looked at Doomo.

Doomo did not look at Walter. He was focused on Grax. He looked serious.

… But there was no way he was serious… Right?

Grax frowned, scowled, and asked, "You're serious?"

"Yes," Doomo said. "We'll provide clear passage to southern Uzrune, anywhere in the Chinese Expansion, or even all the way in D'Australia. If you head to D'Australia, we'll even help set up some lands for you. You just have to take all of Goblinhome with you. All of your 10 pillars, all of your history and purpose, and relocate far, far away from Aluatha. We'll give you Mark in a force bubble. We have the capability to do that at a moment's notice, as long as the guarantees are strong enough."

Grax stood up, instantly saying, "I guarantee—!"

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"No," BiggestBaddest said.

"What?!" Grax demanded.

BiggestBaddest ignored Grax and said to Doomo, "I want more than Mark. I want Aurora, too, and that Eliot you have."

Grax had no idea what 'love' really was. The humans talked about it a lot, but what was 'love', really?

At that moment, Grax felt that maybe he understood 'love', just a little bit.

Grax said, "Yes. I agree. Aurora and Eliot, too."

"Eliot is off the table," Doomo said, "Aurora is doable, if you give us enough guarantees."

BiggestBaddest said, "We will have to take this to our people, and we want Eliot, too. Bring us deals involving all three of them, or individually, and we might have a deal. We request a day to reconvene."

Doomo said, "Eliot is off the table. But a day? Agreeable."

The goblins stood up first.

The humans followed.

The meeting at the stone table on the hill ended, with all 6 people walking away.

The very second that sightlines ended, the spell broke, and Grax once again stood on a plain, normal hill, deep in the Greendeath mountains, surrounded by forest on all sides. The stone table up there on the hill was only half of a stone table. Goblinhome was right over there, in the other direction, past that forested mountain.

The human half of the table was down in Aluatha somewhere. BiggestBaddest had said where it was —somewhere on one of the islands past the coast— but that didn't really matter.

What mattered was what had just happened.

Grax asked, "Would they honor any of that? Any of the trades?"

"Up until they want to kill us, yes," Old Slave said.

"They'd honor all of it," BiggestBaddest said. "They would slip a trick in there, but if we got those two and turned them into lacuna, or even better, into full goblins, then we could be truly, honestly safe on another continent. And if we didn't go, then they'd go to total war with us, and their witches would have every capability to finally end us on this continent; to finally end Greendeath mountains."

Old Slave scoffed. "But seriously, though… To leave the Greendeath mountains?! BiggestBaddest… All of that was just a ploy, though? A game from them for… whatever reason. And for us, too." He looked at Grax, and then back to BiggestBaddest, and said, "None of that was serious."

"We've been here for a long time, Old Slave, and for a long time Aluatha was a good dragon to steal from. But we're entering a new age. Aluatha has human-sized watchers on the walls that actually care about other humans..." BiggestBaddest looked away. "If you only knew some of the secrets I knew, then you would agree with me. We cannot go to Total War. The witches are only part of the reason. We must find ways to survive. Leaving Goblinhome behind is a small price to pay to secure the Black King and the Rainbow Queen, and right now, D'Australia is looking pretty good. It's far away from every single empire."

Old Slave had a softness to his eyes as he said, "You could tell me some of these deeper secrets, BiggestBaddest, when we're this close to something big."

"No, I can't, old friend. They would find you, torture those secrets out of you, and… It has happened before, and you know it. I am the repository of knowledge for a reason." BiggestBaddest looked at Grax and Old Slave, adding, "This one only ever comes back when he wants to, and you get captured all the time. Terrible ways to run a country."

Grax scoffed, "Who cares about secrets when power is all that matters."

"Bah!" BiggestBaddest started walking, saying, "Secrets are power and—"

"Done listening!" Grax said, reaching out and popping BiggestBaddest's body with a casual titan-sized squeeze. Green flesh and blood became a krangled tube of meat in a grip that reached tens of meters up, and then Grax let go, and BiggestBaddest's meat flopped to the ground with a splash. Grax felt a lot better. He proudly proclaimed, "Ahhhh! Silence."

Old Slave huffed. "He will be mad that you did that."

"Maybe so. But maybe he'll focus on the rest of his bodies, trying to figure out how to work this to our advantage. I merely helped him leave this area faster—" Grax heard someone ranting in the distance, though their voice was muffled by the trees. Grax muttered, "Dammit."

Old Slave grinned. "See? Mad."

BiggestBaddest already had a tirade going as he walked into view.

Grax spoke over him, "Why would you ever think, even in your wildest dreamings, that they would EVER give up the Black King and Rainbow Queen? Tell me that secret, at least, and I would walk down this crazy path with you and then stay until it all falls apart."

BiggestBaddest came up short, mouth shut, for once. He was thinking.

Old Slave added, "I would know this one secret as well."

BiggestBaddest frowned deeply, then said, "The transfer would fall apart and Goblinhome's political position would turn worse in that falling, I agree, but— But!" BiggestBaddest said, talking loud enough to stop Grax from interrupting. "You shut up, now."

Grax merely said, "Fine! Go on."

"But…" BiggestBaddest continued, "The very moment they sell out those two will be all we need to split Aluatha wide open. That is all I will say on that." He added, "Chances are that they won't give us the Black King and Rainbow Queen, but if they do hand them over —and there is a non-zero chance they would!— then we need to be ready to take advantage of it, because this entire scenario, no matter how it happens, changes the calculus of war in so, so many different ways."

Grax wasn't sure what to say to that.

Old Slave hummed, then said, "If I were the Empire I would tell Black and Rainbow about some transfer plan, fake a trapping, and just get them anywhere near any of us, and that would be all it would take to split Goblinhome wide open."

Grax nodded, but he was feeling better about this plan already. "But if they came to us trapped, we could still Bite them. It would be a trap for us, too, but they would be close. Close enough to talk to. Close enough. This is fine. Let's do it."

BiggestBaddest said, "We shall see what they come back with. I hope for Eliot—"

"Never never," Grax said. "Never happening."

BiggestBaddest shrugged. "Maybe maybe."

"I do not think this will work how Goblinhome wants it to work. The humans are stronger these days than they used to be," Old Slave said, voice serious. "They are looking to kill demons in permanent ways. Their dragon is Addavein. The wars they committed against each other are things of Pre-Reveal. They are not fractured. They are a discontinuous whole. Humanity is stronger in many, many ways these days. They might have found some way to kill us in ways we cannot recover from."

Grax did not like Old Slave at all, and he still did not know why. It was probably something deep in his memories, locked away by time, with Grax's journals from his old lives scrubbed of all relevant writings. But Old Slave had been there when Grax had been reborn, and that, primarily, is why Grax did not trust him. Why so close?

And why so afraid of death?

"Bah!" Grax exclaimed, suddenly more interested in this idea than before. "You are worried about things that we cannot recover from? The Final Deaths? That is the worry? I laugh at that. We can recover from anything. You two just want to recover instantly. You should spend some time in the dark and you would know it is not that bad."

If Old Slave was caught in the dark for a century or two? That would be fine.

Old Slave was tall and proper in his suit. He was purposefully not showing emotion. He did that when he was hiding.

BiggestBaddest had no problems at all waving hands like a properly terrified person, going, "Gah! You scary goblin, Grax. The dark?! Too fucking scary."

Grax grinned. "Thank you."

BiggestBaddest spat, "I liked you better when you were Grazis…" He added, "But Grax is the empire builder, once again, even if Grax has that stupid sort of Bitey-ness to him."

Grax huffed and walked away, turning giant briefly and then taking a single step to walk across four mountains and then step down into his estates.

It was a nice place. Big white buildings, flowing waters, goblins everywhere growing foods in the hills and making dinners in the kitchens. A few humans here and there, making it all work better. The humans kowtowed to the ground when they saw Grax step back home. Grax ignored them. They were hollowed out in the mind, puppets made that way by BiggestBaddest, and they were more valuable as cleaners who could reach high places than lacunas. Replacing them took a lot of time.

Grax went to his room, turned on the screen, and watched superhero shows. His mind was not on the show at all, though.

Grax scoffed, and then muttered, "They'd never hand us Mark and Aurora."

Never never…

… Never.

… Right?

"But if they send them to us, and it's a trap, and we avoid the trap, then that's just Total War, and their witches would have no power over the war because they will have broken the covenant first… yes?"

He should probably go talk to the Witches of Goblinhome about that. Later, though. There was more to this, and Grax needed to think about it.

Grax frowned, thinking, as he watched superhero shows.

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