Only Villains Do That
Bonus 5 In Which the Hero Falls

“Are you sure this goblin is trustworthy?” Flaethwyn stage whispered for the third time in those exact words in the last fifteen minutes. This was the better version; the other two she had called their guide “this creature.”

Yoshi appreciated that about her. Really, he did. Ephemera had enough in common with the isekai formula that he knew so well to be recognizable, but was otherwise filled with surprises and disappointments, yet his first meeting with an actual live elf had been precisely as it was in all the stories. Flaethwyn was beautiful almost beyond belief, graceful and magical, complete with a figure of a kind he hadn’t thought 3D women could actually possess, which she typically dressed to show off. If she didn’t suck all the wonder right out of it by insisting on being such a pain about everything all the time, he wouldn’t have been able to have a conversation with her without stammering or staring. Yoshi shuddered to think how badly and how often he would have humiliated himself had he gotten mixed up with an elf whose bearing matched her beauty.

“I don’t think we can be sure of anything,” he answered quietly and patiently, making an exercise out of varying his wording so he, at least, wasn’t repeating himself verbatim. “I’m following up on a tip that I consider good, but we’ll have to see what comes of it. I appreciate you all for coming along. I wouldn’t want to try this without competent people here to watch for trouble.”

Flaethwyn sniffed and lifted her nose into the air, but her expression softened markedly, and Yoshi managed not to smile. It really was funny how easy she was to flatter; even he could do it. It was all that consistently worked, for most of them. The group had gotten about a week of relative peace after Flaethwyn got them all thrown in jail; outside of that, Pashilyn was the only one who could really manage her.

“I suppose it is my duty to look after you,” the elf mused. “Goddess only knows what trouble you’d wander into unsupervised.”

“Pardon me if I overstep,” said Raffan in the sweet tone he only used when about to deliberately and widely overstep, “but would someone remind me which member of the group isn’t allowed to browse the bazaar unsupervised because she gets swindled every time? I know it’s someone, but I’m blanking on a name. Pretty sure it wasn’t Yoshi.”

Flaethwyn’s cheeks went pink and Yoshi sighed.

“We all have our strengths,” Pashilyn interjected soothingly. “I look forward to the progress this group will make when its various members commit to learning from one another instead of snipping at each other’s little faults. Perhaps we could all stand to emulate Yoshi in that regard.”

Raffan shrugged. “I guess this ain’t exactly dealing with shady shopkeepers. We’ll probably be fine.”

“It’s near enough to that,” Flaethwyn sneered, barely lowering her voice. “As is any goblin business.”

“You kids know I can hear ya, right?” said Maizo, looking over his shoulder at them from the head of the group. The goblin was grinning, his expression apparently amiable, but Yoshi strongly suspected goblins understood very well the effect that the sight of their sharklike teeth had on humans and never displayed them for entirely friendly reasons.

“We’re sorry about our elf, li’l buddy,” Raffan said sincerely. “Lady Flaethwyn isn’t accustomed to making conversation with anybody who actually works for a living. Lady Flaethwyn refuses on principle to become accustomed to—”

“Raffan, enough.” Pashilyn could handle him nearly as adroitly as Flaethwyn. Her tone was calm and not confrontational, and yet put a firm end to the chatter. Yoshi really envied her ability to do that.

“Hey, I get it,” the goblin said lightly. “It’s tough bein’ outta your element. Good on ya for stickin’ with it this far. Hell, I don’t enjoy stomping around out here in beastfolk territory, but we all do what we gotta.”

“You do know where we’re going, though, right?” Yoshi asked.

“Course! You can trust ol’ Maizo to getcha where you oughta be. I may have to stop and get my bearings now an’ again, but we’ll get there!”

The soft buzz of wings grew louder in Yoshi’s ear as Radatina fluttered down to hover over his shoulder. “There are three people at the very edge of my senses, southeast of us. They’ve started moving parallel to our course.”

Flaethwyn’s lips drew back in a snarl and she laid a hand on the hilt of her rapier. “If this little green worm has betrayed us—”

“No!” Radatina said hastily, shooting upward to hover in front of the elf’s face and waving both of her hands. “They’re too big to be goblins! Squirrelfolk hunters, I think.”

“Yeah, we’re in squirrel territory,” Maizo commented. “Nothin’ to worry about. None of the beastfolk on Dount would try to jump a whole party of adventurers, and the squirrels aren’t aggressive at all unless you try to go into their village. They’ll keep pace just to make sure we aren’t doing that.”

“That tracks with what I know of the local tribes,” Raffan added.“I keep up with reports at the local Guild branch. Relax, Amell. End of the day, the beastfolk are just people, not monsters or anything. They’re not like—”

He caught himself, but the fact that he broke off rather than finishing his sentence was damage enough.

Not like goblins.

The whole group paused because Maizo did. Facing away from them, the goblin turned his head this way and that as if making sure of their route, but Yoshi wasn’t the only one who winced. Raffan took the opportunity to gently extricate his arm from Amell’s grip; she had latched onto him at the mention of beastfolk hunters shadowing the group.

Flaethwyn wrinkled her nose, tossed her hair, and began, “Well—”

Foreseeing disaster, Yoshi intervened. “I hope this isn’t going to get you in trouble, Maizo,” he said hastily, raising his voice. “Is there a risk of other goblins seeing you lead us to this hidden tunnel entrance?”

“Nah, but thanks for worryin’, boss,” the guide replied, turning his head again to give Yoshi a grin and a wink. “You’re a good kid. Specifically, we’re goin’ to an accidental exit from one o’ the old mines that’s been tapped out longer’n anybody’s been alive. Won’t be anybody there, probably. Though you got a point—if I do see other goblins around, I’m gonna have to beat a retreat.”

“Typical,” Flaethwyn muttered.

“Mines?” Pashilyn tilted her head. “What is that?”

“Wh—you know, mines?” Yoshi gave her a quizzical look. “For mining?”

“Which is…?”

“Mining,” he repeated, gesticulating helplessly. “Digging up metal and gems and stuff out of the ground.” Sᴇaʀch* Thᴇ ɴøvᴇlFɪre.ɴet website on Gøøglᴇ to access chapters of nøvels early and in the highest quality.

Pashilyn frowned. “Why would metal and gems be underground?”

“Because goblins stole them, obviously,” Flaethwyn sniffed.

Yoshi opened his mouth to try to explain further, then thought better of it. What would be the point? At that moment his eyes fell on Maizo and he stilled. The goblin had himself seemingly frozen, turned fully to fix Yoshi with a piercing stare, his green brow furrowed in thought and eyes narrowed to analytical slits.

As soon as Yoshi’s gaze fixed on him, Maizo resumed his amiable grin as if it had never faltered and cleared his throat loudly. “Oh, hang on! Sorry, got turned around. We need to go this way.”

He backtracked through the group, who stepped out of the way for him, and bounded off down another narrow game trail that Yoshi hadn’t even noticed.

“He doesn’t even know where he’s going!” Flaethwyn complained.

“Well, then he can’t be leading us into a trap, can he?” Raffan retorted, grinning. “C’mon, Lady Flaethwyn, we’re gonna get left behind.”

The group shuffled into motion, following Maizo deeper into the khora. Flaethwyn was only not uttering another litany of complaints because Pashilyn had stepped alongside her and preemptively engaged her in murmured conversation. Yoshi trailed along after them, with Raffan and Amell bringing up the rear. Yoshi himself frowned in thought as he silently made his way through the alien-looking underbrush. He couldn’t escape the feeling that something important had just happened. Maizo had clearly had a similar thought—and then taken pains to hide it.

Were they heading into a trap? He opened his mouth to suggest caution, then closed it again silently. All of this was his idea; if he chickened out now Flaethwyn would never shut up about it.

“I think we’re over the goblin tunnels here,” Radatina noted quietly, centimeters from his ear.

“You’re over goblin tunnels in more places on Dount than not,” Maizo called back cheerfully, which really said something about the acuity of goblin hearing. “But yeah, this here is above those mines I was talkin’ about. All the entrances were supposed to’ve been sealed off, but even so the remaining shafts are closer to the surface than on most parts of the island. We’re lookin’ for the one that’s cracked open in the years since the miners shut down operations.”

“Looking for?” Flaethwyn snipped. “I thought you were supposed to know where this was! Is that not the entire point of this expedition?”

“Well, I know in a general sense,” Maizo said in a particularly nonchalant tone.

“Yeah, there are spaces really close to the surface,” Radatina said softly, hovering closer to Yoshi’s ear. “As in…I suspect parts of this forest are matted dirt over khora roots over ravines, not tunnels.”

“You tallboys,” Maizo cackled. “Always so certain you’re gonna fall through if you dig a ditch! You guys have any idea how far down this island goes? We’re fine. Long as you’re not dumb enough to put your leg in a hole, the ground’s perfectly solid.”

No sooner did he say that than Yoshi jerked his foot back from a patch of ground which sank alarmingly under his weight. “Uh…”

“Your little Spirit critter ain’t wrong, it’s packed dirt over root networks in a lot of the khora forest,” Maizo said glibly, still swaggering along ahead. “If the ground gets soft enough to mess with your footing, walk on the bigger khora roots. Look, there’s a nice one here, right along this path. Practically our own private paved road.”

That was putting it generously; the yellowish tendril of hard khora which extended down the trail was barely wide enough to put one foot on, and rounded in a way that made balancing a challenge. Maizo immediately hopped onto it and sauntered along, whistling. His center of gravity was notably lower, Yoshi thought in annoyance, but said nothing, just clambering onto the root and concentrating on his footing, as did the others.

It didn’t surprise him that he was the first to fall off, though given what had happened next he really wished it hadn’t been.

Again, the ground sank under his foot, but this time, it continued to. A deep groan sounded from below them as the entire path started to buckle; alarming depressions began to appear as if rivulets of soil were trickling through the holes of a net. Yoshi scrabbled frantically at the big khora root upon which they were all walking, succeeding only in making the entire thing sway.

One by one, the others toppled, save Flaethwyn, who held her balance with her arms outstretched until the root itself snapped with a deafening crack. By the time she tumbled off its suddenly broken end, the weight of four people had proved too much for the ground. Earth, vines, and roots tore away, sending all of them tumbling into the dark depression below.

It didn’t feel like he fell all that far, but it was a confusing descent, entangled with roots, cascading dirt, and Raffan’s legs. Yoshi landed face-down in some kind of muck with something on top of him.

“Oh, no,” he heard Amell gasp as he tried to claw his way back upright. “No, no, no…”

Raffan cursed as Yoshi’s attempts to push him off only entangled them further. He finally got his head up out of the mud in which he’d landed, taking in a deep breath of relatively clear air. Light blossomed in the pit, revealing Flaethwyn as the only one still standing upright with her glowing aura illuminating the entire depression. Amell was just in the process of opening her satchel, and as Yoshi turned his attention on her, she let out a deep sigh of relief and slumped her shoulders, finding the stiff interior walls and padding had protected her various bottles and vials during the fall.

“Well, this is another fine mess!” Flaethwyn snarled, then twisted her neck up to stare at the long gash of the opening above them. “Hey, you! Goblin!”

Maizo’s head appeared over the edge of the pit, the light of Flaethwyn’s aura revealing his broad grin. “I have a name, you know. You’ve heard it repeatedly, elf. Do you even remember what it is?”

“Whatever,” she retorted, impatience incarnate. “Find us a rope or something!”

The goblin tilted his head to one side, still grinning, and said nothing. That sinking feeling in Yoshi’s stomach sank further.

“Hey, Tina?” Raffan said quietly. “You seeing what I’m seeing?”

“Yeah, this isn’t a natural cave or ravine,” Radatina answered in a resigned tone. “And that wasn’t a network of live khora roots covering the top. From the look of the edges, it was dried vines. Also, the ‘mud’ all over the walls isn’t mud, it’s some kind of slime.”

“Smells like theuryct paste,” Amell said in a small voice. “Harmless, but very slippery. It’s a byproduct of the process that turns uryct sap into akorshil varnish. Used to lubricate wagon axles. A big enough alchemy operation, like the goblins are suspected of having, would produce a lot of it.”

“I told you—”

“Actually, Flaethwyn, you didn’t,” Pashilyn interrupted her. “You just made a lot of snide comments implying it right where Maizo could hear.”

Yoshi forced himself to meet Maizo’s red eyes, if only because it was easier than looking at any of his own companions now that he’d led them into this trap. “All right, Maizo,” he said, glad his voice managed to be as even as it was. “What happens now?”

“Oh, you’ll be fine, ya big babies,” the goblin said without a trace of sympathy. “It wasn’t that deep and the bottom’s squishy. Aren’t you adventurers supposed to be resourceful? I’m sure you’ll get outta that before too long. But here’s some advice for you to think about while you’re workin’ on it.”

Maizo leaned forward, bracing himself against the broken end of the khora root—which, now that Yoshi could see it from below in the golden glow of Flaethwyn’s aura, was clearly dried and had been filed away in multiple places below, designed to break somewhere if enough weight was placed on it.

“We ain’t stupid,” the goblin said, his grin fading. “Everybody in the tunnels knows what’ll happen if a Goblin King rises here on Dount. There’s no predicting all the steps it’ll take to get there, but the unavoidable end result? A shitload of dead goblins. Nobody wants that. The only thing that’ll make enough of us wanna back a Goblin King and try to rise up is sheer desperation and rage. Y’know, the kinda thing that results from how you tall folk fuckin’ treat us. At this point? It ain’t lookin’ good, kids. There’s enough helplessness and anger… Well, I dunno what’s gonna happen. But if you assholes will just stop, the whole thing might still go away. There’s enough of us who definitely want it to…ain’t a sure thing, but it could still happen! If you keep pushing, though, you’re just gonna rile everybody up even further.

“You wanna stop a Goblin King from rising? Then quit trying to make our lives miserable. It might be too late already, but there’s still a chance. But if you kids keep doing what you came here to do, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy and nothing will be able to stop it.”

“What a load of—”

Flaethwyn’s strident rejoinder was cut off by a clump of mud which impacted her right in the face. She screeched in sheer rage, stumbled, and sat down hard in the muck next to them.

Yoshi tore his eyes from that spectacle to look up at the rim of the pit again. By then, Maizo was gone.

It was a good trap.

Apart from the clever and well-laid top part which they’d fallen into, the pit was designed to keep them there fairly effectively. The walls sloped upward; the angle was steep but shouldn’t be impossible to climb, except for that khora slime they were coated in. The gunk made traction impossible, and seemed to be in a layer several centimeters deep and then soaked into the living earth beyond that, making a gooey mess of the entire surrounding walls.

“Okay,” Yoshi said while a grimacing Raffan tried to scrape the goo off his hands, “we can get out of this. We just need to dig out enough of the slimy part that we reach proper dirt and rock, and then we can climb up that. We’ll have to use hands, but…”

He trailed off as Raffan and Amell turned horrified stares on him.

“Dig up the walls? Of the pit we are in?” Flaethwyn demanded scornfully. “And have the whole thing collapse on us! Are you daft, boy?”

Yoshi flushed, opened his mouth, and then had to steel himself to speak in a more careful tone. “I…um, I think that…in my experience, I mean, digging into dirt may not be as hazardous as you might have been brought up to believe…”

“Maybe on a magical planet covered in water, but this is Ephemera,” the elf said, dismissively turning her back.

Yoshi tried to think of a way to phrase a disagreement, but gave up. The response would be the same.

He was generally having trouble acclimating to this culture. Grateful as he was for the way his friends gathered around him and smoothed over misunderstandings, Yoshi had to wonder if he might have overcome some of his difficulties by now if he’d been forced to adapt on his own. The Fflyr were very plainspoken and straightforward—to to mention loud—which was difficult enough, but there were caste issues to navigate on top of that. Highborn just said whatever they felt like, and he didn’t have enough frame of reference to know whether elves saw no need for the concept of manners or that was just Flaethwyn. And then, lower-caste people would speak openly and assertively to him, but when talking to Pashilyn or Flaethwyn drop into a kind of intricate deadpan sarcasm. Pashilyn said Fflyr lowborn commonly did that to make fun of their superiors right to their faces in a manner they couldn’t be called out for. It had the unfortunate knock-on effect that Yoshi sometimes couldn’t even parse what they were saying.

Even knowing nobody would mind, he couldn’t just start snapping orders at people. It was such a simple thing to imagine, but in practice? Impossible.

Not for some people, of course.

“All right, someone needs to get up there and go find us a rope,” Flaethwyn stated with a characteristic toss of her head, the effect somewhat ruined by the mud entangled in her hair. “Hopefully they won’t have to go all the way back to Gwyllthean for it, but…it will be as the Goddess wills.”

“Lesson learned,” Raffan sighed. “Always pack a rope.”

“Indeed.” Flaethwyn gave him a grudging nod.

“If one of us can get up there,” Pashilyn suggested, “couldn’t they then pull the others up?”

“I thought of that,” said Flaethwyn, shaking her head. “That’s not as easy to do as you may think, Pashi. The upper body strength required is significant, and more importantly, the leverage. The entire rim of this pit is more soft dirt over a woven ceiling that’ll break if any further pressure is put on it. So, yes, someone up there can pull us up…”

“With a rope,” Pashilyn finished with a sigh.

Flaethwyn nodded again. “Well then! Amell, you’re the smallest, so it’ll have to be you.”

“Me?” Amell squeaked.

“Yes, you,” the elf said irritably. “Don’t make that face, all you have to do is go back to town and get a rope. The rest of us will boost you up. Boys! Into position.”

“Uh…” Yoshi opened and closed his mouth again. “By position, you mean…”

“Against the wall!” Flaethwyn exclaimed, exasperated. “You two are the biggest, obviously you have to form the base.”

“Ah. Right.”

“Welp, here we go,” Raffan said in resignation as he picked his way over to position himself next to Yoshi. “I feel like I oughta make some comment about having beautiful women step on me, but honestly, my heart’s not in it.”

“That is a sign from your conscience that perhaps you ought not say such things, for once.”

“Thank you, Pashilyn. Always helpful to have a priestess’s perspective in a crisis.”

“I am pleased to be of service.”

This operation took a lot longer than it should have, which proved to be a blessing in disguise. Yoshi was tired, the necessity of the position he and Raffan assumed pressed them face-first into the slimy grease lining the pit, and the actual process of being used as a human ladder was more uncomfortable than he’d expected it would be. All of which meant that he ended up not being embarrassingly distracted by the sensation of having girls climbing up and down him, which was good, because the process was not over quickly.

Amell managed to clamber awkwardly onto their combined shoulders, only to discover that from there she was too short to reach the rim of the pit. So she had to come back down, then Flaethwyn and Pashilyn crawled up to stand on the boys and finally Amell laboriously climbed up all of them, achieved a handhold on the broken vines edging the top, and managed to drag herself onto solid(ish) ground.

By that point Yoshi was too exhausted from holding up his share of the weight to even be embarrassed that he was the one to buckled under the strain. Unfortunately it was Flaethwyn on his shoulders, so he inevitably earned a tongue lashing as he gasped for breath in the muck (she managed to land much more lightly, of course), but it wasn’t as bad as it could have been.

“Okay, I’m up,” Amell called from the top. “So…um. Which way is back to Gwyllthean?”

“Back the way we came,” Flaethwyn snapped.

“Right. Um. Is that…which side of the pit did I climb out of? I mean…this path looks the same in both directions. It’s barely even a path.”

“Gwyllthean is east,” Pashilyn called. “You should be able to see the sun overhead through the fronds. It’s afternoon, so head the other way.”

“Ah, right, right, thanks!”

Amell’s head disappeared, then seconds later, she peeked back over the edge.

“Um…”

“What is it now?” Flaethwyn exclaimed.

“Do…do any of you remember all the turns that goblin took us on? Because, there were several paths, and they branched off and met…”

“Oh, for—if you get lost, just check the sun and keep going east!” Flaethwyn shouted. “It took us less than an hour to get here, even going straight through the khora it can’t take you that long.”

“Right. Okay.”

This time she was gone for twice as long before her (currently green) hair and eyes reappeared. “D-do you think those beastfolk hunters are still out there?”

“Squirrels won’t attack you, ‘Mell,” Raffan reassured her. “If you see them at all, they might even help you out.”

“O-okay…”

Amell disappeared yet again.

“So help me,” Flaethwyn whispered, “if she comes back one more time…”

“Brace yourself,” Radatina advised.

On cue, Amell’s wide-eyed face peeked over the edge at them. “I-if I cut through the khora to get back to Gwyllthean, how will I find you again?”

“Oh, Nightlady take your watery eyes!” Flaethwyn roared. “Yoshi! Raffan! Assume the position!”

“Oh, to hear any other woman saying that,” Raffan groaned, standing back up. “And ideally only my name.”

Flaethwyn’s departure with a much chastened Amell left a pall over the remaining group, despite the blessed peace and quiet it brought. For one thing, the loss of her elven aura of light left them sitting in deep shadow with only a dim and distant sliver of sky high overhead. Also, Pashilyn had had to bear her weight alone on the boys’ shoulders. Only for a few seconds, but the priestess was not physically accustomed to being furniture and the effort left her gasping almost as hard as the two of them when their pyramid collapsed and left all three lying in the muck.

At least part of the discomfort was alleviated; once Pashilyn got her breath back, she conjured an Orb of Light for them. The clean white illumination was less cheery than the golden glow of Flaethwyn’s aura, and gave them an unpleasantly perfect view of the greenish muck lining their prison, not to mention the filth all over themselves, but it beat sitting in the dark.

“I’m sorry,” Yoshi blurted out just as the silence started to stretch into discomfort.

“This isn’t your fault, Yoshi,” Raffan said immediately.

Yoshi shook his head. “It was my tip we were following up on. I’m the one who insisted on trusting Maizo. I didn’t even tell you guys the full reason. If I had—ow!”

Raffan had reached out and bonked him on the head. “Oi, enough of that. I wasn’t sparing your feelings, Yoshi, it was just the facts as I see ‘em. You didn’t tell us it was a sure thing, we all knew there were risks, and we decided to chance it. C’mon, even Flaethwyn didn’t get on your case about it, and she barely needs a reason to complain at the best of times. We took a calculated risk and this time it didn’t pan out. That’s the adventuring life.”

Yoshi drew breath to argue, thought better of it, and just nodded mutely. It wasn’t that he didn’t see the sense of what Raffan was saying, but it didn’t make him feel any less guilty.

“This is not to blame you, Yoshi,” said Pashilyn, “because as it happens I agree with Raffan. Your lead was as good as any. But I did think it odd that you were hesitant to tell us why you thought it was good. It seemed like you had a particular reason, I thought so at the time, and now you say there was something else?”

He hesitated, then sighed and began digging in his vest pocket. “Well… Okay, so Maizo gave me a reason to think he knew a lot more than he let on and was sympathetic toward…um, the Hero’s cause. He sold me these.”

The treasure was intact despite the fall; Yoshi had put them in a small knife case with a rigid lining. He finished digging them out and held up the two tapering, lacquered sticks of polished akorshil, the magic light gleaming along their surfaces.

Raffan frowned. “Uh… Hairsticks? I mean…you’d have to grow yours out, but I guess…”

“They’re not for pinning hair,” Yoshi huffed. “They’re chopsticks. For eating.”

Pashilyn and Raffan squinted at the chopsticks, then looked at each other, then back at Yoshi.

“How?”

“Why?”

He shifted them to the proper grip in his right hand and clicked the tips together. “Like this. You pick up food this way.”

“My question stands.”

“Mine stands twice as hard!”

“That seems unnecessarily difficult,” Radatina added.

“I don’t want to hear it,” he said crossly, tucking the chopsticks back in their holder. “You people don’t even have forks!”

Raffan barked a derisive laugh. “Forks, he says! What, you think I was raised in a mansion?”

“Forks are used in fine dining, but not common among lowborn,” Pashilyn explained in response to Yoshi’s confused look. “They have to be either cast from metal or very laboriously carved by expert ninwrights. Fine details like tines are difficult to make from akornin, and akorshil is too prone to splintering for eating utensils. Speaking of which…you should probably not try to actually eat with those.”

“Oh. Well…these are what we use to eat where I’m from, okay? They’re…sentimental to me. And Maizo had them, when apparently they’re not a thing in this country, and he acted all…y’know, knowing. All winks and hints that there was more where that came from. I figured he had to know something. Which I guess was right; he just wasn’t using it in our favor.”

“Hm.” Raffan leaned back against the pit wall, ignoring the resulting squelch. They were all so splattered with muck at this point that more made little difference. “Okay, I see your point. There’s definitely something there. Now I wonder if we should be more worried about that little shit.”

“Yoshi,” Pashilyn said in a thoughtful tone, “does the name Yomiko mean anything to you?”

Yoshi blinked and said up straighter. “Yomiko? Yeah, that’s the protagonist of a classic anime I like. And there’s a Yomiko in my class. We’re not close or anything… Actually, she never talked to me. She’s on the girls’ softball team. Not the circles I move in.”

“So that is a Japanese name?”

“Yeah, a fairly common one. Why, where’d you hear it?”

“Yomiko was the name of the last Dark Lord,” she said, “fifteen decades ago. What about Satoshi Hara?”

“Oh, definitely. Well, it’d be Hara Satoshi, we put the family name first for both men and women, but yeah. That could’ve come out of a Wikipedia list of common Japanese names. Who’s he?”

“The Hero who defeated Yomiko. There are still statues of him all over Lancor. I’ve always thought it was odd that so few names of Heroes and Dark Lords are remembered farther back than those two, but for whatever reason, only a few particularly famous names survive. What about Ryotaro? Maximus Caesar?”

“Ryotaro’s another common Japanese name. Maximus, no—but that is a Roman name.”

“Is that close to Japan?”

“Hah! Uh, no, Roman civilization has been extinct for a thousand years. But the Roman Empire was huge in its time and very culturally important; almost all Western countries are descended from it. Names like Maximus and Caesar are still famous.”

“So a Japanese person would be likely to know them.”

“Yeah, I guess so. Though I imagine most Japanese people wouldn’t think of a name like that. It’d take a really particular kind of otaku.”

“Hm.” She shifted her gaze to Raffan. “Can you think of any others, Raffan?”

“What, the highly educated priestess is asking me for a history lesson?” he teased. “Well, as it happens, I do know of one you forgot: Dark Lord Kroshkranth.”

“That is definitely not a Japanese name,” said Yoshi. “Actually, I’m not even sure I could pronounce that.”

“Yeah, we’ve all heard you trying with Fflyr,” Raffan said, ruffling his hair.

Pashilyn shook her head. “Kroshkranth is an orcish name. Thank you, Raffan, I did forget him. But apparently Virya summoned him into the middle of the Hazed Lands; by the time he emerged from their territory, it was with his army of orcs, and he was going by the name they gave him.”

“Where are you going with this, Pashi?” Raffan asked in a more serious tone.

“I have always thought it quite peculiar,” she mused, frowning into space between them, “how the names of Dark Lords and Heroes alike have mostly vanished from history. And the way they vanished. There are countless surviving tales of both and in particular their battles with each other. But it seems more of those stories than otherwise label their protagonists only as ‘Hero’ or ‘Dark Lord.’ That is just not the way history works, at least when it’s about anyone other than Champions of the goddesses. I can’t help suspecting the last two are only still recognized because Lord Hara’s name still has significant political power in the Lancor Empire, enough that purging him or his enemy from the histories would be too difficult.”

“Purging,” Raffan repeated, now frowning. “You think someone’s doing this on purpose?”

“Why would anyone do that?” Yoshi demanded.

“For the same reason we agreed not to tell anyone outside our group about you, Yoshi,” she said pointedly, “and even Lord Seiji, though this would be a perfect opportunity to shut him down before he does any actual harm. A Hero or Dark Lord early in their career is frighteningly vulnerable—lacking most of the power they can eventually accumulate, but every bit as important as they will ever be. Socially, politically, spiritually. If they can be identified before they are ready to reveal themselves, either Champion could easily be killed, or more importantly, controlled. If the goddesses call all their champions here from one single nation on the other world, then any knowledge about that nation could be used to identify the Hero and the Dark Lord as soon as they appear. And then, if they survived, they would end up as pawns of the existing powers. I doubt that is what the Goddess or her dark sister want.”

Yoshi slumped back against the slimy pit wall, now staring wide-eyed at nothing in much the way Pashilyn had been a moment ago. “You mean… Japan is taboo?”

“It’s a theory that explains all of this,” she said, “though of course we can’t know. That is, unless you have something to add, Radatina?”

Belatedly, Yoshi realized that while he was distracted by Pashilyn’s unfolding theory, his familiar had been zipping back and forth above him in increasingly agitated maneuvers. At being directly addressed, she finally came to a halt in midair and burst out with clear relief.

“Finally, one of you figured it out! Oh, man, I hated sitting on this one, but it’s a direct command from the Goddess, you know? One of very few things I actually can’t talk about—or at least, can’t bring up. But if the topic comes up anyway then the point’s moot and I can finally give you the details! So, yes, Pashilyn is exactly right, the goddesses call all their champions from that one nation on Earth and for exactly the reasons you laid out, all knowledge of that nation is forbidden. And, yeah. That is by order of the Goddesses themselves. Both of them. It’s one of the only things both Sanorite and Viryans alike are held to equally.”

Yoshi’s head was spinning. He felt betrayed, and the worst part was that he couldn’t quite articulate why. If he tried to view it logically, the rule made sense and his reaction didn’t. But… The goddesses only took Japanese people? And then took steps to erase every hint of Japanese culture that they brought to Ephemera? It was… It didn’t seem…fair.

“Waaaait a second,” said Raffan. “If this is some big deep dark secret mandated by the goddesses themselves, how come that random-ass little goblin knew about those eating sticks? And recognized Yoshi?”

“Knowing things they should not is one of the characteristic pastimes of goblins,” Pashilyn replied, a hint of gentle wryness entering her voice. “We’re not down here going to so much trouble to suppress their ambitions because they’re ugly.”

“Well, I figured that wasn’t the only reason…”

“But that brings up why my mind started going down this road just now, and why it’s important,” she continued more seriously. “In order for information to be suppressed, there has to be someone who knows which information to suppress. And for it to be suppressed successfully, that someone has to have a considerable degree of authority and power.”

“Yeah, that’s the thing,” Radatina agreed, having descended now to hover directly above Yoshi’s shoulder. He appreciated the gesture of closeness, and well understood why she didn’t set there like usual; he was absolutely filthy with slimy muck. “With any rule or agreement the goddesses make, you can count on Virya to break it whenever she’s not directly under her sister’s sight. And just to keep up, keep her faithful from being overwhelmed, Sanora is forced to make little exceptions herself. So, Japan may be a prohibited subject, but there are always some who know about it among the highest authorities of the most powerful Sanorite and Viryan religious institutions. Several have collections of artifacts that Heroes or Dark Lords have designed, writings in their language, even personal memoirs they recorded.”

“So,” said Pashilyn, her face positively grim now beneath its splattering of greenish mud, “we can take it as given that there are forces, both enemy and allegedly allied, who might recognize Japanese features or accents, and be able to produce things like…chopsticks, was it? Things to get a Japanese person’s attention. The Viryan agents will very likely try to kill Yoshi—we’re lucky this one trap is less deadly than it could have been. But even the Sanorite institutions are dangerous, because they’ll want to control Yoshi. The biggest Sanorite faith in this part of the world would be the Radiant Temple of the Lancor Empire.”

Raffan let out a low whistle. “Didn’t you imply they already turned the last Hero into their pawn?”

Pashilyn nodded gravely. “And apparently managed to defy the Goddess’s order to suppress information about him afterward. With the backing of the Empire and a powerful church, apparently that’s possible. So they’ll be desperate to get the next one, too. With two Heroes in a row as their direct agents, they could cement their authority for thousands of years.”

“Aw, man.” Raffan turned a stricken expression on him. “Shit. Yoshi, brother, I’m really sorry to say this, but—”

“But from now on I need to play dumb,” Yoshi finished. “Any reminder of home I ever see from this point will probably be a trap. It’s okay,” he added, managing a forced smile. “Don’t worry, I won’t repeat my mistake. And, hey, it’s not like it’s forever, right? This is specifically a concern for Heroes and Dark Lords early in their careers. I just need to get strong enough that the Radiant Temple or anyone else isn’t able to control me.”

“Yup, that’s all!” Grinning, Raffan clapped him on the shoulder, causing a splatter of mud. “We’ll have that squared away in no time.”

“This raises a couple of points, though,” Yoshi went on, letting his smile fade. “Things we’re gonna have to deal with relatively soon.”

“Is one of them the fact that there are now a whole colony of goblins, with an incipient Goblin King, who know your secret?” Pashilyn prompted dryly.

He nodded. “Yeah, exactly. So…I guess we can’t afford to follow Maizo’s advice, even if we were tempted do. Now, we have no choice but to finish what we came here for, and shut down this goblin uprising. Hopefully before it happens.”

“I agree,” she said. “But you said a couple of points. What else did you think of, Yoshi?”

He drew a deep breath. “You’re probably not gonna like hearing this, Pashilyn. Flaethwyn definitely won’t.”

“Oh, Flaethwyn doesn’t like hearing anything,” Raffan snorted. “Disappointment is good for her moral character.”

“Well, there’s the fact that we’ve now met, and are apparently both on the same small island,” Yoshi said seriously. “So if one of us is taken by some religious institution, they could very easily be forced to reveal the other. So, even if we’re technically enemies…”

Pashilyn’s eyes widened as she caught on, and finished his thought aloud.

“We need to warn the Dark Lord.”

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