1.4

  City elves, indeed most of the world that knows itself to be civilized, conducts business in the light of day. If they must operate at night, they make their own light, be it while-oil lamps or tallow candles. The Elrodore are a more ancient sort of people. They grow up in the near-dark of starlight. They live in the shadows of the canopy, in the deepest parts of the forest. The difference between Ballea the world of the pockets of the Elrodore is that of city to jungle*, yet only a few leagues separate them. Aytheur was completely at home in the darkness.
*[is as pronounced as London to the Congo]
  The moon rose, unwelcome in the half-elf's eyes. Long before he could see it, Aytheur smelled the water. Smelled like a stagnant puddle in the desert – the ground here was hard and cracked. Deadly-dry mud. His stomach informed him that he ought to eat. A watering hole would provide ample food for an Elrodore to find, but...
  Aytheur looked down through the shallow canyon that lead to the watering hole. Mist rose over it. No country this dry should have mist, particularly at night. It shimmered like the day's heat. He was compelled to go forward, to investigate. The mist swirled and formed behind him as he did. 
 A voice spoke out of the mist. It sounded like gravel being poured. It was a voice without breath, a whisper from death. “We do you a favor, elf, by addressing you before you die.”
 The word elf was pronounced, if such a voice pronounces, as though it were rotten meat in the mouth. Aytheur strained to see the source, but the unnatural mist hid all forms. It was freezing cold, but not wet; a wet mist might have had some life in it.
 “Your kind betrayed us long ago. Even in death your magic poisons us. We have no rest. Know your fate.”
 The mist billowed in on him. Small, invisible hands grabbed Aytheur's arms solidly. They pushed him deeper in. The voice was strange even beyond its lifeless sound. The words were the wrong shape. Aytheur had little experience with accents before joining the Academy, but he heard a vast number there. This one was certainly not among them. The mist's hands forced him on his knees before the pool. Aytheur had a feeling this drink would not be healthy for him, so he guessed.
 “Wait!” he shouted in the language his father taught him. The goblin language. “Just hold on! I'm not an Elf!”
 A gray silhouette of a goblin emerged from the mist directly in front of Atheur, its footless legs hovering over the water. He was a short man, a bit taller than a dwarf. His face seemed permanently contorted like he was smelling something foul. Of course, compared to the lineless features of the elves, most races had that appearance. The goblin's head was bald, but it wore a massive beard that would make any dwarf proud. His muscles, where the scraps of clothing didn't cover them, were knobby and short rather than long and smooth. The goblin wore a bears' skin as a mantle.  
 Aytheur's eyes caught on the weapon the spectral goblin carried. It was a sort of halberd, a cured blade something between an ax and a sword on a shaft a bit less than the goblin's height. [Picture this like a machete on a stick. More accurately, picture an Egyptian Khopesh turned polearm. I'm not really sure how to describe it.] Aytheur knew the weapon immediately; he'd seen it's like T’Ricordon's ancient weapons class. It was the standard tool of the ancient goblin armies, used from the age when weapons were made of bronze; long before orcs were driven from the continent. 
 This goblin goblin spoke, but it's voice was not the one Aytheur heard before. It still had the gravel tone of the other ghost, but the words were not in his familiar elven. They moved like a stream down a steep hill. A few of them made sense to Aytheur, but many were gibberish. “Know” and “place” stuck out, but all he could be certain was he'd been asked a question. The halbred's blade, though the shaft was ghostly, began to look frighteningly real. 
 “I, I don't know what you said,” Aytheur stammered in elvish. He repeated himself in goblin. “I'm only half-elf, and ostracized at that. My father was a wizard.” That should help. Everyone knows the wizard's name is an open door to the goblins. “He was called Gheant.”