Chapter 3. Faddy
1229 Words
All the time that Mal Wears weary army had spent in the Goblin Town, they had been watched by a Shadow!
Note:
NOT Watched FROM the Shadows!
Watched BY a Shadow!
This shadow was not particularly sinister, just curious and a bit worried.
Faddy was a merchant that travelled to the goblin city to trade.
They were not trading anything expensive, just some hand made jewellery.
Not expensive hand made jewellery
(Plus it is a Medieval tech level society, almost everything is hand made by default anyway!)
It was very cheap jewellery, made from beads and colour string. The sort of thing you would by in an open market for children and that you would not care if it got lost within a few weeks.
The sort of jewellery that shared the same category as friendship bracelets and you would find in for under $10 (2021 prices) made out of cheap plastic in our world.
This jewellery was made in batches in free time to sell once in a while to supplement the subsistence farming in the evenings.
The whole family would get together in the evenings to make the jewellery and chat before bed.
It was their main family activity.
Faddy had tried to survive the slaughter attack by the Sunite Inquisitors and their Sold Bound leader by taking off all his clothes.
And it had worked!
No one had noticed him.
If there had been bright luminous lighting instead of darkness, still no one would have noticed him.
In the darkness, itself, no one had noticed him either.
During the attack, there had been some lighting and fire thrown in his direction a few times but even the direct hits had not harmed Faddy.
Some falling debris had bruised Faddy, but they were only bruises.
Faddy was part of a race whos density of their material form depended on the about of visible light around them.
If the lighting was one hundred per cent bright, then they were zero per cent physically present.
In one hundred per cent lighting this race could not be seen and if any martial, just as plate glass, was transparent enough they could walk straight through it without it breaking.
Although invisible in bright light, this race could still be harmed by normal fully opaque swords and clubs, because the inside of such physical objects was pitch black inside,
In total darkness, their races material physical presence was also one hundred per cent.
So when bright magic lighting or fire struck his naked body, its inherent brightness meant it had passed straight through him, as his shadow body had instantly phased out. (and then instantly phased back again).
This race was simply known by the goblins as the Shadows.
But not in any ‘creepy’ context!
They were rarely encountered and had to wear special clothing to help them fully interact with their surroundings.
But once in a while, you saw a few travelling merchants selling stuff or delivering news and post from other kingdoms.
The goblins did not bat an undue eye when they came to their towns and cities.
They were just another accepted race and dull fact of life.
Although strictly speaking they were not a single race, but a collection of different races and species.
Faddy was a shadow humanoid.
Basically, he was a normal human in all ways, except, his being was made from “shadow material”
Faddy was not a thief, an assassin or a spy.
He was just yet another subsistence farmer who had come to the nearest town to sell some cheap cottage jewellery so he could buy some extra crop seed for his smallholding.
He was just a man in his forties, trying to make an honest quick buck.
He did not follow politics.
He was not ambitious at all but he worked hard.
He was not any form of hero type (unless you needed a gardener, a shelf put up or some cheap craft jewellery made!)
He was not undead, just made of shadow, the same way that you or I are made of meat and bone.
In fact, Faddy was also made of meat and bone but it was shadow meat and shadow bone.
He was just a mundane ‘mr average’ who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong random time.
So I repeat my first sentence of this chapter…
All the time that Mal Wears weary army had spent in the Goblin Town, they had been watched by a Shadow!
…And that Homanid Shadows name happened to be called Faddy.
Faddy did not know what to do with himself.
Should he tell someone about the goblin town slaughter?
If so, who should he tell?
Should he tell someone about this other small rebel army?
If so, who should he tell?
Faddy was not a highly educated man or particularly all that smart but he was not stupid either.
He knew just going home and keeping his head down would not keep his little farm and family safe.
He may have had no interest in politics but you did not need to be a genius to know that troubled times were coming to this entire area.
He was quickly starting to suspect that he was going to had to take an interest in at least some politics fairly quickly!
So Faddy had watched and learned what he could.
Because He knew that any single one fact could help save him or his families life in the bad times to come.
So far Faddy had learned only four things.
Firstly, Fact one,
That these creatures, these ‘humans’ were very much like him but pink and gooey.
They looked pretty much like a shadow hominid like himself but more disturbing looking.
They were made of the same ‘goo stuff’ that the goblins were made form.
Then, Fact two,
That there seemed to be two factions. The ones that had slaughtered all the innocent people in this goblin town and the other who seemed to be allied with the goblin forces of this town.
As a town visitor and as a witness to the horrors that the Sunite’s had done to innocent screaming goblin civilians, it was easy to decide who the “good guys” were!”
Fact three,
That apparently, the goblin town was NOT on the surface world, as he had thought.
All the Shadows had considered this cavern with the goblin town as the ‘surface world’.
It seemed that there was an extra ‘surface world’ above this one!
And that the Humans did not realise that this cavern was not really in the underworld, that there was the entire shadow-dominated realm below this one!
Furthermore, That shadow realm had all considered themselves as having existed of the vertical “middle”.
None of these people, including the goblins seemed to realise that below the shadow realm was yet another realm that all the shadows had considered the ‘underworld’.
It made you wonder how many of these ‘Worlds’ were actually stacked up vertically in total!
Lastly, fact Four,
That even if he could get most of it together a gathered up again…
Even if he could do that…
It was very unlikely…
That these strange new creatures would want to buy any cheap jewellery!
Even at a discount!
- Writer
