Despite the slight hiccup at the end, I’d call our little dinner party a success. By the time I had cleaned up and returned to my room, there was nothing I had to do...but it was still too early in the night to go to bed. I’d barely had anything to drink, and I certainly wasn’t drowsy.
“I know.” I have plenty of alcohol left from the party. I could share it with the gods. To put my plan into action, I took out a book from my Item Box. As I poured magical energy into it, bright light flooded my vision—just like it did whenever I prayed in a chapel.
In an instant, I was in a white space occupied only by Wilieris and Grimp sitting at a coffee table.
“Good evening. Just the two of you today?”
“Welcome, Ryoma. Most of us are out and about,” Wilieris said.
“Now, now. Take a seat,” Grimp offered.
When I did, a plate of baked goods and a cup of tea were already in front of me. “Thank you. I know I came up unannounced.”
“You can come see us anytime you like. That’s why Fernobelia made you that relic,” Wilieris said.
“It won’t work when it’s not a good time for us, so don’t concern yourself there. What’s happened today, Ryoma?” Grimp asked.
“Oh, right.” I told them what gave me the idea to come up here, and showed them the goblin-distilled sake from my Item Box. Then, I laid out a series of glass sake cups—which I had fashioned with Alchemy earlier—and a snack to go with our drinks. “I hope you’ll like it, but there’s at least enough for all of you to drink...if Tekun restrains himself to a reasonable amount.”
“This stuff is good, Ryoma,” Grimp said.
“Wonderful,” Wilieris chimed in.
“I’m happy to hear that. For a second, I hesitated to bring you leftover drinks from a party.”
“We don’t care about that,” Grimp reassured. “It may not be refined, but I can taste the hard work and ingenuity in this brew...and the passion of the goblins who worked on it. Drinking it directly makes it all the more special.”
“Directly?”
“All year long, we receive wonderful offerings that we can’t directly enjoy. For the most part, there is no means to send objects from the mortal realm to the divine realm—not without a significant use of our powers, and we can’t do that just so we can taste those offerings. So, we make copies of offerings up here that taste and feel exactly the same as the real thing. We receive the heart of those offerings.”
“Yep. Anything tastes good if there’s heart in it,” Grimp supplied.
In that case, I figured that I could bring offerings more often. It was a small way to repay the gods, and the goblins weren’t going to stop making booze. Besides, a history of offering the sake to the gods might give the drink some sort of boon when using it for hexing.
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