“What?! Is that true, sis?!”
“Why, yes. I heard about it in a port town where I was working once. They bring female goats along on lengthy sea voyages for their milk, you see, and some of the sailors get so pent-up that they become very friendly with these goats, or so I hear.”
“Wow, ye’re jus’ a font of knowledge, ain’t ya, sis? I’m impressed! I really respect ye!”
“Heh heh heh. Good little boys won’t follow their example, though. You wouldn’t want to catch something nasty from them, would you?”
“Excuse me! Will you two please shut your mouths?!” hissed a voice.
The elder harrumphed once before continuing. “...Ahem... Moving on...”
Darke raised her hand before the elder could even begin his next sentence. “Question!”
“What is it, pale one?” The elder turned to her.
“These ancestors of yours, which was the male and which was the female?”
“Hmm? How does that matter?”
“One way is more exciting than the other, so I think it’s very important to know.”
“Oh, you bet. When I get back to Great Anvil, the cartoonists are gonna ask me about that when I tell ’em the story.” Dwaemon chimed in.
“Will you two please be quiet?” pleaded the same voice as before.
“Can I continue my story?” The elder asked with a sigh as Sashalia stared daggers at Dwaemon and Darke.
After a short break in which the red-haired half-elf punished the two troublemakers by pinching their noses, the old kobold resumed his tale.
“Our ancestor kobolds, the descendants of a goblin fairy and a divine beast, were blessed with the mystical power to seek help from the spirits. This allowed them to live peaceful lives in a corner of the Greatwood. And we’re still close with the spirits, aren’t we? Not like those barbaric humans or the elves who left the forest behind.” The elder paused, then continued on. “Because of our lineage, we speak half with our bodies and half with our souls. Our speech is easily heard by human ears despite our volume and the shape of our mouths, isn’t that right, Your Majesty? This is because we speak directly to the soul.”
“Come to think of it, Fog said something like that, didn’t she? I hear you guys talk about how souls smell all the time, too.”
“Indeed. When we speak to someone, we are also half-able to smell the scent of their soul. This makes it easy for us to tell what someone is like and what they’re feeling.”
That was likely why the kobolds hadn’t feared Gaius in the way that humans and animals did.
“Now, getting back to our ancestors. A few times long ago, some idiot or another saw fit to mock the ley lines of the Greatwood, causing periods of great growth of the forest. At these times, our settlements were overcome by the forest and magical beasts, and our ancestors were scattered. With time, our mystical power faded, our bodies grew smaller, and we ended up the way we are now.”
“Huh...”
“The power of our ancestors now only survives in the few of us who have the skills to be a shaman. The spirit-speak that we shamans use is the power the divine beast blessed us with, to commune with the spirits. We call this ‘soul howling.’ Our ancestors could speak directly with the spirits, but we don’t possess that much power now. Really, the best we can do is annoy them with chirps and whistles.”
The kobolds all nodded, saying to each other, “so that’s how it is” and “I get it now.”
Meanwhile, the elder muttered, “I’ve told you all this more times than I can count,” his shoulders sagging.
“Okay, so we get the stuff about our ancestors, but what’s that have to do with us now?” Red Eye asked Sashalia, crossing his arms.
“I’m glad you asked. I intend to employ your spirit-speak in battle.”
“Spirit-speak? But like the elder said, it’s just an ability to make weird noises. And we don’t even know who’s making the noises or where they come from. It annoys the shamans, so our parents teach us right away to never do it if we figure out how. I remember when I learned how, I did it as a prank once and my mom and adults all over the village yelled my ears off about it. It’s just one of those things your parents drill into you, like ‘don’t waste food’ and ‘go to the bathroom at night so you don’t wet the bed.’”
“Yes, that’s right. And I think that’s just the problem. The power of customs is frightening. Over the course of a few generations, or a few dozen of them, something gets branded as useless, annoying, forbidden, and everyone turns their back on an incredible power. I’m guessing there’s been absolutely no research or study into spirit-speak, has there?” There was a twinkle in Sashalia’s eyes as she spoke.
Red Eye knew just how despondent the half-elf had been only a few days ago. A mix of surprise, interest, and joy played on his face at her change in demeanor as he waited for her to continue.
But Sashalia’s next words were directed not at him, but past him, toward the entrance of the meeting hall: “Come on in, ladies!”
“Comiiing!” At her summons, the Kobold Kingdom’s most powerful faction, the housewife alliance, strode into the meeting place. Some carried sticks, others baskets full of rocks, and yet more even had large rolls of parchment with them.
“Come on, clear a path!”
“Get your butt outta the way!”
“Ow! Stop poking me!”
“You’re stepping on my taaail!”
“Mom?! What?! Don’t kick me!”
Over the protests of the men, the women roughly cleared the men out of their way over to Sashalia. They spread out a map that covered several pieces of parchment in front of her and quickly placed an array of small, different-colored stones on it. Then, when the map was ready, most of them filed out, leaving only a few housewives to stand around the map with their sticks as if in formation for some kind of ritual.
“Thank you, ladies.”
“Good luck, Sashalia!” replied several of the women as they left.
With a bashful smile, the half-elf turned back to the men. She cleared her throat, and extending her hands to draw attention to the map, declared: “Now, let me explain just how our spirit-speak tactics will work.”
＊
“As Red Eye said, all spirit-speak amounts to now is some annoying noise. However, your ancestors were likely able to use it to hold conversations. If you concentrate, you can control the rhythm and duration of the sounds you make.”
“None of you have had to do it, so you probably don’t know this, but this is part of performing spirit magic when you’re a shaman,” added the elder. “It’s like doing a vocal warm-up before singing, only you don’t make the sounds using your actual voice. It’s much easier than calling the spirits directly, so if you’ve got any talent you can learn it right away.”
“Oh... Yesterday afternoon, people were saying someone was chirping in spirit-speak. That wasn’t just some kid messing around?” Rain Grass asked.
Sashalia shook her head. “It wasn’t. It was an experiment I was conducting with the elder and Hopping Rabbit, and some of the wives and children that can use spirit-speak. I wanted to know how it worked and how far it could travel.”
“Oh yeah, somebody told me once that you can’t hear it if you’re too far away.”
Since it was considered nothing more than bothersome noise, no one had bothered verifying any of these things. After all, who pays attention to garbage on the side of the road?
“I had thought that the sound might have no limit, but we determined the range of spirit-speak from the village to be just about to the mouth of the riverbed and the forest’s edge. Beyond that, the sound became too faint to hear.”
“Oh yeah?” The men only reacted as if they’d just heard some useless trivia.
“...Do you mean for us to use it to signal to each other? Say, if we spot an enemy?” Red Eye had been listening with his arms crossed, but he spoke up when he thought of that. All the other kobolds also seemed to just now be realizing this noise could actually be useful.
“Are ye tellin’ me ye’d never thought of somethin’ so simple before?” The young dwarf looked around in exasperation.