Chapter 94: Shadows

The Collector watched from outside as the hobgoblins circled the Snowmound and began to file in and out, bringing out females, hobgoblin children, and a sparse few of the smaller goblin variants.

It was interesting to analyze the Snowmound and its structure. By encasing its ocular systems with magical energy, the Collector could perceive the exact mechanics by which the flow of magical energy created such a geographic anomaly.

It would seem that just as mana flowed within the body of living beings with analogous physical vessels such as the core to the heart and spirit roots to blood vessels and nerves, so too did mana flow through the world.

With the world, however, the analogous physical vessels were parts of its physical terrain.

Thus, the 'spirit roots' of the world could be perceived within the wind, growths of flora, the running of water bodies, and so on and so forth.

All of these also indicated degrees of flow.

A particularly healthy forest biome, for example, should indicate the presence of particularly strong mana flow.

The Snowmounds were concentrations of mana flow. An intersection of various points of mana lines traveling across the terrain. Here, snow and winds, the physical vessels of mana, congregated, forming into large mounds that could easily house this tribe of hobgoblins.

At a certain point of development, the Snowmounds also became charged with enough magical energy that they came to defy certain natural processes, becoming self-sustaining and resistant to melting.

These hills of magically charged snow were therefore both physical and magical shelters, providing insulating warmth and also strong wellsprings of mana.

The Collector could utilize the Snowmound to imbibe more atmospheric mana, for until it reached the cap of its root consumption limit, consuming creatures would not restore its reserves.

In the Snowmound, the Collector calculated that it could increase the regeneration rate of its mana pool from one percent per minute to five percent per minute.

But first, there was to subjugate the rest of the tribe.

By now, the Collector saw that the whole tribe had assembled. The male specimen held down the females and children, keeping them corralled in a cage of bodies that once were meant to protect them.

The Collector slithered over to the ring of packed females and young. All of them shrieked and shied away from it, and many of the hobgoblin males snarled, taking offense to such a reaction to their 'lord.'

The Collector spoke with Higher Calling. "Be still."

Its voice resonated outwards, and as the echoing peals washed over the rest of the goblins, they came under its eternal servitude.

The Collector had theorized about what it would do with these specimens. It depended on a variety of factors, but the greatest was in whether they were self-sustainable and capable of moving unnoticed by tinkerers.

This, the Collector would glean from the elder.

"Where is the specimen you designate as an 'elder'?" said the Collector. "Bring the specimen forth."

"Take time. Elder slow and weak," said one of the hobgoblins.

The Collector waited.

A minute later, the elder emerged from the tunnel entrance of the Snowmound.

As expected of its title, the elder was an aged specimen. At the twilight of his biological lifespan, quite likely. Potentially nearing sixty years.

He hobbled forwards on a rough stick fashioned to support failing legs. His limbs were thoroughly atrophied by age and lack of usage, thin strands of muscle lying weak under wrinkled white skin.

His head was hunched over with a large, hooked nose dotted with warts, and thin grey wisps of hair speckled the top of his balding head. In size, vertebral compression along with accompanying muscle loss caused him to be less than half the bulk of the average hobgoblin.

A hobgoblin had to continually assist the elder as he walked, hobbling with some difficulty through the thick snow towards the Collector.

From the elder's dulled pupils and the way the hobgoblin assisting him had to nudge him this way and that, the Collector could discern the elder was blind, or at the very least, lacked sight to such a degree he was functionally sightless.

"Hrunt...is that you, child?" said the elder as his wrinkled, pointed ears pricked up. He adjusted his weak gait towards the Collector, picking up likely on the Collector's magical energy.

Likely, the elder picked up on a magical energy signature within the Collector that was foreign. The Collector surmised it was due to the fact that it had slotted in the Frostborn Hobgoblin Thrall's core.

"Something...something about you has changed," said the elder as he ambled forwards, one hand on his walking stick, the other stuck out in front of him, towards the Collector.

"You are now to heed my words," said the Collector, its voice echoing with the power of Higher Calling. It had decided to save the elder for last, noting from the others that the elder possessed higher levels of magical energy than the rest and therefore potentially more resistance to mental interference.

The Collector inputted in more magical energy with this command, and as the elder heard the words, he stiffened, then nodded.

"Ah, I see now. You are here, my lord. Lord...no...this feeling, it is...it is more akin to a king," said the elder. He hobbled on his walking stick. "I would like to kneel, but my body fails me."

Tears began to well up in the sides of the elder's eyes. "To think, to think that even our king rises from the tales of myths and legends. Will you return us to the old age?"

The Collector clicked the mandibles on its main skull.

Higher Calling did work on this elder specimen, but not to the same degree it did on any other goblin species.

Instead of utterly blind devotion, the elder merely was suggested to treat the Collector as a 'king', presumably a title of authority outstripping the 'lord' in rank.

As for why, the Collector could make several theoretical guesses, many of them involving the potential that highly magically sensitive goblins possessed cores that differentiated in structure sufficiently to prevent the highly specific nature of the Higher Calling powers from working at maximum capacity.

However, to test these theories, the Collector would have to directly inspect the elder's heart, and any manner of physical trauma upon a specimen this fragile possessed over a ninety percent chance of leading to death.

Untenable now when the elder was the Collector's greatest potential source of knowledge for this new biome.

At the very least, the elder seemed thoroughly willing to cooperate with the Collector of his own free will.

"I know now of what this 'old age' entails. Yet, I sense it is within your vested interest to ensure the continued safety of this social unit," said the Collector. "Tell me, does this area, this Snowmound, possess enough safety to reside within for extended periods of time?"

The elder put a hand to the air, feeling its billowing currents. The winds were not as strong here as they were in the winter storm that had passed, and the elder noted this with a nod.

"The storm has passed. The Shadows will come back soon to take shelter from the clearing skies and the light of the sun. But I sense that the clouds still gather against the sun. It will take some time. Two hours, yes, that does seem right, my king."

"No other presences threaten this location? No humanoid civilizations?" asked the Collector.

The elder shook his head. "No, my king. Our people are safe here til' the Shadows come. Then, must we leave lest we invoke their ire."

"Agreeable. Then this extraction of information shall continue within the structure of the Snowmound," said the Collector.

___

Within the Snowmound, the Collector turned off its aura of flames for the space was insulated enough against the cold such that its flames could risk overheating those within or perhaps melting even the magically enhanced structure.

It was of noteworth that the space of the Snowmound was larger within that its external physical dimensions would indicate.

Perhaps another result of mana concentrating in this point.

The difference in space was significant, indicating almost a doubling of space within compared to what could be perceived from the outside, but nothing extreme.

The Collector did not find much surprise at this casual warping of space. It now knew to note the importance of phenomena upon this world of magic not by how they broke conventional natural laws, but instead by the scale of the effects they manifested.

The Collector coiled down within what was essentially a domed room of snow spacious enough for the whole tribe to sit around it. Pores within its carapace drank in the thick concentration of magical energy within this space, accelerating its mana regeneration greatly.

Not five percent per minute. The Collector reassessed its calculations. Ten percent per minute seemed more an accurate deduction.

Here, the Collector could even continue to maintain the existence of the newly evolved champion without worrying about continual mana loss. It would have liked to keep this area as a territory for itself as it provided the necessary magical energy to fuel its experimentation with Higher Calling.

If the Collector could modify Higher Calling's evolutionary function such that it removed the need for the evolved specimen to continually drain the Collector's mana, then it could theoretically evolve the entire tribe and possess a formidable fighting force.

This, however, was contingent upon the information the elder gave it and whether this space could be wrested from these entities known as 'Shadows'.

The elder sat cross-legged in front of the Collector, utterly dwarfed by the Collector's size.

"Explain to me more of these Shadows," said the Collector. "And the nature of threat they pose."