Urgent Discussion and Secret Negotiations

Back in his cell, Rizz was sitting on the floor. He inspected his hands, then his feet, then his long, green nose. '... Yeah, I just double-checked. I'm still a goblin.'

'If you keep lying, then I will just ignore you, monster,' the young woman stubbornly replied. 

'What makes me not a goblin?' Rizz questioned with a salesman's tone. 

There was a second of hesitation before Elenia telepathically answered. 'You… are far too intelligent to be a goblin.'

'That all you got? Human arrogance, imagining that no one else can be as strong or as smart as you?' While calling her out, Rizz rubbed his empty belly with an unconcerned expression. 'I don't accept that reason. So give me a better one.'

'You're too green,' Elenia stated with a knowing tone, showing a bit more confidence. 'You're also too tall to be a goblin… And your ears are all wrong. They droop down and back. Not out and up.

'... H-hello?'

Rizz took some time to process everything the young woman had just said. Each statement alone was too heavy to unpack. All of them together felt like diving into a mound of mangled metal. 

'I'll have you know, I've always been tall for my kind,' Rizz reasoned, thinking back to how he maxed out the height bar of the character creator.

'You're still too green. Goblins aren't green. That's a fact.' Elenia didn't back down, getting a bit sharper with her words. 

That time, Rizz was stumped. 'Then… what color are goblins supposed to be?'

Stating a fact, Elenia spoke with a more erudite tone, 'All goblins are blue, or a greenish blue. Some races of goblins may be turquoise.'

'Are you saying that green goblins don't exist anymore?'

It was Elenia's turn to feel stumped. 'W-what do you mean by anymore? Goblins haven't changed, ever. They've always been a shade of blue… H-hello?'

'Tell me!' Rizz roared through the telepathy. 'What's the name of this city? This country?'

The young woman almost fumbled her thoughts due to the mental shouts. 'W-we're in Dorson City. The Capital of Wassek.'

'Dorson? Wassek? Where the hell is that?' Rizz questioned, mostly to himself. 'Are we near King's Glacier?"

'The king doesn't own a glacier,' Elenia responded. She brushed some hair out of her face, partially in hope of clearing her confusion. 

Rizz groaned across their mental link. 'Hmmm… Then tell me what year it is.'

Elenia was dumbfounded to get such a plan question. 'It's 1437 BU.'

'... BU? What does that stand for?' asked Rizz, keeping a bold tone while his brain was gradually losing footing. 

'Beyond the Upheval. It's been one thousand four hundred and thirty-seven years since it happened,' Elenia sheepishly answered. 

'Since what happened?!'

Unable to discern what was going on, Elenia paused. She steadied her breathing and her thoughts. 'Umm… Monster–'

'The name's Rizz. I'm not a monster.'

'... Well… Rizz,' there was a layer of bittersweetness topping off her voice, 'why are you asking all of these things? It doesn't make any sense. And since I'm your master, it shouldn't matter–'

Rizz interjected, brazenly declaring, 'This matters a lot! More than I realized! Tell me, Elenia, which pantheon is on top right now?'

'What is a pantheon?' Elenia questioned. 'I don't know what you're referencing.'

Rizz succinctly explained, 'You know, all the pantheons of gods. Like the Exalted Gods or the Cutthroat Gods or–'

'I've never heard of those gods before... Hello? … Monster? … Rizz?'

The supposed goblin swallowed some saliva stuck in his throat. '... Elenia… Did you just say what I think you said?'

'That I haven't heard of those deities?' Elenia rephrased it, just in case it would help. 

'So you… you've never heard of… the Exalted Gods? Or the Cutthroat Gods?' Rizz stammered, finally letting some of his rattled thoughts leak out. 'Then… what gods are there? What gods do you follow?'

An extra hint of eloquence was laced into Elenia's answer. She moved to the edge of her bed and kept a straight posture. 'Me and my family worship the Diamond God, His Perfection, along with his Crystal Saints under the authority of the Crystalline Church.'

'Who?' Rizz rubbed his eyes, disappointed that it couldn't clear his head along with his eyesight.

'You've never heard of the Diamond God?!' Elenia yelled in bewilderment, mentally and verbally. 

'Hey, you've never heard of the other gods, so now we're even,' Rizz bantered, buying some time for his brain to sift through these unexpected details. 'I've never heard of the Diamond God, but I wouldn't mind learning about him. And I can tell you all about the other gods too if you want. But you gotta promise to bring me some food.'

'No! Father would scold me if he so much as discovered me speaking with you, monster!' 

Sighing again, Rizz use a finger to clean out his ear. 'I already told you, Elenia. I'm not a monster. I'm a goblin, and my name is Rizz. How would you like it if I called you a beast?'

'I'm no beast, not in any sense!' Her fury shattered all former timidness. 'Don't even dare call me such a thing!'

'Exactly,' Rizz remarked. 'Now you know how I feel, Elenia. So, please call me Rizz. And I'll be waiting for that food–'

The young noblewoman telepathically shouted, 'I'm not bringing you food, nor do I have any reason to do so. You are nothing more than a fiend in some sort of disguise.'

'... Honestly, I've been called worse. So long as you don't forget my name, Rizzio McKlank Von Thong. But I'll let you call me Rizz cause you're kinda cute.'

That mental bombardment left Elenia in a daze. She held a pillow to her chest while her eyes drifted to the ceiling. 

'Hey,' Rizz called out again, 'you replied to me earlier when I talked about making you a mage, or something. Why's that?'

Elenia nibbled on her lip while deciding how to respond. 

'... I know you can hear me, Elenia. You're allowed to talk. I don't bite unless you ask nicely.'

A wisp of uncertainty stole her nervousness for a second, cracking apart her solemn behavior with a weak giggle. 

And Rizz kept talking, 'So, what was it that you were interested in? Being a mage? Being pretty? Or being crazy rich? … Believe it or not, I have my own ways to help you with any one of those.

'But only if you bring me food and we continue this talk in person.'