I thought carefully, once I'd set up the bare bones of my "tree room", and the core room that would be down the next hallway. I had nearly a dozen little rooms - ha, little. They were bigger than any of the rooms I had right now! I had nearly a dozen medium-sized rooms to play with, and not that many ideas for what to do with them.

  I supposed I could leave them empty for a while, then fill them up later.

  My decision not to mess with them lasted a whole ten minutes, and then I was back to tweaking my blueprints. If I zig-zagged the long halls from room to room, I could make a sort of gauntlet that intruders would have to go through to get to the end and my core. Something felt wrong about having the core on one side and not the other - no tree could be equal to my core! The shiny rock made from my very soul!

  I sketched out another room, even bigger than the big ones, and connected both of the large rooms to it. That would be my new core room! I quickly transferred the raised platform and its steps, and the pedestal in its center, to the new biggest room in my plans, and the statue plinths as well, and then I made more of them, and then I got a little nuts decorating.

  I didn't even notice when the third room finished and the twin halls started to carve out; I was too busy sketching out sections of wall for bas-relief carvings. I didn't know what kind of carvings I wanted to have, but I could figure that part out later, after I'd gotten the broad strokes of everything done.

  Intruder Alert!

  I barely noticed when something came into my dungeon - whatever it was, it was promptly swarmed under by my bumblebees.

  ---

  Greyex spent the rest of the day half-dragging his kobold toward the looming mountain, where he could see white snow high up. Snow was, if great-grandma goblin's stories were to be believed, a kind of water, so if they got there, there would be water to drink. Eat. Supposedly snow was water that had gotten so cold it had turned into sand, which sounded fantastic and fake, but he was more than happy to chase after a story if it meant having a short-term goal to reach for, some kind of plan to follow.

  Night fell before they got there, and Taaku had gotten alarmingly lighter as they traveled. He'd eventually stopped... leaking, but that might be because he'd run out of...stuff to leak.

  The moon was bigger and brighter tonight, and Greyex could just barely make out shapes around him, and the mountain blocking out the stars. He kept going, slower than before. He stopped a few times, when he tripped over things or stubbed his toes. Sometimes, those things were rock fruits and he drank the water inside. He didn't give any to Taaku, who wasn't awake enough to notice him not sharing. He did use some of it to clean the kobold, though, if only because the smell was distracting and could cover up useful smells, like fresh water.

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  It was too dark, even with the full moon, to find bugs and tell the good ones from the bad ones, so he walked all night, dragging his friend pet behind him, panting, stopping only when absolutely necessary (or when he found any kind of water he could drink).

  Once, his foot tangled in something and he fell, only to realize that he'd tripped over a water vine. Greyex cut into the plant with his own teeth and squeezed it over Taaku's mouth, hoping that the kobold would be able to get some of the vine water into itself. He ignored his own thirst and emptied as much of the vine as he could manage into (and onto) his companion, until he ran out of vine to bite and squeeze. By then, the sun had started to come up, so he took a much needed break, sat down on the ground, and twisted the used up vines into a rope.

  Once he'd finished making the rope, the sun was high enough that he could see what he was doing easily. He foraged a few good bugs to eat and, carefully, put one of the squishier ones in Taaku's mouth.

  "Come on," he muttered under his breath, "eat the bug. You drank the water," he left the I hope part silent, "you can eat a bug or three."

  The kobold swallowed the bug. It swallowed the next five, too, and some more vine water when Greyex found a length he'd missed in the darkness.

  He spent the next... however long it took, enough time for the sun to move and the shadows to get a bit shorter, tying the kobold to his back so he could carry it better. It thanked him by relieving itself down the backs of his legs, and then they were off again, a bit slower, but much steadier.

  While he walked, Greyex thought about what he could do to keep them safe once they reached the mountain. He kept an ear out for monsters or anything else dangerous, and double and triple checked that he could bite through his ropes to drop the kobold if he needed to run for his life and leave it behind, but the only things he heard were bugs and small animals, none of which were dangerous to even a lone goblin.

  ---

  Taaku wasn't sure what was happening, or why Greyex was still dragging him around when he was so sick. He had barely been able to open his eyes during the night, and not at all during the day, but the goblin had dragged or carried him when he could stagger along, and even fed him when they finally stopped.

  He'd lain on the ground, then, half convinced that Greyex was going to leave him to die, or kill and eat him. He fell asleep wishing he'd just gone to the Master like he was supposed to and done his duty. It would have been faster than this.

  He woke up to something rough digging into his chest and under his arms and around his back, and then he was laying against something warm and soft and sturdy. His stomach cramped, and he - well. It was a wonder the goblin didn't drop him.

  It was hot and the sun was bright through his eyelids. His head hurt. He went back to sleep, sort of.

  It was hard to sleep when he kept being bumped around, almost as hard as it was to sleep when he hurt, or in the terrible heat, or with the brightness of the sun searing his eyes through their lids.