"The Brotherhood is no more. I doubt this news will give you any grief, but I felt you should know. They were useful tools who are... no longer useful." Lord Bleak shrugged his cloak off, revealing a silver and black suit of armour that adorned him.

It was surreal, Coin thought, hearing a goblin speaking common so fluently. Even those above them spoke human terms in a hissing and gravelly tone. Bleak spoke as if he'd been speaking common his whole life.

"My interest, as is no doubt obvious, is in uplifting the downtrodden. Goblins, ogres, kobolds... and mimics, as it happens."

Coin narrowed his eyes. "By kidnapping my friend?"

"An... unfortunate necessity. I cannot risk entering into Sentinel, my magic would have me sensed by Velasco's agents well in advance. Nor did I imagine any peaceful envoys would be received well." His expression was unchanging, regarding Coin with two solid crimson eyes. "Rest assured, your kobold lover is unharmed."

She had damn well better be, Coin thought, his thin lips parting to reveal rows of sharp teeth.

"What's this all about?" he asked.

"It's simple. I believe you and I have had a similar past, so to speak. Two 'monsters' who were suddenly granted human intelligence. In my case, I was exposed to a few special potions on the isle of Shibalba, a cursed ice-blasted rock forsaken by all sane kingdoms. My former master had no clue I was boosting my own intellect until it was too late. And, by that point, I was able to truly grasp the plight of my people."

He narrowed his eyes.

"Do you know what my earliest memory is?"

Coin hesitated. "I'm... not-"

"It was the murder of my mother. A woman who was not a fighter, who was running for her life when a 'hero' in plate armour ran her spine through with a spear. I hid, one of the few survivors in my burrow, and could do nought but watch as that adventurer and his cohorts sawed off the heads of my mother and all the others who had fallen. They needed proof, you see, of their hard work. More heads meant more pay."

Coin frowned. "I am aware." He had seen as much in his 'youth.'

"Indeed. Being enslaved by an evil witch seemed a step up by that point, you can imagine. At any rate I grew smarter and stronger, one of those rare goblins with a hint of magical potential. And that tower became a great place to refine my strength and broaden my knowledge once I had claimed it for myself. But that memory festered with me all the while, and I learned that my fellow former slaves all had similar memories. When the time came to travel, leaving that frozen ruin behind, I learned that every goblin had memories like that, their own horror stories."

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Coin nodded slowly. "I can imagine. I've seen how human adventurer treat goblins." And while goblins could fight viciously, the humans were ultimately the ones barging into what passed for their homes, often with the express intent of killing them.

Bleak cocked his head. "Well, as you can imagine, I eventually decided that enough was enough. Humans were not content to drive us into the gutter, now they wanted that same gutter to constantly overflow with our blood. Why should we suffer that indefinitely?"

And Coin, as angry as he was at what had happened to his home, could not help but grasp that anger. Who wouldn't be furious, in Bleak's position?

"You're still killing innocent people," Coin eventually said, slowly clenching his clawed hands. He had seen Bleak's war first hand, the massacre during the Goddess Festival. "Do the people on the street deserve to die? People who never did anything to harm a goblin?"

"They did not harm us, but they did not help us. They were content to let the status quo go unchallenged, to believe us as monsters who deserve to be slaughtered." His eyes burned with baleful hate. "There are no innocent humans, Coin. Don't be so naive. There are those who commit slaughter, and those who let them. And you know that the humans, the elves, the gnomes would not suffer the presence of anything other than themselves. After all... you disguise yourself as a human, well aware of how your 'true' self would be received. Am I wrong?"

The two glared at each other for several long seconds. Askyr leered in the dark, held firmly at bay by the power of his master.

He thought of Elijah, who had loved him as a son even after learning the truth of him. And Essine, who loved him even knowing what he was. And of all his friends who knew he was a mimic but did not see him as a monster. "Humans can change," said Coin. "All people can, anything that lives can change. You and I are proof of that, right?"

"No. We're freak accidents," said Bleak. "Not that that is a bad thing. We're alike, and that is why... I want you to work with me. To change the world, and remake it into something more.. suited to our people. You can be your true self. Your kobold lover, and all her kin, can live like people. Like they deserve."

"At the cost of every other life in the towns and cities of Arcadia, yeah?" Coin narrowed the serpentine slits of his eyes, lightning starting to dance along his gnarled, bruised flesh. "Not happening. I'm sorry for what you've gone through in the past. And for the goblins who were killed without deserving it. But you and I aren't alike. Give me Essine, and get out of my damn way."

Bleak narrowed his eyes. "I would advise against being my enemy, Coin. I have spent a long time scouring the depths of Elbrinth, finding weapons and secrets that I will soon bring against Arcadia." He raised his hands into view as he spoke, revealing an ornate metal gauntlet on each. One was promethium, gleaming and silvery. The other was erebite, so black as to almost absorb any light that touched it.

"Give me Essine," he repeated.

Bleak sighed. A wave of force slammed into Coin, so fast that he couldn't react in his injured state, and he found himself being smashed into a deep trench in the ground. "Even when it's a mimic wearing a skin of one, a human is still a human. Askyr? Kill him. And make it hurt."

A noise halfway between a hiss and a laugh rose in Askyr's throat as he loped forward, no longer bound in place by his master's power. Bleak vanished into a churning swirl of emerald light to attend matters elsewhere.

And with the worst of Askyr's wounds having mended into grotesque scars, he seemed to be in better fighting shape than Coin. The mimic noticed this as he forced himself upright, spitting blood from a fresh gash in the side of his face that was slowly mending itself shut.

"Finally." The word was barely coherent, something rasped out of a mouth ill-suited for human words.

Askyr did not care about the Brotherhood anymore. Did not care for his prior aspirations, his belief that Bleak would help them reclaim their former glory. And, dimly, he only vaguely cared about Leona and his revenge. His mind was a shell of what it had once been, decaying in the throes of batle until all that remained was a primal, baleful hatred.

Kill the mimic, his mind hissed at him.

Kill it now.

Coin took another shaky breath and stood on uneasy legs, his hands swirling with whirlwinds of lightning. "Come on then," Coin growled, his grey flesh bristling with swiftly forming ridges of bone. "If I have to tear through you to get to her... fine."

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