Daubed Across the Throat

Not writing — goblins don't write. A wall by the descent throat painted over and over in lamp-soot and old blood with the same crude warning: a ring of lamps, the dark past it, and a hand held up.

Goblins do not write, so this is not written. It is painted — daubed in lamp-soot and old blood across the whole wall of the descent throat, the same crude shape made again and again by different hands over what must be a very long time. A ring of small flames, drawn careful for goblin-work. Past the ring, a smear of nothing, black and thick. And over the nothing, every time, a splayed hand held up: stop. There are no words because the warren has none for this. Some daubings are wet-fresh. Some are buried under a hundred older ones, a whole floor's wall gone dark with the layering. This is the closest the Skritch come to scripture, and all it says, in the only language they have, is the thing every goblin here is taught before it is taught to raid: not past the lamps.