In which Our Protagonist is returned again to the land of the living and is made to realize he has a higher calling whether he likes it or not. Further, he learns that no act of kindness is without both vested interest and inherent punishment.

Toede awoke with a queasy feeling, a sour ache in the pit of his stomach. Digestive problems, something going down the wrong way.

No. The something going down the wrong way was him, going down the gullet of Hopsloth. Had it all been a dream, or…?

He looked at himself, still dressed in the sturdy gray trousers, shirt, and brocaded vest that he had battled Gildentongue in. A little combat-scarred, but none the worse for wear. Certainly his clothes did not look like he had taken a trip through the digestive system of a dragon-spawned abomination.

The battle with Gildentongue was not a dream, however, nor was the confrontation with Hopsloth. They were slices of reality, carved off and sent spinning into the void. He had died, again, Toede mused, and scowled at the thought, in the hopes it would retreat meekly from his mind. He had died twice now, with dragons and their kin responsible for both deaths. And something or someone had brought him back each time.

Something throbbed red and painful in his mind, and he closed his eyes to think about it. Something that happened after he had been pulled into the maw of the holy Water Prophet, but before waking up here. It was like catching the tattered remnants of a dream, but all at once it came into sharp and singular focus.

He had been on some otherworldly, metaphysical plane. Those godly figures were back, towering brutes of great power, the same who told him earlier that he was to be granted nobility. The figures seemed displeased with his actions, particularly the wider figure who seemed wider than the widest ocean. Their voices boomed like thunder, rattling him from forehead to heels.

This time they had not promised anything. They had told Toede only to "live nobly," not that he would become a nobleman. His mission was to live in as noble a manner as possible, said the other one, who was taller than the tallest mountain.

Then he awoke, the metaphysical door hitting his backside on the way out. Toede wondered if this was what it was like to be a priest, with one's deity always nosing about and making damnable orders.

Also, he wondered how one was to live nobly if one was not a noble already-unless one acted as a do-gooder like the Solamnic Knights and that breed? Toede assumed that people like that were born with silver short swords in their mouths.

Toede opened his eyes. He was back on the banks of the stream, the same stream where he had awakened earlier, beneath the same maple as before. Spring and high summer had passed in his absence, and now the scenery was a brilliant shade of yellow. The first leaves were drifting down in the breeze and settling on his prostrate form.

Toede squinted, looking at the brilliantly garbed tree and wondering if it had been created specifically to bother him. Perhaps next time they would send him back with an axe to take care of such beauteous offenses.

No. He almost forgot. Noble people did not threaten trees just because they did not care for their looks. He reached out and patted the trunk. "Nice tree," he said aloud, feeling immediately foolish. For all he knew, noble-acting people felt foolish all the time.

There was an excited chittering overhead, and Toede looked up to see a squirrel, bushy-tailed and red-gray, taunting him from an upper branch. Again, his first thought was to grab a stone and put the little rural rodent out its misery, but he caught himself. "Hello, Master Squirrel. Sorry to disturb you," he said, pointing at the squirrel with two fingers, imagining them in his mind to be a crossbow aimed at the creature's heart.

The squirrel chattered for a few more moments, then fled, obviously perplexed. Anyone who might have been able to talk to this squirrel in the next two months would have heard a story about how the squirrel saw a drunken hobgoblin appear out of nowhere and speak sweetly to the trees and flowers. Fortunately for Toede's reputation, no one did query the squirrel in this manner, and after two months the squirrel's memory had returned to more important facts, like remembering where all its nut-caches had been stored.

Toede stood, rocked on his unsteady heels, and stumbled to the shore. He splashed water on his face. Again his stomach rebelled. He knelt over the stream but could manage nothing more than dry heaves. Just as well. There was no way (at least no way that Toede knew of) to vomit in a noble fashion.

Toede sat on the shore for the longest time, trying to determine his next move. He was probably a wanted man in Flotsam by whatever government had replaced Gilden-tongue's bogus faith. And he couldn't stay where he was. There were kender in the hills.

He toyed with the idea of retreating from it all, much like Groag, being nothing more than a servile slave to a beneficent master. Groag seemed to have matured in the process. Adaptive, that's what he had said. On reflection, Toede would have called it imitative. Aping the mannerisms of his superiors. Still, it had proven a sure survival trait.

Toede shook his head. Poor Groag, nothing but smoked hobgoblin on a stick, now.

Toede took stock. Whatever had returned him to life had not thought to send any food, supplies, or weapons along with him. A most inconvenient oversight on their part, particularly with kender stalking the woods.

The thought of kender made Toede uneasy. True, they'd taken in Groag as a slave and tried to rehabilitate him, but Groag didn't smash a kender guard in the face and try to drown Kronin's dippy daughter. They might not be very happy to see Toede, and after all, he was weaponless.

The lack of weapons also mitigated against an immediate return to Flotsam. Without knowing who was running things, it would be a safe bet that the new powers-that-be would be as unwilling to hand the throne to Toede as Gildentongue. Without a small army backing him up, Toede was unlikely to get past the gates.

In the end the wisest choice was to put distance between himself and Flotsam and stay away from the kender as well. Move somewhere else, somewhere near Balifor, where one's past could be safely forgotten, or even back to Solace. Surely, no one was left alive there who might remember him. If, in the course of his travels, he happened to encounter a band of hobgoblins of the old-style, whom he could razzle-dazzle and convince to capture a city, well, then, what harm would there be? It would even be a noble thing, almost, bringing his people out of savagery and into a better world.

More cheerfully, Toede started on a trail along the creek, careful to keep his thoughts sufficiently intact to avoid any spills and watching for the beginning of the swamp.

Move far away, that was the right idea, reflected Toede. Perhaps even enter into some holy order or another, like the Solamnic Knights or the Tower of High Sorcery. Learn, relax, gather one's strength, then take over some small town or hamlet in the name of goodness. That would give him a chance to flaunt his nobility, or at least enough nobility to keep his shadowy masters happy.

Perhaps a lordship would come in time, he mused, for humans were always singling out those of their number who acted in a noble or selfless fashion, and providing all manner of rewards to them. Perhaps individuals would come from miles around to listen to Toede's wisdom and to seek his advice, for a noble being would undoubtedly be considered wise.

Lord Toede the Wise. Saint Toede the Protector. Toede, Master of All Noble-Splash!

Toede had found the edge of the swamp again, in his customary fashion. Unmiring himself, he noted that the cattails began in earnest another hundred feet away. To the left, the rising hills led to the kender encampment- not the best group of people to be around at the moment.