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Chapter 15

Shape of a Goblin

Myraenac pinched the tip of my ear. “No, this needs to come to a point. Sharp, like you’re going to cut someone with it.”

I began the change. Not that I, myself, saw the purpose of ears. It felt like a lot of exposed tissue, needlessly hanging out. I wasn’t a big fan of the goblin noses, either.

Perhaps I should explain. The tribe had decided, since they couldn’t strike from outside, that someone needed to infiltrate the goblin nest. Specifically, that someone was me, although I was still small for a goblin.

I had told them the nutritional requirements to grow, and in retrospect there were better things I could do with that one hundred eighty biomass. Heck, with two hundred I could raise my Insight. Maybe a better brain would help me think of ways to get more biomass?

.....

But instead, I was burning a point here, two points there, refining my goblin form under the guidance of Myraenac. The clan had wanted Yneridd, who had spent months studying goblins, but she had already left to visit relatives.

Visiting relatives was just an excuse; strong centaur didn’t need to ask other clans for favors. But family, even by marriage, was supposed to do little things for each other. So much of the actual politics of the clans was done by individuals, who happened to visit another clan at just the right time.

I had tried explaining to him that the goblin smell was what had given me away.

“I don’t want to be touching a smelly goblin.” He said dismissively. “Form first, then we correct the smell.”

And so we worked on tiny, irrelevant details that somehow were worth Anatomy cultivation. The length of finger joints, the exact shape of the overly large feet, the inefficient positioning of the tiny goblin teeth.

It was like goblins were just made to be disposable; I had to constantly go back and re-make changes. I was hopelessly symmetrical for a goblin.

And I couldn’t do anything about my eyes. No matter what evolutionary changes I made, my eyes were always orbs of solid black, mildly reflective like those of a shark. It was silly and frustrating and even at the time of this writing, I just can’t seem to do that.

Eyes, poets tell us, are the windows to the soul. Apparently, mine is darker than races considered innately evil.

Eventually, extra flesh added to the eyelids caused a squinty look that hid the look of my eyes.

On the second day, Myraenac had brought back a dead goblin to compare, and found whole new faults. My stomach grumbled, even as the goblin corpse went foul.

“If I could just eat the goblin-” I began.

“Stop being a repulsive little whelp. We’d be done by now if you’d just change your form faster.”

“I don’t see you changing your form faster.” I complained. That remark earned me a cuff.

After four days, he presented me to the clan, who pronounced me a suitably vile-looking goblin.

#

I wasn’t given the best of goblin equipment, that would have looked suspicious.

My equipment was carefully chosen not to match, or to look like I had any clue what it did or how to maintain it.

The disguise thus perfected, I was fed brews of fungus, rotted lizards, and fish heads for two days.

The plan was simple; another set of two males and their wives would attack the goblins by day, camp just inside their perimeter, and kill as many as they could. I would be wounded, and lay down among the goblin bodies.

Goblins, I was told, didn’t even get names unless they did something heroic. In a clan of near four hundred, especially breeding as fast as they did, I should be able to fit in.

And, if I failed, it wasn’t as if an actual member of the clan had been put at risk.

I was to meld into the nest structure, figure out how things worked, and get assigned to guard the cave entrance during the day. Once that was done, I could start making reports and receiving missions.

My lack of enthusiasm for this plan helped convince the chieftainesses that it was a stroke of brilliance.

The fact that I would be hit with a real arrow? That was just a pleasurable bonus.

So the bold party rode forth, killed the current cave guards by a hail of arrows, set up camp where the last raiding party had, and waited.

Not long after dusk, goblins began assembling at the two nearer concealed entrances. I say concealed, but they were hidden by a bundle of dead bushes. If you knew what you were looking for, they were easy enough to spot.

That said, the clan had missed them during the initial scouting.

A goblin infantry assault is a terrible thing to experience up close. The centaur lured them, baited them, darted around at the edge of the goblin bow range. They, and their kobold generals, apparently thought it was worth pressing the attack.

When that attack was led through camp, I dutifully charged out from under my blanket, merging with the rushing melee troops. It was chaos.

I tried not to cringe, or to look like I expected to get struck down by an arrow. This was good, because it turns out I wasn’t. The small goblin to my left was struck in the chest, but not slain.

“Hey, you.” He said to me, “Help me this arrow.”

I looked at him, wondering what I should say.

He made a yanking gesture. He wanted me to pull the arrow out, so I did.

He screamed louder about the arrow coming out than it going in.

And then, he was charging again, so I followed. We ran to the point of exhaustion, not stopping as our comrades died around us.

It felt like hours, but it had been less than ten minutes. I shifted back my knees, ankles, and hips, all of which had changed during the running. The pain helped me feign exhaustion, which seemed to be the norm.

Perhaps two in ten of my group were no longer with us. The battle was ahead, but in the distance.

The big ones talked to each other, and moved away from the battle. Were we done?

One took a swing with a curved knife at the goblin furthest from the battle.

“Get back up there!” Bellowed one of them, pointing a spear towards the sound of screaming. ” for the !”

In a disorganized, drooling, frenzied mob, we loped off to battle.

#

We returned to the nest, or perhaps it is better to say we were herded there.

“You there! Runt! Give me that knife.” I did so, having a better knife in my inventory. “Move along, tiny.”

I moved along. Even if I had understood goblin society, I couldn’t have won against that misshapen hulk.

As we passed through the tunnels, we were guided left or right by our height. At the end was a chamber, rough hewn from clay and reinforced with stone pillars. The floor was the same kind of stone, but pressed with smaller rocks. It looked to me like the sediments of an ancient river had been solidified.

I wondered when we would eat. And wondered, and wondered.

We were packed in tighter than I preferred. Had I been packed so densely with my siblings in the lagoon, we’d have eaten each other.

The majority of the goblins just curled up on the floor and went to sleep.

I searched for exits; they were all watched by larger goblins. No fewer than two, no more than four.

Those weren’t the most vigilant of guards, but they were enough.

Big surprise, the plan had gone awry – again.

The big ones came through. “Wounded goblins, to us! needs to see. All wounded goblins, to us!”

The one I’d followed the night before pressed close on my back. There was a sharpness beneath the right side of my rib cage.

“Not. One. Word.” He told me.

“Is that a sharpened stick?” I asked primarily to gain time, but also to distract him from the scale that was growing under the point.

Those who came forward were being filed out of the cavern.

“It’s enough to wound you. I’m not going alone. The wounded don’t always come back. You’re my shield.”

“Is anyone else wounded? Point to the wounded, if they aren’t coming forward on their own.”

Two brutes came toward us. He panicked, and the point slid to the edge of the forming scale and plunged in for six points of damage. I screamed in pain, and we were pulled apart.

“You won’t feed me to the spore pits! I’m going to live!”

I gained a point of Pankratios XP by watching them grapple with him. An oversized hand fell on my left shoulder.

“Heh. That’s a . Guess you’re wounded now.”

“I guess so.”

My superior slapped me.

“What was that for?”

“Say you’re sorry for getting wounded.”

“I’m sorry that I’m wounded.” Was the closest my Truthspeaker curse would let me come.

“Good. Move along.”

#

The word we were supposed to see was either a shaman or witch-doctor, or whatever profession serves goblinkind as a medic.

She barely looked at the wounded, slapping a bandage on some, twitching her ears to the side for others. Those were led away screaming.

.....

“Huh.” She said when looking at my wound, and then slapped a bandage onto it. The edges were treated with something sticky, and the herbs mixed in burned, but the chance of my wound getting infected went down.

“This one will live.” She said. “Back to the broodcaves with him.”

For all his whining, my fellow soldier also got a bandage. “This one will take two days to heal. Back to the broodcaves.”

And so it was for that first day, under the negligent but tolerant care of our keepers.

That night, we were taken outside by the same exit. “One hour. Eat what you can find.”

What? That was ridiculous! No wonder goblins were stunted and skinny, they must spend half their time starving.

Some other group had been led to the same field, for it had already been picked over. Someone had even eaten the flower bulbs.

Square of size times Might times level was four times two times five, or forty biomass points. It just wasn’t possible.

That didn’t stop me from grabbing handfuls of foliage into my mouth, into my inventory. It was easy enough to harvest, if bland and thin on nutrition. Eighty meals of grass would be enough to keep me alive a day.

I found other things, a few unidentified seeds, a mildly poisonous mushroom that I left alone, a mint plant that had a few leaves left on it. If I’d had more time, if I roam more, then this would be easier.

My fellows were chasing around mice, digging for worms, where had I seen this before?

When it started, it was over an oyster, of all things...

When it started, it was over a sickly bird, too weak to get away.

There were guards around the perimeter, so I couldn’t run. I put distance between myself and the fight, but was unable to look away.

They punched and kicked and bit. All I could think was that each goblin was made of meat. Foul meat, that would go quickly to rot and slime, but not so quickly as I could digest the stuff.

But – the diarrhea. And there was no water here. Or at least none I had seen. Some of my fellows licked moisture from the walls, but that couldn’t be the right way, could it?

How sad, that one of the first meters I’d had to pay attention to was my water. And here we were, with no source of water apparent. I flipped through the goblin evolutions I knew of. With this many of my fellows, they had to drink some time.

Without ceremony, we were herded up at the end of the hour and back into the nest. I had managed to harvest six biomass, and my inventory consisted of one knife and three stacks full of grass.

We were all herded back into the same cavern we’d come from. While we had been out, someone had set half a barrel upright.

I had a keener sense of smell, but those who had been closer to the entrance were ahead of me, and were already racing for it. That barrel contained enough water for half our number, and goblins were already fighting over it.

#