“Derek, how did you know?” Was the first thing Tyler asked me after we got basic directions.
“Didn’t.” I wasn’t going to lie about it.
“What.”
Tyler paused in mid-step, Riary frowned at me. Konahora even chuckled.
“It’s like I said, I had a bad feeling. There was no sudden knowledge of an attack or even a good guess, really.”
And that was the truth. Just not all of it. I had ran like a de-... like a demon… because I was stressed and that run had started to feel amazing. I had to run more often. If your body isn’t a pile of manure, running is apparently great. It was like sex but not. Wonderful.
I caught Konahora’s wink. Ah, so that’s how we play that game. That’ll be fun later.
We continued walking, not slowly either. The Baron was worried that the teleportation mage would kill the villagers now that the Goblin Horde they summoned had become less than ash. But all the speed in the world was useless if we passed it by.
I had gathered from context clues that Goblins abducted women and used them like breeding machines. I had enough social tact, barely, to not blurt out any questions. Namely, why? Like, are there no female goblins? Was it a whole race that just survived off rape?
We ate up the ground at a jog that would’ve made an athlete jealous, looking around. I wasn’t really sure what I was looking for. A cave, sure, but from this direction it was hard to tell where that would be. The trees weren’t helping much. We were nearing the area The Baron Reese had mentioned but I was starting to get seriously worried we had missed it.
Till I heard the battle cries.
I turned and there was a small… platoon? No, squad? Of goblins. Around a dozen of them were rushing us. With a sigh Riary raised her hand and a dozen arrows of fire were made and shot forward. Soon, a dozen piles of ash were left.
How they died was slightly horrifying. The fire arrows pierced their heads, going straight through, then turned around and burned them down to ash. That was something I had noticed, Riary never left a body.
“Good, we have a direction.” Tyler said.
It was slightly west of the way we were heading but we had been pretty close. I looked back at the piles of ash as we walked away. Death, killing… I felt like I should have been horrified or care. Goblins weren’t people, as far as I could tell, but they were certainly humanoid and very much alive. I briefly worried I was becoming a sociopath. But…. well… they were goblins. It was kinda hard to care about something that shrieked and ran at you to kill you. Especially while looking that ugly.
No no, bad. Don’t disrespect the dead. I’m sure to goblins their wart and lumpy gross faces are great.
I looked down at my hands, and flickered my claws ‘on’. Did I like fighting and killing? I remember how relieving it was. How amazing it felt to just go on a slaughter. Before Riary had massacred them all, I must have cut down at least a dozen. It had felt… amazing. The blood and gore and… alright, so I’ve developed a bloodlust. Why didn’t I feel this way with the Baron’s men or at any other point in time. I hadn’t really ‘fought’ Riary, but there had definitely been combat and I didn’t feel that way. Had it been-
“Would you like to share your thoughts?” Konahora asked.
I looked up at her, where she was staring at me stare at my claws. Right, that must not have seemed like a great thing mentality wise.
“I don’t like that I enjoyed slaughtering those goblins.”
Riary snorted. “Why? They’re goblins.” Her voice filled with ridicule and disbelief.
“Yeah but… I can’t say I’ve ever found murder stress relieving till right now. It’s, concerning.”
Tyler looked back at me and I realized I really should have kept my mouth shut. I saw his grip tighten. Riary, for the first time in my entire life, said words that were helpful towards me. Definitely not on purpose though.
“Fucking idiot. All demons love to kill and slaughter.”
“Most.” Konahora said.
Ah. There was that mental dysphoria and existential crisis again. Great. Awesome. Truly, the best. I just liked to kill and rip people to shreds now because my race was different. That’s… what the fuck. Were demons just innately evil or some bullshit? Come on! Do I enjoy drinking blood and raping people too? What’s next, I’m gonna start waking up with the skulls of my enemies in a pile underneath me?
“That surprises you.” A statement of truth, not a question.
“It does.”
“Why?”
That seemed like a particularly pointed question. I answered truthfully.
“I have had no interaction with other demons before.”
They all paused at that and turned around to me.
“What.” Riary hissed out.
“I grew up, away from all other demons, as far as I am aware. I am ignorant of a lot of things. I lived a peaceful life back where I’m from and since coming to this world… it has been a lot of surprises.”
Konahora frowned, heavily, and asked something I was surprised had slipped through the interrogation.
“When was the first time you killed?”
“A week or two ago? It was The Baron from the last village, the evil one.”
They all had shocked looks on their faces. Wait. What? Did you guys think I was some kind of mass murderer?! What the fuck?!
“Why would you think I’m a killer?!”
“”“You’re a demon.””” Three voices answered in unison.
God damn. I was liking my race and this conversation less and less by the moment.
“I knew there had to be exceptions to the rule.” Tyler said, happily.
“Tyler…” Konahora said, “We should talk later.”
He looked confused but nodded. Our journey continued with Riary shooting confused glares at me. More like confusing. Sometimes full of disbelief, sometimes with suspicion, sometimes with an extra strong helping of hate. How on earth did the demon… nation? Kingdom? Survive if everyone of them wanted to kill and slaughter?
Wait no, they had started a war and then stopped. Even if they were internally killing each other daily, clearly, there were some elements of peace possible with them. They had never attacked anyone besides humans and their allies, from what I’ve heard.
I shook the thoughts from my head. I could worry about what other horrible mental surprises were in store for me later. Right now it was time to kill more goblins… sigh.
Finally, we found the entrance to the cave. It was… small. I looked over at Tyler and grimaced. He was going to have to crouch the whole way through, that was for sure.
“Let’s go.” He said.
And then it was dark. Riary summoned a flame and lit up our path before us. The Goblin Cave was… gross. There was… I was going to try really hard and pretend it was mud and dirt. The yellow stains were just… shut up me.
It was dark, cramped, and we had to go single file. Riary was in the lead. I could hardly see anything, even with the light. Namely because there was a giant man’s back in front of me, blocking the whole tunnel. I heard goblin screams and then silence. A few moments later, I was stepping on ash. Riary was clearly not having any problems taking care of goblins. In fact…
“Have you guys done this before?”
“Yes.” Tyler said from in front of me.
“More than a few times.” Konahora said from behind me.
Hmm. I did wonder why the tank wasn’t in front but if they’d done this more than a few times, they’d probably learned how to do it best.
Soon, the narrow tunnel expanded and we came to what I could only think of as a natural underground cavern. At least, I thought it was natural for a moment.
“Rock Tunnelers.” Tyler said in exasperation.
Two sighs came from my right. I had to ask.
“What?”
“Goblins dig in the ground. They sometimes find Rock Tunnelers. Harmless worms but when they meet other creatures, they go crazy, digging a whole underground system. Goblins kill, maim, eat, and terrorize them, making it even worse. It means a lot more tunnels and a lot more rooms. The only bright side is that the whole place won’t collapse on us.”
I didn’t quite understand why that was a bad thing. Bigger place, sure, but that just meant more places to be ambushed or more space for goblins. We hadn’t had any issues with them yet, didn’t fully see why everyone sounded so exasperated.
****
It had been a few hours. I now hated goblins. A lot. And worms. It would have been fine if the worms had just dug tunnels but oh no. They were worms. They didn’t dig straight lines. They dug erratically. Some spaces were too small for any of us, some were full dead drops, some curved only to climb back upwards. This whole damn place was a fucking maze of cramped dirty tunnels.
And goblins.
One managed to jump on my head while we had been in a narrow tunnel going upwards, attacking out a hole, and I had to deal with goblin guts splattered across my face while we crawled.
A few times I’d ended up coated in burning ash from Riary’s magic.
Once, I’d missed a hole in the ground and learned that tripping into what I dearly hoped was mud was extremely annoying.
It was like the walk here but instead of rain, it was dirt, darkness, and mindless screeching creatures that were starting to strongly remind me of insects.
I was starting to worry we’d never find what the hell we were searching for, until we finally entered an area where there seemed to be a bunch of worm corpses. I had been… seriously underestimating their size. Worms should be small, not the size of my arm. One was the size of a goblin. For things that could dig through rock, they sure weren’t very strong if goblins could kill them.
“We’re close. Thank god. Their ‘store’ of valuables should just be around that corner now that we’re passing through their feeding room.” Tyler said.
“Goddess damn it. I hate these fucking things.” Riary spat on the ground.
“No humanoid bodies. That’s a good sign.” Konahora added.
We got closer and my power gauge lit up a little. Nothing strong, but something a bit stronger than the goblins. A leader?
By some quirk of fate, (Riary getting tired of doing all the work probably), I ended up being in the lead. So I got to see the sight first.
“Oh. Oh. Oh. Huh. Wow.”
“What is it- the fuck.”
Tyler finally turned the corner and got to see the sight that had dumbfounded us.
“What are you two- GAH!”
Tyler tried to pull his sword and run to attack immediately.
In front of us, a very pregnant woman, was getting absolutely wrecked by three goblins at the same time. All three of her holes were getting absolutely pounded.
Tyler ran to attack and I had to quickly grab him. The look he gave me was a literal split second from splitting me in two.
“Wait! Look!”
He did and his eyes shook. His rage grew and grew, every second a battle not to rush in and murder the goblins committing such an atrocity, causing him to nearly go berserk, searching for what we had seen to stop us from already saving the woman.
When he finally saw it, his mouth dropped open and his sword clattered to the ground.
“Derek, how did you know?” Was the first thing Tyler asked me after we got basic directions.
“Didn’t.” I wasn’t going to lie about it.
“What.”
Tyler paused in mid-step, Riary frowned at me. Konahora even chuckled.
“It’s like I said, I had a bad feeling. There was no sudden knowledge of an attack or even a good guess, really.”
And that was the truth. Just not all of it. I had ran like a de-... like a demon… because I was stressed and that run had started to feel amazing. I had to run more often. If your body isn’t a pile of manure, running is apparently great. It was like sex but not. Wonderful.
I caught Konahora’s wink. Ah, so that’s how we play that game. That’ll be fun later.
We continued walking, not slowly either. The Baron was worried that the teleportation mage would kill the villagers now that the Goblin Horde they summoned had become less than ash. But all the speed in the world was useless if we passed it by.
I had gathered from context clues that Goblins abducted women and used them like breeding machines. I had enough social tact, barely, to not blurt out any questions. Namely, why? Like, are there no female goblins? Was it a whole race that just survived off rape?
We ate up the ground at a jog that would’ve made an athlete jealous, looking around. I wasn’t really sure what I was looking for. A cave, sure, but from this direction it was hard to tell where that would be. The trees weren’t helping much. We were nearing the area The Baron Reese had mentioned but I was starting to get seriously worried we had missed it.
Till I heard the battle cries.
I turned and there was a small… platoon? No, squad? Of goblins. Around a dozen of them were rushing us. With a sigh Riary raised her hand and a dozen arrows of fire were made and shot forward. Soon, a dozen piles of ash were left.
How they died was slightly horrifying. The fire arrows pierced their heads, going straight through, then turned around and burned them down to ash. That was something I had noticed, Riary never left a body.
“Good, we have a direction.” Tyler said.
It was slightly west of the way we were heading but we had been pretty close. I looked back at the piles of ash as we walked away. Death, killing… I felt like I should have been horrified or care. Goblins weren’t people, as far as I could tell, but they were certainly humanoid and very much alive. I briefly worried I was becoming a sociopath. But…. well… they were goblins. It was kinda hard to care about something that shrieked and ran at you to kill you. Especially while looking that ugly.
No no, bad. Don’t disrespect the dead. I’m sure to goblins their wart and lumpy gross faces are great.
I looked down at my hands, and flickered my claws ‘on’. Did I like fighting and killing? I remember how relieving it was. How amazing it felt to just go on a slaughter. Before Riary had massacred them all, I must have cut down at least a dozen. It had felt… amazing. The blood and gore and… alright, so I’ve developed a bloodlust. Why didn’t I feel this way with the Baron’s men or at any other point in time. I hadn’t really ‘fought’ Riary, but there had definitely been combat and I didn’t feel that way. Had it been-
“Would you like to share your thoughts?” Konahora asked.
I looked up at her, where she was staring at me stare at my claws. Right, that must not have seemed like a great thing mentality wise.
“I don’t like that I enjoyed slaughtering those goblins.”
Riary snorted. “Why? They’re goblins.” Her voice filled with ridicule and disbelief.
“Yeah but… I can’t say I’ve ever found murder stress relieving till right now. It’s, concerning.”
Tyler looked back at me and I realized I really should have kept my mouth shut. I saw his grip tighten. Riary, for the first time in my entire life, said words that were helpful towards me. Definitely not on purpose though.
“Fucking idiot. All demons love to kill and slaughter.”
“Most.” Konahora said.
Ah. There was that mental dysphoria and existential crisis again. Great. Awesome. Truly, the best. I just liked to kill and rip people to shreds now because my race was different. That’s… what the fuck. Were demons just innately evil or some bullshit? Come on! Do I enjoy drinking blood and raping people too? What’s next, I’m gonna start waking up with the skulls of my enemies in a pile underneath me?
“That surprises you.” A statement of truth, not a question.
“It does.”
“Why?”
That seemed like a particularly pointed question. I answered truthfully.
“I have had no interaction with other demons before.”
They all paused at that and turned around to me.
“What.” Riary hissed out.
“I grew up, away from all other demons, as far as I am aware. I am ignorant of a lot of things. I lived a peaceful life back where I’m from and since coming to this world… it has been a lot of surprises.”
Konahora frowned, heavily, and asked something I was surprised had slipped through the interrogation.
“When was the first time you killed?”
“A week or two ago? It was The Baron from the last village, the evil one.”
They all had shocked looks on their faces. Wait. What? Did you guys think I was some kind of mass murderer?! What the fuck?!
“Why would you think I’m a killer?!”
“”“You’re a demon.””” Three voices answered in unison.
God damn. I was liking my race and this conversation less and less by the moment.
“I knew there had to be exceptions to the rule.” Tyler said, happily.
“Tyler…” Konahora said, “We should talk later.”
He looked confused but nodded. Our journey continued with Riary shooting confused glares at me. More like confusing. Sometimes full of disbelief, sometimes with suspicion, sometimes with an extra strong helping of hate. How on earth did the demon… nation? Kingdom? Survive if everyone of them wanted to kill and slaughter?
Wait no, they had started a war and then stopped. Even if they were internally killing each other daily, clearly, there were some elements of peace possible with them. They had never attacked anyone besides humans and their allies, from what I’ve heard.
I shook the thoughts from my head. I could worry about what other horrible mental surprises were in store for me later. Right now it was time to kill more goblins… sigh.
Finally, we found the entrance to the cave. It was… small. I looked over at Tyler and grimaced. He was going to have to crouch the whole way through, that was for sure.
“Let’s go.” He said.
And then it was dark. Riary summoned a flame and lit up our path before us. The Goblin Cave was… gross. There was… I was going to try really hard and pretend it was mud and dirt. The yellow stains were just… shut up me.
It was dark, cramped, and we had to go single file. Riary was in the lead. I could hardly see anything, even with the light. Namely because there was a giant man’s back in front of me, blocking the whole tunnel. I heard goblin screams and then silence. A few moments later, I was stepping on ash. Riary was clearly not having any problems taking care of goblins. In fact…
“Have you guys done this before?”
“Yes.” Tyler said from in front of me.
“More than a few times.” Konahora said from behind me.
Hmm. I did wonder why the tank wasn’t in front but if they’d done this more than a few times, they’d probably learned how to do it best.
Soon, the narrow tunnel expanded and we came to what I could only think of as a natural underground cavern. At least, I thought it was natural for a moment.
“Rock Tunnelers.” Tyler said in exasperation.
Two sighs came from my right. I had to ask.
“What?”
“Goblins dig in the ground. They sometimes find Rock Tunnelers. Harmless worms but when they meet other creatures, they go crazy, digging a whole underground system. Goblins kill, maim, eat, and terrorize them, making it even worse. It means a lot more tunnels and a lot more rooms. The only bright side is that the whole place won’t collapse on us.”
I didn’t quite understand why that was a bad thing. Bigger place, sure, but that just meant more places to be ambushed or more space for goblins. We hadn’t had any issues with them yet, didn’t fully see why everyone sounded so exasperated.
****
It had been a few hours. I now hated goblins. A lot. And worms. It would have been fine if the worms had just dug tunnels but oh no. They were worms. They didn’t dig straight lines. They dug erratically. Some spaces were too small for any of us, some were full dead drops, some curved only to climb back upwards. This whole damn place was a fucking maze of cramped dirty tunnels.
And goblins.
One managed to jump on my head while we had been in a narrow tunnel going upwards, attacking out a hole, and I had to deal with goblin guts splattered across my face while we crawled.
A few times I’d ended up coated in burning ash from Riary’s magic.
Once, I’d missed a hole in the ground and learned that tripping into what I dearly hoped was mud was extremely annoying.
It was like the walk here but instead of rain, it was dirt, darkness, and mindless screeching creatures that were starting to strongly remind me of insects.
I was starting to worry we’d never find what the hell we were searching for, until we finally entered an area where there seemed to be a bunch of worm corpses. I had been… seriously underestimating their size. Worms should be small, not the size of my arm. One was the size of a goblin. For things that could dig through rock, they sure weren’t very strong if goblins could kill them.
“We’re close. Thank god. Their ‘store’ of valuables should just be around that corner now that we’re passing through their feeding room.” Tyler said.
“Goddess damn it. I hate these fucking things.” Riary spat on the ground.
“No humanoid bodies. That’s a good sign.” Konahora added.
We got closer and my power gauge lit up a little. Nothing strong, but something a bit stronger than the goblins. A leader?
By some quirk of fate, (Riary getting tired of doing all the work probably), I ended up being in the lead. So I got to see the sight first.
“Oh. Oh. Oh. Huh. Wow.”
“What is it- the fuck.”
Tyler finally turned the corner and got to see the sight that had dumbfounded us.
“What are you two- GAH!”
Tyler tried to pull his sword and run to attack immediately.
In front of us, a very pregnant woman, was getting absolutely wrecked by three goblins at the same time. All three of her holes were getting absolutely pounded.
Tyler ran to attack and I had to quickly grab him. The look he gave me was a literal split second from splitting me in two.
“Wait! Look!”
He did and his eyes shook. His rage grew and grew, every second a battle not to rush in and murder the goblins committing such an atrocity, causing him to nearly go berserk, searching for what we had seen to stop us from already saving the woman.
When he finally saw it, his mouth dropped open and his sword clattered to the ground.
