Chapter 25: DD2 Chapter 019 – Standard

The battering ram, or perhaps just the fist of an oversized classer, slammed into the wide double-doors. Grey dust clouded the humid air from the hard impact against the stone, but the barricades held. System help them, the barricades still held. 

Doom approached, and the goblin had yet to pick a name for himself, which made him an oddity, something he was disinclined to change in his final moments. The idea of dying nameless like so many of his brothers and sisters who had come before him was an appealing one, a nod to where he had come from, if not all that he had achieved. The other goblins who were huddled around him had been quick to adopt the new fashion of names, but they were all younger than him, born to the knowledge that he had to scrape and kill for. Unlike him, they had never known what it was to be tribal, much less to be feral! Their minds had entered Creation at a more complete, more whole stage, even if it was in his opinion a distinctly softer one. 

A softness that had perhaps led to the entire tribe being soundly defeated. 

Their attackers had arrived without warning, overwhelming the top floors of the dungeon before a response could even be mustered. The numerical superiority and home advantage that he and his fellow goblins possessed had counted for less than nothing. Their unexpected enemy had efficiently butchered his people all the way down to the deepest depths of the dungeon where he and his fellow ‘elders’ awaited. The oldest five and their admittedly quite considerable entourages formed the last line of defence for those too valuable for the tribe to lose and the Core itself.

The robustness of their foe’s forged steel weapons, the regularity of their heavy-infantry formations, the devastating power of their wheeled siege-weapons and massed spellfire... it had all been too much for his tribe to handle. Every trick and trap designed with the great enemy in mind had ultimately faltered before this new unforseen adversary, the leaders of which had unflinchingly traded the lives of their own like pieces on a board, all in order to penetrate quickly into the dungeon before the goblins could organise a tactical response.

Tactical!

The goblin laughed aloud at that thought, earning himself numerous looks of fearful suspicion in the dark. The staring only stopped when the doors to the chamber shook again; this time the sound of the impact was accompanied by a large crack that loudly forked through the thick rune-etched stone. The few earth-mages with mana to spare rushed forward to repair the damage, but he knew that it wouldn’t be enough. They had neither the levels nor the expertise to make a difference.

It wouldn’t be long now until they were through.

In his opinion, ‘tactics’ was a small word that wasn’t used nearly enough by his tribe. It was an old idea only recently given verbalisation through the shared memories that were bestowed onto them by the Great System. The steady growth of the concept from attacking a creature when its back was turned, to more complex flanking maneuvers and feigned retreats, was a new and unfamiliar branch of knowledge that many goblins still did not possess. 

If only that wasn’t the case. If it wasn’t then perhaps they would have put up more resistance during the frantic fighting retreat that had led down into the dungeon.

When the enemy attacked, armoured in skill-forged steel, with shining helms of snarling beasts, lacking direction, too many goblins had panicked and defaulted back to their instinctual behavior. Without a plan, and all too often a weapon besides their claws, they had charged en masse, dying pointlessly in numbers that the goblin still had trouble comprehending as they threw themselves on their enemies’ blades. The waves of rallying green all too soon had turned red and ragged as the enemy’s heavy-foot relentlessly advanced forwards over the corpses of the recently slain. 

Barbed polearms that skewered flesh and tore the skin from his kin when they tried to rush the invaders on walls, ceilings and floors. Magecraft eviscerated his tribesmen from afar, the weak spells that were fired from the back ranks were made all the more deadlier by the virtue of their quantity. Ballista bolts were launched from moving platforms amidst crossbow volleys that were fired from over armoured shoulders, the combination of which had turned every brave charge into a bloody rout without so much as a single victory in the long series of skirmishes that had nearly cost them their home.

It was unfair, he mused. His tribe had achieved so much in such a short space of time. The dungeon that they had claimed as their own had served their needs so very well, allowing them to thrive and grow like they never had done before. Unexpectedly the Dungeon’s Core had chosen them in turn, alerting them to the end times that approached as it worked with the elders to better guide the tribe's growth. Without reservation or bargain it had gifted secondary classes to all who qualified rather than try and enforce enthrallment or servitude, a decision that had caused their numbers to swell to truly astronomical proportions.

Astronomical. Ast-ro-nom-ic-al. 

Relating to the stars and celestial bodies, or extremely large amounts. 

Huh.... 

It was a good word. Even now, in the depths of his tribe’s defeat, their numbers kept triggering new memories that he had never forgotten. New words, thoughts and ideas that blossomed in his mind with every passing day. A part of him wondered who he would have been in another month, or even another year if he had managed to live that long. The certainty that he would not survive to see the coming sunrise soured his usually wistful thoughts of the future.

A thundering boom shook the chamber, and the reinforced doors cracked open, offering a brief glimpse of muscled flesh beyond. Immediately, a thin film of mana sealed the new opening shut with a barrier of conjured stone that would last until the respective mages’ reserves ran out. The goblin turned his dispassionate gaze to study the spellcasters and shamans at the rear of the chamber, how they sweated and strained as they held hands in a ritual circle. Each caster working together to empower the spell inscribed within the runic array, the cumulative power of their stats and classes let them achieve far more together than they ever could alone. Which was a good thing as individually goblins didn’t make great mages. The few they had remaining were already sorely taxed in their efforts in saving so many from the upper levels and holding the ritual for just a handful of seconds would drain them completely, but it didn’t matter. Their sacrifice would give him more time to think.

Already his short life had been defined by violence and loss. His status as the eldest elder amongst his tribe was a cosmic joke that would have made him cry if he were capable. That the wisest of his species measured their age in months, not years, was a depressing testament to what they had become. What they had once been, he couldn’t quite remember, but he knew that it was grand.

He supposed that their astronomical rise was one of the main reasons why their subsequent defeat was so galling. In their dungeon, thousands of goblins had been bred to fight in the most important war Creation had ever seen, and unlike his predecessors whose valiant struggles were wasted since the Sundering millenia ago, his tribe was actually within clawing distance of the fight they were made for, and now they had been defeated inside of a day by the wrong enemy.

History was about to cast them aside like they were nothing. The iron weapons and blackest of alchemies, that they had been so proud of, had splintered and splattered on their enemies’ skill-forged steel like they were little better than the knapped flint they had long since graduated from. With the levels and classes that they had been steadily accumulating since they had been accepted by the dungeon, the goblin had tricked himself into believing that his kind could be useful. That their efforts weren’t wasted. That the humans’ great betrayal, the mutilation that they had endured for so long hadn’t made them totally useless.

But that lie he had told himself was being revealed for what it was. 

Self-delusional. 

The humans had been thorough in the crippling of his species, and now after a lifetime of struggle, it was all finally coming to the end. He was to be exterminated like the vermin he tried to rise above.

The spell failed, the conjured stone melted away into motes of mana which raised the ambient levels in the dungeon imperceptibly as the door cracked open and the goblin drew his knives.  

At least he would die on his feet.

Shards of stone slid away from the now vacant doorway as the creature lumbered forwards; hunching low to fit through the low ceilings of the tunnel, the beast revealed itself for what it was. A lumbering hulk of muscle, clumsy and slow.

The goblin smiled, pointed his favoured knife at the beast and roared a warbling warcry. The wavering sound was first taken up by his honour-guard, and soon after that it was repeated by every other goblin in the large chamber as the roiling wave of green charged the hulking mass of furred muscle without a second thought. 

They ran on walls and ceilings as easily as they did the ground, lanky limbs and clawed hands finding solid purchase in the dungeon stone that lined the surfaces of the cavern, placed there for just such an occasion. The goblin delighted in the look of panic that grew in the fevered beast's beady, rat-like eyes as it saw what approached it and felt fear. A thousand bared knives saw their prey flinch and hungered in response. Skills bloomed in the dark as the goblin’s own [Bleed Anything] joined the chorus of System granted abilities brought to bear against their invading foe. His normally unwieldy mana was corralled by the Great System into a fine, deadly pattern that extended down to his blades, honing their edges into an ultrafine point that cut the air as he passed.

The lumbering giant struck out with its powerful limbs, casting down goblins from the walls around it and crushing their frail bodies beneath its fists. It flailed blindly in its panic, and every one of its aimless strikes killed a dozen or so of his kind, but as it marched forward trampling his kin underfoot, it bled.

It bled a lot.

Goblins were fast at their lowest tiers, not particularly skilled or strong, but reasonably fast once you took into account their short gait. As they advanced through the ranks, few goblins, if any, prioritised a stat as much as they did dexterity, and with the thousand in the cavernous chamber being the best they had left, even the slowest amongst them was fast.

Ribbons of flesh were carved from the massive beast as it advanced deeper into the dungeon, the wave of green breaking around it, peeling thick ropes of muscle away from the creature’s bones even if the exchange cost numerous goblins their lives in the process. Goblin blood mixed with the giant’s as it spread out across the floor. The sheer quantities of red that streamed from its lacerated flanks threatened the footing of the gobins’ unending charge as they raced past, knives out and hungry.

Soon the beast was roaring in pain rather than fear, reeling back from the tide of unrelenting cuts and baring more of its flesh to the goblins' hungry knives which only sped up its rapid decline.

Within a minute the warbeast was reduced to a pile of stripped bones and macerated flesh. Its large corpse had barely made it more than a dozen feet inside the room before it fell. Scattered around it were forty-six dead goblins, their own broken bodies in the process of being stripped of flesh. His species's innate skill [Eat Anything] and its subtle variations allowed for the meat of the fallen to hastily restore the injured and mana deprived back to some semblance of fighting shape, which would be needed as the stomp-clank-stomp of the enemies’ heavy-foot was fast approaching.

Another barrier of conjured stone sealed the entrance shut and was immediately ripped apart by a volley of spell-fire and ballista bolts that went on to claim the lives of the goblins behind it who were too slow to fall back. Some of the less-disciplined soldiers belonging to the other elders broke away; some fled, but more headed back down the tunnel where the artillery fire had emerged from. The slight rise in the ambient mana that followed moments later told the goblin exactly how that exchange went as the stomp-clank-stomp went on uninterrupted.

The ominous noise grew louder, and soon the front ranks of the enemy emerged from the tunnel. A long column of steel-clad soldiers marched six-abreast behind a wall of overlapping tower shields that bristled with barbed halberds and practically glowed with mana from the rune-etchings that covered their so-very-impressive gear. Skill-forged steel in such large quantities only made the goblin jealous; his own tribe was only just starting to narrow in on the secrets of steel, having taken a notable detour with alchemy that had so far failed to pay off. 

Crossbow bolts and spell-fire shot out from overhead, killing more of his tribe, while the goblin hesitated to order the charge. His kind were soldiers, and those who knew their duty would face their end without regret, but attacking the ratling column had, time and again, failed to achieve any kind of meaningful results. Goblin archers fired back, their arrows clattering futilely off of shields whilst the enemies’ crossbow bolts punched through multiple goblins with every shot. Ritual spells from his shamans unleashed a wave of rapidly moving stone that was dispelled long before it could reach their foes' shields. Alchemists tossed concoctions that erupted into flames and anticlimactic ‘pops’ that only caused the glow on their steel breastplates to dim ever-so-slightly.

The goblin ran his long tongue over his need-like teeth, all too aware that his people were dying while he did nothing.

He looked to his comrades interspersed throughout the chamber, his fellow tribal elders, each goblin with a name and a story that until today had felt so impressive. Bloodspitter, Humaneater, Ironfang, and Grub. They waited in the dark for his command, their people waiting patiently with the same look of resolution and despair set on their green faces. 

Fighting was pointless, they had already lost.

YOU HAVE DONE WELL GOBLIN, BUT IT APPEARS IT WAS NOT TO BE.

The Core’s voice echoed in his mind, loud and booming as it so often was.

“I know,” the goblin said aloud, the words coming out with great difficulty from his oversized mouth, too many teeth and not enough bone to support them. Another thing to hate the humans for, he suspected.

THEY ARE TOUCHED BY A DUNGEON ALSO. LIKE YOU THEY HAVE BEEN CHOSEN. YOU DO NOT HAVE TO DO THIS, YOU COULD SURRENDER.

“It is not our way,” he replied, a narrow finger testing the edge of his knife. Still sharp.

I WILL SPEAK TO THEM FOR YOU. THEY MAY BE MORE RECEPTIVE TO MY WORDS.

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The goblin grunted noncommittally, unwilling to spend anymore effort on words, not when there was killing to be done. Fighting their unbeatable foe may have been pointless, but it was their way, to do anything else wasn’t worth considering. A small self-serving voice begged him to run, to save himself before it was too late but he ignored it. He had long since transcended thoughts of personal survival. The goblin surveyed the wide faces of his kin as the stomp-clank-stomp grew louder and the whirring sound of bolts tearing through the air grew more numerous. He bit his tongue while he waited, the taste of his own blood helped to calm his nerves, until finally, the long column began to snake out of the tunnel and into the wide cavern where he and his kin waited.

Eyes shifted between him and the enemy. Fear, desperation, resolution all played out on the faces of his kin, but as the goblin stroked his knife’s edge he saw what he had been waiting for. 

Glee.

Fighting this fight may be futile—their loss a near certainty—but if they were to die on their feet a mere hairsbreadth away from the real fight just because a dungeon had sent its creatures to sharpen their blades and levels on his kin, well, he would make damn well sure to bleed them for it.

[Bleed Anything] pulsed in his narrow chest as a thousand eyes too large for their skulls stared at him in the dark. The goblin laughed, and his tribe, as nameless as their leader, laughed along with him. The large chamber echoed loudly with the warbling sound of their laughter even as his kin continued to die beneath their enemies' assault.

I CAN NEVER DECIDE IF YOUR KIND ARE ALL MAD OR IF IT’S JUST THOSE WHO RISE TO THE TOP.

The goblin grinned wider at the Core’s incredulity, multiple rows of his teeth bared in an unnoticed challenge. He raised his favoured knife and pointed it at the centre of the column of enemies clad in thick runic-steel. He cried out in joyous rage, his warbling laughter transitioning into a cry of frustration that echoed thousands of generations of his kind who had died violently and in vain. 

They were so close to the end of it all, that if they were to be denied their chance at significance, then he would at least taste the flesh of these ratlings who dared to invade his home.

Again, a thousand goblins repeated his cry, the cavernous chamber loud with the screams of their rage as waves of green flesh charged, broke, bled and charged again against the orderly regiments of ratlings in heavy runic-steel. 

***

The throne was a grand and gaudy thing. The goblin—who was mostly surprised to still be breathing—couldn’t help but wonder why anyone would ever want so much gold. The metal was far too soft to stab anyone with, and last time he checked, none of the variations in [Eat Anything] could derive any nutrition from metal. A large amount of effort and possibly even class skills had gone into its construction. Lifelike scales flowed up the legs of the seat that better resembled those of a great predatory beast than a chair’s. The high back was composed of long serpentine necks that craned upwards, intertwined with one another until each ‘neck’ ended with a distinct draconic head. The throne itself was arranged in the centre of the impromptu dais that had been set up in the Dungeon’s Core chamber, the throne empty and vacant while a ratling stood proudly in front of it beside a large standard planted firmly in the ground.

Surprisingly, the ratling did not stand alone; besides its guards—a large group of black-furred heavy-infantry—there were a kobold in fine robes, an earth sprite clad in rocky armour, a woodling in bark, a fungoid dressed in woven fibres, and many more creatures he would not have suspected of surviving the sundering, if not for their tags floating proudly above their heads. Members from every lesser-species that inhabited the Dragonspines filled the chamber where he now knelt bound to the rock.

Looking between the collection of races and the many banners that trailed down the length of dark wood that was the standard, it wasn’t hard to piece things together. It was a coalition.

“Join or die,” the ratling said coldly, the furred creature looking at him with nothing but disgust in its beady-animalistic eyes.

The goblin hated that it looked down at him like that, almost as much as he hated that it was the same look he sometimes gave his own kind. He had only recently understood why goblins were so despised by the other enlightened species; his new memories had given him the context that he needed to properly despise himself for what had been done to them. 

For what they had been reduced to.

Their baser instincts to reproduce when lacking the moderating influences of their memories wasn’t exactly the most palatable aspect of his kind. He liked to think that he was better than that now, that he had risen above what he once was as he tried to become closer to what goblins truly were, but that was just idle fancy. Despite his best attempts to instill some semblance of decency, goblins were nothing but a pale, violent shadow of what they used to be. Their worst qualities carried forwards to a species perpetually trapped in their infancy, unable to grow or mature beyond the inadequacies of second rank. 

He wanted to stand up, to stare back into the ratling’s cold disinterested eyes and defend goblinkind, to cast the blame for their failings on the humans who had stunted them so many generations ago with the Great Sundering, but instead he did nothing. He was after all the oldest amongst the elders, a dubious honour that he had earned through his past cowardice. The lessons and knowledge of every failed tribe carried forwards a little bit at a time, every time he had run for his life, until, that is, he decided to stop running.

“You can have dungeon. Everything in it yours. Let us go,” the goblin said stiffly after looking fleetingly at the other dozen or so captives similarly bound in the wide chamber. 

“That wasn’t the offer. Do I need to draw a pretty picture to get it through your thick skulls?” it asked, the words coming smoothly out of its mouth as its furred hands fondly stroked the handle of a spiked mace tied at its waist. 

Despite its obvious willingness to commit violence the ratling oozed culture and intelligence in a way that goblins simply could not. His species’s mouths were overly large, and were simply the wrong shape for easy speech. Every word was a gruelling effort to project past their many rows of teeth; their tongues were too long and thin to properly evoke sound. Now that he was older, he knew that those long tongues were designed for feeding as immature goblins packed on nutrition for the next stage of their growth. A stage that as far as he was aware, no goblin had reached since the humans’ great betrayal.

“No picture,” he replied, shaking his bald head. “Goblins no join. Goblins never slaves. Never fodder. Goblins soldiers.”

The creature smiled at that, its single row of pristine white teeth looking far too clean for his liking.

“It is a good thing that I’m not here looking for slaves. My Lord needs soldiers.”

Huh, Lord? 

“Goblins soldiers,” he responded cautiously, unsure of where the ratling was going with this.

“I’m going to take that as a tentative expression of your interest,” the creature stated smugly, pausing briefly as it was interrupted by a kobold, who spoke excitedly in a yipping tone, visibly shaking with enthusiasm as it prattled on about the remnants of a failed alchemical experiment they had no doubt discovered in the goblins’ labworks. “As I was saying, My Lord is looking for soldiers, and while we came here for easy levels, your tribe surprised us there for a moment, hence the offer.”

“You kill many. Not enough left,” he spoke, choosing to be sparing with his words as the exertion of speech took its toll on his vitality score. For once he was grateful for this limitation, if he could speak freely then he wasn’t sure he would be able to contain the rage that ran through him. Instead the goblin clenched his fists, his claws digging into the green skin of his palms and bleeding him more than he could likely afford, especially considering how recently he had been injured and subsequently healed.

“Then you’ll make more,” the ratling said with a smile, ignoring his obvious show of anger.

The goblin shivered at that. While his kind were despised for their reliance on ‘breeders’ to bloat their population, ratlings were distrusted for their casual disregard of their own species’s lives. Their caste system seemed cruel in the extreme even to him. The thought that he was subjecting his tribe to the whims of the finely-dressed creature before him caused him to hesitate, but only a little as the goblin was not delusional enough to think that he had a choice in the matter.

Before he realised it, he was ‘negotiating’ with the confederacy of creatures before him. The number of breeders who were to be ‘donated’ to the goblins' cause to replenish their depleted ranks was bartered for, along with their access to skill-forged steel, and their duties and obligations in the army that they were essentially being forced into serving. It was an almost amicable exchange if not for the obvious fact that if he refused to give ground on any issue, he would be summarily executed along with the rest of the survivors. Still, the goblin’s cowardice served them well in skirting the threats and earning the concessions that would see his tribe recover greater than ever before.

For a ratling, the creature that spoke to them was so very goblin in their practicalities.

When it eventually became time for it, he and the surviving goblins kneeled before the ratlings’ banner. The creatures were obviously in charge of the delegation and they followed a depiction of a large tusked rat on flowing red silk. When he kneeled before the lowered standard, the goblin took the red silk in his still bloodstained hands and kissed it, an act of subservience that made the bile rise up in his throat, an act that was repeated by every bound goblin in the chamber.

When they were done the ratling laughed, a soft almost melodic sound that showcased how easily it spoke.

“What wrong ratling?” the goblin asked, fearful that the hard-won bargain they had struck might soon be unravelled.

“You may call me Halith, not ratling. And while I appreciate your sentiments to The Great Tusked Rat, I need you to swear your oaths to the standard, not the banner.”

“To the dragon?” the goblin asked.

“Yes. To the dragon,” Halith confirmed.

This time the standard was dipped; the banner displaying the tusked rat head was allowed to trail on the ground along with so many others, as one by one the remaining goblins pressed their lips against the golden statuette of the snarling dragon atop the standard. 

The metal was warm despite the chill of the dungeon, and if the goblin didn’t know better then he would have sworn that it tasted of cinnamon.

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