Chapter 16: Ch 13 – Dusk

Aspect of fertility has risen to +2

Aspect of fertility has risen to +3

 

Fertile body has risen to 4 - womb recovery rate up, estrous cycle quickened

 

Womb status: recovery ~ 12 hours remaining

 

Inheritance doctoring has risen to 2 - you may choose the type of traits your offspring will have at a slight cost to the trait’s strength 

 

The constant chirping of insects and croaking of frogs ring in my ears from all directions, only broken by the crashing of the waterfall nearby. The leaves of the trees surrounding the village rustle with a drowned out wind

 

“Look, I appreciate the enthusiasm, but you don’t need to bite that hard. Or at all, really.”

 

The tiny goblinoid doesn’t change her behaviour in the slightest, continuing to assault my nipple with her toothless jaws. Hey eyes remain closed, but I can tell that she’s awake right now.

 

No

Bite

 

Her eyes drifts open to meet my own, and we stare into each other for a drawn-out moment.

 

She slowly shuts them and returns to her meal, relaxing her deathgrip on my swollen teat by just a little.

 

Eh, I’ll take what I can get.

 

…

 

It takes about 15 minutes for her to drink her fill, and I spend all of it in a state of minor unrest. Every second I spend in the village before I go to the Elder only increases the chance of the goblins figuring out that something is amiss. I just have to hope no one checks up on the guards.

 

However, everything seems to be quiet, so I should be in the clear.

 

All I need to do now is to switch my goblinoid daughter with Dawn and make myself scarce.

 

I do feel a little bad about leaving her here, but I won’t go back on my word. We should be able to communicate through maternal link anyway, so it’s not like I’m going to leave her life entirely.

 

My nipple pops out of the infant’s mouth as she starts to grow weary, a few drops of milk leaking onto my areola as the lack of stimulation halts the flow. Looks like she won’t be making any noise for the moment.

 

Pulling my jacket back on and pushing myself to my feet, I guide myself through the starlit camp as quietly as possible. I pass the bush where the first guard I subdued should be resting, and pull a bit of foliage aside to see if he's still asleep.

 

Yup. Laying there as quietly as Dawn.

 

I walk around to the front of the Elder’s hut and walk in. The back doorway to the sleeping room is covered by a leather curtain at night, which I slowly pull aside.

 

Oh

 

Oh no

 

What greets me isn’t at all the darkness brought by a lack of windows on a moonlit night. It’s something far worse.

 

Torchlight

 

Hearing the rustle of the door-curtain open, the Elder turns her head around, looking away from the workbench she’s seated at, and right towards me.

 

Her gaze shifts to the green child in my arms, but her expression doesn’t change from her usual stoic one.

 

“Ah, so it was tonight.”

 

Wuh- wuh- wuh-

 

“What?... You knew?”

 

She scoffs. “You claim that shirt was to keep you warm, yet you sit in the waterfall for hours at a time. That’s meltwater straight from the mountains dear, it’s almost ice cold.”

 

“But that can’t be the only thing. Surely you couldn’t figure out my whole nature just from one lie!”

 

A sight seeps out of the Elder’s wrinkled lips.

 

“Sit down, you can’t stand in the doorway forever.”

 

I consider my options. Obviously I can’t run from here without Dawn, so any delays in my escape caused by seating myself are irrelevant. But I also feel like I shouldn’t be letting my guard down.

 

I cautiously make my way to the fur nearest to Dawn’s crib and lower myself into a position half-ready to bolt as the Elder eyes my daughter curiously.

 

“You’re probably expecting me to make some sort of list compiling all the clues you left behind; but honestly, those are all pointless. Simply put, you just did a horrible job of concealing yourself with that shirt.”

 

“That shouldn’t have happened, I made sure of it through my reflection.”

 

She smiles, my panic seems to amuse her slightly.

 

“Please, you shouldn’t be placing your own perspective on others. If you only ever look for your reflection, you’re going to see the whole world backwards.”

 

“Please spare me the philosophy. What do you mean?”

 

“I mean, Horned One, That it only takes a small shift from either party for a creature of a goblins’ stature to see right under that shirt.”

 

I clench my teeth in a mixture of frustration and embarrassment.

 

Fuck. I want to tear my hair out.

 

I somehow literally forgot to take into account one of the three things that goblins are: short, green, and horny

 

How did I even manage to do something so stupid?

 

From what she’s saying, it was painfully obvious to any member of the clan with eyes.

 

This is just too much. Not only was the whole clan aware of my rapid pregnancy, but none of them said or did anything about it.

 

“But wouldn’t any goblin with a head on their shoulders just lock me up and use me as a vessel for their children? I can produce them so much faster than a human can, so wouldn’t the clan become one of the valley’s strongest?”

 

The Elder shakes her head. “There are so many mysterious and wonderful things in the world, but no pure blooded goblin has time in their short lives to make sense of them. They all simply have to focus on survival and  accept everything at face value. My clan has never had a human for decades, in all likelihood they just assumed that all humans are like you.”

 

“Is that why you spout poetic nonsense then? Because it’s your job as a hobgoblin to think about things? Why didn’t you chain me up then?”

 

She glances at the babe briefly.

 

“The rest of the clan would not like to hear this, but I actually don’t want us to be strong. The path to power is caked in fear, hate, and blood, and I wish to stay as far away from it as possible. I really don’t care if the clan never accomplishes or owns anything, as long as we have a long lived leader to guide us, that will be enough.”

 

Old thoughts float to the surface of my mind about her previous words to me. About how hobgoblins live in most other clans as aloof megalomaniacs. Too many of my children would probably tear her precious clan apart.

 

I look down at the small sleeping figure in my arms. Her mouth is hung open slightly and there’s a bubble of snot in her nose that moves slightly when she breathes. No matter how I look at it, I find it hard to believe a being like this could become capable of such hate.

 

But that’ll all just be a product of how she’s raised, right?

 

I can’t really see the Elder instilling any of that ideology in her, but I still can’t be sure if I’m not around to see it happen.

 

I had this all planned out ahead of time without a problem, so why am I having second thoughts now? Should I stay?

 

No.  I don’t know if I’ll be able to stop myself from getting pregnant, so I would just end up ruining the Elder’s vision for the clan’s peace.

 

What if I were to just take he-

 

ｦ̶̨͈̹̈́ｨ̶̥̖͒͠ţ̵̗͌̕n̵̜̪͐͗ǫ̷̢̓̓͝o̵̠̓ｰ̸̪̅%̶̭̙̌l̴͍̫̖̄͗͠｡C̵̹͋͋̕v̶͕̲̯͛̄̓n̶̼̐͒ｬ̴̵͚͙̙͒͛̂̉͜͝͠ͅ､̵̛͔͈̯̋ｬ̷̙̕͜ｷ̵̧̮͔̅̂%̷͔́X̷̰̒

 

Something starts to claw its way out of the recesses of my mind, scraping against anything it meets on the way.

 

o̵̠̓C̵̹͋͋̕ｦ̶̨͈̹̈́ｨｰ̸̪̅%̶̭̙̌l̴͍̫̖̄͗͠v̶͕̲̯͛̄̓｡̵̙̂̉͜͠ͅ､̶̥̖͒͠ţ̵̗͌̕n̵̜̪͐͗ǫ̷̢̓̓͝n̶̼̐͒ｬ̴̵̛͚͙͔͈̯͒͛̋͝ｬ̷̙̕͜ｷ̵̧̮͔̅̂%̷͔́X̷̰̒

 

It seems to grow closer and closer with every passing moment, its wake torn and broken.

l̴͍̫̖̄͗͠｡̵̙̂̉͜͠ͅ､̵̛͔͈̯̋ｬ̷̙̕͜v̶͕̲̯͛̄̓n̶̼̐͒ｷ̵̧̮͔̅̂%̷͔́o̵̠̓C̵̹͋͋̕ｬ̴͚͙͒͛͝ｰ̸̪̅%̶̭̙̌X̷̰̒ｦ̶̨͈̹̈́ｨ̶̥̖͒͠ţ̵̗͌̕n̵̜̪͐͗ǫ̷̢̓̓͝

 

I can feel it right behind me now, radiating an icy chill against the length of my back.

 

̶̲͙͛̕%̸̬̼̰̏ｬ̸̗̈͌̈́ｪ̸͈̯̗̀ｦ̴̳͑ḁ̷̶̡̫̙͛̎̑ｩ?ｬ̵̳͙̓̈̈ｰK̵̶̮̗͇̳̯̋̆̋̿̓̚%̷̪͙̪̊͌l̵̹̽̍͝"̸̶̨͉̭̟͌̇̔̌̉

 

Whatisthiswhatisthithiswhatisthiswhatiswhatisthiswhatwisthis

 

…

“Horned One!” the elder exclaims.

 

“Huh? What’s happening?”

 

She looks at me with a slightly concerned expression on her face.

 

“You tell me. You were just staring into space for a good few minutes there.”

 

Minutes? What was I just doing?

 

I try and remember, but it only sends a chill shooting down my spine. No matter, I should be leaving anyway.

 

“Here.” I say as I pass my second child forward. “I was thinking that she should probably have a goblin name, which has to be earned, so I haven’t given her one yet.”

 

The old herbalist quickly opens her mouth, but stops herself before any sounds come out. She tentatively reaches her arms out towards me.

 

I gently deposit the babe into her weary wrinkled hands. She quickly draws them back, clutching the tiny figure tightly against herself while gazing down at them.

 

“There isn’t a need for something new when there is already a perfectly fine thing just laying around unused.” She rasps, a low growling interwoven into her speech.

 

“You shall be Rhodah: My little rose.” she says, her voice creaking link wood. “That name was wasted on me anyway.”

 

She runs a bony finger across the infant's cheek, who seems to hiccup in response.

 

Slowly, her eyes move back up to me, and I can see many different things painted of her face:

 

Gratitude

 

Suspicion

 

A goodbye

 

Hundreds of questions

 

An apology

 

She merely bows her head to me in the place of saying any of them.

 

I don’t really know how to respond to any aspect of the Elder’s behaviour. Should I even keep this conversation going?

 

I walk to the corner of the room where my short jacket is laying and swap it out with my long one. The smaller garment feels much less claustrophobic on me. 

 

I would prefer for Dawn to stay asleep for this, but I’d rather not startle her by waking her up accidentally, so I’ll wake her up first.

 

Kneeling at Dawn’s cradle, I pause to marvel at her briefly. She seems quite a bit larger than she was a week ago, but her adorableness hasn’t faded even a bit.

 

Wake up

 

Her eyes flick open briefly, revealing their blue for just a second before she shuts them again.

 

Hey.

 

I saw that.

 

Don’t try and pretend you’re still asleep.

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…

 

Wake up

 

She rolls over away from me in a way that's obviously a conscious movement.

 

…

 

Whatever, I don’t have time for this.

 

I scoop her up and place her in her sling anyway and begin to walk out of the hut, but I pause right before ducking through the doorway to give the Elder one last look. 

 

She stands with Rhodah in her arms and the same strange look on her face.

I sigh and leave the room wordlessly, passing through the Elder’s apothecary, and emerge under the stars again.

 

Dawn seems to be fully conscious at this point, and is giving me a healthy dose of her usual glare.

 

Rude

 

“I’m sorry for waking you up, but it’s time for us to leave now. This village is pretty boring.”

 

True

 

I scan the village one last time, taking note of it’s features. The waterfall and the rock I sat on by it, the burnt out husk of the evening fire, the handful of hiding spots I brought my partners to. I don’t think I hate this place, but it’s just too uneventful for me.

 

Dawn snuggles into my chest, trying to scavenge whatever sleep she can from the cold night air. I walk past the unconscious entrance guards, peering into their bush just out of curiosity.

They haven't even moved a hair since I left them.

 

I pass through the camp’s entrance as I watch Dawn drift back to sleep again. Her slight scowl slowly fading into a peaceful one. 

 

What am I going to do now anyway? Find some humans to play with?

 

Eh, I’ll be doing that anyways no matter what, so it’s not really a goal to work towards. 

Obviously, I’ve got to find civilization first, and then I’ll probably find some other stuff to do once I’m there. 

 

That feels kinda… I dunno… Aimless? 

 

I mean, there isn’t really anything that urgently needs my attention, and I rather like the idea of just casually roaming the lands. 

 

But at the same time, I also feel like I should be working towards something. I want a goal that I won't even get close to completing anytime soon.

 

Dawn squirms a little bit, pressing herself into me.

 

I’m obviously not alone with her here, but I’m starting to wonder if there are more people like me. More of my kind who woke up in that futureless black landscape.

In the time I spent wandering there, the only trace of any sort of life was Desmond and his buddy. Are trespassers really more common than natives? 

 

Am I unique?

 

These questions weigh on my mind much more than they did previously for some reason. I wasn’t at all this curious when I was in Hel or right after I had escaped.

 

When did that change?

 

It hurts-

 

Why does it hurt?

 

What is spirit?

 

What is Hel?

 

It hurts to think about, but I can’t stop.

 

Ur

 

What are you?

 

Who are you?

 

You made me, didn’t you?

 

I brace my temple with my hand, and my thumb brushes against my horn.

 

It's cold.

 

So cold.

 

It hurts.

Pact with individual -Rhodah the Elder- completed

 

Contracted payment was given, No reaping carried out

 

Lesser true Helspawn has risen to (+1)

Lesser true Helspawn has risen to (+2)

Lesser true Helspawn has risen to (+3)

Pact?

Why is this being dealt with in my head like this?

Would Ur know about this?

Pact

 

A rush of information bounces back to me in splinters, each fragment a tiny portion of the message sent. 

Enforced

Agreement

In

Ego

 

Uhhh… What does it mean by Ego?

Ego

 

Mind

Soul

 

So a pact is an agreement ‘In’ body and soul?

And it’s enforced somehow?

Confusing.

Why can’t there just be a book that says ‘Here's how your body works, have fun’.

 

Maybe that's why I want to find another member of my kind. Maybe they can explain all this nonsense.

So those are my goals then.

Short term: Find civilization.

Medium term: Find something fun to do in civilization.

Long term: Find more Helspawn/Succubi and have them tell me what the Hel is going on.

I turn a corner in the wide central forest path, mentally tracing my way back to where I entered the woods a week ago, and come face to face with something I hadn’t hoped to see again tonight.

 

More torchlight.

And a lot of it.

I hold my arm up to block the sudden blinding sensation as my eyes quickly adjust to the new brightness.

“Eh?” I exclaim.

“Huh?” “What?” “Oh?” several voices seem to reply.

Oh no…

That’s a lot of goblins.

Counting the more prominent torch flames alone, there's at least several dozen of them, but there could easily be many more with torches. Leading the horde is a taller figure, a male hobgoblin.

My only saving grace is that they seem just as surprised as I am. There isn’t a face in front of me that isn’t plastered with disbelief.

Dawn stirs, lifting a small hand up to block the sudden influx of bright light.

Dozens of pairs of eyes stare at me for an uncomfortably long amount of time before the silence is broken by the hobgoblin.

“You escaped?” He asks.

“Um, I was let go.” I replied.

This only seems to further disorient him, as his face starts to wrinkle up in confusion.

“Don’t believe you. Not even a bit.” He states.

Shit. How many more goblins will I have to wade through before I can leave this place?

“It’s the truth. What are you doing here anyway? Also, who are you?”

He seems to puff his chest a bit at the question.

“My name Meat Smasher. Best fighter in all of the valley from big river to mountains. In all of it, no one be stronger than me.”

His speech is rather broken, but not quite to the level of most other goblins I’ve met. He looks the equivalent of about 16 years old for a human, just enough to be hormonal. He was probably born here in the valley. 

Loud

Huh?

I look down to Dawn, who has just sent me a message. She's glaring at Meat Smasher with a level of irritation that I haven't seen her have before.

“When herd that waterfall clan found a human, we knew they would be too weak to defend it. Me guess it does make sense that you escape from those morons.”

Dawn’s eyes start to change colour, growing darker and darker, as if the sun in her sky-blue eyes is setting.

Are you ok? I ask her.

Annoyance. she replies.

“So we were going to invade their camp and capture you, but now you show up right in front of us. No need for invasion anymore if you-“

Something draws my attention away from the young hobgoblin

As Dawn’s eyes start to grow closer to looking like the void in-between stars, I begin to sense something I wasn’t expecting to run into for a long time.

Sort of like the smell of rain mixed with the stench of blood. 

I know this smell.

I know exactly where it’s from.

It smells just like Gehhenna.

Dawn's eyes suddenly shift dramatically as the darkness from her irises starts to bleed into her sclera.

From my own downward pointed eyes, I notice something else.

It’s a ring of… something? One edge of it is right between me and the hobgoblin, and it encircles almost all of his troop.

Whatever is on the behind of the ring seems to warp and shift, like it’s being held above and behind the rising heat of a great fire. I subtly hold my hand out to gauge it, but my outturned palm is greeted with an icy chill rather than the aura of warmth I was expecting.

What is this? I ask my daughter.

Silence. Comes the response.

A spark appears, then another, then ten more; all rushing to join into the ring’s distortion.

Slowly the ring starts to spin as more and more cinders fly to be one with it. The grass just beneath it starts to writhe and twist as well as the ring spins faster and faster.

Meanwhile, the hobgoblin seems utterly oblivious to the strange display that is occurring right beneath his nose.

“-and then our children rule the whole valley!” He yells.

I look back up to the young hob who’s speech I’ve mostly ignored. I don’t really know what is going on, but I can guess that it’ll probably be pretty bad for him.

“I was really expecting you to be a bit grabier. Have you actually met a human woman before?” I pose, trying to buy some time. 

The warping in front of me slowly becomes more and more concentrated around the hair-thin ring of light that the sparks are forming.

Meat Smasher tilts his head to the side. “You want me to grab?”

“No, I… That’s not what I meant. What do you know about how humans view making hobgoblins?”

He puts his hand to his chin as if this question is something he needs to think hard about before answering.

“Uhhhh… It like making goblins but with human?” He states.

Does he not know that he’s infertile?

“And what if the human were to say no?

He takes a few moments to process what I’ve just said, and gets slowly angrier as he does.

Finally, he bursts.

“HUHHH? YOU SAYING ME UGLY?” He yells, starting to take a step towards me and out of the ring.

I hold my hands up defensively. “No, no! Just curious about how much you know of humans! I would gladly have your babies!”

He seems to relax quite a bit, stopping just before he leaves the ring.

“Oh.” He says. “You speak confusing.”

I nod. 

“It’s a bad habit I have. By the way, do you see that?” I ask as I look and point down to the anomaly.

His eyes follow my finger, but he doesn’t seem to notice anything out of the ordinary.

“See what?” the hobgoblin says after concluding that nothing is there.

The final spark drifts into the now completed strand of light, and as it does, Dawn’s eyes seem to flash with hundreds of stars.

She opens her mouth.

“♥Die♥” Comes a distressingly cute voice.

What sounds like a clap of lightning reverberates through the forest from right in front of me.

In less time than it would take me to blink, the ring folds in on itself, twisting and compressing like it had just been crushed by some unseen force. It rapidly grows smaller, shrinking towards and then passing through the goblins until it meets itself in the middle.

It stays as a tiny speck of brilliant white light only for a moment before vanishing completely. As it does, another sound echoes through the woods, this time a low booming noise.

-SPLAT-

Eh?

Every single goblin who was inside the ring hits the ground almost simultaneously, bisected at the waist. Blood and organs spill out onto the cold earth. 

“♥Eheha♥” A short giggle escapes Dawn’s lips.

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