Tenebroum

Chapter 16: The Goblins

Despite the pain that was caused by the searing white light of the inquisitor’s god, the darkness stayed with Solovino until the end. It wasn’t just because the bard's suffering was delicious either.

Though it was.

It was because with every word the fool that tortured his minion to death gave it valuable information. Templars existed to hunt down evil. There was a Holy city. The church thought very little of mages, and by proxy, since a mage thought that the darkness was a grave threat, they were utterly unconcerned by it. It was almost laughable to the darkness. They were more interested in hurting the bard for his terribly licentious reputation than in understanding the darkness that suffused his pitiful soul. It didn’t help matters that the Bard was literally incapable of telling them what they wanted to know though.

With every word, the swamp’s decision to keep a low profile and disappear from sight in the wake of the storm seemed like a better and better idea. It had barely begun to explore the new opportunities that awaited in its expanded territory, and the last thing it needed right now was to deal with fending off a serious threat in its weakened state. So it watched while the Bard tried in vain to tell the holy men what they wanted to know while he lost his fingers one at a time. The swamp would have preferred to keep Solovino. His songs had been useful for whetting its appetite for the wider world, but its grip on him weakened during the flood, and the wraith would much rather that the bard was put down like the dog he was rather than give him the chance to somehow slip the leash.

In the end Solovino didn’t even die with a whimper. When he was finally on the verge of telling the men about the Lich beneath the swamp, that same Lich simply pulled his soul out of his body, completing their dark bargain and pulling the bard back to him like a fish on a hook. After a brief spasm, Solovino’s body grew still, and with an acrid odor and a puff of foul smoke, the amulet on the tortured man's chest began to melt until it was nothing but slag. Moments later the darkness lost sight of the Templars, but he doubted they would find any clues on the body that would come back to haunt it.

Free from that distraction, the darkness turned its attention back to other matters. It would save the damned soul for a special occasion. It had other things to do now. Last week it noticed that the flooding had placed a string of caverns to the west firmly in its reach now. That was surprising enough. It had no other formations like this anywhere in its territory. What was more interesting were the creatures that dwelled inside: goblins.

The swamp knew what goblins were of course. They were common enough. They were a vermin that had been purged from all civilized lands, but foothills and the mountains that lay beyond them were still wild places, and all manner of strange creatures still lived there. The darkness had seen larger predators like wyvern and chimera soar far above the edges of its territory, but it had no hold on them, and could only watch as they flew into the distance. Goblins were different though. They were more like true men, than even the lizard men that still worshiped it in small numbers here and there.

It wasn’t just possible to infect the goblins with its darkness. It was easy. The creatures had just enough of a mind to be filled with avarice and bloodlust, but not enough for anything resembling higher pursuits. In the weeks that followed the swamp spent almost all its time learning about the small tribe that it had the smallest of holds on. It learned how they fought, how they bred, and what they ate. They were vermin with fingers, but they were his vermin. They drank of its polluted flood waters, shat in its mud, and as soon as the darkness understood them, they would belong to it, forever.

More than anything else they did, they fought amongst each other and the neighboring tribes in the surrounding area for space and resources. One week they were fighting over this cave, and the next over that wateringhole. The green skinned beasts lacked a proper language. Indeed, even their dreams were little more than flashes of pure rage or fantasies to sate one of their many hungers. In time the swamp identified them by their totems, and the crude graffiti they daubed on the walls of their lairs. The tribe that dwelt in the swamps domain was the Black Teeth tribe, named for how the poisonous frogs stained their normally yellow teeth black as much as the stalactites that dominated their dank lair. Surrounding them were their most fearsome enemies: the Dog Eaters and the Burning Skulls.

It was unable to get much insight into the other two tribes that surrounded the cave system, but the swamp was vaguely excited when it saw a member of the Burning Skulls wielding a sort of fire magic in battle against the Black Teeth. It didn’t matter what they fought over, as long as they had someone to fight, and day after day that trickle of blood and rage nourished the swamp in a way that neither the worship of the lizardmen nor the slaughter of adventurers had. These petty conflicts were the perfect flavor for what the darkness craved, and it was with that revelation that the swamp realized exactly what it could do to bring its latest pets into the fold: power.

Of the three it seemed to be the only one to possess even rudimentary magic. It was no surprise then that it was winning, and slowly pushing both of the other groups of goblins out of the most desirable territory. In time it might be the only tribe left standing. The swamp wondered how that would affect the regional balance of power as it gazed across the swamps and foothills, and then north towards the plains where the humans dwelled. Between the rugged outlands where the darkness held sway were fifty miles of plains dotted with human villages. As it viewed the big picture, the Lich could see what needed to happen next.

In a vision he saw them, ten thousand hungry mouths of a united goblin army. Instead of killing each other each day they rose up as one and devoured the kingdom of man, one small town at a time. It was a tide of blood that could sweep away everything in its path. Enough blood that the bottomless hunger that was the darkness might finally feel sated.

But they’d never be united. Not like this.

Even if the Burning Skulls were to win and replace the Black Teeth and the Dog Eaters, they would still be prey to a fourth tribe, or they would grow so large that they would break into two, and fight themselves for lack of another opponent. It was their way after all. They were only a few steps above the animals of the swamp. The darkness might command a crocodile to devour a trapper that strayed too far into its domain, but it could never command an army of crocodiles to invade a city. The brutality and the hunger of the former was their nature, but the discipline of the latter was an impossibility.

The same might be true for the goblins, the swamp considered, but it seemed like there was enough of man in them to know fear and take orders, and for now that would be enough. All they needed was a leader strong enough to command that fear and bring the other tribes to heel, and if that goblin did not already exist, then the swamp would create one.

The darkness finally found its first candidate, dying in the depths of the cave. Its name was Grod, at least that’s what the darkness thought its name was, not that it really mattered. Goblin dreams could be very confusing. The goblin was a fine warrior, but had bitten off more than it could chew in a fight with a Dog Eater half a head taller than him. Grod had still managed to win, by using a level of sheer brutality that had managed to impress the darkness. Even with a knife in his guts he’d managed to rip out the other goblin’s throat with his teeth and make it home.

He wasn’t the toughest or the best warrior in the tribe, but he was a fighter, and he was dying from the infection in his wound. Grod knew it too, just like he knew that his fellow Black Teeth were circling like vultures, waiting for him to become too weak to be a warrior anymore. Once that happened he wouldn’t even be a goblin. He’d just be food. As the dying goblin slipped in and out of his fever dreams, the swamp slipped in. Dreams and illness were its purview even more than life and death. Saving this wretched creature would be one of the most minor miracles it had accomplished in years. Impressing the power of the pact on it though, and forcing it to agree to serve it would be much more challenging than actually healing it.

In the end it took a night and a day, with the dream imagery getting increasingly concrete and convoluted. Rather than dreaming of battle, as Grod usually did, he dreamt of a dank temple. On the altar was a goblet of blood shaped like a golden skull. The first time the dream played through, he tentatively drank from it. He was surprised to find that his wounds had healed, but panicked when the chains rose up from the floor to shackle him. The second and third times the dream occurred, the choice was the same, but it was more accepting of the shackles.

The goblin understood. Its life could be restored, but it came at the cost of service. Whether or not it understood the depths of that service, or that it would last a lifetime, the darkness couldn’t say. It didn’t matter though. If the creature proved too troublesome then the darkness would make sure it died a slow and painful death before it found another to serve in its place.

Two days later Grod was hale and healthy again, with only a terrible black scar to show where his brush with death had been. As goblins go he’d always been quarrelsome and bloodthirsty, but now he was worse than ever. He literally hungered for blood now, charging his opponents in every fight, and using only his bare hands and teeth rather than the crude weapons that goblins usually favored to rip them to pieces. Every death made him stronger, and no matter how badly the darkness’ pet goblin was wounded, the next day he was fine. Every week his standing rose in the Black Teeth tribe, until soon he had a spot close to the fire and tender meat instead of the scraps he’d always made do with until now.

The goblin did its part too, boiling the skulls of his slain foes in an old pot helmet. The goblins would never have the skill to work metal, but yellow clay mixed with goblin urine did a wonderful job of turning the skulls yellow. Once they were stained, the goblin began to mark its slowly expanding territory with the fearsome totems. The tide had turned, and for once the surrounding tribes were on the back foot as the Black Teeth began to win battle after battle and seize control of key parts of the surrounding area.