Chapter 3

In a dark forgotten woodland, goblins rushed through the wrecked gates of the castle. Vix let them all attack ahead of him. He had to ensure no cowardly goblins lagged behind to let others do the hard work of fighting.

Vix worried little though. The goblins had waited a month to storm the final stronghold of the goblin lords.

Finished patrolling the outside of the castle, Vix walked past the gates, stepping over the body of a goblin that had met a dagger to the throat.

Though the goblin lords called the place a castle, it was truly just an abandoned manor. It had a moat but no outer gates and a guard tower in disrepair that likely stored foodstuffs. The state of the tower didn’t stop a goblin loyal to the lords from taking shots at them before he died.

Observing the dusty hallway, Vix found the goblin lords engaged in combat with a group of goblins. The strength of the lords meant only one of them was needed to take on multiple goblins. For this reason, Vix had ordered his goblins never to take them on in single combat.

An order they followed even without his warnings. All goblins feared lords. All except him.

Dashing through the hallways, Vix searched for an unoccupied enemy. He found one after a goblin lord skewered the last of three goblins that had surrounded him. The lord’s ragged, dark cloak was stained from not just their blood, but the blood of enemies long past. He turned to Vix and sneered.

Vix placed his long knife at level with his eyes. Unlike the other goblins’ weapons, his was stained and chipped. As the goblins loyal to him looted the stashes of lords and shamans, they found an assortment of brand-new weapons that the goblins took to like candy.

Vix, however, liked a weapon that showed its age. If it lasted so long then it must have known what it was doing. He hoped that will to survive would carry through to him.

The lord chucked the corpse of the goblin aside dismissively and walked toward Vix, then rushed him, sword thrusting toward Vix like a spear. Vix saw it coming. This wasn’t his first fight with a lord but after this battle, it may be the last.

Vix jumped, grabbing onto a board of wood on the ceiling and shimmied his way along it with nimble limbs. Growling with frustration that Vix had not let himself be impaled like the other goblin, the lord shot daggers at him, and not just with his eyes. The lord’s quick hand shot several daggers, long and thin. The daggers stuck into the wood as each missed Vix who refused to get stabbed by them.

Letting himself fall from the ceiling, he prepared to activate his skill. The lord saw an opening in Vix’s fall and again lunged at him, this time leaping as he did so to intercept Vix’s fall. The lord’s beady black and yellow eyes narrowed at the imminent kill.

Only for his sword to slash empty air. Vix had activated his skill Hop Step to jump on the air. With Vix’s feet back on the ceiling, he pushed off hard to impale the lord with his dagger.

Both fell to the floor. Vix used the lord’s body to break the fall.

The lord survived and crawled away. Unlike the past, he had no other goblins to use as fodder and make his escape.

Vix watched him crawl, curious. The fight ended quickly. He wondered if his opponent was really a lord and not a regular goblin in disguise. Then again, all the lords were like this after a loss. Weak.

The strength of the lords came from their use of skills awakened in them from a long life of struggle. Though tall, many goblins who stood properly and refrained from hunching their backs could meet their height. The strength of a lord was little more than other goblins and their intelligence only passable in Vix’s eyes. With their skills though, they could suppress any other goblin.

Vix used that reliance on skills to his advantage. The goblin lords used their skills in bursts to finish a fight quickly. So, when the attack on their last refuge began, they expended themselves fighting the first wave of goblins. Now all he had to do was clean up the rest.

He left the lord’s body and searched for others to fight, not worrying the lord would escape. There were two goblins peeking out from a corner. Those types waited for moments of weakness to come out. The screams of the lord as the two goblins came from their hiding place to kill him brought a grim smile to Vix’s face.

Once the battle turned their way, the goblins scattered throughout the manor in search of loot. Vix let them, not having the energy to bark orders at them. In their frenzied state, he would have to kill a few to get them in line.

The cause of Vix’s lack of energy came from the now lifeless bodies of two shamans and a lord that had ambushed him in a dead-end of the manor. The shamans fogged his vision with a strange illusion while the lord attacked. Unfortunately for them, they’d forgotten he led an army. Armies have soldiers.

Two of his loyal goblins snuck up behind the shamans and made a smile across their throats with their knives.

Those two goblins now searched the bodies for valuables. Krack had a varied collection of scars on his face. He stopped his search periodically to scratch at them with his sharp fingernails. Only Vix knew that Krack had scarred himself to look more intimidating. It worked.

Mulch, finding nothing interesting, settled with the lord’s cape. It wouldn’t suit his current dress. The dress he currently wore was pink and must have belonged to some girl-child. He held out the cape to see if it would fit him. Mulch liked nice clothes no matter where and how they were obtained.

The odd goblins were his most competent followers in his rebellion against the current goblin leadership. A leadership that after this day was no more. When he found Mulch and Krack, they had already killed their leaders or tried to. They had acted fast to secure themselves in the new order Vix was creating. Odd they were, dumb they were not.

Vix got up from the body of the shaman he sat on. “They have had enough time to loot. If it goes on any longer a fire will start.”

Mulch finally decided the cloak didn’t go with his pink dress and threw it to the side. “No fire, not like last time.”

A disappointed and empty-handed Krack answered. “We will make sure the really valuable stuff stays safe. No fire, not like last time.”

Having found nothing for himself, Krack intended to take from the others. Vix afforded him the luxury because as his loyal follower, Krack had the responsibility of making sure the objectives of the battle were met. It left Krack with no time to get loot like the others and his life was in greater danger as a leader.

Vix gestured with his chin to the door and the two goblins took their leave, eager to get their share of loot and crack others over the head while doing so. Alone again, Vix left the room as well to stroll through the halls. Eventually, he came upon the manor study.

To his great surprise, the books were intact and the room in good condition. The shelves were sparsely filled, but the books had little dust caking their covers. Tables were upturned and windows were broken of course but other than a few dead rodents and a foul-smelling corner of the room, the library was usable.

Shamans must have stayed here. They may have suspected the books held magic to study, or they just had no other room left. Whatever the reason, the library’s good condition gladdened Vix.

He trailed his green fingers along spines of the books and found one that interested him: Of Gods and Monsters. He carefully removed it from the shelves and opened it, flipping through the pages. It would surprise the humans to know that most goblins found human language easy to understand, only the different dialects of those languages confused them.

If his fellow goblins were willing to learn, they could achieve great things. Few creatures could understand all the languages of the world. Goblins could dominate trade, travel the world, see—Vix stopped. He was getting ahead of himself. They had only just finished freeing themselves of the Inimi, trading with the world was a far way away.

To his delight the book was a work of history, not a children’s book. In the past, those were the easiest for him to obtain as villages held them to educate their little ones. That is what gave the humans power, knowledge.

The book explored relationships between, as the title hinted, gods and monsters. It proposed that more so than humans, monsters held a closer bond with gods as the many varied forms of monsters matched that of the gods. The author brushed aside arguments of the serene presence of the gods as a matter of perception, not of intrinsic nature. If a god wanted to scare humans, they could and often did.

While it pleased Vix to read of such an open view of monsters, it put a nasty taste on his tongue that he could be anything like the manipulative beings called gods. Thankfully, before he could work himself up and destroy the precious book, Krack’s scarred face came into the room.

“Prisoners,” Krack said simply.

“Mulch is watching them?”

Krack nodded his scarred face. Vix hurried off, knowing that if he didn’t arrive in time the goblins would kill the prisoners. His policy toward prisoners was to let them run off. His mercy was not out of any great love for humans but a matter of practicality.

If the goblins fell into their old ways, they would forget that overthrowing their abusive leaders was the objective, not the death of humans. Shamans and lords offered petty violence to distract stupid goblins.

Krack led Vix through the halls littered with the bodies of enemy goblins and lords. Cleaning up didn’t matter. Using the dingy manor held little appeal to Vix. He would take what he needed and leave it to the dust of time.

They reached a room with several cages. Some hung down from the ceiling. A makeshift prison. Or a torture room.

Goblins surrounded a cage large enough to hold a bear, likely its original purpose. The goblins slobbered and looked ready to pounce toward the cage if not for Mulch fending them off with his curved knife, looking fearsome in his pink child’s dress.

The reaction of the goblins told Vix all he needed to know. A woman was inside the cage.

Pushing through the goblins, they parted once they realized he was there. Two women huddled in the cage in tattered clothes. One woman had the figure of a fighter, likely a captured Coalition worshiper. The other was—it couldn’t be!