Born a Monster

Chapter 19: Born A Monster, Chapter 19 – Goblins in the Woodorn A Monstehapter 19

Goblins in the Woods

"They’re in the woods, to arms!” shouted Philometa.

I nearly fell off the roof. Yes, the roof. The centaurs didn’t trust their scaffolds, so I was up there, wielding my hammer with all the expertise one expects from a cook and manservant.

Well, nobody had to tell me who was getting their inventory loaded down with extra quivers. I scooted myself down the side of the roof and clambered down a wooden scaffold.

I was wrong, of course. Quivers were in short supply, so I got a spear that was about four and a half times my length.

.....

There was a debate whether it was more dangerous for me to carry the point forward or back. Eventually, point forward won out just so that I see where it was headed.

I nearly fell off Demesnethe’s back as we rode, and was glad to hop off as we slowed to a canter along the river bank.

A haunting pipe melody haunted our steps, and we approached Myraenac and an angry Yneridd.

"My sylvan isn’t good enough.” She said, approaching Hermetocrita from the ford.

"He shouldn’t be here. He’s guardian of the northwest wood, not southwest. Did Rhee make it?”

Rhee was my nickname, because centaurs just have trouble pronouncing my name. I lugged my spear to where she could see me.

"Excellent. Carry that spear across the river, and stay by me. Protocol demands that I not carry weapons, but I trust that satyr about as far as you can throw him.”

"That satyr has a name.” he called across the river, and then returned to his pipes.

"Oh, let me guess. Black Kang?”

"Mawgrin to my friends.” He sounded offended, but returned to his pipes.

To me, she said “Stay close.” And across the river, “Mawgrin, guardian of the northwestern woods, I Hermetocrita of Clan Cloverhoof do seek your permission to cross this river in the spirit of parley.”

"Granted.” Said Mawgrin.

"More Achean than he understood when I spoke it.” Muttered Yneridd.

And so we crossed the ford, making it halfway before the predictable eel attack.

"Food! I thought you were dead! Let me taste your fear and your blood!”

"Aargh! Get off my tail, you unmitigated nuisance!”

She thrashed and pulled, and I didn’t dare to fight back for fear of dropping the spear. I arrived on the far bank ahead of Hermitocrita.

"Ha! All I need do to speed you up is place an eel on you? Do snakes work as well?”

Mawgrin also laughed long and loud. “Should I get the wedding rings? I can see you two have a special relationship.”

I pulled a handful of grass from my inventory, pressing it to my injured tail.

"Ho! Grass on your ass!” Mawgrin mocked, capering around and chuckling so hard he couldn’t start his pipes.

"Guardian Mawgrin,” Hermitocrita said, “We of Clan Cloverhoof seek entry to the southwest wood to fight the goblins infesting that region.”

"Well spoken, but no.”

"Might we know why not?”

Mawgrin shrugged. “You’ll find out sooner or later. Those same goblins are now the sworn guardians of the southwest wood.”

#

"Say that again.” Demanded Hermetocrita.

Mawgrin blew out a single note on his wood pipes.

"They are currently sworn guardians of this wood. You, much as our species share a feybond, are just residents. So – no, your clan has no business on this side of the river.”

"Go ahead and kill as many goblins as you want, so long as they are on your side. But as soon as both feet are in that river, they are protected.”

"Your guardians didn’t stop us before, why would you risk your life now?”

"My life? Oh dear, that sounded so very adjacent to a threat. So let me ask you, what enchanted weapons do you have to stop Her Majesty of the Flint Face? Those arrows won’t help you against Windlings, either. Have you ever seen what even a single animated tree is capable of?”

"What makes you think she cares enough?”

"Why, because she is the one who accepted their oaths. Directly.”

"How do I know you’re not lying?”

"Why, because fey cousin, I am here to warn you off. Set one hoof against them; when it’s all done, I genuinely hope the number of your hooves is still four. I know you’ll need to take time to see it, but I really am protecting your clan from yourselves.”

"Those are still goblins. You know they’re going to eat faeries.”

"Are they? Hmmm, if that is the regrettable case, then they’re still the problem of the Council of Guardians. And THAT means? Oh, Not. Your. Problem.”

"Someday it will be.”

"Oh, some night, unless these are highly civilized goblins. Some night soon, I’d guess. Any goblin who sets foot on your side of the river is yours – for exactly the length of time it takes them to scamper back into the river.”

"This river will run black with goblin blood, Mawgrin. I don’t need to swear it, we both know it’s true.”

He played a high, wailing note. “Just be sure none of that blood is from goblins with both feet in the water. That is the message from the High Queen and the Low Queen, though I’m personally mystified as to which is which.”

"Goblins don’t have queens.” Snorted Hermetocrita.

"Queen Sarsha the Ever Beautiful, although you won’t catch me trying to sneak into her bed. Seems that her tribe recently had some manner of disaster that wiped out most of their manfolk. Humans getting uppity again, she says. Not in those words, mind you, but the same gist.”

Hermetocrita turned her head and spat. “And I suppose she also accuses the clan?”

"She might have mentioned it. Over a hundred slain, something like that. But no. She doesn’t hold a grudge over that. She says someone named Rakkal is going to set things right.”

"Oh, does she?”

"She does. Says he and his family live in a cave far east of here. Big, strong, swift, smart. You know, the normal foreboding stuff one says about distant allies. OooOoo, behold Rakkal, the distant boogie man, for he is coming.”

"Larger and better in every way than a goblin? Forgive me if I’m not impressed.”

"Honestly, I’ll save the impressions until Rakkal moves his butt out of his distant home.” He played a few tentative notes on his pipes. “But enough about stuffy formal business. Any of those sturdy looking females seeking a mate? I’ve got a bottle of Uruk stomp-wine back at my place.”

"No, I think we’re done here.”

He looked longingly across the river. “Pity. Well, the weather looks nice enough. Good day to you, fey cousin.”

"And a good day to you, friend Mawgrin.”

Once we were back on the far shore, she took my spear, turned the point earthward, and thrust it deep into the sand on the east side of the river.

"Well, that’s that, then. Come on, we’ve got a long house to winterize.”

#

And that WAS that, for that winter. There were skirmishes in the woods, and in the plains south of the woods, but none of the Clan were severely wounded and it just became one of the things not perfect about their new home.

Children soon grew bored with goblin stories, and wanted more heroic fare at night.

The days grew short, the food thin and sparse, and the firewood a never-ending chore. Eightfuhr hadn’t been exaggerating the cold; the ground itself froze, and tiny flecks of frozen snow blanketed everything in ceaseless waves.

Even the squirrels, vicious beasts that they were, holed up in their nests, plugged the entrances with whatever was handy, and stayed inside.

They didn’t watch me; they didn’t need to. There was one warm place where I could sleep. As long as my chores got done, they didn’t seem to care when, or how far I meandered.

As long as I didn’t go after the berries or the nuts, the animals of the wood left me alone. There was little competition for the grasses, lichens, and mushrooms that became the bulk of my diet.

Yes, mushrooms even grow during the winter.

For the centaurs, they kept the population of wild hogs in trim, and wasted nothing. With a sliver of bone and some spare pieces of gut, I fashioned my blanket into a cape that I kept wrapped about myself when outside.

Although the children belabored the lack of nuts other than acorns, there were pine seeds and also grain stockpiles from the plains. There was no shortage of herbs and spices.

While everyone grew hungry, and everyone was cold, nobody starved. The snows gave way to freezing rains, so there were days I didn’t dare to wear my blanket outside. And then there was no longer ice over the river, and Thonia declared the season of spring was returned.

#

Stumping is not a labor for the weak or easily distracted; the removal of pine stumps requires the removal of roots sometimes twice the height of the tree away. Fortunately, these roots were never deep.

In the cold of early spring, or late winter, depending on how you reckoned time, we unearthed the fall’s stumps, one by one, chopped them up for firewood, and planted a number of pinecones in earth mined from the winter’s middens at each site. Thonia would cast the nature magic Fertile Earth, and we’d move on to the next stump.

It was inevitable that these activities, combined with near ninety days of chopping firewood, would unlock the Lumberjack class of the Gathering tree. It came with a bonus to axe damage when attacking trees, and a chance for less fatigue while lumbering, and other benefits of equally dubious merit.

Except that there was, at least for those early weeks, no shortage of labor requiring that manner of effort. All physical labors are Might skills, but my hardened muscles were a long way from rating three of even a sub-stat of Might.

I had saved up biomass over winter in hopes of evolving a few digestive perks, but a thin layer of fat cells had gone under the scales to protect from Thermal (cold) damage. I had also yielded to an evolution that doubled the amount of grass I could store in my stomach. The grass didn’t digest any faster, and didn’t provide extra nutrition, but with an exception of key nutrients (on what must have been a massive key ring, there are a lot of them), biomass was biomass.

.....

And I needed that biomass; nobody in the Clan believed how much my metabolism consumed each day. Stumping gave me access to a plethora of worms and insects, which I freely devoured. But I was rapidly approaching a hard wall, where raw food alone just wouldn’t be enough.

And we’d been averaging between four and six stumps a day, so the work was going away fairly fast. Everyone else said this with clear joy; for me it was an increasing pressure to find some other way to survive. Yes, I know, I had just gotten two evolutions over winter.

If I could have afforded it, I’d have picked up evolutions for eating and digesting wood itself. I mean, I could probably digest bark without those, but – meh. I drew the line at grass; anything with a lower threshold of biomass points per meal just wasn’t worth eating.

Spring was also a time for growth spurts among the foals, and believe me, they ate like little locusts. They didn’t quite compete with those of their mothers who were pregnant or nursing, but cooking took up all three fireplaces, and an outside fire pit as well. It was infuriating; everyone except me was getting enough to eat.

To be fair, I was eating more than any two foals combined, and almost half as much as an adult centaur, who easily out-weighed me by a factor of way too much.

Wait. How DID adult centaurs get enough food? Four times sixteen times level was sixty four biomass per level. Presume that six biomass per meal – they just didn’t EAT that much.

Something in my System was broken, and if I didn’t fix it, I was going to starve to death.

#