Born a Monster

Chapter 9: Born a Monster, Chapter 9 – Goblin on Goblin Violencorn A Monstehapter 9

Goblin on Goblin Violencot surprisingly, I was shaky on my feet. Goblins are surprisingly ungraceful in form, unbalanced and improperly formed. Even with my limbs the same length and roughly the same size, the lack of a tail was doing severe things to my ability to even walk.

"Hrm. No. You are too large to be a goblin child, and an adult – I think we have that equipment...”

I kept within fresh tracks range of the scout, while Eihtfuhr retrieved several pieces of goblin gear. It honestly didn’t take him long at all, considering the distance.

I got to wear the best of the motley trash that passed for goblin armor. A patched together mesh of squirrel hides, topped with a fire-hardened pumpkin hull for a cap. The shirt of some larger creature, which came down to the knees. A short spear, fashioned by tying a steak knife to a piece of fractured pole, held together by loops of knotted twine. An armor belt, made of interconnected padlocks.

.....

I stood forth against a goblin who, even stooped, my head only came up to mid-chest. “Stop!” I squeaked out. “Stop and speak your name!” Well, the System couldn’t do everything for me. I really needed to learn more goblin words.

"Huh? You are not our tribe, yet you wear- MONSTER! YOUR SCENT BETRAYS YOU!”

He drew a knife from his belt, which was a coil of rope. He gave a roar of defiance, which actually looked intimidating. I advanced cautiously, my spear held as Birimirihiirp had taught me.

He ran at me, avoiding the point. His knife slashed an area under my shirt, but not an area with my flesh under it.

We collided, and I fell over onto my back. He seemed as surprised as I was.

I hit him in the face with my left fist. He raised his knife, but my forearm blocked his as it descended.

I made a futile grasp for his throat, but he held my right forearm in his left hand.

He bit my nose, and made a point of showing off the tip of it in his mouth before swallowing.

I didn’t even have the words to express that he had bitten me, much less my nose.

My hip joint popped as I dislocated it to try grabbing his belt with my foot. No grapple, but he lost hold on his knife.

He punched at me, I punched at him. I’d started reverting to my default form at that time, but none of the changes were going to finish any time soon.

When he went for the knife, I rolled him off of me. He found his feet first, and lunged. I swung again at him, but hit nothing vital. He’d managed to cut of an ear and trace a line down the left side of my torso before I caught him in a shoulder hold.

I put all my strength into it, but I couldn’t break his arm.

"I curse you!” you cried. “I curse you for all my brothers you have slain. Demon creature, just DIE!”

He slammed backward with his elbow, doing no actual damage, but breaking my hold on him.

He dove for his knife, which he’d somehow dropped without me noticing. I jumped for him, missed, and ended up atop the knife.

He tried to clamber onto my back; I rolled over. Our hands found each other’s throats at about the same time.

When he bit at my nose, I bit at his; our mouths collided and both of us lost teeth.

He wrung at my neck, and then suddenly his head was gone.

Goblin blood tastes terrible; Eihtfuhr raised the open wound of the goblin’s neck to his mouth and took in great gulps of the foul stuff.

"You’re welcome.” Thought speech has the advantage of not interfering with eating. “You were losing, by the way.”

"He was under half health, too.”

"And you were?”

I lay on my back and looked up at the indifferent stars. “I was losing. Thank you, Eihtfuhr.”

#

I had not mastered partial transformations, nor healing transformations. I was still severely injured when I returned to my camp.

I had gained XP for Combat and Pankratios, and even more puzzled by how my System interpreted such things. What type of warrior WAS the Pankratios class, anyway?

My transformations may not have used mana, but the sheer drain on my biomass was ridiculous.

However, I realized I just wouldn’t have done even as well as I had if I’d had to remain on four limbs.

So, drained on biomass, I set about the changes in my spine and hips to make me bipedal. Unsurprisingly, this required a lot of calcium. As vile as cauliflower and fish stew sounds, it still isn’t as bad as goblin.

The plains had their own dangers, cats of double my size, snakes jealous of their sunning rocks, even moles that left their holes in places that seemed calculated to break the ankles of passing foragers.

What the plains were good for were grains, millet and barley that year. They ripened soon enough, and the acorn mast fell from the trees, and I actually had to wash and de-louse the goblin bags to hold the surplus.

Birimirihiirp had taught me the basics of weaving and sewing, and several of the longer plains grasses could be cut lengthwise for fibers, and woven into fragile twine.

I’d just gained Agility rank two, which made walking SO MUCH EASIER, when I found it.

"I found it.” I told Eihtfuhr that night.

"Health and happiness?” he guessed.

"No, Eihtfuhr, I’ve found the goblin lair.”

#

It was a mound of earth the size of a small hill, with black smoke curling from the top. At its base was a cave; two goblins lay there, one lazily scratching his belly, the other outright snoring. Before the cave, several pens contained a few pigs each.

"I knew this was bad, but had no clue it was this bad.”

"How is this bad? That hill can’t contain more than a hundred twenty goblins. Not and hold any hope of shape.”

"The hill,” he said, “is just a raised blister above the true goblin lair. But that doesn’t make it bad. What do you see?”

He stopped me at the smoke.

"Have you ever seen black smoke before?”

"I’ve seen dark grey before.”

"Black smoke means coal, rock transformed and energized by the black blood of the deep earth. Goblins don’t normally mine for it. Kobolds might, but their blacksmiths are rare.”

"Blacksmiths? That’s the craft that produces metal goods, right?”

"Yes. And if they have a blacksmith, then the goblins aren’t the worst things under that pile of dirt. I’d like to think it’s just a well-educated kobold, but it isn’t likely.”

"You want me to scout out the lair? Those guards look mostly asleep.”

Eihtfuhr tapped me on the back of the head. “If smoke is coming out...”

"Oh. Then we have a way in.”

We circled the mound, and came up the back side. It turned out that the chimney was too small for Eihtfuhr. “It could be a long descent down that.”

"I’ll see how deep it goes. I can always come back up if the smoke threatens to choke me.”

"Good, then you see the true danger. I’ll be here.”

What can I say about chimneys? It wasn’t especially warmer, but I had to close my eyes almost immediately. Coal-smoke leaves a slippery residue on everything it touches, which included me. Even breathing only through my nose was hard.

By the time I had to hold my breath entirely, it was warm. I descended lower, imagining I could feel each coal. I was about to turn back when I felt the soft breeze. I turned my head and foolishly opened an eye, shutting it immediately in pain.

But I was close to the bottom. Just a few more limb-lengths – there.

I squatted on the lip of the forge, gulping in deep breaths of heated air. I took in a quick look at the tools assembled, the two titanic monsters sleeping in their beds. Then, with a deep breath, it was back up the chimney for me.

I almost fell once, but didn’t. Climbing was so much easier with prehensile claws.

At the top of the mound, I lay coughing, crumpled on my side. “Orcs.” I told Eihtfuhr. “These must be orcs, the larger goblinoid.” I sent him the images I had seen.

He grew still. “Those are not orcs. Those are humans.”

He took in a deep breath. “HUMANS!” he exclaimed to the heavens. This startled me, because he usually used thought speech as compared to the verbal kind.

"Oh my.” He said. “That was loud. We should go before we are discovered.”

And so we did, before the goblins discovered us.

We were not far away before I noticed something larger than Eightfuhr following us.

"Eihtfuhr-”

"I see it.” He confirmed.

It was taller and longer than Eightfur, but perhaps only two thirds as wide. It approached on four legs, but its torso was set upright atop that body, and had two arms of its own. If someone had set a goblin torso atop a lean and distended pig, then covered the whole of that with fur, and distorted the head into an extended version of a human skull, it would have looked like this.

It came to a halt before us.

"Greetings, strangers.” He said, in clipped goblinoid. “Welcome to the land of the Cloverhoof clan of centaurs. My name is Gataro.”

#

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