Fate Deals the Cards Temperance
Chapter 25 It's a honey of an O…
I slept in a hasty burrow below a hollow log that provided a feast of termites as well, so score. I was hungry-hungry after battling… Whatever. I was in no state to forage properly and didn’t have much on me beyond a waterskin and some dried berries. I didn’t eat the whole colony, just half of it. They would come back strong in a few weeks and keep gnawing on that fallen tree, feeding the forest from the bottom up. I liked that, it felt very balanced.
What wasn’t balanced was me… my insides were rough. Like, discounted convenience store burrito rough. Like, ‘someone dunked a cigarette-butt in that cup I just drank from’ nasty.
I kept my grubs down, but only because they were so soft and easy to digest, with a mild chestnut flavor. Four-stars, would recover from a battle with a demonic hunger under this log again!
Sundown woke me with a jolt, shaking me from a dream where I was some kind of spider cultist… The religion involved a lot of silken panties and robes… It was kinda erotic.
Less sensually pleasurable was the massive, spicy and painful dump I took under a bush, moments after waking. It was a real barn-burner and I doubted the hackberry bush I buried it under was going to survive being exposed to that pollution.
I washed in a cold, clear flowing stream, feeling much more civilized after that. As I walked north-east, I pondered my new life, enjoying a level of mental clarity that felt new and exciting after so long in a hormonal fog.
The curse on my down-below I’d left hanging on my hangdown was gone. It wasn’t surprising, I’d fought for my life most of the night and that hex was barely holding on because I liked the effect. That kind of turbulence in my aura was just more than Hessen’s spellwork could handle.
Out in the woods, with no female aromas to rile up my inner gobbo, I was clear headed and alert… And I wondered why. I didn’t feel off or… anything.
I’d just eaten something unnatural and dangerous, like gas station sushi… I sat down and pulled out my swan bone flute for a little meditation and jam sesh in the woods. Nothing of that thing was going to follow me to my girls and that was a hard line; that meant self reflection and a bit of directed meditation before going home. That’s just good spiritual hygiene!
As so often happened, it felt like I’d experienced something not unlike this before… Old me sure did get up to some crazy shit… But then, who was I to talk?
Under the influence of variations on the themes of Jethro Tull, I tiptoed through my own tulips for a while, chiggity-checking myself, to avoid riggity-wrecking myself. Musical meditation isn’t for everybody, but I fell into my own navel, rooted around looking for problems and got a good idea of the current landscape inside me. It all checked out, I just had a little more clarity and my humanity felt closer.
I started missing some simple things I’d almost forgotten; the scrape of the razor on my face and that cold, stinging feeling of cleanliness. The scents of bread and coffee whispered in my senses, a longing for those familiar things from my old life tugged at me. The siren call of nostalgia was strong, but I had a growing family at home to protect… and the most likely source for bread on this world was the slaver towns… no thanks.
At the end, I just kinda felt a little more awake and present in the moment, like I’d grown a little, inside. I worked out the rest of my feelings trotting eight miles through the forested hills, headed for where my family should be waiting.
/
Wheel dealt the cards and tossed the runes again and again over the days following the ‘Great Escapade’ and received no hint as to his quarry’s location. Each time he camped for the night the diviner searched with his occult senses and practices and failed to discover a clue.
Not that the time was wasted… not at all. He walked north up the coastal road, enjoying the weather, which was important in its own way…
Miles and miles of empty country lay between the cities of man on this domain, with scattered outpost towns and hamlets, each one around one of the many naturally occurring apertures in the veil this world boasted.
Sadly almost all led to worlds dominated by the Light cult and thus closed to most travellers of the ways. Humans could usually pass freely, so long as one was not too flashy with ostentatious wealth that might draw covetous eyes… In the same way, any object of value or power could draw the gaze of the clergy and nobility. Most dangerous of all, was to be too attractive, distinctive, interesting or otherwise notable. A wanderer with a pleasing shape could vanish from the streets and awake in chains within hours of arrival.
Anything but a human that might arrive on one of their worlds was destined to be enslaved or sacrificed, no exceptions. The cult was ever eager for new slaves and sacrificial victims who could be snatched up, thus few willingly entered their realms.
This world, their dirty secret, was a slave breeding world; kept sealed away and dedicated solely to the production of goblins. The rapacious beasts could be gathered and herded into the void to infest the cosmos and provide an endless source of disposable flesh.
“Ugh, Disposable Flesh. Terrible band name.” Wheel muttered to a ghost that insisted on flitting around his camp by the shore, disrupting breakfast. “All right, what do you want?” He asked with a sigh, while pouring the coffee.
“Oh, really? How nasty! Wait… haven’t we met?” He paused and considered the decaying and thin spirit for a moment. “Amelie? Is this where you wandered off to? It’s been centuries!” He grinned and rocked back on his butt in the sand. “Sweet! Hey, show me where your bones are, I’ll haul you out.”
An hour later, he tucked a shovel up his sleeve and grinned at the exhumed corpse... “Necro was just here, you know! Three days ago. Let me find a sack to stuff you in! It’s nice to have a local guide; most of the shades here are pretty far gone, or complete assholes.”
He chattered on and on as he began walking, leaving little trace of his encampment behind. Only flattened sand and footprints.
/
I staggered down a hillside after a long night’s walk over an endless seeming landscape of tangled forests and convoluted terrain… Mostly because I was tired and cranky. I wanted to sleep in my nest, have a bath, snuggle as many of my wives as I could manage and sleep in my nest for a week. See how I bookended the snuggles with sleep? Tired Ghnash.
“Sensei Ghnash, we are overjoyed at your safe return.” Someone familiar said, in a very unfamiliar and confident way.
“Thera?!” I grunted, too surprised to even bite myself. She stood there, tall and straight, with a sword and dagger at her waist; confidently looking at me, like a whole new woman. It was far more than the removal of her collar and the addition of a sword, for the first time I actually saw her. The woman, not just the ears, fur and slave collar. Now she was a confident and self-possessed woman and held herself in a way that challenged me to ignore her.
“Big changes!”
“Yes, sensei. Rest, you have traveled far and endured much.” She declared, before leading me to the others, hidden in a shallow little dale among the hills.
“Some of the women have departed and joined other groups in the nearby hills… they may wish to rejoin your clan, now that you have returned.” Her tone suggested that she thought little of the idea, and that she fully expected me to follow Ghnash junior wherever he led… which was fair.
I was busy contemplating the woman who led me to my wives. She stood a little shorter than me, so right around four feet tall; lean, sleekly muscled and fit, the gray striped woman moved with a sinuous and frankly, feline grace that was in part natural, in part training.
Her compact bosom and firm, toned shape were pleasing and her face held enough of the cat to be dangerously exotic and enough of the hominid to be unabashedly hot. Fur covered her forearms, calves and a patch on her lower back, where her tail sprang forth; while her ears jutted from beneath an unruly head of curly hair. Thera, now that I could actually see her, was a total hottie.
I mean, she wasn’t a goblin… So whatever, as far as lil’ Ghnash was concerned; but a certain part of me could appreciate a lean and lanky catgirl… that’s not creepy, you’re creepy!
“Thera nub slave. Gruk this? Understand?” I stumbled over the concepts and un-goblin ideas a little. “Free.”
“Yes, sensei. I will study under you and serve the princess.” She answered smoothly.
“Can go… find pushdogs… not-goblin tribe.”
I blushed, because ‘pushdog’ was a particularly rude slur in goblin… It meant any non goblin person… and ‘dog-fucking idiot’ as well.
“I will serve the princess, as is my duty.” She answered, still unwavering. “When my honor is satisfied, I will depart.”
There was no arguing with that and I was worn out.
Emmie, Saphie and Alba were right there, leaping at me when I slumped down in the nest they shared with Beryl, too exhausted to keep keeping on. “Girls… Ghnash’s home.” I sighed, before laying down for a nap.
This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.
I woke, after who knows how long, buried under Emmie, who seemed super clingy, even by her high standards for grabbyness and hold-on-itude.
“Nub nub, stay longer…” She purred in her sleep, when I tried to wriggle free.
“Indulge her a while, chief. Emmie lost her baby two nights ago, while you were battling that… Whatever it was.” Sarafina whispered from the edge of the nest. “It is a side effect of the Babynot tea. Many girls fail to carry if they drink it too many times in succession, especially so for the first timers… She will endure, as so many have and so many more will.”
“Oh… Sorry… Is hard.” I petted my cheerful mate, which caused her to wriggle even closer to me and sigh. I sucked with emotions, words and stuff when I was human, too. There was a lot of growth potential there, even by goblin standards...
“Oh, useless goblin man…” Sara sighed, patting my head in a very condescending way. “Tell me about this thing… the spirits of the dead seemed deeply distraught by your foe.”
“Spider shadow.” I mumbled, going for two words at a time seemed to be a winning strategy. “Not real, Intangib…!” I went for three and paid the price, but Sara nodded soberly.
“The cult summons lesser beings from the outside, mindless hungers and ripping claws that thirst for flesh to eliminate any problems, like isekai who are hard to catch.” She sighed sadly.
“Most of us bumble into towns right out of the gate, foolishly gullible, since we are almost always young children when we die and are transmigrated here…” She glared at me and nodded again.
“You are an oddity in that way as well, my mysterious chief. Keep your secrets. But be cautious when facing such things. I know not what it was, but I would not willingly face that which the dead fear.”
Her soft, soothing voice lulled me away, after I chugged the tea sitting beside my nest, just where I would have put it, again. Sara noticed my reaction and smiled.
“That small comfort, and so many others you do not notice are the workings of Emmie, Beryl and Alba… they watch over you, each in her own way.” The old witch sighed at me.
“Even my Lapis, who holds no affection for males in general is in her way, fond of you my chief. Don’t expect her to hop on your babystick for fun, as some of these young wantons might…” She winked and curled up beside us, joining the warm, cozy pile.
“More for those of us who can appreciate a stiff one.” She purred, stroking my hair until I fell back to sleep.
I finally snuck out around midnight, staggering off to the jakes and then the ‘kitchen’, because I was ravenous. Escaping those warm clinging arms and legs wasn’t easy, but I hadn’t really eaten much since those termites and it was getting loud in my guts.
There wasn’t much in their little basket, so I dug into my shadow storage and rooted through the food stores I’d looted from the slave caravan. Eventually I settled on a lump of jerky, gnawing on it and complaining internally about the dry, tough stuff as I drifted through the springtime woods.
Life was stirring and waking all around, even in the dark of night, rustling in the ferns and bracken, or chittering and chirping from the trees as I roamed, searching for a nice spot to linger and rest for a few days.
In the hills, farther from the shore, I slipped into a still and quiet forest. Sheltered from the wind, the trees grew tall and widely spaced, creating a dim, cool, mossy cathedral beneath the boughs, cut by a shallow, clear stream running over a rocky bed of stones.
I took some time calling the house from the dark and unknowable place it went, stretching and working with my limitations to make something more advanced, more refined. What I got was more of the same, rawhide paned windows, wattle and plaster walls, that same high, river-stone foundation and chimney, just larger and taller; which was not that big of a bonus when you and your whole family are around, or under four feet tall...
At least the kitchen space was larger! I spent a few minutes replenishing our food stores in the house, keeping out a block of butter, some flour, sugar, salt and a smelly sourdough starter in a sealed jar.
Robbing those slavers was really paying off… Now it was time to spend a few days relaxing and recovering with my remaining followers.
I nibbled on some dried locusts and a few sweet, end of summer prunes, while I mixed and wrestled my way through a massive wad of dough in the dim glow of the cookfire in my stone oven. I left my project under a cloth I’d looted from some worthless ass-bag and strolled out into the woods, on my way to collect my family and lead them to our new home.
Three miles wasn’t a long march for my remaining crew, they followed along, familiar with the process by now and eager to resume living in the chief’s ‘castle’. Especially Beryl, she’d grown accustomed to my big stone hearth and oven, her personal domain in my tiny kingdom.
She liked the expanded space, when we finally arrived, but was suspicious and cranky, when I swooped in and started working on my dough at the long table in the center of her fiefdom.
I savored the whole process, enjoying the subtle balance of gentle pressure and real strength required to properly knead bread and the delicate touch needed to shape perfect rolls with speed and accuracy. I could almost feel a warm, motherly gaze on my back as I worked my craft in the still, morning hours.
“A new thing, chief?” Beryl’s soft voice made me jump a bit, I’d been lost in my work, and the vague sense memories of home, hearth and a warm family I couldn’t remember. I smiled at a member of my new family, one I valued and cherished, but hadn’t spent much time with.
“Yes, bread. Human food. Is good.” I grunted, as I held out a ball of dough to her. “Nub eat. Not done. Feel, smell.”
She bounced my little dough ball, a dinner roll neatly rolled and snugly twisted into a bouncy little ball. “Is fun… smells good.”
“Wait… soon done.” I grumbled, feeling like a class A moron. Beryl had figured out how to use the stone oven beside my hearth in short order and with little help from me… since talking is dumb and for babies.
She roasted, simmered, stewed, braised and otherwise made the whole kitchen run for all my many, many clan members, with consummate skill and real talent. Even though I brought in the meat and my garden provided its abundance, it was Beryl who kept us not just fed, but happy.
There were far fewer of us now; perhaps twelve, plus the runties, when the clan stirred at dawn to the scent of bread baking. It felt good, watching them demolish the stuff. After mixing, kneading and watching over my yeasty babies as they grew, it was a real pleasure to watch my family just wreck the mounds of warm fluffy rolls. There were no survivors.
/
After breakfast, I landed in the bath; just floating, derelict in the pool with a flannel over my eyes, even in the shade beneath those mighty trees towering overhead.
“Ghnash…” Emmie’s voice was soft and low, far less ebullient and excitable than usual. “Is I bother you? Can we blah-blah some… like when was… just us?”
“Always.” I muttered, nearly lost in lingering sore muscles and a sense of having overexerted myself, from my shadow. It felt stretched out and loose, like I’d loaned my favorite sweater to someone much larger. “Ghnash has time for Emmie, always.”
Her tiny, taloned hand found mine and she pulled me into the shallows, where she liked to sit, near the gushing spring that filled the pool where the water was hot and turbulent. There, in the roiling steam, she sagged against me and sobbed for a while.
“Was nub really yours… but I wanted to give you a baby…” She sobbed on my shoulder, just wrecked and snotty. I had no words for her pain, there were none, so I just held her and let her sob and dribble snot all over me for a long spring morning as the birds sang in the boughs so high above. It was bathtime anyway.
“You was gone four nights… I worried so much…” She blubbered and sobbed. “Then, it just happened… not my fault! Swearsies!”
“Nub fault. Nub blame. Emmie is safe, is good.” That took a lot of mental focus and I was feeling ragged already after too much and too many miles, so I wasn’t awake long…
/
Lingering on a hillside above the ‘city’ of Lighthome, Wheel wondered how the hell these idiots managed to make themselves such a wretched and terrible menace across the local area… Which, for a being that crossed the veil regularly meant something slightly different than the usual.
The place was topped by a grand and shining cathedral of fine, white stone, richly ornamented and gilt until it gleamed under the early spring sunshine. Those spires and proud buttressed walls of immaculate stone rose from a reeking, disgusting pit of a town, surrounded by the kind of festering boils such places invariably create.
Dozens of fine estates scattered the wide and idyllic seaside plain, each vying with the others for grandeur, while remaining less ostentatious than the great white lump of stone shining above the miserable town.
Each one had its own pestilent, reeking and poverty stricken cluster of hovels near the wide farm fields and orchards, and neatly out of sight of the grand houses’ many windows.
Slaves worked the fields, orchards and garden beds, beastfolk of all kinds, uniformly skinny, naked, filthy and battered people with ears and tails, but just people, taken from their homes and brought here by the slavers the cult lavished such splendid rewards on.
The Light never sold slaves, ever, only bought them. Any and all in any condition or state… with appropriate price adjustments, of course.
The Light would take any slave of any sentient race from anywhere in the vast cosmos, for a fair price. Business loves a nice stable demand as much as the powerful love having a steady supply of young and pretty things to choose from, so it worked out for every one… Great job, guys! To be born under fortunate stars on a world ruled by the blessed and eternal Light was truly a joy! Actual mileage may vary, consult your family pedigree before celebrating, some restrictions apply, of course.
Wheel admired those grand homes and stately manors, delighting in the shining ornaments and baubles. The display of wealth was truly a wonder, if one could overlook a few noisome imperfections here and there.
Not that it was a tourist or trade city. Lighthome imported luxuries and fine things, the best of anything could be had for a price, but the city, and in fact the entire realm was just a goblin breeding farm, so tourism was highly discouraged.
The slaves that came here would never leave, a fate shared by the troopers, overseers, clerks and functionaries of the cult stationed in Goblinhome, even if they didn’t know it. The promise of rising high enough to gain a transfer out, back into the bosom of civilization never materialized for most men that landed on the blighted cesspit that was among the cult’s deepest secrets.
Keeping a whole world tangled up in plots, schemes, secrets and misery took a lot of effort and a lot of luck. Mostly it took a level of casual and amoral disregard for the rights and lives of other beings that would stagger the imagination of any sane entity, but plenty of luck too.
After days of scrying without result for the facecard his deck had hinted at, he’d given up for now. He would be coming back here again, but for now, Temperance would remain elusive.
Most of the Garies were at least some flavor of sneaky and they all found the ways between worlds eventually… He would appear again.
Wheel shrugged and chuckled at the awful scene of misery lying below him, as he began the forbidden ritual that would open the way briefly, allowing him to escape the foul dungeon world… Which would mess up, just all sorts of delicate things and no doubt send the lord of this realm into an absolute tizzy.
Every accessible void aperture was sealed and surrounded by one of their awful cities or outposts, while the veil around the place almost sang with the energies of lives spent in sealing the place off, spilling from sacrificial altars scattered around the globe. They had inflicted so much horror on the living sentients of this and so many worlds and a fair piece of that was here, entangled in a nightmare construct of entangled spells, curses and evil intent.
Cutting a hole in that delicate construct of misery, terror and pain from the outside would pose a huge challenge and draw the attention of a few unpleasant beings that lurked in the ether nearby, as such things are considered between worlds. From within, it just took a little luck, and the help of a ghost who wasn’t keen to stay any longer.
“Shall we, old friend?” He asked the sack of mouldering bones over his shoulder. With that, he was gone, leaving little behind except a single topaz brooch, looted from a caravan on the road. It lay on the sand, glinting in the sun, as a low, loud clangor began rising from the cathedral.
/
I stretched, feeling fine, even though the sun must still be up, cause there was a bright, golden light streaming in from outside my eyelids that wouldn’t go away when I turned over or pulled the furs over my head… That was odd…
I peeled my sticky eyes open, blinking at the awful light that wasn’t actually that bright… It was comfortable and warmly golden, like a poorly laid fire; flickering, but comforting still.
The light came from a glowing, golden amber panel hovering in front of my eyes; wherever I turned, it tracked, blocking most of my visual field.
Congratulations! *error*
You have defeated the spawn of Ungoliant, weaver of darkness! *error
By defeating in single combat, a screaming hunger from the void, you are eligible to become Dungeon Lord of this domain! *error*
Potential dungeon lordship conflict… Ineligible entity or entities detected. *error*
Ineligible entities detected, defeat and consume *ineligible demonic entity* to claim your prize! *error*
Please locate and destroy marked entities to assume your throne. This quest has no time limit. Reward: Lordship of GoblinHome, the Goblin Dungeon.
Well… that was something to wake up to.
/
