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1
King of Nothing
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THE GOBLIN WHO USED TO BE VIKTOR pulled himself from the mud. The mud was his mother, his father, the soil was the womb where his limbs were made flesh and his heart first beat. The rain fell from the sky without rhyme nor rhythm, swallowing everything in a shapeless spray of splash and shadow. Its hundred thousand little drops knocking against the wood, the land, the leaves, like tiny knuckles sent by heaven, downpouring straight and steady against Viktor's new body.
I am dead, he thought. And yet his chest throbbed, his limbs shook, and his head ached. He kept pulling his other leg, which was still buried in the earth. His entire body hurt, but from afar one could see the goblin smiling.
Viktor could remember it as clear as day: Erin’s solid voice whispering into his ear just after he died, “I will see you in your next life.”
The storm poured against the ground, the worms buried between the soil and the birds scurried to their nests.
My arms are green, he realized. The entirety of him carried the color of leaves. His hands were soft, and his skin and body and his face and his toes, so soft that a single branch could wound him.
It was cold. And from then on he had always been cold. The strong winds blew as if to embrace him. His stomach growled, his throat was as dry as the southern desserts. He stared at the rain with an open mouth: he wanted to swallow the sky.
Having better bones was so new to him now. Nothing cracking at the stretch of an arm, nothing painful at the movement of a leg. His larger, pointed ears let him hear a flowing river far from him. His long pointed nose inhaled the fresh dew of wet grass. His spine had no urge to curve, it needed no effort to carry his weight.
Viktor stood upright.
I am dead and I became a goblin, he told himself, trying to process it. He sat beneath the shade of Khel’tom, a tree. Must be witchcraft, he was sure of it. But why? How? Who? In the last eighty or so years, he had always kept his blood with him. The Inquisition made sure of it. Unless it was the Inquisition who was responsible?
Erin?
He was sure that she didn’t cry when he drank the poison that claimed his life. He attributed it to Erin’s stoic facade, or her understanding of his decision. After all he’d been probing the idea for almost a decade now. He was 121 years old, not much left living left to live. They were used to it. Both of them had grown jaded of their companions being claimed by the inevitable hands of age.
When the rain died the sun gave light to the surrounding flora. The trees were a mixture of white trunks and scarlet leaves, some had light pinkish barks and indigo leaves, and some had the familiar brown wood and green leaves. The ground was covered in moss and ashen flowers, yellow grass with blue beetles, and red-headed mushrooms. Plants and shrubs of contrasting colors littered the dirt, as if any patch of land with nothing growing in it is an offense to the forest itself.
In Viktor’s entire life in The Land Beyond the Walls, he had never seen plant diversity this rich, and this is only one side of the patch. An entire forest boasting many colors can only mean one thing: the entire place must be teeming with goblins.
Goblins are, in essence, the antithesis of animals. While all creatures’ primary function is to breed and further their species, goblins are born out of nature itself, fully formed. As if the earth can feel itself threatened so it decided to spawn its own vermin. Wherever a goblin goes, the plant life surrounding the place will have a surge in their bloom. If a goblin dies, a Gnossienne tree will grow from its corpse, and from its fruit the same goblin will be born. If you burn its body, the tree will grow in the place where it last bled. And if it never bled in its entire life, nature will make a completely new one from its soil, or the water, or the rocks.
Like Viktor’s new body.
Like immortal, bipedal cockroaches. Of course, the entire process takes centuries to happen. A Gnossienne tree takes twenty decades to fully mature. And from Viktor’s experience, compared to men and orcs and beasts and leviathans, goblins are the easiest to cut; including the bone. Woodworkers will find regular logs harder to split in a single axe swing. Goblin bodies are as weak as babies. They will bruise themselves from a single slap from an eight-year-old.
And Viktor was in no daycare center. The Land Beyond the Walls is filled with monsters beyond comprehension, beyond belief. He once cleared an entire patch of land for the Amanila’s wall expansion, and he is never keen to do it again. He once saw a giant whose body is made of naked humans jumbled together in a mesh of flesh and skin, and everything it ate added to that body. . . alive.
And that was him at his peak, at his human peak. And what now that he is in the middle of nowhere, miles or maybe thousands of miles beyond Amanila, as a goblin?
Viktor notes the noose hanging on his neck.
He knows that Amanila is on the west edge of the continent, and by looking at the sun he can tell which direction to go. West, he thought, Find Erin, his mind says.
Find clothes, his skin says. It is six in the morning and the heat couldn’t reach his body, as if he is immune to it. Find food, his body says. He knows about mushrooms and fruits, but his knowledge only extended to the wilds near Amanila.
While it is not his expertise, just by looking at the patterns and shapes of the fruits and mushrooms, he knows that this entire forest is filled to the brim with poison. When he found an innocent-looking peach, one that is slightly red instead of orange, he quickly considered that these must’ve evolved as an anti-anti-poison mechanism.
Or not. He couldn’t be sure.
He poked around the tree more and noticed that some of its fruits had been picked before, and there were only five of them dangling now. He took one and bit it—it tasted sweet, yet very very spicy.
Still, it wasn’t enough to relieve him of the coldness he felt. He spat out what he ate and threw out the rest. His tongue was burning; he wasn’t sure if it was because goblin tongues were weak or if it was the fruit.
Maybe he just needed more tolerance. Like exercise. Like scars. He was about to pick up the fruit again when he noticed the ants already claiming it as their own. Oh, he thought. Food chain.
He just got an idea to solve two problems at once.
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VIKTOR PREPARED AND WAITED for twelve hours near the red peach tree, called Tael’blanc, and he was now hiding behind the height of a green trunk, which blended well with his body’s color. The sun was beginning to set and along with it was the slowly-leaving light. He was worried he would need to wait for days before his prey came, and yet as the dark came, so it moved.
A gruman. It was a maggot the size of a dog, whose head was the exact same as a human baby, and it crept slowly from the peach tree’s roots going upwards. Like a caterpillar. Like a worm with an infant’s face, looking so innocent and desperate like it was about to cry in any second.
Grumans aren’t essentially dangerous, just downright disgusting, with their sticky ooze and their foul smell, like putting your nose inside a rotting carcass of a dog filled with feces.
Viktor knew how to cook grumans. The smell was simply a defense mechanism, and once cooked their meat is as soft as beef boiled for an entire day. Using a sharpened branch, he stabbed the gruman’s gelatinous carapace, then sliced it in half.
He’d seen so many of the things that he felt no guilt in stabbing the creature, despite its so human-like head. He was half-tempted to make a fire and start sizzling, but he needed to remind himself of the end goal. Food chain, he repeats. Food chain.
He once again hid behind the same tree. The moon rose and the night covered the sky in its blanket of black. It didn’t matter anyhow, goblins could see in the dark.
After two hours, the vultures came. Three of them, circling above the gruman’s corpse. It wasn’t the predator he was waiting for, but it was better than maggots. When one of the vultures swooped down to take the corpse, he threw his sharpened branch like it was a javelin, and pierced a hole in the vulture’s left wing. It fell flat on the ground, stumbling as it tried to fly. The width of its wings was thrice the size of him.
And simply crippling the vulture was intended. But crippling his arm for a simple throw was not. Viktor’s muscle tore off and the bone on his elbow extended beyond its limit. His left arm hung uselessly on his shoulder now. Quickly, he grabbed his spare makeshift weapon and stabbed the vulture’s other wing, then dashed into another tree out of the vulture’s sight, his feet sliding on the wet grass.
The vulture won’t be able to even move now. It tried its best to fly, but even opening its wings made it wince in pain.
How easily could he kill it? The vulture was as tall as him, with claws like daggers and a beak sharp as a needle.
Food chain, he repeated. But what kind of monster would even eat this bird? He expected wolves, or tigers, or at least some versions of those. The appearance of a Sanguine Cursed would mean he’d have to abandon his haul. He hoped to never meet one again.
This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.
For a while, he started debating whether to roast the bird or not. He could have a good soup with the gruman meat and make the stock from vulture’s bones, then start all over again tomorrow. And in the morning he can cook the gruman’s fat into oil, then fry the bird in it. At worst he can smoke their meat and pack it for his travels. At best he can fashion the bird’s claws and beaks into better weapons.
All these ideas bring a pang in his heart. He was excited. It’s been years since he had last known battle, years since he had to fight for his life. Everything was a mortal danger to him, yet he could barely feel it; he felt no need to acknowledge it even. A lion could appear and Viktor the goblin would charge at it with full confidence.
Not even an hour had passed, and already he could hear the rustles of another animal. It smelled of fur, and Viktor breathed a sigh of relief. Fur meant that it would be the last he needed to hunt. Fur meant he could skin it and make usable clothes. Leather meant a knapsack and in the future, a waterskin.
He still had two sharpened branches left, one that he was using and one as a spare. Making them was a pain, literally. He had no knife so he sharpened them using normal stones, scraping the wood from one edge, and scraping his palms on the other. They are still bleeding as far as he is aware, goblins heal fast, yes, but all the skin on his hands was raked as they healed, then the flesh, then the bone, and then again. His left arm still ached, but he can move them properly now.
The bird still tried to move, still tried to flap its wings in a desperate attempt to flee. The vultures still circled above their crippled friend, waiting for it to die. Their black wings covering the stars. The wind howls its silent howl, bending the trees to its will. And when Viktor saw his prey, his mouth gaped in short horror.
It was a bear. A bear thrice the height of him. Except its head was upside-down. And it has six limbs, fast-crawling like a spider with twice the speed. And its flesh was inside out. And all of its furs travel around its enormous body as if it was a snake trying to coil around it.
It zoomed into the crippled vulture in a singular flash, stretched its mouth in a wide gaping hole the size of its body, tearing the flesh on its cheeks, and then swallowed the vulture whole.
It was a Sanguine Cursed.
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VIKTOR HELD HIS BREATH THE BEST HE COULD, and prayed to Semos almighty that the beast will be quick to be done with it and move on. He had bathed himself in mud hours before, and he had hoped that that was enough to mask his smell.
His new ears could hear the monstrosity chew, could hear the crunching of bones and the sound of flesh and feathers being grinded between teeth.
Faster, go faster, Viktor thought. And as if Fate itself was betting against him, he started to feel a snake creeping around his legs.
Yet he didn’t dare move. He froze all the muscles on his body, even as the snake went and buried its fangs in his ankle. It’s not venomous, he convinced himself. He didn’t budge an inch, even when he realized that the snake was starting to suck his blood.
The cursed bear, after being done with its prey, moved on to the gruman’s corpse. It grabbed the maggot’s entire body using its two front limbs, then bit it gradually like a sandwich.
The thought that Viktor’s lunch was gone didn’t faze him. The long hours of waiting, the careful setting up of traps, the grinding of branches, all of those efforts were gone in an instant. Even now Viktor had stopped feeling his leg. He was guessing all the blood in there already escaped him.
The Sanguine Cursed now, taking its sweet time with it. Slowly nibbling away at the gruman like it was one of the best meals it ever had. Its flesh-skinned, upside-down head looked at the vultures above, who themselves had already started to leave.
And just as it ate the last of its dinner, the snake on Viktor’s leg released its bite. It intended to crawl up to find better parts to leech from, and from one’s perspective, it was right. Its only mistake was that as soon as the blood leaked from the wound it left, the cursed bear already got a whiff of its scent.
Viktor ran. He didn’t need to hear the bear roar before his legs pushed him. He didn’t need to see the bear leaping into the tree where he last hid. He didn’t need to know how the bear snapped the tree in half with its protruding pair of upside-down teeth.
He ran as fast as his legs could push him. It matters not if he couldn’t feel his left leg, he just needs to know how to move it, and when to move it. When there were branches he could reach, he would leap into them and use them to swing, propelling his body to better speeds.
The bear could smell him, yes, but it couldn’t see him. Its eyes weren’t as sharp in the dark as a goblin’s. It ravages any tree where Viktor’s blood had dropped, slowing it down a little as it takes time to find the next ones, mostly because Viktor was flying in the air.
The snake went to bite him on the neck, but he managed to grab its neck in time because it was so fat with his blood. He threw it into the Sanguine Cursed, whose fur leaped out of its body like it was a separate entity, and then caught the snake using its empty mouth. The snake then went straight from the fur into the bear’s naked flesh like it was part of it all along.
From its six limbs, four were used to run like a quadruped animal, while the middle pair was for parting trees to make way for its size. The fur moved on its own, swallowing the insects flying around, the lizards and moths and rabbits going on its way. It acted less like skin and more like an extension of itself.
Viktor made use of this. He purposely went between two trees that are close together, paths that circle terrain that is hard to navigate as a giant. Every time the bear charged into him, he would maneuver into the back of a tree which the beast would helplessly smash into.
He couldn’t win against it using speed alone, but the environment worked wonders in his favor. When he was far enough, he leaped into a branch, and as he sprung himself into another, he looked back and threw one of his sharpened sticks into the bear’s nose.
Yet his left arm shuddered in pain, completely missing its mark. The bear’s fur swirled like cloth letting the goblin’s javelin seamlessly pass through it.
Viktor’s left foot, which he couldn’t feel, landed on a tall rock that messed with his landing. He fell on his nose and broke one of his ribs. He tried to stand up, almost failing to, then he tried to run, and with each step, the broken rib pierced into his diaphragm. He was limping now, cursing at how weak his new body was. He could hear the bear roaring behind him, and when he turned to look he saw the bear’s weight sinking into the ground, then falling into the pitfall trap he had made beforehand.
Viktor caught his breath. Inhales. Exhales. There was a small cry coming from where the bear fell, but he didn’t dare to relax yet, not until he was sure it was dead. His lungs were screaming and his gut was solid.
He had managed to prepare four pitfall traps, one for each direction he’d find himself running into. All the distance was a leeway to lure whoever was chasing him in the right direction; it is easier to run straight through than to turn in circles.
The problem was that each trap was designed to catch something only as big as a normal bear, so he wasn’t sure that one with six limbs would fit. The other problem was that each only had two sharpened sticks waiting at the bottom. Each one took him more than an hour to make, with his primitive methods and tools.
Still, he had hoped that it was enough to complete the job.
But of course, it wasn’t.
As the bear’s six limbs pulled the creature out of the hole. One of his sharpened sticks was stuck through the fat patch of the moving fur, which, very slowly, was spit out by the fur as if the stick was simply something it ate and didn’t like. But to his success, the other one went through the side of the beast’s shoulder.
There was no relief in this small achievement. Viktor took a deep breath and threw the last of his weapon using his healthy, right arm, and hits the bear’s left eye.
It did. It really did. It went through the empty eye socket of the Sanguine Cursed’ moving fur, which jumped in to block his attack at the last second.
Viktor cursed under his breath, and once again started running, and the bear started chasing.
He limped, and the bear limped with the wound on its shoulder, and the trees bent and the dust howled as they traveled the air.
And he screamed his throat out as the bear ragged and roared.
And he ran until his lungs burned and his gut felt like turning inside out.
He ran until he vomited between his teeth and his feet bled from all the rocks and splinters he stepped on.
He ran until the ground ended on the edge of a cliff and he had to stop.
And for a moment, everything paused. From this height, he could see the west before him. Thousands of trees, mountains and plains. He realized he was nowhere near Amanila. There was no kingdom to run to, no army to command, no Erin to save him.
He was the lord of none, the ruler of nowhere, the king of nothing.
A nameless man in a nameless land, whose death would be but an echo in a vacuum of naught. An existence that offered no moral nor meaning, only the desperateness to exist.
And desperateness indeed he would claim; like a phantom birthmark. He would stretch his new life as far as he possibly could.
As the bear rampaged towards him, the surrounding flora and fauna ripped into shreds, into vines and timber, plants and flowers, carapace and mandibles, flesh and skin and limbs and skin. Its teeth tore through the trees and its fur swallowed everything in its path.
Viktor looked at the ground directly below him, flat land varying in height.
If he aimed his fall well, if he was pinpoint accurate, if the wind blew where he needed it to blow, maybe, just maybe, if he jumped he would find himself landing into the flowing river.
Is it deep enough for his fall? Is it close enough to him? He wasn’t sure. He bent over for a better view, his broken rib pricking his chest, and all he saw were forms of sharp rocks jagging in the middle of the water.
It was clear that the world wanted him dead. He was dead. Yet now he lived, and now nature should take what it was owed.
He led the bear here because it was his only chance of survival, his last option for winning.
He had done this before, thrice even, wherein he used to lure the enemy army into a cliff while his own army sneaked in and took their base. But of course, the cliff-river combination back then was never at this height, and never in this body.
The bear leaped onto him now, halfway in the air. Its large size covers the moon, the stars, the night, and briefly swallowing Viktor is under its shadow. He is so, so small.
Yet he was so calm. Gradually, he raised his arms and took a stance where his body took the shape of an arrow. He took a deep breath, and Viktor dived into the cliff. This way the water will not slam into him should he land. This way the air would propel him in the direction he chooses.
His broken rib stabbed his chest, his skinless hands burned, and both of his arms were broken. He jumped, and the bear fell before him.
For a moment, it felt like everything was completely still. His little body was floating in the air, quiet and smooth and unmoving. While the cursed beasts above him wriggled, grabbing for land that isn’t there.
And finally, Viktor sunk into the water in one swift motion.
While the Sanguine Cursed slammed head-first into the ground, its arms crushed against the earth, all of its bones bent and splintered. Its body twisted on angles. Its fur soaked in blood was completely beneath it, like it tried to block the soil.
And when the goblin rose from the river, one thing was clear in his mind:
He needed an army.
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The Land Beyond the Walls
[Entry from The Gaian Expeditions, courtesy of the Empire of Amanila]
The Land Beyond the Walls is a place with no name whose extent has no ends nor measure. Its expanse is generally everywhere that is outside Amanila, which is the only city known to man where humans can survive.
Orcs are generally considered to be the most intelligent, apex predator that roams the land, and even they fell prey to nameless monstrosities and unnamable damnations that even the best of poets have trouble giving descriptions to.
There are lands lush with forests both moving and unmoving, mountains of stone and copper where the air taste of blood and metal, deserts brown and black that have seen hailstorms of heat, winters where its snows ashes from the burning clouds. But of course, where there is rot, there is life.
The land is large enough to fit peace and war within in its belly. The Gaian Expeditions have seen flat plains where every tree bore fruits as sweet as honey, giant flowers whose nectars fizzle inside the mouth, schools of colorful fishes that swim in the air, and a forest of gigantic mushrooms where creatures live and sleep.
From time to time The Gaian Expeditions were known to find human settlements, although few and laden with mistrust, they try to take these humans back to the Empire with their cultures intact.
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