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11
Viktor’s Goblin Company
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MIMIC GRABBED SCARAMOUCHE’S FLUTE, and with such magnificent instrument in hand, she made the most rhythmic, artfully skull-numbing, and disgustingly ear-splitting beat: by banging it against metal like a gong.
Then, she inhaled a largely unnecessary amount of air, and from the bottom of her belly, she shouted, “EEEEEEET’S MORNINGGG BAY-BEHHH!!” the blast of her makeshift alarm echoed throughout the whole camp. “NOW WAKE UP YOU NASTY, MOTHERLESS RUG-SNIFFERS!”
The sun rose gloriously behind her back, the soil clapped to her earth-shaking melody and the trees bowed in awe of her musical ability. The metal—Canyon’s unworn armor that she stole as he slept—clanged and clanged and clanged that even Dos had no choice but to admit Mimic’s brilliance.
“Please stop,” Dos groggily spoke. He was afraid that if Mimic kept doing the drums, she would eventually outshine him. It was very understandable, given that men have a ton of superiority issues and Dos was relying on his guitar for charisma. Mimic couldn’t take that away from him, so she stopped. “Oh thank god.”
“Oy dimwit,” Scaramouche called, asking for his flute. “That’s not how you use that.”.
Mimic threw the instrument into the whimsical, comic-relief goblin’s face, who sadly caught it before the slapstick comedy ensued. Mimic copied the jester’s smile. “Here you go flatbag!”
“Don’t call me flatbag, that’s for Canyon.”
One by one the goblins rose from their bunker-hammocks—one of Mimic’s newer design—climbing down the sides with their heads bubbling left and right. They proceeded to their morning routine of gathering water, drinking water, playing with water, maybe taking a bath, and generally avoiding their captain and lieutenant's line of sight. In between these activities were the general grunts of complain, casual tomfoolery, and the occasional cry for help when someone gets lost inside Mimic’s fortress.
The fortress was, fundamentally, a hotchpotch maze of furnitures and buildings jumbled together into one place. The entire camp was of made pink planks and light blue lumber, and ash-white logs, and black timber, and—you’re not gonna believe it—brown wood, hammered and nailed making up the makeshift houses filled with tables and hammocks that looped into layers of half circles surrounding the town center, which was the ground but it’s decorated with Mimic’s collection of flat rocks that made a semblance of a floor.
Mimic designed the entire thing.
At least twenty times now.
The entire camp gets built, dismantled, restructured, then rebuilt again at least twice a month—courtesy of Mimic’s personal army—as she drafted, designed, and redesigned better walls around better layouts, then locks, buildings, extra-complicated-tables, more locks, trapholes, pranks, roads, intersections, dead ends, prank-dead ends, gates, more locks, doors, a suspicious lack of windows, simple chairs, complex chairs, a chair that Canyon called “that’s just my shield on a stool” but Mimic named “The Butt Protector,” a gate that looks like a wall, a gate that uses an underground passage, an actual underground passage, a bridge for no reason, an overpass between Canyon and Scaramouche’s houses (as a joke), and more and more of Mimic’s architectural machinations.
Canyon called her dangerously creative. Viktor called her a madman. She called Viktor a tasteless boring swine who probably dranks his piss with sugar and called it cuisine.
Doesn’t matter, Dos would shoot that gob in the face any time soon. Dos would shoot anything that Mimic told him to shoot.
“Oy, you, Builder 27!” Mimic called. She gave her goblins names based on their job and the order they came into her army. She specifically chose big goblins, often fighting over with Canyon about whose army gets who.
“Me?” the goblin responded. He had a deep voice and a muscular body. All of Mimic’s army had muscular bodies due to their line of work: torturous construction.
“Yes, who else is Builder 27?”
“Uhm, my name is Michael?”
“Ha! Good one, Builder 27!” Mimic openly laughed and didn’t understand why Scaramouche tried to hold his. It was a good joke. “Tell Builder 4 and Builder 3 to bring me the hostages!”
“Do you mean David and—”
“— a joke is never funny twice Builder 27, get going!” Mimic said, proud of being able to make use of Viktor’s interruptive dialogue. The goblin went on with his way, while Scaramouche and Dos were staring at her. “Is there something on my face? Did you two suddenly fall for my absolutely stunning charm? What?”
Dos spoke first, “Hostages?” and he had a red face for some reason.
Scaramouche scratched his spiky, grass-like hair, which Mimic never noticed before because he was always wearing a hat. “Dimwit, we’re supposed to bury the bodies, not take them home.”
“Nahhh, that’s for y’all motherless amateurs!” Mimic boasted. While Dos and Viktor attacked the orcs in the morning, and while Canyon and Scaramouche sieged the humans at night, Mimic was given a very special task. “I went into an orc tribe of twenty! I repeat, twenty,” Mimic showed both of her hands and emphasized at her number of fingers, “That’s like ten, but twice,” she continued, her eyes widening in excitement. “I built a fort, in front of their fort, and they just sieged it! But ha! The entire thing was filled with locks!”
“You built a fort. Filled with locks.” Dos repeated, then thought about it. “So that’s why it took you three days. You had, how many traps? Wait, don’t you mean cages?””
“Yes! Good word! Cages! I like that word!” Mimic punched him on the shoulder. “You’re the best! Words are nice! Ha! Cages, what a great word!”
“But why?” Scaramouche asked.
“Viktor Boss Man said he needed orc bodies to trade!”
“Trade with . . . ?”
“Trade with me,” Fog-eyes appeared from a distance, casually strolling with his new dark-green trench coat and the now gold-layered glasses. The goblins looked like kids compared to his height, and they looked well-fed compared to his built. Still, he managed to bring his towering cabinet with him, hanging heavy on his back like he was carrying his own coffin.
“Ugh, who invited the Snotlord.” Scaramouche groaned with all his teeth, which Mimic thought was amusingly weird and tried to replicate it instantly. She failed. “Alright, I’m out, I’ve got soldiers to beat up, best of luck.”
Mimic charged toward the orc and the orc charged towards her, then they high-fived. “Long time no see Foggy boy!”
“Yeah, hoping for a longer time honestly,” Fog-eyes grinned. “Wow, it’s so disgusting to see all of you.”
“HA! It’s so disgusting to see you too, you vile swine!” Mimic laughed. “SooOOOoo doyouhaveanygoodsforme BAY-BEHHH!!”
Fog-eyes brought a knapsack from a backpack from a section of his cabinet. Mimic noticed this redundancy and thought about building a better cabinet with fewer locks; or perhaps more locks to keep everything nice and secured and separated. She banked the thought as Fog-eyes opened the knapsack, which was filled with different types of padlocks in odd shapes and puzzling keyholes.
“This one does not need a key,” Fog-eyes pointed at it. It had a mechanism where one can scroll through four sections of numbers, “it requires passcode, which you can set.”
“AmaziNG! that’s the stupidest lock I’ve seen yet!!” Mimic fiddled with it and quickly realized it would take longer to open than most locks, as she would need to manually try each iteration of numbers to figure out the code. She tossed it to Dos, “Yo, brute force it honeyhead!”
This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.
Dos caught the lock and had no idea what to do with it. “Did you just call me honeyhead?”
“Did I?”
“I think you did?”
“Eh, your face looks sweet, so good enough.”
Fog-eyes interjected, “are you two flirting?”
Mimic answered without thinking, “sure—”
“—no— what!” Dos said in unison with Mimic, then took a step back, then looked at Mimic. “Wait, what?”
“Little man, I have zero attention span and I am busy,” Mimic simply said, matter-of-factly, as she fiddled with the bunch of other locks. “Let’s talk about it later. I’ve got hostages to sell.”
“I prefer the term products,” Fog-eyes commented. “But yeah, Dos, we’ve got uh, sensitive business to discuss, and you got some piss to drink, so beat it—oh he already left.”
“Yeah, he’s a soft-bellied bastard, did you know his crossbow is also a guitar?” Mimic giggled. She gestured the orc to follow him, and they started walking around the camp. “Boy, what a nerd.”
The orc laughed, “Classic,” he said, watching two goblins have a fist fight about which rock is better. “Where did you learn that word?”
“One time you brought alcohol and you got drunk and you cried because your orc friends called you a nerd.”
“I prefer the term Biomancer.”
“Congrats,” Mimic clapped. “Still a nerd.”
“I can literally turn your bones into jelly any time I want to.”
“Sure, and Viktor Boss Man said your axes are for decoration and you skip meals to read books sooOooOo—”
“—okay, okay, okay, are you done?” Fog-eyes interjected. They walked over a wooden bridge that had nothing but land underneath it, but the floorboards were colorful and the railing had exquisite carvings of various goblin heads. Mimic had to beg Viktor to do that, and in return it became her job to catch the products. “Nice bridge, nerd.”
Mimic screamed. “AaaaAAaaa fine, you got me, pig-dog!” She started hanging some of the locks she liked into her belt. “Why can’t I just build a bridge?? Everyone said I can’t build a bridge, that it makes no sense! But what if we’re being chased by grumans, but really big, and we need to cross between two cliffs? How is my army gonna know how to build a bridge?? Right? Right?? RIGHT?”
“Question, does the bridge need to have these carvings?”
“SPEAK ONE MORE WORD ABOUT MY BRIDGE, AND I WILL LEAD YOU INTO A TRAPHOLE.”
“Very passionate,” Fog-eyes commented. They passed by Canyon’s line of armored goblins who were carrying drums of water—previous benefits of their previous trades—metal plates, in exchange for Mimic’s army building the orc’s workshop back in the cliffside. “How many uh, products do you have?”
“Ehh, about nine? It is seriously, very, very hard to make traps for orcs. Ridiculously hard. Sacriligiously hard. It was absolutely insane,” Mimic complained. “They just see through everything! I’ve tried using bushes, tried drugging them, tried baiting them with food. I even asked Woodworker 19 to piss on them, and nothing works! Man if only they were as dimwitted as you are, I could’ve caught them all.”
“Wow, thanks,” Fog-eyes blinked, paused, then blinked again. “Wow.”
“No problem Orc Doctor Man.”
“I’m a Biomancer now.”
“What’s the difference?”
“I uh,” Fog-eyes paused for a moment. “I have a paper that certifies I am one, and it allows me to… read more papers,” the orc murmured the last part. “Please stop calling me a nerd—wait is that an overpass?”
Mimic looked at where the orc was pointing, which was the overpass she built between her two best companions’ personal houses. “Not a word,” she threatened. She had enough lecture from Viktor about it, and in the next plans she already made the layout for overpass intersections that include her Boss Man’s personal home.
They arrived in the underground passage, which everyone thought would never be useful. Inside were four orcs in separate cages made of wood. But instead of simple bars, the cage were lined with complex, three-layered woodwork of hexagonal holes supported by triangular angles, then rooted to the ground.
None of the orcs were able to break it.
“That’s genius,” even Fog-eyes had to admit it. “How did they even get inside?”
“They jumped over the walls of my fort,” Mimic boasted. “Aaaaand it was a very THICK wall, you know? About CAGE-THICK, yeah?” she emphasized. Cage. She was liking that word more and more. “So when you hop over the wall, thinking oh why, sir, i shall land on the wall safe and sound, and then it just swallows you down…:” she elbowed Fog-eyes, then winked. “You said it yourself mister, I’m a genius.”
“You’re a nerd.”
One of the orcs banged from the inside of her cage. It said something Mimic couldn’t understand, then Fog-eyes replied in the same language. The conversation seemed exclusive to them.
This bored Mimic, so as they talked she began detaching the cages from the underpass and started attaching the wheels. “Canyon’s gobs would help you over with that,” she said, but it didn’t seem like Fog-Eyes heard him. The orcs’ conversation was heated, angry. “What do you need them for by the way?”
Fog-eyes grabbed his axe and opened one of the cages. The orc lunged towards him in full-armor, gauntlets in hand. Fog-eyes touched the opposing orc’s face, and then…
Mimic couldn’t even describe it. Imagine if your face twisted, not like a broken head no—but like a whirlwind. As if there was an epicenter pulling everything on you into a dense, painful spiral.
The snot, the hair, the skin on the orc’s head left and attached to Fog-Eyes hand, which he shaped into a sphere of flesh. Then he pulled its tongue, combined it with the sphere, stretched the tongue all the way into the orc’s butt, then attached the other end back on its twisty face. One of its eyes was on its chin and the other was on the right cheek.
Mimic didn’t need to know the orc’s face to know that it was crying. This made her terrified. This made her excited. Then this made her curious. “HooOOoow DID YOU DO THAT!!”
Fog-eyes spoke in his language directly to the other orcs in the cages, then turned to her. “I told you I can turn your bones into jelly.”
“That’s terrifying!! I HATE IT! LOVE IT! TEACH ME!”
“Yes, of course I can teach you,” Fog-eyes agreed. “Only took me thirty years is all,” he proceeded to open all the other eight cages, one by one. Yet none of the orcs dared to attack him. They stood staring at what happened to their comrade, trying their best to hide their trembling visage.
Fog-eyes started walking out of the underpass, and the orcs simply followed him without needing further commands.
“Youaresocool Orc Doctor Man!!” Mimic blurted out in excitement. She wanted to do that. She needed to learn how to do that. She could right? She could learn anything she saw once. She was a genius. Even Viktor said she was.
“No no no, Biomancer,” Fog-eyes corrected. “Now, for why I came here,” he scratched his chin. “I heard Dos is going to shoot Viktor.”
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Viktor’s Goblin Company
[Entry from Dr. Faron's (Fog-Eyes) Notes, from The Land Beyond the Walls]
Viktor’s group of goblins is fundamentally rare, but not unique. There had been cases of primers being able to lead at least thousands of goblins without falling apart. But essentially what separates Viktor’s group was the Amanilan-like treatment of its soldiers, and the amount of authority Viktor gave to his men. No matter how I looked at it, especially after reading books about the Gaian Expeditions, Viktor’s army follows their composition from structure to schedule. It was undeniable that this is how a human army functions.
To dissect, Viktor’s army is divided into four parts, with thirty goblins each serving one leader:
* Dos’ band of troopers, armed with nothing but leather and skin. The typical jack of all trades of an army, able to scout, hunt, trap, shoot, and fight, serving all kinds of purposes depending on the need and what the army requires. Very versatile bunch, with a leader that has a heart but is not a fool. Dos’ band knew when to attack and when to retreat, and they knew how to choose their own battles.
* Canyon’s armored goblins, who in a proper war would ideally serve as a frontline. This was the most human army of them all—men drilled with techniques both offensive and defensive, a very strict discipline, as obedient as dogs—paired with a hyper-rational leader that knew exactly how to use them. When they defend, they could block anything as if they were a castle wall, but when they charge, they could flatten anything on their track.
* Scaramouche’ party of fighters, which was perhaps Viktor’s wildcard. They were goblins that Viktor didn’t train, but turned out to be scarier than the rest of the army. They were flexible, wild, and dextrous, like pack of uncontrollable jackal-hyenas that devoured anything they laid their eyes upon. Not to mention, their leader, Scaramouche, which was just as terrifying as Viktor.
* Mimic’s personal army, who knew very little about fighting but more about building. They were good trappers in their own right, but what made them so dangerous was how fast they could build it, and how complicated and clever the designs their leader could make. Given proper resources, and perhaps more time for her to mature, I believe she could make Sunspine a better fort than it already was.
Still, not much is known about Viktor himself, only that he could pull this wild group of goblins together without being a primer. It was as if the existence of the goblin itself already begets respect. For further research, I’d like to bring a goblin intern with me next time to see Viktor’s name in the lines of The Names of Things, and perhaps we could learn more about him.
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