Raid preparations temporarily transformed the village into a hive of activity. Dried foodstuffs were distributed. Travel packs, cloaks, and boots were re-measured and repaired. Lamps and torches were put under final checks and refueled with oil or firestone. Knives and cutlasses were oiled and sharpened to a wicked edge.
When Tryle had been issued his pack, he’d noticed it looked different from the other stolen human packs sitting on the giant slab of redwood the goblins were using as a supply table.
“Why are the other packs so shiny?” he asked the quartermaster, a grizzled old goblin with a wild mane of graying hair.
“Water-proofed,” grunted the goblin. He called down the line. “Next!”
Tryle inspected his pack. “Is mine water-proofed?”
“Ya think I’m gonna give you a perfectly good waterproof pack?” said the quartermaster grouchily. “These here be limited edition ‘quipment for the seasoned raiders. You’d likely burn it up or use it for sport in one of yer infernal whatchamacallits. No water-proof pack for you. Move it along.”
“But—”
“Next!” barked the quartermaster.
--
For as long as he could remember, Tryle had been different from other goblins. Outwardly, he resembled any one of them: slitted eyes, fangs, pointy ears, and rough scales.
He liked to catch fish in the streams, forage for berries, and munch on the juicy, crunchy flesh of the Dub-Dub fruit that grew across the Great River. He could speak both Goblano and the human tongue, as most goblins learned to do from birth. It helped, after all to know how to tell the people you were robbing exactly what you wanted to rob from them.
But as he’d gotten older, Tryle felt his world and that of the other goblins his age were diverging rapidly. While the rest of his brood class played mock war games with sticks and slingshots, braided their hair with mouse bones, and held fire-belching contests, he was busy cataloguing the areas of the Woodland with the most bountiful yields of Dub-Dub fruit on crude bark layouts and modifying his slingshots to help with hunting.
And there were other, more educational endeavors.
Tryle scavenged all the books that were tossed aside after raids and organized them by subject, hoarding them in his room and devouring them by candlelight deep into the night. When he ran out of space, he began storing them in a dead beech tree close to the village walls.
Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.
He started with basic alchemy theory and a few experimental concepts in an emerging field called chemistry. Then he dove into biology, geometry, geology, magical transmutation, and homological materials charming. For fun, he learned about astronomy, and by the silver light of the moon, he drew a rough star map using the view from a hilltop in a nearby meadow.
Tryle’s mother was supportive of his scientific pursuits, rustling up bundles of parchment from raids and other midwives in the village for him to scribble his notes and experimental findings. She affectionately said he reminded her of his father, who died from a jumping scorpion sting when Tryle was an infant.
From the stories she told Tryle, his father had also been rather unconventional, taking wide interest in the ecosystem of the Woodlands. Yet he had confined his interests to the village’s practical orthodoxy of hunting and gathering, writing naturalistic guidebooks on edible plants and dabbling in grub husbandry. Unlike his father, Tryle’s unusual interests were not greeted with as much approval from the rest of the goblin community.
It didn’t help that Tryle was somewhat of an easy target. He was frequently picked on for his scrawniness and his stunted tusks, which were only a few inches longer than his fangs and indicated he would hit puberty later than his brood class.
As a male goblin, being a late bloomer placed you at both a cultural and biological disadvantage in goblin society, since it meant you would never be as tall or have tusks as physically imposing as they could have been. And everyone knew the ladies loved big tusks.
Tryle wasn’t too bothered by the teasing. Even when the bullying turned physical, he could handle himself. Though small for his age, he was a good climber and could escape the worst of his tormentors by waiting them out in the treetops. If he couldn’t evade trouble, he was still quick and well-coordinated and surprisingly strong. And if all else failed, he could usually figure out how to retaliate in other, more creative ways.
One day, Gumbo and his posse of goons drove Tryle into a lagoon full of dozing Ergo Salamanders: insectivorous, peaceful creatures with membranous, black skin and yellow spots. But unbeknownst to everyone but Tryle, they also secreted a clear, acidic liquid from their pores that radically lowered the pH of the water they basked in.
Knowing that the other goblins liked to play the Beat-Up-Tryle game after lunchtime, Tryle had slathered himself with sodium bicarbonate he’d sourced from a nahcolite deposit and Aurora maple tree sap before leading his assailants on a merry chase around the lagoon. The acrid water was neutralized by the basic layer of protection he’d applied, and all he had to do was avoid splashing too much into his eyes and mouth.
Gumbo’s squad was not so lucky. It took only a few minutes before they began to feel strangely itchy, and another minute to notice their hair was starting to turn fine and brittle and snapping off at the roots. They retreated, howling, their scales flaking off their limbs like dandruff and their skin turning as raw and pink as newborn mice.
After that incident, the other male goblins in brood class learned not to foist trouble onto Tryle Bodkin, lest they get into trouble themselves. It was best to leave the social outcast to conduct his weird experiments in peace.
That wariness cut both ways. Tryle had few friends, with the exception of those like Opal and Anok. And he liked it that way. The less time he spent having to maintain many relationships, the more time he could devote to his experiments.