A Gate Marshal is many things. Animal handler, investigator, policeman, firefighter, ambulance driver, public relations representative, cleanup crew. Straight up soldiering, however, was always something a bit out of the ordinary. Or at least it was supposed to be. Earth is full of its own particular conflicts, and so in turn is the world of fairies. It was the decree of the wise that the world of Man and the world of the Faerie should remain apart, and that the cancers of one world should not be spread to another.
Or at least that was the theory. In practice, things tended to be a bit more complicated.
Deep within the tangle of an enchanted wood, a group of small, terrible creatures covered in fungus were lurking in a clearing, fussing around a crude catapult which they were loading with a bundle of grenades lashed together to form a single, high explosive projectile. Periodically, the creatures would pause to look furtively about as the sound of heavy guns rolled over the treetops like distant thunder.
Suddenly, the uneasy peace of the woods was shattered when the brush nearby exploded into twigs and splinters as a battered old Russian T-55 tank ploughed straight into the field, its coaxial machine gun ablaze as the steel behemoth peppered the woodland with bullets and flattened fleeing goblins beneath its treads. The roar of the engine and shrieks of the goblins were soon joined by the crack of rifles as elven soldiers poured into the breach behind their iron titan. In a few moments every goblin in sight had been shot, bayoneted or ploughed over, and the elven soldiers then followed their Soviet-made machine onward towards their next target.
Two days of heavy fighting had seen the goblins cleared from most of the woods. They were steadily being pushed back into a small pocket of the forest where they were making their final stand against the elves. Despite their success, the elves had nonetheless suffered many casualties, and Lothiar’s troop was no exception. With four of his men wounded too badly to continue, the First Spear had replaced his losses with the nearest resources he had to hand.
Which is how Donovan managed to find himself in the midst of the whole mess.
“Volunteer” is one of those words which never quite means what you think it means. Likewise were words like “support”, “assist”, “facilitate”, and so on. They all tend to boil down to the same thing in the end, and thus a fellow who isn’t supposed to be in the front lines under fire often winds up being there in the thick of it nonetheless.
Donovan peeked cautiously over the top of the fallen tree which he had been hiding behind. Up ahead, about fifty yards or so away, was the dark mouth of a cave sunk in a hollow of the ground filled with brilliant green moss. It looked peaceful and deserted, but Donovan was pretty sure it was neither of those things.
Donovan turned to the elf soldier who was crouching beside him.
“Are we really sure this is the center of the contagion?”, he asked.
“That is what the March Wizards say”, the elf replied. “Why do you question their word?”
“I dunno, I just figured we’d want to be sure before we walked into a cave full of crazy goblins.”
“It would have to be cleared anyway.”
“Yeah, but then we could just clear it with some napalm.”
“The March Wizards want to take the cave with the pupae intact.”
"I know they do. I’d just rather take it with us intact.”
“Shhh!” The elf held his fingers to his lips and then pointed back at the cave entrance. There, ambling around in the gloom, was a goblin.
The elf raised his rifle and was peering down the sights at the creature when Donovan laid his hand on the weapon.
“Hang on a second”, he whispered.
The elf looked up and met his eye.
“What are you thinking, human?”
“I dunno, I was just thinking I had an idea.”
The elf cocked an eyebrow.
“Are you thinking what I think you’re thinking?”
“Maybe. Wanna give it a try?”
The elf looked back at the goblin and smirked slightly.
“Why not?”, he replied.
A few minutes later, the silence of the woods was broken momentarily by a muffled squawk and a scrabble, followed again by silence. And the goblin at the cave entrance was no longer there. For now he was being detained in the woods, bundled up nicely with paracord. When this was all over they’d at least have one goblin still alive whom they could have a chat with, which likely couldn’t be said of the remaining goblins inside the cave.
Donovan crept stealthily back towards the cave entrance, a flashlight taped awkwardly onto the forestock of his old rifle. Beside him were several elves, their own weapons similarly prepared. It was time to make the push.
The men were lined up on either side of the cave entrance. Lothiar himself took point on one side, and Donovan took the other. Inside the cave, Donovan almost thought he could hear the quiet gibbering of goblin speech.
Lothiar had plucked a fragmentation grenade from his webbing. With a tense look on his face, the elf pulled out the pin and swiftly chucked the grenade inside the cave.
For a moment the inside of the cave lit up like a sunburst as the grenade exploded with an ear splitting bang. Immediately the elven troops poured inside, guns blazing. In a few terrible moments, it was all over.
About a mile away, there was a stretch of road through the woods, newly ploughed by bulldozers driven by elven combat engineers. A mix of assorted vehicles were parked alongside, old landrovers, one or two flatbed humvees in dark green, and a seventy year old M43 ambulance.
Coming swiftly down the road was an M151 jeep painted in mottled camouflage. The driver was going fast and the vehicle swerved slightly before it pulled to up to an abrupt stop beside the other parked vehicles. Seated in the back was a man with long but thin platinum colored beard. His skin was pale, and his eyes were dark violet, and upon each hand he bore no less than six fingers. A voluminous camouflage poncho was draped over his body, and on his head was a very tall pointed hat with a broad brim, which largely concealed his long pointed ears. He sat erect with his hands folded in his lap and his features set like stone, and he remained unperturbed for the whole of his wild drive, his body only swaying slightly as the vehicle came to a stop.
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As the jeep came to a halt, an elf soldier in the front seat leapt out and proffered his assistance as the man in the back seat arose with a regal bearing. As he descended, the soldier beside him reached into the bed of the vehicle and produced a great wooden staff inlaid with little bits of silver and turquoise and topped with a carved head resembling some terrible dragon-like creature, which he presented to its owner who seized it in a determined grasp. In the meantime, several other soldiers had gathered from around the parked convoy and now stood at attention.
For a March Wizard had just come on the scene.
Two elven officers now approached, and bowed deeply before the wizard. After a brief consultation, a detachment of soldiers were gathered and together with the wizard headed off into the woods on foot.
Far into the woods, Donovan leaned against one side of the cave entrance, and dug an antique pipe and a pouch of tobacco out of his satchel. Clearing the cave hadn’t been as bad as he’d feared. As he puffed calmly on his pipe he drank in the beauty of place around him. As the sunlight pierced through the gloom the brilliant green of the moss covered walls shone like a cavern of emeralds, while small droplets of water falling down from the ceiling was the only sound to be heard. Only a short while ago this place had been a death chamber. Thankfully neither he nor any of his comrades had been the ones doing the dying. As for the Spore Goblins, well death didn’t quite hold the same significance for them. Which was precisely the problem.
From outside in the woods the stillness was broken by the noise of approaching men. Donovan looked out to see a squad of elven soldiers tramping their way through the brush, and in their midst was a bearded man in a tall pointed hat, striding determinedly with a great staff in his hand and a large camouflage poncho billowing around him like a maestro’s robes.
Apparently, his brief moment of peace was already over.
Donovan shook out his pipe as the party came to a stop at the cave entrance. Or rather, as most of the party came to a stop, for the man in the tall hat kept going until he was practically nose to nose with Donovan.
The newcomer regarded him critically for a moment, and his violet eyes rested heavily on Donovan’s round human ears. There were those among the elfkin who intensely disliked humans, and Donovan was left with the distinct impression that this violet eyed, six fingered character was one of them.
At last the newcomer spoke.
“I am Ixiar. Who is in charge here?”
Donovan pointed back inside the cave with his pipe.
“That would First Spear Lothiar. He’s just inside, wanna talk to him?”
The elfkin grunted, but said nothing and merely pushed past Donovan into the cave. With a sigh, Donovan put away his pipe and followed.
At the back of the cave there was a large room where the elves had laid out a number of very bright lamps. The place was completely grown over with moss, mushrooms, and many layers of assorted fungi.
And most importantly, there were the puffballs.
There were dozens upon dozens of them, large, globular, dirty white funguses piled on top of each other like so many warts, and every now again one of them would release a puff of spores into the air. Donovan had seen a lot of these rotten things over the last few days, but this was by far the biggest bunch yet.
Ixiar came to a halt as he entered the room and snorted with a grim satisfaction.
“So here it is, exactly as foreseen.”
Lothiar stepped up and bowed.
“There are also a few other rooms in the cave which are similarly contaminated, my lord, but this is the largest concentration.”
“I see.” Ixiar turned to one of his soldiers and casually extended one hand. “Hand me a pulaish!”
The soldier dutifully drew a broad, machete-like weapon from his belt and handed it respectfully to his superior. The wizard’s eyes narrowed and he bit slightly into his moustache for a moment as he looked critically at the giant puffballs. Then, with a swift, tiger-like motion, he swept the machete across one of them, creating an almost surgical incision which ran from top to bottom. Handing the blade back to one of the soldiers, he then aggressively pried both halves apart.
Inside, curled up like a fetus, there was a goblin.
It was surprisingly clean, hardly any mold or fungus to be seen on it yet, and there was a sort of peace about it where it lay inside its fungal cocoon. Soon it would be full grown, at which time it would wake up and claw its way out of the puffball. Spore Goblins were so named because everywhere they went they released fungal spores, a certain percentage of which would inevitably grow into puffballs, which would in turn produce more goblins and begin the lifecycle of the creature again. If allowed to persist, the goblins would ultimately spread their spores everywhere and theoretically might consume everything else on the planet.
“Hmmm”, Ixiar mused to himself, “this one is extraordinarily well developed. This infestation has grown rapidly, and having seen this example I can’t say I’m surprised.”
Ixiar now turned towards Lothiar.
“Burn everything immediately.”
“Yes my lord. We do have a prisoner, however.”
“What! Why didn’t you say so before? Take me to it at once!”
Donovan followed along as Lothiar led the way back outside the cave, while behind them a number of elf soldiers began to thread their way through the cave with a flamethrower, burning everything as they went.
A little way into the wood, their prisoner was being detained under guard, tied up where he had been deposited previously.
Donovan gazed at the goblin. The goblin gazed back, his eyes twitching slightly and not entirely focused. It was generally considered that most Spore Goblins were slightly insane, which was a product of possessing only a fragment of a mind. According to those who knew about such matters, each colony of Spore Goblins possessed but a single soul, which was broken up into fragments and scattered about its members to create a sort of disjointed hive mind. If the whole colony was not wiped out completely (which was very often the case), that same mind would simply reemerge in the next generation of goblins, growing stronger each time. It was believed that Spore Goblins first came into being when demonic spirits filtered through the rifts in the astral planes and infected other living creatures to create a kind of magical parasitic organism. In this case, the demonic spirits made their abode first in fungal spores, which then infected ordinary goblins to create the sort of creature which was now staring at Donovan with a maniacal gaze, drooling slightly.
Ixiar now coughed loudly, and fixed the goblin with a withering stare. The goblin merely replied with a giggle.
“Well?”, Ixiar demanded. “Speak! Who are you? I command you to reveal your name.”
The goblin giggled again.
Ixiar took a deep breath and brandished his staff menacingly.
“Don’t toy with me, goblin. I command you to speak! Who are you?”
The goblin giggled a third time, and then spoke at last in a squeaky, high pitched voice.
“I am legion!”, he cried.
Ixiar sighed with exasperation, and appeared slightly deflated. A great many spore goblins answered to that name, which seemed to serve as a kind of default identity where there was no other. In all probability, the goblin host didn’t actually know the proper name of the infernal spirit which inhabited him. Stooping over, Ixiar retrieved a crude submachine gun from a pile of similar weapons which the elven soldiers had retrieved from the cave.
“These weapons. Where did you get them? Speak! And stop giggling.”
The goblin stopped giggling, and grinned. “Found it”, he replied.
“Where did you find it?”
“In a box with our name on it.”
“And what name was on the box?”
“Legion!”
Ixiar sighed again, and drove his staff into the ground angrily.
“Useless creature!”
“There were a lot of weapon caches left over from the last bush war, my lord”, Lothiar interjected, “At that time the forces of Dereth Kral dispersed enormous numbers of arms to the goblins. Perhaps this colony discovered a large stockpile of them.”
“Perhaps”, Ixiar replied. He then returned his attention to back to the goblin. “Where did you find this box?”
“Don’t remember”, the goblin chuckled, “I am legion!”
“Speak! I command you to remember!”
“I am legion!”, the goblin shrieked again, and broke out in a fit of maniacal laughter. Ixiar uttered a loud groan, and reaching beneath his poncho he pulled out a snub-nosed Colt revolver and shot the goblin dead.
Further out into the woods, the last few goblins of the colony were dug in, surrounded by the elven forces who now laid out mortars and began to bombard their position into annihilation. Soon heavier artillery was brought to bear. In a few more hours, it was all over, and the last vestiges of the infestation had been wiped out.
Or so everyone hoped.