He felt hunger.

It wasn’t a dull throb like that of a prolonged starvation.

His hunger was raw and ravenous.

It felt as if there was some great force coursing through his body. It was ruthless and greedy. Screaming to be sated.

And every atom of his being would respond to its call.

Each pang of hunger would begin from his stomach and radiate outwards. As it coursed through his body, his muscles would instinctively contract, his heart would start beating erratically, and finally the wave would reach his head.

His mind would get dizzy and his vision would momentarily blur. A disgusting volume of saliva would overflow his mouth. And after a few moments the cycle would repeat itself.

He instinctively controlled his breathing, hoping to tame the beast threatening to devour him from within.

The place where he awoke was completely devoid of light, but when he scanned his surroundings, his eyes easily pierced through the darkness.

He wasn’t alone.

There were dozens of strange creatures all around him. Their disproportionately large, bald heads housed beady little eyes. The flesh on their chests seemed to have collapsed onto itself, revealing rows of ribs and ridiculously protruding bellies underneath. Their small physiques would tremble intermittently, exposing them as victims of the same hunger that tormented him as well.  

Somehow, he recognized these creatures as his brethren.

Goblins. 

Most of them laid listlessly on the ground, completely trapped in their own little worlds and unable to show any interest in their surroundings. Some gasped for air as if suffocating, others whined and hissed. Few were driven to desperation and lashed out mindlessly at their neighbors in pointless acts of violence.

He didn’t.

He knew that he couldn’t eat them. And the same innate knowledge that informed him of the fact these creatures were his kin, revealed to him one more piece of information. 

The time to feast would come soon.

Instead of wasting his energy, he continued to survey the room they were kept in. The floor and walls were made of uniform dark bricks. The ceiling was concave and even with his excellent vision he wasn’t able to fully pierce through the darkness shrouding its top. 

At the opposite side of the room stood a large iron gate. His eyes were instinctively drawn towards it. It was made of a latticed iron grille and revealed a dark corridor behind it.

He decided to move closer towards it. 

As he slowly made his way through the room, he carefully stepped around the creatures spread out on the floor. Most of them were occupied with their own struggles and ignored him, others were more alert and growled threateningly when he walked past, but luckily he’d managed to avoid any of the rabid ones that would attack indiscriminately.

He found himself a spot a few meters away from the gate. Noticing the disturbance, one of the nearby goblins turned towards him and hissed angrily. He responded in nature. They eyed each other for a few moments, but in the end the other creature decided to ignore him, and resumed its listless posture.

He continued to scan his surroundings, wary of some other goblin deciding to launch a sneak attack, but it seemed that no one else was interested in starting anything. 

Feeling relieved, he sat on the ground and attempted to slow down his breathing again. Even this tiny excursion had stirred the ravenous force inside his body and it wouldn’t be easy to placate it again.

He ignored the beads of sweat rolling down his face and the overflowing fluid in his mouth. 

He severed all his other senses and focused only on the sensation of his chest, rising and falling in a mysterious rhythm. 

He waited.

[...]

The sound of the iron gate being raised resounded like thunder within the closed confines of the room. Three strangers entered, each of them carrying a large trough. They placed them on the ground with a loud thump, spilling some of the contents on the floor.

Countless eyes abruptly flashed open in the darkness.

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The commotion had woken him up from his meditative state as well, but it wasn’t the mysterious strangers or what they carried that attracted his attention.

The dark corridor, previously blocked off, was now open. 

He abruptly stood up, stumbled almost, as the blood suddenly rushed to his legs. There weren’t more than a few steps separating him from the outside, but even at such a short distance, he couldn’t see anything past the boundary. The corridor was pitch black, almost as if it was removed from reality. 

He took a step forward.

And then a curious smell entered his nostrils. 

He didn’t readily recognize it. It was… both sweet and savory, completely unlike the sour stench of goblin sweat he grew accustomed to.  But something within his body did. 

The ravenous beast he barely managed to put to sleep had woken up from its slumber.

It smelled food.

His heart started pounding like a jackhammer, sending waves of excited blood to his head and limbs. A thick layer of perspiration broke out all over his body. His face became flushed and his skin felt as if it was pricked by a thousand needles, but he was no longer in a state to register it.

He turned back in an awkward, jerky motion of a poorly operated marionette, his gaze drawn towards the center of the room.

The three strangers were already gone, having disappeared as if they were never there to begin with. All that remained were the three troughs. 

The thick aroma wafting from them had an almost physical quality. It seemed to cling to the walls, to the floor, even to the skin. 

The goblins that laid limply on the ground stirred and started to rise to their feet. Their beady eyes shone in the darkness with a strange light.

The tension was palpable but no one made a move. The goblins stood still as if transfixed, their collective gaze arrested by the troughs in the center of the room. 

For a moment it seemed as if the time itself had ground to a halt.

And then the iron gate dropped down, crashing into the ground with a deafening boom.

Spell broken, the goblins swarmed towards the three troughs. 

Bodies slammed against each other. The lucky few, who were closest to the center of the room, immediately dunk their heads into the troughs and gorged themselves on the nourishing food within. Those behind them cried out in madness, and clawed at their backs, their attacks imbued with strength born of their desperation.

He wasn’t among the lucky ones.

Consumed by the same madness that overtook his brethren, he fought his way through the living mass of flesh. 

The heat radiating from the bunched up bodies was suffocating. Roaring and howling, he pushed forth, his back crisscrossed with wounds, but every step he took forward, the pressure he was facing only increased.

Claws pierced his flesh. Countless hands wrapped themselves around his arms and legs, pulling and tugging, desperately trying to suck him back into the crowd.

The stench of their sweat and blood should’ve long overpowered the scent wafting from the troughs, but, instead, the two odors mixed and fused, giving form to an even more domineering aroma. It seeped into their bodies, igniting the wounds, overwhelming the senses.  

By the time he finally reached the trough, the food was almost gone. The last goblin obstructing his path was forced to bend down and reach in with its hand to scoop the remaining gruel from the bottom. 

He cried out and struck with all his strength, his claws ripping a fist sized piece of flesh from the goblin’s back, but the attack didn’t even elicit a response. The creature continued to frantically stuff its face, forgoing the effort to even swallow - whenever its mouth opened, a bit of half chewed gruel would spill out, landing back into the trough.

Some flicker of conscient thought that stayed with him told him that it wouldn’t work. No matter how long he persisted, the goblin simply would not let go.

His claws abruptly changed the path of the attack and struck the goblin’s throat.

Hot blood sprayed from the wound, splashing the bodies of the surrounding goblins, who cried out in madness. 

The goblin at the trough miraculously appeared not to even notice. The creature’s wound gushed with blood, but its hands never stopped moving, one holding tight onto the trough, the other reaching for more gruel.

He roughly pushed the half dead goblin aside and finally secured himself a spot.

His cupped hand reached into the trough and brought a bit of food to his mouth.

A wonderful warmth spread throughout his body. 

The ravenous beast residing within his body roared, though not with contentment, but a burning desire for more. At the same time, he could sense the mass of goblins behind him, their hunger transforming them into a single terrifying entity. 

He could sense their desire to eat. Their desire to live. 

But he wouldn’t let them.

His back was scarlet with blood. It was no longer possible to differentiate between the different wounds scarring it. The ferocity of the goblins behind him had remade it into a single stretch of exposed flesh, starting from the nape of his neck and going all the way down to his waist.

But their attacks had little effect. That last flicker of conscient thought that guided his actions just now had fizzled out. He lost any awareness of his body. With one of his hands holding fast onto the rim of the trough and the other ceaselessly reaching down for more gruel, he seemed to have transformed into a living ghost of the goblin whose spot he’d taken.  

When the troughs were finally empty, they began to disappear. All they left behind was a pristine spot on the floor, sharply cutting away from the filth of spilled blood and gore surrounding it from all sides.  

The goblins that’d managed to secure themselves a meal rested on the ground, focused on digesting the nourishing food inside their stomachs. 

He could also see a few goblins that didn’t move at all, their bodies left lying in small pools of blood. Some of the faces were contorted in madness, while others reflected complete bliss that seemed to transcend even death, like that of the goblin he’d killed.

And finally there were around a dozen of those that didn’t get to eat at all. They crowded around the gate, scratching their small fists against its metal bars, and whining in pitiful voices. 

But the gate remained closed.

This was his first memory.