Steal made his way forwards, soft grass giving way to coarse dirt, then solid, cold stone as he pressed onwards.

It was an odd feeling as he pushed on into the dark cave, the feeling was oddly familiar, homely in fact. But still alien, the creature had spent very little of it's excessively active life within tunnels, caves and caverns, but it was still the place it was born. Cave goblins were always at home beneath the ground, in the dark, beneath a ceiling of stone and stalactites.

The entrance was empty, save for a streak of blood across the rough ground; it would've been silent to, besides the gentle whistling of the wind if he couldn't have heard cackles and jests echoiing through the tunnels.

It would seem the wretched were laughing amongst themselves, the sound of sloshing liquid splashing to the stone bounced along the cave walls, hitting the goblin's ears. It sounded thick, heavy.

Another step on the stone, not Steal's, something elses. Another, the sound quickened, the sound of stepping overlapped, not just 'something' but mutiple 'somethings' approaching.

A voice like metal grating against stone "Brother Rai, Mother will soon be happy, she will?"

"Yes, Brother, happy I am though, we have many drink, a good night for all of our Brothers."

He saw their bodies round a turn in the stone cave, short blades dangling loosely and lazily at their size, rather than slink away, Steal marched on forwards, though his hand lowered slightly, hovering above the dagger around his waist. The goblin gave a leisurely wave to the wretched.

"Hello my brothers, we got some humans, where are they?"

The leftmost one, the one that had a spattering of pus-filled sacs rather than a right cheek gargled out at him "You speak strange Brother, I know not you Brother, what your name be?"

Steal frowned a little, he'd already ran out of ideas for improvisation, and had spent the past minute thinking up just how to introduce himself.

"Ah... I be Brother Ste-... Brother Steenk"

"Brother Steenk? Yes, hello Brother Steenk!" Poxey, the left-most wretched replied, practically gargling as one of the pus sacs that lined his inner mouth was popped by one of his more jagged teeth, a glob of green, creamy filth spat from his lips onto the stone floor as he kept speaking "humans are down and down, far far, given to mother, they will be."

A slight giggle from the wretched on the right, his face seemed unmarked, though his naked body was spattered and marred with blisters, his hands painted a slight-red with blood, the space beneath his claws was noticeably filthy, dark brown spatterings stained themselves beneath sharpened, yellowed nails. "Yes, yes they are Brother, not fun, the humans aren't." The right wretched flashed the back of his most-bloodied hand to Steal, flesh was ripped from the back of his hand in a long gouge.

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Steal nodded along, slowly trying to make his way past the Wretched.

"Still, it will be fun if it makes Mother happy, she makes it all good, happy, yes yes yes." Poxey chortled to himself as they split up, backs scraping against the stone walls with a dozen sickening pops to let Steal pass between them.

The goblin passed by them, pitch-black eyes glancing at the green pus that painted the jagged walls. He dared a glance behind him to see the wretched making their way to the mouth of their cave, blood from their scraped backs mixing with green and yellow discharge.

Shrugging off the disgusting sight, Steal made his way further down, most of the cave was on a slight decline, nothing too steep, and the rock wasn't particularly slippery, nor was it jagged enough to cut through the thick soles of his feet.

Occasionally, there were small offshoots, or dugouts in the walls, often full of sleeping wretched, though one particularly large dugout, about twelve-feet across and seven feet high was occupied by the noise he had heard earlier, seventeen of the wretched were playing amongst one another, popping postules and wrestling, some stood to one side, drinking a thick, black substance from carved out skulls, or cracked wooden bowls; occasionally, the wrestling wretched would crash into the drinkers, often causing them to drop the gooey liquid to the floor, or atleast lose some of it as it splashed outof the bowl in great clumps.

The clump wriggled a little, and began worming it's way towards the door, sadly, it's escape was halted as a wretched stooped down and slurped it up off of the cave floor.

Steal ignored them, sneaking his way past, but making a note of how many of these wretched there were, so far, he'd counted atleast thirty, on an open field, he doubted it would be a problem for the humans and him to kill them all, but in these cramped tunnels, the humans would probably have to be on all fours, or atleast bent low, leaving Steal as the only remotely effective fighter. Sadly, there was no way he could fight his way through all of these... monsters...

Wait...

Steal paused on his way down, he was the same as them, besides all the horrid growths, he was practically identical. He was a monster, so why did he look at creatures that were basically his own kind with such disdain. He didn't know, atleast, he couldn't think of a clear reason.

He kept moving down and down, passing by a few more wretched, they didn't really pay him much attention, instead just shifting out of his way or greeting him as a 'brother'.

He would have admittedly lost his way through these tunnels long ago, if he didn't have his lock-on skill, the trail of blood he'd previously been using to follow the captives was now little more than a few small smecks and dry smears.

It was still a hell of a lot of blood, and he was astonished whoever had bled this much wasn't dead.

"Ah Brother, you came to meet Mother?"

Steal nodded, the wretched that blocked his path in the narrow tunnel let him pass, entering a relatively large cavern, the cave opened up into an unnatural dome shape, twenty feet across, and fifteen feet tall at it's center.

It wasn't Kor'Ak of Kelvin that Steal saw first. No.

It was the most vile thing the creature had ever experienced, he could only hope that anything worse than this abomination simply was forbidden from existing.