Gribble hunched in the blackest corner of the damp cavern, jagged stone biting into his bony rump. Fingers clenched white-knuckled to skinny knees, drawing them tight to his scrawny chest. Hot tears welled in bulbous yellow eyes, leaving grimy trails through the dirt smeared on gaunt green cheeks. The sting of humiliation throbbed like a rotten tooth.
Earlier, jeering goblin pack mates crushed him under cruel mockery during weapons training. Laughter raked him raw as he flailed weakly, scrabbling to lift a notched short sword from a pile of chipped, rusted blades. The hilt slipped from sweat-slick palms to clang on dank stone while muscled young warriors guffawed.
Krub, a hulking brute twice Gribble's size, snatched up the sword and cleaved through a straw dummy in one fluid stroke. The straw head plopped at Gribble's feet. Staring up into Krub's smirking face, any shred of defiance withered.
Gribble always lagged behind the others, a runt struggling to match their size and savage strength. He gripped a crude wooden training sword with twig-thin arms, trembling under its meager weight. Around him, clan mates hefted spiked maces and gut-hook axes with ease, trading blows that cracked the air.
Brutal old Gruk, the pack's battle master, stomped over. Contempt twisted his scarred features as he glowered down at Gribble with one milky eye.
Gruk jabbed a gnarled finger at Gribble's chest, snarling sharpened yellow teeth bared in disgust. Goblin too weak to even lift blade has no place here. Waste of food and space. Get out of sight before I use you for target practice instead.
Gribble's face seared with boiling shame as a fresh gale of mocking laughter scoured him. He dropped the wooden sword with a hollow clatter and scuttled away, tripping over his own bare feet. Howls of derision chased him - runt, maggot, worm.
The words hounded him now as he huddled alone in the moldy shadows. He squeezed stinging eyes shut, but it only made the voices louder. Useless. A disgrace to the pack. Never a real goblin, never one of them.
Gribble pounded a fist against the stone, embracing the ache in his knuckles. It almost drowned out the pain twisting like a rusty blade in his guts. He would never grow big or strong like the other goblins. His feeble body betrayed him no matter how doggedly he trained. The harder he fought, the more viciously they scorned him.
Coarse voices shattered his bleak thoughts. Gribble flinched, head jerking up. His blood iced over. Krub and Griz, his chief tormentors, swaggered out of the tunnel shadows. Their bared teeth gleamed in the gloom.
Wretched Krub loomed over Gribble, filling his vision. Pig eyes glinted with cruel amusement above a bulbous, crooked nose. Muscles coiled like snakes beneath mottled green skin.
Krub gave a mocking tsk, tongue clicking against cracked brown teeth. Poor little Gribble, mewling alone in the dark. The nasty weapons training too rough for the runt?
Griz snickered, flicking a forked tongue over wonky canines. Careful, he might bleed if you prick him. Maybe we find him soft little mushrooms to battle instead of real foes. Not too big or they pummel him.
Krub's braying laugh carved Gribble's bones like rusted hooks. Tiny maggot can't even swing a blade without falling on his face. He should scuttle away and never come back before he gets us killed dragging his useless carcass.
Gribble's throat closed, choking on a thousand retorts that curled to ash on his tongue. Rage and despair warred in his chest, two beasts locked in eternal battle. He wanted to scream at them until his lungs bled. To tear at their leering faces and prove he wasn't weak.
But he knew it would change nothing. Fighting back only ever earned him savage beatings that left him spitting blood and teeth into the dirt. He was no match for their ruthless bulk and skill. Each failure only ground their contempt deeper.
Gribble hunched into himself, fixing his anguished stare on the cave floor. If he stayed small and silent enough, maybe they would grow bored and seek crueler sport elsewhere. Maybe he could salvage one scrap of dignity from their scorn.
But Krub and Griz smelled fresh blood in the water. They pressed in, fetid breath washing hot over Gribble's face. Meaty hands bunched to boulder fists, knuckles popping with grim promise.
Krub's words dripped venom, each one sinking fangs into tender flesh. You shame the whole clan, worm. Enemies see you sniveling and know us for easy prey. Why cling like dung to a strong pack's heel? Slink away and spare us your stench. Feed the deep tunnels with your brittle bones.
Gribble couldn't stop hot, humiliated tears spilling down his cheeks. They only spurred his tormentors to new heights of gleeful scorn. Their laughter flensed him to raw, twitching nerves. He wanted to claw his own skin off just to stop feeling so small. So pathetic.
His cracked lips moved, heaving out mangled pleas that tasted like blood and ashes. Want to help the pack. Be a good warrior. I try, just need more time...
Krub punched him savagely in the stomach. Air whooshed from Gribble's lungs in an agonized wheeze. Stars burst across his vision as he crumpled, dry heaving. Wet ropes of drool dangled from his slack mouth as he gasped for breath that wouldn't come.
Krub spat on his curled, shaking form. Help us? Broken twigs help more than you, runt. Started puny, die puny. Only use is as worm chow.
Krub punctuated his words with a vicious kick. His studded boot sank into Gribble's soft belly, wrenching a strangled mewling cry from his throat.
Griz cackled like shattering glass. Better as arrow catch for target practice. See how long he dances and squeals with bolts in his back. Won't waste the steel though. Wood branches plenty good for likes of him.
They lingered for long, savoring moments, drinking in Gribble's choked sobs and pitiful writhing. Misery rose from him like a delicacy to be inhaled, rolled on their tongues like fine wine. Finally, sated on his suffering, they turned and swaggered back into darkness. Laughter floated behind, scraping Gribble to bloody ribbons.
He lay where they left him, face pressed to dank stone, eyes gummy with desperate tears. Moving meant feeling, and feeling meant drowning in oceans of agony both physical and humiliation. Gribble floated in that pitiless void for uncountable time. Minutes, hours, days.
Thought skittered through his throbbing mind like panicked insects - maybe Krub was right. Maybe he should let the tunnels swallow him. End this wretched, scorned half life as pack runt and whipping boy. Stop being an oozing canker on the clan's glory. What could worms do to him worse than poison his own kind spewed daily?
But something stubborn and snarling growled to life in Gribble's chest. A defiant spark, feeble but fierce, guttered against the howling despair. He couldn't give in. Couldn't let their cruelty win. His whole miserable life had been a litany of beatings, each one a pyre for his pride. But he still lived. Still sucked breath through broken teeth and spat blood at his tormentors' feet.
As long as a single thought flickered behind his bulging eyes, there was still one chance. However small and wretched. A chance to prove them wrong. To earn more than contempt and curses. He just had to keep scrabbling when they kicked him down. Snatch any shred of worth like a bone from a wolf's jaws.
With a shaking, snot-clogged breath, Gribble forced himself to sit up. His body screamed protest at every tiny movement, a clamor of bruises and strained muscles. But pain had been his constant companion since birth. It greeted him like an old, cruel friend. He braced his back against the rough stone, digging dirty nails into his palms to center himself. Drew in long, rattling lungfuls of the dark, fungal air.
Fumbling fingers found the small fetish hanging around his neck. Gribble clutched it like a talisman against the dark, feeling the rough bone warm against his skin. His great grandfather's battle trophy, passed down through generations. Proof an ancestor had held power Gribble could only dream of.
He rubbed the crude twisting runes with his thumb, mouthing a wordless plea. To the fetish, to the uncaring gods, to any shred of light in the drowning blackness. Guide him. Show him a way to prove them wrong. He needed little. Just the barest chance to grasp his destiny.
Eyes squeezed shut, he prayed until his ragged breathing slowed. Until the roaring tide in his head dulled to a distant thunder. The charm grew warm in his palm as the ancient magic in the carved bone sputtered sluggishly to life. It was a meager thing, nothing like the towering legends of mighty goblin warlocks. But to Gribble it was a lifeline. A speck of light above pounding waves.
Quiet scrabbling pulled him from desperate prayer. Gribble twitched upright, eyes flying open. There, not five paces away, a fat cave lizard crept along the dank stone. Its moist scales gleamed, winking and rippling in the faint torchlight spilling from a distant tunnel.
Gribble felt a flush spreading through his aching chest, sudden and heady. A single pure thought crystallized in his mind like a glowing ember. Cave lizards were a rare delicacy, their succulent meat reserved for only the finest feasts. But they were devilishly quick, scurrying up sheer rock or vanishing down cracks too small for even a goblin child.
If he could catch it...kill it and lay it at the pack's feet...the thought almost hurt. It was a wild, desperate fantasy. Would they even deign to notice? Or just grind his offering to pulp under their boots as they did his dreams?
The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.
But the bright coal in his chest refused to gutter out. For once, Gribble didn't try to smother it. He let it flare, let it sear him from the inside with reckless need. This was a chance. His chance. He would grab it in both bone thin hands and never let go.
Moving with a careful, trembling slowness utterly foreign to him, Gribble drew the small knife at his waist. It was little more than a sharpened sliver of tin, a toy to mock him more than a weapon. But as he locked bulging eyes on the lizard's lazily twitching tail, it seemed to take on a deadly weight in his fingers.
One bare foot slid silently forward. Then the other. Each breath was a roaring gale in Gribble's head, each thundering heartbeat surely loud enough to wake the whole cursed mountain. But the lizard didn't twitch, engrossed in worrying a patch of lichen with serrated teeth.
Closer. One halting step at a time, Gribble eased his quivering body forward. Drool gathered in anticipation at the corners of his lax mouth, the phantom taste of blood and hot fat already rich on his tongue.
He drew level with the lizard's muscular haunch, its girth nearly as wide as his own thigh. Gribble's eyes flicked over it greedily, drinking in every detail. The speckled pattern swirling across pebbly scales. Each bunch and twitch of powerful muscle under thick skin. He had never been so close to something so alive. So full of thrumming heat and vitality.
Barely daring to breathe, he raised the knife. The edge shook violently, his hand trembling like a leaf in a gale. Gribble fought to steady it, jaw clenching until he tasted blood. He couldn't botch this. Couldn't let his weakness ruin this one flickering chance.
The lizard's slitted eye rolled in Gribble's direction. Ancient, alien intelligence stared out of that gold-flecked blackness. Gribble's heart stopped dead in his sunken chest.
The world smeared into frantic streaks of color and sound. Gribble's body lunged without conscious thought, his thin arm pistonning down. A hideous wet crunch, a spray of heat across his face. He blinked. Blinked again.
His knife stood out from the lizard's bulbous head, sunk to the bolster in one bulging eye socket. Inky, foul smelling blood sheeted down the green mottled snout. The creature's thick body shuddered once and fell still, oozing dark fluids across the rock.
For a long moment, Gribble could only stare. His mind stuttered like a broken machine, refusing to process the impossible.
Dead. He killed it. A real thing, not straw and rotten wood. His hands shaking so hard he could barely grasp the thick, knobby tail. Sour lizard blood squelched between his fingers but he couldn't unclench his fist. If he let go this might all melt away, another mocking dream dangled like poisoned fruit.
A sound ripped from Gribble's throat, a half laugh half sob. It broke the paralysis gripping him and suddenly he was moving, lurching to his feet. The dead lizard swung heavily from his hand, leaking dark fluids with each shambling step.
He had to show them. Cram their sneering faces into this glory like mongrels rubbed in their own filth. Let them choke on the truth of him, what he could do. What he would become.
Gribble's feet slapped against the stone, frantic energy buzzing from his skin. Each stride jolted bolts of agony through his battered body but he pushed through it, gritting teeth until his jaw ached. Nothing mattered now but reaching the main cavern. Laying his prize at the feet of the war band and watching their mockery turn to awe.
His small chest heaved, heart battering bruised ribs as Gribble hauled himself up the final tunnel into the central cave. A hundred cruel yellow eyes swiveled to him, faces twisting in reflexive sneers at the runt's intrusion. Gribble braced for the usual jeers and curses, the rain of disdain that crashed over his head whenever he dared show his face.
But as he thrust the stinking lizard carcass high, a ripple passed through the assembled goblins. Bulbous eyes widened, jaws growing slack. For a teetering moment the cavern hung in silence, the weight of collective shock pressing down like a stone.
Look, Gribble wanted to scream. See what your runt brought for the pack. See what these weak, useless hands can snatch from fang and claw.
But before the words could shove past his teeth, Krub shattered the silence with a contemptuous bark. The hulking goblin shoved his way forward, looming head and shoulders over Gribble. His face twisted in an ugly sneer as pigs eyes flicked over the dead lizard.
Krub whipped out a hand and snatched the lizard from Gribble's shaking fist. Thanks for the snack, maggot. Thick thumbnails dug into soft underbelly and ripped a small chunk free. Krub shoved the bloody gobbet between brown teeth, chewing with open mouth.
Griz shouldered up next to him, leering. Looks like cave slug is moving up in the world. Scavenging almost-real meat instead of dung and mud.
Krub laughed, spraying half chewed lizard. Maybe the runt will catch us real food next. A mouse or beetle, something bite sized for his baby teeth.
He hurled the mangled lizard to the pack of young warriors clustered behind him. They fell on it with savage howls, ripping and tearing. In seconds nothing remained but a few blood smears and bits of scattered bone.
Gribble stood frozen, watching his prize disappear down a dozen gnashing throats. The bright flame that had flared to life in his chest guttered and choked under a black tide of despair.
Nothing had changed. Nothing would ever change.
Gribble's shoulders slumped, that small defiant flame in his chest sputtering, choking on bitter black smoke. The pack devoured his small victory, smothering it under gnashing fangs and bloody sneers.
It dripped down his ears and the back of his throat like rancid oil - the truth he could never outrun, never claw his way free of. However desperately he scrabbled, whatever pitiful triumphs he brought gasping from the dark...he would always be Gribble. The runt. The waste of skin shivering forever at the outskirts of the pack.
His fingers spasmed on empty air, clutching for something solid. Something to anchor himself against the sick swaying in his skull. But there was only the whistling hollow behind his ribs where something bright had flared so briefly. And now Krub and Griz filled his vision, leering mugs thrust close enough to taste their fetid breath.
Krub sank blunt yellow teeth into another strip of lizard haunch. Pink ribbons dangled obscenely down his chin as he smacked oozing lips. What's wrong, maggot? Thought your little snack would buy you a place at the table? A real goblin seat, instead of begging for scraps?
Griz pawed through the wet bone shards littering the floor, flicking them at Gribble's feet with a nasty chuckle. Should be grateful we let you lick the blood, runt. Only meal you're good for is seasoning our leftovers.
A thick green foot lashed out, grinding bits of broken lizard into the stone. Gribble flinched back by reflex, hunching in on himself. Bracing for the kicks and jeers he knew were coming. The blows to crack his ribs and cave his face.
But Krub just snorted, an ugly wet sound deep in his bullish throat. Learn your place, dung worm. Rotting at our feet. Only way you'll ever fill our bellies is as worm chow in a shallow grave.
Then they were swaggering away, Krub's arm slung around Griz's hunched shoulders. Their laughter echoed in the vaulted dark, loud enough to rattle Gribble's teeth in their sockets. And all around vicious goblin eyes bore into him, bright with cruel glee at the runt's futile humiliation.
Gribble stood motionless as the cavern emptied in twos and threes. Until only the dregs remained - the sick, the mad, those too weak to follow as the pack caroused in the feast halls. They paid him no more mind than the lichen creeping across the walls.
Slowly, each movement jagged with invisible hooks, Gribble turned from the bone shards mocking him. There was no point in crawling back to his lonely crack. Not with Krub and Griz still prowling fat and boastful from their sport. They would be out for more soon enough, hungry to grind him like a heel on an ant.
So Gribble walked. Bare feet scraped raw on cold rough stone, he trudged back down, down into the belly of the mountain. To the deepest cracks where light never touched and only spiders and blind worms wriggled through the endless rot.
He had no torch, but he needed none. This maze was graven on his heart, every dead end and jagged turn. Gribble followed the twists like a dry stream bed, numb to the thin grasping fingers that plucked at his limbs from unseen holes.
Time blurred, his head stuffed with wet wool. His angry pulse hammered behind bulging eyes, almost louder than the drip of water. Was he still moving? The dark pressed in like thick choking tar, holding him fast. Only the throb of his face, his knuckles shredded raw on unseen stone, told him he shambled on.
Gribble walked until his shins struck stone, pitching him face first into clammy moss and mushrooms. He had reached the Wailing Cracks. This was where goblins came to die.
Not to lay down their lives in glory under blade and fang as the tales sang. But to be rid of them. The unwanted. The deformed. Those who shamed the pack with their loathsome faces.
Gribble's nose filled with the sweet stink of moldering flesh. Maybe Krub was right. Maybe this was where he belonged, forgotten offal moldering in the deep places, feeding the squirming dark.
The ground was soft here, soft and yielding under his bruised cheek. It would be easy to lay his head down. Stop the clawing riot in his skull. Slip away into the black and let it fill his lungs, his belly. Choke the stuttering mockery of his life at the root.
Gribble closed his eyes. The rough stone bit into his back, but he was long past feeling such paltry pains. He floated in a deeper ache, an emptiness that yawned wide enough to swallow the world.
In the black behind his lids, faces crowded close and hungry. His mother, mouth twisted in disgust as she thrust him mewling from her dry teat. His clutch mates, sticks and stones bouncing from his child's skull as they chased the runt from the den. Krub and Griz, fists and hate and spit flying as they pounded him into the mud.
And Gruk, that monstrous grizzled mask of contempt, his shout forever tolling in Gribble's ears - runt, worm, waste. A goblin who cannot even raise blade has no place in the pack. No place in the world. Only one use for the likes of you, and it's smeared across the bottom of my boot.
The looping images blurred, melting into each other. A hundred thousand cuts flaying Gribble to weeping sinew. The brand of a lifetime's scorn charring his bones black.
He sucked a shuddering breath, tasting mold and stale water. The Wailing Crack pressed down on him like a living thing. Patient and pitiless in its hunger. It would be so easy. A goblin sized smear ground into the stone and then blessed nothingness. The only peace a wretch could pray for.
What was he clinging to? What fantasy kept him lashed to this wretched sputtering consciousness? Dreams were for those with a future. All he had were nightmares, an endless gray stretch of pain and futility.
His fingers found the charm at his neck. Gribble hardly felt the familiar grooves and ridges. Just another false idol to mock him. No magic could save him, no shred of secondhand glory.
And yet.
And yet.
The ghost of defiance uncurled in his chest, pale and stubborn. The sullen dying ember sparked among cold ashes.
Gribble's eyes cracked open. Tears leaked down his concave cheeks, salt stinging on cracked lips.
He couldn't. Wouldn't.
Every joint popped and screamed as Gribble pushed upright on shaking limbs. Bile soured his tongue, the world spinning in the suffocating darkness. But he gritted his teeth until his jaw creaked.
One hand found the cave wall, slick and crawling with nameless things. Gribble smeared them under his palm, hardly feeling the burst of foul wet across his skin.
He would live. To spite them. To spit blood and hate into their sneering faces for another day, another year. Until his last rattling breath ghosted from his broken chest, he would make them choke on his endurance. An insult and a curse to their strength.
One foot in front of the other. Slow, so painfully slow, Gribble dragged his carcass up from the sucking depths. The dark clawed after, snatching with grasping fingers. But he shouldered through, skin flayed raw and weeping.
He would crawl back to his damp little hole. Lick his wounds in the familiar black. Sleep, and wake, and endure. And the next day, the next month, the next year - he would do it again.
The world had no use for him, but Gribble would carve his place in it with blunted fingernails and broken teeth. However small, however mean and wretched.
He was Gribble the Goblin. The runt. The survivor.
And he would need more than scorn and fists to lay him in the Wailing Cracks.