Gribble marched through the heart of the Whispering Woods, the eldritch glow of the foliage casting an ethereal pall over his undead legion. The goblin king's eyes, once alight with the warm camaraderie of his troll hosts, now glittered cold and pitiless in the tenebrous murk. His iron-shod boots crunched the loam with each fell stride, trampling the emerald fronds and azure mushrooms that carpeted the forest floor. The coruscating light seemed to mock him, to whisper of the innocence he had long ago forsaken upon the altar of his avarice. Yet Gribble did not falter, did not deviate from the ebon path he had chosen. His gauntlet tightened upon the wire-wrapped grip of his blade, the skin stretching taut and bloodless across the bony knuckles. The Gribble of old, the wide-eyed whelp who had sought solace and purpose among the trolls, was a fading memory, consigned to the abyss of his past.
The skeletal warriors of Gribble's dark legion marched in his wake, their bleached bones clacking a macabre rhythm against their rusted armor. As the goblin warlord forged ahead through the lambent fronds, spectral recollections of his time in the troll village flickered unbidden through his benighted mind. The warm, mossy scent of troll hovels. The rolling thump of earthen drums and the raucous laughter of warriors at their ease. The simple affection in the eyes of his hosts, the uncomplicated camaraderie of hearth and shield-hall. For a trembling heartbeat, the ache of loss sent fissures spiderwebbing through the bulwark of ice and iron encasing Gribble's shriveled soul. Snarling, he quashed the weakness, teeth bared and eyes hooded against the mocking radiance of the forest. The frail bonds of fellowship were chains that had no purchase on him now, misbegotten shackles long ago shattered upon the anvil of his will.
A mote of memory broke free from the shuttered corners of Gribble's psyche, painting a cruel diorama of his erstwhile self. The young goblin, fierce and vital, moving in perfect unison with a band of troll warriors beneath a buttery sun. Sparring with blunted blades, the staccato clack of wood on wood ringing through the glade. A sense of belonging, of purpose, thrumming in the marrow of his bones. The Whispering Woods pulsed with foxfire, as if striving to spotlight the path Gribble had abandoned, but the warlord turned his back on the entreating glow. His hell-eyes flared like coals, devouring the light and birthing shadows in its place. The only purpose that moved him now was the inexorable march of conquest, and the trolls would be ground to dust beneath his iron-shod heels.
Tormak's voice echoed in the stygian reaches of Gribble's mind, an etiolated whisper from a past he had long renounced: True power lies not in the strength of one, but in the unity of many. Once, the old troll's words had blazed like a lodestone in Gribble's battered psyche, a path to redemption in a world of blood and treachery. Now, they were ashes upon his tongue, a misbegotten gospel drowned out by the clarion call of his avarice. He spat, lips writhing back from tombstone teeth in a cruel mockery of a grin. The trolls and their piteous mewling about harmony and kinship - he would show them the true face of power, would teach them the folly of their ways with fire and sword and the screaming of the damned.
Visceral phantasms dogged Gribble's every step, rising from the loam like maddening grave-vapors. The warble of troll flutes, the pungent musk of roasting meat, the simple pleasure of a flagon shared beneath the stars. Each fading sense-memory seared him, branding his spirit with the hateful echoes of his discarded weakness. Snarling, the goblin warlord drove the sputtering recollections before him, his heart a black fortress against the siege of sentiment. In the gibbous light of the Whispering Woods, Gribble's features were cast in stark relief, all jutting angles and cruel lines, as if hewn from living basalt. His yearning for fellowship lay buried beneath fathoms of avarice and spite, a misbegotten dream dispelled by the harsh light of conquest.
In the tenebrous murk of the present, Gribble was a figure of nightmare, a gothic colossus wreathed in shadow and malice. The susurrous weight of the boughs seemed to press down upon him, as if the forest sought to smother the polluted cancer of his spirit, but the warlord shouldered the ethereal burden with contemptuous ease. His eyes cleaved to the winding track ahead, to vistas of slaughter and glory that danced behind his eyelids. The ghoulish percussion of fleshless feet tramping at his back drowned out the desperate protestations of his vestigial conscience, a threnody of the grave to chase away the wheedling echoes of troll wisdom.
Impious whispers flooded the chambers of Gribble's mind, a rising tide of profane entreaties. They eclipsed the murmuring susurrus of the forest, drowned out the spectral admonitions of his erstwhile mentors with a wall of glutinous noise. Syrupy imprecations dripped from their phantom lips, dark promises of dominion and immortal glory. Of a world scourged clean by sword and flame, the kneeling nations prostrate before Gribble's ebon banner. The goblin's atrophied heart shuddered against his ribs, a misfiring engine goaded to fresh fury by the honeyed poison of their words. Gribble embraced the umbral shroud that smothered his spirit, exulted in the eldritch puissance that sang through his marrow. Thoughts of trollish wisdom and fellowship shriveled to ashes before the hellish heat of his infernal resolve.
Scorn flickered across Gribble's wasted features as he pondered the folly of his trollish hosts. They prattled of harmony and kinship, of bonds of honor and oaths of brotherhood - misbegotten nostrums mouthed by a race of craven fools. As if there was strength in sentiment, as if the iron fist could be turned aside by prattle of peace and fellowship. The lucent boughs of the Whispering Woods seemed to quail before the monolithic horror of Gribble's presence, the foxfire glow curdling to a sickly pewter hue as it limned the cruel angles of his face. The trolls and their childish mummery, their placid smiles and clumsy affection - they disgusted him now, a maddening itch beneath the surface of his skin. Soon, he would slake his blade's thirst in their ichor, would bear witness as their morale crumbled to despairing shrieks and piteous mewling. Only then, as he glutted upon their agony, would the last stubborn motes of his past be forever expunged.
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With a savage spasm, Gribble shook the clinging cobwebs of memory from his benighted psyche. The cloying echoes of troll wisdom, the mawkish sentiment that had once held him in thrall - he would suffer their maddening susurrus no longer. He was a creature of blood and shadow, a dread engine of destruction shaped by the implacable will of his dark masters. The world was his for the taking, and he would scourge it clean with the baleful flame of his ambition. The trees of the Whispering Woods buckled away from his advance, their lambent glow winking out in smothering banks of shadow as the goblin's unholy radiance eclipsed their fey luminance. Gribble breathed deep the loamy putrescence of his soul's corruption, and his lips skinned back from his teeth in a dire grin. There would be no more parleys, no more fatuous olive branches. Only conquest, cruel and inexorable.
And so the Dark Legion forged on through the guttering murk of the Whispering Woods, a macabre cavalcade of rattling bone and tarnished steel. Gribble rode at their head, a hunched juggernaut swathed in shadow, hell-spawned eyes aglow with soulless hunger. Skeletal feet whispered through the loam, the susurrant crunch of grave-earth yielding beneath their tread, and the boughs bent away as if cowed by the army's dread purpose. The Gribble of old grew more distant with every passing stride - a pathetic mote of weakness and frailty, long ago sacrificed upon the altar of his avarice. There was only Gribble the Deathless now, Gribble Godslayer, and his reaping had only begun.
The goblin's gauntlet tightened upon the leather-wound grip of his blade, every sinew thrumming with the promise of carnage to come. Phantasms of slaughter flickered behind his eyelids - viscera-slick talons goring yielding troll-flesh, high gore-shrieks piercing the twilight murk. The Whispering Woods would bear witness to atrocities undreamt of in their primordial memory, would shudder to the screams of the broken and the cruel cacchination of their devourers. Gribble would carve the true face of power into the meat and gristle of his erstwhile hosts, would make of himself a byword for horror and despair. His rictus grin cleaved the gloom like a crescent moon, the tombstone slash of teeth stark in the tenebrous half-light. Soon, the beastmen would feel the cruel kiss of his blade, but it was the trolls he hungered for, the trolls who would be the first to reap the whirlwind of his hate.
The sylvan radiance of the Whispering Woods grew ever more fitful as the Dark Legion forged on, the foxfire wisps sputtering out one by one as if smothered by the poisonous miasma of Gribble's malice. The twisted boughs curled away from the army's passage, the umbral taint of their presence seeping into the very fabric of the forest. Lichen withered, mushrooms blackened and fell to dust, and the susurrus of the leaves took on a keening note of despair. The world was changing, warping in the crucible of Gribble's ambition, and even the ancient sentinels of the Whispering Woods could only look on in horror as a new order took root in the loam.
And still Gribble marched, the threnody of grave-meats and the chittering of the dead a demented counterpoint to the clamor of his thoughts. The trolls and their bucolic inanity were all but forgotten, no more than a half-remembered fever dream dispelled by the frigid kiss of his dark purpose. He was a creature of apocalypse now, a dread reaper astride a blasted heath. The world was his for the taking, and he would clutch it to his withered bosom with a grip of cold iron.
Ahead, the twisted track wound on through the crepuscular dimness, the foxfire lamps growing ever more diffuse and intermittent. Gribble cared not. He would forge on through Stygian murk and clotted shadow, through fungal groves and gloaming dells, until the very heart of the forest lay black and desiccated at his feet. The trolls would fall first, their much vaunted strength crumbling to mewling pleas and despairing shrieks, but they were only the beginning. The beastmen would follow, their warrior pride broken upon the wheel of Gribble's implacable advance. And then the kingdoms of man, with their teeming cities and glittering spires. One by one, the nations of the world would kneel before his ebon banner, their the mantle of dread and sorrow.
And so Gribble marched on, the dread warlord of a blighted age, a malignant colossus astride the mouldering loam. The warnings of the trolls, their piteous bleating of fellowship and clemency, were lost and gone - feeble susurrations swept away by the onrushing storm of his malice. The Whispering Woods groaned as if in anguish, boughs buckling beneath the weight of an inverted world, but Gribble paid their lament no mind. There was only the blood-mad thrum of his purpose, the cruel imperative that goaded him ever on. For he was Gribble the Defiler, the Scourge of Nations, and his reign of dread was nigh.
The hateful radiance of Gribble's spirit spilled from the eyeslits of his helm, painting the benighted foliage in sickly whorls of balefire and pus. The Dark Legion marched on around him, a tireless engine of bone and gristle, rusted blades held high to gout the moon. And the Whispering Woods dwindled at their backs, the sylvan radiance fading with each inexorable footfall until only febrile murk and clotted shadow remained.
There was only Gribble now, the hunched warlord swathed in tenebrous might, and the fading corpse-light of his hell-eyes scouring the way ahead. Conquest awaited, as did the sweet anguish of his foes, and the threnody of their ruination would be a hymn to slake the cruel hungers of his soul. Gribble grinned, the tombstone rictus cleaving his wasted features, and his gauntlet tightened upon the pommel of his blade.
The woods would whisper of his coming in epochs to come, but first he would make the world scream.