Mist swirled between the gnarled trunks, dancing tendrils of gray that clung to the moss-slick bark. The stench of decay hung heavy in the humid air. Rotting leaves squelched beneath iron-shod boots as Grubnik, Chief Gnarltooth, and their band of warriors trekked through the gloom of the Wild Woods.
Raggok, the Bloodfang Clan's most renowned tracker, knelt in the muck. His fingers traced the edge of a clawed print gouged into the black loam. Yellow eyes narrowed, gleaming in the shadows beneath his hood as he peered into the dense foliage.
Fresh. The beast passed this way within the past moon. No more than a few days.
Chief Gnarltooth grunted an acknowledgment, the sound rumbling deep in his barrel chest. His massive fist tightened its grip on his spear haft until the wood groaned. A legendary creature, one not seen in generations. If the tales passed down through clan lore held truth... bringing its pelt back to adorn the Winter Festival feast would ensure his name was sung for a hundred years.
If the damned thing exists at all. Snaggletooth spat a glob of phlegm, wiping his mouth with the back of a gnarled hand. His single eye glared at the surrounding trees as if they personally offended him.
The old warrior's blunt dismissal earned a sharp look from Grubnik. He tightened his fingers around his own spear and squinted up at the dense canopy, trying to catch a glimpse of the wan sunlight filtering through the leaves far above.
The Wild Woods held secrets even the goblins had not yet unraveled in their long centuries dwelling in its shadow. Ancient things, slumbering in root and bough and stone. Waiting for the right time, the right soul, to awaken. Grubnik could feel the primordial power thrumming through the loamy earth, taste the tang of it in the back of his throat.
Raggok would not lead them astray, not in this. The tracker's instincts had saved the hunting party a dozen times over in seasons past, guiding them to the richest game trails, warning them away from the territories of foul things that skulked in the forest's rotten heart.
No. If Raggok claimed the tracks were fresh, then the beast was close. Closer than it had been in living memory. Grubnik adjusted his grip on his weapon and squared his shoulders under the weight of his chief's expectations. Under the weight of the clan's future, their very survival.
He would not fail them. Could not. Not with so much riding on this hunt's success.
He met his father's eyes over the ready spears of their warriors. Unspoken understanding passed between them, the bond of chieftain and heir, of father and son. A single nod, grim and resolute. Then Gnarltooth looked away, his gaze fixing on some distant point beyond the veil of trees.
We continue. Press on until dusk, make camp on high ground.
A murmur of assent from the assembled goblins, a few scattered grunts and the creak of leather as they readjusted their grip on their weapons. Grubnik swallowed past the sudden tightness in his throat. He knew what pursued them through the forest, nipping at their heels like hounds scenting a wounded stag.
Time. The inexorable march of the seasons, winter's icy talons eager to sink into the clan's unprotected flesh. Hunger, a yawning void in the belly that ate away at strength and hope in equal measure. Desperation, a spurred heel driving them deeper into the Wild Woods' haunted reaches with each passing day.
They needed this hunt. Needed this single, glorious triumph to stave off the gnawing specter of starvation for one more winter. To fill their stomachs and their hearts with fiercer fire than any that crackled in the hearths of their huts.
Failure was no option. Not for him, not for any of them. They would return with the beast's carcass or not at all.
He shook away the dire thoughts, focusing on the crunch of rotting foliage under his boots as the party forged onward into the hungry wood. Raggok loped ahead, his smaller form nearly swallowed whole by the riotous undergrowth as he cast about for signs of their quarry's passage.
Snaggletooth and the other hardened veterans formed a loose ring around Chief Gnarltooth and Grubnik, spears at the ready, eyes darting to scour the shadows pooling between the trees. Predators stalked those shadows, things with too many teeth and a taste for goblin blood.
But no creature of claw or fang truly concerned the warriors. No simple beast, no matter how dangerous, could compare to the lurking unease that crept up their spines with each step they took away from their woodland haunts.
This deep in the Wild Woods, this far from the trails and markers carved by generations of goblins eking out a life in the forest's verge... things grew strange. Unfamiliar. The trees towered higher, their trunks gnarled into unsettling faces that seemed to leer from the corner of the eye. Odd creatures skittered in the undergrowth, small things with too many legs and eyes that glowed with a cold, uncanny light. Whispers sighed in the rustle of nameless leaves, hinting at secrets old as stone, best left undisturbed.
It played on the nerves. Set teeth to grinding and palms to sweating on spear shafts. But also awakened something deeper, more primal. The same eerie thrill that sang in the blood during the chaos of a hunt, the breathless exhilaration of pitting fang and claw and blade against a cornered beast.
The Wild Woods were the ultimate quarry, Grubnik mused as he clambered over a fallen log slick with lichen. An eternal, unfathomable thing against which every goblin was measured from first breath to last. To master its secrets, to return with trophies wrenched from its most jealously guarded shadowlands... that was the mark of a true warrior.
And he intended to prove himself such, this day. To carve his name into the sagas alongside his chieftain father. To still the doubts that he sometimes glimpsed flickering behind the heavy brows of the clan elders when they watched him training with the other young bloods.
The heir's fangs were not yet sharp enough, those looks whispered. His heart still too soft, too tainted by his mother's gentle spirit. What hope could there be for a clan led by such a whelp?
He ground his teeth until his jaw creaked, fingers flexing around the haft of his spear. He would show them. Show them all. He was the blood of Gnarltooth Bone-Gnawer, the most legendary chief the Bloodfang had ever known. He would be a worthy successor or die in the attempt.
A branch slapped him across the face, jolting him from his churning thoughts. He tasted blood and realized he'd bitten his lip near through. Wincing, he swiped his tongue over the wound and spat red. A soft chuff, almost a chuckle, sounded from his left.
Head in the clouds, pup? Better watch your tail, 'fore something sneaks up and bites it off.
Grubnik scowled at the wizened old tracker. Your eyes would serve better watching for signs of the beast, old one. Not my backside.
Raggok flashed a gap-toothed grin, somehow finding humor despite the gravity of their pursuit. Aaah, but what a comely backside it is. If only I were a few dozen winters younger...
Grubnik growled, slashing at the wiry figure with a half-hearted swipe of his claws. Raggok cackled and ducked away, melding seamlessly back into the underbrush as if he were just another one of the forest's gnarled shadows.
A grunt from his father snapped Grubnik's spine straight, an automatic response honed by years under the chieftain's unrelenting tutelage. He grimaced and hurried his steps, resuming his proper place in the formation. Gnarltooth shot him a warning glare from beneath beetled white brows, his blunt muzzle wrinkling.
Focus, boy. This is no jaunt to check the snares.
Yes, Chief. Grubnik ducked his head, heat prickling up his neck. Shame curdled in his gut, salting his tongue with bitterness.
His father had never been free with affection or approval, even before the burdens of leadership had settled across his broad shoulders like a mantle of stone. But ever since they'd left the village on this desperate gambit, it seemed his expectations for Grubnik had sharpened to a flensing edge. Every stumble, every blink, was noted and judged. Weighed against the impossible standard of chieftain-that-would-be and found wanting.
Grubnik swallowed the sudden ache in his throat, the pup's plea for a father's respect and comfort. Devoured it, churned it into resolve bitter and black as slag iron. He bared his fangs at the watchful wood, inviting its dangers, daring the very trees to stand in his way.
He was his father's son, a hunter and warrior born. His heart was the iron that would forge the Bloodfang's future, even if he had to first quench it in a river of his own doubts and fears. No beast's talons would be half so sharp as the goad of the chief's expectations.
Another goblin, one of the unblooded youths, hurried up to march at Grubnik's shoulder. The whelp's knuckles were pale green where he gripped his boar spear, the head of it trembling in minute jerks.
How much further? His voice cracked on the question, reedy with an unspoken plea. Grubnik bared his teeth in displeasure at the display of weakness. The pup shrank back, throat bobbing as he swallowed.
We walk 'til the chief says otherwise. Grubnik bit out. You tiring already?
No! No, I just... the shadows are getting longer, and...
And you fear to face the Woods' mysteries in the dark, like a mewling pup crying for its mother's teat? Grubnik snarled, derision dripping from the words. The pup cringed, shoulders hunching up around his oversized ears.
Grubnik spat to the side, lips curled in a sneer. Get back in position, whelp. And pray your cowardly whining hasn't cost us our prize.
The youth blanched and scurried back to his place in line, head low and eyes on his shuffling feet. Grubnik watched him go, a strange mix of irritation and guilt churning in his stomach. Perhaps he'd been overly harsh, but... these unblooded wretches needed a firm hand. Needed to be hardened quick, before their sniveling drew the notice of things with sharper teeth than Grubnik's tongue.
Snaggletooth dropped back to pace beside him, a mean chuckle rasping in the old warrior's throat. Grubnik tensed, expecting another of the scarred veteran's cutting critiques on his leadership style. But Snaggletooth just shook his grizzled head, single eye gleaming with dark amusement.
Pup'll be Warg shit by dawn if he don't grow a pair quick.
Grubnik grunted agreement, relieved to be spared a lecture for once. Snaggletooth was hard on the youngbloods, but they were harder still on themselves, the weight of their elders' expectations a crushing burden. Especially for those like Grubnik, who'd been born to a legacy measured in the notches on the hilts of legendary blades.
There were days he envied the unbloodeds' fumbling ignorance, untempered by the keen edge of a chief's duty. But such thoughts were just another weakness to be scoured away by the whetstone of the hunt. He was Grubnik, son of Gnarltooth, heir to the Bloodfang. His path was as solid and unforgiving as the iron of his fangs.
The hunting party pressed onward, the susurrus of the wild wood slowly shifting to a chorus of frog-song and insect-hum as dusk crept in on moccasin feet. The light took on a frail, watery quality, the green-tinged gold of autumn leaves on the eve of their fall.
Grubnik lifted his head, tasting the air as the first evening breeze stirred the sweaty scruff of his neck. The wind carried change on its back, a gathering pressure that weighted the clouds overhead to a sullen charcoal.
A storm was brewing in the deeps of the sky, the scent of it harsh and heavy with the promise of rain. It would be a hard one, Grubnik predicted, lips drawing back from his tusks in displeasure. The kind of tempest that turned dry streambeds to frothing torrents and sent every sensible creature scurrying for the sanctuary of its burrow.
Gnarltooth had noticed as well, the chief's blunt muzzle rising to snuff the air with a soft chuff of comprehension. A considering rumble stirred in the great barrel of the warchief's chest as he turned to survey the surrounding wood with a jaundiced eye.
Raggok. Gnarltooth croaked, the name snapping with the authority of an order.
The tracker materialized from the verge as if conjured, his rangy form slipping free of a bearded tangle of vines. His eyes were wide and slightly wild in his pinched, weathered face.
How far to that tor you marked, the one by the lightning-split oak?
The grizzled tracker squinted at the fading sun, thick brows furrowing like caterpillars. Half a league, maybe less. But Chief, if the storm breaks while we're out in the open...
It won't. Gnarltooth cut him off with a sharp chop of one sledgehammer paw. Get us there. The rest of you, eyes up, spears ready. I mislike the quiet.
As if to punctuate the warchief's words, a rumble of thunder growled across the sky, an ominous drumroll building to an echoing crack. The goblin youngbloods flinched, claws tightening white-knuckled on their weapons. Even Snaggletooth glanced skyward, his ruined face creasing in an anxious grimace.
Grubnik straightened, squaring his shoulders beneath the weight of his chief's expectations. He met his father's eyes, the warchief's golden stare boring into him like molten metal. A pulse of understanding passed between them, the unspoken language of chieftain and heir.
Protect them. The hunt must not fail.
Grubnik dipped his chin in a minuscule nod, the gesture a silent vow. He would not shirk his duty to the clan, to the unblooded youths in his charge. Even should the Wild Wood turn against them, even should the very sky crack and bleed, he would see this hunt through. No matter the cost.
Raggok had already vanished back into the brush, the tracker's wiry form swallowed whole by the deepening gloom. The rest of the party fell in behind him, Snaggletooth taking rear guard while Grubnik held the center, the youngbloods arranged around him like a a phalanx of spears.
The going was treacherous, the forest floor a morass of twisted roots and leaf-slick stones hidden by the dense undergrowth. More than once Grubnik had to grab a floundering youth by the scruff, hauling the wretch up before they could tumble into the yawning dark of an uprooted bole or ravine.
All the while the storm built overhead, the clouds roiling and churning like a pot left too long on the boil. The wind picked up, setting the treetops to thrashing and moaning. Grubnik felt the first fat drops of rain spatter against his up-turned face, each one a cold dart pricking his skin.
A muttered curse escaped him, snatched away by the rising gale. His feet slipped and skidded in the rising muck, the leaf-littered soil turning to a slurry of rotting vegetation and icy water. Claws denting the loam, he redoubled his efforts, pressing forward with the determination of a wolf on the heels of wounded prey.
The tor couldn't be much further. Once they gained its footing, the stone would give them purchase, a defensible position from which to weather the tempest's fury. They just had to reach it before the Wild Wood ripped the ground out from under them...
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Raggok's shout, high and thin with panic, knifed through the hammering deluge. Grubnik's gaze snapped up, piercing the tangle of flailing branches. There, just ahead, through the wind-lashed veil of rain. A dark hump of stone crouching amid the thrashing wood like a great slumbering beast rudely awakened. The tor, a granite fist thrusting up from the forest floor to batter at the underbelly of the lowering sky.
And there at its base, a darker gash splitting the stone like a wound. A cave, its mouth yawning wide as if to swallow them whole.
Raggok stood at its threshold, his sodden pelt plastered flat to his scrawny frame. He gestured wildly, urging them onward with frantic swipes of his arms.
Chief! In here, quick!
Gnarltooth barged through the clinging undergrowth, shouldering saplings aside like grass stalks. Grubnik and the others stumbled in his wake, fleeing the storm's rising wrath. Lightning split the sky, the flash searing Grubnik's vision to a blind white smear. Thunder followed a heartbeat later, crashing down like an avalanche to rattle the very stones beneath their feet.
They plunged into the cave, a surge of drenched green bodies jostling and slipping on the worn stone. The darkness swallowed them, enfolding the bedraggled goblins in its cool, musty embrace. Grubnik felt his eyes adjust, pupil swelling to drink in the scant light trickling in from the cave mouth.
It was a shallow antechamber, a cupped hollow scooped from the living rock by time's patient chisel. Barely large enough to hold their band and scant supplies. At its rear, a narrower tunnel delved deeper into the tor's stubborn flanks, worming away into stygian shadow.
Gnarltooth moved to its entrance, eyes narrowed to golden slits as he peered into the whispering gloom. Senses strained for any hint of movement, any flicker of life to suggest another occupant resenting their intrusion.
Nothing. Just dank emptiness, the close walls sweating with the damp.
The chief grunted and swung his spear down from his shoulder, the haft smacking meaty palm with a solid thwack. Grubnik, with me. The rest of you, catch your breath but stay sharp. We're not alone until I say we are.
Grubnik hurried to his father's side, breath still heaving in his chest from their headlong flight. Gnarltooth spared him a glance, eyes like molten gold in the gloom. Then the chief turned and stalked into the tunnel, his heavy tread unnaturally loud in the sepulchral hush.
Grubnik followed, senses straining. His sodden pelt prickled, hackles lifting along his spine despite his best efforts to calm them. There was something about the inky blackness pressing close that set his fangs on edge, tightening his grip on his spear until his knuckles creaked.
The tunnel twisted and turned, wending deeper into the bowels of the stone. The walls pressed close, scraping his shoulders if he strayed too near their slick flanks. More than once he nearly stumbled, boots sliding on loose pebbles scattered across the uneven floor.
His father pressed on relentlessly, never wavering even as the dark thickened until it was a clotted curtain across Grubnik's vision. If not for the chief's steady tread, the rasp of his breath, Grubnik might have lost all sense of direction, floundering blind in this stony maw.
Just as the tension coiling in Grubnik's gut threatened to snap his control, Gnarltooth halted. The sudden cessation of movement froze Grubnik's breath in his throat. He crept up to his father's side, spear-tip dipping low to probe the void before them.
The tunnel had opened out, the close walls falling away into a cavernous gulf of empty space. The air hung in a hushed pall, thick and heavy as deep water. Even the sounds of the raging storm outside had faded to a distant murmur, as if the wildwood's fury could not penetrate this far into the tor's stony heart.
Grubnik swallowed against a sudden surge of dread, the unfamiliar emotion a sour weight in the pit of his stomach. This felt... wrong, in a bone-deep way he couldn't articulate. A primitive part of his brain, some vestigial animal instinct honed over generations of goblinkind's harsh survival, was screaming a wordless warning. Urging him to flee back into the storm's cleansing fury rather than face whatever nameless thing lurked in the obsidian depths before them.
He licked dry lips, tasting salt and the copper tang of his own fear-spiked musk. A muscle in his jaw ticked, teeth grinding as he clenched his fangs against the irrational impulse. He was a warrior. A chief's heir. He would not shame himself by cringing like a newborn whelp at the first whiff of the uncanny.
Father? His voice emerged a reedy whisper, disgustingly frail even to his own ears.
Quiet, boy. Gnarltooth's growl was sub-sonic, more felt than heard. Something... something is here.
As if summoned by the chief's grim pronouncement, a sound shivered through the clammy air. The soft, dry rasp of scales on stone. A sinuous slither, heavy and deliberate in the fathomless black.
And then, light. A glimmer so faint Grubnik initially thought it a delusion born of his strained eyes. But no... there in the deeps, a thin phosphorescent line coiled through the dark. Pulsing, growing, it twisted back on itself like a serpent wakened from hibernation, segments of spectral green flickering to sullen life along its length.
Until the dark unfurled not one but dozens of lambent shapes, their cold glow limning sleek hides and the wink of cruel, hooked talons. Reptilian eyes kindled to viridian lanterns above yawning maws bristling with needle fangs.
Basilisks. The breath punched from Grubnik's lungs on a single, choked exhale. Dread crystalized to icy certainty in his gut.
The cave was a nest. They'd stumbled straight into a brood of Basilisks dug in to wait out the worst of the storm. Foul amalgams of snake and lizard bloated to the size of war-hounds, with poison to drop a bull moose frothing from their forked tongues.
Get back. Gnarltooth's voice was low, steady as the tor's granite heart. No sudden movements. They're still groggy from the cold. If we withdraw slow, quiet, maybe...
A scrabbling, a panicked yelp echoed from the tunnel behind them. Grubnik whirled, icy sweat prickling his hide. One of the unblooded youths stood at the threshold, eyes wide and rolling with terror as a Basilisk reared up before him, its hideous head swaying on a sinuous neck.
The whelp screamed, a high, ululating wail that shattered the hushed air like a stone cast into a stagnant pool. The Basilisk lunged, its rope-thick body hissing across the stone with blinding speed. Needle fangs flashed, sinking into the youth's shoulder with a wet, rending crunch.
Blood fountained, black in the spectral light. The whelp's screams turned thin, reedy, as the Basilisk's venom pumped into his veins. He spasmed, dropping his spear to claw uselessly at the beast's iron-hard hide. The weapon clattered to the stone, the sound as final as a headsman's axe.
The nest erupted like a kicked ant-hill, the dark suddenly alive with darting, hissing shapes. Gnarltooth roared, the sound as deep and primal as an earthquake. He leaped forward, throwing Grubnik behind him as his spear lanced out, the razored point finding a glittering eye.
The struck Basilisk shrieked, an ear-splitting keen like tortured metal. Gore-slick talons scrabbled at the spear haft protruding from its ruined socket. More surged forward to take its place, a writhing wave of venomous hunger.
Grubnik found his feet, instincts taking over as the heady scent of blood and musk filled his nostrils. His spear darted like a striking serpent in his own right, finding soft joins between armored scales, sinking into the putrid meat with sickening ease.
Shouts and screams battered at the confines of his skull, the rest of the war-band boiling into the tunnel to join the fray. Steel rang and clashed, the metal taking on a reddish sheen as blood splattered the dank stone.
A Basilisk reared before him, its maw gaping obscenely wide. Venomous spittle drooled over dagger fangs. Grubnik snarled, bracing himself for the lunge. His spear felt like a flimsy reed in his sweat-slick grip, the leaf-shaped blade woefully inadequate before that monstrous gullet.
The beast lunged, blurring speed belied by its bulk. Grubnik dove aside, fetching up hard against the tunnel wall. Stone cracked his shoulder, setting his fangs to gritting. He whirled, just in time to see the Basilisk's barbed tail scything towards his face.
No time to dodge. He threw his head back, eyes slamming shut. Wind buffeted him as the venomous spur hissed past, scoring a burning line across his cheek. Blood, hot and salt, flooded his mouth.
Roaring, he brought his spear up in a desperate thrust. The blade skittered off ridged scales, scoring the beast's underbelly but failing to find a vital spot. The Basilisk writhed, its bulk slamming into him like a falling tree.
Air whooshed from his lungs. He hit the ground hard, spear spinning from nerveless fingers. The Basilisk loomed over him, its hooked maw drooling. He scrabbled for his knife, the blade suddenly pitiful in his grip.
A shadow fell over them both. Gnarltooth crashed into the beast like an avalanche, his spear gone, bowie knife clutched in one sledgehammer fist. The chief snarled, slamming the blade into the monster's gaping eye-socket. Once, twice, three times.
The Basilisk screamed, thrashing. Its tail cracked across Gnarltooth's back, drawing a grunt from the old warrior. But he never relented, never released his two-fisted grip on the blade as he bore the beast backward.
Grubnik surged to his feet, snatching up his fallen spear. Gnarltooth wrestled with the Basilisk, a tangle of savaged green flesh and gore-slick scales. Grubnik charged, bracing his spear butt-first against the stone.
The steel point struck true, sinking into the soft hollow beneath the beast's jaw. It punched through, erupting from the back of the meaty skull in a welter of ichor. The Basilisk stiffened, a shudder wracking its length. Then it slumped, the dead weight of it bearing Gnarltooth to the ground.
Panting, the chief struggled free of the corpse. Grubnik offered him a hand, hauling his father upright. Their eyes met, a moment of shared triumph, of primal exultation in the face of death and danger.
Then a shriek rent the air, high and agonized. Grubnik whirled, searching for the source. There, near the mouth of the cave. Snaggletooth crouched over a fallen form, his already ruined face a mask of blood. At his feet, Raggok writhed, the lean tracker's pelt shiny with gore. More blood pumped from between the fingers he had clamped to his gut, staining the stone a glistening black.
As Grubnik watched in horror, the light faded from Raggok's eyes. His body stilled, one last rattling breath shivering from slack jaws. Snaggletooth threw his head back, loosing a howl of grief and rage.
Grubnik's gaze swept the carnage, picking out the still forms of other goblins strewn amid the Basilisk dead. Too many. More than they could afford to lose. And those were just the ones he could see...
Gnarltooth shouldered past him, the chief's heavy tread resolute even as he limped on a blood-slick leg. Grubnik fell into step at his heels, numbness creeping through his veins like a slow poison.
They'd survived. He clung to that thought like a drowning goblin to a float-log. Survived the Wild Wood's attempt to devour them. But the cost...
He looked down at his crimson-painted hands, the spear haft tacky beneath his palms. Was this the price they'd pay for the Bloodfang's salvation? Blood for blood, life for life?
A terrible suspicion coiled in his gut, colder and more piercing than any Basilisk fang. Perhaps there was no great beast to be found. No legendary pelt to drape triumphant upon the clan's Winter Festival pyre.
Perhaps... it was all just a mocking lure, a false promise like the glimmer of a mirage on a salt-pan. And they'd stumbled after it, so desperate for hope that they'd been willing to brave any danger... only to end as meat for the Wild Wood's insatiable maw.
Unease prickled his muck-streaked pelt, a creeping surety that this was only the first toll the forest would exact. But he shoved the whispers down, locking them away. The clan needed him steadfast, solid as the sto-
A sound split the air, raising every hair along Grubnik's spine. A warbling, avian scream that shivered through marrow and gristle. It echoed off the stone in distorted ripples, filling the cavern with its promise of primal fury.
No. Not a scream. A roar.
Grubnik froze, ice flooding his veins. He knew that sound. Knew it from somewhere deep in the racial memory of his kind, ancestral dread welling up to choke the breath from his lungs.
There at the cave mouth, framed by the storm's raging maw. A shape condensed from the hammering deluge, coalescent shadow gaining substance with each stalking step. Lightning flared, the stark white flash limning its hulking form for a single, awful heartbeat.
Grubnik's bowels turned to water. His spear clattered from a hand gone boneless with shock.
A Thundercat. Largest of all felids, apex predator of the Wild Wood's most abyssal reaches. Progenitor of a thousand goblin nightmares.
Muscles rippled beneath a pelt of midnight blue, patterned with jagged stripes of ghostly white. A crest of guard hairs bristled along its spine, crackling with actinic sparks. Fangs like skinning knives gleamed in its gaping maw, a lolling tongue the color of an old bruise.
But its eyes... Grubnik moaned, feeling his sanity fray at the edges. Orbs of otherworldly gold, alight with a terrible alien intelligence. Holding knowledge of things beyond mortal ken, dark and primordial as the forest's stony roots.
Those eyes found Grubnik's, bored into them with a force that sent him staggering. Reeling beneath the weight of that eldritch regard, that pitiless stare. He felt flayed to the bone, every secret hope and fear turned out like a coney's guts for the beast's cold perusal.
Then it blinked, a lazy dip of night-dark lids. Grubnik gasped, a drowning thing breaching for air. He scrabbled for his spear, hands wooden, distant. His pulse thundered in his ears, louder than the maelstrom's distant roar.
The Thundercat crouched, muscles bunching beneath its impossible pelt. Sparks leapt between its claws as it sank them into the stone, flexing. Grubnik panted, ice and fire warring in his blood.
This was it, then. An ending, as sudden and merciless as the Wild Wood's own ancient law. The futility of all his dreams and doubts, all his strivings, laid bare in that single, simple action. A beast, preparing to fill its belly. And he, the meat.
He looked to Gnarltooth, seeing his own sick despair reflected in the old chief's snarling mask. Snaggletooth, gore-streaked and panting. The few surviving youngbloods, huddled together like frightened rats.
So few. Too few. All of them, caught between stone and the Thundercat's fury. Fangs and claws against brittle goblin steel and flesh.
No way out. No clever stratagem to turn this fight. Just an old story, writ again in ichor and offal. The strong devouring the weak, as it had been since the first goblin crawled from its cave to blink at the merciless sun. As it would be long after Grubnik and his ilk were dust.
He threw back his head and laughed, the sound jagged as broken glass. Let the Wild Wood take them, then. Let it glut on goblin marrow, on the shards of their broken dreams. At least he'd die as he'd lived - snarling defiance at a world bent on grinding him down.
Gnarltooth shot him a look, the old chief's eyes narrowing in their nest of wrinkles. Something passed between them in that glance, a mute understanding that needed no clumsy words. The only language left to doomed things, scrabbling at the dark.
As one, they turned to face the Thundercat. Grubnik hefted his spear, feeling the shaft's weight settle into his callused palm like an old lover. Beside him, Gnarltooth brandished his knife, the blade a paltry fang against the beast's night-drenched might.
It wouldn't be enough. Could never be enough. But perhaps, if they fought hard, if they made the Thundercat work for its meal... their blood-debt to the clan would be paid. The Bloodfang would remember their last stand, sing sagas of their defiant end. It was the best a goblin could ask for, in this hungry world of stone and shadow.
The Thundercat surged forward, its stride devouring the distance between them in terrible heartbeats. Grubnik bellowed his war-cry, the sound torn ragged by the snarling drumbeat of his pulse. He braced himself behind his spear, knowing it for the sorry reed it was.
The beast's claws sheared the air, filling his nostrils with the stink of ozone. Lightning arced between the curving scimitars, leaping to sting his exposed flesh like furious wasps. He gritted his fangs, squinting against the stinging brilliance. Waiting for the final, terrible impact.
The Thundercat struck Gnarltooth's bowie knife with a shriek of sundered steel and a gout of cobalt sparks. The old chief roared, slamming his bulk against the beast's shoulder even as his blade shattered, driving it back a staggering half-step. Grubnik lunged in the fractional opening, his spear licking out in a desperate thrust at the Thundercat's barrel chest.
The steel point skittered off the beast's hide as if it were stone, deflected by rippling muscle and bristling fur. The Thundercat yowled, more enraged than hurt. It whirled on Grubnik, moving with a speed that beggared belief. One huge forepaw hooked out, batting the goblin heir aside with contemptuous ease.
Grubnik flew, breath bursting from his lungs as he slammed into the cavern wall. Stone cracked against his spine, filling his skull with blooming starbursts of pain. He slid down the rough rock face, every nerve alight with white-hot agony.
Through slitted eyes he saw Gnarltooth throw himself bodily at the Thundercat, grappling with its sinewy neck. Snaggletooth leaped to join him, his notched blade hacking at the beast's haunches. It twisted like an eel, fangs snapping shut a hair's breadth from the old chief's snarling face. Gnarltooth reeled back, and in that instant of distraction the Thundercat's rear claws found Snaggletooth's belly.
The scarred warrior shrieked, a high and terrible sound. He fell back, hands clutching at coils of steaming viscera that bulged between his fingers. The Thundercat pounced on him, worrying at his body like a mutt with a rat. Wet, meaty sounds, and the gristly snapping of bones. Snaggletooth's wail cut off with a liquid gurgle.
Darkness billowed at the edges of Grubnik's vision, narrowing the world to a hazy tunnel. Muffled sounds reached him, as if from a great distance. Screams, the crunch of splintering bone. A goblin's death-rattle. The smack and slurp of feasting jaws.
He tried to rise, to will strength back into his failing limbs. But his body felt leaden, sunk deep into a smothering fog. Only his eyes retained any faculty, fixing on a tableau of primal horror limned in guttering witchlight.
The Thundercat crouched over Gnarltooth's savaged bulk, its muzzle buried in the old chief's gaping chest. Worrying free gobbets of dripping meat, gulping them down only to dive in for more. The great hammer fists spasmed, gnarled fingers clutching at empty air.
Grubnik keened, a wordless lament torn from his collapsing lungs. Gnarltooth's head lolled towards him, half the face hanging in ribbons. One eye found his, the other a shredded ruin. Grubnik saw pain there, and sorrow... but no fear. Never fear, even at the last. His father, the lodestone of his world, even as that world bled out onto the uncaring stone.
The eye fixed him, held him with a force stronger than any Thundercat's fury. It bored into Grubnik's own, striking deep to that inner place where all pretense sloughed away. Leaving only the purest ore of himself, raw and aching.
His father's lips moved, shaping words Grubnik couldn't hear over the roaring in his skull. But he didn't need to. He knew, in that place beyond thought, beyond blood or bone. Gnarltooth's final command, his last thread of chieftain's duty carried down until it frayed to nothing in death's indifferent shears.
Live, boy. Lead.
Darkness crashed over Grubnik in a smothering wave. It hooked into his sinews, dragging him down, away from horror, from the ruin of his world. He tried to fight, but his limbs were cold, so cold. Filled with a leaden weight, the promise of oblivion.
His eyes fluttered closed, shuttering out the sight of his father's body, the Thundercat's gory rapture. But he couldn't escape the sounds. The smack of jaws, the wet crunch of splintering bone. They followed him down into the velvet dark, scoring deep even as thought faded.
The last thing he knew was the cool press of stone against his cheek, and a spreading warmth that could only be his own blood. A final, bitter comfort, cradling him as he fell endlessly into the void.
Live. Lead.
Then nothing but the dark, and the distant roar of the hungry Wild Wood, implacable and eternal. Swallowing him whole, as it had so many before. As it would so many after.
The world spun on, uncaring. Gnawing on the bones of goblin dreams, glutting on the marrow of their defiance. Only the Wild Wood endured. Only the beasts of shadow and fang held sway in the green heart of the world.
And Grubnik sank into its depths, to await the final devouring. A feast for worms, a saga never to be sung. Just another mote, flickering out in the forest's vast and pitiless night.