Chapter 55

All on the Shoulders of a Little Goblin

Brewer’s Reputation: 606.

Dream Cutter Stone Shard Quest: 13,300/15,000 shards.

Back and forth trips from my Beyond the Cabin plane to the docks were annoying, but there was no better way to move hundreds of barrels. Abigail meanwhile used a Water Skimmer attribute ale to escort goblin ships and an orc ship in through the Mist Hidden barrier.

It was dusk. The amount of chimeric colored labels threw enough light to make the dock feel like it was throwing light like a lighthouse. Such colors… I often touched the material to see if the colors were truly real.

I was nearly dizzy from all the back and forth of moving barrels. By the time all the barrels had been moved, the goblins and orcs had docked. Empty chimeric colored barrels made of forged ethereal labels were carted down to shore and haphazardly stacked.

Captain Grey-tongue introduced himself as the newest goblin to handle deliveries with us.

“Let’s get cracking!” Captain Grey-tongue snapped at his lessers. Hundreds of goblins lurched to task.

Goblins grouped around barrels.

Grey-tongue leapt onto a barrel and took a deep breath like he was ready to shout for the rest of the day. “Tip ‘em!” he said.

Goblins grunted and tipped barrels.

“Fingers underneath!”

Goblins slid their fingers beneath the barrels.

“Lift on the count of three!”

Grey-tongue began counting, starting with number 7. Between there and 9 and 2, goblins hefted the barrels with strained grunts.

“Carts! Carts! Carts!”

With half a dozen goblins per barrel, barrels were heaved into carts. Some carts creaked, some groaned, some rolled away, some cracked, and some fell apart. More than two dozen sharp, pained yelps rose from the goblins.

“Tip ‘em!”

Two pairs of goblins rushed through the crowd. One held an armful of balled canvas strips. The other stopped at goblins who cradled their hands and could not wipe streaming tears from their cheeks. Their bruised fingers were bandaged in a flash, before the goblin pair moved on to bandage other hands.

“Fingers underneath! Seven! One! Four! Three!”

Barrels were thrown into protesting carts. The pairs of goblin medics rushed through the crowd once more. In no time, with nearly every goblin’s hands bandaged, the carts were full.

“Heave and heave-ho the carts! Put your back to it, Sleep-lids!”

Goblins grunted and strained against the carts that began to roll down the dock.

“Double-up! Push, No-brain! Push, Stuff-nose!”

Goblins let out sounds like growling foxes. They grunted and pushed and heaved and yelped. Slowly, the carts were managed up the gangways. But the goblins had hardly put a dent in the inventory, and all the carts were in use.

“Group up by the sevens!”

Goblins grouped up, not by the sevens.

“Tip, tip, tip! Tip, Pox-brow!”

It took no less than 5 goblins to tip a single barrel. One of the goblins, in a group of four, strained so hard that he stiffened, put a hand to his lower back, and fell to the dock. He writhed in agony until two goblins carried him off.

“Roll!”

The dock suddenly reverberated with the sound of an earthquake. Goblins jumped over each other as they rolled the barrels. It was so packed on deck that some goblins were forced to ride the barrels. Many more yelps rose from trampled goblins.

Rolling barrels up the gangways seemed near impossible. That was where goblins truly screamed with all their might. Their eyes bulged as they pushed and pulled. Veins throbbed in their necks. At least a dozen goblins were required to bring a single barrel aboard.

Some didn’t make it aboard. One less goblin than a dozen meant it was easy to lose control of the barrel. Several barrels rolled back down the gangway and bowled into goblins, barrels, another round of carts, and into pilings. Goblins frenzied over beer that spilled out from cracked open barrels. Some barrels splashed into the sea and bobbed around a ring of melting chimeric colors. Dark dinghies slipped through the water and green-ladders clung to the barrels.

“No stealing! No stealing! Tip! Tip, Flap-ears!”

Another round of mayhem and hard labor moved barrels aboard.

“Switch!”

Bandaged, beaten goblins boarded the ships. A hundred more descended to the docks.

“Tip! Big-feet!”

Barrels were tipped.

“Fingers!”

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Hands were bandaged.

“Where’s Slime-tooth?” I asked captain Grey-tongue.

“Lift!” he commanded. “No ptooey today, hawkman. Not ready yet.”

I wanted to ask if I could pass off a letter to Slime-tooth, but the more I observed the goblins, the more uneasy I felt about it.

“Heave-ho! C’mon, Spine-bump! Heave-ho!”

Amid the long and hard task of moving barrels, some goblins were sneaking sips every here and there. More than one bunghole had been opened up. I could smell the beer.

“No stealing! No stealing! Roll! Roll, Mutter-mutter!”

Some barrels were purposefully pushed off the dock where dark dinghies awaited. The goblins on the dinghies giggled, secured the barrels, and quickly rowed into the shadows of the ships before Grey-tongue could throw obscenities at them.

The goblin who handled the sack of coin pocketed 1 silver coin. When Grey-tongue turned his back, another coin was pocketed.

One of the gangways thrummed with panic. Another barrel rolled down that gangway and knocked all the goblins off their feet. In the mayhem a scuffle ensued, and one of the goblins lost their promotional boots. Tensions led to a brawl.

I held Slime-tooth’s letter in my hand.

Abigail nudged me. “I think we should deliver her letter personally.”

I could only nod and return the letter to my inventory.

“Eleven, one, two!” Grey-tongue went on.

“Where can we find Slime-tooth?” I said.

“Working, working,” Grey-tongue said. “On the empty ship!”

When the last of the barrels were loaded up, Abigail and I drank Water Skimmer attribute ales and escorted the ships back through the Mist Hidden barrier. The sea sloshed beneath our feet and around our ankles. The bioluminescent mist flickered overhead like heatless flames. We emerged on the other side. I knew instantly which ship Slime-tooth was on.

“He was right,” Abigail said. “It looks empty compared to the other ships.”

There were less than half as many bailers. The ship sat low in the water. There was a mass of corpse-figureheads on the bow.

“Terrible,” Abigail muttered.

“Let’s go find him.”

“Drink this first. Keep the bottle on hand.”

We both sipped from her Chameleon Stealth attribute lager. She gave me a bottle to keep on hand because the attribute effect didn’t last as long as those like Water Skimmer or Anti-gravity.

We made our way across the sea. We stepped over surf and leaned into the waves. Abigail’s form was only a wrinkle of air. I looked through my hands and was almost disoriented from not being able to see where I put my feet on the constantly changing sea surface.

At last we arrived at the ship. With sips of Anti-gravity attributes, we leapt up to the crow’s nest and leapt down to the deck. There were only a few dozen goblins on deck tirelessly bailing water. The captain bailed with them. There were so few goblins that we easily stepped out of their way and avoided collisions. We passed unnoticed below deck.

There were no goblins below deck. Only black barrels. I tipped one and found it full.

“They’re stacked three high,” Abigail said. “They could only stack them two high on the other ships.”

“It looks like they have to; there would otherwise be no room. And since twelve goblins could barely stack barrels two high, they’ve got to have orcs down here.”

The corridors below deck were filled with stacked black barrels, always three high. Crude mixed material ladders intersected the main corridor from a variety of other hallways that came at different angles. More black barrels were stacked in those hallways, which meant orcs must have carried the barrels up the ladders.

“No, not orcs,” said Abigail. There’s no way orcs could have come down here.” She went on hands knees to move through a tight breakthrough in a wall.

I was barely able to squeeze through. Unless an orc was the size of a goblin, Abigail was right. But as we moved on, black barrels were still stacked three high.

Ahead, down the slight curve through intersecting hallways, a hunched figure crossed and climbed a ladder. Their body was bent like an arch. One hand grazed along the floor like the cane of a blind man. The figure squinted and mumbled.

“What creature was that?” Abigail said.

“Too dark to tell.”

We climbed the ladder to another floor, and followed the creature down a new hall. It stopped by a black barrel, opened the bunghole, and tested the ptooey.

My jaw dropped open as I approached. Our Chameleon Stealth attributes wore off.

“Slime-tooth?” I breathed.

Slime-tooth unbent like a fishing rod after losing something heavy. He looked through me with blue-gray eyes. I could make out his sapling-thin bones beneath his skin. His fingers were smashed at jagged angles. Abigail cried out, covered her mouth, and turned.

“Hello?” said Slime-tooth. He looked right at me. “Is someone there?”

I crouched down to the goblin’s eye level and put a hand on his shoulder. “Slime-tooth?”

“A human?” Slime-tooth said. His head moved as if to look, but his eyes darted madly until he squinted hard and shuffled forward. “Hawkin? What—by Peg-tooth—are you doing here?”

“Slime-tooth…”

I cupped his face. Abigail silently cried. Emotions welled up within me.

“Who’s with you?” Slime-tooth said. He clasped my hand at his cheek. His fingers were bent in alternating directions.

“Abigail’s here,” I said absently. “What happened to you?”

“Oh I’m just tired. Sometimes being tired makes me tired, and being more tired makes me even more-er tired.”

Abigail, with tears on the round of her cheeks, fell to her knees beside us. She began rummaging through her inventory and brewing a series of small beers. I recognized some of the ingredients and put together the healing beers she was making. One by one, she handed them to Slime-tooth.

“Will you hold my head?” Slime-tooth said.

He leaned back as only a puppet could and I held his skeleton up while he drank sip after sip. It was only then that I noticed the greenish color return to his pallid skin. I heard bones pop and felt his spine straighten. He breathed like he’d been holding lung-crushing tension in his body. His clouded eyes cleared; they came alive and roamed my face.

Abigail gave him bottle after bottle. “Lemon Spinach, Olive Porridge, and Apple Butter Sustenance beers,” she said. “I don’t understand? How did this…”

“What happened?” I said when Abigail could only shake her head.

“Sorry I’m late with ptooey,” Slime-tooth said. “I’m trying to catch up.”

And with that, he gestured to the barrels that had been lifted and carried up ladders, barrels that were stacked three high, barrels that were stained with blood around the rings, barrels marked by fingernails, barrels stained with sweat…all the way down every hallway.

“By yourself?” I said.

Slime-tooth smiled. “I’m just like my little Barnacle-eyes, aren’t I? I hope I can be as hard working as her. Strength flared in his broken hand. I had no idea where the sudden strength came from, but he firmly grasped my arms. “How is my Barnacle-eyes?”

“She wrote a letter. We came to give it to you.”

I handed him the letter. Slime-tooth smiled big and opened the letter. His eyes moved over the writing. He smiled and laughed, and sparkles appeared in his eyes.

“What a treasure!” he said. “Wow what kindness this is, for you to deliver her letter, if it is a thing that comes from kindness. I thank you from the bottom of my soles. Again, I’m sorry I’m behind schedule.”

Slime-tooth turned the letter this way and that. He brought it to his chest for a furtive hug. He was simply beaming.

“Slime-tooth?” Abigail said. “Would you like us to read the letter?”

I would have said it was impossible for Slime-tooth to smile more, but he did. “Oh could you!”

As I read, Slime-tooth listened in fairy-tale awe. He gripped my arm like it was the handle of a walking cane. He gasped. He laughed with glossy eyes.