[https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/f/5b0c9847-92dd-4728-954f-93579b7ef57b/dfg6o6d-9ba9427c-3486-4677-ba05-e4dc03c25142.jpg?token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJzdWIiOiJ1cm46YXBwOjdlMGQxODg5ODIyNjQzNzNhNWYwZDQxNWVhMGQyNmUwIiwiaXNzIjoidXJuOmFwcDo3ZTBkMTg4OTgyMjY0MzczYTVmMGQ0MTVlYTBkMjZlMCIsIm9iaiI6W1t7InBhdGgiOiJcL2ZcLzViMGM5ODQ3LTkyZGQtNDcyOC05NTRmLTkzNTc5YjdlZjU3YlwvZGZnNm82ZC05YmE5NDI3Yy0zNDg2LTQ2NzctYmEwNS1lNGRjMDNjMjUxNDIuanBnIn1dXSwiYXVkIjpbInVybjpzZXJ2aWNlOmZpbGUuZG93bmxvYWQiXX0.r6pq9r92hxfslb-zFKzd5gRR1PdWVL5twXU8UPFUn0w]
The Past
Owd the Survivor
A nameless goblin had been born to a random litter like any other. There was no record of how many littermates there’d been nor of what female had served as the mother. Green goblins weren’t sentimental like that. They had no sense of family or even the concept of a mother. Females were just birthing tools, used until they broke, then chopped up and thrown into the cooking pot. Because goblins were very practical creatures and never, ever wasted anything edible.
His original tribe had been slaughtered when he’d been only a few months old. Wood elves had filled his brethren with arrows, then tossed them onto a pyre together to burn. He’d been part of a trio of goblets, goblin young, that one of the hobs had buried in a hole and covered with moss to hide them, and the only survivors.
The three had crawled out days after the rest of their kind had become ash. In the following months, as they’d scrounged for food, one of the trio had been eaten by a bird. Another had been stung by a poisonous plant and withered to death. The wilds of Heartstone were deadly.
He’d eventually come across a young human female, alone in the woods, out collecting herbs and flowers. Bashing her in the head a couple of times with a rock, it had taken all his strength to subdue her and drag her off, keeping her away from the eyes of the other humans who’d come looking for her.
He’d used her to breed his first tribe. Twenty-seven strong they’d become before her scrawny body had given out, and he’d grown into a hobgoblin. Then the dastardly humans had discovered them, bringing a half dozen adventurers far better armed and armoured than anything the goblins had from materials scavenged in the forest or from farms they’d raided.
Once more, he had survived. This time, he’d managed to save four others as they’d fled.
His rage had burned hot in the following weeks as they’d tried to avoid the adventurers tracking and hunting them, calling them monsters.
Damned humans. Damned elves. Damn all the other species who tried to kill him! He hated them all.
He vowed to survive and found a new tribe. He would do it as many times as it took to grow powerful enough to grind every other species into the dirt, to make them slaves and cattle. He would make leather of their skin, jewelry of their teeth, and gorge on their meat. He would show them just how monstrous a goblin could be.
They had begun to call him Owd. He tolerated no challenge to his leadership, no threat to his power and ambitions. If another hob developed even a hint of greed in their red eyes, he removed a limb. If that act of mercy didn’t work, he culled them and threw them into the stew pot. A few mouthfuls of their ambitious fellows and the other gobs grew wiser.
Not that many tried to topple him from his reign. Only the most foolish made that mistake. For most of the tribe, it was easy to see that following Owd was smart. For he had gained cunning over the years. They raided judiciously, a village here, a farm there, but never in the same place too often, lest it bring about retribution.
He had taken great pleasure in killing humans and even more when the goblin tribe managed to corner a couple of elven scouts, such a rare and stunning feat that the elves always died with shocked expressions, unable to believe such lowly monsters could have gotten the better of them.
For years, he’d carefully cultivated his tribe in secret, limiting their growth to prevent the need for too much space and food and the discovery that wanton rampaging would lead to. He wanted to build his strength, make them a force to be reckoned with. Even so, failure had come.
Adventurers. The scourage of goblins everywhere! A large party had come for him and his tribe. Their ranks had been decimated, and only his own power and cunning had saved the rest. He cared nothing for the deaths of so many of his own kind, but the setback had struck deep into his heart. He’d begun to doubt that goblins would ever have a place in this world. Perhaps they were nothing but fodder, too inferior to other species to thrive. Perhaps he was too weak.
That’s when a visitor had come, offering hope and gifts: a strange elf unlike any he’d seen before. He’d walked alone, striding into their camp without the slightest hesitation or fear despite being outnumbered.
Owd, though he craved the elf’s death, ordered his few surviving warriors not to attack. Instinctively, he’d known that to do so would have been a quick death for them all. This was no elf like any he’d seen before.
The visitor had had the appearance of an autumn day. His hair and skin had been as golden as coin, his clothing a blend of yellows, oranges, and browns, and his eyes had been a startlingly clear sky-blue. His cloak had swept about him like falling leaves, and his bow had been carved with acorns and fox tails.
In a chilly voice, he’d called himself an eladrin, a fey elf of the Autumn Court, a traveller to this world but one who called another dimension his true home. “I have come to strike a bargain with you, leader of goblins.”
Owd had been sitting on a fallen log by the fire with a half-cooked haunch of some animal in hand, his reduced tribe behind him in a half-moon shape facing the elf. He had not been scared; death was something he’d lived alongside his entire life. Perhaps today would be the day. His eyes narrowed, but his curiosity spiked. He grunted. “Speak.”
Haughty eyes had looked down on him. The golden elf had seemed barely able to contain his disdain. “There is a creature from my homeland, exiled and in need of protection. Give her a home. Prevent all harm from coming to her.”
Owd hadn’t flinched. “And?”
You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.
A sneer. “And I don’t feed the trees with your corpses today.”
Owd was smart for a goblin. He’d gestured to his tribe “We are few. Adventurers kill many. Kill often. Cannot protect.”
“Yes, quite.” The elf had reached to his side, where a small, brown pouch was strapped to his leather belt.
Though the pouch was no bigger than his hand, he’d reached inside and somehow pulled out a thick square of stone that was three hands wide. The stone was dark granite and carved with a feminine goblin face with large eyes made of red glass or something smooth and shiny like it.
“What that?” Owd had asked.
“An icon. It will allow you to communicate with M’labreel, a goblin deity. Worship her, and she will grant your goblins magical powers; make shamans out of them. Like the priest adventurers you’ve seen, with healing spells and powerful magic.” He placed the stone on the ground in front of him.
Owd was very skeptical. “Trick?”
“No. She has long been worshipped by many tribes.”
“Must be pathetic god. Many tribes still die.” He’d shrugged, unimpressed. “Goblins always die.”
“Most goblins are stupid though, aren’t they? But you’re not stupid. That’s why I’ve come to you and not another.”
“Can’t fight adventurers. Or soldiers. We have sticks; they have steel. We have spit; they have magic.”
“Then perhaps this would help.” From the bottomless pouch, the eladrin had withdrawn the most beautiful object Owd had ever seen.
Owd’s jaw had dropped, and he’d risen, tossing the blackened haunch of meat aside. A few long strides and he’d been standing before the visitor, accepting the gift.
It was a sword, but unlike the image that word conjured in his mind, of the tools so often carried by his enemies, the forged steel he’d long envied. This was breathtaking: curved, jewelled, magical. It tingled in his hand, and he felt a powerful urge to use it, to plunge it into a living body and drain the life from it.
He’d hefted it. “Good sword.”
A half smile. “Yes. Rather.” The eladrin had turned and walked away, knowing without Owd having to say it that the deal had been struck. “Continue to be prudent, goblin. Even more so now, with the one I leave in your care. Protect her, and she will help your tribe grow. Keep her alive, and I will bring more gifts. You will survive. You will prosper.” He waved his thin fingers toward a nearby tree.
The trunk of the tree split as if it were liquid, revealing an opening.
A female creature emerged, half humanoid, half tree. Her flesh was black and her leaves shades of purple, her eyes glossy and a single colour: violet. She moved weakly, sickly, and gazed at Owd and the goblins with distrust.
The eladrin elf gestured to her. “She needs a place to put down roots, quite literally. She is a fey dryad. She will choose a place to make her home. Your job is to defend that home, and her, as if your life depends on it. Because it does.” At a grunt of assent from Owd, the fey of the Autumn Court had brought a stone out from his pouch, and an orange portal had appeared in front of him, swallowing him wholly a moment later before vanishing.
Owd and his goblin tribe had followed the creepy tree woman through the forest and then other forests beyond until entering a place of trees so giant they seemed to touch the clouds. She found a quiet place where the soil was wet and the ground rotten, the air smelling putrid and disgusting, even to him.
There in that bog, she’d birthed a very large seed and placed it in the water. In moments, a sapling had begun growing from the filthy water. When she touched it, she melded into it and disappeared. In a week, the sapling had become a recognizable tree. And in six months, it seemed as if that strange, dark thing had been there for centuries.
Owd had kept his word, creating a new home for his goblins here while protecting the fey dryad’s tree. They began worshipping the stone. To Owd’s surprise, the icon’s eyes had eventually begun to glow, and a couple of his goblins had claimed to hear a voice in their minds. Mysterious powers had followed. The number of worshippers had increased substantially.
While Owd’s first pleasure was the sublime rush of power as he ended another’s life, his second pleasure was of the flesh, the heady flood of domination and control in his veins as he impregnated a female. The exquisite fear in their feminine eyes when he pierced unwilling flesh not with stone or steel but with his own spear. The exciting explosion of ecstasy when he filled his victims with his seed and the pride of seeing his whelps birthed by his enemies, watching them helplessly weep at what they’d been forced to do.
Very unexpectedly, not every female was an unwilling victim. How it had surprised and confounded him when the first woman had gone from fighting him to lusting after him. She’d been a blood elf trader who’d foolishly camped off the protected, magical road. Her skin had been crimson. She’d wept at seeing her kin slain but, over time, had appeared to grow attached to him, no matter how much fun he took in abusing her. She even looked with fondness at the little green monsters she’d whelped and begged him to impregnate her with more.
He’d distrusted her, unable to believe her willingness, thinking it a lie or that her mind had broken. So he’d taken no special care for her and watched her eventually die, her body too worn out from birthings and beatings.
In their new home, guarding the dark dryad, they had plucked more females from the surrounding area, often going far from home to do so and then using these to breed. The deity in the stone seemed to take great delight in that, despite apparently being the same gender. Always she urged them to mate more and more, and only Owd’s wise caution kept the population from exploding and bringing trouble down on their heads. This was a greedy god.
For years, he carried a lingering doubt about the strange blood elf woman who had developed that odd attachment to him in the past. Yet the more he pondered it, the more desire lingered. There was something about a woman willingly enslaving herself to him that excited him.
So when the same situation eventually happened again, this time with a human female, he’d taken pains to make her his own toy, safeguarding her, forbidding the others from breeding with her or harming her. She was for him and him alone to use.
She’d been even more depraved than the elf. Barely any resistance had been put up before she’d changed into something wonton and depraved. She’d thrilled at receiving the collar he’d given her. She orgasmed constantly no matter how he used her body. She even took the beatings he gave her and begged for more pain. The more he’d treated her as his filthy sex slave, the deeper she’d taken the role inside of herself, submitting both body and soul.
He’d kept her on a chain like a dog he’d seen on human farms, his new shamans ordered to keep her alive and relatively healthy with their magical healing powers. She was a prized trophy, like his sword, proof of his strength and leadership. The other goblins saw his dominion over one of their hated enemies and bowed to his greatness.
He’d come to this place with a dozen goblins. That number had doubled, then cautiously doubled again. They’d defeated owlbears and a huge moss bear, brought down a giant centipede after tunnelling into its home, and even pushed a young drake out of their expanding territory. The eladrin sword had cut through anything, healing Owd of horrible wounds as he fought. One pace at a time, this great forest was becoming theirs.
They had dug a home under the ground, kept pigs for meat, and fished in the river not so far away. They made bows and arrows, spears and clubs, and eagerly looted their victims of better weapons.
Owd had evolved from hobgoblin into goblin chieftain, larger and stronger and smarter than ever. Only twice did another hob challenge him. Both had tried to sneak up on him while he slept to steal his precious blade. Both had been burned alive as an example to others.
Owd had plans now. The discovery of the nymphs had been an unexpected boon. They would make prime breeding vessels. And Owd was ready for the size of his tribe to grow in accordance with the ambitions he had restrained for too long.
They had food and weapons in abundance. They would triple their population in the next half year. And then?
There was a little human village only a day’s walk from here. They’d raided a farm now and then. Now, he wanted to conquer the entire village itself. A hundred human males turned into meat: fresh steaks and delicious roasts, the rest smoked or cured as rations. A hundred human females turned into slaves and breeders. A hundred females churning out a new litter of goblins every few days.
It would be the beginning of his army.
It was enough to put a wicked, toothy grin on the goblin chieftain’s scarred face.