Side Story: Others’ Tales

~ Castle Guard ~

❝ Your Favourite Narrator ❞

“Gobu Ru rik! Hirsh ma shrreeft tekk.”

At the centre of a dark valley filled with death, atop an ancient stone wall overrun with creeping ivy, on a windswept chilly walk, there stood a young goblin, fresh from the nursery. Goblin Ru was his name, like he had just stated—“rik” being the first person singular of the verb “rikor” meaning “to be” and placed at the end of the sentence to signify affirmation.

Goblin grammar really is more elaborate than anyone gives it credit for.

Ru was shivering as he executed an approximate salute. His tattered sleeveless tunic flapped it the cold gale. The vestment was clearly too large for him and had been worn before by someone else. But considering the haphazardly patched hole in the chest area and the darker spots on the cloth surrounding it, the shirt’s previous owner was unlikely to come back asking for it.

In front of the young greenie, a burly—burly for a goblin—veteran—for a goblin—and mean-looking—they all did—guardsman replied with a disdainful snort. This one wore makeshift padded gambeson, crude but definitively warmer than Ru’s rag, which made the latter shiver in jealousy…or it might just be the freezing cold. Likely a little of both.

The taller goblin shoved the tiny Ru aside and headed for the stairs that lead down to the outer courtyard of the castle. His short-spanned attention had already shifted towards the female who would soon be warming up his shrunken sword. Left alone atop his small section of rampart, Ru sighed and moved to, like he said, “tekk heess shrreeft”, which basically consisted in standing there and screaming his lungs out if anything bigger than a frog came too close the wall.

Stepping in place of his senior kin, Ru nervously glued his eyes to the road leading to castle. It started under a huge pile of rubbles, where the barbican of the main gate used to stand, then extended straight towards the woods, about forty five yards away, where it finally disappeared into the dense vegetation, like swallowed by a leafy behemoth.

So close to the fortress, the trees still were relatively short, but the further one got, the taller they became, ending up dwarfing the impressive Bluerose itself. Since the bygone days when the green tribe had taken up residence in the outer castle, a time none of the recalled, the Great Forest had always been an object of fearful awe. No goblin who had entered it ever came back…or at least that was what Ru heard from the old shrivelled female taking care of the newly hatched goblings.

In truth, today was not only Ru’s first day as a watchman, but also his first day outside the tunnels where younglings lived, full stop. Thus he was quite inexperienced at…err…at life in general.

So why give a newbie a vital role like a guard? Well, the answer was simple. It was a boring job, so they gave it to the weakest ones who couldn’t complain. Stupid? No. Goblin.

The green imp-lookalikes didn’t exactly shine by their intellect. In fact, most goblinologists—a well-respected profession—would agree that instituting vaguely timed guard duties already quite stretched out the limits of the species’ strategic thinking, which made this tribe very intelligent in the goblin spectrum.

Goblins are a really pathetic species…just intelligent enough to ignore their instincts, but just not intelligent. They weren’t strong either. Their only real trump card was how fast they bred. Truly a perfect example of vermin.

With the conscientiousness of a stressed-out novice, Goblin Ru kept staring at the pathway, afraid to screw up on his first day, and thus staying completely immobile despite the freezing wind, oblivious to the stalactites forming from his nasal mucus. Moreover, he was also trying his best not to steal glances at his beautiful childhood friend, Goblin Mia, stationed on the other side of the collapsed entrance.

He had felt attracted to her since their hatching, six days ago—goblins had a very steep maturing curve early on. They had to, or they died. And ever since he’d learned how to form words, five days ago, Ru had been psyching himself to go talk to her and ask her to let him fertilize her eggs…

Ahhh~ Goblin poetry. It might not be obvious at first glance, but Ru was a hopeless romantic.

For a goblin.

However he had never dared take action, both in fear of the nursery idol’s probable rejection and because of the stronger adults who also had their sight set on the budding beauty.

Ru was a romantic goblin, but a bit of a coward…Okay. A lot of a coward. Which actually wasn’t as bad as it sounds. Fear and anticipation of future hardships was a proof of intelligence rarely seen in the green people.

If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

Yes, Ru was a genius.

…

……

………

Again, for a goblin. Two plus two was still waaaay out of his comfort zone.

Soon, he failed to keep his eyes in check. His gaze unconsciously drifted from the road to the young alluring female, and eventually he was openly feasting upon her large hips, tall stature of three feet two, healthy green leathery skin, short protruding tusks, and smooth bald head.

Please do not judge goblin aestheticism. It’s a different culture.

Goblin Ru suddenly noticed Mia too was peeking at him too. He blushed, turning purple, and quickly looked away to hide his cheeks, now turning dark green in embarrassment, and therefore missing the girl’s teasing smile.

With his eyes lowered, however, what he didn’t miss was a slight movement in the heap of rubbles blocking the door. His heart skipping a few beats and he anxiously scanned through the ruined entrance, but all he saw was a rolling pebble.

Ru chuckled, both in relief and in derision of his own cowardice. Humour. Another proof of—relative—intellect.

Unfortunately, there was more to come. Numerous other stones, and even small boulders, started to tumble down the pile, as well as from other damaged portions of the ramparts. Soon, the whole castle was shaking, then a loud lowing filled the thundering night, echoing out of the Great Forest’s Maw with the sound of heavy stomping.

As the trampling noise got louder, a blackened silvery armour suddenly emerged from the gap, desperately running.

Was this bigger than a frog? Having never actually seen a frog, Ru had no idea.

Then something leaped out of the forest, chasing the armour, which made all the gobbling guards—Ru and Mia included—gasp in terror. [Cerbetauros], a twenty-foot tall three-headed bull spewing flames from all three maws.

Whatever a frog was, Ru decided to preventively ring the alarm…or in this case, scream like a pussy. Equally effective at alerting people, or goblins.

Without slowing down in the least, otherwise at risk of being flattened, or eaten, or burned, or likely all the above, the armour materialised an iron javelin in its right hand, and swiftly threw it at the wall. The metal pole flew straight at an unbelievable speed and violently stuck itself between two blocks, protruding horizontally at two thirds of the height of the rampart, right below Ru.

The flabbergasted green-skinned onlookers could only stare in confusion as the running armour then shifted away from the main cobblestone road. As soon as “it” stepped out of the rock and onto the grassy soils, a pillar of earth abruptly sprung up under its feet, propelling the humanoid metal man diagonally through the air. A miniature tornado wrapped around it, increasing its speed. In mid-air, it made flip, briefly landed on the planted javelin, then jumped again upwards, vertically this time.

However, before it could reach the top of the wall, the twirling winds dissipated and the unknown biped suddenly slowed down, then started to fall. It screamed something that even a goblin could identify as a curse, then chanted something else. A thread of darkness shot from its wrist to coil around a merlon—that’s the piece of stone between two crenels. The armour stopped falling, but its body brutally slammed headfirst against the stone rampart, prompting another stream of colourful curses.

Still spouting furious gibberish incomprehensible to the goblins, it hauled itself up and set foot on the rampart walk. The thread of darkness dissipated in smoke and the armour removed its dented helmet, revealing a fuming red face, a bald head shining with sweat—very attractive from a goblin standpoint—and a wounded forehead bleeding profusely. A pair of green-blue eyes burned with cold rage, and curled-up chops uncovering gritted teeth though which seeped puffs of vaporous breath.

Ru gawked at the “huma”. He knew the tall biped was called a “huma” thanks to the stories granny goblin had told the hatchlings, and the old drawing she’d showed them, which depicted all sorts of mythical and strange creatures. However, Ru had never actually seen one in the flesh. Nor had his parents. Nor his grandparents. Nor great-grandparents. Nor great-great-grandparents. Nor great-great-great-grandparents. Nor great-great-great-great-grandparents. Nor great-great-great-grea—Well, goblins had pretty short lifespans. And it had been a while since any “huma” had made it into the valley, let alone to Bluerose Castel.

Out of breath, the man—Ru guessed it was a male, although he wasn’t sure, the drawings had been pretty sketchy—angrily muttered something the little green-skinned watchman didn’t understand. “Fuck. Didn’t expected to run out of mana in mid-air. Aw fuck. Head wounds do bleed a hell lot. Ah, shit, that thing.”

Not even glancing at the confused goblin beside him, the man turned back and passed his bust through a crenel to glare at the monstrous bovine about to collide with the wall right below. Curious, Ru readily imitated him, dangerously leaning over the edge due to his overly short stature.

The crash was violent—very violently so.

The shockwave it sent through the stones made the entire fortress shake like jelly on a plate. Miraculously though, the crumbling ruin held on. The careless young goblin, on the other hand, lost balance and tumbled down towards the gaping, flaming jaws of the tricephalous bull. Horrified, he was already regretting not having sooner banged—made his move on Mia, when his fall was abruptly stopped.

Without much thought, the Wandering Knight—because it was him, duh—had reflexively reached out and caught the little fellow by the collar of his sleeveless shirt.

A brief and awkward silence followed, during which human and goblin stared at each other. For a moment, Elric looked like he was seriously considering letting go of the little monster. Meanwhile, the choking Ru prayed the Great Ogre that the “huma” did just the opposite.

Eventually deciding on a whim to spare the little creature, the man pulled Ru back up just as a torrent of flames gushed by where the goblin had been an instant before. He unceremoniously dropped the useless shorty on the rampart walk and then leant back over the crenel to observe the [cerbetauros]’ next move.

Rapidly recovering from the frightening near-death experience—sometimes being racially retarded had its perks—Goblin Ru once more joined his saviour in observing the weird creature assaulting his home. Although this time, he had the presence of mind to actually bring his guarding stool, stand on it, and to hold himself better to the rampart.

Down the wall, the big bad bull appeared undamaged from the earthquake-level impact. It tottered backwards a few dozen metres, and looked about to once more hurl itself at the wall. Seeing this, Goblin Ru stepped down from its stool and away from the edge, while Human Elric simply braced himself. “Here it comes.”

The monster charged forwards, and Bluerose once more shook on its foundations.

“Bada tadey. Boom.”

“Whatever you say, green shrimp.”

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