Chapter 50 – Boglins

<1 hobgoblin scrappers have been added to your tribe.>

<2 hobgoblin wranglers have been added to your tribe.>

<1 noblin ignis has been added to your tribe>

I woke up, shivering in the oilskin cloak. Goblins typically nested for warmth and reproduction. But I’d spent the night alone on an elevated platform that I’d pulled up into the crook of a low tree in order to put any amount of distance between myself and ground-based predators. I didn’t seem to be suffering the malaise typical of a restless goblin night, so that was a plus—if a small one.

Plan A was repairing the balloon and floating out of here on a change of the wind. But that necessitated more food than I had in order to produce the methane-rich goblin scat. Fish were my best bet for that. I spent the morning making a pair of flexi-pole fish traps—a combination fishing pole/flex-a-pult that would swing a hooked fish back onto the shore. I’d seen fish in the bog, up to and including ones that were big enough to eat me. I used what was left of my meat to bait the small hooks and the cordage from my pouch to make the lines, and then cast them out into the bog.

With the traps active, I set out to explore my immediate surroundings on the bog island. I crested the top of the hill and looked out west, where a thick layer of brush spread out. There weren’t any crocs that I could see on the shores leading down to the water. Maybe they were too steep, or maybe the beasts were still asleep instead of sunning themselves on the silt banks. Good riddance. I hoped I didn’t see any all day. I did, however, spot—or rather hear a nest of the tesla wasps nearby, by their tell-tale electric snaps and pops. And I did not want to run afoul of them, either.

Though, maybe the presence of the nest was what deterred the crocs. As long as I didn’t attract their ire, the presence of the nest might work out to be a net benefit. I kept moving, keeping the sounds of the nest on my left as I pushed north through the tight brush. The under-layer was a forest of stems and branches that I could navigate crouched down. I felt a bit like a rabbit ducking through a hedge. Occasionally, I had to use my bogging knife to clear a branch or two, but otherwise, it was almost like a secret highway under the foliage.

I made it a couple hundred meters or so by mid-morning, at which point I reached the western shore of my little island. I also heard the distant twang of the flexi-pole going off, so I decided to head back. Sure enough, there was a fish that had splatted against the rocks with a very shocked expression, hook still in its mouth. I collected the meat, reset the trap, and headed back to my meager camp to start a fire.

With the dampness of the bog and with no other goblins for a carousel, it would be tough to get a fire going. At least through traditional means. When I’d met Rufus, he’d struck a fire by combining a pair of liquids from a pair of small vials. I didn’t have those two chemicals, but what I did have was a trio of small clay balls filled with a compound sensitive to pressure and impact.

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I collected some kindling and sticks, as well as some creeping ivy from the trees, and sat down with one of the poppers and my ceramic precision tools. One was a tiny hand drill, and that’s the one I went to work with. In our world you might call it a pin drill, with a bit about .8 millimeters across, if I judged it right.

It took a few minutes, working slowly to avoid catastrophic failure, for the ceramic bit to auger through the hardened clay and penetrate the softer material within. I carefully drilled a second hole, and then tipped the openings toward my small pile of fuel. The bomb-fruit juice didn’t blend perfectly with the oily goblin scat and sulfur mix of the poppers. It took a few moments, but a bead started to form at the lower opening, growing to about the size of a pea before breaking off and dropping over the tinder I’d scraped together.

I quickly slathered a bit of mud over the openings to seal them, and then struck the wet spot in the tinder with the hilt of my bogging knife. There was a crack and a smell like the Fourth of July, and then a tiny flame nestled in the fluff.

Oh boy.

I got down on my hands and knees and blew into the budding flame until I had a decent fire going, then set the remains of the fish to roast on a piece of bark. I sat back as it cooked with some vines from the forest and my knife to make a fine enough cord to stitch up the lizard-frill balloon. The crackle and pop of the fire kept me company as I worked, blending with the sound of the bog—which was mainly the sound of insects interspersed with the occasional croc-knocker bellow. So far, none of them had accosted me on this island.

I’d gotten so used to the noise of the village. The goblins were many things, but quiet wasn’t one of them. Running around at top speed, chittering, biting, and just generally being a menace made the bluff sound a bit like a daycare from hell for most of the day. But it had become my daycare from hell. I didn’t like being alone.

I heard the Twang-splat of the flexi-pole again, only without the splat part, this time. I sighed, getting to my feet. Fish had gotten lucky, this time. I grabbed a few morsels and some fishbones to make a better hook. One small fish wasn’t going to get me very far.

I trekked down the hill of the island to the coast, but when I saw what had happened, I stopped, and dropped down to the ground.

Five small hominids stood by the water, examining the sprung fishing trap while a sixth sprawled on the silt, with a red welt running vertically up its ugly, fleshy face. I watched from my concealed position as one of them smacked the other fishing trap with the butt of its pronged spear, causing the contraption to go off. It somehow also managed to smack the one already prone on the ground. Judging from their spears and their fleshy, webbed feet, these had to have been the same creatures that broke into the wagons and stole supplies.

They looked like, well, they looked like goblins, albeit furless, fleshy, and fishy. It had to be a subspecies or variant. And if they were a goblin, then my ability to command them might work on them.

System, will these things defer to a goblin king?

Perfect! Swamp-dwelling goblins! The System provides.

I stood from my hiding spot, striding confidently down the hill. I raised my hand in greeting and offered a big, toothy grin.

“Ahoy! I’m King Apollo!”

The boglins stared at me. Still not close enough, apparently. I kept approaching, waiting for the prompt to catch up and the System to tell me that the tribe had grown another three members.

System, what gives? I thought these guys will answer to a goblin king.

I stopped, confused. I figured it out about the time one of the spears hit me in the gut. A lance of pain washed over my body. The world shook, and every muscle in my body lit up like it had been struck by lightning. As I toppled, I looked down, at the spear embedded in my belly.

Huh. I thought, before I lost consciousness.