It wasn't too far down the road before he begun sniffing the air. The familiar scent of blood iron filled his nose, and it smelled different from the day old variety that was out rotting in the sun. The scent seemed to be more clear and defined from before.
He paused, looking at the empty street, noticing the numerous bodies he remembered on the street had turned into a just a few. Faded red stains marked the spots were fallen were previously, and he noticed large blood ringed footprints ringing most of the missing bodies. The trolls had been busy.
The bodies were gone, leaving the cars to rot out in the sun.
Looking around, he felt a slight smell catch his attention. Looking around to see if he could find the source, he took small sniffs from the air before finding a fresh corpse, or what was left of it. Something had mangled the body pretty badly. Cocking his head to the side he was able to faintly make out the camo pattern of fatigues. One of the soldiers.
Reaching out he dug his hand around the soldiers neck , he grimaced as his fingers easily passed through the goo of what remained of the body before his fingers tapped against metal. With a quick tug, he pulled the dog tag from what remained from the mans neck. After wiping the blood off of it, he let out a sigh of relief, it wasn't one the the guys he knew from the group.
That didn't mean much, however, as he hadn't remembered of all their names. A slight feeling of shame crept up in his gut, but he pushed it down as he considered how lucky he was to survive so far.
He pocketed the dog tags, and sniffed at the blood on his hands.
He felt his mouth water slightly and he looked down at the day old blood staining his hands from the fresh corpse. Now that the scent was closer to his face... it smelled... tasty. Filing another quirk of his body away mentally he stood up quickly, trying to distance himself from the now alluring smell of the body.
The goblins following behind looked at him with hungry eyes.
“Mind if we have some boss?”
He reeled slightly as the implication crossed his mind. An image of the four goblins eating the dead man's flesh from the body like zombies. The thought of how good the flesh would taste crossed his mind briefly before he dismissed it..
Holding his hand to his forehead to disguise his look of disgust he took a moment to compose himself before replying.
“No, we don't have time. Maybe later... Maybe we will run into something else.”
The four looked looked down at their feet like disappointed children. Disappointed murderous runt goblin children who wanted to eat a human body raw.
“Common, lets go” he felt himself say gruffly before turning down the road again, not looking behind him to see his goblin companions were following closely behind.
The road ahead was filled with the dead corpses of cars, but otherwise seemed clear. As far as he could see, the rest of his journey back to base should be relatively easy assuming he wasn't ambushed or chased by trolls again.
He didn't see too much chance of either of those things happening however. The group he was with would have fled down the same way, and anything in their way would have been killed. All he had to do was walk down the pathway that had already been secured in blood.
As he walked down the road he glanced up at the sun high in the sky beating down on him, and he grimaced, his momentary feeling of ease disappearing again. The heat from the sun beat down on him, and he could feel the pavement heating up on his feat. Heat distortions appeared in the distance, making odd illusions in the distance.
He walked down the street like that for awhile, weaving in between cars and checking around their corners for any monsters that might come after him. He kept his shotgun slung across his back despite his sense of alert. He had learned from hunting trips that hunting weapons only seemed early initially, carry any weapon in the field for long enough and you would grow sick of carrying it.
After awhile of weaving down the street with his green entourage in tow, he felt his mind start to wander, and it made him more missed off in the process.
He took stock of the his current situation. He had essentially been left behind by the patrol. Hd didn't blame the others for their choice, but it still pissed him off anyway. The changes that he had experience since then were a serious downgrade as well.
His fingers ended in talons. He face was green. The whites of his eyes were blood red. He imagined the flesh of the dead as tasting sweet to his tongue and he felt his stomach growl slightly in response to the though of consuming a body. He reached up and picked at one of the tusk teeth that was sticking out from his bottom lip, then glanced over at his four goblin followers.
Stolen novel; please report.
They seemed a lot more capable than his animal summons, but didn't like the vicious look in thei eyes either. They were only slightly more trustworthy than the blue face goblin that had stabbed him. He felt like the only difference between them and blue face was that they had not betrayed him yet.
Picking at his tusks again, and looking at the malevolent grins cutter was giving him, he began to fully understand his new oddities. Greenskin creatures were always portrayed as monsters, because they were monsters. He wasn't going to be any different either. If he didn't give into the cravings that he was experiencing, then he would still have them riding on his back for the rest of his life, however much still remained.
Involuntarily he thought back to the body again, and part of him thought back to how good the flesh would taste, the other part of him was fucking pissed off and disgusted with himself and the situation he was in.
He didn't even know what parts of Greenskin hybrid he was even supposed to be. Human goblin? Human Orc? Elf goblin? He hissed in frustration as he walked.
His attention span started to waver after awhile of walking and he encountered more random bodies in the street. Oddly enough, there were bodies littering the roads not more than a day ago and he looked at them as no more than background scenery.
Following an instinct, he took time to look over each body, ignoring their smells and checking for valuables. His goblin followers imitated, him. He glanced at them looting the other bodies and paused in thought before resuming he search, he could always shake them down for what they had found later.
A few of the bodies he came across had money, but he decided not to keep the paper bills, if he learned anything from all the nerd books he had read, money was essentially useless now, unless he came across metal.
He paused again, looking at the three goblins trailing him. They were making a lot of noise whenever they moved, each weighted down with a large bag of crap that was shifting around as they moved, clacking loudly. They eyed him back wearily when they noticed his gaze upon their packs.
Arms bared his teeth slightly towards him, a slow hiss escaping the small muscular goblins lips.
Narrowing his eyes, Gans slowly looked back at the other goblins faces, scanning each to detect any other emotions.. Chopper's yellow eyes peered back at him in an eager smile of anticipation, then looked between him and Arms. The other two looked back at him dumbly.
Not letting any emotion show on his face, he slowly, as if he had all the time in the world, pulled his shotgun from his back. He made a show of checking the chamber and peering down the barrel to see if the end of the tube was clear. Arms looked back at him stupidly as he watched the motions, cow eyed, the slow, methodical motions intriguing him.
Gans looked right at arms as swing the shotgun back and forth, as if stretching his shoulders. The small muscular goblin's smile started to falter as he watched Gans, his erratic and methodical behavior unnerving him.
With a sudden burst of speed, Gans tightly gripped the shotgun above the trigger guard and barrel and swung it around his shoulder, the butt of it smashing into Arm's head with a loud crack. The impact broke skin, and blood splashed back onto Gan's face. The moment the blood reached his mouth, he could feel his mouth ache in anticipation and his pupils dilated in response. Arms, bleeding heavily from his face and forehead, fall backward from the hit, dropping backwards onto the pavement, whining and hissing back at Gans.
Fangs fully bared in a bloodthirsty smile, Gans swung quickly again before Arms could react. More blood kicked up from the already downed creature and it started to whine miserably.
Gans, as if removed from himself, felt himself swinging again, and again, and again repeatedly into the already dead creatures head,. His other minions watched on as he continued to plow into the dead goblins face, each blow spattering more blood onto his body.
Continuing to swing down, he felt his sense of logic evaporate, as he felt the intoxicating feeling of his muscles working rhythmically, the excess blood splatter only seemed to egg him on further and he could only hear the sound of his own grunting and heartbeat downing out everything else. An odd feeling of purpose filled him as with each swing, and he felt his smile widening with the feeling of each hit of contact.
After awhile he felt himself snap back awake, and he wiped his nose, finding himself looking down on a mangled goblin corpse. Huffing in exertion he felt the green blood of what was Arms drip off his extended fangs, and he turned to the other goblins. He saw them flinch, as if coming out of hypnosis.
Each of them quickly knuckled their foreheads, in fear. He noticed Cutter had taken a step behind the others, as if using them as a shield. Gans merely stood there, the wide eyed crazed look still upon his face as he caught his breath.
He stood there awhile, breathing in and out, looking off into the distance.
Cutter was the first to break the silence.
“Boss?” Cutter rasped out. The older looking goblin looked back at him intently, red eyes blazing underneath a hoodie the goblin had stolen from the house.
Gans looked back at him, before huffing slightly as reality started to sink back into him, the intoxicating high vanishing as quickly as it appeared.
He looked around at his surroundings, ignoring the dead body at his feel or his subordinates. Compared to the last few days, it felt too calm to him outside, even with the occasional gunshot going off in the distance. He slowly inhaled, taking a deep breath, then hesitated, looking back at the mangled corpse as an idea blossomed.
Kneeling down he reached out and, he pierced the body with one of his claws, before pulling it out again, his claw dripped with green blood.
Then using his finger as a pen he began to draw a conjuration circle on the ground next to the body. The goblins he had conjured were meant to serve him. They were evil creatures, and if he couldn't think of how to use them flexibly he would doom himself.
It took him a few extra dips into the body before he was able to fully draw out the circle and the few symbols he knew around it. If he couldn’t hide himself out in the open, he would need something to serve as a bigger distraction.
He didn’t actually know much about the symbols themselves, his book not explaining much beyond the “How” functions of conjuration. He did know however that they were specific to what he wanted to create. Unlike a summoner, he couldn’t simply call things into being as he liked, whenever he liked. Drawing the circle and its constituent symbols took time, but was much more rewarding in terms of its versatility.
Placing his hand on the circle like last time he focused inward, feeding it from his inner pool of mana like last time. This time however, he focused on a specific creature he knew. He murmured underneath his breath and he feelt the circle hook into his chest again like last time. Mana began to suck from his body and after a few seconds of the circle sucking down he felt the connecting made. He reached his hand down into the circle, gripping on the head he knew was there and pulled.
Blue face emerged from inside the circle, eyes wide in confusion before looking at Gans and widening even further in fear.
As quickly as a snake, Gans grabbed blue face by the neck in a choke hold and smiled as he lifted the smaller green skin off the ground, its legs fluttering helplessly off the ground.
Gans smiled cruelly back at him.
“I need your help blue face.”