[Gottlieb]
“Die! Die! Die!” shouts the ooze excitedly, her spacesuit flopping around as she tries to crawl closer to the monitor. Gottlieb reaches out, pulling her back.
“Don’t get too close. It’s bad for your eyes,” says the man, as the slime looks over her shoulder, as it were, the suit turning disgustingly far as she spins around. He looks back up at the monitor as she plops back down, staring up at the live feed of the station’s cameras. They’ve been sitting here, watching the naga move through the station room by room, violently clearing out anything they find with extremely deadly force.
The snake people seem to be great hunters. He thinks he made a good choice in picking them.
It’s a good deal. They kill and eat the monsters on the station, keeping it under control and feeding themselves, and he doesn’t vent the segments they inhabit out into the endless void of space.
This will go a long way toward helping the station not fall apart.
But now, new maintenance members are needed to help keep up with all the damage. Things like dryads growing flowers and vines in the vents, rats nesting in the pipes, and what seems to be a nest of giant spiders in an entirely new electrical grid are problems, even after the monsters are dead. All of that stuff has to be cleaned and maintained, and Blauhausen can only do so much by herself.
The goblin, Grunheide, points at the screen as they watch the kill-team slither into a new room, full of very surprised little plant monsters, spriggans. “Two nutri-bars say that they miss one,” bets the goblin.
Gottlieb slides two of his own into the pile. “I’ll take that bet. I say two,” he replies, looking back at the screen. There are at least two dozen small, onion-bulb shaped creatures in the room, who were, prior to the invasion, doing a cute little dance and prancing around on their stumpy, thumpy legs. They’re adorable, and have big, green leaves sticking out of their heads, some sprouting flowers. Each of them is maybe an adult human’s knee in height.
“I of the Hardwater Clan wager the anguish of my flesh,” says the naga, ‘standing’ behind them. They all turn around to look at the serpent-woman as she sticks her finger into her mouth and bites into it, pressing her teeth straight through the tip and biting it off. She spits it out into her hand, dropping the removed piece of her finger and the long, curved, black nail attached to it down onto the betting pool. “None will escape my clan. Or you may cut off as much of I as you wish,” she hisses, blood dripping down her mouth. “This is the black promise that she, who is I, makes.”
Gottlieb looks at her. The man raises an eyebrow. “Settle down.” He looks at the digit on her hand, which is oozing blood. The finger slowly begins to regenerate. “Security Officer Schwarzwasser, refrain from bleeding on my console from now on,” replies Gottlieb, looking back at the monitor. “Drama queen.”
She hisses, her tail coiling around herself as she pulls out a dagger from the cloth belt tied around her torso. “My repeated failures will be carved into my flesh,” promises the creature, lifting the rusty knife. “For the honor of my brood.”
Gottlieb leans back, taking it out of her hand, and sets it onto the console. “I said settle down. Sheesh.” He shakes his head.
— A spriggan is dragged off camera, others running around in terror in an uncoordinated circle. Many of them bump into each other and the walls as they, being the dumb little things they are, are simply incapable of survival.
Gottlieb turns on the audio.
“- PAKEEEEEEW~!” screams a horrified plant-monster from the other end, before its blood-curdling scream is cut short by a crooked sword shoved through its entire body.
Gottlieb turns the audio off.
“I-Is this appropriate content?” asks the minotaur, Braungrube.
“Die! Die! Die!” says the ooze, Blauhausen, excitedly, clenching her fists as a massacre unfolds before them.
“It’s fine,” says Gottlieb, waving her off. “They’re only monsters. They’re not really people,” explains the man, completely and very expertly avoiding the awkward silence that follows as everyone in the room looks his way.
[Remark]
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- Perhaps it would be wise to return to our duties.
“Yeah, yeah,” says Gottlieb, lifting a hand. “Just let us finish this one, Kai,” says Gottlieb, watching the monitor. “Gotta make sure the new guys are up to snuff, you know?” They watch as a pair of spriggans make a run for the door. “Yes! Come on, come oooon…” says Gottlieb excitedly, leaning in as his bet seems to be going well.
Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.
The two little monsters make it out of the door.
— And are promptly caught and violently eaten alive, kicking and screaming, by the naga waiting outside for any such possibility.
“Damn it!” says Gottlieb, collapsing back down into his chair.
Grunheide groans. “I thought they’d have a chance because of how small they are,” she says.
A proud hiss comes behind. “I claim my prize,” says the triumphant naga, scooping up her own cut-off finger and eating it whole. Gottlieb nudges the nutri-bars her way too, trying his best not to touch them, since they’re covered in thick, weird, sticky snake-blood. She looks down at them, narrowing her eyes, and prods them with a claw, which pierces the packaging and goes right into a bar. “What is this mush?” she asks, lifting her hand and looking at the rectangle stuck on it.
“You know, I’ve asked myself that often too,” says Gottlieb. “But I learned one day that it’s best not to know,” he says. “Just eat it and don’t ask too many questions,” sighs the man, as Kai switches the monitor off and returns the camera feed of the world below. “Your people are good. You got the job,” says Gottlieb, handing her back her knife.
The naga takes it, stowing it back away in the cloth-wrap. “May our pact be as fruitful as the loins of our brood-sisters.”
“Wow. Gross, Schwarzwasser,” says Gottlieb, covering the ooze’s helmet with his hands. “That’s inappropriate,” remarks the man, shaking his head.
It’s fine though, the ooze seems to be too distracted with all of the violent murder that just happened.
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[Wood-mother of the Goblin Tribe] Dryad, Female, Wood-mother
The human soldier of the wild-lands patrol is violently murdered.
The large, lanky hobgoblin easily overpowers him, catching the man’s sword with its calloused, thick hands that show no difference to the fresh wound and yanks the arm away. It grabs his neck with its other hand and tackles him, biting deeply into his exposed flesh above his torso.
His compatriot is dragged by his legs towards him, his clawing hands tearing into the dirt, unable to hold him in place long before another tug from the gray, drooling hobgoblin dragging him off dislocates his shoulder.
The human tumbles as he’s thrown, landing at her hooves.
She steps down onto the side of his head as the man screams, her sharp hoof cutting into his cheek. “Where is the third?” she asks.
The man doesn’t reply; he's too busy screaming. She presses down harder, as a hobgoblin grabs hold of his legs to stop him from kicking around. “WHERE IS HE?!” she screams at him, pressing down. The man’s jaw cracks, his animal cries muffling the fresh blood that fills his mouth, pressed against the dirt, as teeth crack and come loose together with his jawbone.
Human patrols always move in threes.
“H- he ran away,” says the man through his gurgles, his huffing chest pressing him up off of the dark soil. “He ran away!” he explains.
She tsks, lifting her hoof off of him and turning her head to a group of her hobgoblins. “CATCH HIM!” she screams. They drop to all fours, scrambling off through the darkness like wolves, drool running down their faces, their dense, thick muscles twitching as they move.
The man still lying on the ground cries.
She nods her head.
He cries for a while longer as the pack of hobgoblins descends around him and eats him alive.
She watches, holding her stomach. They must reach the human cities, as is the will of the heavens above. Yet, they lack in numbers. Even with the use of the forbidden ritual, creating the hobgoblins, secrecy and speed are of the utmost importance. They must reach the human cities before they are alerted to their intentions.
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[Daja] Human, Male, Soldier
The man runs, panting as he shoots through the forest, bathed in moonlight. Trees shoot past him, their long, witchy branches sticking out in all directions like the claws of gangly monsters, trying to catch him. His clothes rip, together with his skin, as he snags and falls, but he scrambles and keeps running, losing more and more of his heavy gear to make it easier to move.
What the fuck.
He spares a glance behind himself into the darkness, not sure what he’s supposed to see there. He can hear them. They’re chasing after him. They’re not the goblins that they were sent down here to scout for. They’re something worse. Goblins don’t get this big. Why the hell are they so big?!
The man clenches down a scream, looking back forward. Something lunges out of the darkness, grappling him with long, wiry arms that reek of unwashed rot and meat. They tumble, and he unsheathes the dagger on his belt, stabbing over and over into the mass of whatever has him, wet soaking over his body as they roll.
The two of them come to a stop, hitting against a tree. Claws having ripped into his back, against his backplate, leaving long scars in the metal, but just as long and deep cuts in his unprotected shoulders.
Screaming, Daja gets up, scrambling out from beneath the weight of the body, and then looks down at it for a second. It’s gray, like tepid, murky waters. Its limbs are long like a spider’s and lean, with visible muscles that look stretched out, like they were taken from a smaller body and stretched to connect to the ends of bones that are far too long for them.
The trees rustle.
The man drops the knife and quickly scrambles up the tree as high as he can, his heart thrashing in his chest.
He looks down, watching as several more of the creatures lurk out into the forest from the underbrush. They walk in a strange way, upright but hunched over forward as if they were just barely avoiding an animal instinct to prowl on all fours. They turn, looking through the area, sniffing the air and the corpse as they scan the forest, making a series of guttural noises.
One of them grabs the leg of the corpse and bites into it without much of a thought of any kind.
In horror, he watches as they eat the dead one.
— The leaves of the forest rustle.
Daja looks up. A set of thin fingers wrap themselves around his neck from above, a howling face with teeth as long as the nails that press into him dropping drool down into his screaming mouth.
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[Gottlieb]
“Die! Die! Die!” says the ooze Blauhausen, happily slapping away at the minotaur Braungrube, who is sitting there, crying, with his hands above his head to shield himself from the childish onslaught.
Gottlieb blinks, watching them and then looking at the monitor. He doesn’t have time for this. Humanity needs him. “Schwarzwasser. Handle it.”
She hisses. “Their corpses will serve as warm spaces for the eggs of many.”
He cups his hand by his mouth, watching her go. “No corpses! No eggs!” he yells.
The naga nods, looking back at him. “Very well. I, who is she, will gorge on their flesh until I burst.”
Gottlieb sighs, shaking his head. “You know what? I’ll handle it,” he says, getting up, his chair spinning as he rises.