“Heave! Ho!” the mass of goblins on the wooden platform cried to the heavens as they lifted yet another wooden beam into the air to be placed in the expanding paneling of the park that they all stood on.

“Heave! Ho!” The sun began to set in the forsaken bog as the great park base jutted out in a circular shape, out from where the princess's shack once stood.

“Heave! Ho!” Sweat dripped from the green brows of the goblin workers. The ropes chaffed their hands and, out from the rhythmical workers’ song, complaints and criticisms began to flood the air.

“Been doing nothing these last weeks, 'cept set these elder forsaken beams!” an old goblin with a long black and gray beard cried out.

Behind him, another answered.

“So hot ... least they could do is give us hats! Look them up there! With their colorful, pointy cones. They mock us!”

The row of goblins pulling on the ropes looked towards a nearby small wooden watchtower. At the top was the pointy and protruding silhouette of the Pump brothers’ gnome hats. Their watchful and colorful hues mocked them and belittled the goblins for their lack of garish colors.

The goblins’ attention was called back to their work. At the front of the line stood a strange goblin who had a much yellower hue than the others did. He directed and focused his group as he too pulled on the rope.

“Focus everyone! Day's almost done. Let's get this section ready!”

The goblins fell silent for a moment as they continued to pull and move the great beam until finally the elder goblin in the back called out to the yellowish goblin.

“Never took you for a lapwolf of them pointy hats, Lemin.”

Lemin groaned at his fellow gomrade’s words. “Lapwolf? Never! You should know better than anyone, Axel, that goblins together are strong! If everyone carries their weight, the faster we get this done and the faster we get out of here.”

“Is that right?” Axel retorted. “What about them pointy hats up there? I don't see them carrying their weight. They should be down here helping us! It's their bloody park, after all.”

Lemin struggled to ignore Axel and continue his work. He focused so that his share of the load wouldn't drop. “They must have a reason. I'm sure whatever it is, them pointy hats got a job that's just as important or just as hard as what we are doing here.”

The setting sun shone brightly into the watchtower of the two brothers. Shrieks and grunts echoed out from it. “I can't stand this anymore, Ini!” Ono cried out as he broke down on the floor in tears.

“You have to, Ono!”

“No, I can't. This is too much! I can't do this anymore—it's too hard!”

“For gramps’ sake Ini, just take another card!” Ono ordered his brother as he passed him the deck of cards laid out on the table.

Ini recomposed himself, standing upright on the table. He held almost half of the entire deck they were playing with. “It's so unfair. How am I going to get rid of all of these?”

“It's not my fault you suck at Gumo,” Ini blurted out as he rested his feet on the table and gave his brother a devious smile. Ini only had one card in his hand.

“Fine ...” Ono took another card from the deck, adding it to his already large collection. He tried to jam it in, groaning as he pushed the card into the deck that barely fit in his hand. Suddenly, the entire deck slipped from his hands.

The cards spilled onto the floor and his brother proudly proclaimed, “Gumo! Ha! I win.”

“I hate this game,” Ono grunted, reaching for the pitcher with lemonade and pouring a drink for his woes. “There's nothing in this world harder or more humiliating than that game.”

The grunts of the goblins hard at work below failed to make their way into the watchtower.

“Oh, tell me about it. All these wins today have completely exhausted me.” Ini reclined back in his chair with a smile and fanned himself with his one card.

Outside, the workers’ groans grew heavier and heavier.

“Hey, shouldn't we check on the goblins?” Ono asked, finally wondering why everything up in the tower seemed so quiet.

“Hmm? Oh right.” Ini recomposed himself, clearing the cards away from the table to reveal the schematics and blueprints for the park.

Both of the brothers stood up from their lounge chairs. They moved to the edge of the watchtower, jumped and held on to the edge of the wooden wall. They peered down to the goblins’ work.

“We doing great progress brother.” Ini said.

“Yes, I'm proud of our efforts,” both of the gnomes said with a proud smile, above the railing they were dangling on.

Ini looked toward the setting sun and asked, “Should we let them rest? Not exactly sundown yet.”

“Eh, it's fine. They made good time today. Let them go a bit earlier.”

Ini nodded, letting go of the railing and making his way to the corner of the watchtower where a large metal bell rested. His prancing and skipping held the goblins in a trance as they eagerly waited for the tolling of the bell.

The gnome hit the bell. Its dinging and donging echoed through the entire swamp, and all of the goblins breathed a collective sigh of relief.

Almost as soon as they did, they dropped the great load they had been carrying all day and the ropes quickly fell away from them.

“Wait. What are you doing? The beam is still in the air!” Lemin cried out as he tried to hold on to the rope. He was one of the few goblins who cared to.

“The bell's rung, Lemin. Not our problem,” Axel said.

Next to him, another goblin said, “Yeah, leave it to pointy hats. Is rest time now.”

“But! It's not safe!” Lemin gritted out from his teeth as he maintained the beam in the air. He felt the mass of the wood fighting him. Slowly, each of the last goblins lost their grip on it and the rope became tighter and tighter.

“I, can't hold it! Forever!” Lemin cried, tears streaming from his face.

“Hey! Lemin, get it through your head!” Axel yelled as he stopped to look at the struggling Lemin. “Not.”

The rope began to crack and tear.

“Our.”

Lemin anchored himself, bringing his full force against the beam.

“Pro—”

Rip. Thud. The rope tore, forcing Lemin to fall onto his back and the beam to fall on top of Axel, squashing him underneath it. He pleaded in a struggling voice, “blem ... Lemin. Help.”

“Axel!” Lemin cried to the goblin struggling under the beam. “Stay right there! I'll help you.”

The squashed goblin groaned, both out of pain and at the uselessness of his gomrade's order. “I can't go ... anywhere.”

“Everyone! Gob down, rally to me!” Lemin screamed at the top of his lungs to the few goblins who had turned to see the spectacle.

“You, there! You three, there. The rest, with me!” His voice boomed through the work floor as he accompanied his orders with elaborate hand gestures. His sense of duty, determination, and stern authority enthralled the goblins with a charm that rivaled the princess’s royal presence and dignity.

“On my mark, get ready!” A small crowd followed behind the yellowish goblin as he moved his arms and held his fellow workers and gomrades in a focused and deliberate effort to help Axel.

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

“Now!” he yelled out to the sky as, all together, the goblins brought their strength to lift the beam upwards.

“Second team, now!” Lemin commanded and three goblins moved underneath the raised beam and began to push against it, assisting their pulling gomrades.

“You! Take him!” A last directive was issued and the final goblin on the sidelines quickly pulled the injured goblin from where the beam had fallen.

“Second team, out!” The pushing goblins quickly rolled away from under the beam, and with a last yell and order, he decreed, “On three, two, one, drop!”

The beam fell back onto the floor, crashing with a heavy thud and releasing the goblins from their trance.

“Oh, my bones. My squishy goblin bones,” Axel cried out as he was laid on the floor. Lemin approached him, the crew of goblin rescuers tailing him as he called out to his gomrade.

“Don't worry, Axel. This is nothing a bit of goblin resilience can't fix,” he said as he placed his hands on Axel's legs and signaled with a nod for the goblin crew to hold Axel's head and shoulders.

“Wait, Lemin no, no! Please!” Axel pleaded.

In the blink of an eye, Lemin brought his entire body to pull on the goblin, stretching him and realigning his spine inside his body.

“Ah! I'm gonna kill you! You lemon-colored gobsmacker!” Axel cried out in pain as the power of goblin resilience and stretchiness began to take hold of his body and repair the damage that the beam had caused to his rubbery bones and organs.

The pained yell and screams flooded the entire wooden platform and up in the watchtower, the gnomes glanced at each other.

“Did you hear something, Ono?”

“No, the only thing I hear is this sizzling chicken.”

“Oh pass me a wing Ono. It looks tasty.”

“It is. I used Captain Brian's secret spice blend.”

“What's the secret?”

Ini's gaze shifted in the watchtower as he leaned toward his brother and whispered, “You chew on mintleaf and then spit it on the chicken.”

“Ah.”

With a final twist and turn that was accompanied by an equally loud yelp from Axel, finally Lemin let go of his gomrade. Gently, he placed him on the floor. The old goblin slowly stood back up, his hand pushing into his own back as he turned to his friend and said, “I hate you.”

Lemin smiled. “I hate you too, old friend.”

The goblin crowd began to disperse, moving away into the nearby open air mess hall.

“C'mon. Let's go eat something,” Lemin said as he gave Axel's spine a smack.

The goblin cried one last time, recoiling before he slowly began to tail his gomrade into the food line.

#

The open air mess hall bustled with a mob of hungry and tired goblins. Each was eagerly waiting for their turn as they wondered what sort of delicacies would lie in store for them after such a grueling day.

Lemin followed with his wooden tray, sliding it across the counter. On the other side of it, a goblin with a torn old chef's hat brought a boiling hot pot from a tent.

“What's today, chef?” Lemin asked, his stomach rumbling and screaming for a good ration of meat.

“Sawdust soup,” the chef answered, placing down the boiling pot of stagnant water and scooping a mess of brackish yellow and brown sludge with his ladle.

The goopy byproduct of the goblins’ daily work sloshed in Lemin's tray. He eyed the chef for a second, opening his mouth to protest. Yet the chef’s glare was all that was needed. The yellow goblin closed his mouth, frowned, and turned away with the jiggling mess of soup and dust in his tray.

Together, he and Axel walked towards the material storage area where various logs and wooden equipment waited to be used as more than mere benches and chairs by the goblins atop them. The goblins slept, rested, and drank their gruel above and in the shadow of the raw materials for the park.

As they passed their fellow goblins, Lemin spoke. “You know what. You can have my ration, Axel. I'm sure you need it more than me,” he said with a forced smile.

“Hey, how about I pour that slime over you instead, Lemin? You worked pretty hard today, I'm sure you could use a bath.”

“I was just trying to help,” he relented with a slight grumble.

“I know what you were trying to do. I'm not eating this trash either.”

They joined a few of their gomrades at a shoddy table made from leftover wooden scrap.

“Oh, can I have it then?” a portly goblin asked as he pointed to Axel and Lemin's trays. Silently, both of them nodded and slid their food to their table neighbor.

“More sawdust for me!” he said with an excited smile. To Lemin and Axel's shock, he quickly engulfed both of their trays, only for his body to respond with a violent and just as sudden cough. His system was trying to reject the slop he had forcefully shoved down his gullet.

“Do you ... want some water, Slims?” Lemin asked as everyone at the table looked uncomfortably at their gomrade’s bodily reaction.

“Yes,” the portly goblin begged as tears streamed out from his eyes. The goblins quickly passed a wooden cup to their friend, but as soon as he downed it, he let out in a strained and anguished voice, “It's more sawdust!” He let out a few more coughs, finally giving up as he fell from his seat, landing unconscious on the floor. Sawdust and sludge spilled from his mouth on the wooden platform.

“Huh. At least he's gonna sleep well tonight,” Axel said in a resigned tone as all other goblins around the table nodded in agreement.

“Hear, Hear.”

“Aye aye.”

“Got that right, Axel.”

The goblins emphasized their words by hitting the table with their hands.

Only Lemin stood up, moving to Slims, and as he saw the faint movement of his chest and lungs, he rolled him over so that he could continue breathing in his unconscious state.

He cleaned the drool from the floor and from his friend. Standing up on the table, he preached to those assembled.

“We can't keep doing this. There's a limit to how much a goblin can be pushed around, and if things keep going this way we are not gonna make it to the park's opening.”

The goblins all nodded and agreed in low voices. Only Axel challenged him.

“We can't, but what are we gonna do, Lemin? She's got us trapped by the oathstrike. Been spending a little too much time with that pointy hat wizard these last few weeks as well, if you ask me.”

The goblins all nodded in agreement, wearing defeated expressions.

A shrill voice came from a skinny and frail-looking goblin. “I told you picking Rom was a bad idea! I knew that idiot was gonna ditch the cart and run at them.”

“Oh, shut up.” A goblin with a dark, green color spoke, his rumbling and deep voice matching the hue of his skin. “How could have we known that them pointy hats would have magic like that? Gobmother only knows where Rom is ... or if he's still even alive.”

“Those hats ... I wonder what they hold inside them,” a younger goblin with a large and unusual head of golden and gray locks mused to himself.

Next to him, another goblin with a large protruding chin answered. “We wants them. Them pointy hats. If only we could get them.”

“Everyone stop!” Lemin took back control of the group. His voice towered above everyone else’s. “This is what we always do. We lose focus of things and drift off into random nonsense instead of actually sticking together and making things better.”

“Lemin,” Axel spoke up, the only voice that ever dared to address or match Lemin's. “We are in oathstrike. We can't do anything about it.” Axel leaned into his arm and held his head. His voice was low, grumbling and strained, and his eyes darted to the floor as a great sadness overtook him.

“Axel. My friend, there's always something we can do,” Lemin said as he moved closer to his friend, giving him a warm smile and attempting to cheer him. “I'll tell you what.” Lemin looked back up to address the rest of the goblins at the table. “I have been thinking. Sure, we lost the oathstrike. But I ask you: what does that actually mean?”

The goblins looked in confusion at one another, wondering what he could possibly mean by such a strange statement.

“If I win Oathstrike, I am raising your duties from fighters to servants,” Lemin said as he mockingly mimicked the princess’s voice and mannerisms. “The princess only increased our duties from fighters to servants.”

The entire table remained with the same air of confusion and bewilderment as Axel spoke up and asked, “So what?”

“My dear Axel. The terms of our bond are still the same. All that she did was broaden our duties,” Lemin responded with a kneel and smile to his seated opponent.

The goblin’s expression remained the same. “I'm not getting what you mean, Lemin.”

Lemin sighed and stood back up. Goblins from nearby tables began to huddle together as they united to hear the goblin’s words.

“Think about it. What were the terms of our old oathstrike? We would be fighters, guards, and sworn to protect and aid the princess if she ever called upon us.”

“Right ...” Axel answered, wondering what Lemin’s logic was.

He continued. “Here, far away from home, our oathstrike said that we would not raid, we would not form clans, and that the princess would remain as our leader. But!” Lemin expelled as he accentuated the last word. “I think many of you forgot part of her oath.”

The goblins looked shocked, as if an idea had suddenly sprung back into their heads. Axel looked up at Lemin, his mouth agape and his eyes widened as he realized what he meant.

“In our old oathstrike, Princess Ivy Wolfsbane swore that if she would ever gain a holding or land that she would provide us with the proper equipment, roof, and food for us to do our job as the green guard!”

The mob of goblins looked at one another. Their spirits began to rise, as did their voices.

Axel stood up, uttering to his friend, “Lemin ... you beautiful gobsmacker, you are right! How could have we forgot?”

Lemin smiled, seeing the hopes of the goblins reemerging. His voice boomed and echoed in the open air mess hall as he proudly proclaimed, “Princess Ivy Wolfsbane has made us now her servants. There is no disputing that; we lost that oathstrike. But! We spent so long without a land of our own fending for ourselves that we forgot that she holds duties to us as well. This is her land now and we are building her kingdom! She proclaimed it as such to us, and she is not honoring the oathstrike!”

Lemin grabbed a tray filled with the sawdust slop and threw it into the ground as the crowd of goblins cheered. He continued.

“I say then, friends, goblins, workers ... I call a strike! We will not move, we will not work, we will not fulfill our end of the oath until the princess fulfills hers and gives us what we want!”

The goblins all began to clap, cheer, and cry out Lemin’s name as he continued to rile them up.

“What do we want?” he called out, raising his fist into the air as did every other goblin.

“Meat!” they answered, matching Lemin's rhythm.

“What do we want?”

“Beds!”

“What do we want?”

“Roof!”

“What do we want?”

“Hats!” a lone voice cried out from below Lemin, and all the goblins looked for its source.

It was the goblin with the protruding chin, calling out, “Hats. We want hats. The pointy hat’s hats, to be precise.”

Lemin looked silently at the answer of his gomrade, stumbling on his words, as he tried to gain back the crowd’s focus. “Huh. What we want isn't important right now. What we need is to focus and get the princess to hear us and see our strike!”

The goblins’ spirits were lifted and their cheer carried to the night sky. Even Axel, downtrodden and cynical as he was, smiled and nodded at his friends’s hope.

“Yeah, and we also want to get the pointy hat's hats,” the goblin with the chin called yet again, derailing the spirit of the crowd.

Lemin addressed him. “Ok fine. We'll get those stupid hats as well. By the gobmother ...” he answered, holding his head in frustration, his voice trying to direct and move the crowd.

Below him, the goblin with the protruding chin raised his fist to himself and silently uttered, “Yes! Hats.”