The sun was setting and all three teams were assembled just outside of the black and purple portal, along with the contingent group defending this side of the portal. The teams were all checking their gear and making sure that they were prepared for their mission.
Major Thompson stepped up to the groups and spoke. “Alright men and women, this is it. Remember, we aren’t just here to neutralize a target. We are also here to gather information. Take note of anything and everything. After the primary objectives are met, begin the secondary objective. We need to gather more of these stones for study and to understand what they do and their relationship with these creatures. If you come across more camps than initially scouted, use your discretion to either eliminate the additional hostiles, or fall back here. Move out and godspeed!”
With that, teams Guillotine, Sawblade, and Overwatch approached the portal aperture and entered one team at a time. Once on the other side, the teams split up. Based on scouting reports, Guillotine's target was 4 miles northwest of the portal, Saw Blade’s target was 5 miles northeast of the portal, and Overwatch’s target was 3 miles due north of the portal.
Team Overwatch was assigned the closest camp to give them time to begin observations. The General wanted to know what the Goblin’s typical behavior was and how they responded in an emergency.
It wasn’t long before Overwatch was in position outside of the Goblin camp. Four of them, including Captain Ryan, and Staff Sergeant Ramirez, climbed trees on the northwest and northeast sides of the camp so that they would be in strong vantage points if the camp's Goblins moved to reinforce either team Guillotine or Saw Blades target.
The remaining soldiers, including Airman Roberts took cover in the foliage at the southwest and southeast corners of the camp. This left them in position to rapidly respond if the Goblins headed for the portal or either of the camps.
Captain Ryan counted the Goblins in their camp. There were only 16 in Overwatch’s camp, just as the report stated, which meant that none of the Goblins had moved camps since they were initially scouted. That, or if they had changed camps, just as many showed up as left. Ryan began fidgeting with a quarter in his pocket as he observed the Goblin’s behavior and waited. Most of them were clustered in groups of three or five. A few were cooking what appeared to be rats on skewers, others were asleep on hide skin bed rolls, and the last ones were squabbling and brawling with one another. At least he hoped that they were brawling. The last thing Ryan wanted was to have to report on Goblin mating behaviors. He shivered at the thought and continued fidgeting with his quarter, rifle readied and waiting for the other teams’ signals.
* * *
Team Guillotine got to their camp next, being a bit closer than team Saw Blade to their camp. Guillotine took stock of the camp. There were 25 Goblins in their camp, which matched the report they received. That meant if the other reports were correct, there would only be 22 Goblins in Saw Blade’s camp.
Much like team Overwatch’s camp, the Goblins were divided up into groups of three to five doing similar activities. Guillotine picked a group of five Goblins that seemed to be moving around, searching the forest floor for something. Guillotine approached through thick ferns and readied their combat knives. They halted when the group of Goblins all began running from the camp in a zigzag line, like they were chasing something. Guillotine crept after them, positioning themselves between the group and the camp as the group of five Goblins ran further from camp as they pursued whatever poor creature had been spotted by them. One of the Goblins dove at the ground and all of the others followed, pouncing as they reached the first Goblin. A moment later they were standing back up, with what appeared to be a rat the size of a cat held by two of the Goblins. The two were tugging it back and forth and soon the other three got to their feet and joined in the squabbling. Team Guillotine quietly surrounded the distracted Goblins and in a quick and quiet motion, reached up clamping their jaws shut to muffle any screams and to expose their necks. They slit all five of the Goblins’ throats in unison. They pulled back on the Goblins’ heads, both pulling them to the ground and widening the gash in their necks. The Goblins dropped the torn apart rat and clawed at the arms holding them as they quietly passed away, only making choked gurgling noises as they died.
After a moment, all of the Goblin corpses began to deflate with black smoke leaking out. It smelled like a mix of burnt bile with hair. However, where three of the smoke clouds dispersed and dissipated, two of them gathered to team Guillotine’s leader’s hip pocket. Team Guillotine’s lead made a face like he was about to be sick, then pulled the obsidian stones out of his pocket and they now had a shifting black and purple swirl to them. He put them back in his pocket and they moved to the next group.
Team Guillotine repeated similar tactics on the rest of the groups, picking off three to five at a time depending on which one would be less likely noticed. However, these times, all of the corpses just deflated with the black smoke dispersing. They no longer interacted with the obsidian stones held by the team leader.
Team Guillotine had just killed the group that were cooking more rats of unusual size around the fire and began to move in on a group of four Goblins that were wrestling each other when a red flare rose up in the night sky about three miles east by northeast of them. It was team Saw Blade. They had neutralized their camp.
The Goblins immediately stopped their brawl looking up in the sky at the flare. They were dazed by it, not quite sure what to think of it. That was when three were tackled and immediately stabbed in the bottom of their chins. The fourth Goblin turned in time and jumped at its assailant, latching onto its head and began scratching and clawing at his face.
Pop, pop! Two M18 gunshots rang out. Both 9mm rounds hit the Goblin in the side of its ribs. It fell to the ground off of the torso of the man it had latched itself onto. The Goblin squirmed in agony, not understanding what had happened to it. Its eyes turned to one of the men that held the firearm in his hand. The Goblin fought through the pain, screamed and began to lunge at the man. A third pop rang out and the Goblin dropped to the ground with a bullet hole in its forehead.
The man holstered his sidearm, pulled out an orange flare gun and fired it into the sky. He turned to his team. “Guillotine’s primary objective is complete. Bandage Airman Brown [broun] and get him back to the portal then wait there for us. If you see Goblins, fallback through the portal and warn them.”
Someone was already bandaging Brown’s face where the worst gouges were. Turns out Goblin claws were pretty sharp and infection would be a concern with how disgusting the creatures were.
“Airman Grace [greys]. Get your ass up a tree with that rifle and keep an eye out for more hostiles. The rest of us need to round up these crystals and weapons. Pile the remains up men. We will begin hauling them back to the portal last.”
* * *
Team Overwatch had been watching their camp's activities. Ryan still wasn’t sure if the Goblins were fighting or mating and was ready to be done with this mission when a red flare lit up the night sky to Overwatch’s northeast.
All of the Goblins, except the ones asleep, stopped what they were doing and looked at the flare in a daze. After a moment, they heard a distant pop, pop. Shortly followed by a third pop. Then another flare rose up in the night sky. All of the Goblins then turned to the noise and hissed, the ones asleep woke up. They all began speaking gibberish and hissing as they scrambled.
The Goblins began scrambling over each other, grabbing nearby weapons and heading to both of the flares in the sky. How they split up was chaos. They effectively were in a mad dash and decided which one to go to based on which one had fewer Goblins already rushing in that direction. They ultimately divided up into nine heading northwest toward team Guillotine’s flare and gunshots, and seven heading northeast toward team Saw Blade’s flare.
As the Goblins began leaving their camp in either direction, gunshots began ringing out.
Bang! Bang, bang! Bang! Bang, bang, bang! Four of the Goblins heading to team Guillotine fell and three heading to team Saw Blade fell. Not yet dead they were writhing on the ground in agony. The remaining Goblin groups of five and four stopped in their paths, looked up in the trees where the noises came from, and spotted four of Overwatch’s riflemen and hissed.
Bang, bang! Bang, bang! Shots rang out from behind them in the camp and two more from each group dropped.
The Goblins turned to face their new foes when six more shots rang out from all of their surrounding enemies and the rest dropped.
Ryan, Ramirez, and the other two riflemen of Overwatch climbed down out of their trees and the team began finishing off the Goblins that were still writhing on the ground with their combat knives. The ones that had already died to their gunshot wounds were already deflating with putrid black smoke.
One of the Goblin’s deflating near Ryan had its smoke absorbed into Ryan’s obsidian stone in his side pocket. The smoke hit him and he started heaving his guts out from the smell.
“Hey Cap, I’m glad they made you hold that thing. This stuff smells bad from afar. I’d hate for it to seek me out like that.” Airman Roberts quipped.
After Ryan stopped puking his guts out, he got to his feet. “I’m glad you think so Roberts, because you are now on recovery duty.” Ryan pulled out his flare gun and fired it into the air. “Ramirez, Windler [wind-lur]! You two, get back up those trees and keep any eye out for any reinforcements. The rest of you gather the corpses for Roberts to dig these stones out of.”
“Fuck!” Roberts exclaimed.
“You should learn to keep your mouth shut.” Windler said as he slung his rifle over his shoulder and began to climb a tree again.
Ryan and the rest began dragging all of the Goblin remains near the campfire as Roberts began cutting them open and removing the obsidian stones from inside them. They all appeared to be located inside the ribcage, around where you would expect a heart to be. However, all that was left inside the corpses were bones and gooey, stringy flesh that tied the insides together. It was like all of the muscle and organs evaporated into black smoke leaving mostly calcium and skin behind.
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Roberts was just cutting into the last of the Goblin remains when both team Guillotine and Saw Blade showed up, both dragging Goblin remains behind them, using the hide skin beds as tarps.
“Hey Captain, sounds like you had quite the firefight over here. Everything go smoothly?” Team Guillotine’s lead called out.
“Yeah, the Goblins were more stunned by team Saw Blade’s flare until they heard the gunshots. That whipped them up into a frenzy and they started heading toward both of your teams. We expected as much and were in position to put them down quickly, but not quietly. It seems like any signs of life enrages these creatures. What happened to two of your squad?” Captain Ryan asked.
“Sorry about that. One of the fuckers latched onto Brown’s face when we moved on the last of our targets. That is why I resorted to using my sidearm. I sent Grace to escort him back to the portal and to stand guard by it.”
“Understood. We are just wrapping up here. Right Roberts?”
“Yeah, I just pulled the last of our stones out”
“Hey, at least you have a pair now.” Windler shouted down from the tree.
“Stow it, airman.” Ryan shouted up at Windler.
“Sir, I see movement coming from the north.” Ramirez shouted down. “Looks like three hostiles heading this way fast.”
“All riflemen, pick a tree and climb. Call out any additional reinforcements, but hold fire until ordered. Everyone else, grab one of those spears. It looks like there are either some stragglers or there were more camps. Ramirez, get me positions. Spotters, I want hand gestures for directions. You will be our plan B if needed.” Captain Ryan ordered and everyone began moving.
Remirez gestured in each direction the inbound were coming from. The six men on the ground, including Guillotine’s and Saw Blade’s leads, grabbed spears and moved into position for the first approaching hostile.
They were more Goblins. The first popped out of the ferns into a clearing right in front of the six soldiers wielding spears. They made short work of it. The next two Goblins were closer together and the six spearmen split into two groups of three and made just as quick work of these Goblins.
The Goblins made it fairly easy for the soldiers as they practically charged in and impaled themselves on a spear while the other soldiers stabbed them with killing blows.
A knocking sound on a tree trunk signaled more inbound. This time six were spotted. The spotters gestured where exactly they were coming from, which were all from the north, but scattered out.
The spearmen engaged each, dividing up as needed if they were approached by Goblins close enough to one another.
Then more knocking sounds came from the trees. This time 20. The spearmen repeated the process, never splitting up into less than pairs. One by one they slaughtered all of the inbound.
Then there was even more knocking, except this time there were 27 from the north and 11 from the northwest.
Ryan knew that this was a bad sign. This must have meant that there were definitely more camps and they responded to all three flares so they were beginning to come from team Guillotine’s and team Saw Blade’s original targets. At this rate they would be overrun in no time.
This time, instead of the spearmen splitting into pairs, they created a small phalanx line with their spears and let the Goblins come to them. The Goblins began to flank the sides of the phalanx and Ryan gave the order.
“Fire at the flanking hostiles!”
A clap of rifle fire rang out from the eight riflemen perched in trees and six Goblins that were moving around the spearmen’s left flank immediately dropped. Another clap rang out and the remaining five moving around their flank dropped. Several more gunshots rang out as individuals from the larger group from the north tried to move around to either of the spearmen’s flanks.
After the wave of Goblins was slaughtered, Captain Ryan called down. “We are getting overrun here. Ground crew fall back to the portal. Tree crew, climb higher and hold your fire. They don’t seem to be noticing us up here until we open fire. We will hold back and observe the enemy and will fall back once we get an opportunity.”
“Affirmative!” Both team Guillotine’s and Saw Blade’s leads shouted back.
“Sir, next wave inbound. It’s a lot and coming from all three directions.” Windler called over to Captain Ryan as he was climbing higher up.
“Get moving men. Fall back!” Ryan ordered and the spearmen on the ground began to make their way back to the portal.
Not too long after the spearmen left team Overwatch’s camp, Goblins came rushing in from all three directions. There were well over a hundred of them. It was chaos in the camp as the Goblins were looking around for the intruders, none of them noticing the soldiers high up in the trees. Then one of the Goblin’s squeaked out, noticing the trail of the retreating spearmen. The horde of Goblins all rapidly pursued them south toward the portal.
There was a second horde that showed up that continued on through after the first one. This one had a little more than the first horde. However, most of them came from team Guillotine’s and Saw Blade’s camps, where only about a dozen or so came from the north.
It appeared that there were a significant number of other encampments out there that were further than the scouting team had gone. Thankfully, the General had prepared for this and had a response waiting just on the other side of the portal. Ryan gagged at the thought of all of that black smoke in one area.
Then more reinforcements were spotted. These only came out of the northeast, where Saw Blade’s camp was. The furthest from the portal, but the closest to all of the undiscovered Goblin camps.
There were about 25 of them, but instead of mostly naked scrawny green Humanoids. These were armored in jagged iron plate armor.
As they got closer, Ryan noticed that they weren’t fully covered in armor. Their thighs and biceps were exposed, but they had helmets, chest plates, gauntlets, boots, and shields. They carried spears and had a machete attached at their hips. He could see the green skin on the exposed areas. They were still Goblins. Except for maybe one.
The one that led them was about five feet tall, was armored like the rest, but instead of green skin, it had a brownish skin. It didn’t have a shield or any of the weapons the others did though. Instead it carried a gnarly looking battle axe.
This must be the vanguard bringing up the rear of the forces. These weren’t blindly charging ahead. They were moving at a steady pace and with purpose. They were taking in their surroundings as they moved through the camp and stopped in the center by the fire, looking around.
With two hordes moving through before them, the camp was in shambles. Everything had been scattered and trampled. There were too many tracks to make heads or tails of at this point. The piles of Goblin corpses had been scattered as the hordes climbed and trampled them on their way through with no respect for their own dead.
The leader, who Ryan figured to be something akin to a Hobgoblin, from what he heard of from games, books, and movies, was taking note of how many Goblin corpses there were in this camp. After all, they not only killed the original camp dwellers here, but had also dragged the remains from the other two camps, and held off a number of waves of assaulting Goblins.
With one hand this Hobgoblin picked up one of the deflated corpses that had been cut open and had the stone removed from inside and examined it. It held up another deflated corpse, this one not cut open, but skewered by spears, with the other hand and examined it. The Hobgoblin dropped the one killed by spears and looked closer at the one cut open. It then stuck a finger through one of the bullet holes in what would have been the skin from the Goblin’s back. It pulled its finger back out and looked through the hole and then tossed it aside.
Ryan was fidgeting with the quarter in his pocket, which was a really bad idea at this moment. He shifted to pull his hand out of his pocket and support his rifle again when a branch under one of his feet snapped and he had to catch himself from falling out of the tree.
The Goblin vanguard looked up at Captain Ryan in unison and the Hobgoblin let out a roar as it drew its gnarly looking, mangled iron battle axe. The rest raised their shields and spears. They then noticed the others in the trees and moved into a porcupine phalanx formation around their leader. The Hobgoblin shouted something at them in its language.
Ryan knew that this was a challenge. However, this was the first real sign of intelligence from the Goblins, so he shouted down at the Hobgoblin.
“Can you understand me?”
The Hobgoblin repeated the gibberish noises, but louder this time. Clearly challenging Captain Ryan to come down and fight.
“I take that as a no then?”
The Hobgoblin once again repeated what it said before, except this time pushing his way out of the phalanx and over to the tree Ryan was in.
“Men, ready.”
The Hobgoblin took a swing at Ryan’s tree with its battle axe, cutting a hefty chunk from it.
“Aim!” Ryan shouted as he looked through the scope of his M4, as he aimed it at the head of the Hobgoblin.
The Hobgoblin took another swing and another chunk out of Ryan’s tree. It then let out a roar and prepared a third swing.
“Fire!” Ryan pulled the trigger as a thunderclap of rifle fire rang out.
The Hobgoblin dropped immediately dead as the 5.56mm bullet penetrated his helmet and passed through his brain and out the lower back of his skull, splattering brain matter on the ground and Goblins behind him. The Hobgoblin fell to the ground with a clatter.
Along with their leader, seven other Goblin vanguard dropped. However, they weren’t immediately dead. They were all shot either in the torso or somewhere along the shoulder line based on the angle of the rifleman targeting them. That being said, they were all writhing in pain, reaching for their bullet wounds. Their armor, too thin and poorly made to protect them from rifle fire.
The rest of the vanguard scattered and began to flee in all directions as more gunfire rang out picking off the rest as they fled. It was a slaughter. These Goblins didn’t stand a chance against superior weapons and tactics, even when they showed the capability for some strategy.
Where the real threat came from was the numbers of Goblins and their rabid ferocity.
Ryan climbed down out of his tree as the incapacitated Goblins slowly began dying one by one from their wounds. All of the dead, including the Hobgoblin, were now leaking black smoke.
As Ryan reached the ground, the Hobgoblin finished deflating. Ryan slung his rifle over his shoulder and pulled out his combat knife. He first cut the straps to the Hobgoblin’s chestplate and removed it. He then cut open its chest and found the obsidian stone inside of it. However, this one was bigger than the one that was provided to him. Not by much, but noticeable, where the rest of the ones they had seen from the Goblins were all the same size and roughly the same shape.
Ryan removed the stone from the Hobgoblin’s chest and there was a rumble in the ground. Ryan shoved the stone in his pocket.
“Hey Captain. What was that?” Ramirez asked from his tree while looking around.
“It’s nothing good. I think it’s time for us to finally leave this camp and carefully begin making our way back to the portal.”
The rumbling grew and the ground noticeably began to shake. The tree Ryan was in cracked as a seam from where the Hobgoblin was hacking at it connected to the other side of the tree. With loud cracks the tree began to fall and came down with a loud crash. The rumbling and shaking abruptly stopped.
“It is definitely time to get out of the trees. Is anyone hurt?” Ryan asked.
Everyone sounded off as they climbed out of their trees. No one was injured.
“Alright, let's get back to that portal and get out of here. I don’t like that rumbling and we’ve drawn enough attention to anything that is still in the area on this side.”
Along their way back. The earthquakes became more frequent and stronger. They occasionally would have to stop to dodge falling trees and to prevent themselves from tripping during the earthquakes.
It was eerie. There was no sound of birds or small forest animals disturbed by the earthquakes. The only noise was them making their way back to the gate, the rumblings from the earthquakes, and the sound of trees falling around them.