Introduction

My name is Seron, Seron the Scribbler as people call me. I will tell you about a side of the war that is yet to make the light of day. For reasons I cannot speak of, I will not give my family name. However, that I believe to be irrelevant to the retelling of the story, as this story pertains to a gruesome history that has been hidden from us for a long period of time.

I recognize that by releasing this story in great detail, as it’s been retold to me, I’m exposing myself to various, dangerous factors. First would be my reputation, as this is not coming directly from the original source, but via another individual, which for this story we’ll call Robin. That, I do not mind, as I believe him to have told me the whole truth, even though it won’t seem so at first. If you trust my words to be true though, then you may agree with me that this has to be true, at least in some capacity.

What I fear most, is what people in power may do to me or those associated with me (thus why I will not reveal Robin’s real name either). As you may know already, my reputation hangs on the fact that my stories are as real as they can be, and tell truths that no one bothered digging for or tried hiding. So, if what’s being told in Robin’s story proves to be true, then I’m afraid this could very well be my last story as a journalist.

I am, however, content. I’m only releasing this story now because I was able to live my life and ensure that those involved can no longer be tracked down, as this story may expose their original whereabouts. I consider it to be my greatest work to date, and that it will ever be, it will also be my last work as a journalist. Treasure it if you will, despise it if you want, or discard it as you wish, I am content.

Without further ado, here is the story of an old war, told from the perspective of someone most involved in it: a goblin.

Goblin Sickness

The story begins with me travelling through Fenoa. Most people know this country nowadays as a peaceful haven, one which has seen the most of war, yet seems to also have forgotten all of it.

I’ve been gathering various stories from around the places. Most people didn’t have anything interesting to say, as their days were lived in quiet and peace. The most they had to say were things about bears or something they confused for a monster, but some of them, particularly in the most northern and colder region, had what I considered good stories.

One such story was about an illness going around. Not many people were afflicted by it, and even if they were, nothing grave happened. However, there were a small number of people who would die from it, but before they did, they would apparently see something. It wasn’t quite clear what that something was, and no one gave a good answer to it, so I was thinking it might just be another one of their myths.

Then, I was able to see one such person as it happened to them. It was unfortunate at the time that I had only arrived as they were halfway passing out. But the little I heard from them intrigued me. “Goblins!” the dying man screamed, looking terrified by something above him while lying in his bed, although nothing was there to be seen.

The word itself is what intrigued me most, “goblin”, some fifty years ago the word hadn’t been spoken once for a long time, as no such thing had been seen for more than eighty years, around the time the war had ended.

So I started looking deeper, wanting to know more. First I had to understand the history of the country better, what were their relations with the so called ‘magical beasts’. These creatures of old that are said to have been born from magic. Both concepts were foreign at the time for me, magical beasts and magic itself. But as you can tell by reading, I’ve grown accustomed to it at some point.

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That point was when I stumbled across an old book in a library from Leyo, a small town near the centre of the country. There I discovered that, while the illness taking over the man was similar, it wasn’t the same as that affecting the others. It had similar symptoms: coughing, fever, swollen feet and fingertips. But the difference stood in their eyes, their colour changing to an unnatural yellow or green of sorts. I was reluctant to try reaching back and see if the man had the same symptoms.

Part of me wanted to know more, while my gut was telling me there’s business I shouldn’t meddle with, and this was later proven to be true.

Even so, I reached back, and as you may have guessed, it confirmed. I haven’t even mentioned the colour. The man should’ve had black eyes, but instead they said it was a dirty yellow. The book said that the only way to get in touch with such a disease, would be by ingesting a goblin’s blood.

I’ve read more books on diseases, asked physicians from all around the country, and while on one side I didn’t get anything, on the other the same was affirmed.

One thing I found strange at the time, was the fact that there weren’t many books documenting such things. Even when I reported and mentioned this to various people from around Fenoa, nothing came of it. What was even more troublesome to me, was that even in our own country, Molavia, nothing came of it, or rather, they didn’t want me to know anything about it.

At that point, I was starting to feel that sinking feeling in my stomach, that I was poking a bee’s nest, and I was about to get stung for it. However, as I was still young and foolish at the time, and feeling that that was my purpose in all of this, to find out the truth, I pushed forward.

Even though there was no more information on it, and I knew that someone was bound to follow me soon enough, as I wasn’t careful about me asking around, there were still the people who got sick. If I followed that trail, then it could only lead me to one place: where the goblin was at. To have spottings of such a creature would cause an uproar from the general public, let alone having a living, breathing goblin walking around and making people sick.

First thing I did was: go back to the person who died from it. I was thinking maybe there was someone who held the goblin captive and was poisoning people with its blood. It was far-fetched considering that this was happening to random people from random places, but it made more sense than a goblin just going around, spilling its blood into people’s mouths at night.

I first started asking some questions to the family, pretending to be some higher authority that I wasn’t in order to get them to talk. There were no mentions of people that would have ill intentions of him, or that he could’ve struck some deal and such. What they did say, however, was that one night he travelled through the forest, coming back from cutting some wood. He had the symptoms back then, the coughing and soon fever that developed into something more. The only thing they remember him saying was that “I forgot where I was for a moment, and my hatched was all bloody for no reason.”.

The hatchet became a priority for me, wanting to see if there was any blood left on it. However, they buried him with it, as it was the one thing he valued most and was proud to swing. The thought of digging up his body did cross my mind, but besides the immense disrespect that would bring to him, it wasn’t like I could tell if the blood was that of a goblin. The book presenting the disease only spoke generally of the disease, never going into great detail. But at least I had a better understanding, or so I thought at the time.

I then followed the trail of deaths. The disease, which was more of a poison, started the same day a victim would fall prey to it, then it would linger for at least a month, after which it would move to the final phase, killing its victim. So all I had to do was gather information in regards to the other illness and see which people talked about it lingering more than usual.

It was hard at first, people around the northern region were a bit more secluded and didn’t speak much. Still, I managed, and I finally arrived at the second turning point of my journey.

I was in a village, the name I won’t mention, where I followed what I believed to be the oldest death to date, going back more than ten years. Something that bothered was that, even with the limited information on goblins, it was clearly known that a goblin couldn’t live more than two years, most dying before that. So I was thinking I was about to stumble across a nest of them. That thought changed my pursuit into something different, as I was no longer after one small creature terrorising villages and towns from all around, but a group of creatures that could have long gotten out of hand and could put the whole country at risk.

Before I was to make such conclusions, I had to ensure there was some chance of it. People from Fenoa, for all I knew, were the ones keeping the goblin population in check, if there was one. I also found it kind of odd and irritating that all the victims conveniently just forgot their trips into the forests.

It all started to be strange and I grew suspicious of the ones in power of the country, more so than before. Although I was thinking chances were high to be caught and killed, I still had safety spots to retreat to in case worse came about.

With that, I knew there was no more turning back from it. I was to learn the truth, no matter how ugly it was. In retrospect, I severely overestimated my ability to handle the truth, as it still haunts me to this day.