“Who do you work for!? Tell me mister Gobo!” I demand of the particularly angry Goblin that I have tied up with shadows, hanging from a spider’s web like a captured fly.
“Kurpse no Ghe’Dem! Gov’es cas mekitek no linney en descar no doken! Unbreax Gov’es, se Gov’es shinke wa!!!” The tied-up Goblin screams back into my face, his rage clear on his face with his lips pulled back in a snarl, his crooked and sharp teeth on full display.
“Where were you on the night of the third? Tell me punk! Where are the explosives being kept!?”
“Kurpse no Ghe’Dem!!! Gov’es cas vengreas Fitfif! Unbreax Billybilly!”
“You are really smelly. You also should really brush your teeth…”
The Goblin continue to scream at me in what I assume is a stream of curses, but I turn away to look over at Nathaniel and Lieutenant Colonel Roberts. I have to raise my voice to talk over his screaming. “You see what I was talking about? He is using words. He’s talking!”
“Are you certain?”
“Yes, I am. I think Gre’dem might refer to me… Gov’es is his name, I think, they might be talking in third person. Not sure about Fitfif and Billybilly though- Ahh! Stop yelling at me! Ok, he reacted to those words though. Maybe they are some other Goblins we killed? I’m really thinking that they are- Oh my gods, you are so loud! Let’s talk outside!”
Holding my hands to my ears I quickly leave the room with Nathaniel and my boss. They don’t seem too sad to be parting from the noisy Goblin and gladly follow me out the room.
“Like I was saying, he is using words, his sentences have structure to them. I’ve heard plenty of Goblins make noises at me before. They just make noise, like a baby babbling angrily at you, it was never anything coherent and meaningful like this.”
“Are you trying to tell us that the Goblins are becoming people now or something?” Nathaniel asks.
“Mhm, I noticed it when he was trying to barbecue you guys. He seemed really upset when his dog got shot… Ah, crap, we killed a guy’s dog and then took him prisoner…”
Speaking of dogs, why the hell were they riding them!? I almost had a freaking panic attack again when I saw them come tearing out of the woods. Thankfully, my Demons were there to take care of them, but are there going to be even more of them after this? Is this where all the dogs have been disappearing off to? How the hell did the Goblins tame them?
As I am rolling around in my thoughts about the dogs, LC Roberts gets my attention. “If they are developing and getting smarter, then that means that they are capable of using strategy. This is going to make our situation much more dangerous. Instead of it just being mindless monsters running headfirst into our defenses, we now need to worry about planned attacks and strategic movements.”
“Doesn’t seem like they were using very much strategy against us earlier. They just charged headfirst into us and died.” I say.
“Yes, but this is most likely their first time facing a threat like this. They probably haven’t had to do anything more than recklessly charge forward and attack so far. Without extreme numbers and power advantage, such a strategy won’t work against us in the long run. The problem is, however, that they seem to already be implementing strategy.”
“What do you mean?”
“This attack doesn’t seem like it was a planned one. From the look of it, this was a recon unit that happened upon us. While you were interrogating your prisoner, I sent out some men and your Demons to scout the area. Besides a few scattered survivors, there doesn’t seem to be any more enemy forces nearby.”
“Which also means that the one I caught is probably also not the nuke dropper… Great, let’s just hope that they don’t have too many fire mages in their ranks. This guy was actually able to hurt me.”
Nathaniel pipes in, “About that, I thought you were fireproof?”
“I mean, sort of? I’ve only really stuck my hand in a little campfire before. It’s not like I’ve bathed in napalm or anything, and I certainly don’t want to test the limits of my fire resistance. Plus, it is magical fire, so I am expecting at least some level of bullshittery with that… “
“Hmh, fair enough. So, we definitely shouldn’t just try to tank any of their magic attacks then. It might hit harder than we expect it to.”
“Yup, make sure to tell the others.”
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The Lieutenant Colonel rejoins the conversation at this. “On that subject, what are your plans for your prisoner? From what I understand, you are the only thing keeping him from burning this place to the ground.”
“Ah, ya… Right now, I’m keeping him suppressed with my Field, but if I leave, he will be able to use magic again. We don’t have some way of keeping him contained, do we?”
“No, we don’t. And even if we did, we can’t guarantee that it would work long term. Our Forward Operations wasn’t built with the intention of containing prisoners of war, magical of otherwise.”
“Haaaaa… and if we let him go, he’ll just run back home and tell his friends about us. I… I’m really not comfortable with the idea of executing a prisoner. Even if he is just a Goblin, he is also clearly a person…”
“Luckily, that it isn’t a decision that you have to make, it is mine. What you said is correct. We can’t release him, but at the same time, we can’t keep him here, not while you are the only one that can keep him contained. Before you leave, that Goblin will have to be put down. If you don’t do it, someone else will.”
“Mmm, yes sir… What about the female we brought back? She can’t use magic it seems.”
“If that is the case, then there won’t be any problem keeping her here for now.”
“Alright then, thank you sir. Before we leave, I would like to see how much I can learn from him, so I’ll be keeping an eye on him. Could you have them bring the female here?”
“Yes, I’ll have her brought over. Before you leave for your mission, be sure to inform me of anything that you learn from them.”
“Yes sir.”
Parting from Nathaniel and my boss, I head back into the room. The Goblin is hanging there from the shadowy spider web, seething silently as he watches me walk back into the room. He doesn’t say anything as he watches me, just giving me a death glare the entire time as I take my seat behind the table.
We sit, or well, I sit, and he hangs, in awkward silence for a long time. For now, I just remained there while I wait.
After some time, we can hear some noise coming from outside that sound like a woman screaming. Before long, the door to our room is getting opened and a female Goblin is getting carried in by a pair of soldiers as she spits, screams, and tries to bite everyone. Her hands are cuffed, and the soldiers have dressed her in a new shirt. When she had come in, she wasn’t wearing anything but a loin cloth and a dirty fur poncho.
When she enters the room, her eyes instantly go from the soldier she’s trying to bite, to me, and then straight to the tied-up Goblin. Her fighting against the soldier redoubles, and when I wave for them to let her go, they drop her and let her run into the room.
She instantly moves for the tied-up guy and jumps up onto the spider web, her cuffed hands grabbing at the webs to try and pull them apart and free him.
“Billybilly cas unbreax wa. Brea, Billybilly cas salv’e Gov’es!” She screams as she pulls at the shadows.
I wave the soldiers away as they hesitate over whether or not they should try to stop her. “It’ll be fine, close the door please.”
With the soldiers gone, and it now being just me and the two Goblins, I watch as she continues to tear at the shadows, but they simply refuse to break or tear. He talks to her as she fights against his bindings, and she responds with more desperate calls. Deciding that I don’t much enjoy watching this, I go ahead and wave the shadows away, dropping them both to the ground in a heap.
As soon as they hit the ground, they both move to attack me, the one that I am certain now is called Gov’es, pulling as much fire as he can to his fist as he goes for a punch.
I don’t bother moving from my seat as they charge. Pulling my shadows, I make the both of them trip before they even reach the table, wrapping up their ankles and pulling them back to the other side of the room.
“Can you both relax, please?”
They don’t relax, unsurprisingly, and both scream as they throw themselves at me again.
And again, I trip them and pull them back to the other side of the room.
Again and again, they attack me, and again and again, I stop them.
“Relax already…”
Gov’es gets up and chucks a little fireball at me. Mostly out of reflex, I reach out and catch it, the flames eating at my hand as I hold it.
Ignoring the two of them for a moment, I look down at the little ball of fire that I am holding, my skin sizzling and burning under its heat.
Looking at it, I examine how it is constructed, marveling at something that shouldn’t exist. It is a literal ball of fire. It is a bit squishy, but yet solid, almost like a mud ball. Looking deeply into it, the ball seems to have a concentrated core of fire, that should have exploded when it hit me, but my field is currently keeping it suppressed.
While I am looking at the ball, I throw the two pissed off Goblins back again without looking at them.
Structurally, it is basically the same as if I made a ball out of shadows. But the difference is the flames that are radiating off from it. The way the mana moves inside of them, pulling from the core of the ball as it continues to burn. Interesting…
I bring it close and watch how it burns my skin, the flames themselves aren’t what is harming me, but the mana itself. It appears to be eating my flesh, the fire mana destroying itself to destroy my skin in turn.
Fascinating… I should be able to do this too, right? I’ve been having a lot of trouble trying to get my shadows to delete stuff, like Sky said I did to the bear. If I can figure this out, then I can make my shadows more deadly…
Sending the Goblins away again, I switch hands for holding the fire ball after coating my other hand in shadows to keep it from burning. The palm of my right hand is now charred black from the burns and hurts like a bitch, but I can mostly ignore it. It takes a little bit for it to start noticeably healing, proper feeling in my palm from the burned away nerves slowly coming back to me as the blackened skin falls away.
Bringing a small stick of shadows to the flame, I observe it as the fire mana cuts through and pulls apart the shadow’s structure, making it fall apart under the flames.
With time, the fire ball will burn itself out. But if I keep feeding it mana, even if I can’t use fire mana myself…
“Hmm, there we go… cool… Now, can you two please calm down?! Gov’es! Billybilly! Stop!” I yell.
Storing the fire ball that just increased in size inside of a shadow cage and then setting it aside, I look at the two shocked Goblins and tell them, “Will you two please stop attacking me. You can’t beat me, so relax. Please…”