I face off with a cave mouth. Two dead goblins at the entrance. Killed by me of course. They hardly put up a fight, I had been cautious at first, I had learned my lesson. Not everything was as it seemed, the batlings had taught me that much.

Voices echo from out of the cave mouth.

“Nug? Wher you Nug?” I pause. Goblins. I wait for a couple of seconds and hear another voice call out. Just a couple of gobs from the look of it. I could kill them easily, I just needed to know how many there were in total. Cave fighting made it easy to get tripped. Goblins were masters at it.

I look at the dead sentries and then take a step into the cave. My foot sinks deep into something, I look down, and find my foot inside of a dead goblin’s gut, all of its entrails had been eaten.

The voices stop. “Nug?”

I stay silent and stalk toward the voices, just a single tunnel so far, but I can tell that it had been mined. The goblins call out again and I come within a couple of troll-lengths and count how many there are. Around ten goblins. So long as they are as weak as the others outside it shouldn’t be a problem.

I take a deep breath and then roar as loud as I can, saliva flying and foam forming. The goblins look at me and scream.

“Gleeeeeeg!”

The sound made the rest flinch and start moving. They began to run, tripping, pushing, and kicking the others into my way. I pace forward, and growl, low and menacing. One of the ones at the back trip and fall.

I move toward it and stand over it. The thing pisses itself, and stares at me, eyes wide with fear. The rest of the group ran toward the end of the tunnel only to be stopped by another, larger, group of gobs coming down.

The new group of gobs stops when they see me and I see something start flying toward me. I dodge, not wanting to be hit by anything that I don’t know about. I’m too slow though and the arrow hits me in the face and then falls off. The goblins stop mid-charge, their confidence sputtering when they see the effect of the arrow.

I look at them and they look at me.

I charge, and they run. Their legs can’t carry them fast enough though and I smash into their back rank, bowling over gobs and crushing them beneath my feet. Blood splatters and I laugh, this was my element. Crushing those beneath me, the gobs come at me from all sorts of different angles but their weapons just bounce off my hide. Sometimes I see them covered with some sort of glow and those manage to pierce my hide but all I do then is grab a goblin and feast on his soul. Draining it into a lifeless husk and empowering myself. The goblins eventually getaway, at least the few that I haven’t slaughtered hiding in small passageways or going into random nooks and crannies I can’t reach.

I grunt, stretch and move out of the cave. I’d come back tomorrow and try to find the rest and then bend to my will. The goblins know that their best bet would be to stay inside their cave and try to hide. The outside world would rip them pieces.

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I find my own cave, and hunker down. Thinking about Eye, the goblins, and what the future holds. I needed to sort this situation out fast. Others would follow, after all, I didn’t try particularly hard to hide my tracks. Besides, I’m no tracker, even if I wanted to, I wouldn’t be able to do it all that well.

I settle down and get to sleep.

…………………..

I wake to darkness and sigh, I had gotten too used to the sun shining down on me. It was a nice sight, and it made things easier, waking up I mean. The Pits were always dark, and even the tiniest amount of light was seen as evil. I never agreed. I always won against light things. Maybe it was because most of the other Trolls turned to stone in the light of the sun.

I shrug, those are questions for another time. Right now I have bigger problems, I gaze toward the goblin cave and see activity. Or at least moving shapes, I’m too far away to really tell the difference.

Knowing goblins though they are probably setting up traps and other nasty surprises for me. They were cunning that way. Preparing traps was a speciality of theirs, honed over years and years of protecting themselves from predators. Not that their traps would do all that much. The only thing that could really hurt me would be a pit trap.

And pits are my speciality. Holes aren’t all that hard to find, even ones made by Troll- engineers. I could always see them, just like how I could always see the tunnels that the miners dug.

Any other trap that could be made overnight would be useless against me. Unless it was a magical trap. I had seen what shamans could do, and if goblins had their own then I could be in trouble. I didn’t see any the night before though, so I was probably safe.

I stretch and then move, slowly stalking toward them. I make a slow circle of their cave, making sure to say away from them. Stealth wasn’t my strongest skill but I learned enough to be able to hide when needed.

[Skill Unlocked: Stealth. Innate skill level found. Stealth gained: Level 5.]

I watch and notice that there aren’t any shovels around, and there were no piles of dirt either. Nothing I could see made me agree with my earlier thoughts. Other then them being goblins of course. Still, though, magical traps are a thing, I would need to be careful.

I move closer to the goblins and wait for another moment. More activity, goblins start to stream out of the cave mouth and start lining up. The one controlling them all is the biggest goblin I have ever seen. So tall that its head would be at my belly button. He was head and shoulders bigger than any of the other goblins present, and his weapon was just as impressive. A mace. A metal mace, I would want it if it wasn’t so small.

There was another goblin though. Not as large as the first but still just as strange. This one was covered in bones. My first thought was that it was goblin shaman after all bones were very good for rituals. Or so I heard.

It didn’t have a staff though and carried a sword. Interesting. Something that I wasn’t expecting. It seemed that this goblin was the real leader. It was ordering the others around and even the bog goblin seemed to bow to its authority.

I move in closer and then I see the covered up holes. The goblins are all in front of them, I snarl. They were going to try to trap me. Bait me. Make me fall. The holes were well hidden but easily seen. Mere gobs couldn’t fool me. It seemed they were smarter than I first thought, especially since they hid the dirt and shovels. I tense and prepare to charge, I kill the bone goblin and take the other one captive. The bone goblin was the leader and needed to be taken down. The big one though. It would join me, I would breed it and make more. Make something useful out of a useless race.

A shout comes from the bone goblin and the rest all quieten down, spears pointed out into the darkness. Had they seen me? Did they know I was coming? Their arms are shaking with fear, but is it fear of me or fear of their leaders? I wait for a little longer. I’m curious. This isn’t normal gob behaviour, not at all.

The bone goblin snarls at the large one. They both start moving, not into the formation but away from it, going into the dark mists. I prepare to pounce, waiting for them to come closer. They move with purpose, not coming straight towards me but slowly coming my way.

I move toward them, they know I’m here. Hopefully, they think I don’t know their on to me. I have no idea what they’re going to try to accomplish. There isn’t a lot they could do.

When they get within a troll-length of me the bone covered one bursts out with a red light, blinding me, the bones on it melt and then flow, forming an armoured shell around it. The big goblin on the other hand just gets bigger. It muscles become more defined, and the mace it holds is covered in the same red light as the other goblin.

I charge forward. I need to get them while I still can, and after them, I’ll get the rest.