It was about midday when the whole wolf fiasco went down, and now it’s dark outside, and I mean really dark. I’ve been slowly and somewhat surely making my way towards the cave. Or at least I hope I am. I’m cold, weak, and I don’t even know if Jaba is even alive anymore, but at this point, all I care about is making sure I get him back, even though I can’t actually feel my legs anymore. I keep trucking along. Did I already mention it was dark? I mean really really dark, I can barely see my little green feet barely taking steps in front of me, and that's with taking into account the eyes of a Goblin who is better at seeing in the dark than a human being. Well at least I think it is, either way, not many other choices than to just keep walking.

One small green foot at a time..just…keep…walking..

And that's exactly what Rick did, he walked and walked and then walked some more. At some point in time, he began wondering just how much farther they had to go before he fainted, as his entire body ached beyond reason and his legs had long since gone numb.

It wasn’t just the fact that he was walking very far, it was the fact that he was carrying Jaba on his back the whole time. Taking into account that a Goblin of Rick’s size usually weighed only around sixty pounds total, while Jaba, who was a step above his peers, weighed around one hundred pounds. So it would come as no surprise that Rick was struggling to make it back, carrying one hundred pounds of deadweight because Jaba was still unconscious. But he walked on, with more determination than he has ever had in his short Goblin life or even in his life back on earth, the little Goblin continued to put a step in front of a step, ever so slowly moving forward, little by little. Until he could go no further. His legs couldn’t move, regardless of how much he wanted them to.

Begging and pleading with every fiber of his small green body to just take one more step towards home, didn't seem to be enough. The Goblin known as Rick had reached its limit and crumbled to his feet. The one time that Rick tried to do something meaningful in his life, something more than him, something important, it seemed he had failed.

At least that’s what Rick initially thought until he suddenly heard the tapping and running of what sounded like small feet, and as the feet got closer, Rick happily listened to a sound in which he never thought he’d love more than in this moment, that same old angry monster baby gibberish. Knowing or even hoping that he safely reached his home with Jaba still hopefully alive, Rick just stayed on the ground and immediately succumbed to his tiredness and fell asleep. He would wake up the next morning to quite an interesting surprise.

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

Waking up with a headache two times in a row is just simply two times too many. How can a young Goblin such as me get his beauty sleep if I’m having to deal with headaches first thing in the morning? It has got to stop! Anyway, what’s going on? Why am I the only one in this tent? Where are all the other Goblins? It was at this point that I could hear a very familiar voice speaking somewhat loudly in our cave. Is this Jaba? No, it can’t be, why does he sound so smooth? Did we get visited by some new Goblins or something? So I ran out of the tent looking to find the source of that voice and lo and behold it was indeed Jaba. Not only was he sounding a lot more different than what I was used to, but he also looked a lot more different too, like completely different.. better yet who the hell is that?!

Jaba woke up not too long before Rick did, and it only took a second for him to realize that he was no longer the same Goblin as his previous self. For one he was a lot taller, now standing at around six feet tall. When you remember that he was previously at around four feet in height, while Goblins like Rick stood no taller than three feet, it was definitely a massive jump for Jaba.

The signature potbelly on a Goblin was now gone, instead replaced with abdominal muscles that Jaba didn’t even have to work on, it seems after his change he became immediately ripped from head to toe. The one thing about him that didn’t change in a physical way was the fact he was still a beautiful shade of green, just slightly lighter than his fellow Goblins.

Although his physical changes were quite shocking to see, his most alarming transformations come on the inside of him. He felt he could understand the world around him a lot better than before, more and more concrete thoughts ran through his head now and most of all he felt like he could talk just like Rick did, without random pauses after every word or two. He would describe it as him feeling like a part of his brain which had always been there finally unlocked. It was then that Jaba finally realized he was standing in this tent all alone, fully naked as his previous loincloth could no longer fit around his waist, so he grabbed the much larger piece of animal hide that was being used as a bed and wrapped that around his waist instead.

Finally emerging from his tent, he saw all the other Goblins in the tribe except for Rick sitting around the fire, as if waiting for him to come out. So he quickly walked up to the group and greeted them, just in time for him to see the weird Goblin that he knew saved his life when he was on death’s door, walking out of a tent with a baffled expression present on his face. Of course, he immediately knew what caused Rick’s confusion, so he chuckled softly and called out to him.

Seeing the brand-new Jaba calling out to him, Rick only responded by saying out loud the only words on his mind at that moment.

“What the hell?”