28th Obsidian, 71
Goxa ran, dagger clutched in one hand and a dirty rag pressed to his nose and mouth with the other. The rag had belonged to the half-eared book-slave, Zom, back when she still had the other ear. Technically she probably still did, but if you took that view then she didn't have a body below the neck instead. This wasn't really the time to debate technicalities - there was running to do.
Hopping, skipping and jumping, too, dodging around the bodies. Uzulek's, rammed onto a spike of ice; Kiku's, strangled with his own whip. At first, he had thought there was a slave revolt going on. Then it became clear that the killers were not the slaves. He stopped at the swordmaster Ago's body and frowned. The upper half of the body had been burned to a crisp, the legs chopped off by a blade. But clutched in the severed, charred left hand was his sabre, good as new. Not one to pass up the opportunity for a deadlier weapon, Goxa stuffed the knife into his belt and picked up the blade.
He crept toward the intersection of the corridor. The walls were stone here, not ice, so he knew he couldn't be seen, but he could hear breathing from just around the corner. Was it them? To risky to waste time checking. Goxa took a breath then sprinted up to the corner and, using the edge of the wall as an anchor, drove the sabre's blade into the gut of the goblin beyond.
Ozo slumped to the floor with a wet clang, as the blade ran out through the other side. Blood bubbled up through his lips, but it seemed there was frothing there already. No sane thought or presence remained behind his twitching, bloodshot eyes. With the last ounce of his strength, he pushed into Goxa's arms the object he had been carrying - a tablet carved with writing. The diary he thought nobody had known about - Zom had spotted it weeks ago and duly reported it to her master. Unlike his usual tablets though, this one had been forged out of iron, the words scribed deep into the metal.
Goxa looked at the blood-spattered black tablet and back at the dying goblin.
"The fire... hole..." Ozo managed as the final breath escaped his lips. His eyes glazed over and grew still.
Goxa snorted and wrenched the sabre out of Ozo's gut. He looked at the tablet and contemplated throwing it aside. He changed his mind at the last moment - the tablet would make a reasonable shield in a pinch. Where he was going, he would need it.
---
The firehole was sweltering, sulphurous and uncomfortable as always. Goxa noted with dismay that the stone bridges that spanned it had collapsed - there were signs of impact on the surface. This meant he would have to clamber around the edge to get to the secondary exit (since the main exits had been collapsed), and to do that he would have to cross one of them.
They didn't seem to have noticed him yet. They were too busy holding their revered artefacts to the air, as if in praise of Sheget. The three figures stood at almost equidistant points around the firehole, chanting in a dark tongue. Goxa had heard it before, but only from one pair of lips - and he wasn't entirely sure that llamas even had lips as such. They were robed and cowled, though. Which one would he have to cross to escape? He picked the one directly between him and the exit. He might get lucky. It might be the harmless one.
It wasn't. As he approached the figure, Ogini threw off his cowl and drew his sword, levelling it at Goxa. Across the firehole, Yilmug and the gemcutter (Damsto? Goxa had never bothered to remember.) uncloaked as well. The gemcutter held his gem in his hand; Yilmug wore her crown upon her head; Ogini clasped the stone sword he had himself carved as surely as he had his one of iron.
"You shall not pass," Ogini declared.
"I bloody well intend to try," Goxa snarled.
"That was a statement of fact, not a warning," said Ogini. "Put down your weapon and you will have the honour of a clean death." Goxa gave a sharp snort.
"Maybe you're right," said Goxa, raising his sword and very deliberately leaning it against the wall. "So before I do die, would you care to tell me why? Why all that?" Goxa gestured with the iron tablet back toward the remains of their outpost. "Why all this?" Out of the corner of his eye, he measured the distance to Yilmug.
"Because Olsmo lives."
It was enough distraction to work. In one fluid motion, Goxa drew and flung the knife at Yilmug, embedding it sharply in her chest. The butcher screamed a strangled scream and toppled forward into the lava. Goxa had already begun to dive to one side when the blast hit the space where he had been.
The gemcutter thrust the priceless fire agate in Goxa's direction again and once again a blast of fire erupted from the stone. In his rage he fired again and again, barely missing the goblin until he was almost on top of him. Screaming in terror, the possessed goblin launched one last fireball at point blank range. It hit. Of course it hit.
Thank you, Ozo. The impact shattered the tablet into three, forcing it to glow with heat. Goxa wisely let it drop into the soothing caress of the magma below and instead focused on the swing of his blade.
Slash!
The gemcutter's hand, and the fire agate with it, both fell into the magma. With a percing scream and a swift kick from Goxa's boot, the gemcutter followed suit. He allowed himself the luxury of a cackle. It was a luxury too far.
The sword cut through the back of his right knee, severing the tendons. Even as he dropped onto his good knee, Ogini's blade hamstringed the other leg as well. Goxa clawed himself onto his back, only to have the blade rammed hard into his chest. Seething with impotent rage, Goxa tried to have a last defiant cry, but his lungs no longer worked.
So it was in silence that with the last of his strength he grabbed the sword with both hands and rolled into the fire. Moments later, the fire would make its fury known, and a cloud of ash would settle over the icy wastes. All trace of the outpost was destroyed.
Precisely 1,048 years and one day later...
Goxa frowned at the fire hole. The place stank, it was either unspeakably hot or bone-chillingly cold and supplies were minimal at best. There didn't seem to be the slightest indication of life here either, beyond a handful of straggling trolls that Uzulek had managed to tame by bare-back riding the alpha into submission. Still, as the slaves began cutting out the first shelters, it seemed that Goxa had no choice.
She would just have to get used to it.
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Topic: Frostbite [Goblin Community] - Reboot! (Read 11984 times)