I've not been paying too much attention to my writing in recent weeks, have been reading here but not really contributing. Nevertheless, to try and kickstart my own involvement a bit, posting here as I continue the story of Grax, aspiring goblin snatcher.
In times past ear-torn had sheltered a number of dwarves, and tales were told to the children that the statues and the walls of the catacombs that were shaped by these goblins who used to exist as dwarves. The small men of the settlement who were smaller than normal, pale skinned with russet hair. Whilst not as keen at hunting, and with less of a preference for raw meat, these characters had an affinity for working with stone, and seemed happier under the earth. For a hundred and fifty years or so they lived generally alone in Ear-torn, at first in a makeshift hole dug by shovel and later on in the extensive tunnels and catacombs beneath the temple. They knew themselves to be goblins in their hearts, the fortress knew nothing but total inclusivity for all - but they knew they were a different type of goblin than the sun-loving grey-skinned ones who sat on the barren earth above.
There were four of them, all male and all of the same build and complexion, and they found solace and joy below the temple, cutting through the rock, gathering jewels and ores, smoothing stone - and crafting trinkets and pieces of stonework carrying great beauty. Pearlescent walls glimmered in the low light of the candles which they worked to as they extended their tunnels through the earth and rock. Some of the goblins enjoyed watching them work, but none of them could match them despite all best efforts. Those to try would often shatter the wrong piece of rock, hit the wrong line of cleavage, and memorial slabs existed to the three goblins still buried under the temple in rockfalls of their own making. But the dwarves who now existed as goblins worked, amazingly, without any wooden supports and the tunnels grew month by month, year by year, without any apparent shifting in the ground where the disastrous goblin mining escapades had called for several wings of the temple to be rebuilt.
These dwarves also grew old and were to die, the events of which instigated the raid for the children of which Zathrut had only just been regaling the crowds. The goblins were used to their own immortality, and the elders at the time were unanimous in agreeing that it was their natural entitlement to retain the dwarven lives through the community. The quest to re-acquire dwarven blood for the goblin fortress inadvertently sealed the town for years - as the elite of the military was quieted. With a minimal military defense force – to survive – they had no choice but to hide from merchant caravans, bandits and neighboring goblin tribes. They became insular and although as time has passed they have become more open, the closed mindset proved ideal for a man of god such as Zathrut to come to prominence.
-
Of all the facts, Grax was not aware, but the rumours of the Dwarves were well known, and after spending a small amount of time in reflection he made his way to the large black stone door located behind the altar in the main hall of the temple. He stood short of the door and looked up at this creation, noticing a relief on the surface which had never really occurred to him before. There seemed to be the shape of a large goblin about to strike down a wolf with a huge curved sickle. The wolf’s spine was arched around the goblin, front right paw up and his face appeared to be looking up to the goblin plaintively. If the artist was to be believed, the wolf was about three times the size of the goblin. Under the relief were the words:
‘Ungolt, Kills Madekal the Wolf, y.215’
Ungolt, the hero who Grax had just been hearing about was stood there in front of him. He was pleased on the coincidence, noticing this for the first time, but was not so unwise to know the power of only noticing coincidences when they have immediate relevance. He was invigorated, but slightly puzzled, as he walked through the door and down in to the first level of the catacombs. Puzzled, as it was not in character for a goblin to mark down in history the events of their heroes – after all – if you wanted to know of a certain time you could just ask the goblin with the keenest memory who was likely to remember it. And what value is carried by history? Why worry about the deeds of the past when all we need to concern ourselves with is the events of the now, and of the near future?
Grax was now in the beginning of the below ground accomodation, a large round chamber which most of the population of the fortress had visited. Green glass was set in to the ceiling (it was the courtyard above, located immediately outside the temple) and this area was well lit by a verdant hue during the day. It made a reasonable feasting area for when the seasonal rains came and the rattle on the roofs made chatter and music impractical above-ground. Grax thought fondly of times past in this room – drinking too much sunshine and laughing with his friends at how the light in this room made everyone look green-skinned and black haired.
He navigated his way slowly round the central stone table, close enough so his red cloak caught on a chair and slinked across to drop at the other side as he moved through the room. He ran his hand across the surface of the old stone table, and felt small repeating pits where the surface had been weathered by use - but otherwise it was completely smooth. A cursory push on the corner at the end of the table led him to believe that it was very stable in its position. He didn’t suppose anybody would be in the habit of moving it very far from where it was, and decided he couldn’t compare it to the flimsy glumprong-wood desk he ate from every day. But who would be able to craft such a thing? No goblin that he had come across had any care or affinity for working with stone and slowly the answer started to coalesce in his mind. He made the connection which had always been very obvious, that the dwarves of Ear-torn had made these items in times gone by, and he immediately forgave himself for his stupidity. After all – he had never held any interest in the whimsical tales of the dwarves and the catacombs prior to today.
Making his way with more urgency he pressed on through the tunnels, venturing far enough to be slightly anxious about the depth, but not far enough to risk getting lost. His eyes accustomed to the receding light and he witnessed items of art of which he had never considered possible. Ungolt, the brave soldier, was captured several times in statue-form striking down a number of vile looking beasts with sickles, whips and spears.
Further in, green-tinged silver weapons sat uprightly presented in red-stone racks, left forgotten by somebody who didn’t want them. Aqua-blue armor-stands - goblin upper-torsos carved out of rock – presented nothing but the suggestion that in this area there had once been a keen blacksmith. The stands were decorated with personal touches cut in to the stone, swirls, symbols and words which Grax didn’t recognise. He felt the turquoise stone of one of the armor stands, and thought it felt soft – not hard-edged and rough like a typical rock he would pick up from the ground above. Tapping it with one of the silver hammers in the weapon rack a dead-straight crack appeared from the top of the shoulder to the armpit. With a laugh to himself and a further, harder tap from the hammer, the upper arm of the armor stand fell to the floor and sheared in to further discrete slabs as it hit the hard ground.
Raising his eyebrows, he felt some sort of appreciation for the man who made this item, he couldn’t touch the rock (whatever it was) without breaking it yet some creature – a dwarf no doubt – had used the material to fashion an armor stand of great beauty and precision.
He replaced the silver hammer to the weapon rack for it was not his to take, and explored further, finding four rectangular rock boxes at the end of this apparent armory, all sat in the wall in recesses which seemed to be cut for the boxes and the boxes alone. The boxes were coffins, and only by striking alight an oil-soaked rope on the wall could he see them in all their absolute clarity and beauty. Below each coffin but one there was an apparent eulogy to the occupants, each paragraph cut in a different hand. Grax assumed the final coffin, with no eulogy, was the last of the dwarves to die. Perhaps superstition had not allowed him to write his own eulogy prior to his own death, but whatever reason the coffin sat unnoted, only marked nearby by deep stains, scratches and evidence of fire – perhaps suggesting this character received a more typical goblin burial.
Whispers and an inexplicable wind in the air sent a cold shiver through the bones of Grax, and his captivated stare at the coffins was cut short as the rope extinguished itself in an instant. Grax retreated, with a scurry, accepting the dwarves obvious request to be left in peace.
Finding his way easily back to the feasting hall, he sat down at the table, leant back and admired the room. His appreciation for art was essentially none-existent, but even he knew that the murals on the walls were something to be envied by any other goblin in the land. He knew that the fine statues beneath his feet in the dark recesses of the tunnels only added to the glory of the town, and he knew greater than ever that four dwarves were coming home. He just didn’t yet know how he was going to achieve it.
-
Sleeping heavily and lengthily, Grax awoke to the mid-morning sun. He pulled the leather curtain back from the door of his shack and let the outside air in. The hunters outside seemed to be carving up and serving the meat of the large bison that had been bleeding out yesterday as the tanner scraped the skin dry nearby, and a cook stirred a large bag of oats through the bath of blood. The smell was glorious and he stepped out, rubbing his belly ready for an early lunch. He claimed his fair share of meat and taking it back to his shack wrapped it in cloth and bound it with cord, ready for his upcoming self-imposed quest.
Slowly chewing on a ration of raw meat at his desk, elbows on the wooden surface and jaw lazily grinding the meat, he thought out various escape plans. After discounting the more elaborate ones involving nightfall and sleeping gas, he decided to walk out the front gate at noon, and If questioned he would say he was walking to the nearby stream to gather water, and if followed may have to cudgel one of the guards into unconsciousness. Ear-torn in this day and age however was a lot less closed than the paranoid regime going back fifty years, and in truth Grax didn’t need to be concerned.
With the clothes on his back, a full waterskin, four cuts of bison meat wrapped safely in cloth and the curtain to his shack as a makeshift leather cloak, he walked unchallenged out the front gate of the Dark-Fortress of Ear-torn at noon, and out in to the forest to the north and on to great adventures. The sense of freedom on leaving the fortress was completely liberating, but an uneasiness about the town letting him go sat in his stomach somewhat, making it impossible to completely savour the moment. Walking purposefully on, by early evening the sun still occasionally shone strongly through the gaps in the canopy of trees and kept him warm and content. It was mid summer and the floor of this old forest was hard enough to make travel easy and fast. He saw the recent tracks of deer on the forest floor, hair from rabbits caught on the low level branches, and knew his keen sense of smell and sharp eye was going to make it easy to subsist happily as long as he trod in this forest. He felt ever so slightly guilty for taking some of the meat - it was almost easier to eat out in the forest at this time of year than wait for the hunters to return in town. Nevertheless, he continued on without a second thought - his wrapped meat would only remain flavourful for a few days, and he preferred to eat that before resorting to any hunting – Grax didn’t personally appreciate hunting for sport alone.
Setting camp for the night by a small brook with a very gentle waterfall, he sat by a fire for warmth and strung his leather curtain up against a tree for shelter. In truth the day had been so balmy and warm that the fire served little purpose than to entertain his mind in the quiet. He watched the impromptu ballet of the imps dancing on the burning branches, diving and curling in and around the embers, warming up the small circle of stones around the perimeter of the fire and sending a perfectly vertical column of light grey smoke in to the clear night sky. He slept easily that night.
Waking to a gentle rhythm of light rain on the leaves of the old oaks above him, he sat up from his sleeping position, rubbed his eyes and let reality re-enter his waking mind. Grax was happy to be alone, happy to be free, but ultimately honored to be taking on the quest for the further glory of the town.
He took a stone from around the fire and used it to hone the edge of his blade that he kept on his belt.
After packing his meager possessions and hiding the remnants of last nights fire, the inconsequential rain-shower had stopped, and he continued his journey north, the morning sun sitting low and hidden just above his right shoulder in the blue eastern sky. The sky above was white, ribbed with grey, and Grax wouldn’t be surprised if he received some further light rain before the sky fully cleared for the day. Pressing on, Grax noticed the ground change from that he was used to around Ear-torn, to one a bit more rugged. Brown sharp outcroppings of stones started to appear more frequently, tearing through the soft forest-bed, and thinking about future days where he would need to hunt, Grax picked up a few loose sharp stones on his way. He could use these as ammunition for a makeshift sling, should he fancy eating bird or rabbit, without having to go to the bother of learning to fly or run extraordinarily fast – and trapping whilst traveling in only one direction was clearly not going to work.
He was so happy in his thoughts, his foresight, and his own imagination, that the chanting and grumbling of the human did not immediately register to him until he was within about forty paces – and eyesight – of the man. The man had black, shoulder length hair, and wore a conspicuous powder-blue robe - Grax stopped in his tracks. The man clearly looked in Grax’s direction, but appeared completely undisturbed by his presence, despite both of them being – as far as the goblin was aware – in the middle of nowhere. The man looked down at the patch of earth immediately by his feet and seemed to be chanting some strange incantations to the earth, prior to giving out a number of loud, irritated insults. As Grax looked closer, the man was holding a shovel over his shoulder.
After observing quietly for five minutes or so to try and deduce what was going on, Grax seemingly had no option but to engage the man in conversation. He could hardly have walked straight by, and Grax was sure that the man posed no immediate threat to him personally. The young goblin walked up closer to the man, about twenty paces away, and tried to engage him.
“Hello?” Said Grax inquiringly, in his own goblin tongue, for these were the only words he could speak.
The man in the blue-robe threw his index finger sharply up to his mouth and ‘shushed’ quite rudely, before beginning another bizarre incantation. The words were unrecognizable to Grax, and he was still none the wiser as to what strange occasion he was bearing witness to.
The man at first appeared to be of foreign lands and incapable of communicating verbally with a common goblin. Strange words and mutterings convinced Grax that this was the case. With the human being so ignorant, and oblivious, the goblin was compelled to stay and watch, even going so far as to lay out his leather cloak on to a fallen branch for a makeshift seat. Despite appearing an interesting distraction, it took only a few seated minutes for Grax to become bored – the man was clearly insane and destined to die trapped in a single-sided conversation with the ground. As Grax got up and made his way to proceed further north through the forest, for another ten or eleven days, he noticed the muttering had stopped - and then Grax heard a couple of footsteps in the leaves, and turning round found the blue-robed man but three paces from his position, appearing to have covered twenty paces in the time it took a goblin to cover two. Grax cowered ever so slightly, took half a step backwards and placed his hand over his blade.
“Hello.” Said the man pleasantly, in a tongue and dialect recognizable as one very similar to Grax’s own - only - softer and lighter - more 'human' perhaps ...
“Eh … Hello!?” retorted the young goblin, quizzically and with an attempt to return the kind tones of the human.
“I expect you were worried about what I was doing just there – please don’t worry yourself about that, I would have liked to have begun talking to you earlier but, you see, I was deep into an incantation which I was trying today for the first time. Didn’t want to disrupt it, you see?”
“Yes, okay.” Grax carried on, in moderate confusion.
“And … well … and it seems I’ll have try somewhere else. No joy again.”
“No joy I see. What were you trying to do?”
“Oh how rude of me, yes I can see that now. I am Nicolas, sage and sorcerer of … well … nowhere yet. But once I can dig my foundations in the right spot, the tower should spring up in no time, and then I will be sage and sorcerer of that place.”
Nicolas spoke clearly but quickly.
Grax mouthed a few words, silently, before trying to respond appropriately … “Well … erm … So you were digging foundations? … But you didn’t think to use the shovel you are carrying?”
“Ha! Yes, the shovel. I expect I will need that at some point, yes. Each bit in it’s own time though. Can’t dig foundations before you have a location, can’t find a location before you have the stone to build the tower, can’t build the tower without mortar for the stone, and can’t set the mortar without water from my well.”
Nicolas nodded and looked at Grax knowingly. Grax got the impression that he should be able to understand what he had just been told, and his urge was to pretend he fully understood. Curiosity got the better of him, however, and he needed a little bit more information.
“Erm … I’m sorry? Well, stone, water, location.” Grax listed the base level of information he had managed to understand.
“Yes! Brilliant mind there young goblin.”
Grax remained still and furrowed his forehead in thought.
“But, why bother with a well when a brook runs five minutes walk to the west? There is enough stone to build a tower to the sun about a foots length under the undergrowth beneath our feet, and judging by your presence here, I would presume you have found your location?”
Nicolas considered this, and his brow also creased, apparently in thought.
“Hmm. Not so clever goblin. No. I’m afraid if it were that simple, I would already be the sage and sorcerer of The Jungle of Gluttony. I would already be betitled and you would be having this conversation with one of my many loyal manservants, or perhaps an enslaved griffon. But no, it’s not that simple.”
Grax was now sure that the human was insane. Nicolas continued.
“All things are linked, my dear boy, and all things must be completed in the correct order. Unfortunately for me, and counting heavily against my timeous promotion to that which I deserve, I must first create the well that will provide me with the water to set the mortar of my tower. If I can find the right position for my well, the rest of it should be straightforward - really. And you just so happened to stumble upon me in the midst of my thirty-first incantation, and the twentieth potential well site, for the source of the water that will bind my tower together.”
Grax blinked slowly and his brain ticked over. He would never have considered himself clever, but he was practical enough to understand madness when he saw it. He carefully suggested an alternative for Nicolas, as an attempt to both help the man out and also potentially to allow the man to leave him alone:
“But mortar is mortar, water is water, why not just use the brook nearby?”
Grax could now see that Nicolas was strangely excited in the presence of the goblin. Nicolas reached his arm out to hold Grax by the arm, and laughed quietly.
“Ah! Delightful dear goblin! Sorcery doesn’t work that way, but I love having a bit of common sense around! Terrence over there was so terribly sycophantic.”
More overt madness, but Grax felt obliged to humour him.
“Terrence, my friend? I do not see anyone over there?”
“No, you wouldn’t I expect” Nicolas responded flatly. “He’s just below that small mound of earth over there in a shallow grave. Afraid I couldn’t take his attitude anymore.”
Grax was comfortable with murder if carried out for the right reasons, and suspected in this case the reasons may not have been quite that expected of an honorable goblin, but his faith in the character of this man was improved somewhat. Mad, perhaps, but principled enough to kill.
“And I was ever so sure that this spot was the perfect spot for my well of misery, but the first incantation could only make me cry tears of joy.”
Grax was kind of enjoying the strangeness now, and relaxed his tight musculature and returned Nicolas’ gesture, placing his own arm on his. They were stood there – goblin and man – a few paces apart, in the middle of a dark patch of ground in the forest, each holding the left arm of the other with their own right hands, and they smiled to each other as they talked.
“But I knew from the off that the well wouldn’t work with tears of joy, so bringing Terrence to that spot over there, I cut his throat and tried to dig the well at the softened earth of the blood of my fallen companion.”
Nicolas was now well in to his verbal stride and Grax continued listening, his spirits rising to the sheer lunacy of the situation.
“And today I put two and two together and resolved that the well must be dug at the softened earth of tears of pain and anguish … only … well …”
“Yes?” Grax inquired.
“… well … it’s clear now … I’ve not really had anything to ever be miserable about, you see? My life has been rather blessed – touched only by fortune and happiness.”
Grax had indeed been listening intently, and joyously responded “So … you have to take the water for your mortar for your tower from a well of misery dug at the site of tears of your own pain and anguish?” His teeth were in a wide smile.
“Yes! Exactly my dear boy!” Nicolas laughed out loud and Grax joined him shortly after, infected by the happiness.
“So I am not going to be chief wizard of the Plains of Taste, or the dark-mage of the Thorns of Bristle before I get a bit more negative life-experience, you see?”
It was at that point that Grax made an earnest promise to Nicolas that he could join him on his quest, and on telling him of the fierceness and mercilessness of the dwarves of the north, Nicolas could not believe his luck.
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