Fate Deals the Cards Temperance
Chapter 27
Breakfast In America
Every morning before dawn I vanished the house, rebuilding it once the sun cracked the night’s last fragile hold. It was a minor nuisance, but worth it to confound the spell those dolts used to track me.
The ‘scouter module’ I looted from the noble lord, sir Spider-butt DerWorm-food, back in the woods gave me some clues and hints. It offered a reading of the target being’s ‘power level’ and general magicalness at close range, say ten or fifteen yards. I scanned my gobbs with it and got a uniform reading of ‘Class F, unranked’ and a ‘power level’ under fifty for everyone, from the littlest gobb to the most experienced.
Thera, when targeted with the device, revealed herself to be ‘Iron rank, class D’ with a ‘power level’ of one hundred.
Sarafina displayed ‘copper rank, class C’ while her ‘power level’ hovered around three hundred. Whatever that meant, I had no idea.
The device was useless to the others and unusable on the wearer, causing the thing to malfunction and crap out, when I tried to use it on myself. The stupid thing flickered, sparked and sizzled for a moment, before going completely inert.
It gave me the clue I needed, though. When I looked at my house, it revealed a geyser of rainbow light visible only within the device’s range of less than twenty yards, shooting up from my pool. With a little work I could ground out those energies into the natural background magic of the world, making the kind of ritual they used, completely useless.
For the moment, it was a brute force solution; no house at the moment of dawn, no bearing for them to follow.
Sometimes we moved, sometimes we stayed in a place for a few days, but always we headed east for the distant hills and my next target. My murder spree was just starting and I wanted to be ready for whatever might come next.
I made properly weighted and balanced wooden swords and padded training guards from woven palm fiber for Thera’s sword lessons, since I was rusty too.
Not that I could use a real sword; the closest I could get was a light, wooden short sword, edged with shell fragments. It would be devastating against bare flesh… but the prototype was extremely fragile and largely just an interesting experiment.
A steel sword would shatter it with ease, while even light armor or thick fur would foul the edges and turn a fatal strike into a messy cut, since it lacked the mass and kinetic oomph of my warclub. Against one of the armored light cultist knights, it would be a simple stick and little more; likely to shatter against their metal armor on the first blow.
Thera and I sparred in the garden every morning before dawn, clattering noisily across the lawn in circles, then relaxed in the bath after the runtie’s lessons were done.
Since the ‘escape’ of the bunny kid and that human girl, the woman was a real participant in the family and no longer feared me at all… The disappearance of her hated collar and the curse of subservience sealed in it, most likely had a lot to do with her new attitude.
I couldn’t really ask and probably shouldn’t anyway, so I let it be. Sapphie said a human rescue party came to take them from the slavers; her promise and the concurrence of Thera and Sarafina were good enough for me. I wasn’t really suitable for non-goblin company, anyway…
Except for Thera; having a real adult relationship with zero sexual tension involved felt like a breath of fresh air, even if we did spend most of our time trying to hit each other with sticks and giggling like idiots… I’m a grown-ass goblin! You shut up!
The mountains drew a little closer as spring arrived fully, along with Beryl’s pup. Goblings were easy and fun to make; they grew quickly too, so I shouldn’t have been surprised at waking up and heading out to hunt one evening, only to return to a new addition to the core of my family.
Pearl turned out to be a delightful and cute little snotling; and proved that goblins really were born with a lot of smarts. The tiny creature was almost always quiet and active, watching her mother from a nest by the hearth as she worked in her kitchen, placidly smiling the very day she gave birth.
“Goblins don’t suffer in the birthing as most humans and humanoids do… We’re stretchy!” Sarafina explained softly when I grumbled about Beryl’s workload. “She is growing and blossoming into the makings of a fine witch, chief. She was already a competent mother; when her daughter leaves the nest, Beryl will be my heir...”
Our slow journey to the east continued, steering wide of any contact with other goblin clans and the scattered villages hidden among the foothills. Pearl quickly fell in with the others, toddling about, playing their games and participating with the lessons before she was a week old.
We slowly wandered across the foothills until we hit a barrier; squatting at the foot of a low, wide pass, a human town stank and festered. No other obvious way through the mountains presented itself, presenting a problem for me. My next ‘target’ was on the other side of those mountains, waiting for a surprise visit from the king…
/
Emmie’s tummytime returned with mid spring, lifting her mood and giving her an opportunity to manage her ‘condition’ with one of my charms for the first time; she was a huge fan of the whole idea.
“Wait… No nasty, smelly tea? No booty burning, spicy shits or nausea… just this?” She held up the tiny packet of bark sheets, covered with my tiny inscriptions in ‘ink’ sewn together and waxed water-tight.
“It uses pheromones… smell magic and your body’s own energy to make your cramps and pain go away. The charm tricks your body, making you feel and smell babyfull, but not babyful.” Sarafina explained, as Emmie hung the charm around her neck with a giggle.
“That means he can smush you again, sweetie.” I got pounced on right after that, which I was pretty cool with.
“Need cross mountains…” I grumbled to Sarafina, once Emmie was out cold, sprawled across my legs. “I has work there.”
“There are places to cross, though it would be difficult without your gifts, chief.” The old dame sighed. “Food is scarce in the passes and slavers patrol them often. With you, we should pass through unseen, but should not linger.”
It was true, certainly. Compared to a mounted party on a road, we moved painfully slowly; but by nomadic goblin tribe standards, we were greased lightning. We could easily do eight miles in a day over game trails and broken terrain. A similar group of slave goblins would struggle to make half that distance and then, only under an overseer’s whip and at great cost to their health.
We encamped every night, departed after dawn, well rested and fit, meaning we could outpace any pursuer in the wildlands. We slipped through the passes known to Sarafina in three long days of marching; following subtle marks etched on boulders and carved into trees.
Our little tribe finally emerged into a warm breeze, scented by a broadleaf forest that seemed… unlikely, considering the cold, granite smelling alpine barrens we’d descended just a mile before.
I ‘looked’ back up our trail, where the path vanished around an unremarkable hillside and grunted in confusion. “Yes, chief. We have passed into a new biome, it is often jarring to those who have not traveled across shards before.” Sara sighed in my ear, when she noticed my confused expression.
“Across a shard boundary, seasons may change, new vistas open up and new dangers present themselves. Our world is an infant, undeveloped and inconsistent. Fractured worlds within worlds… watch your step, and remain alert.”
She patted Sapphie, who was riding my shoulders, acting as my eyes. “Be cautious and walk with care, as we learn the secrets of this land together, I have never been to this shard of Goblinhome.”
Shards were just that, fragmentary worlds within the goblin dungeon; ‘levels’ if you will. Each possessed a distinct set of biomes and geography with significant overlap at the ‘shard boundaries’ where one could pass between them with ease. Unlike crossing the void, any creature or thing could pass, including rivers, plants, animals, monsters and goblins. There was no sensation of transition, things just changed.
That was how our little tribe left the upland moors and mountain passes, right before we emerged on a lightly forested plain with a large body of water in the distance. The ‘mountains’ behind us were barely more than hills… despite how high we’d climbed up those narrow trails. Looking back after sundown, bright starlight revealed the impossibility of it.
“Yes, chief. I struggled with it at first too… The boundaries shift as well, next season we may cross that pass and find an entirely different place there.” Sara murmured in my ear. “Perhaps it’s best you were blindfolded at the time. It gets very bright here!”
“Still bright here!” I murmured as the starshine reflected from waving, golden grasslands between lightly forested dales and dark, heavily wooded valleys. Without the fog and mist, the hillside was uncomfortably exposed and felt like a place to not linger under bright starlight.
“This shard is vast, a wide savanna stretching for many days walk and the endless sea in the other direction. Few gobbs dwell here, the desert and grassland tribes are few in number, widely scattered.” Sarafina whispered softly. “Here it is goblin raiding parties, led by orcs, ogres or trolls we must conceal ourselves from. Let us find a sheltered place to encamp, that I might contact the local conclave of witches.”
“Ugh, nub more witches.” I grumbled unhappily, with an eye roll thrown in. “Tell of raiders.”
“The season will begin in a few weeks, my chief. Until spring, we have few worries; though we will keep watch, day and night.” She cooed, soothing me with her voice and touch, petting my hair in a way that always worked on me.
“This conclave will not unfold as the last did; I will see to that, my chief. A runner from the nearest witch clan should find us soon, let us find a secure and hidden place to wait.” Sara murmured quietly, as our clan gathered around awaiting direction. Under the witch’s firm, quiet guidance, the ladies and their runties sank into the grass, hiding them from view and reducing how far their scents would travel across the breezy hills.
This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
I slipped into the nearest copse of trees springing from a fold in the hills searching for a safe place to make our home and let the night embrace me in this new place… The little patch of oaks I chose was, sadly infested with a vast colony of toxic woodlice. Unpleasant smelling, squishy, invasive and obnoxious, they were the definition of pests.
I dipped out and left them to their own devices, headed for a grove of alders that proved far more hospitable; once the small pack of desert jackalopes fled into the tall grasses. Stealthy, carnivorous scavengers, jackalopes were obnoxious, nasty tasting and so tough that even starving goblins seldom hunted them, so good riddance!
Instead of constructing my home, I kinda tried to take over the grove and make it mine; while bringing my garden and some comforts along. The results were mixed at best, the grove looked unchanged from outside, but under the trees, it got a little chaotic and mixed up. The fruit trees and berry vines jammed themselves in among the existing undergrowth; crowded would be an understatement, the grove became impenetrable.
It took three more tries to get it right, with the bathing pool hidden among the boughs and a small lodge concealed nearby under the canopy of leaves. The girls moved in and got settled, while I wandered the outer edges, where my territory bled into the open grasslands, patrolling and sniffing the new and confusing scents on the wind.
/
“This adds a new and disturbing element to this matter…” The cardinal complained over the report spread across his desk. “Leonard Haggery’s sigil brooch was found at the site of the disturbance, you say?” He demanded of the inquisitor knight in charge of the investigation.
“Yes cardinal… I suspect that he was actually the infamous Wheel of Fortune, in disguise, my lord.” Sir Filbert said very carefully, as the cardinal trembled with rage.
“So there never was any virgin slave-girl…” The cardinal grumbled angrily. “Have his entire family taken in and questioned, in detail. Send any survivors to be sacrificed.”
“Perhaps we should enhance security as well, my lord cardinal? If the Tarots are sniffing around, we should increase the personal security details of all the higher clerical orders and drastically restrict entry to all of the cathedrals.”
“Do so… I must find a new flesh merchant, somewhere. How distressingly troublesome.” The cardinal complained sourly, as his subordinate left the chamber.
/
“Come on, Wheel… just in and out!” Strength complained weakly. “You let Greela in!”
“Greela is hunting a specific target… you just want to go on a rampage. You know how low magic worlds affect you.” Wheel tapped his own noggin with a highly significant glare at the huge man looming over him. “The denizens of the goblin dungeon are quite surprisingly reasonable, brother. We shall find places to employ your abilities and talents, never fear.”
“Stupid covert operations… I can be covert!” He rumbled angrily from deep inside.
“Yes, I’m sure you can, Strength. You are a maestro of mayhem and a prodigy of pugilism, but subtlety will continue to elude you.” Wheel smiled blandly up at the slab faced giant above him.
“I could just smush you, bro.” He grumbled after a long moment.
“But you won’t. Trust me, we’ll find just the right place for you to go completely nuts. I promise.” Wheel soothed the massive being gently. “My divinations suggest that another of us will be appearing in, or near the Goblin Dungeon soon… I’d rather not create too much chaos in the local area right now.”
“Fair enough.” The huge man sighed and sagged a little. “I’d heard you were all terrorists and murderers… got my hopes up too high.”
“Have faith, big guy. Someone is going to earn themselves a thorough stomping soon; on that we can always rely.” The odd man said with conviction. “These guys are such huge assholes, it’s just a matter of time.”
/
Security was tight at the gate to the cathedral town. No human or beast kin were allowed to pass the gates, without detailed examination of their papers and cargo. Beastfolk also suffered a personal search for hidden weapons and such, before being allowed to pass. Goblin slaves remained ubiquitous and invisible, if properly collared or branded. It was the work of a moment to ‘obtain’ a collar from a slave and join the crowd. The neutered slaves all wore simple kilts like mine, so I blended in, so long as nothing poked out where it oughtn’t.
I slipped over the wall and into the slums, disappearing into the crowd around the central cathedral of local stone and timber. The amber pip on my mini map, indicating the target, ‘Cardinal Ambeforth Lipshytz’ crept closer with each step through the servant’s halls.
After an interminable journey through the wandering maze of passages, I finally drew close, emerging in a room filled with young girls, none over twelve or thirteen, who ignored my presence, much as I ignored theirs, so focused on finding my prey in the crazy structure. I slipped through the weird dormitory and into an opulent, private bed-chamber, where I’d expected to find my target.
The room was empty, but the scents of two humans lingered… and a faint scent that made me think I’d somehow gotten lost and passed through this room once already.
“Weird, but I’ll find you.” I whispered, as that elusive trace vanished. My target was gone, moving swiftly through the structure without regard for the halls and passages, almost like he was flying.
“It’s only a matter of time.” I whispered carefully in the empty chamber.
/
“It’s just a matter of time…” Cardinal Lipshytz soothed his newest concubine. “You’ll get used to the idea soon enough. We’ll begin your training right after your seventh birthday party… We can’t rush these things.”
He smiled with pleasure, as the girl’s eyes went huge with fright at his awful promise. That was delicious! “Oh, perhaps I will rush you just a little. I bet you have the sweetest scream!” She opened her mouth to cry out in terror, which elevated his pleasure to new heights.
“I haven’t even touched you yet, dearie…” Something closed around the cleric’s throat from behind, as he felt himself lifted bodily from his bed, where he lounged nude, for the adoration of his latest acquisition.
The tiny human child watched in silent terror as a huge tiger woman dressed in a long coat of leather seized that naked weirdo and choked him into silence with one huge paw. With the other, she scooped up the girl, bundled her into her coat with practiced skill and hung her from the leather harness she wore underneath. With superhuman strength and agility, she leapt to the rafters overhead, carrying the girl and the weakly struggling cleric with her.
Greela purred with pleasure, crouched on a rafter, high in the shadows of the keep’s great hall. Below, men bustled and milled around, unaware that their lord cardinal was dangling above his throne, gasping silently in the velvet soft, iron hard grip of the tigress’ toe-beans. “No claws, darling… I can’t let them find your corpse til I’m finished.” She sighed winsomely at the struggling cleric in her grip. “Strangling you lets us enjoy our time together. That’s nice, isn’t it? Hush now, someone’s coming.” A goblin slave entered the room, looked around, took a few sniffs, then left, seeming to move with far more confidence and grace than most of the wretches displayed.
Too soon, it was time to wedge the honorable cleric into the highest groin of the ceiling beams, where he wouldn’t cause trouble for a day or two… Maybe longer, since humans can’t smell a fart without a noise to alert them.
“Heh… Butt-cheeks are hilarious.” She whispered to the tiny, unconscious human girl slung from her harness straps. She clambered over the rafters to the residence wing, dropping through a gap behind a tapestry, into the cardinal’s private chambers and his seraglio of young girls.
Greela dropped into the chamber silent as nightfall itself, landing among the scantily clad kids with a confident, soothing smile on her boldly striped, black and orange face.
“I’m Greela Ward and this is becoming a rescue mission; now that I’ve finished my assassination ahead of schedule.” She remarked calmly. “Anyone interested in escaping… gather ‘round and hold hands.” A soft sound from the bundle on her back drew her attention. “Oh, you’re awake! Lovely, I’m your big sister Greela. Now hold on tight, I’m calling for help… He’s scary, so be brave.”
/
Strength grumbled and rolled over and got out of bed… Really it was a stall in a barn on the edge of the village, because he was too tall to fit in any of the houses in Tarot village.
That was the story of his life…too wide, too heavy and way too big for the human sized world. Even the collection of pleasant homes beside the seashore where his new brothers lived, were too small. He plucked a few coconuts from a tree and cracked them between his teeth, enjoying a trickle of sweet juice and a nugget of tasty, slightly gritty stuff.
It was a marvelous world though… moonless, like all dungeon worlds, but so many stars sailed across the sky, each one another dungeon world, striving for a future of its own, out in the void. “Still wanna smash something, though.” He grumbled to the sky, drifting off to sleep under the stars, just in time for an interruption.
“You’re in luck, brother. Greela just called for backup.” Wheel called from the loft of his barn. “Come on, I’ll open the passage! You’ll have twenty or thirty minutes to destroy a whole cathedral. Interested?”
“Rules of engagement?” He asked very quietly for such a huge creature.
“Slavers. Go ham on anyone armed and armored, then bail out.” Wheel hopped down from the hayloft with a light step and smiled at the giant. “We have a large number of slaves scattered in the town; goblin slaves too. They aren’t monsters, brother. Promise me you won’t hurt any that aren’t aggressive.”
“Goblins don’t matter. I want slavers.” He rumbled eagerly, as he rummaged in his gear for his terrifying club of ironwood banded with bronze straps. “Let’s go!”
“We are almost there, brother, close your eyes and kneel down for a moment. Ready yourself.” Wheel muttered softly in the giant’s ear. “When you pass through the veil with me, things work a little differently. Now slowly open your eyes and go do that thing you do. Greela and I shall tend to these waifs.”
“Waifs?” He asked, low and soft as she stood to his full height in the seraglio of a cleric, surrounded by a circle of glowing red and amber glyphs and runes scrawled on the floor. In a corner of the chamber a small group of children stood with Greela towering over them… pitifully tiny children, dressed in little, if anything at all. “Oh, now I’m mad.”
“Come along, girls… swiftly now, into the magic circle!” Wheel urged the flock of silk and gauze clad kids. “Let’s go before things get dynamic. Brother, give us ten seconds more, please.”
/
Without warning, my target pip stopped moving seemingly in the middle of the cathedral itself, then after a few long moments it winked out entirely, only to be replaced by a green glowing marker in the central audience chamber…
Cardinal Ambeforth Lipshytz has been slain by an allied third party /error/
Correcting parameters for multifarious beings.
Cardinal Ambeforth Lipshytz has been slain by a member of your party. Collect and secure the cardinal’s throne to complete acquisition of this immortal being.
*Warning* Do not sit in the chair. *Warning*
‘A chair…’ I thought, wondering just how far off the mark this thing was going to get. I had no ‘allies’ or ‘party members’ to worry about, nor had I killed anyone aside from the goblin I stole my collar from, so far.
That was probably going to change quickly, as something loud and angry roared, somewhere in the depths of the place, near the cardinal’s private chambers.
‘Aww, shit, that weird dorm is full of kids…’ I thought, while my feet were already headed that way. ‘Wait, dorm full of girls? Aww, shit!’ My internal monologue never sliced my face to bits, so I decided to stick with it. Just like a human armored knight splattered into a stone pillar and just decided to stick with it as a semi-permanent art installation. Another came flying by, tumbling and rag-dolling over an upper floor railing, to fall hilariously to a crumpled mess on the floor of the central nave.
Seconds later, three men at arms and the lower half of another knight flew out of the mezzanine, clattering to the floor far below in a grisly spray of entrails and blood.
“More! Send more to me!” Something roared furiously as a hand of impossible size gripped a stone arch and ripped it wide enough for his bulk to pass, among tumbling stones and screams.
Bigger than an ogre and almost entirely made of slabbed muscle and bone, the monster hammered one knight or armsman after another into paste with his nightmare club. A half dozen armored warriors with pikes marched in from the courtyard garrison, lowered their points and charged at the nightmare mockery of a man; only to be crushed aside in two sweeps of the iron strapped tree he gripped in one hand. Broken men lay sprawled over balustrades and slowly oozing down the stairs with the remaining strength in their bodies.
A huge, booted foot crushed one of the crawling wrecks into goo, as the creature walked down the marble clad steps. Each tread cracked and splintered under his weight as he descended into utter chaos and mayhem. I watched the horrible creature as it rampaged, striking down anyone who raised a sword or spear, with a manic laugh of pure joy and a song whistling from his lips.
‘O Fortuna’ in all its dramatic flair and exuberance spun out, as his club kept time on his foes and the walls of the cathedral. Arrows, bolts and spears flew, lodging in the dense muscles and hide of the nearly naked man-beast, as he crushed the resistance and broke the garrison into scattered, fleeing men.
While the awful creature was busy turning the flower of the local knighthood into mulch; I slipped around into that damned harem, deeply afraid of what I might find there after all this chaos…
And there was no sign of violence in the chamber, nor any trace of the girls. A guy can only do what he can do, so I went in search of my quest reward furniture. Goblin life is like that…
I found the chair in the central sacristy, on a little balcony hidden behind ornate screens, where the cardinal could observe, while remaining discreet. The chair itself was fine and covered with gilt, decorations and even a tiny, cursed needle hidden deep within the cushion.
“Oh, nasty!” Coiled within the body of the chair, among the jeweled decorations and inlaid scenes of devotion in mother of pearl hid a malign human spirit, bound to the chair by dark arts.
I had every reason to suspect that the actual cardinal was in this chair, waiting for the next bottom to sit on it and get possessed by the malignant ghost hiding in the ugly-ass seat. Once seen, the curse couldn’t be easily forgotten or ignored; it throbbed like a hangnail, or maybe a hemorrhoid. I slipped the hideous thing into my shadow and grinned, as a notification appeared in the corner of my eye.
Chaos rampaged on two legs in the cathedral town, knocking over buildings and just wrecking the whole place. Organized resistance had collapsed entirely, as the streets swarmed with fleeing people.
I looked out on the madness and fires destroying the town from the city wall and smiled. “It’s just a matter of time…”
