Dream 25 (Patreon)

“Wow,” Sam gushed, eyes sparkling as he looked back at the mountain he had been born in.  “I’ve never really seen it like that before.  I guess you just don’t realize how big and impressive the world is until you gain some perspective.”

“Takkla,” he continued, nudging his sibling.  “You have better eyes than Dussok and I, can you even see the top of the mountain?  It’s just all clouds and blue past a certain point for me.”

“Samazzar,” Dussok said, his tone as stern as ever.  “You do realize that we have been captured and the Greentoe goblins plan to have us work as slaves before we die, right?”

The bigger kobold lifted his claws, revealing the strip of leather that bound them together.

“You don’t have to be such a downer about it Dussok,” he replied, grinning at his dour companion.  “We needed to help Tazzaera, and ultimately we took every precaution.  Unfortunately, Lellassa knew Takkla’s gift worked and had the guards hiding in pits covered in brush some distance from the clearing.  Even with her eyes, there wasn’t any way we were going to spot that ambush at night.”

“Shush dear,” Takkla whispered quietly, leaning her body so that her tail brushed against Dussok’s.  “Sam’s right.  We never would have forgiven ourselves if we had just turned around and given up last night.  Ultimately, as bad as this is, we survived.”

She cocked her head to the side, ears flicking with amusement before continuing.

“Honestly, that’s probably more than we could say if we were still in the tribe.  If Lellassa was willing to sell us to the Greentoes, she wasn’t beyond doing something worse if we hadn’t taken her bait.  Who knows, our next meal might have been seasoned with poison if we stayed in the caves.”

Dussok grunted thoughtfully, letting his own tail tap against Takkla’s as if he was seeking some reassurance in the familiar contact.

“Don’t just focus on the negative Dussok,” Samazzar continued, unperturbed as he raised his bound claws above his head to shade his eyes from the unfamiliar noon sun.  “You should think of this as an adventure.  It’ll be quite the story to tell our pups once we get back to the tribe.”

“I shouldn’t focus on being a slave?”  Dussok sputtered, halting to stare at Sam.  “Going home?  I don’t think you understand the point of slavery little dragon!”

“It’ll all work out,” Sam winked at his sibling.  “I have some ideas.  Just don’t let it trouble you too much.  For now, we’re just along for the ride.”

“Seriously Samazzar,” Dussok grumbled, shaking his head.  “What in the name of the mysteries does that even mean?  Don’t let it trouble me…”

The big kobold jumped as Grimmshold, the goblin shaman, smacked him across the shins with his walking stick.  Both the animal skull that made up the stick’s hand rest and the whisper thin goblin himself glared up at Dussok.

“Keep moving you lunk,” the goblin rasped at the three of them.  “I’m not sure why Grolm put me in charge of you lot, but the march back to the village has been slow enough.  I’m not going to let your lollygagging delay us any further.”

“I think he put us under your care because you’re the only other goblin in the warband that can hold a conversation,” Samazzar interjected helpfully.  “The rest seemed more interested in hooting at us, eating, and rolling around in the grass together without their armor.”

“The warriors are hard to control during mating season,” Grimmshold muttered.  “I mean, they’re hard to control most of the time, but I don’t think anyone but the chief can keep their armor on for more than a couple hours during the spring.”

“Oh.”  Sam blushed, sensing the heat build up in his cheeks.  “So they weren’t wrestling”

“No,” Grimmshold replied dryly.  “They weren’t wrestling.”

Before anyone could say something further, a goblin screamed behind them.  Samazzar craned his neck, looking for the source of the noise only for another two goblins to begin hopping up and down, screeching incoherently and pointing at the sky.

A shadow passed overhead, followed a second later by the heavy thump of wings beating the air.  Sam’s eyes widened as he gaped at the sky.

It was a dragon.  Dull red wings blotted out the sun as it coasted through the sky, circling a thermal just in front of their convoy to soar higher.

“She’s beautiful,” Sam whispered, eyes glittering.

The dragon banked slightly, the sun gleaming off of her scales like a million rubies.  In her claws, each easily bigger than Sam or Dussok, she held a limp deer.  Another flap of her wings sent a wave of air pressure downward knocking Samazzar back a step.

Part of his mind marveled at the way she shaped the wind, obviously using the mysteries to create updrafts that kept her majestic form aloft.  The rest just stared in slack jaw wonder at her sinuous, well muscled length, lazily absorbing the sun as she cut through the sky with a deftness that would have made the stormcrow blush.

“Beautiful?”  Grimmshold asked with a snort.  “I’ve heard Fel’Annthor described as the tyrant of the plains, the crimson reaper, and a couple other choice phrases that I’m not going to try my luck by uttering within her earshot, but never beautiful.”

“Wait,” the goblin paused, his walking stick held high as he prepared to smack Samazzar back into motion.  “How did you know Fel’annthor was a female?  I only know that because our tribe has to pay tribute to the Shattered Rock Orcs, and they pay tribute to her.”

“Look at her,” Sam responded, motioning helplessly with his bound claws.  “From the way she flicks her tail to how she flexes the muscles in the shoulders to flap her wings, how could she be anything but a woman.”

“I…” Grimmshold cocked his head to the side, struggling for words before finally fixing his gaze on Dussok.  “Is this a kobold thing?  Can you just notice details like that because you’re descended from the same stock, or have decades of putting up with Chief Grolm’s whims finally pushed me over the edge?”

“No,” Dussok said simply with a shake of his head.  “This is not ‘a kobold thing.’  Most kobolds react to a dragon soaring overhead in a proper and logical manner, by freezing in hopes of not drawing its attention or trying to hide from its sight.”

“Samazzar is a little different.”  Takkla chuckled.  “His head is in the clouds because he is absolutely sure that one day the rest of him will catch up with his dreams.  The strange part is that more often than not, despite the odds, things work out for him.”

Sam ignored them, his eyes trained on the dragon.  Fel’Annthor flapped her wings again, corkscrewing gently through the air as she enjoyed the sun.  The wind curled around her, cradling her massive form and helping guide her away from the convoy and back toward the mountain range.

His heart hammered in his chest and his blood sang.  This is what he wanted.  The majesty and effortless power as she soared through the sky.  The way that she almost subconsciously manipulated the mysteries.  Everything about it called out to Sam, filling his chest with longing.

More than that, for the first time he felt yearning.  The dragoness was gorgeous.  From the tip of her tail to the front of her muzzle, Fel’Annthor took his breath away.  This must be how Takkla and Dussok felt when they looked at each other.

He slowed, craning his neck to follow her graceful form as she soared higher, magic visible only to him rippling in waves off of her as she molded the very sky around her.  Seconds later, she disappeared into the cloud shrouded heights that surrounded the looming grey cliffs where he had spent his entire life, crossing the journey that had taken Sam almost a day in a matter of minutes.

A sharp blow to his lower back staggered Samazzar forward a step.  It didn’t really hurt, ever since his transformation, Sam’s scales had become hard enough to make the sort of armor available to the kobold tribe optional, He tore his gaze away from the spot where the dragon had disappeared and looked behind him quizzically.  Grimmshold was glowering at him, waving his walking stick menacingly, as if he was preparing for another attack.

“You can moon after your girlfriend later,” the shaman barked.  “Now get moving before I infect you with something that will lock your joints solid and give you the runs for a month.”

“Infect?”  Sam asked, ignoring the wooden rod in the goblin’s hand as he began walking once again.  “I don’t think I entirely understand.”

“I’m an acolyte of the advanced mysteries of rot and disease,” Grimmshold responded proudly.  “I might not be as combat oriented as a fire magi, but spreading a fever through an enemy warband on the eve of battle can turn the tide of a battle.  It might take a little longer for my magic to work, but a single tainted well can wipe out an entire village.”

“Impressive,” Samazzar responded absently, mind still buzzing from his first encounter with an actual dragon.  “Two greater mysteries is quite a feat!”

“I’m glad you appreciate talent,”  the shaman grumbled.  “Chief Grolm spends half of his time asking me to turn prisoners into toads or telling me to turn rocks into gold.  He doesn’t understand the scholarship and risk that goes into learning even the meanest of mysteries.  Every time I try to explain how magic actually works he just gets bored and commands me to stop bothering him.”

“Wait.”  Grimmshold squinted at Sam.  “You’re just trying to distract me, and steal my secrets, aren’t you?  I told Chief Grolm that we just should have killed you and been done with it.   Nothing good comes from trusting Lellassa.  That witch would murder her own sire with a smile if she thought the price was right.”

“I’m not-” Sam began raising his restrained claws in protest only for the shaman to cut him off with another smack from his walking stick.  The blow didn’t hurt, bouncing off of his scales with a dull thump, but he knew better than to try the goblin’s patience further.

“Enough!” Grimmshold barked, wisp thin and hardly imposing.  “I’ll bind your muzzle if I have to!  We’ve got a long walk ahead of us, and I’d prefer it to be a quiet one.”

A quartet of passing goblin warriors pointed and hooted in amusement.  One of them tossed the spear it had been holding to a companion and put its hands together while another dropped to its knees.  The kneeling goblin prodded the one with its hands together weakly with the butt of its spear before tipping over onto its side.

On the ground, the goblin with the spear rolled over onto its back, flailing helplessly while rocking back and forth.  The warrior with its hands together shrugged theatrically, before turning and marching away, almost bringing its knees to its chest as it exaggerated its movements.  The two onlookers burst into laughter, screeching with joy while pointing gnarled fingers at Grimmshold.

The shaman quivered, gaunt fingers digging into the animal skull atop their walking stick. They reached into a leather case at their hip, pulling out a bone covered in stinking meat covered in writhing maggots.  Sam gagged as the smell of it hit him, but Grimmhsold seemed unphased, brandishing it like a talisman at the other goblins.

“Go on and laugh!” Grimmshold shouted, taking a step toward the snickering warriors.  “We’ll see whose laughing when I give the lot of you Hassamic Black Rot!  Good luck winning mating duels when you’re dehydrated and covered in oozing lesions!”

One of the goblins stuck their tongue out at the shaman, but they quit their play acting, jogging past the bound kobolds.  The shaman turned back to Samazzar, Takkla and Dussok, waving the bone at them menacingly, but the three of them wisely kept silent.

As silly as Grimmshold looked, underestimating the shaman could easily be fatal.  Although an acolyte of a mystery couldn’t create the mystery from scratch, they could take a sample that already existed and twist its nature.  Samazzar didn’t know exactly what was infesting the meat the goblin was holding, but he wasn’t all that anxious to find out.

“Good,” Grimmshold said, satisfied.  They slipped the bone back into its satchel.  “Now stay quiet and keep moving.”

Sam simply nodded, unwilling to aggravate the shaman further.

The rest of the day was uneventful.  At one point a stormcrow passed overhead, and about an hour later a large, furry, tusked quadruped ambled by the column, but both decided against attacking the goblin warband.  Finally, after six or so boring hours of walking through the plains, they made camp.

Only Grolm and Grimmshold rated tents.  The rest of the goblins slept out in the open, snoring happily in heaped piles of limbs and bits of armor.  They didn’t bother the kobolds beyond assigning a pair of guards to watch over them.  Despite everything, other than the thin gruel Grimmshold served them grudgingly for dinner, Sam had a relatively peaceful night.

The next morning, the shaman woke them all with a kick and a litany of verbal abuse.  Sam didn’t like the taste of the handful of nuts and dried berries that he was given for breakfast, but he choked the food down anyway.

Then, they started walking again. After four or five hours of hiking, just after the sun reached its peak in the sky, Sam first sighted the plume of black smoke that marked the goblin village.  About a half hour after that, the settlement itself came into view.

It was situated on a hilltop where it commanded a view of the countryside to ensure that no warbands could approach unseen.  The village itself was protected by uneven walls, logs dragged from the lightly forested nearby slopes were dragged into a rough circle before being slathered in mud and clay from a large open pit carved into the ground nearby.  The end result was a brownish red wall that varied in height from just over twice as tall as Dussok to four times the kobold’s height.

Five towers poked up from the ochre wall.  Three of them were topped by bonfires that the goblins kept burning, even during the day.  The other two had some sort of mechanical contraption atop them.

Samazzar couldn’t tell whether the haphazard collections of world and iron were some sort of weapon, an alarm, or scientific equipment used in the study of the mysteries.  All he knew for sure was that even from a distance he could make out two or three goblins lounging about the tops of the towers, keeping watch as their warband approached.

Finally they reached the gate, little more than a break in the wall that someone had parked a six wheeled wagon laden high with rocks and dry clay in front of.  As they approached, Chief Grolm proudly made his way to the forefront of their convoy, his gut jiggling pendulously as he motioned for the vehicle to be pushed aside.

Shouts and hoots from inside were quickly replaced by grunts and the creak of overladen wood as the wagon was moved out of the way.  The entire process proceeded at an agonizing crawl.  It took almost five minutes from start to finish for the goblins to move the barrier far enough for the new arrivals to make their way inside.

Sam wrinkled his nose after he stepped over the ruts left in the muddy soil by the wagon’s relatively common back and forth movement.  Whatever vague hopes he’d had regarding his future living situation were disabused in a single second.

The village was disgusting.  Other than a squat, one story building made from red clay bricks, every other structure was made from logs and branches covered in a combination of mud, clay and what appeared to be feces.  From the smell, it was clear that the goblins hadn’t discovered the concept of hygiene or burying their droppings away from civilization to avoid tainting their food and water.  Even the smoke rising from any number of cooking fires looked unhealthy, thick black clouds of choking soot billowing upward as they burned any number of The center of the town was a noisy open air market where goblins exchanged raw meat, firewood tools and weapons for small bronze discs.

Near the edge of the marketplace, 4 much taller individuals with skin tones ranging from pink to brown were negotiating via pantomime with a hooting and yammering goblin merchant.  Samazzar’s eyes widened as he took in the decadence of their gleaming silver armor and well maintained weapons.

Steel.  Sam had only read about the hard metal.  About how it was harder, less brittle and easier to maintain than iron.  Some of the taller traders wore bands of the material while others were draped in layers of interlocking rings.  Two even had caps made of the stuff to protect the fur-covered tops of their heads.

Even as he watched, another of the metal clad figures pushed his way through the press of goblins, leading a hog three times the size of any of the shorter green figures.  The goblin merchant jumped down from the pedestal that it had been standing on, running around the pig hooting and chuckling to itself as it poked at the relatively docile animal.

“Human merchants,”  Grimmshold said proudly, pulling Samazzar’s attention away from the exchange.  “Originally Grolm wanted to fight them and take their weapons, but I was able to convince him that they were worth more alive.  We trade them the shiny rocks and ore that your tribe and a couple others mine from the mountains, and in exchange they sell us livestock, iron weapons, and most importantly, books.  There’s no way we’re getting a fair deal from the wretches, but the food they sell us has made the Greentoes the biggest tribe in the foothills, and their weapons make us the best armed.  Even if they’re ripping us off, no one but the Shattered Rock Orcs and the Night River Drudges can compete with us for dominion of this area.”

The shaman’s face changed, as if they had bitten into something sour.  They leaned over, spitting on the muddy and stinking ground of the marketplace.

“Of course,” the goblin continued unhappily.  “No one bothers to give me credit for the tribe’s rise to power.  Everyone just praises Grolm’s size and prowess and credits our success to the big fool.  Simpletons.”

Before Sam could say anything, the shaman leaned over, grabbing his forearm with bony fingers and pulling him by his still bound claws toward one of the village walls.  He didn’t resist, letting the shorter goblin lead him until the four of them were standing next to what could charitably be called a small building.  In reality, it was little more than a roof held up by four small logs and what remained of two half collapsed walls made from sticks.  Inside, the floor was covered in smelly matted straw with two buckets near the edge, one filled with brackish water, and one with goblin waste.

“This,” Grimmshold said, releasing Sam’s wrists and pointing at the shack, “will be your new home, and that-”

The shaman pointed at a nearby pit that was covered by a grid of logs, their ends weighted down with boulders.  Something in the hole jumped up, slamming into one of the logs and rattling the entire apparatus even as a paw as big as Sam’s head and topped with wicked claws swiped upward through the gap between two of the bars.

“That will be your new job until Chief Grolm sees fit to change it.”  The goblin smiled wickedly at the three kobolds.  “I hope you like scale hounds.  It sure looks as if they like the taste of you.”