Amazon Apocalypse: Chapter 28 [Goblin Interlude] (Patreon)

Far away, an alien world was slowly drawing closer to Earth, pulled through space and time by the System just as Earth was. Much like Earth, this world was home to a people being integrated by the System. In fact, in the System’s own dimension, Earth and this world were already forever linked, and these realms would soon be one and the same. Reality just hadn’t realized it yet.

Like Earth, this was a temperate world with a handful of distinct continents separated by great seas with large rivers and dense foliage covering the habitable lands. It was a world rich in diverse wildlife, with a history stretching back billions of years.

But that was where the similarities ended. This world was chaotic and untamed. No dominant species had taken hold, though there was one tool-using people. They were short, green-skinned creatures who would have barely reached hip height on a human. With their stubby figures and big eyes, anyone from Earth who saw them would probably have called them goblins. That was the name even the System would one day recognize, but for now, they simply called themselves the people, for they knew of no other species like their own.

They were a remarkably adaptive people, and the ability to fashion clothes let them live anywhere from the heat of the desert to the cold of the tundra. However, most still preferred the dense woodland forests that the first of their kind evolved in long ago.

The people warred among themselves in small tribal societies. Occasionally, something resembling civilization emerged from the constant bloodshed. Still, with short goblin lives and even shorter memories, any progress they made was swiftly undone in the following generations. They were more intelligent than they looked. They had invented technology to build wheels, melt bronze, and grow crops countless times, only to lose it all to war, barbarism, or the simple passing of time.

They were a short-lived species, and one of their kind might go from newborn to a wizened elder in eight Earth years. They simply lacked time to pass on what they knew to the next generation. They didn’t live long enough to reap the rewards of cultivating the land for crops and sewing seeds each season or inventing new ways to preserve food for the winter or grow more crops.

Each winter was harsh and brutish, where the people who survived through fall would butcher one another for what supplies they had gathered while the weather was good. Most would die during the cold season, and tribes would shrink to one-tenth of their former glory. The moment spring came, their numbers would explode again, for the people of this world reproduced even faster than they killed one another.

Now, on one half of the world, winter was drawing near, and the people in one particular tribe began to eye one another as they sized their peers up for the slaughter. But something was different this season, for the last moon had brought with it the System. For this small tribe hidden in a small clearing within a forest, life would never be the same.

And with the System’s arrival, one young female had taken it upon herself to rediscover the lost secrets of their ancestors, buried beneath generations of rubble under their own feet.

“The stick... why put the stick there...” Tezz muttered to herself. She stood before a ragged animal hide drawing, demonstrating a peculiar contraption of twine and wood. She’d had success with another drawing she’d found in a chest buried in the dirt beneath her own hut. That one had been of a great bow that lay on its side, with the string caught in a trigger so that the wielder didn’t have to hold the bow drawn while they aimed. It was like a normal bow, but the stick lay across another one. Tezz had taken to calling it an across-bow.

It was a remarkable weapon and, in Tezz’s mind, a grand improvement on the bow. The rest of the tribe would be quite impressed when she shared the invention with them. When the winter and wild roots and berries became hard to find, her discovery would let her tribe hunt what game remained a little easier and defend themselves from whatever raiders came for them.

But that invention had just been a modification of a bow. Bows were something Tezz knew about. This stone-lifting machine wasn’t something she understood at all. She was only able to wrap her head around the wheel thanks to the many points she’d put into intelligence and the new title she’d gotten after days of hard work.

You have earned the title: Mechanical Master!

+10 Intelligence. You will have an easier time wrapping your head around complex machinery.

She was proud of that one. She poured over her recreations all day to get it. The only other person in the tribe who had a title was the Shaman, and he had to fight dozens of monsters and survive alone in the wilderness to get his. When she told the others about her title, the others in her tribe tried to stare at her creations just as she had, but her thick-headed tribe-mates couldn’t figure them out. Not like she could.

She was still pouring over the drawing of the stone-lifting device when the flap to her hut was thrown open. In walked three males from her tribe, Grux, Wraags, and Doik.

“Give wood!” Grux demanded. “We make big fire!”

Wraags and Doik didn’t bother asking. They ransacked her hut for everything worth burning. Mostly, that meant her recreations and the twine she’d spent the last three days carefully weaving. Sticks didn’t hold themselves together, after all, and figuring out how to make twine out of plant fibers had been the invention that had made all the others possible.

Unfortunately, one of her discoveries while exploring the uses of twine involved seeing how well it burned. It worked quite well as a fire starter, and her tribemates had raided her hut several times to steal her supply for her own uses.

“No! I need!” Tezz protested as her home was ransacked.

“Shaman says we need.” Grux shrugged.

The Shaman was, without a doubt, the strongest member of the tribe. He’d been a simple hunter when the integration came, left behind in the woods by the rest of the hunting party after they spotted a berry bush in the opposite direction.

The tribe had written him off as dead and eaten by wild animals, but he had survived anyway. For three days, he lived off the land with only his sharpened stick for protection. He probably would have died if the System hadn’t come and turned that pointy stick into a staff of great power.

Now, the Shaman called the wind and rain with his stick, and fire burned those who did not obey him. His rule over the Gobgob Tribe was absolute.

“I talk to him! Stop!” Tezz waved her arms. She’d spoken with the Shaman already, and he’d complimented her creations and her new title. He would see the value in keeping them.

“No! Shaman says make big fire no matter what!” Grux replied.

Tezz’s heart ached as her fellow tribe members tore her last three months of work to pieces. The labor put into these things represented an entire sixth of her life. And now it was to be used as firewood.

Tezz’s hands balled into fists, and she tried to wrestle with Wraags and Doik for her belongings, but they laughed and tossed her aside.

“You weak!” Wraags laughed. While Tezz had put her points into intelligence, Wraags had dumped all his into strength. He could pick Tezz up and throw her out of the tribe if he wanted to.

He grabbed Tezz’s precious across-bow and snapped both of the main sticks between his fingers.

“Mhm... good for fire,” he said when he heard the dry wood snap.

“Grab Tezz too. Shaman says we need sacrifice,” Grux added.

Wraags and Doik grunted in approval, and soon Tezz was slung over Wraags’ shoulder.

“Come. Shaman called for all to see!” Grux said as he led the other males out of Tezz’s hut with Tezz in tow.

The small clearing opened up before them, and people poured out of their huts. The tribe had grown over the season, and all the empty huts from the previous year had been filled with litter. Most of the women born last year like Tezz had a dozen month-old brats of their own by now, but Tezz had spent all her days poring over ancient notes and rebuilding lost technology.

Tezz was carried toward the tribe’s center, where she could already see the Shaman barking orders at a few figures building up a pyre twice as tall as he was. They heaped sticks on top of sticks until the mound stood taller than the average hut. Grux and his friends were heaping the remains of her creations onto that pile.

“Shaman!” Tezz yelled, trying to get his attention. But the Shaman had eyes only for the pyre.

“Soon, we will summon the great spirit!” The Shaman promised. “A great, wise, guiding spirit!”

The people around him cheered as he told them of all the things this wise, guiding spirit would do. From what Tezz could hear, it sounded like the Shaman was preparing to use one of the new skills he had gained for reaching level ten. He was the first in the tribe to do so, and the change had brought with it mysterious new powers that made his abilities even more spectacular than before.

“Shaman! Help!” Tezz yelled

But the Shaman only shrugged. “Sorry. Need fire and sacrifice. You ugly, so we burn you.”

Tezz admittedly was a bit tall and busty for her kind. Most of her people preferred females with a more feral, predatory look to them. But that shouldn’t have been enough for Tezz to be kicked out or sacrificed! Not when she had made so many contributions to the tribe.

“Shaman!” Tezz pleaded.

“Sorry sorry,” the Shaman repeated. “I make it quick.”

He flicked his fingers, and fire burst to life between his fingers.

Soon, Tezz was tied to the pyre with her own twine. If anyone else had made it, she probably could have wiggled free, but she’d been careful to weave each strand well and weave them tight so that they wouldn’t fail when she was using it to build her creations. But now it was being used against her.

The Shaman rubbed his hands together. He held his favorite stick aloft and fire shot from it, engulfing the large pyre. The fire took root and blossomed among the logs, swiftly growing into a roaring blaze.

Rain spattered down on the sticks, but the fire grew so fast that the light rain had no hope of extinguishing it. Tezz felt the fire climb up the wood beneath her, scorching her toes and burning her alive. The animals they roasted live over fires like this tended to squeal a lot when they died, and Tezz was pretty sure this was going to be very painful.

She closed her eyes, bracing herself for the flame that would come.

The Shaman hoisted his stick with both hands, chanting the spell he cast over and over.

“Summon big, tough spirit! Wise and strong! Lead us to greatness! Summon!” The Shaman said.

Fire whooshed all over the fire, and Tezz felt it on her ankles, legs, and shoulders. But the fire didn’t burn. Instead, she felt it pour into her. It seeped into her mouth, her ears, eyes and poured down her throat. A nameless force took over her body, and suddenly she realized she was no longer in control of her own limbs.

Her vision faded, and a figure appeared before her.

He was a giant, nearly twice as tall as Tezz, who was tall among her kind already. His skin was pale, and his hair and eyes were a strange bright color.

“Aww damn. I got summoned by freaking goblins!” The figure said. “What a pain in the ass. You’d figure I’d get something better than this after signing up for something called the Deity System...”

“Gab...lins?” Tezz asked, voice full of confusion.

“Yeah, goblins. That’s what you ugly little cocksuckers are,” the powerful being said. He looked Tezz over with the cold appraisal of a beast eyeing its prey. “I would have preferred a male goblin, to be honest. But I guess you’re my high priest now. Shit, they actually put you on the pyre! That damn moron of a shaman... hold on, I need to give him a divine vision to cover for his stupidity.”

Tezz felt someone prying at her body, though she couldn’t see or move it.

“The great spirit lives in Tezz!” The Shaman said. “Speak, spirit!”

The spirit floating in Tezz’s mind grumbled something unintelligible. “Alright, when I give you your body back, you’re going to tell everyone your little tribe is about to fuck some shit up. We’ve got a lot to do if I want to become a fully fledged god, and from what I hear, this world is going to be meeting my old stomping grounds on Earth pretty soon. We don’t have much time to waste. We’re going to find a weaker village of goblins, sacrifice all their males to me, take all the females for our warriors to breed with, and draft all the kids into our tribe...”

“Why me?” Tezz asked. The spirit glared at her, and two orbs the color of a winter sky pierced straight into her soul.

“Because I can do this,” the spirit said, and pain ran through Tezz’s entire being. It felt like the fire inside her was turning against her body and scorching her from the inside.

“Oww! Oww!” Tezz yelled. The spirit closed his hand, and the pain stopped. Tezz fell to her knees. “Tezz understands. I... I worship the great spirit.”

“Good,” the spirit said. “Oh, and one last thing. A god has to have a name to be known by. Soon I’ll be the god of all goblins, after all. You can call me... Craig.”

<Note>

This chapter may or may not make it into the final draft, but it is a good note to end it on and alludes to some of my plans for the next act.

There will be a recap of Paladin 3 this afternoon. I think we'll skip the short story and just go right into Paladin. I know you guys aren't too big on side stories and short stories, so those who want to read it can just wait until January when the anthology releases.