Exploring
Morning comes with the strange sounds of birds crowning and the smells of a hearty breakfast. Goblin cuisine continued to be as strange as it was fat, six goblins around the fire cooked deep fried spider eggs, a generous helping of crushed beetles mashed into a thick paste they ate with pieces of dark bread.
They pour large portions in front of you on what appears to be a human helm turned into a plate, plus a bucket full of fresh water they carry from the depths of the ruins with an ingenious system of pulleys and pipes. It tastes refreshingly cold, but with a mineral aftertaste that you prefer not to think too much about.
After breakfast, Lickwounds came over again to check on your wounds and brought with her a bunch of young goblins carrying buckets and mops. They climb all over your body, pouring water and a mixture of ashes over your scales, using all the force they could muster to brush you down. They cleaned you of the last remains of dried human skin and stretched fabric that still clung to your body, picking out the splinters that had dug under your scales, and even polishing your claws. You relax and was almost purring with their massage, while the Predator was happily devouring more of the fried spider eggs and some strange blue fruits the goblins had brought from the depths of the ruins.
The sun was high in the sky when you are left alone by the goblins and even though just basking in the sun and sleeping off the events of the last days seemed a particularly tempting choice, you decided to walk the ruins and make sure you knew this new place before more humans decided to come hunting.
The lower levels were thankfully built in ample, open spaces connected by small tunnels and passages. You had to squeeze through some of the corridors, obviously never intended for a creature of your size. Descending through the levels seemed much easier for the goblins, they had excavated small tunnels to move quickly through the levels and with a complex system of ropes and cranes they could even move material and goblins through the levels with surprising speed.
The floors were wide, the walls decorated with vibratingly colorful goblin art. There were no torches to light up the path, but neither you nor the goblins seemed too bothered by the darkness. Some patches of bioluminescent fungi grew on the ceiling, but by what you could see the goblins mainly used those for making ale.
You looked through the ruins with four eyes and two minds. You could see and understand what were habitations, defensive positions, and smiths; all built by the goblins over the abandoned ruins.
The Predator saw potential nesting places, ponds that should be full of tasty fishes, a marsh were particularly sweet-looking frogs jumped around, and the nice shadows where you could take a long nap after eating a couple more fried worms.
Written by Ashley Natter on 27 April 2021
