Chapter 5. A Massive slight of ‘The Hand’
1013 Words
The Palm did not rub the bridge of his nose,
But only because they did not take their helmet off.
In the mood they were in, they should have been rubbing the bridge of their nose in exasperation and frustration.
“You are the most highly of blessed…” They said in slow tired word beats.
“Yes…” Said the Hunter
“You literally ‘point the way’ for us all! That is your most singular purpose! Your biggest blessing and gift!”
“Yes… I seem to have failed.” Replied The Pointer
“I do not understand,” Said The Palm, “Have you tried meditation and prayer to our sacred Sunite imperial bloodline?”
“Yes.”
The demon hidden deep inside, posing as divine inspiration, at the back of The Pointers mind shrugged its shoulders… It had no idea what went wrong either…
The Pointer reiterated what he could,
“We have tracked them to this ancient city”
(Remember dear reader, this city is not really all that ancient!)
“We have found traces of recent filthy goblin habitation”
(Remember dear reader, the goblins are not really all that filthy!)
“And yet the trail ends at a row of even more buildings.”
“Buildings that look like all the rest,”
“Sophisticated, precise, and very old!”
“There is no sign of any teleporting from this location but this is where the trail ends.”
It ends at that ancient wall and there are three layers of rooms behind it, and beyond that just rocks.”
“There are no secret doors!”
“There is no secret phased path.”
“There are no invisible portals or illusions”
“Just a dead end!” The Pointer and Hunter finished blankly.
The Palm was not happy.
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Two weeks earlier.
Mal Wear was shaken awake.
“Sir…”
“The goblins have abandoned us!”
Bleary-eyed, Mal took a moment to take a deep breath.
He summoned some remaining scraps of moral to hide his true feelings!
“They were always going to leave us at some point.” Mal Said, hiding his disappointment.
“Go back to sleep, Double rations for all the men’s breakfast tomorrow, we have a bit more to spare now!”
In reality the thought
‘s**t! Deserted already… Just a pocket full of rebels and bandits now in a strange land and no direction.’
‘What the Flushing Wipe! Am I going to do now!”
.
Nogibby the goblin looked to his leader Gobbycite,
“Do we really want to do this?” he asked.
“No. But we will” Replied Gobbycite
“The humans do not deserve this!” Said Nogibby
“Yes,” Said Gobbycite, “Yes they do!”
“But…” Started Nogibby.
Gobbycite snapped at him, grabbing his throat and slamming Nogibby hard into the side of the wall.
“THEY DO DESERVE THIS!”
“AND MORE!”
Nogibby whimpered in submission.
“Has the tunnel been collapse behind them!” Demanded Gobbycite.
Nogibby nodded.
“What about the buildings?”
Nogibby shook with fear.
“It can not be done!”
“We have not enough hands to do this”
“WIPE IT ALL!” Shouted Gobbycite,
“Sir!” Nogibby gulped,
“We have not the hands or the time to get the corners right or even close to meeting minimum standards!”
“It does not have to be perfect, or anywhere near good! It just has to fool humans!”
“No one is going to live there!”
Nogibby sight in slight relief.
“Oh!”
“Well in that case only a few hours!”
“Good nodded” Gobbycite.
“After the building work is done then we head down, via the elevator to the portal nexus at the base of the town.”
“Destroying it as we leave!”
“We will go through at least fifteen abandoned portals, each being destroyed, march five days south to another nexus”
“Then another fifteen portals, destroying each one as we go, before making a last three day march to Nit City to report what has happened to an official high goblin council.
“Yes sir,” said Nogibby backing out the door and bowing.
.
‘The Humans DO deserve this’ Gobbycite told himself.
‘They saved our lives…’
‘They deserve to have their lives saved in return.’
‘It is the right thing, the noble thing to do!’
‘I will try and find them and save support them when we can,’
‘But duty demands that I must report to higher Nobs first!’
.
Present-day.
“I do know where some a load of goblins went,” Said The Huner Pointer Sunite Paladin.
They waved the general direction of a building towards the middle of the town.
“Their auras are easy to trace!”
“We are not after goblins,” Said The Palm
“We are after Human rebels!” He growled.
.
It was dam easy to get lost in this goblin city.
All the buildings looked the same.
All of them black, square and uniform.
All of them to precise sharp-angled standards.
To the human eye, they might seem old.
But goblins can throw up such buildings quite quickly.
And if for some very unlikely reason normal standards were not required, needed or kept too.
Then such buildings can be formed even quicker!
Not that any human would notice the travesty of a non-perfect sharp corner or less than perfectly smooth flat black and slightly less shiny reflective walls.
To be honest most sci-fi super AI computers would struggle to stop the difference.
But a fellow goblin would have been horrified and embarrassed by the “New” street that now stood where the Northern tunnel entrance had once been.
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- Writer
