Chapter 7: A Wish to Live

 

  Stryg spotted the shaman lying on the floor a few dozen feet away.

  Stryg ran towards him, “Over here! On the ground.”

  “Crovor, can you stand? We need your fire magic to get us out of here,” Second Mother called out.

  Crovor coughed up blood. He took a shaky breath, “...It wasn’t supposed to be like this.”

  “What are you saying?” asked Second Mother. “We knew this journey would be dangerous, but we succeeded anyway. The monster is dead.”

  She reached down and tried to find his shoulder in the dark, “Now get up.”

  Crovor tried to laugh but ended up coughing, “It was supposed to be easy. They said it’d be easy. Go in, grab the treasure and get out... I was going to be the strongest.”

  “Who said that?” Second Mother frowned.

  Crovor was glad they couldn’t see each other. He didn’t want anyone to see his shame. “I heard a pair of goblins from a nearby tribe talking about a secret treasure they had found in a cave. A treasure that would make any who had it the most powerful in all Vulture Woods.”

  “What are you saying?” Second Mother asked, she had a bad feeling about this.

  Crovor bit his lip, “They said it was being guarded by a monster during the day. I attacked them while they were off guard. I killed one and made the other tell me where the cave was, before killing him too. My plan was to get the treasure at night and get out. It was so easy.”

  “But what about the mother moon?” Her eyes widened at the dawning realization, “You lied about everything.”

  Crovor coughed, “I needed help getting to the cave. It was the only way to convince you all to come with me, without getting the chief involved.”

  “No, that’s impossible!” Stryg shouted. “You said the mother moon chose you. That this was a sacred quest. That… That Lunae chose me.”

  Crovor laughed, “Of course she didn’t choose you. Are you an idiot? I just said you were chosen to get First Mother’s suspicions off my back. Why would Lunae choose a failure of a goblin like you.”

  Stryg fell to his knees. It couldn’t be. It had all been a lie? The mother moon hadn’t chosen him, he really was a failure. He looked at his blood covered hands. No, he wasn’t. He had killed the monster. He had at least done that one thing right.

  “B-but, I killed the beast,” Stryg mumbled.

  “Stop lying boy. You can’t even win a night challenge,” Crovor spat.

  “...You bastard, you lied to us… I should kill you where you stand,” Second Mother snarled.

  Crovor sighed, “Go ahead. I can’t feel my legs. I’m not getting out of here alive. Nothing matters anymore.”

  Stryg looked at Crovor’s legs. They were twisted in the wrong way, he could see a bone sticking out of his thigh. Wait a second. How could he see anything? If the mother moon hadn’t chosen him, then she hadn’t blessed him either. So, why was he the only one who could see in the darkness?

  Crovor cried out in pain as Second Mother blindly stabbed him with her spear. She couldn’t see in the dark, so she kept plunging her spear around, stabbing the shaman over and over.

  “Wait,” Srixa spoke up.

  “Not a chance,” Second Mother raised her bloody spear again.

  Srixa shook her head, “No, not that. Didn’t the monster say something?”

  “Is that really important right now? After hearing this miserable excuse of a shaman’s confession?” Second Mother spat on the dying goblin.

  Srixa shook his head, “She said something. The monster. She said, that we had made a bunch of noise in ‘our home.’”

  “Our home?” Ostroz furrowed his brow.

  A wretched scream echoed through the cave. Stryg whipped around. Another lamia slithered out from the tunnels. She stared at her fallen sister before fixing her eyes at the goblins.

  “I’ll rip you all apart!” the lamia roared.

  Her serpentine tail lunged at one of the goblins, smashing his small body into the floor.

  “There’s another!” Ostroz yelled as he raised his spear.

  The others followed suit and gathered in a defensive circle, leaving the dying Crovor alone, defenseless.

  Stryg didn’t join the others, he saw what none of the other goblins did. There were two more lamias in the cavern. One was still crying over his dead sister’s body, while the other lamia sister attacked the goblins.

  It was only a matter of time before both lamias focused on killing all of them. Stryg watched as his tribemates tried to attack their unseen enemy and fail. They stood no chance.

  Ostroz’s advice flashed through his mind, You do anything to achieve your goal.

  Stryg only had one goal in mind, only one wish. He wished to live.

  He ran towards the cave walls. He grabbed the largest stone perch and pulled himself up. Stryg climbed as quickly as he could. The other goblins shouted as they fought the lamia.

  He heard their war cries and their screams of terror. Stryg remembered the last piece of Ostroz’s advice, If they can’t stop you, then they don’t matter.

  If they could see Stryg running away from battle, they would call him a coward, a traitor. Some might even try to kill him. But none of that mattered right now. He wasn’t going to let himself die in this abyss of death. He’d survive no matter the cost. To hell with the shaman and his damn quest.

  Stryg’s fear of death propelled him to climb faster even when his limbs grew tired. It only took him two minutes to arrive at the top. He pulled himself up and over the ledge.

  Stryg sighed with relief, he had never been so glad to see trees in his life. His arms felt like jelly, but he didn’t care. All he needed were his legs.

  He stumbled to his feet and ran into the woods. He wasn’t sure which way he had come, but as he heard the lamia’s cry in the distance, he didn’t care much at the moment.

  All he needed was to get as far away as possible. Stryg kept running. Sounds of fauna rang through the trees. He hoped the screams of the lamia would scare off any nearby predators.

  Stryg ran, he dodged bushes, and jumped past any debris, desperate to escape. He couldn’t hear the lamias anymore, but that didn’t mean they weren’t very far behind either.

  A bola flew out from behind a tree and slammed into his legs, wrapping itself over them. Stryg crashed to the floor, his skull banged into a tree trunk. He raised his head in a daze.

  “Well, what do we have here?”

  A masked man, covered in a cloak of colored blotches walked up to him. Camouflage, a small part of Stryg’s mind noted.

  The man crouched, “You’re a goblin, right? Never seen a blue one before, or is that cyan? I can’t really tell, it's too dark.”

  Stryg tried to say “kill yourself,” but it came out as a painful mumble.

  “Can’t talk huh? Figures. Can’t expect much from you savage types. I didn’t even know there were any sylvan tribes near here. I was really only hoping to catch one of the smaller critters on this trip, but today must be my lucky day. Finding a goblin out here by itself is rare. An odd one like you, especially so. You’ll fetch a nice price.”

  The poacher dragged Stryg by the feet.

  Stryg wanted to fight back, but he was too hurt and tired. He couldn’t even raise his arms. His injured back flared in pain as it scraped across all the small rocks and twigs that were sprawled over the forest’s floor.

  After a few minutes they stopped walking. Stryg’s fading mind thanked Lunae that the pain was over, he hadn’t been able to focus on much more.

  An enormous creature walked into his view. Stryg’s eyes widened in shock at the sight of the centaur.

  The lower half of the beast-kin was coated in grey shaggy hair. His upper half was bare-chested, except for two leather straps on his shoulders that were connected to a pair of reins. The centaur was covered in old scars, and his body was gaunt, both upper and lower rib cages were visible underneath the thin skin.

  The centaur’s hair was unkempt as was his unruly beard. His sunken leaf green eyes stared dimly into nothingness. A metal collar was wrapped around his neck.

  A saddle and an assortment of packs covered his lower back. The poacher rummaged through one of the packs and pulled out an apple. He held the fruit up to the centaur who slowly lowered his head and bit into the fruit.

  “Good boy, you waited for me,” the poacher patted the centaur’s side.

  What the fuck am I seeing? Stryg squinted. He had never seen a centaur before.

  The poacher turned to the goblin, “Centaur’s old, but he gets the job done. He’s carried me over the entire Ebon Realm for the past twenty years. Old reliable.”

  The centaur grunted in approval. The poacher grabbed some rope from another pouch, “Vulture Woods can be quite dangerous, so let’s get out of here quickly, yeah?”

  He began tying Stryg up. The goblin tried struggling, but the burst of energy he had when running was nowhere to be found. After tying him, the poacher hauled Stryg up behind the centaur’s saddle, then got up on the saddle himself.

  “I suggest you don’t move too much back there. You’ll fall off,” the poacher warned before grabbing the centaur’s reins.

  Stryg wasn’t listening, he was too exhausted to think. He fell asleep without a second thought.