The tiny person looks up at me with her shimmering sky-blue eyes as she drinks at my breast. As long as her eyes are locked on mine, I find I can’t look away from the marvelous creature.

 

I play with a small tuft of brown hair that sits atop the head of my daughter as she slowly falls asleep in my arms. As I run my finger across the newborn’s head, I find a small hard bump on either side. The beginning of horns? Not fully human then, but it still emerged more human than I had guessed.

 

Her eyes close fully and she begins to snore in a baby-like way, but she doesn’t stop suckling at me even as she naps. 

 

Cuuuuuuuuutte!

 

Such a little cutie.

 

I’m glad she got to breath her first breath outside of Hel. That place is no place for a child. This place is much better.

 

Now that she’s finally asleep, I have a chance to go over the changes that occurred in my records when she was born.

Fertile body has risen to 2 - You may now delay a birth at the cost of spirit

Oh, so if my water is about to break at an inconvenient time I can do something about it. 

 

Womb status has risen to 2 - You may now view details of the children you are carrying

If only I had this for my firstborn, maybe I would know what she is.

 

Skill gained - v Maternal link 1 (0)

Provides a mental connection between you and your children.

Life attribute

Req: Given birth at least once

Huh? I got a skill without choosing it. That can happen? 

It has 0 for the acquisition cost, does that mean zero-costed skills are acquired automatically once requirements are reached?

 

Aspect of Fertility has risen to (+3) - A new skill is available

 

Soul - 11 -

 

v Aspect of Fertility - 1 - (+3)

 

v Skills available

 

Active

 

v Inheritance doctoring (-3)

 

You can control if your children take after you or their sire at a certain point in development

 

Life attribute

 

Req: Maternal Link 1

 

Does this mean I could make a child fully human? What about the alternative? What if it takes after me? Only one way to find out.

 

Skill gained - Inheritance doctoring 1

Points spent: 3

Points left: 0

Aspect of fertility increased to 4

 

I should try it out, if I could get a child that grows up at an accelerated rate, It would free up a lot of my time.

I place a hand on my now flat stomach, I can’t use the skill like this.

Onwards down the river then! 

Current goal? Get knocked up again!

 

Womb status - Recovery

 

Oh.

Bummer.

 

I guess I gotta wait a while before my next pregnancy, but i should still probably find someone to fuck anyway.

Spirit - 7/25

Breastfeeding seems to drain my spirit a little, so I’m starting to get close to starvation.

If only you weren't so greedy huh?

Are you my little thirsty girl?

I carefully swap my daughter over to my other nipple as I walk.

She needs a name, I need to call her something other than “My daughter”. She needs to be called something that means something to me. My mind drifts back to earlier today, my first day of freedom and all the things I've witnessed.

 

Dawn.

 

That's a good name.

 

I wait for something bad to happen, thinking back to the time my body prevented me from telling Desmond my name.

Nothing?

Ok good.

 

“Stop right where are”

A strange sounding voice resonates out from somewhere behind me. It speaks in the same language Desmond spoke, but rather more crudely.

I start to turn around but the voice yells out again.

“No move without permission. Get stabbed if try.”

I stop, and a half dozen short figures surround me with flint spears. They have green skin, long pointed ears, and are wearing deerhide clothing. One of them in front of me eyes me and Dawn up before speaking to the one that I heard before.

"Human woman naked. No see any stones. Also, human have child human.”

This one is speaking in an entirely new language altogether, but for some reason I can understand it just fine. 

Human? I guess I look more human than they do, but I still have a few extra features. 

My tail wraps around one of my legs defensively. If it was a few hours ago, I would have tried to fight them. Or run maybe, I don’t think I’m very strong

I try speaking back to it in the same language as it spoke to its friend.

“Excuse me, but am I doing something wrong? Am I trespassing on your land?”

All of the little green people look at me in shock.

“Speak like goblin.” one of them says after a while.

None of the others speak for about a minute, their eyes all twitching between each other wildly.

One of them eventually breaks the silence with a confused sounding voice.

“Take to elder?”

The others shoot more darting glances between each other, then, without any more words spoken, they begin to walk me at spearpoint upstream.

 

We cross the riverbank where I gave birth, the game trail I came out of, and we keep on going.

Eventually, we meet a small waterfall surrounded by a crude village of wooden huts. The huts are incredibly poorly built, and barely even stand up at all. In the center of the village is a large dirty fire pit surrounded by bones. A half-dozen goblin children are at the fire pit, cleaning up bones and taking them out past the village border to someplace unseen.

I’m led to a location near the waterfall, and the first goblin who spoke to me splits off from the rest of my guards and walks into the largest hut in the village. 

As the news spreads through the village that I’m here, goblin men and women slowly start emerging from huts and returning from patrols. They hide behind trees and in doorways, and peer out at me. Some look at me with suspicion, and others, fear, but a few of them have something else in their eyes.

Lust.

I hold Dawn slightly closer, she hasn’t stopped feeding this entire time. She hasn’t even cried yet. From the moment she was born onwards she’s been perfectly silent

I’m not sure how to feel about the lustfulness of some of the goblins. A few hours ago I would have accepted them with open arms (and legs), but not anymore. Dawn takes priority, and I can’t protect her if I get into an orgy here. 

She’s so small and so fragile, I want to protect her from things even as small as a gentle breeze.

I turn to the second goblin that I heard speak.

 

“What are you going to do to us?”

He looks rather apprehensive about talking to me, but does eventually decide that doing so wouldn’t hurt.

 

“You human. Humans have strong children.”

I look at Dawn, confused. The goblin shakes his head to signify that I’ve misunderstood.

 

“When goblins have goblin children, children weak. regular goblin. When Humans have goblin children, children strong. Hobgoblin. Hobgoblins live long. Hobgoblins make clan strong. Clan fight other clans better.”

“But I’m not human.” I reply.

“Me see that. Humans have no horns. Me not dumb.”

 

The goblin points right at my pussy, which just so happens to be right at arm height for him.

“But you human there. That all that matter for children.”

I sort of understand, but it still doesn’t explain why the goblins are so afraid of me.

 

“Why are you all so fearful of me, I haven’t even done anything to fight back.”

“Human stronger than goblin by much. Take whole patrol to fight. Even if manage to beat or catch human, human break stones.”

“Why are stones a problem?”

“No idea. Humans weird. But if stone break, bring other humans. Kill one human, humans come and kill ten goblin. Member of wolf clan try make hobgoblin with human woman once. Human found way back to stones goblin took from her. Broke all of them. Humans kill every goblin in wolf clan and neighboring clans also.”

Ok, hold on, let me try and decode his broken speech.

So humans have stones that they can communicate to other humans with.

If goblins kill humans, the humans retaliate by killing lots of goblins.

 

And one time a goblin tried to impregnate a human, and the humans responded by massacring probably hundreds of goblins. That seems like a bit of an overreaction to me. Isn’t death more permanent than pregnancy? I guess I can understand that humans might not always want children, but these children stay with the goblins…

 

“Why does that provoke the humans more? Death seems more permanent than a pregnancy.”

The goblin's face lights up as I say this, and he replies in a much more friendly tone.

 

“Yes! Exactly! Humans make no sense! Hobgoblin good for clan! Treat human well because having hobgoblin great honor, but humans no understand. Me like you, not-human, you make sense.”

Huh, so I guess they’ll take care of me if I have a hobgoblin or two, so I’m not worried for myself at least.

 

“What about my child? What will happen to her?”

He shrugs.

“Dunno. That for elder to decide.”

 

I wait in silence for another minute, breaking the silence with a question.

“So who are you then?”

“Deer catcher.” comes the reply

“I mean what do people call you?”

“Deer catcher.” he repeats.

His bluntness both amuses and angers me.

“Your name. What is. Your name?

“Deer catcher.” He says again.

 

This is stupid. Maybe I should just wait quietly.

 

Another minute later the first goblin emerges from the hut and calls out to me.

“Elder see you now.”

 

I walk into the elder’s hut followed by a few goblins, and take in the sights and smells that greet me. 

Dried herbs and roots fill clay bowls on tables lining the walls of the small building, the air smells bitter with primitive medicine. This is probably the only hut in the village that has more than one room, and I make my way through the first and into the second.

An elderly female goblin sits hunched over on a bearskin in the center of the room, grinding herbs with a mortar and pestle. Even with her poor posture, I can still tell she is taller than the other goblins by almost a foot. She greets me warmly and beacons to a deer hide in front of her, her speech much less broken than the other goblins.

“Hello young one, come sit down and speak with me.”

I oblige, sitting myself down on the deerhide she pointed to. As I do, she takes the opportunity to look me over. Once I settle myself, she starts to talk again.

“Hmm, you’re quite the oddity, aren’t you. Disregarding your looks, you walked Into goblin-occupied lands naked, with child, and without any sigils at all. What was your goal here?”

I don’t think there’s any benefit to making up a story here, so I may as well just tell as little of the truth as I can.

“To be honest, I didn’t know these lands were goblin lands at all. I merely wandered into them while looking for a human settlement.”

She sighs.

“Yes, my people are not very good at building, so our lands don’t have the easily noticeable stone towers and long walls that humans build. Many humans wander into our lands, and we have to take care to leave them be, even though they trespass.

I heard your conversation with the deer catcher, and I take it you have questions. I’ll do my best to answer as many as I can.” 

I think for a while. Best to start off with the easy ones.

“What are these stones the humans have? They seemed to be rather important.”

 

“You don’t know? You really are a strange one, are you? She says, obviously surprised.

Pondering for a few moments before the speaks, she starts to explain.

“The stones my people talk about are actually magically enchanted clay tablets; Humans call them sigils, and they’re small enough to hide almost anywhere. Few goblins are mages, including me, so I’m not sure on the specifics of how they work, but they link up to an identical sigil far away in human lands. If one sigil breaks, the other one will as well, no matter the distance.

Humans use them to communicate. If a human is near death or gets captured, they break sigil s that corresponds to a message they want to send. We only dared to try and capture you since you were naked and without them.”

 

Wow. Humans are smart. They found a way to turn literal dirt into an instant communication method. I might have my work cut out for me when I eventually get around to hunting them.

“Right, so onto the topic of my capture then. Uhh, will I be allowed to leave? I don’t mean to take anything from you.”

 

The goblin elder frowns, seemingly dreading this part of the conversation.

“Ah, before we will ever consider letting you leave, we need you for something. 

Soon, our small clan will not be able to compete against the other ones. Hobgoblins all have special talents, and mine is my skill in herbalism. With it, we’ve just barely been able to defend our territory with poison for our enemies and medicine for our injured.

I will die soon, and I can’t do anything to stop it. When that happens, the people I care for will be driven out of our territory by the other goblin clans. Most of them will join me soon afterwards in the soil. “

She takes a deep breath, steeling herself for what she has to say next.

“You see, our cultures are very different, and find different things acceptable and taboo… but if we are to survive, we need hobgoblins. Your child will not be harmed, and we will keep both of you fed and healthy. I’m sorry, I know humans find this cruel, but this is not an opportunity we can afford to pass up if we are to survive.”

The elder looks at my guards, as if telling them to be prepared for an outburst, but she is unable to look me in the eye. She seems to truly feel remorse for her actions.

“Alright.” I say.

The elder looks at me, confused.

“Pardon?”

 

“I’ll do it. Willingly”

 

She stares into space for an uncomfortably long amount of time, and the guards all shoot glances between each other.

 

“You really aren’t human, are you?” she finally replies.

“Nope.” 

“Oh...

Hm.

Guess that makes things a bit easier then.”