Fate Deals the Cards

  Temperance Ch 3

  The Heart of Rock-n-Roll

  Under a shady green bower of willow fronds, a wrinkled goblin crone smiled sadly at me, with a shuddering, rattling sigh that shook her emaciated, nearly naked body of dessicated green skin and pointy bones.

  “Come, boy. I will slit your throat swiftly, so you may pass from this life, unburdened by sins.” She muttered, as though the idea should weigh more heavily on her than on me.

  “I don’t believe in sins.” I said in English; very carefully, to avoid slicing up my talking stuff. “Don’t try anything stupid, I’m feeling volatile.”

  “Oh? I’ve heard of isekai who remember their prior lives, but never have I seen one. That’s quite a mouthful of teeth you have there…” She cooed and purred eagerly, as she stepped closer to where I still sat.

  “All the better to bite you with, grannie.” I answered calmly, as she continued scooting closer.

  “Ah, you are still very new, boy-child… What were you in your last-life? Something like us, a hu-man perhaps, or a kitty-man? I smell something of the spider on you, and more besides.” She chittered eagerly and reached out.

  “Don’t test me, elder, I warn you.” My growl and short yipping bark in goblin speech brought her up short, a moment from reaching out to touch my knobby green knee.

  “Third day on this world… I’m to be abandoned, or castrated and enslaved, now simply slain out of hand? Get fucked, old bitch.” I grunted, drooling a little blood from the corner of my mouth.

  “I was human once, isekaied here long ago… Truck-Kun sends his clerics where they are needed, even to dismal, blighted holes like this one.” She mumbled, almost to herself. “To send a boy-child here, though, knowing what this place holds… I worry what this portends.”

  “Truck-Kun?” I scoffed furiously at the old crone. “The runaway delivery van that knocks people into other worlds in every manga, anime and web-novel, ever?”

  “The same. I am his priestess, one of many… Though the only one on this benighted thorn in the universe’s loincloth.” She answered glibly, a wide smile creasing her features even more.

  “It is a balm to speak with one who knows, even now as my life fades away. I must admit some eagerness to leave this damned dungeon world at last. I can at least take you with me, into the embrace of the divine courier of lost souls.”

  “Seriously?” I demanded, tearing up my mouth… again.

  “Seriously!” She barked, sounding a little irate as she wiped my bloody drool off her knee. I may have sputtered and choked a little blood and drool into the shady nook under the willows. “This little patch of the eternal universe is all fucked up… I have been trapped here, dying and reincarnating again and again for nearly a thousand years, awaiting my replacement from the divine Courier…”

  “Wait… What?” I asked, once the bleeding was under control. “Truck-Kun? Dungeon world?” I demanded carefully.

  “Yes yes… You must be confused from your rebirth… I was sent here long ago, before the Light cult came and stole away the nascent gods of this world, dooming all goblin kind to ignominious savagery and short brutish lives.” She announced, as though I should know what she was nattering on about.

  “It is a tragedy of monumental proportions, that you have been incarnated as a male, little gobbling. Now, if the blood-curse takes you before we can depart, you will be stuck here, my poor little isekai. I look forward to following the thread of your life into the embrace of my god.” She shook her head slowly, while a long, slow sigh passed through her lips. “We shall die together and escape this realm… I hope. If you cannot follow me, while I follow you into the embrace of the Courier, at least you will have a chance to re-incarnate as a female.”

  “Back up… Truck-Kun is your god?” I asked very slowly, aiming for maximum clarity and minimum bloodshed.

  “Of course… yours too, little brother! You must have really gotten your memories fouled in transit.” She sighed sadly. “What were you, when last you walked the soil of a prime world? One of the human variants, I think.” She nodded sagely and smiled. “Yes, a human, unless my old eyes deceive me.”

  “Yeah, I was human… But I don’t believe in gods, old crone.” I grumbled, quickly tiring of her idiocy. “Keep your death cult mumbo jumbo to yourself.”

  “A godless? In this place? Impossible!” She gasped with mirth, while I glared at her sourly.

  “Surely you remember the courier’s divine lights and his servitor…” She asked slowly, while she peered into my eyes, as if seeking some answer there. “You must recall Shiro the Necomancer, waving to your lost soul in the void from the divine dashboard, his iron bell singing sweetly to call your shade into the sacred headlights?”

  “No, oddly enough, I don’t remember your stupid, bullshit afterlife. I died on Earth and landed here, a couple days ago. If you have anything actually helpful to say, get on with it or get lost.” I snapped at her, wounding myself a little in the process, of course.

  “Fucking cultists… Everywhere I go.” I complained to the arching willow fronds above me.

  “You are not of his clergy? Not one of his isekai souls?” She asked, sounding deeply disturbed. “I truly sense no remnant of his touch in your soul and aura, boy-child…” A look of profound horror crossed her face, and of deep, abiding grief.

  “A dead-worlder, in this place?!” She gasped, stricken by some unbearable sorrow. “Oh, poor lost boy… Doomed, doomed doomed you are; lost and alone in this mad little cesspit of curses and wickedness, forever.”

  “Make sense or make tracks.” I snapped at the tired and suddenly very frail seeming goblin dame. “Keep your gods and religion, I’ve had enough of it for this lifetime already.”

  “Gods are at the very heart of it, dead-worlder. Especially the god who should have guided you here to release me from this place after so terribly long.” She gasped, sagging down onto herself, looking very small indeed.

  “Now I will slip away, no matter what you wish, for my life is finally ending. I can feel the gateway, just over your shoulder, waiting in your shadow to bear me from this place... Sadly, leaving you here, marooned for who knows how many centuries to come, cursed and broken in mind, body and soul.”

  “What about my shadow? It does some weird stuff… is that normal here? Is there really.. magic here?” I asked the little woman, as her eyes flickered open and closed slowly.

  “Yes, magic, of course, dead-worlder… You wouldn’t know, would you, though? A dead-worlder, here…? I shall scold my god very firmly, when his light bathes my soul once more.” She sighed even more softly.

  “Magic permeates the vast, unknowable universe, in all the hues, scents, flavors, textures and tones of vast creation…” A shuddering sigh shook her again, as she went on.

  “You have shadows lurking in your shadow, ghosts of the past, the future and the right now, so many ghosts, haunting you from just beyond the veil. Embrace the Shadows, my child… Betwixt Light and Darkness, only the thinnest edge divides… Ware, lest you cut yourself.”

  She took a soft, rasping breath, then fell still for a long moment, until a tiny moth of deepest black crawled from beneath her dim, sun-dappled shadow and flitted into the confines of the willow bower.

  It circled the upper boughs a few times, then fluttered down into my own shadow, where it melted away into nothing but a soft gasp of relief, carried on the wind that couldn’t reach my ears beneath the trailing fronds of my tree shelter.

  It wasn’t frightening, letting a soul pass through my shadow, into whatever lay beyond, nor was it in any way disturbing or jarring… This too felt like a familiar, natural and very deeply sacred thing.

  “Sacred?” I asked myself, as a deep and abiding sense of satisfaction washed over me. “Sacred to what?”

  The empty, lifeless old crone had no advice or help to offer, she just sat there, slowly cooling and stinking up the place, as death took hold and things got a little messy. This too felt familiar, death seemed like an old friend, somehow, natural, necessary and like all natural phenomena, temporary.

  That thought struck me and rang like a bell, vibrating my entire being gently. I’d lived and died at least once already, now here I was; a goblin with a magic shadow, a swinging dick and a whole summercamp’s worth of arts and crafts clamoring at my fingertips, begging to escape into the world. A world I desperately wanted to discover and begin shaping to my will.

  Gods, ghosts or goblin witches, I was not going to let some half baked witch tell me how this was going to go, nor her stupid, silly, Truck-Kun! A delivery truck god with a white, paw waving kitty cat on the dashboard indeed… I scoffed again, just for good measure and hopped down off my little stone seat. ‘Time to make things happen.’ I thought, since thinking wouldn’t slice my lips to ribbons.

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  I collected the snacks I’d laid out for the crone, gathered my stuff and slipped out from beneath the fronds, into the dazzling sunshine of mid morning with a grunt of displeasure.

  “Too bright!” I grumbled as Rache dashed up to me, cradling Sheela close.

  “Ghnash!?” She asked, looking up at me from surprisingly far below. “You got bigger again?”

  “Guess so…” I muttered carefully. I now towered over her by a foot or so and nearly doubled her mass. That brought my attention to the very uncomfortably tight palm frond kilt and loincloth I was wearing.

  The tough, braided cord around my waist was cutting in savagely every time I moved, abrading my flesh, while the crude tackle retaining undershorts I’d cobbled together made even more tender bits uncomfortable.

  My tiny flint knife snipped the cord, sending the over stretched garment flying across the little clearing, impelled by my suddenly, very painfully erect member.

  “Ouch!” I grumbled, before embarrassment hit me square in the balls. Here I was, a big disgrace, waving my flag all over the place… and in mixed company too. “Ugh, sorry, Rache… I make new kilt.”

  She just smiled blandly and shrugged, cuddling her daughter and looking around, unconcerned. “Where is elder Neena, the witch?”

  “Dead.” I answered soberly, while busily weaving a new garment from some much softer grasses and fibers. “She old. Said some stuff, died.”

  “She could have gelded him for us before passing on at least.” Keerie grumbled from across the clearing, as far from me as she could get. “He’s a full grown gobbo now…”

  “Yes, full grown gobb…” I agreed. “No more gelding talk, auntie. Ghnash is done being patient.” I fixed her with a glare that must have been at least a little scary, because she scuttled even farther away, lurking at the very edge of the clearing.

  “Be good, Ghnash!” Rache scolded me gently. “We must leave this place, her body will bring predators, drawn by the scent of blood.”

  “Blood?” I asked, feeling very tired, suddenly.

  “You slew her, yes? We must flee, then.” Rache insisted firmly. “Is nub-good to slay elders, Ghnash! Even if they plan to kill you. Bad boy!”

  “She died. Not killed, just died.” I mumbled, as her tiny hand took my huge, taloned paw. The miniscule goblin dragged me out into the marshlands, following a faint trail through the clumps of pampas grass and bamboo.

  “Sure, my son… I believe you…” Her voice and expression said she was not buying it at all. “Nub-nub more lies between us; truth only to your mother, little Ghnash. Is bad.” She cooed, as we walked along.

  It took a few minutes before I realized we were alone; Keerie no longer followed us a few steps behind, she was gone. “Yes, Ghnash. Keerie fled.” Rache sighed when she noticed my searching glances.

  “She will pup soon, she fears you will slay her pup, to bring her back into season sooner.” She smiled sadly and shook her head. “I told her you were good-good boy, my son, but she fears your baby-maker and the curse.”

  “Curse?” I asked wearily, feeling super run down and fading fast. “Why would I hurt her child?”

  “Curse of all gobb men. When your baby-stick rises, soon the curse takes hold. Maybe you would hurt her pup, it is goblin way.” She shrugged and adjusted Sheela in her sling. “Not your pup, after all. She will not come into her tummy-time until her little gobb is weaned, so most would take her child away, so she may bear a new one.”

  I stopped walking right there, taking a few moments to digest that, while Rache waited patiently for me to get my act together.

  “Really?” I finally managed to ask.

  “Yub-yub” She nodded and smiled. “Is why we fled. New chieftain took power in tribe, demanded all old chief’s gobblings and runties be killed. We fled, now I has a new chieftain, too.” She smiled at me and nodded. “I will be clan matriarch, my son, whatever you decide and wherever you go.”

  “What about this ‘curse’?” I asked, as my butt landed on a mossy log, without my approval. So tired…

  “Blood, bones and balls of every gobb-man is cursed, cursed with savage hungers and bestial wants. When baby-stick rises, madness and bloodlust follow. Only a chieftain can manage the savage desires and be more than an animal.” She said firmly, as she settled on my log beside me.

  “You can be more than animal, Ghnash. I believes you are good boy. Believes enough to stay with my little Sheela.”

  She nodded once more, settling the matter. “Elder nub believes, Keerie nub either.” She smiled at me with a deep and abiding satisfaction. “Come, we must find shelter before night, when beasts and wild gobb-men stalk.”

  I followed almost blindly, too exhausted to wonder or worry, as Rache led the way through the steaming, summertime marsh. We ate roots, berries and any skeeter foolish enough to flitter into our snug nest in a dense thicket of willows, that night, before falling asleep, curled up together in a warm ball of comfy, damp goodness.

  I dreamt again, dreamt of that tall, red roofed hotspring inn, and that tall, pale human woman whose hips sang as she danced through my mind and hazy memories of another life.

  I woke first, again and wriggled free of the two goblins. Sheela had my thumb in a death-grip and complained softly when I gently tugged the damp, wrinkled digit from her lips.

  I slipped her closer to Rache’s boobs and let the hungry little monster go to town on her mother instead, as I passed through the only gap in our dense nest of young trees.

  I once again had a massive boner, achingly stiff and pressing on a bladder full to bursting, as I slipped silently through the marsh, searching for a nice place to unpack my excess.

  After a heroic wizz, a massive deuce and a wank that left me exhausted and gasping for breath, I buried the blessedly normal residue in a shallow hole and washed up in a nearby stream. I plopped my butt down in the crook of a tree, with a good view of our little nest and the local area and settled in for a thinkin’ sesh, while I waited for dawn.

  My eyes wandered the misty fens and lowlands from my perch, as my mind ran around in circles, struggling with the new things and things that should have been new, but felt as comfortably familiar as my favorite underwear.

  Proper underwear felt like a distant dream, in this world of scratchy, coarse fibers and pokey, thorny brush. A pair of pants would be a game changer, even if I had my own built in Pockets! I shook off that thought, before patterns and stitchcraft could fill my mind with ideas I couldn’t execute… right now.

  I reached into my shadow for a few things and began to quietly work at my crafts, while watching the dim, soggy world grow brighter. The morning birds were just tuning up, when a movement in the brush drew my eye. Something furtive, slipping up the trail we had walked the day before, moving from shadow to shadow in the slowly rising mist. That was what gave them away, the mist curling and swirling, responding to the passage of stealthily moving bodies, several of them.

  They were not nearly as sneaky as they believed themselves, mostly because of the large, bristly, brindle furred dog they were kinda following through the mist. ‘Kinda following’ the beast, because two goblins held rigid bamboo pole leashes, affixed to a collar of stout leather.

  They wrestled it back and forth, while the creature sniffed at the trail and led the way, sort of. The two leash-gobbs spent almost as much time preventing the beast from savaging its handlers as they did following the reluctant guidance of the animal’s nose.

  “Sun comes soon, we must strike now.” One of the green, shadowy figures hissed at a reluctant member of the raiding party. When they paused fifty yards from the thicket where Rache and Sheel were still asleep.

  “Jiggs, Skinz wait here with warg.” He turned to his band of a dozen nearly naked goblins and chuckled at the little jerks. “We capture bed-slaves, no butchery! We sort the meat from the fuck-ables after!”

  Huddled in a tree, ten yards away downwind, that boiling, savage rage stirred behind my navel. They planned to steal what was mine… not happening! Each of the stunty warriors bore a club or spear of some kind, mostly just sharpened bamboo poles or heavy branches, crudely worked into weapons. Almost entirely naked, only the leader wore anything and his was a simple belt decorated with feathers holding an elaborate obsidian dagger in a crude rawhide sling that left most of the blade bare.

  It was hard to tell in the darkness, but I seemed to be a bit larger than any of them, but they moved as if they knew what they were doing. My spears and knife were sized for gobbling Ghnash, which made them slightly ridiculous, if still deadly, now.

  I grinned a savage, hungry little smile, when my eyes fell back on that massive furry, growling beast. It still snapped and strained at its leashes, hoping for a bite of one of the two struggling to restrain it, so it was a valuable asset… if a deadly dangerous one.

  My new blowpipe raised to my ragged, bleeding lips as I sighted on my target. The weapon threw tiny skeeter needles, bearing a clot of the nasty little monster’s own venom, compounded with a bit of tree sap and a smidge of clay.

  Since it was silent, I had no fear of detection, when my first shot went wide of the mark. Some tree or bush in the wilderness received my dart with good grace and left me plenty of time to reload from the small cluster of the darts I’d prepared, while sitting in a tree.

  My next tiny needle struck home in the shoulder of one of the leash goblins, eliciting no immediate reaction. The anesthetic properties of the venom worked incredibly fast, magically so. The paralytic took more time, but it did the job. Slowly, the gobbo’s leash hand slackened, weakened then dropped numbly to his side, without the fool noticing at all, until sixty pounds of ravenous canine lunged for his throat, dragging the other gobb along for the ride.

  The screams that erupted in the marsh were music to my hungry ears, as I pounced on the leader, jabbing my toy sized bamboo fishing spear into his belly with a savage twist of the three pronged tool.

  While his entrails spooled up around my forked spear, his buddies found themselves ‘Caught Between the Moon and New York City’.

  Blood flooded my mouth as I sang a sweet, pretty melody with famously nonsensical lyrics. Snarling, screaming and the scent of blood filled my nose and mind, as I leapt from the dying leader.

  My flint spear jabbed and spun, stabbing at the two goblin warriors trying to get by me, to escape the monster currently mauling the handlers and back line. In the darkness, mist and chaos, several figures moved, leapt and fell, bleeding and shrieking piteously as carnage in fur and fangs tore through its tormentors with unholy delight.

  Sunrise found me, bleeding, exhausted and alone, almost. Dark brown, lambent eyes, a blood drenched muzzle and a low growl emerged from the brush, as I pulled my broken spear from a twitching goblin warrior’s guts.

  My keen point flashed across his throat, ending his suffering, while the dog beast prowled toward me, hackles raised and tail low.

  We met eyes for a long moment, across that blood spattered clearing of wrecked bodies and crawling mist. Goblin eyes met the canine gaze evenly, while my rational mind watched from a distance, spectating while my body moved. We circled each other for a long moment, measuring and evaluating the foe on an instinctive, primal level.

  Silently we moved together, meeting in a rush at the center of the clearing. My spear struck first, gouging a long, bloody furrow in the monster’s flank, as it snapped for my hands and arms.

  Those long, yellowed fangs closed on my left forearm, slashing me to the bone as it tugged and worried at the flesh slipping between its teeth as we separated again.

  I pulled my ragged, bleeding arm back, thankful it had missed grabbing any bones, while the beast circled and whined angrily at the deep wound I’d laid in its side. Our eyes met again, sharing a moment where we both recognized something in the other, something that resonated and chimed across the wreckage of blood and spilled bowels. Silently, the animal turned and slipped into the verdure, vanishing into the thickening fog.

  Exhausted, half blinded by sticky blood from a wound to my scalp, shredded and generally a wreck, I staggered to the little copse of willows I’d left for a wizz and a wank just a short time before and collapsed onto the leaves, alone.

  My eye that wasn’t glued shut by swelling and clotted blood found no sign of Rache or her tiny daughter; just the still warm nest they had wisely fled, when the party jumped off. I sighed sadly and slipped away into darkness and pain.

  I woke up some time later, cold, hungry, but otherwise feeling pretty good… I was cold, really cold, and something smelled bad. I nudged the green body cradled in my arms, wondering if Sheela had deuced in Rache’s belly sling again… it hit me a second later.

  The body I held was stone cold and smelled awful.

  I lurched away, horror-stricken and terrified of what I would see, when I looked, as I must. It was a male goblin, a large one. The dead gobb was as big as me, muscular and fit, except a raggedly bandaged wound, festering on his left forearm. The thing was crawling with blowfly maggots and other marshland creeps. Other wounds marked the corpse, but it was the nasty arm wound and infection that did the bastard in.

  I searched him quickly, finding only my broken spear and a few clusters of bright colored stones and flowers in the nest. Someone had washed him, bandaged him and laid him out in the nest beside me, as if for a funeral… I watched in slowly dawning comprehension as the dead goblin slowly began to deflate and dissolve, rapidly decomposing into a slick of clear, silvery slime. Watching my own three day old corpse fade away in a few long moments was super disconcerting, even as I felt a warm, pleasant sensation bloom in my chest, beside the burning anger still lurking in my guts.

  Rache had tended to me, done her best and then laid me to rest in her way… I owed her for that, wherever she had gone, the poor dear.

  The slime that was all that remained of my corpse evaporated away quickly, until only a small pile of very confused bugs remained, wondering where their feast had gone. This was going to be a bumpy ride, however it turned out.

  “Ghnash is dead… Long live Ghnash…” I muttered through freshly sliced lips.