Goblin's Honor

by Scott Harper

Shyla started to glance over at Bernard, but the sight before them drew her attention fully again before she could look at the man by her side. “It’s worse than we thought,” she whispered, keeping her voice low, though she knew there was no chance of being overheard due the noise the multitude below was making.

Bernard flinched at the sound of her voice. When he didn’t answer, she finally looked at him, repeating her words. His pale green eyes wide with horror. He only nodded.

“What do we do?” she asked.

He shrugged.

Shyla gripped her yew longbow tightly with both hands. “We need to do something.”

Finally, her partner pulled his gaze from the spectacle before them. Yet, as he spoke, his glance kept darting back to the nightmare image down in the ravine below them.

“Just what are we ” - one of his hands released its death-grip on his own longbow to flutter between them, taking in both himself and her - “two archers who are out of arrows, supposed to do against an army of goblins? Huh? Tell me! What are we to do?”

Turning her gaze back to the enemy massed below them, she whispered, “I don’t know. But you know as well as I what they’re doing. If they finish the Summoning, we’re dead.”

Bernard gave a hysterical little laugh before saying, “Once they finish the Summoning, every human everywhere will be dead!”

Shyla nodded. “Exactly. So what do we do to stop it? We know the particulars of the spell they’re using to summon Vibbic. All we have to do it to toss a single live goblin into the Well of Discord while the Summoning is being performed and, not only will the spell be disrupted, but no goblin would ever again be able to summon the demon.”

Bernard looked at her, eyes wide. He was shaking visibly. “You are not suggesting that we go down there and try that?”

Shyla locked her gaze with his. “What other choice is there? We run back to our camp and live until Vibbic rises and sweeps over the world, wiping out humanity as per the goblins’ request. Or we can go down there and at least try to stop it. Either way, you and I are doomed, my friend. The only question is this - do we give up our lives in an attempt to stop this and save the rest of humanity from not only losing this war with the goblins but from being wiped out to last man, woman and child, or do we hide until the demon runs us to ground and kills us along with everyone else?”

Shaking harder, Bernard pointed at the writhing mass of goblins below them. “They’ll kill us on sight!”

“Then we’ll have to make sure we’re not seen. We can slip down easily enough. With all the chanting they’re doing, I’m sure the won’t hear us. I doubt they’ll notice us until we start killing them. Then, it’d just be a matter of fighting our way through to the Well and pushing a single goblin over the edge.”

Bernard stared at her. “You’re insane! No matter which way we circle around, there must be four hundred goblins between us and the Well!”

Shyla glanced at the throng below. The chanting was growing even louder. Putrid green mist was drifting up from the Well, shot through with black vapor. “We don’t have time to circle around, anyway. We’ve got to go straight down from here, and we’ve got to be quick about it, or we won’t stand a chance of getting there in time.” She rose into a crouch, ready to move. “I’m going. Are you coming with me?”

Hesitating a moment, glancing from her to the goblins and back, Bernard finally rose with her.

Ror’Dlark stood amidst the horde of his brethren, but, unlike them, he was not chanting, not adding his voice to the rancorous chorale. Instead, he stared sullenly at the weathered ring of stone blocks that formed the surface edge of the Well of Discord. He knew its history. Everyone gathered for the Summoning knew it.

Untold centuries past, the Well had been created, formed by a race, long since extinct, who had been caught up in a war much like that which now embroiled the goblins and the humans, the hole bored so deeply into the earth that it seemed bottomless, the ornately carved stones, etched with powerful runes of a magick so old it was nearly forgotten at the time of the Well’s creation, ringing the upper edge of the chasm. Everything has been situated at the exact center of a massive starburst pattern woven of brilliant silver and shimmering gold. Those who had shaped the Well had then brought into being one of the most powerful demonic entities ever known. Vibbic the Eradicator, they called it and bound it to the Well. The demon was to wait, slumbering, until such time as it was called upon by its creators. It was a doomsday weapon, meant as a last resort, used when all else had failed and those who had created it had no other option besides losing the war.

Finally, that day came and the Summoning was performed. However, one of the fail-safes woven into the spell that had created Vibbic rose up to render the demon useless to its creators. Worked into the creation spells were magicks that would allow the demon Vibbic to be summoned only once in history by any given race. It was a way to ensure that such a thing would only be done with the utmost care and in a time of the most urgent need. What they hadn’t counted on was for the actual creation of the demon to count as their single time calling upon it. Stripped of their final hope of winning the conflict, the race who had created the Well of Discord and bound Vibbic to it were soon after wiped out, losing the war and being hunted to extinction by their foes.

There was, Ror’Dlark knew, a second fail-safe in place, also - anyone who died in the Well, be it at a time of Summoning or not, would render the Well useless for all of time to members of their race. The fact that the mist, sickly green and the darkest black, was rising from the Well was proof that no goblin had ever perished in the depths of the Well.

“Yet,” Ror’Dlark whispered to himself.

The goblin beside him snarled, showing jagged yellow teeth set deeply in blood-red gums. “Shut up and chant!”

Ror’Dlark shook his head slowly. “This is wrong.”

Whirling to face him, the gray-green flesh on the other goblin’s face warped into a savage sneer. “Wrong? How so?”

“We are at war with the humans-”

“Yes!”

“But only with a small faction of them, not the entire human race. If Vibbic is Summoned, it will kill every single human.”

“Yes!”

“Why must we kill the entire race for the misdeeds of a few of its members?”

The other goblin stared at Ror’Dlark in disbelief. “They have hunted us, slain us, until our numbers are barely a third of what they once were! If we don’t do this, they will do it to us!”

“But no human can use the Well. Not for centuries. Not since Clive the Senseless threw himself into it.”

“They don’t need the Well! They’re doing well enough without it! Now shut up and chant!”

Ror’Dlark turned away as the other lifted his gruff, barking voice once more, adding it to the discordant harmony of the Summoning. He looked down, seeing the patterns of tarnished silver and gold beneath his heavy, iron-toed leather boots. “This is wrong,” he said again and began to push his way forward.

Other goblins glared at him as he shouldered past them but none stopped the chant long enough to chastise him. Then the worn, crumbling stone edge of the Well was before him. Up close, the stink of the mist rising from it was stifling. Turning, Ror’Dlark faced as many of the assemblage as he could.

“This is wrong!” he shouted at them, straining to be heard above the chanting. “Why set Vibbic the Eradicator lose upon them to kill them all when we are fighting with only a small part of their population?”

“Fool!” someone screamed at him.

“Chant!” several others bellowed.

“This is wrong!” Ror’Dlark screamed, then turned and flung himself over the stone edging, plummeting into the Well of Discord.

The chanting was dying away, being replaced by screams of mingled horror and despair. Shyla stopped, crouching low behind a boulder on the downward slope, pulling Bernard down with her.

“What’s happened?” Bernard demanded, his wide eyes fixed on the scene below.

Before Shyla could answer, the green-and-black vapors began to thin, drawing back into the Well and out of sight. Too afraid of the alternative to voice it, she said, “I think the Summoning has been interrupted.”

“How?”

“I don’t know. Be silent and let me listen.”

“You don’t speak goblin any better than I do.”

She waved at him to hush, then muttered, “I’ve picked up a word here or there.”

As she listened to the overlapping cries and shouts from the mass of goblins, trying to pick apart the overall mess and find something she could understand, Shyla watched the last of the mist trail back into the Well, clearing the air. Her heart hammered in her chest. Could they be so lucky? Could something have stopped the Summoning of Vibbic the Eradicator? Was humanity safe, for now at least, from such a face? Did she and Bernard really not have to sacrifice themselves to try and ensure such a thing?

“Well?” Bernard pressed.

“Quiet!”

Little be little, Shyla was able to pull a word here, a short phrase there from the tumult of voices below. Her spirits soared. Beaming, she spun back to her partner.

“We need to get out of here. Now.” Without waiting for a reply, she rose into a crouch and drew him up with her, leading him back the way they’d come.

“What’s happened?”

“We’re safe. From the demon at least. If those goblins see us, we’re still dead.”

Bernard stared at her, his mouth gaping open. “Something did interrupt them?”

Shyla nodded. “One of the goblins, for some reason, decided to stop the Summoning. He threw himself into the Well.”

“Then that means-”

“That no goblin can ever again call upon the demon!” She glanced over her shoulder, breathing a silent thank you to the goblin who’d just given his life to save not only her own, but all of humanity. “It also means that some goblins may actually be worth the effort of peace talks.”