Chapter Thirteen – In which the Great Protector speaks with the goblin tribe before passing judgment on Ark.

Chapter Thirteen – In which the Great Protector speaks with the goblin tribe before passing judgment on Ark.

~~** Interlude | The Great Protector **~~

“Guardian.” the power-spoken word of the Great Protector summoned a now hyper-alert Prima inside the cave-hole.

“Yes, Great Protector?” Prima replied fearfully.

“You have heard his words?”

“Yes, Great Protector.”

“Show me to this cave-hole he spoke of.” It demanded of Prima, and she could not refuse.

Prima led the Great Protector deeper into goblin-home, followed by the Old One, until they reached the cave-hole that belonged to Berry, who was there alone, sitting with her daughter Diana Artemis on her lap as they ate sweet purple berries from a clay bowl in front of them. Berry could not ignore the immediate intrusion into her cave hole by Prima, and the unforgettable presence of the Great Protector.

Berry was a bit panicked, not knowing why of all people in the world the Great Protector was at her cave-hole! Was it to see her strong one?

“G-great Protector!” Berry cowed her body, forcing Diana Artemis who was in her lap to bend forward as well, though she was entirely oblivious to everything except the yummy berries in the bowl she kept reaching for.

The Great Protector heard the Old One say a goblin child was born, but dismissed it as perhaps a misunderstanding. Goblins were among the fastest species which procreated, but the human hadn’t been here for more than a week yet, and the Great Protector was sure it took at least a few passes of the moon for a goblin to gestate a child to term. So why was there a rather large goblin child in this small room already...?

The Great Protector hardly fit into the room of the newly mothered goblin. It had looked at the brown-skinned child with interest at first, but was able to see clearly a sharpened stone on the ground near a wall with no possessions against it. Small gouges into the wall were as visible in the darkness of the cave to it as if the wall was outside in the light of the sun. The Great Protector walked over to the wall and placed a clawed hand upon it.

“Child. This room should be wider, should it not?”

“I-I’m sorry, Great Protector! I... Th-there’s a reason for it n-not being...”

“Calm yourself. I only asked a question.” The Great Protector said while trying to control the intensity of its voice. The lesser species often had difficulties due to such a natural power difference. Rather than the mother cowering, the child in her lap not cowering or crying, or even trying to scamper away was far more intriguing to it.

The Great Protector was ready to widen the damn room to the same size of the one it had made for the human to solve his tantrum, but it was now understanding why. And the Great Protector sneered with tremendous self-satisfaction.

“I... was chosen to receive big seed from Husband. A-as you can see, the seed was big and strong. My belly grew fat by the morning after and by the night the strong one came out from inside of me. H-Husband was concerned for me, and tried to help me dig the wall to make my cave bigger. I-I was sure the Old One said it would take three moons to have a strong one, but...”

The Great Protector lowered its body to observe the child. A clawed hand extended towards the child, and the child grabbed at it, daring to put its teeth around a taloned finger while trying to bite it. It had no fear of the Great Protector, and a great power was felt emanating from the child as well.

“No! Diana Artemis! You must never bite the Great Protector!” Berry had said in an absolute state of panic, reaching for her strong one’s mouth to pull it open.

“It is fine. This one will not just be strong, it will be mighty. A Goblin Huntress, no doubt.”

“W-what?”

“This strong one. You will raise it to be a hunter?” The Great Protector asked the scared goblin mother with an ugly brown scar across its green body.

“Yes! She will hunt with arrows of poison. No prey will escape her!”

“Hoh. That is a human way of hunting.”

“W-well Husband... is human?”

A ferocious smile splayed across the Great Protector’s face.

“She will offer me a worthy beast she hunts as tribute three moons from now.”

“Berry swears it!” Berry said quickly, hoping to appease the Great Protector.

The Great Protector had pieced it all together now. The human wanted to use magic when it realized it would take a damn long time for it to hit the wall with the sharp stone in the mother goblin’s room. And the Guardian goblin it entrusted to watch over the human had not bent even a little on the matter as per its orders. This was good, since the Great Protector’s commands were being followed properly, but it was a complex matter as well now, because it was a clash of bending a rule for the sake of prosperity of the goblin tribe as a whole, and as the human said, a matter of compassion which was not something that readily existed with goblins by their very nature. It was almost humorous how the human was completely willing to play the part of the providing Husband, the hero, and the villain, while in the powerless state he was in.

“Guardian.”

This time, the Great Protector knew some of the responsibility for this situation fell on its own shoulders, since it had given clear instructions about what this human would be allowed to do, and what it would let the guardian decide in terms of its freedoms. He had to be bound when being taken out in the sun, he was not allowed to be given a weapon or access to magic, and was to be fed each day as long as he cooperated and provided his seed to them.

There was a bit more to the instructions, but those were the most important points.

He had tried to violate one, which the Guardian goblin was absolutely right to not let him.

But it was a sour note as to why.

Goblins were not naturally compassionate.

Prima, much to the surprise of the Great Protector, even though she was now the target of the human’s spite, also didn’t want him to die. But she couldn’t trade the safety of the goblin tribe nor allow him to violate the Great Protector’s instructions over what was essentially an inconvenience to one lone unfortunate goblin with a strong one in a small cave-hole that by comparison wasn’t really all that small to begin with.

Even when it was revealed the human was the one to suggest Prima put a spear to his neck while using magic, she still couldn’t allow it. So when the human cursed Prima, the tribe’s guardian, with the human magic known as spite, saying some choice things like cursed little seed and the like, the Great Protector was almost amused, and understood why the Guardian goblin stood as sentry at the entrance to the breeding room when it had arrived.

The Great Protector had no doubt things would be interesting around here in the future.

It used a trickle of its own magic to levitate the ugly topaz stone from the ground and separated it from the others, letting it fall at the feet of the one who brought them.

“Stone-seeker. Whether to let him use magic or not is your responsibility now. That stone is the topaz you seek for him.”

The shiny yellow stone was also levitated upward and brought before the Great Protector for a moment, merely to be inspected, of course..

“Great Protector wants my shiny yellow stone?”

A rumbling throaty chuckle came from the Great Protector.

“I have no need for it. But do keep it hidden from the human for now. If you choose to let the human use magic, you will make sure he is being carefully watched, and if you deem his magic a threat, kill him.”

“Jewel swears.”

The Great Protector let the shiny yellow stone fall down onto the ground.

“I am done here. Aside from the matter of his magic, the human remains your responsibility, Guardian. You have done as I asked, even at great cost to yourself. Speak with the human, perhaps he will change his mind about wishing to die now.”

“What about the wicked grand human magic he used? What about his cursed little seed?” Prima had asked it out of turn. She was worried about her own strong ones which she truly believed Ark had cursed.

“Talk with him when he wakes up, Guardian. Human curses are too bothersome to deal with. What he has done, can be undone, if he has a good enough reason to. If he dies, I will bring another human in a few moons. But I think he may still care for the strong ones he has put inside your belly, their bellies, and the ones he will yet put into the rest of the goblin tribe. I would not have chosen him if I thought he did not have the... capacity to.”

The Great Protector chuckled as it stood up and the throne of dirt it had sat upon collapsed.

“I am leaving now. The human will wake soon.”

The Great Protector walked out of the breeding cavern and out of the goblin’s cave. In the clearing in front of the cave and before the fire pit, it spread its wings wide and prepared to take to the skies.

“Great Protector!” The Old One among the goblins who had followed behind at a hurry had called out to it before it took off. “Why did you not kill the human?”

“Old One, aside from the human, who among the goblins offered to dig the wall in the mother’s cave-hole while the scarred one tended to her strong one?” The magic intrinsic to the Great Protector that allowed it flight began to manifest. “That is my answer.”

And the Great Protector had taken off into the skies after having said that, leaving behind a confused elderly goblin who neither understood the importance of the question it had asked, nor the importance of the answer that should have been given...