by Emma Hamm
A thud from next to her made her blink. Even turning her head seemed painful, yet she somehow managed to crane her neck to see Simon lying down next to her. His eyes were closed, swelling already visible around his jaw and cheekbones. She couldn’t tell if he was dead or not.
Warm liquid dripped down her face. It dripped into her mouth as she tried to heave in a breath. Metallic and bitter it was blood that coated her tongue when she tried to swallow.
Booted feet stepped into her vision. She squinted at them, trying to figure out who would be wearing such strange shoes. Little more than leather wrappings, they were too large to be anyone that she knew. Besides, the miners wore boots with heavy soles so that the rocks couldn’t cut into them.
Her eyes traveled up the length, noting that both knees and thighs were treated in much the same fashion. Leather wrapped armor so it seemed. Up a bared chest with bright blooms of red across it and up to the face that was both startling and captivating. He seemed both human and inhuman at the same time. She had just a moment to stare at him before his booted foot slammed into her face and the darkness of the tunnel swallowed her.
CHAPTER FOUR
HE WAITED UNTIL the smaller human passed out before he started breathing hard again. The man had been large and a better fighter than he had expected. No human could fight as well as the goblins of course. The strange name that the humans called them had been adopted by his kind. However the bright red bruises on his chest that were already forming were a testament to the man’s skill. He had hit harder than most and Ruric would hold his mark for days to come.
The man had gone straight for his ribs. At one point, Ruric was certain he had been planning to punch through his ribcage and rip out his heart. It was something a goblin would have done and as such he honored the man in his attempts. Even though he did not have the claws to do so.
Humans were generally weak. There had been a few, like this man, that Ruric had seen in his time who were commendable. None of them could have survived a true fight with a goblin though. They lacked the sharpness of goblin teeth and the strength of goblin hands.
Wincing, he leaned down to click off the lights of their helmets. More would be coming soon. Humans never seemed to be alone for long and the sound of fighting would draw the others. Sometimes he wondered if they scented the blood in the air like the deepwater fish Below. Perhaps they could taste it.
Still though, there was enough time for him to lean down to the body. It had been a young goblin, thin and likely curious about the humans. His clawed hand gently tilted the face towards him and Ruric bowed his head in recognition. Shusar would be saddened to hear that one of his sons had died. The boy was one of the last brood of their kind.
He had always had an unhealthy interest in humans and likely had snuck off to observe them. It was a frequent enjoyment of their young. Humans were so very different from them. They wanted to watch the pale pink creatures toil away at stone that was unyielding to their weak bodies. Sometimes they would speak, startling the young ones at how loud they sounded, how harsh their language could be.
He shouldered the body, picking up the youngling as though he hardly weighed anything. Goblins were a strong race of people, sometimes too strong when it came to jobs that required gentility. Ruric was among the strongest, his body built for battle and hard work. There were more battles now as his kind fought against the humans to simply survive.
As he stepped around the humans lying on the ground, he noticed a glint in the darkness that his large eyes could see so clearly in.
Once again he bent, taking a knee next to the large human that had fought well against him. Fisted in the man’s hand was the necklace of the boy slung across his shoulders. They would have taken this from the dead. Desecrated the body of a boy who was wearing the mark of his lineage. Though it was only quartz, a common stone and therefore a common line, it made Ruric grumble in anger. The rippling sound shuddered through the tunnel, catching upon outcroppings of rock and seeming to grow as it continued.
A strangely green colored head poked out of a crevice further down the tunnel, appearing in the area that the humans had yet to destroy.
“Push the raid forward.” Ruric told the creature and he bent and picked up the large man. He would shoulder both burdens Below. The other creature let out a warbling sound, a signal to the others to begin gathering what humans they could find by any means necessary.
Jane came alive as a splash of cold water burst over her face and chest. Dripping and angry, she immediately started swearing. “God damnit Willow, how many times do I have to tell you-“
She blinked in the darkness. There was nothing in front of her but blackness. To not be able to see upon waking up was startling and horrifying. Fear made her chest sieze. Air would not enter her chest and for a moment she thought that perhaps she was drowning.
“Breathe girl. Yer eyes will adjust.”
The rough voice forced her back to reality. She wasn’t drowning. She was, however, freezing. The cold water had woken her up, but it had also chilled her straight to the bone. She had rolled underneath a small stream of water behind her. Her head was spinning, her back ached, and the taste in her mouth was worrying. Metallic and dry, she felt as though her tongue was swollen.
“Where am I?”
There was a shifting sound from her left. The rustle of fabric had her trying to lean away. But her hands were tied, rope pulling them tightly across her back.
“Below.”
She didn’t recognize the voice at all. Rough and deep, it had the flavor of a man that had smoked his entire life. Either that or sand sickness was getting the better of him a lot faster than others.
“Below?” She asked, then shook her head. “I don’t- I don’t understand what you’re saying.”
A booted foot connected with her leg and she realized the man was trying to move. The rustling sound got louder as he struggled with his bindings. “Ain’t ya never heard the stories? Below. It’s where the goblins live.”
Goblins. That was right, there had been goblins. That was why her head was aching and her lips were crusted with dried blood. There had been a goblin. It had startled her in the tunnel when she had found that strangely beautiful gemstone. Simon had… Simon.
It all came rushing back, every sound of flesh hitting flesh and every painful strike. She turned onto her side, her stomach rebelling against the memories just as strongly as her mind. Jane had never felt as alone as she did now, heaving into the dark with a stranger at her side.
“God damnit girl, get ahold of yerself! We only have a few minutes before the bloody things come back!”
She spit what little she could, turning to the small stream for a drink of water so she could wash away the flavor of acid and blood that now rested on her tongue. His words lingered in her head, echoing as loudly as they would in the tunnels.
“How do you know I’m a woman?” She asked quietly.
He snorted. “Ye think I do not know the smell of a woman? We all knew what cha was the moment ye stepped into that elevator with us.”
The rustling started again as he tugged on his arms. She could see nothing in the darkness still. Her eyes started to hurt at the strain. They had all known she was a woman? How had she not gotten reported? Surely someone would have said something if they knew what she was. Men wouldn’t have tolerated a woman down there in the tunnels with them. She shivered once again as thoughts of all the terrible things that could have happened down there bombarded her mind.
Suddenly it all made sense. Simon sticking close by, him insisting that she stay in the same tunnel with him even though the rest of the men had their own tunnel. He hadn’t needed her help at all. He had been trying to protect her against some of the other men that worked in the tunnel. He hadn’t wanted anything to happen to her.
“Oh Simon.” She whispered, horrified at the end he had met. He was too good of man to be feasted upon by monsters such as these. It was surprisingly easy to forget that he had kil
led.
“Hush girl.” Came the whispered words. They grated against her ears just as much as they set her heart kicking. Hush could only mean one thing. She strained to hear something other than the constant dripping of water near them but she couldn’t hear anything else. Her own breathing was harsh and ragged. The sound swallowed anything she could have possibly heard.
She saw them long before she heard them. A line of goblins walking up a small rocky path towards them. They carried dim blue lights.
The closer they got to her the quicker she realized that she was on a ledge herself. Barely three feet away from her was a drop straight down so far she couldn’t see the bottom. Jane closed her eyes, breathing harder until the man hit her foot hard.
“Get it together girl, they’re comin.”
She was having a hard time getting it together. All she could see was the disfigured shadows climbing up the walls of the cave they were in. The blue lights seemed otherworldly. She was sitting on the edge of a cliff waiting for monsters to do god knows what to her. And she was in pain, battered, tired, and so very scared. Jane had never been so frightened in her life.
The goblins finally reached them, their shadows shortening as they came around the bend of the ledge. Just when she was certain they would going to grab her, they walked past her. Their feet stepped close to her head and hands. At the very end, Jane and her companion were scooped up by the last goblins. She was pulled up by her elbow. The creature bent her arm back until a spark of pain lanced through the socket. A whimper trickled from her lips but the sound only made the creature wrench her harder.
The edge of the cliff was so close to her feet that once she slipped. Rock crumbled beneath her heel and she tilted dangerously to the side. For a moment she thought she was dead. Jane was certain that the goblin would let go of her and she would be sent tumbling into that dark oblivion that didn’t seem to have an end.
Yet the creature pulled her forward once more. They didn’t look at the humans, instead they kept their eyes firmly on the goblin in front of them. Though she tried to speak to it, to reason with it, the goblin would not even give her the benefit of a glance. She was shoved and pulled up the precarious ledge until she realized that there were other outcroppings like the one she had been on.
Each ledged area had a few other humans on it. Some of them she didn’t recognize, but most she knew the faces of. All of these men were miners. They were the same men that had rode down the elevator with her every morning and the same men that had laughed with her on the way back up. Jane was desperately trying to piece this situation together in her mind. She understood grabbing her. She had attacked one of their own kind, or at least it would have looked like that. But the others? Why would they go out of their way to get the other humans in the mine?
It made very little sense, but by head count she guessed that there were about twenty of them down here in what everyone called Below. Twenty men that went missing and she had to wonder if anyone would really notice.
There was not a single man that seemed to have helmets or pickaxes with him. Her head throbbed as she tried to think harder. The smaller one that Simon had killed flinched back when she turned her helmet towards it.
The light. It had to be the light. They lived down here far from the sun and it seemed like the only light they needed was that of the soft blue stones they held in their hands. These had their own light within them, glowing with some kind of inner coating that the goblins shook every now and then.
That was why in the stories there was always a helmet left behind. She didn’t know much about evolution or species. There wasn’t any schooling for those that were destined for the mines. But Jane did know that these creatures were sensitive to light. It was a thought she would file away for later when she tried to escape this hell on earth.
Finally they started to slow, the line moving at a snail’s pace as they started to reach the top. Jane looked up, realizing that the glow seemed stronger up above them. It appeared that they were going to be entering another cave. The line of men and goblins were slowly making their way over a small lip and to a better lit area. She couldn’t see much still, and shadows seemed to move in the unearthly light, but at least it was no longer pitch black.
She entered the large cave with her goblin companion. The same companion that wouldn’t let her turn her head too much to look at him without giving her a firm shake. By the time they had gotten to the lip of the cliff, she had been shaken so many times she was seeing bright spots in her vision. Her head had been hit harder than she originally thought. Jane would have been more concerned by this if the sight that awaited them inside the cave hadn’t stunned her into silence.
There was a raised dais at the center of a wide circle. The lights were coming from more of those strange stones, all gathered around what looked to be a throne. Carved out of crystal, it was one of the most impressive things she had ever seen. The shear amount of gemstones here would have made any man drool with the promise of riches. Just one hunk of these would have brought enough at the market to send a man off to the City rather than living off of the mines.
Like the others, she was too focused on the stones to notice the gathering of goblins seated around them. Though none of them were resting on the throne, they did perch themselves on the other crystals that were emanating light around them. Ten in total, Jane was one of the first to start scrutinizing them.
They weren’t what she had thought. The two goblins that had left lasting impressions on her were not dressed like this. They had seemed barbaric even to a woman who was raised outside the mines. Loin clothed and leather clad, they had radiated an animalistic quality. And with those teeth, who could really be surprised that they didn’t seem like a progressed species.
Yet these monsters did not seem like monsters at all. They were dressed in fine fabric that she did not recognize. So sheer that they wore layers upon layers and so smooth that the light was reflecting off of them. Jane had never seen such colors in her life. Her world was all yellows and blues, hues of these colors were seen perhaps but never the vivid greens and indigos that these creatures wore. Her eyes didn’t know what to focus on, the strange deathly pallor of the monsters or the beauty of the clothing they wore.
One moved slightly to whisper to another and she was captivated as the fabric seemed to float around the creature. It was so fine, so light, something that Jane had never hoped to see before in her entire life. Those in the City might live with such vivid colors, but one such as her? She was not worthy of the gift.
Even the goblins fell silent for a moment, and Jane suddenly discovered that she was holding her breath. It was only natural to wonder what it was that everyone seemed to still for. Her mind raced with the potential of some kind of beast wandering out of the darkness. What would cause these ghastly creatures to go as still as the grave?
What came into the cave from the back was not what she expected. A stooped creature walked towards them supported by a stronger goblin who appeared to be holding much of her weight. She was clothed in the most vivid array of colors that Jane had ever seen. And it most certainly was a female. Her face was different than the others, softer and more round. Though her spine was bent, she had prominent breasts that were outlined by the cloth covering her.
Jane couldn’t help but compare her to a butterfly she had seen once before. The large drapes of fabric fluttered behind her as she walked towards them. Each movement seem to shift through her, as though she herself wasn’t entirely solid. The fabric created an illusion that the creature was made nearly entirely of air. Jane’s breath was taken away by the sight.
There were a few of the other miners like her, startled into wide eyed awe. Others were disgusted by the sight before them, their faces clearly betraying their emotions. The man who had been with her on the cliff ledge spat towards the female.
He was immediately flattened into the ground by the goblin holding him, his face mashed against the rock. Jane had barely even blinked before
the move was completed. The goblin barely seemed to notice. Its foot remained firmly holding the man in place. She thought for a moment he would struggle before she realized his head had been hit so hard that he had been knocked out.
Gulping, she looked back towards the female that had finally crested the throne. Gently she was seated by the larger creature at her side, and she cast her gaze over the humans that were being held before her.
It was then that Jane realized that none of the other goblins were female. There was something decidedly different about this creature than the others, perhaps a slightly darker skin tone or a thinner body structure. It did not matter that the others on the stones were clothed in fabric of equal beauty, they were not female.
She had the distinct feeling that she was being put up for the slaughter. All of the creatures watched them, though she couldn’t quite tell which one of them they were looking at. She couldn’t tell when their eyes were moving.
Silence made the very air seem to press down upon her. Never in her life had she been scrutinized so fiercely. Somehow she was certain that the longer they looked at her, the more she was found lacking.
A few of the miners flinched at the warble that seemed to vibrate from the female’s throat. She had a pleasant enough voice, not as high pitched as the one Simon had killed, nor as deep as the other creature that had killed him. The trilling sounds were unnerving though, the vibration of them breaking as she made the noises over and over again.
Jane’s eyes opened wide as she realized what was happening. The creature was talking. This wasn’t some kind of animalistic bleat. Those were words. There was a distinct cadence to them that rose and fell as though there was a conversation happening. These creatures not only possessed the most precious things to her kind, did not only have the most vivid fabrics she had ever seen, but they also spoke a language that seemed so complex she could hardly understand it.