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The Goblin King was a mean woman.
fWhip had always seen it in her eyes; whenever she made one of her common appearances in the Goblands, she looked at them with disdain and disinterest. Keep your head down, he could hear his father say. Don’t look or speak unless you're addressed. She was hell-bent on instilling fear in the goblin populace, to keep the crown she’d snatched from her rival’s head and to make sure nobody else would get the same idea.
fWhip snuck a few glances. Her eyes were filled with hatred for the goblins she felt were beneath her. To her, they were nothing more than bodies to throw at a problem she created herself. Nothing more than pigs to the slaughter - except she probably had more respect for the genuine food source and pigsties than the poor goblins she conscripted into her army, promising riches beyond their wildest dreams to those who followed her into battle.
She wasn’t a fool. fWhip could sense it - even though they were all beneath her, the Goblin King made sure her foot soldiers were at the very least competent. Similarly, fWhip wasn’t a fool either. He didn’t make a big deal out of it when the King’s soldiers plucked him from his family’s boar farm to train with other goblins who’d never wielded a sword in their entire lives. He never raised questions about how ninety percent of these people - youngsters, easily influenced - would never see the end of the senseless war their King wanted to wage. How the experienced soldiers hoarded all the good weapons and armor when the conscripted goblin youth had to do with wooden and stone swords, as well as old leather armor that didn’t offer the same protection it would have if it had been in pristine condition. How this war, against whatever their opponents were, would never end well for them as a people.
Months passed; months during which fWhip saw the King when she visited. She’d yelled at a goblin who wasn’t doing well and had them banished from the Goblands, into the darkness with nothing but the clothes on their back to protect them. fWhip didn’t even dare to ball his fists - if he had, his would be the next banishment. Who can even raise a finger when the King holds the reins so tightly?
His bitterness and resentment towards the King grew with every passing day. Everyone around him mislead themselves, tricked themselves into believing the King was a just woman who was right and whom they must follow. fWhip didn’t fall for those tricks. He bid his time, bit his tongue and prayed to the goblin god that someone would take their chance and take the crown from her corpse. Later, he didn’t just pray for anyone to do it - he prayed he would be granted that chance someday. Preferably soon.
At long last, the reason for their training came up. fWhip and his now friends were still wildly underprepared - he figured pretty soon that just swinging swords at one another without proper instruction can only get one so far - when the big bombshell was dropped. The Goblin King, as expected, was going to war, and they were the soldiers chosen for this glorious purpose. The King herself came to break the news.
“First we conquer the Ancient City, then we conquer the surface.”
Almost all the color drained from fWhip’s face, and his friends were similarly shocked.
The Ancient City is where all life came from. Goblin, human, and everything else used to live in this grand city in the caves. They had everything they would ever need: life, wealth, technology, freedom. But it wasn’t enough for the greedy humans. In the middle of their city, they called upon the powerful and monstrous Warden to protect them from evil. The Warden did as it was told and killed the corrupt officials that had summoned it. Every death at the hands of the Warden left behind the skulk; the shriekers were pools that once were people, still screaming for their lives at any sound as if the Warden approached. Everyone fled the city; humans took it a step further and fled to the surface, where they lived to this day and religiously followed the strict regime placed upon them by the sun. To this day, the Warden still roamed around the Ancient City, killing every living thing, for it considered every living thing to be the evil it was summoned to destroy.
The Ancient City, the King declared, was still goblin territory. They must simply kill the Warden and expand their empire. Afterward, they could show those sensitive humans the error of their ways and subjugate them, bringing more wealth to the Goblin Empire than they could have ever dreamed of.
fWhip was horrified. The Ancient City was holy ground. You could not just march in there with an army to kill the demigod protector of their history. That was unthinkable. He’d expected her to tell them they were going to the surface to fight there - the Warden, however, was something nobody had thought of. The idea alone was too absurd, too much of a taboo to even consider doing something horrible like that. It was a literal demigod - how does one even go about killing it? How many goblin lives was she willing to throw at the Warden until it perished? How many goblins would still be left to conquer the surface world, as she’d planned? How many goblins would be left at all?
Worse yet, nobody spoke up. fWhip, like the others, glanced around and suppressed the urge to mutter with his neighbors, but none of them said anything. Or did anything.
In what was his boldest move yet, fWhip spoke up against the plans with a resounding and slightly terrified and high-pitched: “No, thanks.”
The Goblin King raised an eyebrow and laughed. Her guard laughed with her, and everyone else felt forced to join in.
“No, thanks?” the King said and she approached the young man. “Looks like we have a volunteer. You’ll be the first who’ll march into the Ancient City and serve as a distraction for the Warden while honorable goblins will do what you could never even try.”
“No, I won’t,” fWhip continued with a strange sense of courage he wasn’t sure he knew the origin of. Not that he’d question the source or complain about it, he was gonna use it to his full potential while his voice still cooperated.
“I am your King!” she snarled in his face. “You will do as I say and speak when you’re spoken to.”
fWhip did not respond in the most polite manner. Or the most expected manner, for that matter. He was just as surprised as everyone else when he swung his beat-up stone sword at her and actually landed a blow on her side, the sword digging into her flesh.
The Goblin King cried out in pain, her wail echoing against the cave walls. Everyone was looking at him dumbfounded - even the guards, who were there to protect her, gaped at him. Panic rose within fWhip, quickly overtaking his mind with a flurry of oh shits while he could not look away from the Goblin King.
To this day, fWhip wasn’t sure what drove him to continue. Maybe it was the innate knowledge that his life was over either way. Only days to live, if they banished him. Only hours, if he was to serve as Warden bait. Only seconds, if the guard recovered enough to draw their own weapons and protect their King. In any case, he quivered when he swung his sword again and by pure luck struck her throat.
It was a dull blade - despite all the stone the goblin miners produced, these stone words were not sharpened or well-maintained, as was the unfortunate standard under this King. The sword did not cut the head cleanly off of her shoulders, but it got stuck when it was about halfway through. fWhip pulled as hard as he could, but only on the fourth try did he put in enough strength to pull it free. He was sent flying backward and landed on his butt. His friends quickly moved out of the way, unwilling to be caught in the crossfire or perceived to be helping him.
From this perspective, though, the Goblin King gurgled blood and tried to call out commands. Her jaw went slack as her legs couldn’t support the weight anymore. The Goblin King fell over and bled out on the deepslate floor of the training grounds, unmoving.
fWhip looked at his blade with surprise and shock. It had her blood on it; he hadn’t wiped it off yet. He wasn’t planning to do that. He let it clatter on the ground while he stood up himself. He glanced at the guard, still expecting some sort of retaliatory strike. One of these soldiers walked over to the body and examined it briefly.
The adrenaline was still pumping through his veins. He glanced at the weapon at his feet - maybe he should’ve held on to it and made sure the Goblin King was truly dead. He wouldn’t become a banished fugitive if he stabbed her a couple more times, just to make sure that she truly died. He was more than ready to snatch it from the ground and attack her or her guards. Now, that would not just mean becoming a fugitive, but certain doom. fWhip decided he’d rather have a quick and clean death over a frightened life outside the boundaries of the Goblin Empire.
The guard looked at him and then bowed his head. “All hail the Goblin King!”
The other guards followed their example, and when fWhip turned his head, he noticed everyone who was present also bowed their heads. The Goblin King had bled out and passed away, joining their ancestors in the darkness of the Chasm. As tradition prescribed, having struck his predecessor, fWhip had gained the title as well as the honor of being Goblin King.
He hadn’t thought this was how his day was going to end, but oh well. He could think about the long-term implications later. For now, he had an important decision to make.
“We’re not going to the Ancient City,” fWhip declared. “We’re not going to the surface either. Go home. Pick up your old lives. Return to your farms and mines. We’re not going to war.”
“Then what are we going to do?” One of the newly trained soldiers asked.
fWhip glanced to his side. From his position, he could see the terraces of the cave pickle farms in the distance. He was certain none of the surface settlements had the same quality of cave pickles they had. Or that they even knew about these pickles. That would have to change.
“We will trade instead.”