The first thing that I am going to say is that goblins are not good. Goblins murder, pillage, kidnap, rape… the list goes on. They are evil and that is their way of life. They may appear small and weak, but their strength is in their numbers. The Grim variety in particular, spread like a virus through an area. Their nests grow fast and with it, the destruction that they cause.

  I’m getting a bit carried away with myself here. My name is Dwynfel Vesidia and welcome to my stream of thought. I am currently lying unconscious and questioning my life choices after majorly fucking up. I suppose the best way to explain is to start at the beginning. That is the most logical place really. I can’t expect you to understand me or my life if I start randomly at the end.

  My birth giver was a human called Liara Morgan. Or at least I think that was her name. My father researched missing people based on the description that I gave him when I was older and she was the best match. I say my father… my… how to put this… adoptive… maybe… I mean... it isn’t legal… the man who raised me. I refer to him as my father but I don’t want you thinking he was a goblin like the vile creature that had a hand in my conception.

  Liara was kidnapped from her village by goblins roughly 17 years ago. Goblins have incredibly few females. Well… the Grim have very few females. The Rakk and Bracken goblins have plenty. They value their goblin purity.

  The Grim do not have that luxury however, and you absolutely do not want to be born a female in a Grim nest. As soon as you come of age you will be raped… endlessly… for the good of the horde. The strength of goblins is their numbers, therefore increasing numbers is a strong priority. Second only to obtaining food, after all, if you can’t feed the horde, then increasing numbers will just kill off everyone. Due to the rarity of Grim females, a nest will abduct as many females from any humanoid species that they can.

  Liara died about 1 year after I was born. She got hold of a goblin’s knife when it was… indulging itself. Rather than endure anymore suffering, she used it to slit her own throat. I still remember her eyes. They were an encapsulating shade of chestnut. I saw the light go out of her eyes and at the time I didn’t even care. Women are a means to an end to goblins and for the first two years of my life, that is how I was raised to see them. Her death was unfortunate but other females could be obtained.

  I went about my life as all infant goblins do. Following an older goblin and learning his duties so that when he got older and progressed to more dangerous duties, I could take over his old ones. Goblins mature differently to humans. Our physical bodies mature at roughly one and a half times the rate of a human… but more specifically, our motor skills develop very quickly… but cognitive skills such as speech development are very slow by comparison. So, I was walking around, eating solids, and learning from my elder at roughly two months. That is when you move away from your mother and begin to learn your role. I say roughly two months because goblins do not keep calendars. I am simply guessing based on what I know now. For my first two years I did my part, I learned what I needed to and I was happy with that existence. Why wouldn’t I be? I knew nothing else. I had my role and I was to do it.

  Then, the goblin that I had been following was killed by the others for not acting for the needs of the horde. He had been castrated and nailed to the wall of the cave with another goblin. I don’t know why; it still bothers me to this day. He was a dead body nailed to a wall. He had never shown any affection towards me, never looked after me. The only time he really acknowledged my existence was when a raiding party had brought back injured men or children for killing practice.

  I guess, I had been following him since I was 2 months old. He was the closest thing that I had to a parent. Despite the fact that he had never shown me any affection. I guess simple proximity caused me to have a level of affection towards him.

  As I was looking up at him, the alarm was raised within the nest. There are various hiding places within the nest that the children are told to hide in when the alarm goes off. When fighting off an invasion the last thing you need is to be worrying about children at your feet and if the children die then that damages the horde. So, hiding is what we were taught to do. Unfortunately… or perhaps I should say fortunately, I was not in a room with one of these hiding places. There were simply two dead bodies hanging on the wall and one entrance.

  I heard the noises of people getting closer. Not goblins… but people. I thought immediately that I was going to die. I looked up at the creature that had drawn me to that room. The cold, lifeless dead body hanging on the wall. The only thing in that entire nest that I felt any attachment to. I climbed up as high as I could, I wrapped my arms around his leg and I waited for death.

  A large hand grabbed me and turned me around. I could barely see through the tears that were erupting from me. I had never cried before, not even as a baby. All I knew was that every single part of my life was being destroyed and that I was about to die.

  That man didn’t kill me though. Which is fairly obvious, otherwise you would not be reading this now. He took pity on me. People do not normally take pity on goblins, given the things that we do, and most that do take pity almost instantly regret it. I imagine he saw a pathetic creature clinging to a corpse on a wall and saw something worth saving.

  He knew those around him would disagree with what he did, so he forced me into his backpack. I had already accepted that I was going to die, I was too paralysed with fear to resist. I assumed he simply planned to torture me later before killing me, yet still I was unable to move. We are raised to fear anything that isn’t a goblin unless backed up by the horde. After placing me in his pack he threw some weird dust in my face and I instantly fell asleep.

  I woke up in a place unfamiliar to me. I was in a bed. An actual bed. I had never been in a bed before. I was terrified. I instantly hid underneath it and tried to work out what was going on. I don’t know to this day what dust he used, but I must have been asleep for at least a day.

  The room had wooden floors. The shutters over the window had been nailed shut, although I suspect that had been a recent addition since my arrival. There were clothes laid out for me. Not that I knew they were for me or why they were there. I was a goblin. We are naked most of the time. Certainly, the children never bother wearing anything. The only ones who wear anything are the goblins who are involved in fighting. The warriors wear loin clothes and sometimes leather armour. The mages wear robes. Nobody else has need for clothes. They would simply get in the way and create additional work in the form of laundry.

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  I lay under the bed, terrified, trying to think of a way out of this situation. Obviously, I was two, I had no idea how to get out of that predicament. All I had learned from the goblins was to find a weapon and hit them until they were dead. I had not learned how to be creative and think on my feet. In the absence of any obvious weapons, I continued to hide under the bed.

  Then the door opened. I saw boots walk into the room. I could smell the odour of a man. Goblins may have a lot of faults but we do have two great strengths other than our numbers. Namely, our memories and our sense of smell. I could smell the man, I could smell the grease in his hair, I could smell the leather of his boots and I could smell the fresh bread in his hand, not that I knew what fresh bread smelled like at the time.

  The man knelt on the floor. He placed one hand on the ground. It was the same hand from before. The same man from the cave. He lowered his head down to look under the bed. My eyes were clearer now, I could see his face, I could see his eyes… his kind eyes… the same shade of chestnut that Liara had.

  He gestured for me to take the bread and said “eat.” I didn’t understand, I thought it must be a trick. Why would he feed me? Humans are the enemy. We kill each other, it’s what we do. So why… why would he do this?

  Despite my fear, I took the bread. I was starving, I had eaten little the day he had taken me and had not eaten since. I had never had fresh bread before. It even had butter on it. I had no idea what butter was. The butter was melting into the bread as I reluctantly took a bite of it. The man stood up and left the room.

  He returned frequently, checked under the bed, occasionally bringing me food. I don’t know how long this went on for, terror makes keeping track difficult. I tried to stay awake and alert. Honestly, I did. But eventually exhaustion got the better of me and I fell asleep.

  I woke up in the bed again. This time with a small squishy creature next to me. I panicked and threw it across the room. It didn’t move or make a noise, just lay there on the floor. I moved across the floor and prodded the creature. It was some kind of material, stuffed with something soft. I didn’t understand the purpose of this thing, but I brought it under the bed with me and resumed my vigil.

  The man continued coming into the room to check on me. Eventually he started talking. Goblins do not use much language, only what is essential. The language that we do use is from the common tongue... mainly so that we can instruct any women that we have acquired. The language that I have now is certainly not something that I learned from my goblin brethren. As a result, I only really understood maybe every third word that he was saying.

  Turns out he was trying to learn my name. I didn’t have one of course. Goblins aren’t given names at birth. You earn your name through actions. I had not earned a name yet. He gestured to the creature that I had pulled under the bed saying “Bertie.” I thought he wanted to take it from me and that maybe if I gave it back to him, he would leave me alone. So, I threw it at him. He simply picked it up, gestured to it, and said “Bertie” again. So, I copied as best as I could “Bergy.” He didn’t correct me, he simply said “Bergy” and handed it back to me. He then stayed in the room with me. Not watching me, not saying anything, just sitting.

  Eventually I got hungry again. I clutched Bergy… this strange stuffed creature that I had been given… it for some reason brought me comfort. So, with it in hand I ventured out from under the bed. The man simply looked at me and smiled. I couldn’t bring myself to ask for food. Goblins don’t ask, they take.

  The man, as if reading my mind gestured to his mouth and said “food?” I repeated it back to him and as if by magic a woman entered the room with a bowl, as well as more bread and butter. She placed the bowl down on the floor, dipped some of the bread into the bowl and fed it to me.

  I was uncomfortable, I didn’t understand, why would they feed me? Why would she put something in my mouth? In the nest I was not fed by anyone after I was ready for solids… and prior to that I was forced onto the breast of my tied-up mother. After that you eat the scraps left by the older goblins. And you are quick about it or you get nothing. This woman was feeding me… placing food in my mouth… warm food… fresh food. These were the people that I considered evil… enemies of the horde. Why would they do this?

  As she was feeding me, the man lifted a large metal container full of warm water into the room. I was so consumed by the food that I didn’t even notice. The bread that I had previously been given was the most amazing thing that I had ever eaten. Today it was dipped in soup… something else that I had never had before.

  I couldn’t identify any of the ingredients, I had no idea how it was made. But, the taste… it was utterly divine. The woman taught me how to cook when I was older. I learned how to make that soup. It was simply tomatoes, onions, some stock, a bit of cream with some salt and pepper. Nothing fancy or what nobles would consider gourmet. But to somebody who has only ever survived on scraps before, it was life changing. My attention was entirely consumed by this act of eating. Due to this I hadn’t even noticed that I had sat down on the woman’s knee.

  When the soup and the bread was finished, I looked at the man who was sitting next to the metal container. He gestured towards it… as if he wanted me to climb inside. I first thought that they intended to boil me alive. But then I looked up at the woman… this kind… caring woman… who had so affectionately fed me bread and soup. I realised I was on her knee and jumped up.

  The man could tell I was confused. He took his boots off… rolled up his trousers and put his feet in the water. He splashed them about a bit and looked at me saying “Warm… nice.” I moved over towards him and dipped my hand in the water. I looked at him… still not knowing what he wanted of me. He held out his hand for me. I took it… I was confused and scared but I took it. He helped me climb into the container. He tapped the metal and said “bath.”

  Goblins don’t bathe… it’s not something we do. Water is too valuable to be used for such things. It is for drinking. The only time goblins get even remotely clean is if they attempt to catch fish. And I can say with a pretty strong degree of certainty that I needed a bath. I had been hiding under that bed for days… I didn’t come out for anything… and I mean anything… I was covered in my own waste.

  The water in the bath went up to just below my belly button when I was stood up. It wasn’t hot… just warm. It felt calming being surrounded by warm water. It was familiar to me… despite being something that I had never done before. I was reluctant to sit down at first so the woman scooped water up in her hands and gently poured in down my back. It tickled and I think that was the first time in my life that I laughed. It was brief and I instantly returned to being on my guard… but I laughed none the less.

  Eventually I sat down in the bath. As the warm water went up to my neck I looked up at the man and the woman. The woman was gently rubbing my back and the man was gently pouring water on the back of my head. I couldn’t understand it at the time… but… I felt… safe.