章 11: Starved
I stood back in the garden of my childhood home, the flowers were pretty.
They smelled like nothing, nature was silent.
The trees stood all in lines, perfect lines.
There were no trees, there was only one.
It repeated over and over, my childhood home had disappeared and only this tree existed.
The ground was no more, the sky had been replaced.
The tree was everywhere.
I shuddered and as one of the reflections died, withering away from old age.
Another caught fire, was cut, another uprooted, one was devoured by termites.
I bore witness to all of this one tree's possible fates, thousands of them played out in front of my eyes as I was unable to look away or think.
My vision faded to black.
My childhood home was back, the tree stood in front of me and I was made to bear witness to another fate.
The true fate.
-Extract from Quideos Audit's most recent vision
Following from a distance, Loimos could see that the trio of hunters were debating something, they wouldn't be gone for a little while.
He listened in on their conversations, having been privy to many conversations amongst the goblins, he already had an idea what the three designated messengers were busy talking about.
They were discussing whether to go to the bark dwellers camp first or last.
To understand why it mattered, one first needed to have an understanding of how the lake and its surroundings.
The soil surrounding the lake formed the rough shape of a reversed U, the bottom of this shape led to the durable grey, brick wall, where Loimos had come from.
If one assumed that the small island was the center of this miniature world, which it wasn't, then, the wall of grey was south.
The goblins were thus, west of the island, below their tribe, laid the camp of the bark dwellers, those monsters had no clear campground, they lurked the woods near the grey wall, their numbers unknown and their behaviour largely shy and fearful.
They were guided by The First Seed, a tree that had lived before them all and would most certainly outlive all of them.
It was said to be able to manipulate the woods around its body, making it impossible for mere monsters to stumble upon.
It would only be found if it wanted to.
There had been other occasions Gobstroz had wanted to share words with the tree and its people, all hunters had heard about how it had once taken a whole week to be able to speak with it.
Being that this was the only group below the goblins, the three hunters wondered whether they should get it out of the way right now, or leave for last.
Common sense dictated to go with the latter, after all, bringing the message of a possible threat to as many tribes as possible should be done quickly.
Thus leaving the most annoying and possibly time consuming one for last, despite not being the brightest, the three hunters eventually managed to get their facts straight.
By the time they had finally decided, Loimos had already moved.
He knew the goblins best out of all the tribes, their tricks, mindset, intelligence, options, he had studied them for a long while.
They were also the most prominent one in spite of having such blockheads as hunters, wiping them out would leave an empty space in the chain of power.
He decided that he would be taking those three out first.
The skeleton had taken a good look at their supplies, they had packed some food and canteens of water.
Each of them wielded a different weapon, one a hammer, another a spear and the third, a sling.
Loimos held no doubt that each of them would be capable of breaking his skull and bones when given the occasion.
Thankfully, the living had plenty of exploitable weaknesses, their need to keep their stomach full and their bodies hydrated was one of their biggest ones.
The undead knew that they would travel alongside a small stream, not all tribes were close to the lake and if they wished to gather more food during their travels, sticking close to the lake wasn't ideal, the line of sight was too broad, animals and monsters would see them coming from far away.
These goblins weren't expert fishers as well, not patient enough and with rough equipment, they never bothered to even try.
With this knowledge in mind, Loimos ventured ahead of them, running at his full speed next to the stream.
As an undead, Loimos could sprint at his maximum possible output constantly and without ever having to stop, even if he wasn't very fast, he had no issue leaving the three hunters in the dust.
They walked to conserve energy, had to sleep when night fell, eat and drink, utterly meaningless activities.
The undead arrived upstream way before they did, it would take them a few days to get up to his position, meanwhile, Loimos was free to put his plan into action.
Laying his body into the small stream, he began to work on growing as much of his putrid flesh as possible, constantly oozing rotten blood.
After experimenting with it and learning more about himself, he had managed to willfully produce the flesh, after he had slayed the goblin in the tribe, he felt his control grow.
It wasn't simply due to what the system called 'Experience' or 'Stats', reaping a life had simply granted him a greater understanding of his own nature.
The flowing water wasn't affected in the first few hours, but after a whole day, it took on a darker taint as the rot kept growing.
Unlike before, instead of simply remaining there without doing anything, the pieces that detached from his bones stuck to other surfaces, trying to expand all on their own.
They had no mind of their own, they simply inherited of Loimos's goal and tried to grow over life and snuff it out themselves.
Remaining in place for days and doing nothing but growing decay, Loimos stood up and suddenly began to travel back downstream.
Eventually running into the three goblins.
They were dehydrated, not willing to touch the water after what had happened to it.
It seemed like they had wanted to move away from the stream and toward the lake, but their intellectual inaptitude had caught up to them.
They had eaten meat from a contaminated animal.
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