บท 9: Intrusion
By the time other goblins came to see what was happening, the mysterious creature was long gone and the darkness was already settling in.
There was nothing that could be done now, the goblin could only make a poor attempt at explaining what he had seen.
Putting his impression into words was overwhelmingly difficult however and he quickly realised that he hadn't seen much of this being at all, his idea of it was born solely from the sheer terror it had inspired into his heart and psyche.
Really, after he managed to calm down, now that he was laying down and slowly feeling more and more tired, he tried to remember the details of this strange figure, its mannerisms, its appearance, anything.
It only inspired a deep sensation of unease, everything about it was off putting and simply wrong.
He remained on the edge of slumber for a while, glancing around the pitch black tent, staring intensely in the direction of each little sound, no matter how common the noises may have been, he couldn't help but associate them with the presence of the beast.
Sleep eventually claimed him however and he awoke the next day, refreshed and with his mind hazy, he slowly rose from his rudimentary, but comfortable bedding on the ground.
The image of the creature popped up in his mind again.
Feeling a cold sweat overtake him in spite of the ambient heat, he got out of his tent before anyone else of his family, the sun blinded him severely, it took him a few minutes to get used to it.
It seemed like he had awoken early, most of the goblins that had chosen to sleep outside were still laying there in random positions.
The only ones that were missing were the hunters, today wasn't a hunting day but they were used to waking up early, since he couldn't see them around, it most certainly meant that they had gone to the lake.
The hunters were stronger and more careful than the rest, they were in group too so going to the lake shouldn't be a problem for them.
However…
The sheer terror the mysterious being had implanted straight into his soul never truly left his mind, always breathing down on his neck.
'Are the hunters actually safe from this creature?' he couldn't help but wonder, he had heard a few things from elders, stories passed down from times the goblin couldn't even fathom.
When this place was much more dangerous and the diversity of danger was far wider than what it is now.
The lake had once inhabited abominations of the deep, but the fishfolks had eradicated them all a while ago, the waters far from the shores had also once been said to be the breeding ground of corpse-like creatures.
The lake was now as safe as it could possibly be however, only home to delicious meals and a perfect place to sit back and relax.
The goblin racked his mind for any legends of yore he might have heard over the years, but after a while, stopped to think about the strange creature.
Stolgob had first spoken of something standing in the water, according to his description, it was quite tall since it was half submerged but still almost as tall as the run of the mill goblin.
Goblins around here were about one meter tall on average, not that any of them had a clue what a meter was, they used themselves as a basis to measure things.
Stolgob was just about ten centimeters above average, marking him as a tall guy.
Gobstroz on the other hand, was a whole fifty centimeters above average; marking him as a giant in the tribe and really everywhere around the lake, all of the intelligent species inhabiting the area were rather small, all about the same size as them.
If Stolgob hadn't seen awfully wrong, then the creature was even taller than the chieftain, correlating with what he had himself seen the night before.
Not many goblins were taking the sightings very seriously, but the orders from the chieftain were respected wholeheartedly, he could tell them to start crawling around instead of walking and they would do it without a second thought.
'What if it's one of those ancient creatures?! We are completely unprepared for this sort of thing!' feeling panicked at this prospect, he thought about making his way to the lake to tell the hunters but thinking about traversing the small portion of woods by himself gave him cold feet.
So he just began to pace around the tribe, looking for something else to do whilst waiting for others to wake up.
With how hot the whole place was, there was no need to bother with the central fire, he instead went over the Gobert's tent, which he had occupied alone, it was just a tent like all the rest, only much smaller because the old goblin had never had a mate or children.
He stayed cooped up in there most of the time, in fact, he only ever got out when called out by the chieftain to put his talents to work or to spend some alone time at the lake.
Carefully entering the tent, almost expecting to find the elder just sitting there, he was struck by that hard to describe old person smell.
It assaulted his senses nearly as much as the chieftain's smoke, but it was much easier to ignore.
Looking around in awe, he quickly came to realise that Gobert had been an even sharper mind than the other goblins believed, drawn on well-preserved tablet's of wood, were many symbols that he couldn't understand.
Though, he knew what this meant about the missing elder.
'He knew how to write and read!' it was no secret that the average goblin wasn't only small in size, but also in brain, in fact, the number of goblins with savvy minds could be counted on one hand.
If one was the talk of the tribe, then it probably meant he or she was more well-off in that aspect.
As such, while he had heard that they had a specific language, he had never seen it.
Gobert had had it in his possession this entire time.
Intrigued, the goblin wanted to skim through the various tablets when a shout pulled him out of his thoughts, a blood-curdling one.
Rushing out of the tent, it didn't take him too long to put one and one together upon seeing the scene before his eyes.
The creature had infiltrated the tribe during the night.
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