Chương 10: Two Fronts

The road to Sarais Hexenfrau's farm was just miles of packed dirt. Brunkholdt walked point. He was forty-one, broad across the shoulders, had a shaved head, and had a scar running from his left ear to the corner of his mouth. The scar was a souvenir from a collection job that had gone sideways when the debtor pulled a knife. That was just part of the job. He still had the knife that gave him the scar. He kept it in a box under his bed with rings and a pocket watch taken from people who no longer needed them.

Two others, his associates, walked behind him in the loose spacing of those who knew each other's stride. The wiry, tall man was the talker, currently working through an apple in slices, cutting each one and eating it off the blade. He spoke and chewed at the same time, mouth open. The third man talked only when talking was required. He walked with his hands in his pockets and his eyes on the treeline.

"Four years she's got left on that note," the tall man said, scraping the last slice off the blade with his teeth.

"Isn't so bad, eh? I think she can do it. Couple good years." He chewed audibly.

"I respect an entrepreneurial spirit," said the tall man, pointing lackadaisically with the knife.

"Yeah. That's the problem," Brunkholdt said without turning, rolling his eyes.

"Anyways, idiot, you wouldn't know what an entrepreneur was if one came out of your mum's bedroom."

"Shut up! Like you know."

"Fuck you," retorted Brunkholdt, the two of them glaring at each other. They were both silent.

"It's what you eat before the main meal at a fancy place," said the quiet one.

"Like in the city. That's why you say that. Means you have the spirit to get more than just your food." The other two looked at him and then looked away, both wanting to not give away that neither of them actually knew.

"So what's the play? We rough her up, and, what, she pays faster?" asked the tall man, rotating his apple to cut off from the untouched side instead of working his way through the part that was already opened.

"This isn't about the debt, idiot," Brunkholdt said, as if they hadn't done this a dozen times before already.

"Paragraph nine. Any posting party found to have given the guild false information is subject to penalties."

"She signed that?"

"Everyone signs it. Nobody out here can read."

"I can read."

"Shut up. No, you can't." Brunkholdt stopped walking. The road ran empty ahead, with forest on both sides and the farm miles up the track.

"What if she was telling the truth?" asked the tall man, chewing on one piece of apple for far too long.

"What if Kohnrad really did book it? She'll be in the legal right." His friend put a hand on his arm.

"Buddy. You're as dumb as a rock. The law doesn't matter out here."

"Why does Varran care about this?" asked the tall man, his jaw working for far too long on the same piece of apple to the point that it was becoming disgusting.

"Does he want the farm?"

"An entrepreneur doesn't ask questions," said the quiet man. Brunkholdt's scar pulled when he smiled.

"... Aren't we here to ask her questions?" asked the tall man, confused.

"A dark elf on the frontier?" He shook his head.

"It's a shame we're going to find out she was lying about Kohnrad," he said.

"And it's a real shame she got aggressive with us and we had to defend ourselves. Way I see it, law is on our side."

"Oooh," said the tall man, understanding. Sarais worked the root rows with her back bent and her hands in the dirt, the draft bird pulling the plow behind her along an unturned circuit on the side of the current crop as she worked a rotated field. The harvest was coming in well, stalks tall and root systems established. If the yield held until autumn, she would cover the next interest payment with a surplus left over for trade. This year was important for her.

Depending on how it went, it would be the difference between continuing to tread water or breaking forward, finally. She had been treading water for seasons now already. But it looked like this was going to be her year. She just had a feeling. She heard the boots before the voices. Three sets, coming up the track from the south road. She straightened, her hand finding the crossbow propped against the fence post, and watched them come around the bend. Three men, armed, though not adventurers.

No guild badges, no monster-hunting gear. The weapons were personal and the clothes were civilian, clean, but old and unchanged for days. She knew the type. Bar louses.

"The hell do you want?" she snapped.

"Afternoon." The one with the scar smiled without it reaching his eyes.

"Brunkholdt."

"We're entrepreneurs," said the tall man. He was elbowed by the scarred man, who seemed annoyed.

"My associates and I are guild contractors. We're here for a reassessment." Sarais chewed with an empty mouth, eyeing the three of them over.

"Of what?" The scarred man gestured for calm.

"Your situation. The guild has questions about the information you gave regarding the Kohnrad party. Just a routine follow-up."

"I told the receptionist everything I know," she replied, watching them.

"Funny. That's what he said too." The smile again.

"Mind if we look around? You said Kohnrad and his folks stayed here, right?" asked the scarred man.

"Well, maybe they left something," he suggested. It was a good pretense. She minded a lot, actually. But her minding was not a firm legal position. The financing agreement gave the guild the right to inspect any property held at any time until the full passing of ownership to the buyer post full payment. Sarais realized she should have come up with a better story.

"Look around," she said, and turned back to the rows.

"But you won't find anything here except a few feathers in the roost, I reckon." They looked. They walked the perimeter, checked the root cellar, and the one-room little farmhouse, and the lean-to wall rebuilt with timber better than anything she could have sourced herself. The scarred man noticed the one-directional wall, marking the outer field toward the forest. It was new. He ran a hand along the joinery, the tight, precise fit of logs cut by someone who knew the work.

It looked more like a military-style barricade than a farm's fence, though.

"Nice handiwork. Who built this?" She stared him down.

"I did."

"Makes sense. I guess you don't have a husband." Sarais said nothing. He studied it a moment longer and moved on. A crunch. One of them walked into the harvest, straight down the center of a row instead of around it. The quiet one, who hadn't said anything yet. He was trampling it on purpose, going well out of his way to do so. His boots crushed the stalks and snapped the root stems, and he went slowly, deliberately, watching her the whole way.

The sound of the plants breaking was the sound of money being destroyed. Sarais shouted at him, her arms rising into the air.

"Hey!"

"Look out!" called a voice from right next to her.

"Weapon!" One of them hit her from the side, down onto her head. The pain opened like a door. She went down hard, slumping against the ground before a boot caught her in the face. Her nose broke. She felt the cartilage go, and the blood came in a flood that filled her mouth and ran down her chin onto soil she had been working in. A weight pressed the back of her neck, grinding her face into the dirt until she tasted both.

"She tried to kill him," said the scarred man, loudly.

"Did you see that? Poor man was just walking there and she went crazy."

"I sure did," said the tall man. The former shook his head, tsking.

"Stay down," he said conversationally.

"Now you tell me. What happened to Kohnrad and his troop?"

"Fuckin' told you!" barked Sarais, fighting to get the weight off of her neck, but the boot pressing down was too heavy for her to budge.

"They ran off!"

"No, that's what you told Varran," said the scarred man.

"I want to hear something different." He looked over his shoulder.

"Make her talk." Behind them, the large bird was screaming. A six-hundred-pound animal reacted to the violence with noise and fury and wings that could break an arm as it pulled against its anchored harness. The tall man went after it with the club. Lying there, she heard the impact, then several more, and then heard the thrashing slow and stop. There was a thump as something heavy hit the ground.

"Now," said the scarred man.

"Let's talk about what Kohnrad found in that warren."

"You aren't listening," hissed Sarais through gritted teeth.

"Northwest."

"I'm listening. I just don't believe you." The pressure increased.

"Kohnrad doesn't skip check-ins. Something happened to him. You know what it was, and you're going to tell me."

"I don't know anything. I already told you that."

"Burn the house," said the scarred man. The quiet man turned and started walking away.

"Fuck you!" snarled Sarais, trying to push him off, but she didn't get far. The tall man came back over, wiping his club off.

"Shame about the bird," the scarred man said. The tall man crouched beside her, breathing hard from the exertion, his club wet.

"She needed that to pay the guild," he said to his compatriot holding her down.

"Imagine needing to do all of this farmwork by hand, alone."

"Rough."

"Too bad it attacked us too." The scarred man shook his head.

"It really is dangerous out here, in the countryside. Lots of bad things can happen to a person out in these parts and nobody will ever know." In the background, an orange blaze began to grow. He nodded his head.

"Give me that crossbow," he said, the weapon being handed over.

"Okay. I'm running out of patience, and you're running out of things that I can take from you to make my point," he made clear.

"So let's try this again." He aimed it down at Sarais.

"What happened to Kohnrad?"

"I won't say it again!" The crossbow went off. The bolt punched into the soil an inch from her head. The sound was enormous, a crack that filled her skull and left her vision swimming, and the soil sprayed up against her cheek, gritty. The tall man pulled the bolt out of the ground and looked at it. He handed it back to the quiet man, who had moved to her other side, and she heard the click of a bolt being reloaded into the channel, feeling a sharp point pressing into the back of her skull.

"Last chance," the scarred man said, and his voice was not a question. The tall stalks moved next to them. The two of them turned their heads to look at the rustling. A bolos caught the tall man around the neck. Fiber cord and stones. whipped taut. It flew out of the crop and wrapped around him. He hit the ground, pulling on it in shock at the same instant a strange, large monster leapt out onto him. It was pale and long and thin, latching onto his throat as it pulled the bolos tighter, choking him.

Froth and drool fell from its mouth.

"Goblin!" shouted the scarred man to his other colleague, aiming the crossbow and taking the shot. The bolt shot out and struck true. The bolt ripped straight through the goblin, rather than getting stuck, and flew onward.

"The fuck it is. Ain't never seen one like that!" shouted the usually quiet man, getting out his knife.

"Get it off of me!" yelled the tall man, managing to fight it off for a moment before it reattached like a rabid street dog trying to maul him. The two standing men looked in horror, watching as the hole in the monster's body seemed to sew itself shut. It was filled with stringy roots on the inside. Immediately, more shapes lunged from the field from all sides. Normal goblins.

The quiet man went down under two of them, knife arm pinned, while a third pressed a sharpened stake to his chest and the others bound his wrists. The boot came off Sarais' neck. She heard his weight shift, rolled sideways, and looked up through blood and dirt at the towering goblin standing in her field. One hand closed on the man's throat as he lifted the scarred stranger off the ground. The scarred man kicked. His boots landed with real force, the power of a man who had been fighting people for a living.

But the large goblinoid monster did not react. A squeeze. There was a crack, and the kicking stopped. The large goblin held him until the man's eyes rolled back and the body went slack, then set him down and gestured. They bound him with the same cord, and the two surviving men lay on the trampled field beside the third.

"I really do want to stop killing people," sighed the large goblin, shaking his head. Slowly, the dark elf sat upright, looking around herself at the quickly resolved anarchy. Her eyes caught the burning house in the distance. She sat with blood on her face and her ribs aching. Sarais spat out a mouthful of blood and looked back up at him.

"... Matthew," she said, without much emotion. It was just a simple greeting. She looked down at the hand extended to help her back up to her feet. He nodded once.

"Let's talk business," said the creature, throwing the corpse down to the side into the dirt. The other goblins dragged away several shapes back into the forest. They threw them over her fence before continuing away into the underbrush. If you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it. She studied him for a moment and then took his hand as he easily hoisted her back to her feet.

"Sarais," she said, introducing herself with just the word, her other hand covering her freely bleeding nose. She pulled on it, an audible crack that made him wince, ironically enough, resonating out as she reset it and then shook out her wet hand. Negotiations had officially begun. Back home in the warren, Nicole smelled something in the air. It was sour, like old eggs. But it burnt and tingled in her nose. She didn't like it at all.

Sulfur and heat, the dry mineral reek of something that belonged underground, coming up from deeper than the warren's foundations. She found it outside from the cave's secondary entrance, a crack in the ground that had not existed that morning. It was a red slit in the ground, exhaling warm air that shimmered in the afternoon light. The first thing came out from inside of it. A head shorter than a goblin, with wings too large for its body and skin the color of a coal left to cool.

Its face was mostly mouth, and its sharply clawed, thin hands held fire, cupped in its palms as though the skin were a wick. An imp. IMP A low-tier demonic entity. Imps are the cannon fodder of the darkest forces in the world. They are mischievous, cruel, and fast. Capable of short bursts of flight, they will swarm their enemies in large numbers and overwhelm even the staunchest defenders with barrages from all angles.

Incapable of significant individual thought, they must be given constant instructions on what to do by a more capable entity. Rank: D- Then another. Then five, then ten, pouring from the crack in a stream and spreading through the trees with the darting movement as the fissure erupted. A hundred came out, maybe more, blasting out at once. The treeline burnt with fire, erupting as they emerged like maggots spilling from a ruptured wound that had festered for days.

Something larger was coming from behind them down in the hole. Nicole heard it through the fissure, a low, resonant voice speaking a language she did not know, and the imps responded to it, adjusting into a pattern. They were being commanded. Nicole ran. She hit the warren's secondary entrance at full speed and did not stop until stone was around her and the sky was gone. She found the nearest wall and slammed her fist against the helmet one of the adventurers had hard. It rang out, like a bell.

The response was immediate. The warren sprang to life. Under Matthew's guidance, they had run several exercises about defensive tactics in the past since the last attack. Snarling for the nearby hunters who guarded the entrances, Nicole had them kick over a large wooden beam that held up the ceiling. It gave way. The tunnel caved in, its entrance sealing.

Janet moved with the infants in slings while two others carried the nesting boxes, and they went down the secondary corridor to the sealed chamber Matthew had designated as the fallback behind the dryad tree. One narrow entrance, sealable, the deepest room in the warren. The non-combatants filed in. The stone door pulled shut. The only way in or out now was the main entrance. The palisade by the stream. The defenders collapsed onto the junctions.

Manning the kill zone, the four-way intersection where the obvious path dead-ended and the real route turned left into the switchback. Nicole commanded from an ambush slit above it. She could see the whole intersection, and the cadence she had developed by hammering onto the human helmet carried orders to the hunters in the other slits. They waited. It was quiet in the warren, with only the sound of goblin feet hustling through the tunnels audible as they took spears and knives from racks.

Everyone was watching the entrance palisade. Silence. Then, eruption. A burst of shapes, of colors. The walls echoed with shrill voices. They flew the palisade gap in a blast of motion, wings carrying them over tripwires and pit traps built for things that walked. A hundred small demons poured into the warren like a flood through a ravine. The first pair entered the junction. Two hunters dropped. The first imp went down with a spear through the wing, pinned to the floor, fire sputtering out along the shaft.

The second imp twisted midair and threw magic that turned a section of the solid stone tunnel wall into sludge, and the second hunter took it from behind with a knife across the throat. But a hundred more imps flooded in, the air filling with shapes until there were more of them than there was empty space. Imps flooded the false junction, weaving around the spears and spikes that jutted out of the walls their way. The two hunters were encircled, a swarm flying a cyclone around them, too many and too fast.

A dark light. The hunters looked up for just a second before the fire washed over them and they were gone. The stone beneath where they had been was liquified, glowing red. The hollow pockets in the walls where goblins were shooting out through embrasures were swarmed. Fire blasted in through the defensive slits from the outside. That magic blasted through the interior tunnels.

The backdraft sent goblins flying in all directions, the pressure launching them into the open and crumbling the interior defensive tunnels in an instant. Hunters ran past the downed defenders, holding large, capped shields in teams of two like rams. Mush-mushes. The imps flooded toward the breach. The goblins wedged the large mushrooms into the two chokepoints flanking the junction, where the narrowed walls forced single file.

Their caps had hardened almost to wood, and they vented spores from the gills beneath, a fine invisible mist that filled the passage and hung there. The first imp flew into it and kept flying, then stopped midair, wings faltering, fire guttering. It coughed. It clawed at its throat. It dropped. The poison worked. The breech held, the only way in filling with noxious fumes that had killed a dozen small bat-things at least and was keeping the others at bay.

Panting and assessing the situation, Nicole looked around at the defenders. They were in the interior central chamber. The tunnel was being held by the team of hunters, pushing the mush-mushes into the holes to plug them. But more and more walls were melting, as some sort of unnatural, infernal magic simply turned the stone into something soft and malleable. The new defensive infrastructure meant nothing if they could just dig through the cave and bypass it all.

More goblins ran in, plugging the burning holes with whatever they could find. Rocks. Mushrooms. Then, Nicole heard it. The deep voice that had been directing from behind the fissure outside in the forest was inside the warren now. Something heavy was scraping against the rocks past the impromptu barrier. It was large. She could feel it move, scraping the world as it crawled. The goblins were silent, standing there, listening as the shrilling of the imps quieted.

Hundreds of the attackers fell silent, as only one thing spoke now. It said words that the goblins didn't know, in a language they couldn't understand. Mike pulled on Nicole's shoulder, but she lifted a hand, gesturing for him to be still. Everything was quiet. It was like the attack had stopped. Slowly, she looked around herself, the helmet under her arm clenched so tightly that the metal had been bending. She looked at the hunters by the door, holding the breach.

"Frank," started Nicole, gesturing for one to come her way. He turned to look at her. And then he was gone before he could take a step. A hole abruptly opened beneath him, the stone melting away below his feet, and Frank fell into the melted shaft. Liquid rock flowed over him, the goblin screaming as he drowned in fire. Anarchy. Imps poured out of the breech, having used their magic to tunnel beneath the walls and the poison barrier.

The defenders scrambled, crude arrows and spears flying in all directions as blazing lashes met them in turn. From the hole that the hunters scattered around, trying to hold it, a monstrosity emerged. Gigantic, with skin the gray-red of heated stone and a head mostly horn. Its six slit eyes were solid orange without iris or pupil, and they cast light. Its armor was bone, fused to the half-slug and half-upright body and grown from it, and its six hands were empty because it did not need weapons of its own.

It raised one hand and pointed, saying two words she didn't understand. LESSER DEVIL A mid-tier demonic entity. Lesser Devils are an amalgamation of wicked spirits that have come together in one singular shell, causing it to become a horrific mishapen thing. They boast significant magical powers and are a terrifying force on the battlefield, not only because of the threat they pose but also because of their role as captains in demonic armies. Demons form a strict hierarchy.

Any demon lower class than a lesser devil will always follow its commands down to the letter. Most often these are imps, shadow people, or succubi. Rank: C+ Nicole rang the helmet for retreat. But they were running out of ground. Where the enemy commander pointed, the fire came, a hundred imps all aiming in coordination at the marked hunters trying to hold the front. They vanished. The narrow walls contained the blast and drove it forward and back, and the mush-mushes burned.

Their caps ignited, their spore reserves flashed to nothing, and both were gone in a burst of flame and a smell like burning compost. The greater demon advanced. The imps rallied behind it, confidence restored by the display, their broken formation reassembling and the fire in their hands burning brighter. The survivors fell back deeper toward the core chamber, running as a group. Steve tripped. Nicole ran back, grabbing his hand.

But he was yanked from her and she stumbled, watching as he was lifted into the air by a team of imps and literally pulled apart into two halves, screaming as he was separated, his organs and innards falling out. Another hand grabbed Nicole and they ran. The core chamber. The dryad tree. The last position. The imps came in a wave of fire and wings. Two hit the spores and dropped, choking. The fungal vines caught three more, constricting, hauling them toward the patch. Two got through, and their fire found them.

Mike dropped, flames in his chest, not on it, and did not move once he hit the floor. His nametag curled in the heat. Clutching him, Gary went next, trying to drag his friend behind the tree when fire caught him across the back. He fell across Mike, and the two of them lay together on the stone, smouldering. A shaking. The ground from the weight of the thing. The air, from the heat of the thing. Nicole, panting, was there with her knife out, watching the demon commander come through the smoke.

She was out of answers. The commander entered the chamber. It looked at the tree, at the last ring of spears, and at the goblins dead on the floor, and its orange eyes measured the situation and found it settled. It raised two of its hands for the last command. It said one word, just like before. But then it stopped before the second half of the command came. Strangely, the air had thickened. The demon hesitated with its hands still up.

Something had changed, a density, a weight that had not been there a moment ago. Its eyes narrowed. It blinked. Then it coughed, hacking. The imps coughed after it, as if responding in mimicry to what their leader had done. One clawed at its throat, fire sputtering. Another wiped at its eyes and its hand came away wet. Smoke. The green-black smoke pouring into the chamber from the tunnel behind them was thick and acrid, and it burned eyes and lungs, and it was getting denser.

This wasn't just the smoke of the siege. Nicole's eyes stung and she started coughing too, the smoke choking her as it got thicker and thicker. The air was rich with it. But there was something more in it than just ash and cinders. The smell of poison was in the air. Clutching her throat, she wheezed, looking up toward the distance. Matthew had sealed the warren from the inside. Every entrance and every vent shaft that could move air was shut. He had spent a decade managing warehouses with climate control problems.

A cave was nothing. He had closed them one at a time with Territorial Manipulation, stone flowing shut under his hands like clay. Then he rerouted the hearth flue inward. The hearth had vented upward through a shaft to the surface since the first day he built it. Matthew turned the shaft around. The flue now ran into the tunnel system, and everything the fire produced went into the corridors instead of out of them. He had turned the entire warren into a smokehouse.

And into that fire he had his team throw the giant poison mushroom caps. Harvested off the mush-mushes that had died at the chokepoints, each dense with concentrated toxic spores. The heat aerosolized them, and the flue carried the result into every tunnel the ventilation reached, which was all of them. The warren was a closed system. No air in, no air out. The poison worked quickly and cumulatively, building in the lungs with every breath.

The imps broke, losing formation, blind and clawing at their own throats, wings beating uselessly in air too thick to work with. They crashed into walls and into each other, and their fire died as the oxygen dropped past the threshold that sustained it. The vines took the ones that stumbled close enough, and the fungal patch took the ones that dropped. The smoke thickened and even if the goblins were mostly immune to the poison in the air, they were not immune to the cinders in their lungs.

A calm, orderly voice came through the chaos.

"Nicole. Be so kind and evacuate the premises." She didn't like the order, and he knew she didn't. But Matthew also knew that Nicole had the good sense to place survival over tradition. She yelled at him.

"No!"

"Nicole. Please. Be reasonable," said a calm voice. Her eyes shifted, looking at the death all around her. Her hands clutched fistfuls of dirt and then she relented.

"Fire drill! Fire drill!" snarled Nicole, hammering on the helmet with one hand as she crawled forward, parroting the exact phrase he had taught them all. All of the goblins knew the taboo command. But at this point, it beat the alternative. One by one the goblins flung themselves into the only place left to go. They jumped into the stream and vanished into the black hollow below the dryad tree.

The demon commander stood in the core chamber surrounded by the sound of its own force dying, still upright, orange eyes streaming as its body tried to flush toxin from its ocular tissue. The little prey was gone. But the thing they were meant to kill was here. Powerful. It could sense the magic. It could see the silhouette of the enemy as it moved through the smoke, alone. Imps fell out of the air, hundreds of them, like a dead flock of birds falling in omen.

A pair of yellow eyes shone in the fire smoke, floating like a pair of embers that were separate from the rest. Their gazes caught each other in the haze. The demon commander could sense it, the dungeon core. Unlike its own master, which was stationary, the core was inside that thing's moving body. That thing that walked in unhurriedly toward it, stepping across twitching imps and dead goblins.

"Ah… damn it. Not Mike," said a voice, heartbroken.

"Do you know how long it will take to find a good replacement for him in this market?" The silhouette of the goblin king stopped. The demon looked at him. The smoke curled.

"What are you?" asked the dungeon core, sounding confused at having the chance to ask this question itself for a change. The demon's chest heaved as the poison worked. Its body was failing. It said something in its own language. The tone was unmistakable as being unprofessional and it didn't get a chance to finish the sentence as the blade of an old axe sliced down into its head. It was over. The smoke cleared slowly.

Matthew reopened the vents, and fresh air pushed the green-black haze out through the palisade and into the forest, where it thinned into the afternoon sky. Standing there, he pulled down the wet cloth he had covered his mouth and nose with. It would seem they've come across a rival operation. [SYSTEM NOTICE] Dungeon Core: Tier Advancement Requirements Met! DUNGEON EVOLUTION CONFIRMED TIER F -> TIER E!

Unlocked: [Enhanced Goblin Spawning Rate], [Organic Territorial Defenses], [Core Secondary Specialization] Total Mana Capacity: 1, 000 → 2, 000 Passive Ambient Income: +1 → +5/Hour Around him, the fungus went crazy. It spread, stretching across the walls in all directions as if it were being fed by the ash. It crawled across the floor, the stone. It wrapped and pulled in imp corpses by the dozens, by the hundreds.

The demons were rich in magical power and the fungus went after them with the same voracity it had for the sorceress. The gigantic demon was slowly fuzzed over, becoming a mound in the core chamber. But that wasn't his real enemy. That was just the hired muscle that mysterious third party had sent to take him out. That new competitor was not going anywhere so quickly. Neither was he. DUNGEON STATUS Mana: 2, 000 / 2, 000 INCOME / EXPENSES (PER HOUR) Passive: +5 Parasitic Drain: +147 Upkeep: -0. 5 Goblins: -0.

9 Net Result: +150. 6 Mana per Hour So it looked to him like, between the adventurers, himself, and a demon-fielding rival core, the market had just become hostile. Rich with magic, behind him, the dryad tree swelled and started spewing out new goblins, the first of the babes landing between the corpses of the old, crying as they breathed in the last remnants of the poison air that welcomed them to this world.