Season 4: Ch4: Daily Duties

  Hiro’s shell tingled, the yellow duck in the midst of reviewing his supplies and plotting a route towards the HeartForge as Ayaka scampered past, the once-tiny drider Queen now the size of an infant running on all eight of her legs across the room.

  Chaos soon ensued, the drider being chased by Dave adamant on retrieving a femur it had been gnawing on that belonged to none other than Hector that was currently hopping around on one leg.

  Just another day in the army of the Cleaners.

  While the Captains of Lord Hiro squabbled and played, Gobledo looked on dispationally before turning and leaving the chamber, a retinue of his knights joining him.

  A moment later, and Gobledo was within the expansive dungeon of their underground fortress, complete with goblins, skeletons, and tarantuals working on traps and fortifications.

  Surveying the clamoring of goblins, Gobeldo narrowed his golden eyes, the goblin paladin sweeping his gaze over the workers as they carried stone and wood through the underdark of their lord’s home.

  He could feel it, discontent, doubt. Somewhere within the masses a flicker of ill intent towards his lord. A flicker that would be snuffed out by the hand that tighten on the hilt of the blood-red blade given to him by his lord.

  Dredges. All of them. Every beast he saw merely fodder for the Lord’s will. This is why they remained unchosed. This is why they worked the mines, for their fealty needed to be proven to Lord Hiro.

  Yet these faithless beasts didn’t understand this. Didn’t understand that they should be thankful to be within the mercy of the Lord’s light, to be blessed with his love. But Gobeldo would make them understand.

  “Captain,” A goblin knight said, standing before the gold-haired paladin. “We have found the discontent.”

  “Good, let us be on our way,” Gobeldo said, donning his helmet before seizing up the goblin knight that seemed apprehensive. “Speak. What lingers on your mind?”

  “Our informent tells us there are at least twenty heathens maybe more, I would better if we brought in more brothers,” The goblin knight said, turning to the six other knights that followed Gobledo. “We are outnumbered. Perhaps we would bring in Sergeant Simp and his warband?”

  “Look around Charr-chik,” Gobledo said, his brow furrowing as an air of blood began to permeated the space, “The faithless outnumber us daily. Or do you perhaps doubt, the blessing our lord has given us?”

  Charr-chik’s eyes shifted downward, his gaze on the crimson blade known as the Muramasa, the blade responding to Gobledo’s bloodlust.

  “Never, I serve the Lord with all my being,” Charr-chik responded, “But… there is safety in numbers. Is there a reason we are tasked with this mission best left to Lady Slimey’s skills?”

  Gobledo sighed.

  “We goblins should deal with our own, the more we do, the less Lord Hiro has to worry. Most of our cousins are kept in line through either fervor or fear of Lady Slimey. But they should be reminded that we the faithful exist as well,” Gobledo said before ordering his squad of goblin knights to begin their marching through the tunnel system and towards The Bunks.

  The goblins in their way parted quickly for the towering monsters, each one, saluting as they’d been beaten to do. Failure to comply with the inspection was met with death. Running was met with death. Insubordination and disrespect was met with death. A mercy compared to what Lady Slimey would do in her dungeon.

  Then, Gobeldo and his subordinates finally came to their destination, The Bunks, a series of caves dug to house and home the goblin horde.

  Within, twenty-one goblins, each saluting as Gobledo’s knights spread out to block the exit of the cave.

  One goblin broke from the pack, kneeling before Gobledo.

  “I find slackers! I find the troublemakers yes I did Captain!” The goblin exclaimed with fervor.

  Gobledo looked down at the unchosen, a member of the flock yet to prove themselves, but one still useful all the least.

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  “Good, you have done well, you may go, I will see you rewarded later,” Gobledo said, allowing the goblin free passage.

  “Traitor!” A goblin screamed, drawing Gobledo's eyes.

  “Why are you not working?” Gobledo asked, sweeping his gaze over the horde until his eyes settled on the one that had screamed.

  “We tired!” The goblin hissed, a small creature with a thin face, long stringy hair, and a coat of fuzzy hair-like texture that coated its arms, telltale signs of a seed bearer.

  “We haz work forz hourz!” The goblin yelled, baring its fangs at the paladin, “We work! Work! And no eat! No meat! No flesh! No flesh!”

  “You have your rations.”

  “No! No more rock! Meat! Flesh! Flesh! We promised meat! We promised flesh!” The goblin spat, the others in the room growing heated as its words resonated with their beastial nature.

  “You want more, yet you don’t work,” Gobledo replied, “No work, no more.”

  “Then we take!” The goblin hissed, pounding its chest.

  “Is that so?” Gobledo said, drawing his blade, the legendary weapon oozing with red energy that made the goblins within flinch. “You are given food. Given shelter. Work. Purpose. And yet…. You want more.”

  “You won’t hurt me, I needed!” The goblin hissed, pointing at the spores upon its arms.

  A rarity amongst goblins, their species could be divided between pollinators and seed bearers, with the whooping ninety percent of their species being the former of the two types.

  Contrary to popular belief, goblins weren't a gendered species nor were they mammals but rather plants who could engage in sexual deviancy as a way to propagate their spores onto victims. With no viable host, seed bearers then became tasked with collecting spores, ensuring the continued survival of their species.

  Yet here Gobledo was, his blade skewering the goblin that would otherwise be untouchable.

  “Y-y-you!” The goblin screeched, eyes bulging as it reached out to its killer.

  “The Great Cleaning waits for no one,” Gobledo said, pulling his sword out of the now dessicated corpse void of blood. “Would anyone else like to protest against our working conditions?”

  Silence.

  The other nineteen goblins motionless, their minds attempting to process the fact that their leader was now dead.

  “SCREE!”

  A scream, one of the dissidents whipped into a frenzy and charging Gobledo who simply spun and flicked his wrist, his assailant, bisected cleanly in two from top to bottom.

  The others backed off, fear in their eyes as Gobledo turned to them and slashed.

  And like that, twenty goblins became three. The trio left standing cloaked in the blood of their fallen comrades and they stood petrified with fear.

  “Would anyone else care to complain?” Gobledo said, addressing the three remaining goblins as the blood from the deceased flowed into his Muramasa, picking the place clean. “Good. Now get back to work.”

  The goblins scattered, racing past Gobledo’s knights who stood stoic beneath their silver helmets and iron plate mail as their lesser cousins fled past them.

  “Are you sure it was wise leaving the unfaithful alive?” Charr-chik asked.

  “They will live as examples. Word of their laziness will no doubt spread.”

  “And when it does?”

  “Then they will be torn apart by the faithful,” Gobledo said, an evil smile on his face as his vision picked up something in his peripheral.

  “Very well said,” Slimey said, the ooze dripping from the ceiling and forming the naked body of the High Priestess. “When you asked for the mission of rooting out dissidents, I had my suspicion that you would go easy on them due to being of the same ilk. How fortuitous that my doubts were wrong.”

  “Lady Slimey,” Gobledo said, bowing his head as his knights knelt. “You honor me with your presence.”

  “Yet you don't kneel…” Slimey said, giving her trademark smile as she circled Gobledo.

  “I kneel for none but our Lord,” Gobledo replied, staring at the slime so fond of her human form.

  “Yet his will speaks through me,” Slimey said, her body seeming to expand as she towered behind the goblin. “An affront to me, could very well be seen as an affront to our master.”

  Gobledo turned, looking up at the gelatenous monster exuding bloodlust.

  “I know from wence you started, Slime. And I too, have risen from my station of a beast thanks to the blessing of our master. Do not think because you are the favorite of our Lord, that he does not love me as well, do not think that because you were the first that my faith does not rival your own,” Gobledo said, his gold eyes shining, brimming with faith as he spoke in pure basic. “I will say this one last time so we understand one another, I am Captain of Lord Hiro’s army, and I kneel for none other than my master.”

  Slimey’s head shifted, silence between the two monsters as the slime raised a brow.

  She could crush him, swallow him whole, his gift from the lord ineffective against a creature that didn’t bleed. These things Gobledo knew, yet despite this, he held firm. He would not be bullied. He would not sully his station as Captain less his knights lose respect for him.

  “Very well Captain, the less I have to do, the better. But know that I am always. Watching,” Slimey said as the entire bunk room wiggled and flashed, revealing their surroundings to be that of slime. Slimey smiled, the rest of her body melding with her human form and dragging the carcasusses away as she slipped into a crack and disappeared.

  “Go, we have more inspections to do,” Gobledo said, ordering his knights off to the rest of the locations where other dissidents were reported by his informants.