Once again Richter experienced life through the memories and senses of another. He, or rather the Witch Doctor, was walking through the goblin encampment. The goblin was lamenting having been summoned by the camp commander, may his member get pox and rot off. It was immensely unfair that he, a level thirty-five Mage, would have to come to this damned forest in the first place. Back in the swamps, he had wives and slaves that catered to his every whim.
His newest slave, a young elf girl, had just been broken! True, he had had to feed one of her sons to the lonelath maggots, but that was just foreplay! Sin-ak had yet to meet a slave that wouldn’t break when faced with the days-long death caused by foot-long maggots burrowing through their body… or the body of their remaining son. The goblin snorted in disgust; he had only been able to enjoy her sobbing body once, before he had left home. It was infuriating!
A scout was unlucky enough to cross his path as he stalked towards the Bloodstone. Goblin society operated by a severe caste system called “stations.” Near the bottom were the scouts. Even though goblins of the scout station possessed a meager intellect, most of them had learned to stay out of his way. As a rikker, the Witch Doctor was so high above them in goblin society that no one would fault him for taking his ire out on the smaller goblins. This was something that he took advantage of as often as possible.
Sin-ak began an incantation, conjuring the spell form into his mind. At the same time, his left hand formed the arcane gesture for the magic. With a gleefully brutal twist to his lips, the Mage finished his spell. Black energy had been building on his hand over the three second casting. It had been just enough time for the scout to see that he was being targeted. The small goblin tried to run, but got nowhere near the outer range of Sin-ak’s spell, Minor Festering Boils.
The scout’s skin began to bubble and pop. Each boil that rose and burst took away one to two health, and there were dozens of boils. Sin-ak’s adept rank in Dark magic increased his spell strength by 35%. Coupled with his high Intelligence attribute, the goblin scout never had a chance.
Richter tried to stop Sin-ak, horrified by the image of what the spell would do to the goblin scout. He had no love for goblins, that was to be sure, but through the Witch Doctor, Richter understood that the spell was meant to torture while it killed. As with his last jaunt through memory, however, the chaos seed was only a passenger.
The scout continued to scream until the boils began to form on the inside of her throat. The sounds coming from the goblin woman changed into a sickeningly wet burbling. The Witch Doctor’s necklace began to vibrate as the enslaved souls within detected the sweet scent of imminent death. Sin-ak stroked the necklace lovingly. As horrible a death as the Mage had just inflicted on the scout, it was a kindness compared to the spiritual torments he had subjected his enslaved souls to. Each had been brutalized and violated until the personalities they had once possessed had become so warped that no goodness remained.
Feeling like an indulgent father, Si-nak opened the cage doors that kept the spirits bound within his necklace. None of them could stray far from the necklace. Neither could they harm the wearer, so the Witch Doctor had nothing to fear. The tortured goblin had no such protections. All three malevolent spirits began to claw and scratch at the scout, hastening its end. Only a few seconds later, she shuddered a final time and died. It was only then that the scout knew true horror. No longer bound by flesh, the goblin’s soul began to depart from the mortal plane, but it never made it.
The Witch Doctor’s spirits began to feast. The goblin’s soul was torn apart as it screamed silently. Each enslaved spirit grabbed chunks of soul stuff and shoved it into their greedy maws. The soul tried to escape, but its struggles were useless. The scout’s soul was not the first that had been sacrificed to feed and grow the Witch Doctor’s slave spirits. Soon, all that was left of the once-living creature was a pockmarked carcass. Nothing remained of her soul.
The glutted spirits returned happily back to their cages. Once they were back in the necklace, Sin-ak in turn grew stronger, his mana, health and stamina boosted by the consumed soul his enslaved creatures had brought back to him. Now in a much better mood, the Mage stepped over the scout’s body, not sparing it another thought. Other scouts ran up behind him and began rifling through the dead goblin’s clothes.
Sin-ak continued walking through the camp. He liked to stop by the prisoner pens and mock the soon-to-be sacrificial victims, but couldn’t take the time today. The commander was not known for his patience. As much as the Witch Doctor hated his superior, he wouldn’t risk his wrath. The Mage made his way through the camp, all giving way before him until he reached the commander’s tent. Unlike the other goblins in the encampment, the elite guards standing outside of the tent were not cowed by either the Witch Doctor’s magic or his rikker station.
The guards just stared at him until Sin-ak snapped, “Move, fools. Your master has asked for my counsel!”
The well-armored duo just kept staring at him. Though Sin-ak was tall for a goblin, they still overtopped him by three to four inches. It stirred a deep anger inside of him, but the Mage did not push further. Even he understood that Specialists of the ortai station were not to be trifled with. After staring at him for another few seconds, the guard on the right turned away and poked his head into the tent. The guard spoke quietly, but the response was anything but subtle.
“Tell him to get his sprite-fucking ass in here!” thundered a deep bass from inside.
The guards stepped aside and Sin-ak passed through the tent flaps. Richter got his first view of the goblin commander.
Most goblins were between four and five feet tall, so far as Richter had seen. Higher ranked “stations” were normally taller. Scouts were the smallest the chaos seed had seen; fighters were a few inches taller; and the Warriors he had killed earlier in the day were a touch over five feet tall. Analyze had shown him that they belonged to the grinder station.
The Witch Doctor whose memory he was witnessing now had been part of the rikker station. Though a touch shorter than the grinder Warriors, the Mage had been in charge. Analyze had shown him that the rikker station was known for having magical powers and seemed to be middle management in the goblin hierarchy. The goblin commander was something else entirely.