Adamant Blood

The walls were too big, the magics on them too dense, and the meatsacks behind the walls too strong.

It irked.

That was the sum total of Grax's opinion on the 'human' settlement; that was as much as he knew about the meatsacks and their true defenses. Not a single infiltrator had made it into the city, and only Old Slave had gotten within touching distance of the walls, and only because Grax had forced him to go, lest he be cast out for cowardice. Grax certainly wasn't going to go. It was death to approach the wall.

And so, he stood surrounded by his men, far away from the lights and the massive wall, cloaked in the dark. This was close enough.

Grax scowled at everything.

Old Slave should have died when he reached that wall, but of course, he had not died at all. He had survived, and made it back to camp. Grax wanted him dead, but that was not happening.

Old Slave was anything but a coward. He was smart. He was planning on killing Grax, for sure, but for now, he taught the brothers a lot. Words, mostly. Ideas, too. Old Slave had been able to 'ascertain' the 'myriad' of defenses of the 'settlement' before he had to 'disengage' from the... meat… Hmm. Had to be a better word than 'meat' for meat.

"Tell me another word for meat, Old Slave," Grax said, to the old one.

Old Slave said, "Meat as in foodstuffs as in edibles? Or meat as in wombs, stocks? I am fond of 'lacuna' for breeding meat. To sink your teeth into a squealing lacuna, to taint it all and make it more of yourself, is what I imagine true power feels like, but all the time."

Grax hummed, his fangs dripping a little in his mouth, as he thought of the term 'lacuna'.

… Maybe that would work, but maybe not.

Old Slave knew entirely too much, and Grax was rather sure that Old Slave was truly old, truly dangerous, and yet he was here, acting 'servile', so that he could control Grax. To what end, Grax wasn't sure. Perhaps he was an 'infiltrator' from the goblin lords in the mountains to the far east. Old Slave had called them something specific once or twice, but Grax didn't care.

Old Slave was too smart.

Grax could have gone for the mountains, to claim fresh heritage and the breeding slaves of his progenitor, kept locked up and slaving away at the 'estate', whatever that was, but that would be walking into a land filled with Old Slaves.

Grax had decided to stay away from the trappings of the Old Goblins. The Elders. Whatever they were called. The Old Goblins would surely kill him just as he had done to his brothers, before his brothers could kill him.

Grax understood more than Old Slave thought he understood.

Grax needed to return to the mountains with an army, or not at all.

He had something of an army already.

Grax's goblins lay in the deep grasses all around, hiding from the sensors of the human settlement, layered in cold mud and obscuring blankets. Now that had been a lesson to learn. The humans could see heat. Metal. All sorts of things. Illusions of light were easily seen, if one didn't also use mud and cold things. Grax could see heat, too, though. He could see a lot.

The lessons he gained fighting the humans here would prove valuable back home, and everywhere else he went.

Goblins never went up against the main human cities, but a settlement? This outcropping in the middle of green lands? Where they sent hunters out all the time to gather and grab the land's bounty?

This was a valuable target.

Grax stood tall in the deep grass, layered over with shadows and mud, only his eyes truly visible to the human settlement beyond. It was so bright. So shining. Grax wanted to devour it all.

Old Slave was in the grasses far underfoot, deep under mud and a weave of shrubbery. Grax wouldn't have known the old spawn was there if not for certain tricks that Old Slave used to mark himself. Old Slave had planted a bright yellow flower onto the top of his weave, though the flower was dull right now. Old Slave called it a bloodflower, and when the roots were exposed to blood, the flower glowed brightly. It was a potent alchemical thing, used as a mash with an assortment of other plants for healing, so it was valuable in many ways.

Old Slave used it as a lure, cutting his palm and grasping the roots under the mat when he knew a target was coming his way. Then the flower would light, and the humans would see it and go for it.

Grax was learning how to do a similar trick with light and shadow itself, which was by far easier than keeping that damned flower alive. But Old Slave always said that solid tricks were better than magic tricks, and according to several tests Grax had made with disposable brothers, Old Slave had been right.

So Grax wasn't going to kill him yet… if he even could. Grax wasn't so sure…

Grax turned to the left, and looked down.

Old Slave was looking through the grass of his hiding mat, eyes locked with Grax's.

For a moment, Grax felt pinned in place. It was a horrible, no-good, bad feeling. The one he got when the claws came too close, when he almost got killed by the black claws back at the camp.

And then Old Slave blinked, and he whispered, "We getting closer, Master?"

"… No."

Grax wasn't sure of his place in the world right now, but he knew that made his teeth leak poison, filling his mouth with the desire to bite. Should he kill Old Slave now? He could do it. Maybe.

Grax asked Old Slave, "What would happen if we attacked now?"

"We would die. If we took a single human, we would die. If we are not fully prepared for a counter, we will die. We must prepare more. We must do more."

Grax scoffed at Old Slave's cowardice. "They would not miss one human. We will take the next one that comes out."

Old Slave added, "The first time we take a human, they will come for us. We must be sure of who we take."

Grax spat toxin onto the ground. It burbled on the grass next to Old Slave's pile of grasses, and Old Slave saw the threat as it was. Grax disdained, "They would truly miss a few hatchlings?"

"They would respond with absolute death," Old Slave said, without fear, though his eyes did glance at the burning grass next to him. And then he looked back up at his Grax, and his eyes held that weight again. "They are not like you and I. When they die, they are gone forever. When we die in service to the Bite, we live again. If we were near an old settlement, one that had been aged out of its warring expansion period, we could take and not worry about responses. But this is a new settlement. They are at war with the world, and we are of the world. If we stand tall, they cut us down."

Grax frowned. "This place cannot be that new. Look at those walls! They are big. They are fully enchanted, as you already saw. Or are you lying to me, Old Slave?"

"The inside is grasslands and every day a new structure goes up. They have special magics, Master. Special, special magics. If you claim the special one, you will be honored above all others! You would be Elder." Old Slave's voice turned softer, "If you did the Thresher, you would be there already."

Grax scowled, asking, "They would truly miss one meatbag?"

"They would, Master. We are lucky the grabber groups failed to grab anyone, and that they all died before they could come back to us."

Grax was pretty sure that Old Slave had been a traitor, briefly, for some of those grabber groups. He had been the only survivor and all the humans had gotten away, without injury. It was suspicious. Too suspicious.

… But Grax couldn't kill Old Slave yet.

Grax stared at the city in the distance.

His fangs dripped with eagerness, but…

Grax needed more goblins before he attacked the city for their meat.

… Grax decided he liked the simple word 'meat', the best. Simple was good.

No war tonight, though. The humans were too prepared.

Grax asked Old Slave, "What is a word for what a traitor does to his brothers, to prevent the brothers from rising to power?"

Old Slave was quiet, and then he said, " 'Sabotage' is a good word for the action itself. 'Treason' is a different sort of word that means the same, but less physical. More information-based treachery."

Grax left it at that.

Grax spoke to his people, hidden everywhere across the hill, "Retreat."

Grax turned to gloom and flowed away on the wind, through the dark, through the grasses, parting them as he went, not caring that the humans probably saw. Maybe, if Grax provided a target, the humans would make themselves vulnerable on their own, and this time Old Slave wouldn't be able to 'sabotage' the grabber groups.

A thousand mounds of grass and mud gradually followed Grax's departure, like fish swimming in a dark river of grass.

- -

A pair of men watched on the monitors as the horde of something departed.

"I'm telling you it has to be those goblins."

"If it's the goblins then they got too smart too fast, and they moved together too well, so it's probably not them. I bet it's another hive mind monster."

A scoff. "I'm going to report it as goblins."

"Potential goblins. Maybe hive mind goblins. Those guys are always bastards."

"We can make conflicting reports. You do yours and I'll do mine—"

A red light flickered on in the middle of the room, followed by a chime and then four different monitors flickered. The kaiju alert went on, and right now the entire city was flickering to full life, lights on in every building. Lights on everywhere. The guys in central command were already on the move, corroborating evidence and checking the big scanners, as the holodisplay in the center of command bloomed to life.

It was a humanoid gator with four arms and a centaur-like spider-body that opened up along its front, leading to a maw filled with ringed teeth that spanned most of its lower body. Its head was one giant eyeball that floated above the body, disconnected, spinning in every direction to glance and stare, while the body moved below it like a scrabbling, hungry thing. It was already devouring the very ground underneath itself, and then it lifted up and plunged back down, eating more ground with every grasping spider claw/leg/hand.

It was only about 50-ish meters tall, though, so a small kaiju.

The command center flicked into high gear and one of the guys flicked a switch, talking about 'making the call' even as he flicked the switch. There were no objections. The kaiju was barely taller than the wall of the settlement itself, so it qualified for the big alarm. Better safe than sorry, anyway. Someone was probably going to complain about the alarm being signaled, but whatever.

"What is it?" Sam Ranger asked, a screen turning on, showing Sam in his room. He was wearing boxers, and that was it, but he was putting on his suit.

Other cameras popped on in other places, showing the other leaders of the Anti-Kaiju Team. Some were at the bar, drinking. Others were at the docks. All of them were already moving due to the alarm.

The guy in central spoke to them all, "Kaiju confirmed. 55 meter man-spider centaur-like kaiju malformation coming out of the waters of the Shine, headed up the Bubble River to the settlement. ETA 3 minutes. AIs saying it's a cat 4. Small, but deceptively powerful. It's eating everything as it walks, so a devouring-type."

Cat 4 wasn't a huge deal. All kaiju were a big deal, yes, but this one wasn't the biggest of problems at all.

Sam's voice was a calm thing as he said, "Heard. I'm heading out. Get Lee to pick me—"

Lights bloomed on the camera feeds as a massive rainbow scattered the heavens and pounded down into the baby kaiju, ripping it apart with twisting light and then grinding the entire thing to meat.

Aurora was on the job, it seemed.

The guys in the command center just watched.

Sam watched from the window of his apartment as the aurora night sky seemed to come down to Daihoon and crush the kaiju and the nearest kilometer to paste. The world broke at the touch of auroras.

And then the light show stopped.

The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

And then the lightshow pounded the ground a second time, twisting and breaking and gathering the remains of the monster into a single pulped mass away from the water. A minute later, and the monster was very, very dead.

Aurora's voice, but no image, came over the coms, "Send Team Pyro to the remains."

Sam sounded professionally exhausted as he stared at his own monitors, in his room, "Ma'am. We could have… done that."

"I don't like devouring types and I'm not letting the young ones do a night raid when there are potential goblins or a hive mind monster beyond the eastern walls."

Aurora's voice went away, and the line clicked. She was done.

With a much more awake voice, Sam said, "Prep Team Pyro, Command. I'll take them out myself."

"Aye aye, sir!"

Behind Sam, his kids quietly asked what was wrong, and Sam told them that nothing was wrong. They were cleaning up a kaiju, though, and they could go back to bed. Daddy would be back home in an hour.

The guys in the command center were already working, sending out messages and orders to those on standby. Soon, they were back to making small talk, because nothing was attacking them right now and every scanner they had was saying the kaiju was very dead.

"I think it was goblins," said one guy.

The other guy said, "And I still think it was a hive mind monster."

Soon, the remains of the kaiju were on fire, burning away into dust to flow away on the wind.

- -

Grax stared at the sky, at the place where the world had touched down and then gone back up. His teeth were dry as dust, his heart pounding harder than ever before.

"And that," Old Slave said, "Is why we take this cautious."

They were not yet back to camp.

Eventually, they got moving again.

When they got closer to home, Grax's teeth were leaking again.

Fear was replaced with awe, and now, with desire.

Grax did not know who to bite, to transform and birth the new ones, but he knew that before he died he would die trying to bite whatever human did that bright light magic. Grax flickered the light around him, causing sputtered blue and brown and then bad yellow light to appear.

Bah!

He promised himself that his next life would be born from much brighter light.

- -

"There's a potential goblin infestation east of the city, or it could be a hive monster," Barba Sacredcut said, "I tend to err on the side of caution, though, so I'm going to act as though it's hive mind goblins. Be aware of the issue… Please be aware… Listen to me, please?"

The team wasn't listening to her.

It was noon, sun in the sky, and Barba and the team-she-was-escorting-today were doing final checks at the eastern exit to the settlement.

It was her and some True Brawny team leader, with his three supporters. The True Brawny had never been hurt in his life, but not for lack of monsters. The Marksman who could kill any monster she saw. The Spotter could see every monster before it got there. And they were all normal warriors. Nothing really special about them.

The only person who was worth a damn was Onoho, the 'healer'.

Onoho was the only one listening to her.

Onoho could wipe the wounds off of a person as though he were wiping jam off toast. It was disgusting to watch, but it was highly effective. He could even repair armor or anything non-magical, according to the documents Barba got for the hunt.

Onoho's Skill was called 'Wipe Away', and it was one of the best non-divine healing-capable Skills Barba had ever seen. Onoho was a bit weird, being an islander, but he was going to go far. The Armsmaster, Tulo Khava, was an islander, too. Those people respected strange lands and stranger monsters. He was a survivor, and he was rather attractive with that dark skin and black hair.

Onoho's team would be dead within the year. Onoho would survive, Barba was sure, but the others?

Barba didn't know how to make the others listen.

The 'team leader True Brawny' lightly touched his gunner woman's ass, as he whispered into her ear, and she giggled at him. The Spotter was furious with both of them because of some relationship drama that Barba didn't want to think about too deeply. Jealous, probably.

Barba coughed, trying to get their attention.

They did not pay attention.

Onoho looked at his teammates and frowned a little. He told Barba, "We have fought together a lot. We know goblins and monsters. Please continue."

Barba tried to continue, "It's a half hour run to the dragonoid fields, and when we get there we do not kill them. We are going to harvest them for parts, and then Onoho is going to heal them, and we walk away…" Barba paused. The True Brawny was thumbing his girl's waistband and she was pushing into his fingers, and Barba continued, but different, "If you do not listen to me, then I am walking home right now."

The guy straightened up and looked right at Barba, smoothly saying, "We got the explanation already, Barba. Thank you. I heard you were mostly quiet, not that you were talkative all the time."

The Marksman put her hand on her rifle strap, saying, "We're good to go, Barba. I got my tranq rounds and I know how to use them and we've done this before."

Onoho smiled, trying to play mediator, saying, "We went out with Ja'Nael four days ago. We know the lands."

… Barba supposed that was true, and yet...

Barba looked at all of them once more.

… And then she turned and walked down the stairs of the eastern gate, down into the monster lands outside of the walls.

The team followed.

Two hours later, the settlement AIs tagged Barba long before she made it back. She was running. It was just her and the now-legless Onoho, who wrapped his arms around Barba's neck, holding on for life, with a failing grip. Barba wasn't doing too hot either. Her left arm was missing.

Tears ran down her face as the rescue team grabbed her before she got close, holding her in quarantine by the wall, asking her questions, even as they healed her. She spoke of many things that all happened at once. Gradually, the story came out. Three people were dead. Barba was talking about how it was all her fault, and how she should have talked to them more, but they said they knew what they were doing and Ja'Nael's report said the same. But the goblins had gotten the team.

Barba had managed to delimb both herself and Onoho before the goblin infection could get them, too.

"The dragonoid was sleeping and I was harvesting the spines and then the Spotter girl…" Barba breathed, wiping away tears with her remaining hand. "She saw a sanguinepuff growing out of the dragonoid's kill pile, and I told her not to go for it, but she did anyway. And then a goblin was there, and then there were thirty, fifty, I don't know. We fought. We killed tens of them, but… there was an invisible or something corruption goblin in the middle of the fight and none of us realized what was happening until… Until we lost the first one. The big guy… cut… I'm not sure how… There was a retreat. We lived. They did not… It's my fault. I should have… I don't know what I should have done. There were no goblins, and then there were goblins everywhere."

- -

Aurora read the incident report, compiled not 20 minutes after Barba Sacredcut got back to the settlement, and the world felt gloomy.

Denaka Pule, Spotter, aged 21. Denaka graduated with high honors at Crytalis Hunter Academy, not even a year ago.

Vikas Woton, True Brawny, aged 21. He had come to the settlement with Denaka, and with three different letters of recommendation from the Grand Guard. He was supposed to make a life here.

Akailah Hadj, Marksman, aged 20. A late addition to the team of Vikas, Denaka, and Onoho, Akailah was in Mage Society and learning how to craft her own weaponry.

Too young.

Onoho survived, and Barba did, too, which was a miracle, really.

They didn't have a real healer… And maybe the goblins were a big problem, too. But the largest failing of the team was more basic than the enemies they encountered.

The whole team would have survived if Onoho had been a real healer. Obviously, 'Wipe Away' wasn't good enough. Aurora had let him coast through an invitation into the settlement program as a healer because Wipe Away was unique enough and good enough that Onoho could eventually become a true power, in a niche sort of way. But apparently not as a Healer, which is what he wanted to be. The kid's desires far outpaced his capability, and Aurora should have seen that.

So that was on Aurora.

Aurora set down the incident report.

Kandon was leaning against the wall, waiting for her to finish.

"Our first deaths," Aurora said.

"I always figured it would be some aberration," Kandon said, stepping away from the wall. "But goblins? I suppose goblins are an always-problem so I shouldn't be that surprised, but I still am."

"I'm surprised, too."

And the prognosticators of the city hadn't seen this issue at all… Well. None of them were perfect prognosticators, anyway, so…

Aurora should simply annihilate the problem in the east.

It would take ten minutes.

But she couldn't save her soldiers all the time; that was impossible. They were soldiers, and she had to believe they could triumph in the face of danger. That's why people came on settlement projects, after all. But these three… Aurora glanced at the incident report, reading the names of the kids once again. These three perished chasing that ideal.

Aurora glanced at the clock, then asked, "The reconnaissance team found nothing at the canyons? It's been an hour."

"The dragonoids were all active and moving around, and we found no signs that there were any goblins at all, but Barba Sacredcut and Onoho were both adamant that there were goblins. It might be a team from Goblinhome."

Ahh… That terrible word. That terrible place.

If it would have been possible to destroy Goblinhome, for real, then the powers of Aluatha would have done that already. But the Elder Goblins just hid underground and on Earth whenever Aluatha came around. That was their normal response to being threatened, anyway. A few times in history enough people had gotten together to truly threaten Goblinhome, to wipe it off the map, and then Goblinhome had responded how they always imagined Goblinhome would respond to an existential threat.

They had contracted with demons to make kaiju.

So large scale attacks on Goblinhome were out of the question.

The worst thing that the goblins could do in reprisal was sneak into the cities of the Empire and create kaiju inside cities.

So the Empire was in a longstanding cold war with Goblinhome.

This event here was probably not Goblinhome, but even if it was, Aurora was fully within the understanding that the Empire had with Goblinhome to eradicate the goblins around their territory.

But she would try to keep some power in reserve, in case it was needed elsewhere, for a potential real attack from Goblinhome. The settlement was always going to eventually draw the sights of those Elder Goblins, since the settlement was less than 500 kilometers from the Greendeath Mountains.

Aurora made a decision, "This is still a small threat, and it will be handled at the common soldier level. To that end: Cancel all harvesting to the east and set up a goblin extermination schedule. You know what to do. Teams are only allowed to leave the settlement if they have the capability to heal the goblin infection, and the normal potions and trinkets don't count." She added, "If these goblins are a team from Goblinhome then the Empire gets involved. Don't spread around the Goblinhome scenario. Treat it as a normal infestation."

Kandon nodded. "Understood."