Watching each member of my party cover themselves in the squeezings from Goblin Slayer's viscera soaked rag made me all too thankful for Jurgen's natural odor, a first in the many decades that I have known him. Usually it was his innate ability to disrupt Warp sorcery and other daemonic activity that overshadowed his indispensable ability to perfectly follow any order I gave him to the letter and save both of our lives countless times in the process. Although I was most likely going to need to burn my current greatcoat as soon as I could get a new, clean smelling uniform tailored, sharing my aide's stench was still far better than letting chunks of goblin fat and other unmentionables dangle off of my shoulders. I only needed to look at High Elf Archer's tearful eyes as she tried her best not to move and smear any of her bloodstained clothes across her body or hair to realize that things could always be worse.
Once the others had finished thoroughly drenching themselves with goblin innards, or rather after we found ourselves unable to wring any more blood from the two corpses at our feet, we were presented with a new problem. The ruins we needed to explore were not only dark, far too dark for the average human to see, but High Elf Archer, our designated scout, was in no condition to be fulfilling her role in her current state. Rather, I could have let her take the lead and risk all of our safety in the hands of someone who was more concerned with not letting any more blood seep into areas that were not already covered in filth, but I valued my life more than I did the Eldar's pride.
"I think it might be best if I were to join High Elf Archer at the front while we explore the ruins." I suggested, hiding my own reasoning with some genuine sounding concern for the other's well-being. "There isn't much I can do in the center of our formation that Jurgen can't already handle on our own and, with an unknown factor likely inside the ruins ahead of us, I don't want us to take any chances and lose anyone to an ambush."
"I can do this on my own!" The Eldar declared as she raised an arm in protest and immediately regretted it as a chunk of bloody greenskin fell off of the back of her glove and onto her face. The xenos let out a girlish yelp as she slapped herself in the face to get it off which only served to reinforce my commitment to helping her look for traps if she was going to be this easily distracted before we came across our first living greenskin.
"We certainly have enough people for it, but why don't I do it instead?" The Squat countered. "I don't mean to be rude, but you humans don't exactly have the best night vision unlike the rest of us. There could be a lot that you might miss without some proper lighting."
"No, Commissar Cain will be fine without any light." Goblin Slayer spoke up.
I was oddly touched by the grimy adventurer's attempt to back me up as this was the closest he would ever come to praising anyone, not that the silver ranked adventurers accompanying us knew him enough to tell this was quite the compliment coming from him. Instead, Priestess chimed in to help explain what the soft spoken dope refused to mention.
"When we decide to go exploring a goblin nest without a torch in case the goblins spot our light, we usually let Cain lead us. His eyes are very sharp in the dark." She told the others.
"Really? Do you have some sort of device to help you out with that, sort of like that Trukk of yours turned a few days of walking into an afternoon drive?" Dwarf Shaman inquired, his curiosity thoroughly peaked.
"No, it's nothing as special as that." I said, deciding not to tell them about the luminator Jurgen kept attached to the barrel of his lasgun should we need an immediate source of light. "When you grow up in the underbelly of a hive city, it's one of the many things you just happen to pick up after a while, just like knowing how to navigate an underground maze."
"Hoh hoh, guess we really did make the right call to bring you along then." The Squat laughed, giving the Eldar beside him a playful look, "Looks like you're going to have to step it up a bit if you don't want him to steal your job from you, long ears."
High Elf Archer huffed at his comment, but didn't say anything else as she let me accompany her at the front of our party as we made our way into the ruins. I quickly proved just how right they were to let me assist the xenos when I noticed a few bricks that were seemingly out of place and advised the others to avoid stepping on them should they be the trigger for some hidden trap. Our archer didn't notice them, claiming that all ruins looked the same, while Dwarf Shaman was seemingly impressed with noticing something he claimed only a cave born dwarf would have noticed at first glance.
With my new position as a secondary scout thoroughly vindicated, we continued through the ruins without much incident. There were a few other traps that were in our way, some of them being picked out by High Elf Archer as if it were a contest to see who would notice them first, but nothing that was able to slow down our progress any. We didn't find any signs of whoever entered these ruins before us at first, but I was certain it was only a matter of time until we did find them.
The path we took through the ruins was fairly simple, as there was only one route we could take through them. Time had not been kind to whatever building these ruins had been at one point, as almost all of the hallways that would have sprang out from the main entryway had collapsed due to either disrepair or their new inhabitants poking around where they shouldn't have. Dwarf Shaman told us a little bit about the history of the forest these ruins were in, mostly some local legends about how this particular area had once been a stronghold back during the age of the gods or some other nonsensical rumors. Lizard Priest agreed that the ruins likely were from that time period however, as he apparently was able to make out a few of the faded murals on the walls that the rest of us hardly noticed were there. The giant abhuman claimed that one particular section that was mostly intact depicted the arrival of star worshiping warlords that had come from another plane of existence to learn the secret of immortality or some other impossible feat, but I wrote it off as a bunch of heretical nonsense. Knowing that I would likely be answering a lot of uncomfortable questions from the Inquisition once I returned to the Imperium, the less I knew about the heathen and potentially chaotic gods some of the people on this planet worshiped, the better.
I was fairly convinced that the Earth Mother Priestess worshiped had to be one of The Emperor's saints made manifest, so she would likely be safe from being declared a heretic. As for some of the others, as I have already said, I am far better off not knowing. I was thoroughly convinced that nothing good could come from associating with the gods the locals of this planet worshiped or their deranged followers at the time, and I would be proven right on several occasions in the distant future.
But I did not have the foresight to anticipate just how correct I was at the time, nor did I have much time to muse on what exactly race had built the ruins we were exploring at the time. Instead of focusing on why the black stone underneath our feet felt so familiar and unsettling, my attention was instead drawn to the all too recognizable war cries and angry jeers of greenskins.
Our party readied our weapons and took up a battle formation with our melee fighters up front and the rest of us safely in the back where we could pick off any stragglers or major threats at our leisure. Possessing a means of defending myself up close and at a distance, I was a natural selection for protecting the majority of our party should Lizard Priest of Goblin Slayer make any through, not that I believed any ordinary goblins could get past them without being cut into ribbons first. We waited and waited, but after a few seconds had passed, not a single greenskin charged out of the darkness to meet us. Instead, the furious howls we heard started to grow distant with every passing second.
There was only one answer as to where the greenskins were going, and I wasted no time in motioning to my aide to follow me as I fought against common sense and ran towards the goblins as fast as I could. I heard High Elf Archer try asking me what it was she thought I was doing, although not quite so eloquently and far more heavily curse laden than most would given my status as Commissar, but I didn't bother explaining myself as time was not on my side.
The only reason the goblin would have been making so much noise was if they had found an invader in their nest, and seeing as how none of them had rushed to meet us, that could only mean that the greenskins had found whoever had arrived before us. Ordinarily, I would have just waited and let the two problems sort themselves out and clean up whatever was left over, but I couldn't not allow that to happen when a potential ally who could help build up my reputation could possibly perish without my intervention. It went against all reason to run head first into danger on my own, but it was a decision that was proven to be the correct course of action to take as I heard the sounds clashing weapons as I drew closer to the goblins I was pursuing.
When I heard a woman's pained shout followed by the laughter of a goblin which was cut short by a sickening gurgle, I pulled my chainsword free from my scabbard and turned it onto its highest setting without bothering to slow down and consider exactly what I was getting myself into. As I rounded the final corner and found a lone figure surrounded by a horde of goblins with a trio of hobgoblins leading them, I wasn't thinking about my own safety. The only thing running through my mind was how I was glad it wasn't me they were looking at and relief that none of them had noticed me yet.
Not wanting to let that change before I could start thinning their numbers while I waited for my party to join me and noticing how the woman they had trapped in between them was no longer fighting back but trying to ward them off with a short sword caked in blood and fat, I let years of instinct take over and started hacking into the horde with lethal precision. I cut a bloody path halfway through the horde of goblin before the dying screams of their kin alerted the vile xenos to my presence, but by then it was already too late. Eight goblins had already been hacked to pieces beneath my feet and another three perished as they turned to face me, their startled face ripped to shreds by the gnashing teeth of my chainsword. Several of the goblins on the other end of the horde tried to flee, but were quickly killed by the hobgolins who swatted them into the walls with a single swing of the large clubs they were wielding.
The goblin's intended victim had used the opportunity I had made for her to cut down one of the goblins who was preparing to try and drive it's soiled dagger into my chest if I would have been so stupid as to allow it the chance to do so before breaking through the opening I had created for her and taking refuge behind me. I bifurcated two goblins that attempted to pull her back with ease, their frail bodies offering minimal resistance as my chainsword sawed through them as if they weren't even there. By this point, there were only the three hobs and five normal goblins remaining and I could tell from the savage look in their grox-like eyes that they would not let either me or the adventurer I had saved go without a fight.
The closest hobgoblin let out a mighty roar and brought its club overhead in an attempt to crush my skull underneath its weight, leaving me free to draw my laspistol and take off everything above the xenos' neck with a well aimed lasbolt. The greenskin toppled backwards and crushed two of its underlings underneath the weight of its corpse, killing one and crippling the other as it let out an agonized wait and tried to scramble out from underneath the dead hobgoblin. Its screams were silenced when one of the other hobgoblins trampled it as the other remaining hob tried to overpower me with numbers, two of the smaller goblins flanking them, likely hoping they could plant a rusty dagger in my back while I was distracted or take the adventurer I had protected for themselves.
Unable to move back and pick each of the goblins off from a distance like I would have preferred to without abandoning the woman treating me as a glorified meat shield at the moment, I held my ground and weathered the initial flurry of blows the hobgoblins rained down upon me. Unlike their headless compatriot, these two hobs did not try to break me with a single powerful stroke after seeing how well it had worked out for their fallen member. Instead these two actually worked together to try and find an opening in my guard, both of which were a first in my experience. I had yet to find a single hobgoblin capable of working together with another of its kind, intentionally that is, and found the duo were surprisingly capable fighters in their own right. I was hard pressed to handle the two without giving up ground and leaving the adventurer I had saved at their mercy, but after only a brief few exchanges it turned out I didn't have to.
A metal weapon is far more durable than one made of wood like the ones the hobs were wielding, and as chainswords were designed for the explicit purpose of tearing through the defenses that conventional armor and weapons provided their users, it wasn't long before the clubs the hobgoblins held were little more than a bunch of splinters after I defended against their combined assault. Without anything more than a fist full of wood between either of them, I was able to effortlessly take the two of them down, decapitating the first hobgoblin and disemboweling the other.
It was only as I pulled my blade free from the tangle of guts my chainsword pulled free from its last victim that the other two goblins made their own attempts at my life. The two of them leaped out at me with the weapons drawn as if they could possibly put up more of a challenge than their far larger relatives could. The goblin to my right was easy enough to pick off with a lasbolt to the chest that burned a hole through its spine, dispatching the xenos before it could realize it was dead, while the other quite literally jumped onto my chainsword.
I don't know what the goblin was thinking when it leapt straight at the whining teeth of my blade, but I could only assume it didn't know what a chainsword was capable of until it was already too late. I didn't have to do anything other than hold my weapon still as the momentum of the goblin allowed it to sink down onto my blade as the teeth of my chainsword until it reached the hilt of the motor. From there, gravity and the sharp edges of my weapon's teeth were all that I needed to let the idiotic goblin's corpse fall harmless to the ground as my weapon gouged a wound clean from its stomach and out of its shoulder without any effort on my part.
I was so stunned by the suicidal stupidity of my last kill that I never noticed one of the goblins I had identified early were missing until the loathsome creature jumped on my back and let out what I could only assume was a cry of vengeance. My blood ran cold as I tensed up preparing to feel a cold blade slide its way into my neck, but instead heard the adventurer behind me let out an unintelligible curse as she pulled the greenskin off of me. I turned around preparing to help her finish it off, but found that she had the greenskin handled on her own.
The dastardly little bugger had dropped its weapon when she had pulled it off me and onto the floor, and apparently none too pleased at having almost fallen victim to the goblins' lecherous grasps, decided to vent her frustrations by stomping on the squealing xenos until its skull was little more than a mushy paste clinging to her boots and the stone beneath her feet in equal measure. I could have intervened and put the vile little creature out of its misery at any moment, but I figured it would be far better to let the woman take the opportunity to exact her revenge on it as I studied her while her focus was elsewhere.
The adventurer's long, flowing blonde hair and pale skin made my heart skip a beat for a brief moment as I laid my eyes upon her. The sight of her ample chest and the amount of cleavage pouring from the opening in her sad excuse for armor had me wondering why she thought it was a good idea to leave herself so exposed when going on a quest and incredibly thankful for the view she provided. Despite brutalizing the goblin beneath her, I couldn't help but to admit that she possessed a striking beauty that I had only seen a scant few times before.
It was only as I noticed just how long her ears were that I was able to dispel any of the more unprofessional thoughts that rushed through my mind that the sight of her brought me. The woman I rescued was an elf, one that was far easier eyes than the one I was currently in a party with, but an elf nonetheless.
I did my best to hide the shudder I felt race down my sky when the adventurer, having satisfied her lust for vengeance once there was nothing left in her victim to crush underfoot, turned her attention to me.
"Well, I suppose I owe you a great deal for arriving when you did.'' She said, flipping a small strand of her golden, blood splattered hair out from in front of her face as she did, "If you would have shown up any later then I don't even want to think about what would have happened."
The Eldar grimaced, likely coming to the same conclusion that I did.
"Neither do I." I told her bluntly in an attempt to change subjects, "You're not hurt, are you?"
The xenos turned away from me for a moment, hiding her face behind her hand before answering me. "N-no, thanks to you, I think I will be more than okay." She said with a tone that suggested that I would have a lot to do with exactly how 'okay' she would be once we were alone and in a safer environment if it were up to her.
I adopted the straightest smile I could muster and did my best to channel that same blatant disregard for anything that I wanted no part of that came to Goblin Slayer naturally as I responded to her. "That's good to hear, because there is still work that needs to be done."
Before the Eldar I rescued could ask what I meant, I finally saw my party turn the same corner I had previously as they came to join us. The Eldar hurriedly grabbed her sword as she tried to face them, but I put a firm hand on her shoulder to restrain her in case she possessed any Eldar magic that the other xenos I was working with thankfully lacked. I felt her tense up a moment when I held her back and silently hoped that she wouldn't take my attempt to hold her back as anything else.
"I told you he went this way." I could hear High Elf Archer complain.
Apparently the others had lost track of me and went the wrong way. No wonder they weren't able to catch up with me until I had already finished slaying every last one of those greenskins. How fortunate for them.
"Sorry for leaving you behind, but as you all can clearly see," I walked past the Eldar woman at my side and gestured to her, "I had my reasons to go on without you."
I did my best to ignore the grumbling I heard coming from the armored adventurer who I had scolded time and time again for doing the same thing I had just done as the others noticed I wasn't alone. Jurgen at least had the decency not to scowl in her direction and hold that same disgruntled look he had when we entered the goblins' nest while the silver ranked trio seemed surprised at what I had found, High Elf Archer especially. Priestess had the most pronounced reaction, rushing forward as she asked if the Eldar I had rescued was okay. Considering how well our first adventure together had went and how more than half of our original number had suffered at the hands of the goblins as much as they had to their own idiocy, I wasn't surprised to see her doing everything she could to try and help. It was only as the Eldar adventurer sheepishly assured Priestess that she was okay, explicitly mentioning how I was responsible for no harm having come to her in a way that made me want to retch, Jurgen too judging by his disgusted look, that Priestess regained her usual sheepish attitude and tried to apologize for any harm she might have caused.
"No, no it's okay. Really, I appreciate you doing your job." The Eldar woman assured Priestess, having correctly assumed she was a healer first and a fighter second. "You don't have to apollo…gize…"
The Eldar stopped talking as she locked eyes with High Elf Archer who looked almost as surprised to see her hear as I had been to realize she was an elf. "Princess!?" She gasped in shock, quietly enough for me to hear her without the others noticing.
Judging by the quick gesture and furious look High Elf Archer shot towards her for her muted outburst, she likely wasn't supposed to have called our archer that. I made sure to file away that little tidbit of info for later, should I ever have found a need to bring it up later.
"So, you're the adventurer that arrived here before we did." Dwarf Shaman as Priestess, the Eldar adventurer and I rejoined the rest of our party. "Told you they were an elf."
"What's that supposed to mean?" The Eldar woman asked, placing the Squat underneath a murderous glare.
"Nothing bad, I can assure you." He placated. "We just happened to find some of your handiwork outside before we entered and I figured the only an elf could have done that so quietly or cleanly."
"Hmmph, it's nice to see not all you mudders are all the same and can recognize greatness when you see it." She huffed, sounding all too pleased with herself.
"You're right, and I'll be sure to tell you when I see it." Dwarf Shaman smirked as he took the Eldar down a peg.
"Say, I thought there weren't supposed to be any other adventurers in these ruins?" My aide said, holding his lasgun in a way that it would be all too easy to fire off a shot in the Eldar adventurer's direction.
"Oh right, you wouldn't know." She said.
"After having taken so long to find Goblin Slayer and his-" The Eldar swept her gaze across all of the humans in our party, grimacing as she caught sight of my aide and doing her best to fight the urge to gag as his stench finally reached, "-interesting associates, I was sent to scout out the area looking for whatever has been causing trouble in the forest these past few weeks."
"What? How did they send someone here so quickly? I just sent out a letter saying we finally found Goblin Slayer after searching for him for a month!" High Elf Archer exclaimed.
It was only after she took a moment to think about what she had said that the girl found her answer. "Oh, yeah. You'd be surprised how hard it was to find him. Goblin Slayer doesn't exactly stand out from a crowd if you don't know what you're looking for."
"What do you mean?" The Eldar adventurer said, looking confused as she looked in my direction, "Isn't he-"
"No, I am Commissar Cain." I said, pointing to the filthy adventurer standing beside Jurgen. "That is Goblin Slayer."
The Eldar adventurer looked at me to make sure I wasn't taking the frak with her and, after seeing High Elf Archer and the other abhumans give her an embarrassing smile, looked aghast. "Oh my gods…" She muttered.
That was also my first reaction upon getting to know what exactly lay behind that suit of unassuming armor and just how thick headed its owner was, but I felt obligated to say something in Goblin Slayer's defense nonetheless. "He might not look it, but he is without a doubt the best person to hire if you have a goblin problem." I said.
"That is what we are here to take care of, right?" I continued, trying to get our party back on track so we could stop wasting time that could be put to better use clearing out the goblins in these ruins before they caught us unaware, "Right now, I would rather purge the last of the greenskins in these ruins before taking the time to hold a pleasant conversation with you. I'm sure we can save the pleasantries for when we are no longer in danger of getting ambushed by another bunch of these sadistic buggers."
"Yes, it will only be a matter of time before other goblins find the bodies of their guards at the entrance or these ones." Goblin Slayer agreed as he turned his attention to the Eldar adventurer and bluntly asked, "Will you be joining us for our quest or not?"
"I wasn't planning on it at first." She admitted, her unnaturally beautiful face suddenly twisting into an ugly sinister scowl, "But I want to make these Mon-keigh pay for what they tried to do to me."
"That'll work." Goblin Slayer declared, putting an end to the discussion before it could even start.
From there we let High Elf Archer and the other Eldar, calling herself Half-Elf Scout, lead the way as I once again took up a position beside Jurgen where both of us would be able to take down the two xenos should they decide to try anything. I doubted it, but you could never be too careful with the Eldar. They were just as likely to sacrifice themselves to help you as they were to turn on you whenever it was convenient for them, and I wasn't going to trust them when it was my life on the line.
Author's Corner:
Ciaphas Cain, HERO OF THE IMPERIUM, has already managed to spit in the face of fate and save one poor soul from her fate, but can he do it again when he encounters the rulers of the ruins? Only time will tell.
…alright, now that that's out of the way, for those of you wondering how and why I saved the captured elf from the very first Goblin Slayer light novel, the reasoning has already been laid out previously. An Orkish Trukk can travel far faster than a motley group can on foot, hence why Cain and company were able to arrive when they did. As for why, as much as a coward claims to be, he knows it is better to fight a strong enemy when they are not prepared instead of retreating and waiting for when they are. Stumbling across a would-be captive in the process was a sheer coincidence.
Comments:
Song ONE: (The naming issue)
I'll be honest, if there is a way to work around this issue while writing a first person narrative in Goblin Slayer's universe without pulling names out of my ass, then I have no idea what it is. The novels and manga themselves all follow a third person view that closely follows Goblin Slayer and other characters, hence why the narration can get away with using titles exclusively. While I could have probably figured something out, I figured it would be far funnier and more in line with the tone of the story to have Cain completely baffled by an 'apparent taboo' or other nonsense that kept people from addressing each other by their real names and promptly ignore it while lampshading how ridiculous the whole thing would be.
Blin 12: Jurgen is a Psychic blank which means when A psyker is standing within a Blank's range they will find their powers weakened if not wholly nonfunctional. So I can conclude technically yes assuming magic would work in the same way as the warp.
"Guest": Jurgen can't actually nullify the magic in the GS world, can he?
Here is a brief, somewhat exaggerated, summary of what effects a blank has on psykers. Any obvious or high level psyker that gets into close contact with a Blank has a reaction somewhere between a violent seizure and enough terror to make suicide seem preferable to staying near the Blank for another minute, or mild discomfort and disgust for low level pyskers, in addition to any and all of said psyker's abilities failing to work in close proximity to the Blank.
All of the clues to answer this debate are already there. It's simply a matter of putting them all together to figure out the answer.
Cerberusx: What did Cain do with all the Orc weapons and stuff? Seems like a bad idea to leave laying around.
This is one of the small joys about writing a story from Cain's perspective. As the novels and Amberley show us, Cain does not particularly care about mentioning things that do not directly affect him.
What happened to the Ork corpses and equipment, you ask?
Since Cain doesn't bother to answer the question, it's almost certain that he was able to make cleaning that whole mess up someone else's problem while he was raiding Frontier Town Governor's wine cellar. That's kinda what he does with things that do not require his immediate attention as required by his reputation, are expected of him as a Commissar with a habit of leading from the front lines whenever possible, or need to be taken care of to ensure his continued survival. So long as there is no possibility of a problem coming back to haunt him in the long run, Cain will happily let someone else take care of his work for him and somehow spin it to make the unwitting sucker and public at large think it is a privilege to do so.
As always, thanks for reading and I hope to see you all in the future.