The heir to the Dark Forest throne had a reputation already. Rumour said he was snappish and irritable whenever something didn't go as he'd planned it. All applicants so far for the post of Royal Aide had been driven off during their trial week serving him. Several had even fled before their turn came.
Queen Griselda and the Pinecone King had given the Bog Prince full reign in the selection of his future aide or aides. Bog, picky but fair-minded, had opened the position to "anyone in the Forest who thinks they can do it. If you last a week, you will move on to the next stage of interviews."
Thang was sure anyone so open-minded couldn't be entirely terrifying.
Thang had been trained in secretarial work. Outside of the school system and the government and maybe some of the larger hospitals, there was not much call in the Forest for his skills. He lived in a small town by the North River with one school and one hospital, both of which were fully staffed, and where the town council was small enough that members took turns taking minutes at meetings.
Moving away was his best chance to find a job in his field. Even if he didn't become Royal Aide, there must be other secretarial jobs available in the capital.
No. That was quitter talk. Thang would impress the Bog Prince and he would get the job.
His trial week started tomorrow.
Stuff knew she was management material.
She had been in nearly every club and team in her school and organized events to within an inch of their lives. She had helped out in the school office, building accreditations from the staff that would boost her status as a candidate in any job she applied for. She had volunteered her services in setting up nearly every public event in her city since puberty.
And now a golden opportunity had fallen into her lap – a chance to manage the future king. To smooth out an infinitely complicated schedule and sort the priority level of every emergency in the country and see her kingdom flourish in direct response to her competence.
Stuff grinned at herself in the mirror, and then assumed a more serious face.
I am professional and respectable and the best candidate for this job.
Her trial week started tomorrow.
Bog towered over this week's potential aides. The taller one, the blue woman, came up to his knee. The toad-like man was barely as tall as her shoulder. Bog worried he might kick them by accident. It had happened before, when applicants tried to stick close to him and got underfoot.
They both greeted him with bows, making them even shorter. Bog was sitting in his study beside his desk rather than behind it, so they didn't disappear from sight entirely.
"Your Highness," said the man.
They were side-eyeing each other, clearly trying to figure out who the other was and why they were there.
Bog cleared his throat.
"Stuff. Thang." They straightened up and glanced at each other again, but quickly and attentively turned to him. "You've both applied to be my aide. You know that, of course." He cleared his throat again. "I've been interviewing candidates in pairs because a Royal Aide has to be able to work with other goblins. So you two will be having your trial week together."
At this point, some past candidates had started protesting and been automatically dismissed. Thang and Stuff both looked surprised, but neither one tried to argue with him.
Bog got some papers off his desk and handed a few sheets to each of them. "These are a Royal Aide's basic duties. Over the week, we'll be testing your skills in each."
Keep schedule organized.
Alright, Thang could do that.
Record important information during meetings.
He had been trained for that.
Sort paperwork.
That, too.
Screen visitors seeking a royal audience.
That point was a bit daunting. How was he supposed to judge who was important enough or had an urgent enough matter to go to His Highness directly? How was he supposed to rebuff someone who wouldn't accept a refusal?
Arrange release of information, such as royal decrees and press interviews.
This one sounded pretty simple.
Retrieve messages from the mushroom line.
Oh dear. Thang was not fluent in fungi.
Send messages and oversee tasks, acting as Royal Proxy.
That one made him nervous, too. Thang wanted to help the prince, and of course the prince couldn't be in two places at once, but Thang didn't have an authoritative personality that people would listen to in the prince's absence.
Stuff speed-read the list, saw nothing unexpected on it, and returned her attention to the Bog Prince. Beside her, the other candidate was shifting subtly from side to side, uneasy or eager or both.
I am stoic and calm and dependable and focused. I am the better choice.
The Bog Prince stood up and left the room. He didn't instruct them to stay or to follow. Stuff interpreted this as a test of initiative and hustled after him, staying close but just to the side so his long legs wouldn't catch her in the gut. Her rival candidate, Thang, froze for a moment and then followed her lead.
That could be useful. Maybe Stuff could sabotage Thang to increase her own chances of getting the job.
Or maybe the prince was looking for such behaviour and it would automatically disqualify her. He'd said his aide would need to work with other goblins. There were other staff members in the castle and other levels of government under the royal family. Stuff's networking skill would be what was valuable here.
This wasn't to say she would be above delegating a riskier task to Thang, if she could get him to go for it.
Bog started out by giving Stuff and Thang a quick tour of the castle and introducing them to any servants they came across. It would be a good test of their memories when he sent them on practise errands later.
He became distracted by a conversation with Mavis, the recently appointed Minister of Education. She was kind and clever and beautiful and Bog never missed an opportunity to talk with her.
"Are these your latest aide candidates?" she asked after they exchanged basic pleasantries.
Bog tore his eyes away from her and realized Thang was taking notes of their conversation on the back of his list of duties.
"Ah, yes. Yes, they are."
He introduced them and the conversation petered out quickly after that. Mavis had her own duties to attend to.
"Try not to scare these ones off on their first night, Your Highness," she suggested playfully.
Bog waved her off, a silly little smile on his face.
He stood there for a moment more, Thang scribbling industriously in the background, until Stuff asked, "Where to next, Bog Prince?"
"Right! Right. Downstairs."
Bog Prince's conversation with Education Minister Mavis didn't seem like it had covered any ground that would actually influence kingdom policies, but Thang took notes anyway, hoping to impress the prince with his diligence and initiative.
It was good that the future king and Minister of Education were on positive terms. The Pinecone King had expanded the Dark Forest school system considerably when he took the throne, and it looked like the prince was following his father's lead.
The castle itself was not as much of a maze as Thang had feared. Some of the passages twisted in odd ways, but for the most part the floors were set up with a large central room on each level, and smaller rooms and halls and staircases radiating out from there.
If you could find the centre of the tree, you could find any other place in the castle eventually.
Stuff tried not to show how overwhelmed she felt when Bog Prince led them into the throne room and introduced them to his parents – their sovereigns.
Of course the prince's aides would have to interact with the King and Queen on occasion. It would be good practice for when the Bog Prince was the Bog King and Stuff was reporting directly to the highest authority in the forest.
But that didn't mean she felt ready to be presented to the Pinecone King and Queen Griselda on her very first night in the castle!
Breathe.
The Queen was taller than Stuff, but not to the same degree as her husband and son. She had brown button eyes and a wide smile. Her broken horns were mostly hidden by her reddish hair. Rumour had it Queen Griselda had been attacked by an owl and snapped her horns either while fighting it or on impact with the forest floor after she made it drop her.
The King was enormous, with shoulder spurs and wings that Bog had inherited. The Pinecone King had vestigial elytra that covered the root of each wing. He was a richer shade of brown than his ashen heir, with stubbier limbs despite being taller, and shockingly large blue eyes, only a few generations removed from the compound eyes of an insectoid ancestor.
The audience was brief. Stuff and Thang both lived through it without making any unforgivable gaffes.
Bog finished the tour with the dungeons, not lingering in the cavernous room with the creaky hanging cages, and then led the candidates back up to his study. They both looked shaken, though Stuff was hiding it better; Thang's barbels had been quivering since the throne room.
"If you last the week, you'll be provided permanent rooms in the castle as part of your salary. For now, you each get one of the spare rooms on the upper level."
He sniffed the air.
"It's nearly dawn. Go and get some sleep and report back here at sunset tomorrow."
They scurried out. Well, nothing disastrous had struck that night, for once. Maybe one of them would make it a full three nights before some crisis appeared and scared them off or Bog lost his temper and dismissed them.
He didn't count on Stuff or Thang lasting a week, though. No one else had so far.
It was on his second night working for the prince that Thang made his first big mistake.
In his defence, with how the mushrooms whispered it, "A caravan has gone off the road into a ditch" sounded a lot like "A bear's pan of scones for toad was switched."
None of the merchants in the caravan had been hurt and only a few goods were damaged. They had been transporting cloth and furniture between towns and were experienced in packing things for treacherous road conditions.
The message had been to inform the castle that deliveries to the capital region might be delayed for a few nights while everything was set back upright, and a request that a construction crew be sent to shore up the edge of the road so this wouldn't happen to the next travellers.
Bog Prince yelled at Thang for "wasting my time with nonsense" but did not officially dismiss him, so Thang decided to act as though he were still in the running as a potential Royal Aide rather than packing his things and fleeing the castle in shame.
Stuff was reluctantly impressed with Thang's guts. She thought the Bog Prince might be, too, since he didn't dismiss the man for bungling a message and then acting like nothing was wrong once the yelling was over.
Stuff made it nearly to the second morning before making an error of her own. Bog Prince sent her to his office to grab a report on recent owl activity in the forest, and she had fetched him a copy that was two months out of date.
It was the first one she found, and Stuff frankly expected government paperwork to be a little behind on current events. Gathering data and consolidating it into a report took time.
Except it turned out that the castle received weekly notices about any observed activity by predatory animals. Keeping an eye on such things was considered a priority for public safety. When he saw the date on the report she'd brought, Bog Prince snapped these facts at her and sent her back to get the right papers.
She noticed something, in the way he curtly nodded to her when she presented him with the second, correct report.
The Bog Prince was easily irritated, just as rumour said, but his temper blew itself out quickly. If one quickly acted to fix a mistake, he didn't exactly forgive that a mistake had been made, but he moved on with the task at hand instead of lingering over punishment.
Night three, Thang got lost twice and mixed up another message. The prince yelled at him again, but still didn't dismiss him.
He also acknowledged Thang had done a good job sorting his files, which was nice. They had been a bit of a mess when the prince unleashed Thang on the cabinets of paperwork. Thang had needed to completely empty and resort several folders and drawers. Papers were now sorted alphabetically by subject and then by date. Thang had even created a flowchart diagram for the prince to keep at his desk explaining where everything was.
Several file cabinets remained locked and untouched. They contained classified documents that Thang wouldn't see unless – until – he was officially the Bog Prince's aide.
Thang's rival candidate seemed much more skilled than he was at dealing with other goblins and mushrooms. Stuff had set up the prince's schedule of meetings by relevance of topic, so the Bog Prince could more fluidly transition between discussions, and by location, to most efficiently travel to any meeting taking place outside His Highness' study.
Making it to a fourth night, Stuff learned, was actually a record. She and Thang were the longest-lasting of Bog Prince's would-be aides.
She did not relax. She still had three nights to go before she qualified for the next level of interviews, whatever that might be.
There weren't as many meetings to organize that night. Instead the prince took them out to the dragonfly stables to test their riding skills.
He could fly, after all, and needed them to be able to keep up.
Stuff had never actually ridden a dragonfly before. Oh, like many young goblins, she had coveted one of her very own, but the closest she'd come was catching mayflies with her sisters. A small goblin could seize a mayfly's two-pronged tail, one filament in each hand, and be lifted off the ground for a moment by the startled insect.
Riding a dragonfly was a very different experience. She clung tight to the animal and mostly let it fly where it wanted.
Fortunately for her, the dragonflies in the royal stable were well-trained and docile and fond of the prince, and her steed followed her potential employer faithfully.
Stuff inwardly vowed to get proper riding lessons as soon as she could.
Thang was not entirely sure whether Stuff was his friend or out to get him.
It was five nights into their trial week, and Stuff had started to make suggestions of things Thang could do for the Bog Prince. On the surface this was very generous, and Stuff was always very logical when asked why Thang should be the one to do something, but the tasks also seemed to get Thang yelled at a lot.
For example, Thang was now more-or-less in charge of getting mushroom messages to the prince, allegedly to improve his understanding of fungi, but he kept getting the messages wrong.
Or when the prince needed to be interrupted in the middle of a meeting or sparring practice or anything but paperwork, which he was always relieved to set aside, Thang would be the one to do it because his voice carried better than Stuff's, but the prince would get snappish.
On the other hand, Bog Prince had still not dismissed Thang from the extended interview, so maybe His Highness really did appreciate it, just like Stuff said.
Stuff was exhausted and stressed and having the time of her life. She had been arguing with goblin after goblin wanting to see the prince "IMMEDIATELY" for one thing after another, very little of it truly time sensitive, and there was a certain thrill in making them set up a meeting and wait or outright dismissing them and redirecting them to the official to whom they should actually be taking their concerns.
The prince hadn't let them in to his study when they reported to him at the start of their sixth night. He'd sternly informed them he was not to be disturbed by anyone and left his potential aides to the task of guarding the door.
Stuff's thrill disappeared when the Queen arrived. She and Thang bowed and exchanged nervous glances, knowing what was coming and hoping it wouldn't.
"Pardon, Your Majesty," she said, shuffling so she was in the way when Queen Griselda reached for the door handle. "The Bog Prince said he wasn't to be disturbed."
"I'm his mother, I'm not disturbing him."
"He said not to let anyone in."
"Well you'll have to make an exception for me."
This was clearly a test – Stuff suddenly wouldn't be surprised if all the other goblins clamouring for the prince's attention had been a test – but she wasn't sure if the right answer was to let the Queen in or keep her out.
"We could take a message to pass on to him?" Thang offered.
"I want to talk to my son now."
How could they redirect her? They had orders from the Bog Prince, but Queen Griselda was one of the two goblins in the Dark Forest who outranked him, but the job Stuff and Thang were trying for was to serve the prince directly …
"N-no," Stuff pressed her back to the door, half-expecting the Queen to summon the guards and have Stuff thrown from the castle for her defiance.
The Queen chuckled. "Try to look a little fiercer about it."
And then, she walked away.
Stuff sagged with relief. She was right. It had been a test.
She waited with growing dread for the King to come and test them as well. That didn't end up happening.
Bog kept Stuff and Thang awake straight through to sunrise on their seventh night.
"You passed. You two are the first to pass. I still have a few more goblins to test, but if none of them make it through a week, you're hired."
"… Both of us, Your Highness?" said Stuff.
"Yes. I thought having two aides would be useful if one needed a sick day, or if I had to delegate a task but still needed someone with me at the same time."
"Why didn't you tell us?" Thang tilted his head to the side.
"That was my mother's idea. To see if candidates would willingly work together or not, she said."
"What should we do while you're interviewing other candidates?" Stuff asked.
"The crown will pay for your lodgings at a hotel in the capital for the next three weeks – less if the other applicants leave early – so you won't be in the castle during their trials. You'll be summoned back by messenger once that's over. You can still sleep in the castle today," he added.
Bog wasn't going to kick them out at the crack of dawn to find their way into town while all the morning birds were out hunting for breakfast.
None of the other applicants stayed past Bog scolding them for their first mistake. Thang and Stuff were back in the castle in three nights.
(Semi-Relevant Notes: For the purposes of this story, most goblins are nocturnal, though there are a few diurnal ones, just like how humans are primarily diurnal with a few nocturnal exceptions.
The Pinecone King is a headcanon of mine. Neither Bog's father's name nor the Dark Forest's laws of succession were mentioned in canon, but fandom speculation is that he inherited the throne from his father, or from his mother Griselda, or that the throne is passed down by combat and Bog killed the previous ruler.
Mavis, the Minister of Education, is Bog's first love, on whom he tried to use a love potion shortly after taking the throne. Again, her name and job and how she and Bog knew each other are pure speculation on my part; all we have to go on from canon is her appearance and that both Bog and Sugar Plum describe her as 'sweet'.
Bog's anger towards others burns out more quickly than his anger with himself, which is why he was still bitter about That Fateful Day at the start of the movie. His anger towards Sugar Plum is an extension of being angry with himself for thinking love potion was a good idea.)