It was ever so boring sitting in his office every single day, staring at the same stone walls that were decorated with the same long dried blood that lay on each of their blades. He had stared at these walls for as long as he could remember, much longer than the witches and wizards had ever cared to. They believed themselves to be above his people, the goblins.
While there had been no wars in the past several centuries. They were growing weak, skills and practice being reduced to near non-existent. They were growing as stagnant as the wizardkind they despised so much. The younger generations barely knew how to hold their axes, while the older ones were not too much better than them. The fury and determination that they had often witnessed on the battlefield had faded into a greed for the gold they now guarded so zealously. The desire for gold had overcome their desire for blood, even though their grins still seemed to have the same effect on the wizards.
He still remembered how it had been when he was younger, watching his father come home every day with a satisfied expression on his face and blood on his blade while his mother would gain a proud glint to her eye at the sight of him. Their training had been rigorous, and had been to help them survive the constant wars their clans managed to find themselves in. They had returned to their various homes bathed in sweat, but satisfied in a way that could never be replaced with the deals of gold that they made today.
Their fierce demeanours despite their height had all since faded with the gradual change into clothing that the wizards saw as acceptable, simply so they could fit in, so they could fill the favour the wizards had asked of them not too long ago, and yet should it not be the other way around? The wizards had asked them to take charge of their vaults and safeguard their gold because of the fierceness of the goblins and the fact that no lies managed to pass through them, yet the wizards continued to sneer down on them, using their height as weapons.
All that remained of their fierceness now was the memory of it, and the history of their bloody wars. At this moment, he doubted the goblins at Gringotts would be able to defeat a troll if they were given the sharpest blade goblins could forge. He knew his father would have been extremely disappointed if he ever saw how badly the goblins had diminished. His father had once told him how he had defeated a troll half-asleep with nothing more than one of the pans my mother had in the kitchen. I had never doubted him with the look that had glinted within his eyes at his words.
The goblins needed war. They needed the hot rush of blood within their bodies as they fought for their lives. They needed the glint of defiance that was necessary to defy death and never give up. They needed life more than they had now. They needed the strength and courage that came with facing the choice of returning to the battlefield every day, and continuing to fight as people around them fell, but they wouldn't.
The goblins had fallen into a trap of complacency. All that passed through the goblins minds was the gold that was kept deep underground, accessible to no one without their permission. The goblins would not leave Gringotts for a battle, not while they found themselves safe within these stone walls. The younger goblins simply lacked the fire and life that the older goblins knew so keenly, and missed dearly.
It truly was saddening to know that most of the goblins he saw every day knew numbers better than they did weapons. They forgot their history while hanging onto the hatred that had been ingrained into them without knowing the true cause. They accepted everything they were told without question, and despite the fact that it made it much easier to run Gringotts, it was utterly shocking and had never been heard of in goblin history. They trusted other goblins with complete faith that they would not be lying, or if the information was proved to be incorrect that the other goblin simply did not know any better.
The only thing that they had managed to maintain to a fairly high standard was their forgery skills, because the only goblins allowed into their forges were the ones who were truly passionate about it. That had been the requirement for as long as he could remember, and as a result the standard of their crafts had only improved, although, the forges only made things to decorate now that the need for weapons had been reduced greatly.
The only people who needed weapons were the few people who had been trained for it, but their numbers were so low and their fighting so infrequent that they only needed their fathers' weapons and nothing new.
The only weapons created were for decorative value and were ridiculously far away from being anything near functional. He often found himself wondering where a warrior may hope to wield half the weapons that adorned some of the goblins' homes. He didn't even think to assume those goblins would be able to use those weapons should the need arise. In fact, he was almost positive those goblins would attempt to threaten or talk their way out of any trouble they may face: and utterly foreign thought to any of the remaining true goblins.
The foundations on which the goblin clans had stood on for as long as they had existed were crumbling helplessly with every young goblin that was not trained in the ways of old, especially since those young goblins would refuse to allow their kin to be taught to fight, to maintain the goblin culture as they should have thought to go long ago.
Lack of foresight was costing them dearly. They had believed the reprieve from war would only be short, one or two years at the most, but those years soon began growing until a decade had passed. Another decade followed that, and another, until it had been over a century since a goblin war had risen from an argument between two clans.
Until today, when he was too scared of asking new goblins of their clan for fear of them not even being sure of whish one they belonged to. The thought of a goblin not knowing even that simple fact of themselves meant that they may as well not have a name for all the good it was doing them. The idea of a goblin not knowing their clan, or even the meaning and reason behind why the clan was formed, gave him a sick feeling within his very bones. It would make him want to rip one of those axes off his wall and wield it against the damned goblin until they were shivering in fear.
It would not do to scare a goblin to that extent though. No one could tell what would happen anymore, the goblins of these days were too soft and squishy. They could probably die of the fright of him wielding a weapon threateningly, as ridiculous as that sounded. He almost wished he could scare the complacency out of the goblins, so that they would find their bloodlust.
A war could be arranged at any time, after all. Besides, he had seen a couple of goblins from the other clan carrying jewels that looked suspiciously like the ones his clan leader had grown extremely fond of. He just didn't want to see the decimation of the goblin numbers to the point where a truce would have to be called simply to ensure that the goblins did not find themselves extinct, and that was exactly what he expected to happen if a war did manage to break out.
It would be embarrassing. He was sure the wizards would like to teach about that war in their schools. The goblin war that ended to save the goblins from extinction. It would give those wizards something new to sneer at them over.
Not that they seemed to be fairing too well on their own. The wizards were currently in the second war they had over the course of around forty years. It was almost unfair that the wizards were having so many wars, yet the goblins had none despite being well known for their wars.
The goblins always stayed out of wizard business unless it involved their gold, though. Goblins were allowed to keep up with the wizarding happenings but not be a part of it. It allowed them to be impartial and whatever other nonsense those wizards had sprouted in order to get them to agree.
He still wanted a goblin to get involved though. It may just give him the opportunity to sharpen his blades…
AN: Ares – Write about goblins