Chapter 1:

Scum

Even If It Kills Me


He awoke to a cacophony of ragged sobbing. In the air was a stench he clawed to breathe in out of instinct. It was disgusting. It was nourishing.

He was crying, and he couldn't stop.

Everything was happening everywhere at every time. It was noisy, disordered; the ringing in his ears did not relent for a moment. He didn’t know how to distinguish between the bleats and screeches and the grating sound of stone grinding against wood, thump-thump-THUMPED by heavy boots.

Every sensation was set ablaze in a grease fire. He barely registered being picked up by hands bigger than his own body.

Only then did most of the flames stay their onslaught, and he was given a moment's respite. Soon, he performed his first action resembling any sort of lucidity since gaining consciousness. He opened his eyes.

Strange. When did the world consist entirely of bokeh? He wasn’t sure if it was the tears, or his mushy mental state and... he was moving...?

Rows upon rows of moving grey dots were all he could see. And the dots wouldn’t stop screaming.

Soon enough, the wind fluttered by him, losing his sense of vertigo.

The screams grew more and more distant by the second. A sounder mind could register immediately he was being plucked away somewhere else, but he did not have that luxury. The colours around him were becoming duller now—as much as black and white could, anyway–and the humidity was replaced by a cold, assured dryness. And his skin—covered in a viscous goop he did not dare ponder the origins of.

But the wind came to a screeching halt, and he was hit with a gust, and vertigo. Falling, falling.

When you were unceremoniously dropped on the ground like a ragdoll, it was no time at all.

Then he felt a pain, one so great all the air in his lungs broke out. It came from below, snaked the waist down, someways to the left. Not much, just enough, for his blind eyes to peer at a leg crunched into two.

He had screamed. He pleaded, anyone, anything, to make it stop. Through the tears, he saw the hulking figure of an orc.

Its leather-clad hands, spattered with mud and something darker, worked with crude purpose. The orc’s grip was merciless, slathering him in viscous muck. Around him, he glimpsed other creatures his size, squirming and screeching as they were dragged across splintered wooden planks by thick ropes tied to yokes.

Before he could process what was happening, the orc reached for his leg again. Tender, agonising fingers pulled and twisted.

Crack.

His world exploded, and black soon enveloped reality.

\\

It was common for orcs to oversee the breeding pits of goblins. Their disdain for anything that wasn’t brutal, strong, or capable of wielding a weapon was clear in how they handled their “charges.”

Hence, the bum leg he would have for the rest of his life. The orc who threw him aside didn’t care where or how he landed.

That was unfortunate. A bum leg wasn’t ideal for survival in this pitiful existence, let alone in a goblin horde.

But it didn’t matter. He’d already served his purpose. He’d gathered soon after waking that he was one of the unfortunate few born only to become fodder in some warlord’s endless campaigns.

His eyes trailed to his gnarled, stubby fingers.

Being a goblin didn’t offer much hope when it came to medical care. He was still young enough that his broken leg had healed itself – but at an awkward, painful angle. Any weight on it sent a sharp ache screaming through his body.

He still couldn’t believe it. A goblin, of all things? Born into the lowest rung of a world that itself was already bottom-of-the-barrel.

GULP-GULP.

He had expected death to bring some measure of peace.

Not… whatever this was. He wasn’t sure what he was sucking down, but it tasted foul. A runny, sour texture slithered down his throat, each swallow making his stomach churn. He didn’t dare look to see what would happen if he spat it out.

The “feeding spout” was as crude as it sounded – just a twisted animal horn stuck into a filthy wooden frame. Food in the breeding pits was never meant to be pleasant, especially not for goblins.

He was in what looked like a hollowed-out cave, ringed with crude scaffolding that stacked up and up, probably twenty layers high. Everywhere around him, goblins groaned, whimpered, and shrieked in unison, painting a grotesque picture of the operation’s scale.

They were livestock, shoved into pens and lined up to feed. His pen was on the twelfth level, somewhere near the centre.

Not that this was an act of mercy. The slop that poured from the spouts was designed purely to grow the goblins as fast as possible, bulking them up just enough to march into battle before they died.

There was no teaching here, no education – only noise, squalor, and despair. To not learn was to not live, and to not dream. They were barely given a chance to think. He’d read about this once: indoctrination. 

Once, a lifetime ago, he was Shinji Yamato. A third-year mechanical engineering student. A human.

Now he was a goblin with a crooked leg and a life of misery ahead.

“Oi, you awake?”

Marcus jolted, instinctively flinching as a shadow fell over him. Stubby hands clenched by his sides, his instincts already whispering to him to grovel.

But it wasn’t an orc.

It was Pimya, another goblin – one with wide, bulbous eyes and a perpetually cheerful grin that made Marcus want to both laugh and cry.

“You’re crying again.”

“Yeah,” Marcus muttered, dragging his filthy hands across his face. “I cry at everything.”

“Why?”

“Why not?” Marcus said with a bitter chuckle, glancing at the spout. “Come on. Let’s just get it over with.”

Pimya hesitated, frowning slightly.

“Okay."

As Marcus leaned back against the rickety frame, suckling down another mouthful of disgusting, nourishing slop, he couldn’t help but wonder what his life might have been if he stayed human.

But there was no point in wondering. He was only one goblin in a sea of thousands. What could he possibly do to change anything?

GULP!

It was disgusting.

It was nourishing.

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