Goblin King

by Kara Barbieri

  My stomach twisted as the tide receded and a horrible, rotting smell permeated the air. There’d been bodies lying under the water bloated and completely unrecognizable as to who they could’ve been or what they might’ve been when they were alive.

  I cast a glance at Soren, nearly fooled by the stoic expression on his face, until I noticed a muscle in his jaw twitching. This close, our bond ran deep, and his discomfort and distress at the horrifying sights might’ve been easier for him to hide, but it was there like a building storm.

  “Does it make me odd if I say that Lydian was a terrible person, but nobody deserves this?” I asked him.

  “No,” he said. “It makes you compassionate and a better person than I am. If I could watch vultures pick out Lydian’s liver, I’d enjoy every second of it. But you’re far kinder than I. But this sight does unnerve me.”

  His eyes showed nothing as another shriek pierced through the air and another person was swallowed by the massive snake creature, blood pooling around where the person once was chained. I winced at the crunching and crushing of bones; the sound sending chills up my spine and I feared I was gripping Soren’s hand so tight that I was cutting off his circulation.

  Then the tortured body that had been swallowed whole and crushed was back upon the rocks, waiting for the tide once more.

  Maybe it was my own experience with torment but there was a pulling in my gut that told me no living creature, no matter how evil, deserved something as brutal as this. I tried to picture Lydian, bound to the rocks, regenerating whenever birds picked out his eyeballs or other animals took out chunks of his flesh. I imagined being swallowed and crushed by the Nidhogg’s powerful muscles. Even then, my stomach could barely handle the imagery, and the deep sense of this is wrong still lingered inside of me.

  “I hope we find him and get out quick,” I muttered, eyes darting around. The longer I spent on this shore, the more my own sanity slipped.

  “We should’ve asked Diaval to do a spell,” Soren replied. “Locating him or something. She could’ve probably done it.” He shook his head in disgust. “Doesn’t matter now. Let’s keep looking.”

  Staring at bloated body after bloated body, I knew that for a long time after today, I would be having nightmares. “This doesn’t bother you?” I asked.

  Soren shook his head. “Not that way. I mean, it’s disgusting and that bothers me, but emotionally? Not really. It could, I guess, if I wanted it to. It’d bother me if it were you or someone else I cared about. But I don’t know these people, so I don’t really care about them. It’s horrific in an objective sense but subjectively…” He shrugged. “I feel emotions, we’ve crossed that bridge before, but I still process them differently. And I guess I process this in a way that it doesn’t bother me.”

  Yes, I had to remember that. While we’d established that yes, his kind could definitely feel emotions long ago, there was still a difference in the way we processed our emotions. Either entwined with them or detached from them depending on who we cared about and why we were feeling the way we were. I knew if Soren saw me being hurt like this, he would tear the world apart to free me, but strangers? They meant nothing to him. He tore into other goblins during fights with brutal efficiency, not holding back, no room for mercy. If I looked inside of myself, there were reasons I didn’t care either, buried under a hundred years of human emotion.

  They should’ve meant nothing to me. This was their punishment, as said so by the cosmos, but I still couldn’t shake the humanity that remained inside me and told me that any type of suffering was wrong.

  It was in this time that I wished I had more control over the impartial calmness of the stag’s powers. When it came over me, everything felt all right, everything felt like it was the way it was supposed to be. It was an alien feeling but a good one all the same.

  A piercing whistle broke me out of my thoughts, and I brought my hands to my ears, wincing as blood dribbled out of them. Some of the older, rusted chains cracked and rattled, stones broke apart with their prisoners still on them. Soren, too, winced from beside me and brought a hand up to wipe away the blood. There was only one goblin we knew of who could whistle sharply enough to make stones break and ears bleed. Seppo was calling us.

  We spotted him and Rose standing next to a dead driftwood log where a limp body was tied and chained. Even from far away, there was no mistaking the agony. They had found him. Picking our way over to where they stood, a hand grasped my ankle as a condemned man looked me in the eyes, pleading for me to kill him in hopes death by my hands would stop his regeneration. I shook myself and tore my foot away; there was no way I was going to be able to help him, and my ankle was now marked from the blood and dirt of his touch.

  “Are you ready?” Soren asked me, a strong presence by my side.

  “As ready as I’ll ever be,” I said quietly, taking a moment to close my eyes and breathe in through my nose and out through my mouth until I calmed my rapidly beating heart. I’d faced Lydian before and come out victorious. He couldn’t hurt me anymore. All that could hurt me was the memory that he left behind, and I had other, better memories to think of now. He would not see me stumble or shake. I could do this.

  Opening my eyes, I approached where Seppo and Rose were with Soren at my side. Diaval had arrived before us, her eyes flickering around the shore in the way they did when she couldn’t lower her defenses and when magic was brewing beneath her fingertips. Hopefully, there’d be no reason for her to use it.

  “Nephew,” Lydian said in greeting toward Soren. His yellow hair was matted and tangled, full of seaweed and brine, his nails had grown jaggedly long, and his face and once-smooth skin were weathered by the harsh sand and winds. His body was bruised from where the water beat him, and there were thick dark rings around his neck as if something or someone had tried to choke the life out of him multiple times. His clothes—the very same clothes he died in—were torn and soaked and bloody, and yet he still had that look on his face like he was king of it all.

  “We have to hurry,” Rose said, his eyes taking on a bit of a sheen. “I’m trying to watch to see if Hel knows where we are—if she knows we survived, but I’m not really good at concentrating with this seer ability yet. So, let’s get in and get out as fast as we can.”

  “Sounds good to me,” I said, hearing the others also agree.

  Soren trudged over to Lydian and crossed his arms, staring down at his uncle for a long moment.

  “Are you going to scold me?” Lydian said, a slick smirk on his face.

  Soren drove his boot into his uncle’s ribs. Once, and then again, and then again twice more until Lydian was left curled to one side as much as his bonds would allow and breathing heavily.

  “You know it’ll take longer to escape if you break my ribs,” he said.

  “I don’t particularly care,” Soren replied, driving his boot into the soft flesh of his uncle’s stomach, causing him to cough. “I don’t know when the next time I’ll have an opportunity like this again, and I figured I better make the best of it.”

  He bent down and punched Lydian in the jaw hard enough that the goblin spat two teeth out. “You punch like your mother,” he said, then his eyes landed on Rosamund’s. “I wonder if you punch like yours.”

  Rose turned sharply, but before he could land a blow on him, Seppo pulled him back. “It’s not worth it,” he said.

  “What he did to her—” Rose began but was interrupted.

  “If I was punished by you five for what I did to everyone’s loved ones, I would remain chained to this rock forever while you beat me into a bloody pulp,” Lydian said.

  “That can be arranged,” Soren muttered.

  “No,” I sighed. “It can’t. We need to get him and get out.”

  “You don’t want to beat him up?” Soren asked me incredulously.

  “Did I say that? Once we get out of here and are tracking Fjalar, we can do whatever we want. But I’d rather not stay in Hel longer than necessary.”


  “The girl has a point,” Lydian said.

  I kicked Lydian in the hip, causing him to gasp in pain. “Shut up. I said we shouldn’t beat you to a bloody pulp yet. Not that I was averse to it or disagreed with the idea as a whole.”

  “All right, all right, kicks for everyone when we get out of here,” Lydian said. “Let’s get out of here.”

  Soren shook his head in disgust as he bent down to look at Lydian’s restraints. They’d deeply burned and bruised his skin due to their tightness and the heat they absorbed, and Soren turned his head to the side to get a better view. “He’s stretched out pretty good on the driftwood,” he said. “Might be better if we turn him over.”

  Before Lydian could protest, Soren started moving the log and continued even when Lydian made a pained sound, now being semi-crushed by his own prison.

  He pulled at the chains keeping Lydian together and hissed in pain when they stung his hands. Iron, of course. Still, it was old and rusted, and Soren took out one of his many blades and began to pry the chain links open at their weak spots. His muscles strained from working at the chains, but if anyone else stepped in to help, he waved them away, saying it was his uncle and his problem.

  I watched impassively as he did his work. It was nothing different than getting an animal out of a particularly tangled snare.

  Finally, with a grunt, the chain that kept one of his arms in place came undone and Lydian stretched his arm, hissing in pain as the damaged muscle moved. He could only continue to lay there though as Soren worked on the other chain, having switched sides of the log to easier reach the restraints. The sand shifted as once again Soren finally managed to bend the metal links enough for Lydian’s other arm to come free.

  Lydian sat up, pulling at the chains around his feet despite the burns they created on his fingers. “Come on,” he said, eyeing the shifting sand. “We need to hurry.”

  Soren continued to try to pry the metal apart, but the process remained slow and painful for both of them. Now Diaval was looking around with darting eyes, same as Rosamund. Seppo and I casually reached for our weapons, knowing the tells of our friends when they showed them.

  Soren had almost finished prying Lydian’s legs free when, from below the sand, the Nidhogg slowly raised his head, his tongue flicking in the air, his cold reptilian eyes watching us with displeasure.

  “Bollocks,” Soren cussed, putting more force behind his movements until the metal snapped open. Lydian toppled off the log, and Soren was faced with the angry Nidhogg staring at him.

  “Don’t look away from him,” Lydian advised, and for once, Soren listened to his uncle, locking eyes with the angry serpent.

  The stare down continued for an eternity with me and the others tensed and ready to fight as soon as the snake made its first move. Soren became unnaturally still, his eyes locked on the serpent’s while he slowly slid out one of the other longer daggers he’d kept in his sleeve.

  The Nidhogg slowly began to lower its head back down into the sand as Soren breathed in relief. That is, until his dagger clinked against another weapon, and the Nidhogg shot forward, jaws open, and sank its fangs into Soren’s face.

  The scream that came from Soren caused my insides to turn as all at once we sprang into action. My axe went down heavy on the Nidhogg’s side but it’s armor-like scales kept it from any injury the sharpened blades might’ve created. Seppo’s and Rose’s weapons were also of little use as blood gushed from Soren’s face. Lydian and Diaval met eyes and nodded once, an unspoken communication going through the two as Diaval started to chant in the ancient magical tongue while Lydian lunged at the Nidhogg, wrestling the snake away from his nephew and tearing its fangs out from his face.

  Soren looked a bloody mess, and he held his hand over where one eye was, gasping in pain as a black, wispy circle formed around the six of us. The black wisps swirled around faster and faster, creating a dome that the Nidhogg couldn’t get through, I assumed from its frustrated sounds. Diaval clasped her hands together and yelled out a single word, and the shores fell away in the blink of an eye. Then we were falling and falling and falling.

  We landed in a world shrouded entirely in mist with the ground already darkening from Soren’s blood.

  PART THREE

  THE IN-BETWEEN

  17

  AS ABOVE, SO BELOW

  THERE WAS SILENCE on the frozen ground as we all lay in shock from the portal. Only Soren’s aching moans broke the eerie quiet that was the world of mist, Niflheim. It was a dangerous place, connected to Hel, and monsters and lost souls wandered around growing more and more unhinged at the darkness and mist. My father told me breathing in the mist of Niflheim would take all of your sanity if you did it for too long.

  Finally, I managed to unfreeze and rushed over to Soren. He was clutching his right eye and baring his teeth, trying to stay silent throughout the pain. But the right side of his face was bloodied and warped, and the eyeball had been completely detached from the socket. Some vomit rose in my throat, and I forced myself to swallow it down so I wouldn’t upset him as he lay curled in a tense ball. His hand clutched the right side of his face where the Nidhogg’s fangs had run down creating two deep and bloody crevices in the skin. His blood formed in a pool underneath him, and I knew I had to do something. I was the stag, and I couldn’t let this kill my Erlking.

  I removed his hand from where he was clutching the wound and placed my own hands on top of it. Before I started, I sent a small prayer to the gods that this would work and I would be able to grasp onto the stag’s power enough to heal him. Anxiety and doubt rose in my throat, but I forced them back down like I had the vomit and got to work.

  Focused on the wound, the position of his body, feeling his blood pulse like it was my own. There was a strong connection vibrating between us like the strings of a lute that had always been out of reach whenever I tried to touch them. But now? I grasped on the cords, and whiteness burst behind my eyelids as I took in all of Soren’s pain. The burning, the stinging, the aching, the throbbing, everything that was stormy inside him hit me like a brick wall, and for a moment, my connection wavered.

  Please come back, I called to the link the stag had created in me. I must heal my Erlking. It’s not time for him to die.

  My bond with the cords connecting us tightened, and while still in pain and with my eyes closed, I somehow knew if I opened my eyes, they would be bathed in golden light. Soren’s wounds were closing up; each sinew and muscle and cut slowly closed and leeched away the pain. I did not see it, but I knew what was happening all the same as the connection to his body deepened, and finally I pulled away from Soren and opened my eyes.

  There were three new scars over his right eye, freshly pink, but healed, but his eyeball was completely gone, leaving an empty socket that was gruesome to look at. Even with all that effort, I couldn’t regenerate his eye. I didn’t have to be linked to him to know he would take this very poorly.

  “Janneka,” he said softly, “I can’t see out of one eye.”

  “I’m so sorry, Soren. I managed to nearly completely heal your face, but you have three scars now. And I couldn’t save your eye. I’m so sorry, I swear I tried, I—”

  “You did excellent work for someone with your skill set,” another voice broke into the conversation.

  “Leave us alone, Lydian, we’re having a moment,” I snarled in the nastiest way I could manage.

  “I’m not dead or bleeding out,” Soren said. “So while I hate to say this on principle, my uncle is right. I’ll get on, Janneke. It’ll take me a while to adjust, that’s all.” A lesser skilled person couldn’t properly make out the bravado in his voice and the fear and anxiety that leaked from under it. But I was his second half, and in that moment, his pain and despair crashed down on the both of us like waves.

  I kissed him softly on the forehead and then looked in his remaining lilac eye. “I understand, Soren.” I hoped he understood the message in my voice. Soren wasn’t the first one in this group to
lose a body part. I had made an oath to Tanya that I would keep him safe and was already failing.

  “You look terrible,” Lydian said, staring at Soren’s face. “The luck you’ve had with ladies is completely gone now.”

  “Good thing I have my lady already, then,” Soren coughed out in a dry, scratchy voice.

  “Shut up, Lydian.” I grabbed the bigger goblin and shoved him hard enough for him to fall back five feet. “Does anyone have a cloth we can use?”

  Seppo dug in his packed knapsack and came out with a long cloth bandage and threw it over to me. “This is not because your eye is terrible to look at,” I said firmly to Soren. “It’s because the socket still needs more healing, and we don’t want to get any infections in it. You understand?”

  Soren gritted his teeth but nodded as I tied the bandage around his eye.

  An uneasiness hung in the air after that. No one knew exactly what to do or say, but we couldn’t keep ourselves here. Sooner or later, Hel would be after us for stealing Lydian from her kingdom, and staying too long in one place in the mists of Niflheim without a purpose would make the mist affect us even more.

  “Where exactly did you take us, Diaval?” I said to the still-panting she-goblin. Blue sparks shot from her fingertips, and her body was drawn in together like the cold particularly affected her.

  She turned her head to look at me and I was shocked by the electric blue that colored streaks in her otherwise dark irises. “Niflheim, we’re in Niflheim.”