The Goblin's Throne

Chapter Fifty Two: Brutality

Tova and her children shrieked like rabbits caught in a snare, their doe-like eyes frozen in a wide-eyed stare towards us. The Hunters who'd come to collect their prey. Emaciated and worn down. Their long hair had been burned off nearly at the root. The ends were still singed from a recent cutting. The limbs that grew from Tova's scalp too had been cut away, leaving ends that oozed with bloody sap. It made me think of my own hair. Knut had made sure he'd gotten her back for that. If there was one thing the goblins believed in, it was paying for one's debts. Eye for an eye. Tooth for a tooth. There was one thing left she still owed me.

"You know what's coming don't you?" I asked her in a whispering hiss, pressing my face against the bars that separated my teeth from her throat, my claws from her eyes. I smiled so big my cheeks ached. At her. At her children. Showing all my teeth that would soon clamp down on their flesh and wrench it free from their bones. 

"No! No, please!" She screamed, holding her children tighter to her breast. Dara and Rikard sobbed into their mother's shoulders, knowing too well what it was she pleaded for. Her begging fell as silently on my ears as it would a deaf person. 

"I'm sorry it came to this, Tova," I said, reciting her own words back at her as I loomed hate-filled and vicious over her withered body. I laughed as the terror in her face tripled right before my eyes. "But as Titania told you, you've brought this all on yourself." I reached through the bars and touched her sunken cheek. She was trembling so hard. Her breathing came in short, sporadic gasps. She flinched when I touched her, but she couldn't pull away. The cage was so small there was nowhere for her to go to get away. "And I'm about to remind you once again that I give as good as I get. I don't make threats, Tova. Only promises." She shook her head slowly, muttering pleads beneath her breath. My fingers grew damp from the tears dripping down her rough skin. With little food, water, and virtually no sunlight, the elves were withering just as any plant would, their once supple, smooth skin hardening and warping as they dried out.  I pulled my hand back and looked towards Stellan's doppelganger. "Take them to The Hollow," I ordered him.

Tova and the children screamed in earnest as the goblin that wore their loved one's face ripped open the cage door and reached his long arm inside. He snatched the nearest elf, taking hold of Dara by her ankle, dragging her out. Her family grabbed onto her, trying to pull her free while she kicked at his hands. "Come now, Dara, is that any way to treat your father?" The goblin said in Stellan's warm, pleasant voice. Dara's screams turned into heart-wrenching wailing, hearing her father's voice so perfectly mimicked by something very other.

Two more goblins sprang from Knut's brow, doppelgangers of Tova's sisters, their bodies charred black and broken. One missing half its head, the other's neck bent at a grotesque angle, a weathered rope dangling from her neck. They yanked the elves from the cage all of them screaming and crying, flailing around to get away, if for no other relief than to not have to look at the brutalized bodies of their family. They had to know that there would be no escaping. They were in the pits of The Goblin Empire and our empire only grew in power and reach with every breath Knut took. 

"Don't do this!" Tova cried, pulling towards me against the goblin's grip. "Kill me, if you want, but don't hurt my children! Please, Matilda! They've done nothing wrong!" She sobbed. Tears poured down her cheeks. "I'm begging you. Please."

"No," I said, staring straight into those wide, unblinking eyes overflowing with mournful tears, with icy cold hatred ringing in my voice. "It's too late for that, Tova. It's a whole year too late."

"No!" Tova continued to scream and beg for her children's lives. "Matilda! Matilda, I'm sorry! Don't do this! Please!" I watched with a smile slashed across my face as they dragged them kicking and screaming from that dark, dank chamber. The heavy door clanged loudly behind them