Oh, no.”
Amma hadn’t even really wanted to be a baroness when it came right down to it, but a king? That had never even crossed her mind. Faced with the prospect, kingship seemed significantly less enticing than baronhood, and eminence over goblins? Well, who even knew they had monarchies?
Not all goblin clans utilized the slaying of their king to determine their new sovereign, but enough followed the bizarre tradition that saying a thing likenot all goblinswas a rather ineffective argument. The practice of replacing a clan’s ruler with that ruler’s murderer led to very short reigns and very bloody histories with anomalous stretches of highly tyrannical governance by the strongest amongst goblinkind. There is much to be said for physical prowess, but finding a figure with matched mental aptitude was often difficult, a thing the goblins didn’t really ponder on too long despite their suffering because they really appreciated height. And of all the kings of the goblin clan of Ashrein Ridge, never had one been so tall as Amma. It didn’t even matter that she wasn’t green.
Damien was still laughing, a reaction Amma thought she would have enjoyed if it weren’t at her expense.
“It’s not funny.” She elbowed him.
“No, no, you’re right,” he said, wiping at his eyes. “It’s bloody hilarious.”
More goblins had crept out of the cave, and, goodness, there were a lot of them. They dressed in tattered clothes, manywearing makeshift armor composed of items one might have found abandoned in the back of a larder or along the roadside. Most stood only as tall as Amma’s groin which made their congregation around her even more distressing. “Damien,” she hissed, “they’reswarming.”
“These are minikin goblins, not like those sinewy ones up north. They’re completely harmless: a strong gust of wind could take them out.”
Amma eyed one’s sharp teeth as it grinned up at her. With a rusted chamber pot strapped to its head and a set of roofing shingles tied to its shoulders, that statement was dubious at best, but it grabbed her hand, long fingers wrapping around her own not entirely unlike a child save for all the callouses, and that sort of did make her heart melt. Of course, that could have also been her insides tugging at her emotions.
“Still, there aresomany.”
“Think of it like this,” Damien said, eyes roving over the lot. “If a numerical attribute could be placed upon one’s health, and in order to slay someone like me, I would need to be stabbed, say, one hundred and forty-two times, a minikin goblin wouldn’t be able to endure even one attack. And it would probably be killed twice.”
Amma was still holding onto the thing she supposed was meant to be a scepter. It was an admittedly nice branch of oak but had a roughly-cut, cloudy gem attached to its top with so much twine it was nearly obscured. Its thickness and heft reminded her of the staff she’d called up in the Innomina Wildwood.
“You come, you see vast empire. All yours now!” A goblin tugged her forward.
“Oh, please, no,” she beseeched whichever goblin she thought might listen, “I only accidentally put an end to your Jiblix, and truly, I’m sorry, but I donotthink that qualifies mefor this job.”
“You died him!” another called in a high voice, hopping so that he could be seen over the crowd of little, green faces. “All hail King Amma!”
The call was repeated by the assembled, voices rising with unrestrained joy.
“By all that’s holy,” she groaned, casting a pleading look over her shoulder as she was herded toward the cave. “A little help?”
Damien only shook his head, a ridiculous grin plastered on his face. “Oh, no, I am too invested in seeing where this goes, and it is quite a good distraction from the conversation we were just having.”
Amma returned one of Damien’s withering looks, slight regret at how amicable she’d encouraged him to become. She would have rather appreciated a surly version of the blood mage who insisted on storming off with her, preferably thrown over his shoulder again, and getting on with his most destructive plans.
But Damien didn’t even complain when the goblins swarmed him too, giving his thighs a push to continue on. “Yes, yes, all right, I am but your king’s humble servant.” Gods, even his tone had turned jovial—what in all the planes had happened to him?
The darkness took Amma’s sight as she was ushered into the cave. A chill came over her skin, and then she was hit with the slightly sweet smell of decay. Dampness in the air and surrounded by the newly energized creatures, she rubbed her eyes to better see the place she’d been brought.
The cavern opened up into an immensely hollow space like the mountain had been bored out completely. A ramp jutted off in either direction from where she stood at a low railing atop a balcony. Made for a much shorter being, Amma wavered at the drop, but then her breath caught. Hundreds—no,thousandsof goblins bustled about in the basin below, tightly packed andchattering so their voices floated up and echoed off the walls in a low din like the rustling of many fallen leaves.
Amma’s chest tightened—that sure was a large clan that was about to find out she had just murdered one of them.
“King Amma,” said a voice from her side, and a new goblin was there, slightly taller than most of the others, limbs a bit longer, but skinnier too. “Will make announcement to clan on behalf.”
The goblin tipped the scepter she held toward him and gave the yellow gem a thunk. A glow from betwixt the tightly woven twine pulsed, and when the goblin spoke next, his squeaky voice reverberated into the whole of the mountain. “Gobbies, King Jiblix is died!”
There was a collective gasp from below, a scattering of metallic things crashing to the floor, and thousands of shimmering eyes turned upward. Amma longed to shrink away from the balcony where she knew she was towering like a tyrant, but the many goblins gathered at her back made it impossible.
“All hail new king, dieder of old king! Bow to great and mighty Amma da Enormous, Wielder of da Boulder of Doom and King of da Gribtoss Clan!”
The goblins clamored to fall supplicant on their knees, more clanging and thuds until all of the eyes were finally turned down.
The scepter’s dimly glowing crystal was tipped back toward Amma’s open mouth. “If wish, Majesty,” he whispered, “address Gribtossians.”
“Uh…” Amma’s utterance reverberated over them, echoing through the cave much louder than the tiny goblin’s. Every head turned back up, but they remained on their knees, waiting, silent, bated. Even the swallow she took echoed against the walls. “Hi?”
