Goblin names were often simple, descriptive, and practical. Names that upon hearing them you knew before even truly knowing the individual, their status in life, and who they were. Names like Anklebiter, Snot, Brokentooth, and Vomit. Crude names. Often violent names. Names that their own kind gave them and used without a second thought. Names that came from others of your generation just as often as they came from parents. Names that other races ignored or brushed over. Everything about goblins was vile, and to the humans, elves, and dwarves that were forced to live near them? Their very own naming scheme was evidence of this. The other races didn’t know the power that a goblin’s name held. The status that it showcases. Perhaps a scholar glancing over the history of the young race would have noticed a pattern but to the average citizen the name of a goblin was not as important as was the knife that they often held. You didn’t care that the green skinned ball of fury stabbing at your innards was called ‘Gutsy’, you just wanted to kill him and get it over with.

But there was a pattern. One that the goblin's themselves put a lot of stock in. A goblin was measured by their name. Others looked to those with names they thought were impressive. A name was important, and most importantly, a name was earned. Chiefs often changed their names multiple times over their lives. Local heroes or important figures often had long strings of names, telling tales that more often than not were completely fabricated. Like many things goblins did, often the very name you referred to yourself by was a lie. A carefully constructed myth or persona. Had Anklebiter truly slashed the Achilles tendon of a passing human knight? No, but he’d told the tale often enough that everyone else in his tribe had forgotten whether it was true or not. Had Brokentooth actually lost her canines in a hand to hand fight with a wolf? No, the hard diet of the swamp she lived in had done that. Either you lied your ass off enough to attain a name of some repute, or others gave you one they thought suited you. It was common knowledge that no goblin had truly earned their name, unless it was an insult. Those tended to be fairly accurate.

Which was why Runt was so very unfortunate to have the name that he did. It was quite obvious why he had earned it. Not that he was truly that much smaller than the others of his tribe in the grand scheme of things, but it was enough. He had no deeds to provide another name, and not enough skill at lying to cover up for that shortcoming. Before he had reached his tenth year, the name had stuck. His mother had bounced the idea of Annoyance around, but others quickly shot that down. It was too long, too unwieldy. Runt was more natural, and as true a goblin name as any other. Surrounded by the other names of his tribe Runt stuck out. It was a weak name, for a weak child. A child that had barely survived the first few years of its life as the tribe had travelled from swamp to swamp, avoiding the pursuers that had hunted them. A child that was almost sacrificed as an offering to their God, before the tribal leader had stopped them. Not out of any concern for Runt, but out of fear. That sacrificing their smallest and most worthless child would be seen as an insult, and would have sent them tumbling into an even lower place than they had ever been.

Runt’s life was not worth much of anything, and even as a young child he had known this. From the very moment he had been born into this world he had been given nothing. His mother had been preoccupied with her other stronger children. Those that would grow up with potential. Those that had the chance to make something of themselves, and in return raise her own status as they did so. Runt had never been given that support. He had been fed scraps, the barest of morsels, and only what he could steal. Runt had nothing to him that made him stand out in a good light in the eyes of his fellows. He was not large, nor strong. He was not exceptionally brave or wise. All that stood out to those of his kind around him was his stature. The way he held himself. The inch that his meagre diet had stolen from him, paired with the cowed hunch of his shoulders, was all they needed.

Runt had just entered his sixteenth year, a year of portent for many of his kind, and he took stock of himself just as the others around him did. He sat separate from the others of his tribe. His jagged teeth nibbling on a stale crust of half mouldy bread. The taste that filled his mouth was disgusting, but he kept at it. Chewing slowly as his beady red eyes skittered around those that sat around him. The crackling fire that the some sat around gave him no warmth, the boulder he sat upon much too far to really come in contact with any heat. He was not the only one at the edge of the tribe, and the others just as cold as he was were the ones he was paying closest attention to. These were the ones just as starved as he was, just as desperate and just as eager to prove themselves. They were the ones that were eyeing the crust of bread in his fingers with want in their eyes. Those by the fire had plenty to eat. Scraps stolen from the nearby human village earlier that very night. Fresh scraps, and much better food. Those that had joined the raid had doled out gifts of food to those around them they wanted to. There was no sharing. No even split for the tribe. Each playing their own politics with what they had. Using whatever of food they had stolen to placate rivals, bribe potential mates, and showboat their own wealth. To live among the goblins was to live among your enemies. There were no friends, no kind gestures, no charity. Each scrap came with an obligation. What was given was never a gift, it was a deal. A handshake that perhaps on the next raid those that received today would return the favour tomorrow. This of course rarely happened, the greed in the moment outweighing the promises of the past, but this was the game that goblins played.

A game that Runt was quite bad at. The crust that he cracked with his teeth had not been given to him by a rival. Nor had it been given by someone trying to court his favour. The dry dust that fouled his tastes buds had been earned through his own desperation. Stolen from another of his kind, a trinket of food that had been set aside because it had little worth left to it. Attention drawn away only for the crust to be snatched up by Runt’s hungry fingers before any of the others at the sidelines could take notice. This was how Runt survived. Scraps stolen from those who stole scraps. The bottom rung of a ladder that stretched out infinitely high above him.

There was little truly different about Runt compared to others of his kind. All he had was a slight aberration in his mentality. Runt understood there was a hierarchy in every aspect of the world around them, and was fixated upon that knowledge. Even the chief of his small clan was content to play among those below, beating down those below him until one finally clambered up to tear him down from his post. Runt was small and weak, among a race of people who were small and weak. He was a runt of runts, and he was aware of that. Aware of the big picture, but powerless to do anything about it. He understood his place in the cosmos on a level born from thinking at the bottom rung of it all. He could see the top, the realm of gods, and hungered to climb to that height, while others around him fought to hold on to the small rung they now sat upon. Runt had no urge, no guiding force that told him to protect what he had in the moment. Just an endless burning desire to climb upwards. To take whatever he could, while he could.

The young goblin had been spat on, kicked, and beaten enough to know his place among his tribe. But those around him, the chief stuffing his face with a half eaten pie, his mother hanging around the edges of the flames, the scraggly old face of the shaman, had received the same. But they had not come to the same conclusions. They were content with their rungs, dreams of rising a few steps up, but that was truly all they cared about. They had been spat on and beaten just as much as he had, but were content now that the frequency of those beatings had slowed. His race was greedy, shortsighted, and spiteful. Runt had been born with a lot of curses, but he had been born with one gift. Unbridled ambition. Enough of it that if he had been born bigger, stronger, more clever or conniving, he would already be dead.

Bright stars burned out quickly among the goblins. Rivals killing you before you could outgrow them. Ambition leading to unchecked risks, stealing what shouldn’t be stolen. Runt knew this. He knew that his only protection was that he was weak. That no one in his tribe thought of him as a threat worth paying attention to.

Barely an inch shorter than average, sitting upon a boulder twice his height, the goblin stared at his people. Eyes full of malice, of hatred and greed stared back, only to look away when they recognized the figure sulking in the dark. His light green skin perfectly matching that of the moss that grew beneath him, ragged and scuffed burlap in place of clothes. A shirt and pants woven together from what he had stolen on his last trip to town. A sack with nothing in it. A sack that had stunk to high heaven, and had been placed with the trash he had been digging through. Better than the nothing he had been wearing before, his only set stolen by another of his kin as he had stupidly tried to bathe in the muddy swamp gunk that surrounded their haphazard camp without checking his surroundings first. A lesson learned. The others were always watching, waiting for a moment to make their move. Any benefit snatched up the moment it was seen.

Even now he could see the one who had stolen from him. The old browning human shirt he had once worn now stained with speckles of a deep red. Remnants of the beating Runt had received when he had tried to forcibly take what was his back. The one who wore it now was one of his own close kin. A half brother stronger and bigger than Runt was.

As if he could feel the thoughts directed his way Blackeye looked towards his sibling perched upon the boulder outside of the dancing firelight. For a moment the two brothers stared at each other.

One by the fire, bathed in it’s warmth. A handful of only slightly stale berries in one hand, a fist in the other. The fist clenching itself rhythmically, the tension in the gesture palpable in the air between the two. Bruised knuckles still purple from the punishment they had dealt out to Runt.

The other brother sat slumped over their stone seat, skinny legs dangling into the cold night air, red eyes peering through the thinnest wisps of dark red hair. Both siblings judging the other, eyeing each other up. Runt could see his brother’s thought process in the beady red eyes they both shared. The eyes that shot glances at the others that sat around Blackeye. The eyes that held on to Runt’s gaze for a few long, drawn out seconds.

Both brothers had just reached the age of importance for their people. Both had just passed through the season of their birth, both of them marking their sixteenth summer upon the realm they called home. Sixteen years was important for many reasons to their kind. It was the age they were considered adults, and the age at which their kind was said to commit their best deeds. An age steeped in tradition. And the age at which rivalries and hatred peaked. Goblins were not without their own morals. And though these rules were not often followed, some were gravely punished by the communities they lived in. The murder of a child was one. Neglect? Beatings? All commonplace and accepted. But murder? A sin the others wouldn’t forgive.

Which meant that the age at which rivalries could truly heat up, where murder plots and assassinations could go off without the wider community reacting, was sixteen. The age where revenge could truly be wrought, where progress could be made and challenges could fully be met. Where a life could be lost over a bit of mouldy bread.

Both brothers staring at each other knew that. Both knew this would be the first year they could truly earn a better name. A name not born from the size of their body, or the worst beating they had lived through. A beating that had left them with a permanently discoloured eye. Yellowed now that the bruise had faded, but a deep dark black at one time.

Both of them would be lucky to see the next year. Both of them acknowledged each other and that knowledge in that moment.

A momentary gaze that was just enough to distract Runt, a pain blossoming from a point at the back of his head before he caught wind of his assailant. No word or gesture of warning from his sibling, who would have easily been able to see the incoming attack. The world became fuzzy at it’s edges as Runt fell from the boulder beneath him, his body rushing to the ground and stumbling as he hit the soft and stinking mud below. A shriek of rage screamed its way out of his throat as he turned to face his attacker. Sharp, needle like teeth bared in an enraged snarl as he looked up to where he once sat comfortably.

An older goblin, maybe a year older than he was, stood on top of the stone. Armed with a gnarled old branch, with hate filled eyes peering down at the youth below him. Hands twisted at the branch in their grasp, knuckles white as they tightened ever further. A small splatter of oozing blood covered one edge of the stick, thick and already coagulating as it ran downwards. A scream of wordless challenge, one that Runt met with his own, as two outsiders far from the warmth of the fire began to fight over the scrap of old bread now half buried in the mud at Runt’s feet.