Mortal lives will serve the pantheon as both pieces and our prizes

The Lore of Above and Below, Verse 3.

Chaos sat deep beneath the skin of the world, surrounded by dirt and stone, and scratched her nose until it bled. Her itch was back and as annoying as ever, crawling through her flesh, refusing to be satisfied. She chased it all over her bloated body, scratching with spiderlike limbs until it returned to her nose. Chaos sighed. She tried to distract herself by considering her dungeon. This didn’t take very long, unfortunately. Her dungeon was a single throne room set in a simple cave. The cave wasn’t large or interesting, but it only had one entrance, which at least made it safe. That was good, but it wasn’t enough. Chaos sent her rat swarm to claim the tunnel that led to her throne room, doubling the size of her dungeon. The rats did this in the traditional way (by weeing on it). For simple beasts or mortals, such a claim would be sufficient, a marking of territory. Chaos wanted more: she wanted to control the tunnel, to own it. She achieved this in her own unique manner: by spitting out another set of fire elementals to serve her.

“Be born, watch, light the way,” she told them.

The elementals danced off to take up residence in the tunnel and stand watch over it. Chaos slumped forward, suddenly weak. In her prime she would have taken over the tunnel without a thought, but her power was so reduced that this easy task exhausted her. She rested for an hour until she felt stronger, then sent her rats onwards. They discovered three large caves below Chaos’s throne, all linked by narrow tunnels, and a shaft that led upwards.

“Any mortals around?” Chaos asked, but the rats squeaked a negative.

They hadn’t found as much as an old boot or cigarette butt. It seemed Chaos had the caves all to herself. That was good. Perhaps Fate was on her side. She doubted it; Fate was always grumpy. The rats returned to the throne room, tired but excited, dragging a few animal bones behind them. They disappeared into cracks in the cave wall. She could still hear their clawed feet on stone, their teeth clicking against their food. It was a comforting sound. Chaos smiled. She closed her eyes.

“Rest,” Chaos commanded her swarm of rats. “Rest.”

She fell asleep and was in the middle of a delightful dream in which she was kicking Order’s head when her elementals called out, waking her up. They had seen mortals in the tunnel beside her throne. Chaos clicked her fingers, and a fireball appeared in her hand, white-hot. Within it was an image of the tunnel, seen from the perspective of her elementals on the walls. Chaos sat upright, her body tense as she scanned for the mortals. Were they agents of Order, out for her blood? How could they have found her so soon? What would they do? While she couldn’t be killed, her tahnago form could be damaged or even destroyed, forcing her back Above, defeated, and embarrassed. She wouldn’t let that happen.

“Where… ah, there you are!”

A gang of ragged, ugly creatures was swarming through the tunnel. They were small and hunched, covered in so many layers of grime that their skin could not be seen. Their skulls, triangular and far too large for their little bodies, were covered in a few strands of greasy white hair that hung down to their bodies. They shouted as they ran, pushing at each other. They burst into the throne room in a mass of whirling arms and legs, too busy with their own fighting to even notice Chaos.

“Goblins,” Chaos yelled.

Her rats raced out of their holes to defend her, forming a circle around the throne. The goblins gibbered eagerly and charged forward. They were armed with stones and wooden sticks. They swung these makeshift weapons with wild abandon, missing the rats far more than they hit them. One particularly eager goblin swung a branch at a rat and hit another goblin instead, knocking it out. Two goblins fell over their unconscious friend, rolled onto the ground, and began slapping each other in fury. Seeing this, a third goblin turned to join in, tripped, and stumbled face-first into the cave wall. Within moments half the goblins were on the ground, and the other half were arguing with each other. The rats, confused by this embarrassing display of martial ineptitude, eased away from the goblins.

“Enough!” Chaos said, rolling her many eyes. “Rats, you may leave us.”

The rats retreated back to the cracks in the walls, hissing in amusement. The goblins, mad with adrenaline, continued to fight each other, kicking and punching, stabbing and smacking. Chaos threw the fireball in her hand at the wall. This didn’t frighten the goblins, but it did get their attention. They turned to her, several noticing her massive bulk for the first time. A goblin threw a rock at her, but it bounced off her walrus tusk without doing any harm. The goblins huddled up, preparing to charge her.

“Goblins,” Chaos said, laughing. “You dirty, creeping, reckless creatures. Liars and incompetents. Welcome! Are you hungry? The rats left a few bones around here somewhere, and you are welcome to them.”

Her words shocked the goblins so severely that they froze in place. They had never been welcomed before. A one-armed goblin, their leader, was the first to react.

“What kind of bones?” he asked.

“Old and disgusting, I imagine, if even the rats don’t want them.”

“Yay!”

The goblins swarmed over the small pile of old bones, fighting for scraps. The one-armed goblin leaped into the fray, emerging with a fragment of bone as long as his hand, which he crunched happily, leaving the other goblins to bicker over the remaining bones. Chaos considered. They were not a pretty site. Goblins were weak, stupid, and self-destructive. They shouted, and they smelt. Most people avoided them, but Chaos was quite fond of the little creatures. Goblins survived famine, disease and disaster while stronger mortal races died around them (and then were eaten by the goblins, which at least solved the problem of famine). Even more appealing than this resilience, to Chaos, their streak of unrivalled impulsivity. The average goblin, while shorter than a human child and skinnier than titan’s finger, would fling rocks at a dragon with gleeful abandon.

In terms of power, however, goblins tended to be pathetic, seldom surviving long enough to reach the next level of power and become lame. The goblins who presented themselves to Chaos were a particularly wretched bunch. They were skin and bones. Most were missing fingers and teeth or ears. All had been whipped and beaten, judging from the marks on their skin and faces.

Chaos did not approve.

“Serve me,” she said, beckoning the goblins closer. “And I will ensure your lives are better and longer.”

The goblins looked at Chaos, and then at the one-armed goblin, and finally at their own feet, which were not a sight for the fainthearted. They grumbled and bickered, unsure of what to say. Their leader crunched on his bone fragments, swallowed, and threw the remains over his shoulder.

“What are you offering?” he asked.

“A cave to sleep in, whatever food you can find, and—”

“Yeah!” shouted the goblins enthusiastically, and they began chanting ‘Caves! Caves! Caves!”

Goblins were the simplest of mortals. They had no plans for the future, shared whatever they had, and were perfectly happy living on a diet of dirt and their own toenails, but even they needed somewhere to sleep each day. They mostly made do with whatever hole, ditch, or barn was available until they were chased away. Having their own cave was a luxury.

“Right,” Chaos said. “I’ll build you a nest, then.”

A nest was a cave set aside for rest, healing, eating, and all the other necessary and occasionally disgusting things mortals needed to do to keep living. Chaos spat a fireball into her hand, shaping it into a new elemental, larger than the ones that lit her throne room but cooler, kinder.

“Be born, be warm, be kind to those that rest,” she said, and dropped it to the ground.

The goblins crowded around the elemental, a few reaching for it, burning their fingers, and reaching again. The elemental ran off, leading the goblins to one of the caves on the level below Chaos’s throne. It would sit in the middle of the nest and burn gently for as long as Chaos wished it, healing all those around it. The creation of a new room tired Chaos again, but it was necessary. The goblins would only follower her if she provided for them.

The one-armed goblin leader remained in the throne room. He didn’t seem concerned to be face-to-face with a far larger, far fiercer creature. Goblins never were. Chaos watched him with interest as he searched the throne room for any animal bones the other goblins had left behind. She had met many goblins in her time, but this one was different. Smarter, for a start. That wasn’t hard. But there was more to him than that. He moved quickly without making a sound. He was the class of mortal that Chaos called the sneaks, a class that excelled at hiding in shadows and stealing things including, sometimes, life itself. Thieves were a type of sneak, as were scouts, assassins, spies, and any other vocation that required stealth. A sneak’s most important characteristic was perception: not getting caught meant being observant.

Most goblins had no class (of any kind). They simply died to quickly to learn the necessary skills. Chaos was therefore pleasantly surprised to find a goblin sneak in her dungeon.

“Do you have a name, goblin?” Chaos asked.

“Snotgut. And you know what? I don’t think you’re really a tahnago,” Snotgut said.