10 Fear

Wanting to make sure, or rather, wishing to disprove his own conclusion, he took unsteady but quick steps toward the growing crowd gathered where most of the goblins that had decided to sleep outside had been.

All had awoken now.

Except for one, who may appear to be sleeping on his stomach at first, only that he wasn't breathing and his face, which had faced the ground moments ago, was twisted into a stifled scream.

His expression distorted by sheer terror, his green body had hints of purple intertwined into it, dried saliva had run from his mouth, all seemed to indicate that he had been suffocated by something.

This goblin was the only one that had been killed.

Whilst everyone was either panicking, trying to find out what had happened or just standing around without any clue about how to react, the young goblin could only realise the incongruity of the situation.

By all means, it was no simple beast that had just wandered in and killed one of them, it had snuck through the fences, wandered into the tribe without being caught.

When it decided to slay a goblin, the creature chose to manoeuvre through the sleeping goblins outside and picked the one right in the center of it all, it seemed nothing short of illogical.

The fact that it used suffocation of all means to do the deed was far from something anything they knew would or could do, on top of it all, this being had done it all without awakening anyone and then placed his body in the one way that would allow the corpse to pass of as slumbering.

This was the work of a creature of great intellect, the choices it had made couldn't be random, it had done exactly what it wanted to do.

It had shown them that they weren't safe, that an unknown beast could sneak up on them in their sleep whenever it wanted, kill them silently and leave without anyone ever being able to come to their aid.

Of course, the goblins may be led to believe that the true culprit was one of them and not some mystical, never seen before creature risen from the depths of darkness.

The youth only had to take one look inside of his fallen brethren's mouth to know otherwise however.

The murder weapon was still obstructing his throat.

A mass of pungent rot and vile, gooey black blood was stuck in there, sticking and eroding at the soft tissue inside.

The reek of death assaulted his senses relentlessly, making him gag and tear up simply for being in contact with it for an instant, he puked not far away.

The chattering amongst the green-skinned monster only got louder as their fear and worry spiked, the cold hand of the beast had now taken hold of all of their hearts, with just one death, they had all been affected deeply.

Death of one of their peers didn't amount to much for them usually, they may be shocked at the moment, but ultimately, they would just take notes of the reason why that goblin died and avoid it.

The unknown killer had done much more than this, he had rattled them to their cores, perhaps much more than it itself had expected.

However, the goblins weren't a disorganised bunch, the instant the chieftain showed himself, in all his grandeur and authority, his mere presence soothed his tribesmen.

They didn't know when, but Gobstroz had gone and gathered the hunters.

With Stolgob and Pokzgob by his sides, there was no need for a motivational speech, this trio alone was a paramount to strength in this tribe, they may be uneducated, primitive and objectively stupid monsters all things considered, but around this lake, in this miniature world cut off from the rest of the world, they were actually the mightiest tribe.

No one wanted problems with them.

"You three!" he called three hunters over as he slammed the top of his stone club onto the ground.

His stern and utterly serious disposition made everyone reflexively go down on their knees, making the tall goblin sigh and shake his head.

"The three of you will travel to the other tribes and warn them of the unknown dangers, at once!" he didn't dilly dally on any details, the hunters knew what they needed for such a task and he didn't bother to explain his reasoning either.

He could have tried and uncover what the culprit truly was before alerting the rest but that was simply idiotic to him, they had all achieved a sturdy state of peace and cooperation, also, even if he didn't particularly like any of them, they could still be allies in case there wasn't only a single monster.

Gobstroz suppressed a slight smile as he prepared to continue speaking.

"We will all be working toward improving our defences!" in the end, he couldn't help but smile as he saw everyone's expression turn sour instantly.

It was a point of contention in the tribe, the fences had been built under the supervision of Gobert when he was still a youngster, so it had been a little bit more than ten years since then.

The construction had always been meant to be expanded on and finalised, but finding arms willing to do that wasn't a simple task, it was probably even harder than actually finishing the defences.

Now that fear would be fueling their movements, they would be building efficiently and with attention.

Turning a bad event into a good one was the strongest suit of any leader, or so Gobstroz believed.

As the three hunters finished packing up their things and the chieftain gave out other orders, the abhorrent murderer watched from afar, sitting in a tree.

He thought nothing, looking simultaneously at the three messengers and the rest of the tribe.

Which should Loimos eliminate first? Was it best to avoid the rest of the living being alerted or was it to clear up the bulk of the living here?

Which option would lead to the demise of all life around the lake the quickest?