The Goblin's Crown

Chapter Five: Return

"The Hollow, I'm certain. Knut does love his blood sport. The two of you are a match made in hell." He chuckled at me. "How regrettable." He ducked back out the door. "Come with me, I will take you to him." He made a motion for me to follow and again my feet obeyed a goblin's whim.

We journeyed in silence, out of the glittering palace and the village with streets paved with gold and plunged into a darkness that even my gifted night sight could not penetrate. He took me down into a labyrinthine system of caves. Each one just as gloomy, damp, and cold as the last. I could never in a million lifetimes, learn the way, yet Kai seemed to know the path so well he could find it blind.

"What is The Hollow?" I asked, my stomach turning sour as I noticed a little goblin struggling in an enormous spider's web. I sped up my pace, not wanting to meet the web's maker. I stuck closer to Kai, never drifting out of his shadow.

"It is something akin to your arenas or theaters. A big open place with stadiums surrounding it, where people go to watch warriors disembowel one another or prisoners be devoured by beasts. You'll see it for yourself soon enough. It's very popular in the Underground. Knut never misses a show." Kai explained. He looked back at me and snickered. "Perhaps we should throw you into the Hollow's fighting pit and see how you fare. We'd make a killing. If you can be so vicious with a butter knife, I'd love to see what you can do with a proper weapon."

"Lunge at me again, and I'll be more than happy to show you." I retorted, glancing back over my shoulder to look for spiders.

Kai laughed.

Finally, the cave spat us out, but what lay beyond the dreadful tunnels, was an even scarier and stranger place. A barren forest where gnarled, black trees, each with trunks larger than some small villages, reached up into the void above us with dead, twisted limbs. The things were so old, they had fossilized, becoming one with the earth and the stone around them. Dead ahead of us, stood the most massive of the trees. Its trunk bore a gaping wound, its insides hollowed out. Down in the mist that hovered over the ground up to my waist, little goblins scurried, hurrying into the hollow tree. It was then that I understood where the arena got its name.

A pair of hook-nosed goblins in plain farmer's clothing chattered to one another excitedly in their garbled native tongue as they whizzed past us. "It seems the next fight is about to begin. We should hurry. It would be a pity if you were to miss the greatest show of goblin prowess." Said Kai sarcastically. It sounded as if Kai was one goblin that didn't care for such sport. Even then I found that odd.

I didn't just hear the crowd's cheers as I walked into The Hollow. I felt them deep in my bones and in the thrumming of my heart that began to follow along with the beats of the war drums being played by several, scarcely dressed, man sized goblins along the perimeter of the fighting pit. Over their faces, they wore savage headdresses made up of vulture feathers and skulls that I wasn't certain were human or not. The barely-there ridges above the eyes didn't seem right, nor the sharp angle of the jaw.

Around the pit were numerous tall stadiums, packed with the smaller variety of goblins, while all along the tree's inner walls, the man-sized ones perched on mushroom like growths.

"We need to go to the royal seats." Kai said, turning me and pointing towards a mushroom bench above the Hollow's entrance.

"How do we get up there?" I asked. I didn't see a staircase.

"Make way, you disgusting creatures! Prince Knut's bride is here for the show!" Kai bellowed. The common goblins screeched merrily and threw themselves at our feet, forming a staircase of wiggling bodies all the way up to the royal mushroom.

Kai smirked at my shocked, awed, expression. "After you, Princess Stabhappy." He mocked me. I tried to take a step up, but the wiggling of the body beneath my toes, sent me teetering back to solid ground. "No fear, you aren't hurting them." Kai laughed at me for what felt like the hundredth time that hour.