Mush drifted. He didn't know for how long. He felt nothing. He could see nothing. And yet, somehow, everything felt kind of... green.
He knew that he was dead. The last thing he remembered was tripping as he scrambled to get away from the rampaging squigs, and turning just in time to see a gaping maw full of wickedly sharp teeth descending upon him. And now he was here. Nowhere. Just floating. Was this the afterlife? He had been hoping for something a little more. This was boring.
As he drifted, he gradually became aware of a new sensation. He had the feeling that someone was watching him. The sensation grew, as though the watcher was staring more intently at him, or perhaps getting closer. Or bigger. The feeling made him uncomfortable, but of course there was nothing he could do about it. There was no point being nervous, anyway. He was already dead. Somehow knowing this didn't help. The feeling continued to grow, pressing down on him. Squashing him. He wanted to scream, but he couldn't. He had no voice. No body. This was so unfair. He had died, and now he was going to die again, crushed out of existence by this feeling. A double death. Just as he was certain that he had been reduced to a disembodied pancake, the voice came.
"MUSH!" the voice boomed. Mush couldn't so much hear the voice as feel it. Like it was everywhere around him, and inside him. "MUSH! WOT YOU DOIN'?"
Mush wasn't really sure how to answer, or even how he could answer. He had no mouth, no voice. Besides, the answer to the question seemed rather obvious. He wasn't doing anything - just floating. And being squashed...
"NO YOU IDJIT!" boomed the voice. "I MEAN BEFORE DAT. WOT YOU DOIN' GETTIN' ET BY A SQUIG. YOUSE SUPPOSED TO BE A DEAD CUNNIN' SHAMAN!"
Mush felt immediately defensive. He hadn't planned on getting eaten by the squig. Things hadn't gone entirely to plan. If his warriors (and those stupid furry trolls) had been better at sneaking, they wouldn't have had to face the squigs at all. His plan had been great. It was just the execution that was lacking. It was so hard to find good help...
"IF YOUR BOYZ CAN'T DO DA PLAN, IT'S NOT A GOOD PLAN MUSH!" The voice thundered disapprovingly. "YOU NEEDZ TO BE MORE CUNNIN'! BRUTALLY CUNNIN'!"
Mush now realised what was going on. He was in the presence of Mork, the great greenskin god of magic and cleverness. And Mork was not pleased with him. Squashed as he already was, Mush felt himself withering further under the weight of his god's disapproval. Mork was going to squash him into a splutchy pancake in an act of divine judgment...
"NO YOU IDJIT," boomed the voice once more. "I IZ NOT GOING TO SQUASH YOU INTO A SPLUTCHY PANCAKE DIS TIME. YOU DONE STUFFED UP, BUT YOU GOT TALENT. I IZ CHOOZING YOU. YOU IZ GOING TO BE MY PROPER SERVANT. YOU IZ GOING TO BE MORE CUNNIN' DIS TIME, AND SHOW ALL DEM GOBBOS WOT A PROPER CUNNIN' SHAMAN CAN DO!"
Mush felt the oppressive weight upon him abruptly starting to lift. He was elated at this turn of events. Mork himself was entrusting him with a mission. This was validation of his vision. He would form a mighty Waaaagh and all the tribes would be drawn to his magnificence...
His thoughts were cut short as the crushing weight swiftly returned, twice as strong.
"AND ANOTHER THING, MUSH," boomed Mork disdainfully. "YOU IZ WEEDY. I DUNNO HOW YOU GOT ALL DEM GOBBOS TO FOLLOW YOU, BUT YOU IZ DA LEAST INSPIRING GOBBO I EVER SET EYEZ ON. IF I AM GONNA KEEP WATCHIN' YOU, YOU NEED TO BE LESS PATHETIC. I IZ GIVING YOU SOME POWER SO YOU IZ LESS HURTY TO ME EYEZ!"
The sensation of being crushed eased once more, and was replaced instead with a feeling like being struck by lightning, and thrust into a furnace all at the same time. Mush could almost feel himself inflating, like a balloon of power. As the agony began to ease, his spirits rose. He knew he would return a mightier shaman than he had been before. All he had dreamed suddenly felt more possible. If only Room was there to share it with him, but somehow he knew in his heart that Room too had fallen in the battle in the caves. A sudden bout of loneliness and melancholy overtook him as he imagined fulfilling his dreams without his brother at his side. He wondered if Mork might have seen fit to send Room back as well...
The crushing weight was suddenly back again. "WOT," boomed the voice scornfully. "YOU REALLY NEED DAT MORON AS WELL? HE'S COMPLETELY USELESS! WOT YOU NEED 'IM FOR?"
Mush tried to ignore the distaste oozing from every word, and focused instead upon the two or three actually useful he could ever remember Room doing. He focused upon the strength they offered together, and his need to have his brother's marginally more impressive brawn to accompany his superior brain. They were a team...
There was a pause, and Mush felt his mind gradually overcome with Mork's supreme disgust. The pause dragged on for a very long time, and Mush wondered if Mork was changing his mind about his choice of champion. But eventually...
"FINE," grumped Mork sourly. "'AVE IT YOUR WAY. I'M GONNA REGRET DIS..."
*****
Mush was dragged back to consciousness. Breath wheezed through his lungs, but it was difficult. The crushing weight remained. He blinked a bit, and realised that he was lying under the dead weight of the same squig that had been about to eat him. As his eyes refocused, he could see that his own hand still gripped the hilt of his blade, which had been driven into the mouth of the squig and up into its brain. "Mork save us", he gasped. There was no way he could ever have done that on his own.
Carefully removing his arm from the dead squig's mouth without losing too much skin to its ridiculously nasty teeth, Mush then managed to wriggle out from underneath its corpse. Brushing himself off and looking back, he realised there was no way he could ever have climbed out from under that thing before. He looked down at his arms. They seemed... stronger. Or at least, marginally less weedy than that had been previously.
Mush looked around the tunnel. There were dead squigs and goblins everywhere. Nothing was moving. The battle had been carnage, but he had no idea how long ago it had taken place - there were no wounded, groaning on the ground. He wondered what to do next. He was just turning to sneak back out of the caves to his camp when noises started to reach him from behind. He froze and listened intently. It sounded like it might be an enemy patrol, coming from the ruins of the old Dwarf gates.
Mush moved quietly away from the approaching noise, further down the tunnel and around a corner. The noise grew as the patrol headed right down the passageway in which he was hiding. The goblins muttered to each other as they picked their way over all the dead bodies. Some of them sounded familiar.
Daring to peek back around the corner, Mush realised that the patrol belonged to his own tribe. What were they doing coming from that direction? Maybe they had defected. Mush pulled out his dagger and started to reach for one of his magic mushrooms when one of the goblins spotted his hiding place.
"Boss, you iz alive!" he exclaimed. "We thought a squig got you."
Mush stepped out from the shadows, straightening up to his full height as though he was affronted at such a suggestion. It was all a show, of course. He had thought a squig got him too...
"Of course I iz alive, Greebly!" He managed to sound somewhat indignant at the suggestion of his squiggly demise. "No squig can kill me!"
The small band of gobbos seemed to reassess him as he straightened and spoke, as though they were seeing something for the first time. There was a look of respect in their eyes that Mush had never seen before.
"Are... are you OK boss?" asked Greebly uncertainly. "You seem... different."
Clearly Mork's blessing had made a impact. Mush didn't really want to explain what had happened, so he took a different approach. "Of course I iz OK," he snapped. "But why are you coming from dat way? Dat's da Weird Toof camp."
The goblins glanced at each other uncertainly.
"Iz our camp now, boss," said Greebly. "We won da fight. Dey iz wiv us now."
Mush could barely believe it. He had been certain the battle was lost. Maybe his minions were not so useless after all.
"Good, good," he said, covering his surprise. "Of course we won. My plan was a good'un! Did we get da squigs?"
Greebly's eyes went wide, losing their focus as though remembering some suppressed horror. "Yer boss," he half whispered. "So many squigs..."
The other goblins were all nodding in vigorous agreement when a noise behind Mush made them all turn suddenly. A bedraggled figure lurched from around another corner nearby, dragging a dimly glowing blade behind it. Mush barely managed to suppress a squeal of delight. It was Room. He looked terrible, but he was alive.
Room blinked dazedly at the assembled goblins. Eventually his gaze fell upon Mush, and his eyes seemed to regain some of their focus.
"Hey Mush," he slurred. "Did we win?"
It pleases me to hear that Mush has become marginally less weedy. Not as much as killing him pleased me, but I must take my wins where I may...
ReplyDeleteYou can't keep a good goblin down. And you can't keep Mush down either, because we need him. For now...
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