Melinda.
Melinda's eye twitched, taking in the rather spartan explanations and the particularly nefarious connotations revolving around some of the presented wording.
Just to be sure, she reread the page twice more, wondering if she somehow had—erm, well, gotten it wrong or, maybe, just been imagining things, but, no, there they still were…
Concerning and ominous in all their fucked-up glory.
Half of them were beginning to allude to the notion that she was to become some sort of evil, eldritch horror that had—tentacles, of all things!
"And, what exactly does 'force' my corruption onto living beings precisely entail?" She inquired, surprised when she got a very vivid and utterly shocking touch of insight toward her concerns by way of an almost instinctual urge.
"Oh, ohhhh hell no… No, thank you! I'm not going to do—that… I am a girl! I mean… sure, there was that one time with Beckie from work and the stra…"
Her words trailed off as she willfully snipped that line of reasoning right from her thoughts.
Mindy wasn't gay, but, it was sometimes said nobody was entirely straight, or so her only friend in the entire world liked to remind her every time he saw a decent-looking guy with abs on television.
Honestly, though, she'd always considered that whole concept something of a goof…
"Really?" She demanded, internally groaning at the thought of 'spreading' her corruption, cult style, to unwilling sacrifices waiting at the altar… "Really, really? Couldn't I just do the whole blessing thing? I'm not a bad person! I swear! Maybe selfish at times, but, I ugh, donate..."
When nothing was forthcoming or changing about her status, Melinda sighed and mentally closed the thing, spiriting the window away as she just stewed with her own thoughts.
If this was supposed to be some sick allegory about how the universe perceived her personality, then the 'universe' could go fuck itself!
Mindy wasn't a rapist!
And, she wasn't into that sort of thing either.
Much…
Okay, maybe she'd sort of delved a little headlong into some of the more hardcore Japanese stuff when she was a teenager, but no! Again, for one thing—girl!
Mindy was a woman. So how would such a thing even, you know, work?
She'd once known a chick who claimed to have both sets of equipment, the ugh, ahem, the pitcher's glove and the bat, as it were.
And had morbidly inquired as to what it was like and gotten more or less what she'd desired by way of explanation and pictures.
She hadn't actually slept with her, largely because she was honest enough of a person to have known she'd been—"Don't say weirded out!"—surprised by it all and amazed that it actually looked so individually normal.
But mostly because he… ugh, she, they? Mhm… however it had been that they'd wanted to call themselves didn't matter as they'd already had a boyfriend…
Mindy honestly hadn't felt the loss on that one either. It had been just too much for where her headspace had been.
At any other point in her life, she'd likely as not given it a whirl! But again, those hadn't exactly been her 'best' days…
Worse, considering her growing apprehension, Mindy wasn't at all oblivious to the fact that she didn't appear to actually have a body.
Oh, she was well aware that, somewhere, presumably in another reality at this point, the old sack of meat and bones she'd been born with was, genetically speaking, female.
However, it was also, at this point likely in the process of decomposing, given she wasn't waking up… And, distressingly, it didn't seem like that was going to happen anytime soon.
Obviously, had 'reincarnation' been on the table, a woman was exactly what Mindy would have chosen to be.
She liked being a chick.
Sure, there were some gnarlier bits to get used to once she'd hit puberty, but, for the most part, being a girl had been pretty fun!
Super squishy and wonderfully sensitive! Certainly better than whatever an eldritchnightmare entailed, given how things were starting to pan out…
Was that to be her fate? Relegated to the role of some evil abomination that stole princesses from kingdoms and forcibly had her way with them until they mentally broke and started calling her monster-mommy?
And, what about the ugh—the guys?
Was she supposed to just—you know… shhloop! Stick it in where no sun deigned to shine and, mhm, simply hope for the best?
That admittedly sort of made her snicker a little bit, disturbing as the prospect was given the situation, but she just couldn't help likening the idea to some of her first experiences in bed…
'Stick it in and hope for the best' pretty much perfectly exemplified how things had more or less gone down. Or, up—inside, back and forth really fast and…
"Mindy, stop being horny! Bad girl! You literally might be a tentacle god. Sex jokes really aren't what we need right now!"
Still, regardless of her halfhearted admonishment, her mental smile still remained as she tried to shake herself of the intrusive thoughts that were neither here nor there, a wolf howl escaping her nonexistent lips as she, as the saying went, barked at the moon.
Ah, it was all just fun and games, she knew, a way to help cope and, she had always said, if you can't laugh at yourself, then you had bigger problems than worrying about others.
Her small fit of enjoyment was a tidbit of normalcy and fun she'd decidedly needed, though it faded away as she was left there, shaking her head at the thought of it all.
After a span, trying to focus on the very real issue that was 'what' she was supposed to do next, she found herself at a slight loss.
The young woman contemplated that very dilemma for no insignificant span of time, trying to figure it out while continuing to just exist as little more than a bundle of poorly contained thoughts and tangent ideas.
However, when a curious sensation overcame her being, pulsing at her consciousness with a non-too-subtle insistence, Melinda found herself intrigued, if for no other reason than it being a decidedly pleasant break from the monotony of nothing.
It was like an itch, a sort of back-of-the-mind nudging that shifted her attention about the dark expanse.
She gnawed on the feeling, trying to zero in on the only other stimuli besides her status that she'd actually noticed within the void to a degree of fervent determination.
There!
A little to her left, a little down, closer… she could—almost make it out… Then, as though a veil was lifting, Melinda found herself inexplicably somewhere that definitely wasn't her dorm room.
The world around her was dark, shrouded in hazy shadows, her perception of what lay before her coming by way of an almost aerial point of view, muddled and distorted as it was.
If she focused, really forced her mind to pay attention, some of the details resolved themselves, a curious scene unfolding before her that had the woman as perplexed as she was, bemusedly, intrigued.
There were fires, large and cobbled-together things, without permanent fixtures of stones or pits, merely large roaring blazes that consumed piles of dry and green timber alike, illuminating the backdrop to a startling display of pitched mortal combat that flowed around the flickering light like the ripples of a wave.
All around her viewpoint, Melinda could see the battle.
Tiny figures wrapped in little more than tattered pelts butchering each other in a chaotic melee without rhyme or apparent reason. It was an utter mosh, the diminutive creatures seeming to slaughter each other by the dozens, and all while screeching like they loved it…
Occasionally, a few might pause amidst the fighting, seeming to try and reorient themselves before dashing off with whooping yips, crashing against a slowly manifesting side which was clearly on its back foot.
Though she herself couldn't quickly tell the difference between combatant to combatant, they clearly had some ability to discern friend and foe…
The, for all intents and purposes, ragged camp turned battlefield found itself rapidly overrun by the victors that harried the routing force like braying dogs, felling them like wheat before the scythe.
More and more of the tiny green—well, 'things' that vaguely resembled child-sized, grotesque adults were cut down during the retreat, the mass of those driven away howling in insensate terror as they fled in all directions, desperately trying to escape the carnage.
That was when she heard it, a curiously clear sound amidst an otherwise discordant frenzy, a lone voice that whispered again and again, allowing Melinda's focus to clarify even further beyond the slight haze of it all, her attention fixing upon a single creature as it drove a knife through the neck of another.
"Please, please, please! Need god! Need goblin god! Not fair! Not fair 'Blackwood' tribe has god! Blackwood, stupid, doesn't deserve god! Gube deserves god! Gube would be great goblin for god!"
The tiny creature hissed as a thrown bone spear sliced through its forearm, cursing into the darkness and making rude gestures with its fingers.
Another goblin rushed at it from behind a tree, practically foaming at the mouth as it bellowed in maddened fury, wildly slashing through the darkness as the creature Mindy had been watching screeched.
Surprise and fear causing it to desperately dodge away from the aggressor's jagged bone blade.
The rage-filled little nightmare seemed quicker and stronger than its repeatedly praying target, foul and warted tongue hanging sloppily from the side of its mouth, bloody and dripping with drool, its free hand constantly trying to snatch at the lower garb of the other while babbling something truly incomprehensible.
"No! No mate! Not with Blackwood!" Her creature spat, the one whose voice was ringing in her head like a strange echo. The monster keeping its distance the best it could while somehow responding in the same guttural tongue as the other that, somehow, Melinda could also, curiously, understand.
"Go find other female! Go, go before Gube stab!"
More barking yips, more keening whines, the pair continuing to circle, feinting and dodging until, true to her word, Gube flourished another small knife of her own, much lesser than the example she'd lost in her prior opponent's neck, catching the rampaging goblin at the throat just deep enough to cause it to start burbling bubbling blood.
Still, the injury didn't seem to faze the creature, its crazed attacks appearing to only come faster and faster until it eventually managed to tackle Gube, who, together, went down in a tangle of limbs and gnashing teeth!
Melinda saw the intrepid little thing tear a chunk of the other creature's ear off with a ripping pop, yet another injury her foe seemed to care little, if at all, for as it tore at her flesh and clothes alike.
Mindy was just about to write the poor girl off, the goblin finding herself both pinned and harried by claw and knife, but then, little by little, the frenzied assault of the seemingly inexhaustible barbarian—slowed.
Its limbs moved with an ever-greater sense of lethargy, gaining in apparent weight before, once noticing her opening, the tiny female plunged her knife into her attacker's guts, twisting and ripping her way through his insides, which spilled hotly across her chest in a cascade of steaming viscera.
Snarling, the survivor pushed the still twitching and wheezing creature away, standing to peer about herself as though she hadn't just been in a life-or-death struggle.
Then, she turned and jogged along her not-so-merry way, presumably, to catch up with the others of her tribe…
"See," she grunted, all but spitting the blood from her mouth. "Blackwood stupid! Stupid god, stupid power, stupid goblin! Stupid, stupid, stupid! Why they get god? What so special?"
Mindy was about to question if the berserker-like rage she'd seen was the 'power' the plucky creature was talking about before; like a fading dream, Melinda found her attention drifting, rising from the considerable focus she'd momentarily enjoyed to return to a more dispersed disposition.
She found her gaze unable to recapture the singular goblin she'd briefly followed, her lone form dissipating into the greater mass which surged through the woods, eventually losing or killing those few who followed too far into its inky depths…
It was curious how they all seemed to reunite through their escape, a number nearing what Melinda was approximating to be close to fifty survivors or more, slowly flowing back together to form a dragging column of bedraggled and beaten goblins.
And, they were goblins…
Honestly, even if she were to try and ignore the almost blatant similarities between the creatures and the more fantastical examples of human stories, what else would she have called them, given they were so—goblin-like?
Again, she tried to pick her goblin out from the crowd, Gube, as she could recall the creature's name, but there was simply nothing for it.
All of them just looked the same to her, with, of course, the odd variation in height and shape that did very little to accurately differentiate one individual from another.
All were basically androgynous to her inspection, battered, bloody, bleeding, and exhausted as they were, to be sure, and also marching without apparent destination.
Before long, it became clear they were simply moving without true direction as they listlessly followed behind the lone broad-shouldered figure that was discernible if for nothing more than that it was the largest by far of their number.
Traveling, en masse, as if they were doing so for the sake of escape alone, at least, until the group stumbled upon the mouth of a hidden cavern.
She sat mystified as a few of the creatures seemed to approach the opening, one of them placing a metal-tipped spear to the side, lighting a branch with flames before taking a deep breath and crawling under the overhang.
The creature seemed to wave the fire about the entrance, not looking for something on the ground and more—searching for gods only knew what, given how bizarre it was to the naked eye…
After a time, the goblin took its first breath, evidently satisfied with something before heading further into the cave system's depths, Mindy soon discovering that her own sight wasn't at all impeded by the rock and stone.
It was a strange if not all-too-familiar experience. Especially for something so viscerally real given she could definitely feel what her gaze was piercing through in a nearly physical manner…
The overhead stone just faded to near transparency as she focused on the creatures within, just as easily solidifying when Melinda released her scrutiny, returning to the large and unremarkable overhang of grey lichen-covered rock that it was.
Idly, she observed as the first creature to explored the rather spacious interior, the gremlin wandering for a span inside it.
Its comically long and drooping nose even sniffed at the air upon occasion, tasting the stagnant interior with grim contemplation before calling back to the others, which, at its insistence, began crawling inside…
All of it leaving a very perplexed Mindy to stare in equal parts wonder and very uncertain confusion as to what 'exactly' the point was for any of this.