Goblin

It wasn’t all that bad, this Isekai stuff.

You’d never really been into it, messy wish fulfillment garbage for the most part, at least that’s how you’d felt about almost all of the new stuff, but you gave a lot of the older ones a pass. You’d always been a bit of a fan of Rayearth, you know… the classics. You’d seen a few of the newer things, the ‘I’m so special’ or ‘Angst is me!’ kinds tended to make you roll your eyes in wonder at how stupid things could get.

But that was a digression. The whole Isekai thing wasn’t too terrible.

At least that’s what you told yourself now after you’d woke up sucking hard at a strangely green boob while your senses came to you in slow strained realization.  Apparently it was probably a good thing that under developed Lungs and throat made sure that you hadn’t given yourself away with a litany of curses in some strange ‘foreign’ language.

Because that was totally what you’d almost done.

Thankfully that particular freakout had been almost a year or two ago, and you’d since gotten past the initial stages of shock, grief, and dismay. Which was a good thing, after all with your new situation you weren’t quite sure what kind of troubles getting up and cursing in tongues would have gotten a babe like you’d been. You didn’t need to add worries to your brand new life like that.

Right now you had other things to worry about.

“Stop it… just stop!” You roared with a still squeaky voice as all around you chaos abided, the babble of a thousand mouths all speaking different things at once seeming to quiet down into a hushed tone, half a dozen squabbles all abandoned at once as large green ears turned their way to listen. “Stop everything and just LISTEN!”

It was not the first, nor would it be the last time you’d commanded such attention. Unnatural as it felt, you couldn’t help but realize how intently every ear turned focused upon you with a literally inhuman intensity.

“Ah, thank you son.” The larger goblin beside you patted your head paternally; his graying dredlocks disarrayed around a large and intensely shiny crown. There was a look of pride as he allowed himself a small smile. “It is with great pleasure that I announce to you my beloved subjects, today is the day in which we have received the entreaty with Solantis, Elfherth, and Deepdwell. Official recognition by our neighbors of our status as a kingdom, of our borders here in Warlands, and allowances for trade. We make our first steps into respect and prosperity for all Goblin kind!”

All around you the crowds now roared with a single voice all rose to fever pitch.

It said something that this official proclamation of kingdomhood was being delivered into what was essentially an oversized wooden shanty, so rickety that you expected shit to start falling apart now as the crowd got ever more rowdy. Everything painted painstakingly purple after a wave of enthusiasm had swept the tribes that comprised your ‘father’s’ rulership.

Even now though, you were wary, two years you’d spent growing up learning of the great goblin who’d rallied the tribes together and claimed leadership of them by sacred right, and his most favored matron who’d given birth to a single kit.

You.

A single birth was pretty much unheard of, and it didn’t hurt that you developed faster than any other child, started asking questions and acting with purpose before any other kit could find it in themselves to speak more than three words.

You were after all the Goblin Prince. Divine providence of the Ald-mother herself.

You’re esteemed father had spent the last ten years of his life unifying goblin kind, teaching them to stand on their own as more than bandits and scavengers, then gave them a collective dream. You were the proof and pinnacle of their admiration and drive.

It was too bad that what you’d really inherited was a kingdom of chronically stupid bints with such a casual disregard for their own lives that they basically had won their right to self rule by taking up residence in the ancient remnants of what equated to a magical nuclear war.

Ok… so not really so much stupid… as suicidal to a fault. The average goblin could literally outpace pretty much every other sentient species in learning and understanding pace