Generational Curses

Korgulg pulled the poisoned dart from his neck and watched the corrupted black liquid snake its way through the veins in his arm. His pale skin was nearly translucent, a testament to his long life in the caverns under Gharaldurgat, and he watched it wend from his thick arms down to his hands. A lesser goblin would have been dead already but Korgulg Mah’z Ar Ragash, chief of the goblin clans of the ancient underground city of Morigoth, was far from common. It would kill him, he knew, but he would fight for every last moment.

Korgulg closed his eyes and took a deep breath. He smelled the dank air, redolent of earth and decay. A thousand odors. A lifetime of scents mixed with memory and hope. 

Moss. He is a child, running through the streets of Morigoth, laughing with his friends, committing every alley, every gutter and hidden crevice to memory.

Rotten eggs. His face is cold, pressed into a pool of sulfur water and held down by his father’s boot. Pain for feeding a hungry child. The price of compassion.

The iron tang of blood. He is in the Pits, holding the twitching head of his father in one hand, his glaive in the other, its silver blade dripping black gore.

Earth. He takes up his father’s crown. He sits on his father’s throne. He holds his own child in his hands, still wet and tethered to the First Wife’s womb.

Ash. First Wife Asham’ar, dead from childbirth. Her body—washed, oiled, and wrapped in fine goatskin—burns on the pyre. The shamans intone their impotent dirges, the Lesser Wives wail, and the flames devour his beloved. Her death is a void, a yawning abyss without resolution.

He turned the poisoned dart over in his hand. It was made of polished wood with a twisting gold leaf scrollwork embossed up the shaft that ended where the red fletching began. An elegant work of art, not like the profane weapons forged by goblins. But the interwoven runes were unmistakably goblin and they spelled out a single name.

Dorgurag. His son.

The old goblin gripped a chair to steady himself. His knees ached, and they labored to hold up his weight, but his mind stayed with the memory of his son. He named him Dorgurag, an obscure word meaning hope and light. Korgulg saw his people needed change. Centuries of violence had given them an evil reputation in the sunlit places of the world. They were pariahs, leperous outcasts, driven underground by the other races of men. Korgulg was determined to break his people free of the bloodlust. As Chief, he valued innovation and knowledge. He made the first tentative steps towards trade with the surface races. When Dorgurag was old enough, Korgulg sent him to study at Khel Almar, the great seat of knowledge for the surface world.

Do you know why I’m sending you to learn with the race of desert men? He asked.

I think so.

Tell me.

It’s time for the goblin to change. This world is moving forward, and we are stagnant, Dorgurag said.

We are primitive and barbarous. And what will happen to the race of goblin if we continue down this path?

We will die underground by our own hand.

Yes, by our own hand, said Korgulg.

He had not seen his son since the day he left for the world of Men.

His legs trembled and he faltered. He fell into a table, papers scattered, a wooden bowl crashed to the ground, a vast hollow sound echoed in the Great Hall. He sank to his knees and stared at the hearth until the only sound left was the snapping of the fire and his own labored breathing.

He felt his head swim and the confusion of an addled mind when death was near. He shook his head and tried to hold on to tangible thought for a few moments longer. Perhaps Dorgurag was somewhere close, a watcher in the darkness, to ensure the poison worked.

‘Dorgorag?’ he called through his choked throat.

Silence.

‘Dorgorag. Are you here, son?’

He coughed. Blood flowed like tar from his mouth. 

‘Dorgorag, I am grateful. You didn’t take me to the Pits like I did with my father.’

Korgulg’s body spasmed and he hit the floor. There was a sharp cry and the sound of footsteps rushing towards him. Strong hands gripped his leather doublet and turned him over. He looked up into the bronzed and weathered face of his only son.

‘Father,’ he choked.

Korgulg looked into his son’s eyes and saw them thick with unabashed tears. He didn’t grieve for his own father, but his son wept for him. Despite the pain, he smiled. He wanted to tell him to be strong. He wanted to tell him he knew he would do better, just as he did better than his own father, but his mouth was full of blood, and he had no strength to speak. 

He tried to blink the tears from his own eyes, but he wasn’t able to focus. He blinked again, but his vision was murky, as if he looked up from under a pool of water at Dorgorag’s sun-bronzed face. He heard the rush of blood in his ears grow louder. Still smiling, he took one final breath. As he exhaled, he was on the shore of lake Bulah Mogg, her endless obsidian caverns glittered in the distance. First Wife Asham’ar waited on its black sand shores. She held her tiny hand out to him, and he trembled when he took it. For Korgulg Mah’z Ar Ragash and his beloved Asham’ar Mah’z Ar Ragash, there would be no eternal combat in the Arena of Yogh. There would be no drums of war, no rivers of blood, no wailing and slaughter, no interminable suffering in death. Their spirits would walk the peaceful shores of Bulah Mogg where they would wait for their son to join them in eternity.

***

Tim Brumbaugh is an MFA student, high school English teacher, father, and husband. When he's not seeing to all of the responsibilities that those things entail, he can be found somewhere in North Texas hammering away at his first novel or getting lost in one of his numerous hobbies. Follow him on Twitter @tk_brumbaugh