Final Confessions of a Goblin Emperor 2

Chapter 1



This autobiography is dedicated to my dear sister, Erita Brashfall, and to my beloved sons and daughters.
Little sister, I love you, like the stars and moons. That is why I’ve dedicated this work to you. I pray that you may read this once I’m dead and gone, which I don’t think will be in the very distant future. I find it funny, that for all the hate that’s been aimed at at me that I should die so mundanely, swiped up by the hand of cold death, before my enemies have the chance to gouge me from this world. In a way I really wish they wouldn’t leave me here to waste away, but you said it yourself, people are pathetic and weak, they always fail you in the end.
But not you little sister, never you. You’re the one person that never failed me once, not once in my one hundred and ten years of life. I beg your forgiveness for all my short-comings, and that I’ve forced this abject, loveless life on you, that you must wander as a villain through the world. But now here, at the end, I have to wonder, were we the villains? We might have called ourselves thusly, rejoiced in it at the time. Were the three of us the real evils of the age, or were we scapegoats to history? After all, I wasn’t the one who killed ten-thousand goblins in the Cairn-Stone pass, that was the fair, heroic race of the elves. Evith didn’t force the starved, beaten, oppressed natives of the Southern Colonies to rebel, that was Tharxstra, let him burn in hell. You didn’t rape those girls Erita, mechanics aside, it was the commander of the Night-Guard who delighted in their juvenile forms, their pubescent screams. Were we wrong to avenge those innocents? Were we evil for fighting the wickedness that the world had covered up or relabeled as ‘unfortunate’? I have to think that we did more good than most in the world. Now, I’m not saying that we were Yathrina Rets or Feiy Harrows, we did do great and terrible evils in our own right. We pillaged, we poisoned and we assassinated those who opposed us, is that real goodness? We tyrannized and degraded as well, we vaulted ourselves up as gods, we were The Goblin Emperor, The Serpent King and The Green Lady, and we became monsters. How many goblins did I kill when I dissolved the ancient chiefdoms? How many hundreds of thousands of soldiers died in Evith’s war of succession? How many men have you sent to death for crimes against the Northern Republic, which you so delicately enforce? There is nothing in this whole world that will ever change the fact that some of what we did was wrong.
Decide for yourself little sister, I can ask no more of you than that, but also no less. You are blessed with the endless life of a Cambion. You have all eternity to figure it out, but more than that, you have eternity to change it all if you so desire. I scarcely have the time to dictate what I remember to my scribe, so, for once, you’re the one who makes the decisions and I am but the bystander. I ask but one concession of you, pass this on to the others, especially to the Zybaylis’s they need it most of all, and to Feiy as well, and tell her thank you, for everything she’s done. I still love her, my oldest friend.
Vasalia be praised, I can do no else.

The beginning is always a fine place to start as father used to say, so I think that will be my starting place. I was born Enath Jorus Brashfall on Shenkalmeth, day ninety-seven, 7997, to Tercet and Becara Brashfall, at the town of Deep Springs, in the heart of the northern colonies. I weighed around twelve zilocs, a good size for a babe, especially one born to poor farmers like my parents. I was, by all telling, a very ugly baby, save my bright brown eyes which were said to look intelligent, even at that young age. I came a little later than expected, mother said that I always made my own time when going places, and I suppose that’s true. My infancy went without a major complication and I grew up to be a healthy strong-willed little boy, who fortunately got better looking with age.
We were by no means a wealthy family, but mother was a mid-wife as opposed to a house wife, and we had a little more than the other family’s around us. We never went hungry, not once, not even after my little brother, Evith, was born four years later, nor when Erita was born, another two years after that.
I, along with my siblings, had the great privilege of attending a public school to learn mathematics and science and history when we weren’t aiding father with the planting or the harvest. In retrospect I learned very little from my first few teachers, but I am grateful for what I did learn. There were another dozen children who were in my class, all vile, runny-nosed, little urchins who’s highest aspiration was to do nothing more than plow and fuck, save the minister’s daughter, who was none other than Sonata Feiy Harrows. I doubt I would have kept on at that place if not for her. She provided a light of scholarship that helped to illuminate me. She was my very best childhood friend, even now I can recount her sweet little face and her bright blue eyes beneath that pile of brown hair. She always smiled. We were a rather eccentric pair of children to see zipping about town, but that’s why the two of us were so well liked in the community. She filled me with aspiration, and hope and a thousand other righteous things that I could have used a lot more of over my life.

It’s true what they say, you know. It is a rich man’s world, and the two of us never forgot that. Her poverty was inflicted on her by her loony father, though Reverent Father Harrows was at his core a good man, and mine was forced on me by the ridiculously rigid caste system that exists among Colonial Humans. I was born a farmer and was expected to die as a farmer. We worked hard to be noticed for someone to say ‘fine job Enath, Feiy, your parents must be proud’. But it worked. I was appointed to numerous little duties as a child, even playing the Son of the Celestine in our Crystal Night play. Feiy was equally rewarded, but inside we wanted real power, by the time our twelfth year rolled around we were once again bored with life and were hunting for new frontiers.
That was how the two of us began practicing magic.

-----If the following narration bores you I’m sorry, but upon the presentation of the finished copy of this biography I decided to intersperse a section on the nature of ‘magic’ or the elemental science, mystic art or way of the shadow and light. Magic is a broad, and frankly vulgar term for the art form of using one’s psychokinetic aura to manipulate the four energies which comprise the world: fire, water, wind and earth, in a way that suits its wielder’s needs. There are eight components to magic, this is a novice’s over view and even by those standards it is brief mind you, they are aura, experience, capacity, focus and then the four energies. The use of magic requires years of training, I was the best in my class, followed closely by Feiy, and even after four years we could barely make the waters ripple, or make a fire gain energy. True mastery of the art takes years. Magic all starts in the mind. The mind, when brought into focus can alter the particles which comprise our existence. Many who read this will immediately picture my ability to conjure tidal waves. That took six weeks of non-stop practice to perfect, I lost forty zilocs during that time, to be frank, the art is direly taxing.
There are other forms of magic. Charms are the most famous; this is where objects’ energies are manipulated as opposed to the use of you own power. Charms can do a broad range of things, they can weaken, strengthen, heat or cool. They are impressive when used correctly. Divination is another major school of magical thought. Divination puts time into perspective, as any true diviner will tell you, all things in time occur at once, not in a painful line like we like to think of. Using divination, a sorcerer or sorceress can view a moment in time, be it current, past or forthcoming.
The most terrible of all magic, however, is necromancy. This is the use of magic to alter ones particles to be immune to death. Vampires, Lyches, Werewolves, Cambions and Incubi are all results of necromancy. Though it stems even further than that, it can be used in reverse as well. One can return the dead to life. Many will recall the legions of dead in the Lych wars under command of the Bone Maiden, Asmira Asnen, Queen of the Lyches. They were a direct result of powerful necromancy.
As one can see, magic is faceted and dangerous, and should not be used lightly under any situation, for further reading, The Elemental Art, authored by myself would be an excellent choice.----

Now, in our town there was a second school, a private school for the dozen noble families that lived on the economic district. It was a big, imposing building, made of imported sand-stone and capped with tacky brass domes. It was here that the local lords and ladies in training came to learn the arts of gentility, in addition to magic, military tactics and how to paint and sculpt. The school was oversized for the city it was in and seemed out of place and condescending with its cheap minarets. But to Feiy and I it was a place of childhood wonder, where the mysterious upper class gathered to discuss the destiny of the world.
I would later discover that most of the gentry don’t discuss anything of deeper intelligence than sexual acts and what wine the emperor is drinking and how to get it. They all drank too much and smoked vile cigars sent from the coast of Ze-Tral i Mein. Worst of all, at least in my opinion is the amount they spend on their parties, or as the call them soirees. However, I am, in a way, thankful that they throw those wasteful orgies, even today while I hold the whole Imperial family hostage. It was at one of these parties that Feiy and I got our start towards being allowed into the big school.
The Kolkas family was about town one day, looking for servers for a festival banquet that they were serving the next night (Satro Kolkas was renowned as the poorest noble in town, he had invested all his money into the local cooperative and lost half of his money when the market went sour.) So as he was walking about he so happened to trip on a marble that a child had left in the street. The man fell and bruised his shin, but wasn’t seriously hurt. Unbeknownst to him though he dropped his sigil ring in the gutter. Feiy and I hustled over and retrieved it for him, ambition already in our hearts. We handed it to him with a smile and a bow, which drew a grin from the nobleman. He took his ring, and after giving us a look over said that he would pay us for a night’s worth of service. That offer lit the way for the future.
The gentleman had us bathed and dressed in finery, which felt scratchy at the time, as it still does today. The two of us were given a crash course in catering and a few other things important for the evening, and suddenly the party started.
Feiy and I were baffled by the decadence of the nobles, and more than a little frightened when the gentry dipped into scotch from the Imperial Heartland. But the two of us played our parts respectably. We stamped about like monkeys, with trays in our hands.
We took to domestic service with an ardor that today would but feel demeaning to me. However, we proved indispensible that night, which set us on the fast road. We were paid handsomely, and in turn my father invested the money into a new merchant ship that had begun to build up a powerful following. My family saw their income multiply tenfold from that one night’s work. But that night gave us something else, and that was a connection to the Kolkas family.
Now, to deviate for the briefest of seconds I must comment that puberty hits at odd moments and in very odd ways. It wasn’t long after that night and the resulting bubble therewith that I began noticing the neighbor boys. It was strange to me, but I didn’t really know what was going on to the fullest extent. It was a funny feeling here and a sticky sheet there, but I had no clue that Sardas Kolkas, the son of Satro Kolkas was going through the same thing at the same time.
This all came to advantage one night at another one of Satro’s little parties. We had by this time become regular servants to his house and were in well with the family. It was another appalling little spectacle of a party, and Feiy and I were once again catering to the needs of people who were too drunk to piss downward, but I had come to resent it less by this point. Sardas strode through the drunken wasteland and asked for my presence in the courtyard. I don’t think that I’ll ever forget what happened next.
“You need something lordship?”
“No, I just wanted to tell you that you look very pretty.”
“Thank you?” I was unsure what he meant by that, but the look in his eye gave away much more of his intentions.
“Kiss me.”
“What?” Now this seemed very odd to me, I had been raised in a family that had never even discussed things like this, I hadn’t a clue what was coming or going.
“Kiss me. It is a simple command. I want you to kiss me.”
“But you aren’t a woman.”
“You can still do it.”
“Will this earn me a bonus?” I asked excitedly, I was always thinking about money by now. Father no longer made me give him my earnings and I was allowed to do with it what I pleased.
“Sure, now kiss me.”
And I did, and I liked it. That began the first romance of my life. It was a childish little thing, hand holding and cuddling during sleepovers, bare-chested kisses at night, but I had never been happier in my life. It was a magical time where the two of us could do anything or go anywhere. I felt conflicted, to say the least, but I had never been taught this was wrong, per se, after all, in a little backwater town like mine, things like that were never heard of.
In the meantime I reaped the benefits, as did Feiy simply for her friendship with me. Our pay rose substantially, and we were signed on as full servants. We were hired out to other local noblemen who needed spare help. Most important of all was our admission into the private school across town.
We of course excelled the moment when we stepped foot into that grand place. She took to math and I to history, though we both loved languages and literature. We both steered away from the physical sciences, that wasn’t our cup of tea. We instead went to magic classes. That was always my favorite time a day during my early education. And the two of us were prodigies, as it turned out. We mastered the first two years of material in a matter of six months and were soon admitted into the higher level courses where our unbelievable progress was stemmed, though just a little.
Unfortunately Feiy and I began to grow apart during these times, and that was my fault. Between my absorption with classes and the affair, if you could call it that, which I was staging with Sardas, I didn’t have any time left to spend with her. But we found a little time between the two of us so at least we wouldn’t become strangers.

It was eight months to the day that I was admitted to the private school that Feiy and I were nominated for a scholarship to the Kiemandra School of Magic, Science and Sociality. I was so elated that I ran screaming home from school, skipping my last class, which was tea manners, and I can’t honestly say that anyone was offended by that. The look on my mother’s face when I came springing through the door was priceless to say the least.
“What is it son?” she imposed as I dashed through the house.
“Look mama, look!” I said as I shoved the fat letter right into her face.
“To the family of Enath Brashfall…” and she trailed off as she read it astounded and winded at once.
“The Kiemandra School mama, all the way in Bvellcaetia, can you believe it?”
My mother was a big, powerful woman, and she seemed even bigger and more powerful that day.
“I know son, wait till your father gets home, then we will speak on this.”
Father came home an hour later in his wagon, as was usual. He had taken to wearing a dapper vest and matching hat with his new found fingernail of success.
“Papa, look!” I yelled at him as I walked up to him on the sidewalk.
“I know boy, Reverent Harrows already told me about Feiy and her little acceptance note, you’re not going, damn nobles…” he stewed for a moment and tromped into the house, leaving me there with my jaw hanging open. I dashed inside at once to try to save myself.
“Daddy, why can’t I go, I’ll be an upper-class person, maybe even a nobleman.”
“Shut up!” He roared at me.
“But papa…”
“I need you for the harvest, you can’t go, we’ll starve, that’s the end of this.”
“You don’t need me, I barely help you as it is.”
“Be quiet!”
And so the matter was left unresolved for a month, neither Feiy nor I got to go, and we continued to tarry in our shoddy little town. We reconnected a little in that time, and my magical talent began to surpass hers, though she was still an exceptional sorceress. The school’s headmaster persisted in notes and letters, which I failed to notice were beginning to sound a little bit threatening, It demanded our enrollment in our last letter. But by then the collection agent had showed up, and notes really weren’t needed.
It was a cold night, mid winter if I remember correctly when the sharp sound of knuckles on our door broke the silence of dinner.
My mother went to the door, “Please come in.” I remember her saying with an affectedly upper-class voice.
“Me tankz,” Came a sharply elven voice, marked by the inability to form an s or th sound.
And in came master Moriaz Ret, seventeenth counsel to Princess Achvella Kiemandra, and among the most fantastically ridiculous looking things in my life. He was a plain little man, pointed ears and tongue, like all elves. But his averageness was offset by his outrageous outfit, a pleated robe of purple and black with a huge silver lilac medallion decorating his chest.
“Whose company may I ask are we keeping?” My mother imposed ridiculously in her fake voice.
“Moriaz Ret, and will you pleaz ztop wit tat ridiculouz voize.”
“Yes lordship.” Said my mother abashedly.
“Ra, err… no, not lord zimply Moriaz, no zir ing pureblooded elf, I cannot be a lord.”
“Well, then at least be seated, it’s the least my household can offer to you.”
“Ra nezu, it izn’t necessary, I ave zimply come pur kva boy.”
“Wait a minute!” roared my father, standing up. “You can’t take him from us.”
“I can zir, and I would watz “(elves cannot make a ch sound either) “your mout.”
“We’re not elves, I will not tolerate you imposing yourself on my house.”
“I ave permizzion from Prinzezz Kiemandra erzelf.”
“She isn’t my queen!”
“Not yet zir!”
And there stood an awkward silence for around thirty seconds, and in that time, my father pieced together that he had already lost
“Please,” he said desperately looking at the Elf, “take care of him, he’s my son, and I love him.”
“I will, I promize you.”
The man grabbed my shoulder lightly and directed me towards a door.
“Won’t he need his things?” my mother yelled after, rushing down the stairs to this scene.
“Bvellcaetia will provide for him, az it doez for all of itz studentz.”
“Take care Enath.” She said softly, tears springing up into her eyes.
“I love you mommy.”
And with those four little words, my childhood was over.