The Goblin's Heir

Chapter Thirty One: Servant

Agi, my childhood guard, and The Hollow's favorite meat puppet lay on his side on the vividly green spring grass, dead as any dead thing could be. His eyes were open and focus-less, already graying in color as the stiffness of death set in. Blood matted his greasy fur and pooled in a darkening clot around him. His tongue lolled out of his mouth past all those fearsome teeth that just a few moments ago were clamped down on Cat's shoulder.

"What do you mean he attacked her?" Odd asked in a strained voice like he was trying not to scream. The others had come running at the sounds of our screams and now we all gawked in stunned disbelief and mute terror. 

"What do you think she means?!" Cat hissed from her seat on the tree stump. "He was trying to eat me!" 

"Hush," Bran murmured, gently peeling the ripped collar of her shirt down over her shoulder to assess the wound. The bite wound was a vicious one. Agi's teeth had gone in to the gums, his jaws clamping down so hard her skin was already beginning to bruise. "He just barely missed your throat." 

"Tell me about it," Cat grumbled, squirming beneath the touch of his cool hands. 

He poured some water over the wound to wash away some of the blood and Cat literally howled at the pain. "Sorry. Can I get a tonic for her?" He asked Floki.

"You mean these?" Floki overturned the pack we'd brought them in and bits of glass and oozing liquid globbed out, so congealed it was beyond use. "They're all smashed."

Bran spat a curse and huffed. "I'll have to heal you myself."

"I can do it." Neasa offered, kneeling with a wince of her own beside them. 

"That's not necessary. " Bran shook his head at her. "I'm sure you're still tired from having to heal all the rest of us yesterday. I'm not trained in it, but I can handle at least this much." He pressed his hands over Cat's wound. A cool white light enveloped his hands and slowly we saw the pain ease from Cat's face. When he pulled his hands back, her skin was mostly mended, though some scarring and light yellow-ish bruises remained. 

Neasa's gasped in surprise at his handiwork. "I didn't know the Unseelie could do any healing magic."

"Some...more well-educated ones can. I only learned this recently through what I've read in books. The Seelie stole a lot of our spells over the years, but we stole some things from you as well." He noticed the way her strange eyes widened slightly and the awed expression that parted her mouth. "What?"

She bowed her head. "You referred to me as if I were one of the Seelie."

"Of course you're Seelie. What else would you be?"

The small, frail faerie downturned her eyes to where her crooked, misshapen legs were tucked beneath her. "Some Seelie think I have more in common with you, cousin than I do with them." It was a fact I often forgot...that Bran and Neasa were so closely related and so much alike. His mother and her father were brother and sister. Both siblings stood as perfect examples of the cold cruelty the Unseelie were capable of. Both of their children were malformed in some way. With Neasa it manifested as a physical deformity, twisting her legs and wings to the point she couldn't even stretch them out. With Bran, it was something internal...spiritual...something easily hidden behind that handsome face and sad pretty eyes. 

"Then the Seelie truly are a bunch of pretty fools," Bran replied, flashing a smile that would make anyone forget what he was, that he was as hollow as The Hollow itself and that a serpent lived within that cavernous place.

"It doesn't make any sense. Why would he...why would any goblins attack us?" Frit asked, mostly himself, plucking at his lip in thought. 

"Nothing about any of this shit makes sense," Odd growled, yanking a knife from his belt. He descended down on Agi's corpse and began cutting away at him, peeling back the fur and carving him open.