**Toil & Trouble – Part I **

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Bale hunched over his crude sketch of the Nethermarsh, a map gouged into wet soil with the enthusiasm of someone who preferred breaking things to drawing them. The markings charted Abothas’ movements, the spread of his crystal growths, and the hollowed‑out patches of swamp where the land itself seemed to sigh in exhaustion.

Beside the map, Sarna doodled. Two goblins—herself and Bale—hands clasped, grinning like fools while an explosion blossomed behind them.

“What,” Bale muttered, voice rough as kicked gravel, “are you doing?”

“Drawing us winning! Duh, dummy.” Sarna’s tone was sharp and high, like a cat startled from sleep.

Bale squinted at the sketch. It was… good. Annoyingly good. But there were more pressing matters than the surprising talent of his partner.

“Look, Sarna, that’s lovely, really. Got the teeth right and everything. But we need to focus. Abothas is up to something foul, and the Nethermarsh is suffering for it.” His irritation simmered beneath the words. “I like the swamp witches. Most of ’em. Plants too. So he needs stopping.”

Sarna rolled her eyes dramatically. “Fine, fine. I just like to picture the ending, that’s all. And yes, the witches are great... except Vujasha. She’s grumpier than you on a bad stomach day.”

The goblins had been together through thick, thin, and whatever lay in between. Or, as the swamp hags had taught them: through toil and trouble. They still didn’t fully understand Mideon, the air thick with soul‑energy, the champions of strange gods clamoring over shrines, the monsters that seemed hungry for the dead. But they understood this: something was poisoning the Nethermarsh, and Abothas was at the center of it.

They’d seen him once before, some blue wraith‑man with a floating crystal instead of legs. A demon who left behind wispy coalesced goop whenever he was struck down, that he would rematerialize out of to strike again if they weren’t careful. They had fought others with that same power before also, but only Abhothas seemed to manipulate the coalesced energy for all manner of foul magics.

“One thing is certain,” Bale grunted. “He’s twisting this place’s soul‑flow. Those tendrils of his don’t sprout from nothing. Every time I smash one to paste, my reactor spins up like it’s had a taste of lightning.”

Sarna gave a little grin. She loved that shine in Bale’s eyes before a fight. “You’re right. But bashing those little monsters won’t fix the swamp. We need to get to the heart of this, we need an ambush.”

Toil & Trouble – Part II

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Abothas’ workshop was a giant abomination of crystal. A jagged eruption of multicolored stone bursting from the marsh like a wound left open to fester. The plants nearest to it lay sliced or shriveled, drained into brittle husks.

From inside came the screams.

Bale and Sarna had heard them faintly from afar and they knew that witches hung like butchered animals, impaled on the crystalline hooks growing from the walls of the fortress. He tore knowledge from them with a cold curiosity. While the witches resisted, he was slowly learning the secrets of the Nethermarsh from them. Even as he interrogated them, he shaped his tendril warriors from their suffering, siphoning blood and soul‑energy alike.

Their plan was simple. Bale would go through the front smashing everything in his path. Sarna would slip through the back, taking advantage of the ruckus to free the witches. 

Bale approached what he assumed was a demon’s version of a “front door”. It was a gaping crystal maw with no doors at all, just an archway bristling with sharp facets. He stepped through, muttering, “Sarna better not be mucking about. Just gotta keep the blue bastard busy long enough for her to...”

A chill crept up his spine. The room was dark, save for faint, dancing refractions from outside. Not enough to see properly.

Bale tapped a button on his gauntlets. “Come on you blasted things… work.” After a few stubborn presses, the fusion circuits in his fists sputtered to life. The enclosed glow threw fractured light across the walls.

And revealed the tendrils.

Dozens. Maybe more. Slimy, veined things with clusters of insect eyes and leech‑jaws bristling with teeth. Their barbed ends twitched as if tasting him.

Bale cracked his knuckles.  “Come on you crotchless bastards, let me send you home to your daddy, crying rivers from all those eyes of yours,” he barked at them and spit on the ground in challenge.

En masse they surged at him, a wall of flesh filled with teeth, wanting to rip him to shreds.

Toil & Trouble – Part III

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“Uh… Bale didn’t exactly say how to get in the back door…” Sarna whispered to herself puzzled.

Before her loomed two enormous crystal slabs, carved like Abothas’ own sneering face—mouths gaping wide, fumes drifting from within. They were far too heavy for her to budge. 

Another billow of foul gas came out of one of the mouths. Mouths that might be just large enough for a small goblin to fit in...

“Oh no. No, no, no. But... well… maybe?” She shuddered. Imagining being swallowed by Abothas was equally hilarious and horrifying. She laughed and then turned pale and nearly vomited at the thought.

With a bracing huff, Sarna climbed. Crystal ridges made for easy holds, and soon she was perched at the lip of the carved mouth. Inside, she saw bubbling pools, swirling with iridescent colors, oily and rainbow‑slick. Some held drifting limbs, others half‑formed tendrils. Essence pools. Or birthing pits. They seethed with corrupt energies.

She wriggled through the mouth with a plop, then padded deeper until she reached more doors with more horrifyingly eager mouths. Each time, she climbed and giggled, because somehow, despite the horror, it was absurd.

Chamber to chamber, she followed the sounds of the swamp witches' screams. As she stood up from climbing through the hole in the last door she realized what a foolish mistake it had been. 

Abothas stood before her, blade buried in the ribs of a swamp witch whose wails Sarna had been following.

“How dare you crawl through my front doors, and into my private sanctum, vermin?” His voice echoed, cold and hungry. “Can you not see I entertain guests.” Abothas dug his broad blade deeper into the side of the swamp witch and she moaned weakly before fainting from the pain.

Sarna blinked, scared and confused, realizing that Bale's plan was falling apart...

Toil & Trouble – Part IV

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Abothas surged towards Sarna with terrifying speed. She barely raised her wand before his blade slashed her leg, sending her tumbling into the crystal door behind her. It creaked open and she scrambled through.

She made it only a few steps before a blast of magical fire crackled through the air toward her.

“HELP! BALE! HELP!” she shrieked.

The doors ahead wouldn’t move. Behind her, Abothas glided through the gloom, muttering incantations while the essence pools churned to life. Shards of crystal whipped from the liquid and slammed into her. Each strike stung leaving her feeling drained... each seemed to invigorate him.

Desperate, Sarna repeated his incantation, stumbling over the guttural syllables. The nearest pool convulsed, and then hurled its shards back toward the demon. Abothas snarled as they pierced him.

“How, how do you know that tongue?” he hissed. “Only the demons of Malifica... I will certainly need to study you now... I will add you to my collection of specimens,” he cackled with glee.

“Oh, shut up!” Sarna croaked.

Abothas vanished into a pool and then reappeared from behind Sarna, striking with his sword, the blunt side of the blade catching her shoulder. He disappeared again, and then another strike from another pool. Sarna whimpered and fired back magical blasts that hit nothing but thin air.

The doors burst inward. Bale staggered in, bruised, bleeding, and covered in tendril guts.

“BOOOOM!” Bales voice rang out and Sarna smiled as he announced his entrance.

“You got a problem with one of us,” he snarled at Abothas, “then you have a problem with us both, pal.”

Abothas gaped. “Two? Worse than rats you are. To me my brethren!" Abothas sneered at the goblins waiting for his army to flow into the chamber, but nothing followed through the doors after Bale, "Where are my tendrils... what have you done?”

“POWER! FIST! ATTACK!” Bale barreled toward him.

The fight devolved into chaos. Abothas blinked between pools, slashing and blasting with agitated fury. Sarna shattered each pool he moved to, chanting the stolen words, glass flying like shrapnel. Bale kept swinging, wild and relentless.

Finally, Bale caught him.

“POWER FIST ATTACK! GROIN BUSTER COMBOOOO!”

Abothas attempted to retreat backwards, but it was too late. “I don't have a groin you cretin..." 

CRACK.

A fracture split across the demon’s crystal lower body. His face twisted in agony.

“GIVE IT TO HIM AGAIN, BALE!” Sarna screamed.

“POWERFIST ATTACK, POWER UP MANEUVER! DOUBLE GROIN BUSTER!” Bale’s fists collided like twin meteors. Abothas reeled, barely holding himself together. Liquid light spilling from the cracks in his crystalline body. His hand scraped into the last remaining pool.

“I will return,” he hissed. “You cannot comprehend my research, nor shall you survive it.”

Gravity warped. Both goblins collapsed as the air crushed inward.

Then Abothas dissolved into the pool, vanishing in a swirl of smoke.

Toil & Trouble – Part V

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

When the pressure eased, Bale crawled upright. “He’s gone. Couldn’t take the heat, so he slithered out of the kitchen.”

“He fled before you cracked him in half,” Sarna laughed.

A sudden realization struck her. “Oh! The witches!”

They raced back through the chambers to find the surviving swamp witches still hanging from the crystal hooks. Weak. Bloodied. But alive.

One witch stirred as Sarna helped her down, "You're safe now, it's alright."

“Thank you, thank you for saving us” she whispered. “I am Yalijun.”

“Happy to help,” Bale said proudly. “Plus we got a good fight out of it, so really we owe you.”

Yalijun managed a faint smile. The witches were beautiful in a haunting way. Their tall slender bodies humanoid, but also blended with the flora and fauna of the swamp. Some sported tentacles, others fungal growths and flowers, and still more with feathers and scales. They were a part of the Nethermarsh, and as soon as the hooks were removed from their bodies their wounds began to heal and their strength returned rapidly.

The goblins smiled, happy that they were able to preserve and protect the wondrous lands that they found themselves in. Even though this was not a battle for effigies or for control, they both thought that Grul, one of their patron gods, would be pleased by their actions. 

“Any magic to bring this place down?” Bale asked Yalijun.

“We can call upon the Nethermarsh,” she stated her eyes angry. “Its roots know the cruelty of this place, and only need a little guidance and encouragement to strike it down.”

Outside, the witches began their chant. Sarna joined them, mimicking their language and rituals perfectly. Bale sat on rock, picking some pieces of tendril out of his armour. The earth answered. Vines erupted, coiling up the crystal fortress. Shards splintered, cracked, then shattered entirely.

The workshop collapsed like a glass carcass, but the swamp still wasn't done, crawling over it, dragging apart, and finally pulling it below its surface. It disappeared like it had never existed.

Sarna nudged Yalijun. “Could you maybe tell Vujasha to be a little nicer next time we meet?”

The witch only smiled enigmatically.

Bale and Sarna took each other’s hands. The Nethermarsh glowed behind them, the crystals of the fortress, crushed beneath the landscape were bursting in distant pops as they skipped away.

“Next time,” Sarna said, “I’m making the plan.”

“Maybe I’ll even follow it,” Bale replied.

Story by Drew Richardson @pooky Edit by Peter Adams @Creature_Caster_Peter