“The Hunger That Remains”
Image Credit: Intruder251
Somewhere deep underneath the Woodsedge Ruins, Midgewater marshes, Bree-land
Darkness remains, but it does not speak. The whispering void that once wove itself through their minds, an unceasing command, a burning force, has fallen silent. The Great Eye no longer watches, no longer calls, and they feel its absence like hunger.
But hunger is not absence. Hunger is always.
The ruins cling to time, tangled in stone and web. The deep chambers, once their brood’s safe womb, lie hollow. Too hollow. The feast that once sustained them, driven by the will of shadow, has withered. Their bodies shrivel, their legs grow restless, and their mandibles clatter in shared unease.
The world moves—fickle, shifting, cruel. The goblins understand. They scurry, they skitter, they see what the spiders see. They fear hunger. They fear weakness.
So they bring offerings. Meat. Blood. Bone.
It is crude, raw, not the living flesh of the past, but it spills onto the stone warm all the same. The creatures who die, small men, foolish men, desperate men, they are no different than any prey that once stumbled into the webs.
The goblins offer, and the spiders feed.
The spiders allow them passage, allow them to move through the ruins without knowing what watches. The deep chambers still hold the forgotten troves, the treasures buried beneath silk and shadow. The goblins take, greedy as ever, though the spiders do not care.
They do not want coin. They do not want gold. They want meat.
The pact is silent. No words, no promises. Only hunger and fear, twisting together in the ruins. The goblins do not wish to be devoured, so they drag men into the web instead. The poachers, the wanderers, the unlucky souls who tread too far from safety. They even make their own deals with other Poachers to bring meat.
There is no Great Eye to command them. No power to drive them forward.
Only hunger. Always hunger.
Their brood stirs. The web shivers. The ruins tighten around them.
The world has forgotten their kind. The world believes them lesser now, weaker, without the shadow’s will.
The world is wrong.
They are waiting. Watching. Spinning. Feeding.
Soon, the hunger will call them forth again.
Soon, they will not need goblins to bring the meat.
Soon, the marsh will feed them entirely on its own.
