Open it

The small box was incredibly hard to open. Flinch was a small, weak goblin, sure, but even he shouldn’t struggle much with a box of this size. Eventually Flinch managed to pry it open with his knife and stared at the contents. Sitting in red silk was a small, perfectly round ball about the size of an eyeball. It was black but there seemed to be the faint glim of a dying fire in its core. Flinch was mesmerised by the beautiful orb, staring deep into the barely perceptible glim at its core, squinting his eyes and getting very close to it.

Then it started to hum. Gently at first, but quickly rising in intensity. Flinch was awoken from his stupor and pulled his face away, but it was all too late. The orc was now humming so intensely, that he could feel it in his bones. There were ripples on the puddles of swamp water around him and even the tree the body hung from was groaning. Flinch wanted to run, but he couldn’t. His muscles were cramped up and his heart was beating as if he was running for his life. Then it started floating. Without any sense of urgency, it slowly rose from its silk bedding and hovered in the air in front of Flinchs face. Then it shot at his head with the speed of an arrow. Flinch felt overpowering pain on the left part of his forehead right before passing out.

When he woke up it was almost morning. His head felt like it had been split open with an axe and he slowly reached for the spot where it had hit him. He felt no blood, which was weird, but… wait, what was THAT? He rolled over and crawled to a nearby puddle to see his face and… there it was. A single black horn jutted out of the left side of his forehead. It was about two inches long a curved upwards slightly. Around the base of it, black scales had spread and almost reached his left eye.

Flinchs stomach dropped. He looked different, too different; he wouldn’t be accepted back home like this. He grabbed the horn and tried to pull on it, the resulting pain almost made him pass out again. Still he tore at it with all his strength, rolling around on the wet ground and screaming in agony. After a few minutes he gave up, laying on his back, panting, covered in sweat. The sun was slowly rising, dispersing the darkness of the night that goblins had always used to protect them. He couldn’t be caught in the swamp during the day, he had to try to make it back to the village.