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One, Two, and Three scamper through the forest, whooping, hollering, and generally praising the prospect of the mindless **** they're about to inflict on poor Cyrus. "Gonna stab him! Gonna stab him! Gonna staaaaaaab him!"

"Gonna bite em' gonna bite em'!"

Lovely creatures.

Intent on indulging in the based desires Bellowyn blessed them with, they venture forth into the forest, thirsty for the blood of their wayward sibling. It's this very thirst that brings them into a clearing, where a discarded potion awaits their inspection.

"Hey look!" Two says excitedly pointing towards the obviously placed potion.

"Yeah look!" One drools, running over to the prize, adeptly discerning the desires of the discarded Decatur.

"It's mine!" Three the biggest, and therefore best of the goblins shoves his teammates out of the way and picks up the potion for himself. As the biggest it is his right.

"I saw it first." Two complains, astutely invoking the edict of Finders Keeper, divine law to the mongrels and abomination of the world.

"Well I got the stabber!" Three counters in his own erudite manner. "See? Stab!" More moved by his own argument than that of his companion the good goblin, three stabbed his brother with the knife. Figuring quantity had a quality of it's he repeated this fratricidal act several, maybe even dozens of time until Two was in no state to object to Three's ownership of the potion.

One watched this all with shivering fear, and decided to keep quiet. His argument for possession of the potion hadn't been as compelling as those of his companions, and Three had made it clear that submitting inferior arguments could be costly. Thus he chooses the way of the church mouse, for this particular moment.

"Now." Three drooled, luxuriating his lips with a long wet tongue as he prepared to consume the potion. "Miiiiiiiiine!" He sunk his teeth into the cork plugging the bottle, and pulled it free. To everyone's surprise a gout of flame erupted from the bottle, singing Three's head clean from his shoulder.

What trickery!

What had appeared as a healing potion to these diligence-lacking goblins, was in fact an alchemist's fire. A dreadful concoction of burning, flaming, singeing chemicals.

Woah to Three largest of the goblins, and his kin-slain companion.

Thus in the span of a few minutes three became one.

One found himself in the regrettable position as sole inheritor to his boss's command. Find and kill the rogue Cyrus and put an end to his villainy. Yet already this task had taken upon him a great toll, the life of his fellow goblins. He's of course is overhwhelmed with the weight and burden of his responsibility. "The stabber is mine!" He holds it aloft, smiling broadly, no doubt moved to giddiness at the thought of finishing what his brothers had started. "Gonna stab em! Gonna stab everything!"

"Yaaaaaaaaaaaaah!" Out from the bushes, comes the traitor Cyrus with a sharpened tree branch in his greasy hands. He charges forward pointed tip of his spear aimed at his foes chest, and he drives it home, driving his opponent to the ground pinning him like curated insect to the ground.

Yet the diabolical goblin, who knows nothing of honor is guaranteed to underestimate the valor in another's heart. One will not go easily. Even as Cyrus falls onto of him, One lashes out, slashing and stabbing at his assaulter, again and again.

Cyrus cries out in pain, reeling backwards riddled with wounds, life flowing out of him.

He falls to his butt, hands grasping desperately at the satchel around his body, searching for a potion from his master. All the while One continues to lash out, knife searching and stabbing at nothing. The last **** throes of a magnificent beast.

Cyrus drinks his healing potion, wounds sealing up, life preserved at least for another day, another moment. He watches, shrouded and consumed by shame as his fellow goblins, stabs, gurgles, and at last lays still.

The threat is gone, and Once again Cyrus is alone in the world.

He bends over an retches. Tiny green heart, broken by his grim duty.