A black dot in a green sky became a black grenade, cutting, harming, slicing, flowing down into the green and swirling a cacophony of black shards with him. A puppeteer yelled something about 'whoops', and a stupid goblin held on to the half of their body that remained whole.

The black swirl twisted into a spinning blender that rose in the mist like a hurricane of blades, each gripped by the least amount of support, each whipping across enemy after enemy.

The goblins yelled and they flowed as well, one of them after another feeding themselves into the black blender as the blender ascended into the sky, once again.

A boulder approached, flung fast and free, heralded by a sudden disruption in the vectors of the puppeteer and the stupid, but no one else was disrupted. They were chaff to die for their god, watching from the sun.

The black flowed to the ground, far away from the puppeteer and the stupid, deep into the green, choking on miasma that invaded and corrupted. Lungs wiggled with nascent life, skin bulged with muscles uncontrolled, flesh twisting into insidious corruption. It was not painful at all. Perhaps that was the scariest part.

And then Glory rang out, deep and true, and Purity drove the corruption away, temporarily. Flesh relaxed, became normal once again, and a bit more Glory repaired what had almost been broken, a black astral body flexing out to full, instantly. With a full range, the black gripped more black, and slipping blades erupted out of the ground all around, flicking and twisting, becoming blades and propellers. The black spot scoured the land quickly as a flick.

Had to be fast. The stupid and the puppet might catch the black at any moment.

But there were others out there.

Speedsters were in the green cloud. They whipped and repositioned the puppet and the stupid and others, and then they moved in themselves.

The green roiled and roared as the black flowed, flying at the speed of thought, ripping up the air with flames and whining cuts. The speedsters got too close. They tried to tag the center with power.

So the center pulled at himself, slashing himself with countless blades, becoming a hurricane of his own cutting nature, and the blades were barely fast enough to splash against goblins that were moving almost as fast. The center whipped outward, flashing long blades while just holding on to tips and centimeters, ensuring that whatever touched the blades could not touch back to the center.

Goblins still tried to reach the center of the storm, moving faster than the storm could ever move himself. The goblins got nowhere, and the storm flowed south, faster and faster, trying to get to a whining, large vector, that might help a lot. The kaiju in the radiation zone.

The goblins couldn't reach the center on their own, but they were not alone. They changed tactics again.

From overhead the flying goblins came. A healed stupid goblin and a puppeteer were in that flying throng, keeping low profiles until they could attack, but the black recognized them now.

The black storm moved on, whipping fast, moving south, faster than the fliers could keep up, so one of the speedsters grabbed a stupid goblin, putting the goblin right in the path of the blender.

Stupid goblins tried to make the Flowing black stupid, too.

Not very effective.

The blender was just a blender, the Flow was everyone, and retargeting targets didn't matter when everyone was the same. Everyone was a piece of meat for the sword, but the swords flashed against the center and broke left and right, to slash into goblins trying to come close, and the center survived, while the infiltrators did not.

The stupid goblin did not survive, either.

And so the storm burst with Glorious Fear, driving into the enemy, repairing itself for a bare moment, and then the Flow returned, and the center turned on a moment, reaching up with a thousand wires of adamantium, barely controlling any of it, as he slashed into the flying goblins and the hidden puppeteer.

Goblins died.

Goblins should have stayed dead.

A green flash passed through the entire miasma-covered land, and dead goblins got back up, healed to full.

The goblins lived.

It was Sampo, the Hearth. The healer of Goblinhome. Mass healing. Mass resurrection. A power only seen once before, and not like this; not this fast, this quick, this thorough. The black logged the event and moved on, his silver helper taking notes.

A revived puppeteer grabbed the black storm and stilled it as much as he could.

Speedsters moved in with fangs glistening, and then ripping at flesh and moving on, headless of injury, for the storm was still capable of moving, just a little.

The black storm Called to another, to someone hurting just as much as him, and it was a shockwave blasting across the land, disrupting the puppeteer's power and reducing the storm back down to a simple man, standing on green land. The man's skin bulged and writhed under his ripped webweave. Glory shone out of green-marked wounds and black coalesced into those wounds, holding down the flesh, covering it with scales and spinning blades as Fear shocked out into the world, once again driving back the miasma.

Salter was alive again, it seemed.

The kaiju roared and everything except Mark flinched.

Mark raced south, moving as fast as he could on adamantium legs, for his own legs, his arms, his stomach, writhed underneath his scales. He held on to himself, purging his flesh with a moment of Purity.

He thought it should have hurt more than it did, to do what he was doing right now.

There were analgesics in the miasma. There was healing in the miasma.

The green miasma flashed once again, waving past with a flurry of healing magics, and Mark grappled with it for a single moment, inundating the power in the green light with Entropy. The green light whimpered and died like houses with the power cut off, and that's when the pain really started for Mark.

The pain dropped him out of the flow, just a little.

His skin burst open with tiny goblins, ripping at the flesh underneath his scales, trying to combine into bigger goblins, ones that could actually be born. Still, he raced south, caltrops flashing all around, spinning, cutting, pushing him forward.

He raced out of the miasma, into the open air—

The sun glared down at him.

The Green sun.

Mark choked and sputtered, crying out in surprise more than pain, all of his thoughts going crazy, all of his Powers faltering.

fucking shit fuck gods dammit fuck fuck fuck fuck

Something Green opened Mark from the inside and an arm reached out from his stomach, past the scales, reaching for his neck. Another arm came out of his stomach to squeeze his chest smaller. A green fist choked Mark's neck and Mark fell out of the flow. His scales did nothing to kill, to carve, so Mark focused Purity inward—

There was a world inside of him.

The Green spilling in every direction, full of ethereal life, just beyond sight.

And Mark was a Glorious lighthouse, standing in the Green.

The Green reached through him, through his chest, through his heart and out of his neck, caressing his chin, holding his hair, telling him to relax and give in. It reached around his rib cage, and patted his back. It reached around his legs and unzipped his legs, red flesh spilling open to let more green hands reach out, to unzip even more flesh

The Green was quiet with its demands, but insistent.

Mark ground to a halt, crashing to his knees before the miasma, before the Green sun, before the demand of the Green illuminating Mark's insides. He had no ears, but he could feel the pull of the Green. He had no eyes, but he could see what it wanted.

It wanted to change places.

For Mark to fold inward and be twisted outward once again, into a different form. A form that would live forever, but changed. The Green wanted Mark to become a goblin. All of the goblins walking around Mark, in the deep miasma and in the light, and floating, like green ghosts in the darker parts of the world, wanted that, too. They wanted Mark to become one of them.

And then the Green stilled.

The goblins on the living side stood in the distance, like ghosts in the miasma.

The Green light inside of Mark, in every direction, stopped trying to reach outward so much. It should have been more painful. Mostly, it was disconcerting. Mark felt like he was having an out of body moment, and he probably was. Nothing felt real. He almost wanted to sleep.

Mark did not sleep.

He held on, with bleeding hands and bleeding blades that didn't move right, Mark held on.

A single goblin walked forward, out of the miasma, onto the ground in front of Mark, saying, "Incorruptible Body isn't as much of a boon as you think it is. All it means is that this transformation stalls out without your express permission. So far, I'm stopping the pain. But I can let the pain happen. Do you want the pain to happen, Mark?"

A hand reached up through Mark's throat, holding open his mouth, and he could not speak.

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But he could think.

FUCK YOU!

Wongod grinned a little goblin grin, and said, "Some pain, then."

There was pain.

All the pain that Mark should have been feeling as his body failed, was suddenly there.

Mark had felt worse pain, honestly.

It hurt like branding irons in his flesh. It hurt like that corruption ooze. It scrambled his thoughts and made him delirious with ache. But Mark could still sense the world with Union, even if Puppet stood to the side, keeping him locked down, and Stupid Goblin was over there, doing the same. Greeplox was behind Wongod, floating on a white flower, humming and meditating, his vector inundating the land with Green power. When did they show up? Mark had no idea.

The world had gone wonky in the last 10 minutes.

Mark felt like he was hallucinating. Maybe he was. But maybe he was seeing something that few humans ever saw.

Mark saw the world through two sets of eyes, one seeing the miasma, the other seeing the Green.

Wongod was a goblin, a meter tall, 30 kilos. Normal.

Wongod was a broken tree, injured and twisted and taller than the sky. He had been scored with ever-burning brands. His roots were twisted with chains. His canopy was infested with beetles eating at the leaves. Rot crawled throughout the entire tree, spilling from wounds in the bark both deep and cavernous, and ever-weeping.

Wongod was the only force in the Green that was truly there. Everything else was ethereal and flowing, and there were so very many, many stars, everywhere out there. Mark was a star, bright gold and open to the Green, forming a path between realities. Other stars out there winked open and shut. Mark instinctively realized those other stars, bright and then dead, were other people, or monsters, dying and being converted to goblins.

And yet, through all of that, Wongod was also just a goblin, standing in this world, looking down at Mark, even though he was half Mark's height.

And then Wongod turned his hand, and the pain was gone.

Mark whimpered and gasped at the sudden loss of pain, at the loss of feeling in his guts and his body and his everything. He felt nothing. He still felt everything. Mark focused on the Wrong-made God, even as goblin arms were lodged in his guts and crawling up his face, holding him in place for Wongod's perusal.

How was Mark even seeing through ruined eyes?

Oh, yeah. Quark was his eyes right now.

Wongod said, "No one is coming to save you. This can go on forever. You think you are the first Incorruptible I have goblinized? You are not. But you will be one of the best. I will have to teach you not to be so reckless, though. To come here? Alone? Hubris. That is not how smart goblins live." He shrugged. "But dumb goblins survive all the same with a little bit of resurrection."

Mark felt the Green thrum at that word, pulse and chitter, and try to push through Mark's existence, to turn his skin inside out and wear him, soul and all, as a different thing. Mark fought, though. Instinctively and actually. He fought against conversion, like trying to stay awake after too many days of fighting. Mark could stay awake for a week, if he had to.

The Green retreated.

Wongod hummed, and then looked down at Mark.

He was as tall as Mark, now. All the goblins were taller.

Or maybe Mark had shrunk—

Mark stared at his flesh, and almost panicked.

The Green was a vibrant source of light just below his skin while the goblins that had been trying to crawl out of him now laid their hands on his chest, crushing it small. They put their hands upon his arms, turning them green, turning his hands to wrinkled, evil things, with black claws. The ghost goblins wrapped around his legs, constricting his thighs and shins and feet into something smaller, something more green.

The goblins shapes in the Green danced around the tree, around Wongod, dancing to his tune, as they also danced around Mark, trying to bring him into their collective. There was music in the Green. Chiming, claiming.

In the real world, in the miasma, the goblins watched, eyes glaring, power flaring. They prepared for Mark to resist, but they already had Mark on his knees, unable to do a damned thing.

There was music in Wongod's voice, as he said, "Resilient. I suppose that's to be expected. Why don't you heal yourself, Mark. Throw some of that Purity around, if you can." He glanced outward. "Puppet. Stupid. Greeplox. Force him."

Three goblins stepped up their power gripping into Mark.

Mark tried to do nothing. To resist with pure willpower.

But Mark felt himself Union with Purity and Corruption, and the Green boiled with gold and bubbling, crawling, Rot. The Rot crawled into Mark, but it was not painful. Not truly. Mark was beyond pain. Corruption slicked against him, burning his body away in great, useless flows of dying flesh.

Mark did not die.

And in the Green, the great tree that was Wongod unfolded in front of Mark like a spilling thing, the Rot slicking away, the tree growing tall and fresh, deep and strong. Mark's Union drew out the corruption inside of that tree, drawing it into himself, to let it break away into slick that burned through the soil all around.

Stupid Goblin jerked away from the spill of corruption, even as Sampo flashed the miasma, healing everyone even more. Healing Mark, too. Mark's body came back green as they healed him.

But then more Rot touched Mark and broke him down to rot himself. The Rot spread out into the Green, too, spreading into the spaces further beyond sight, beyond the dancing Green goblins, into the darkness beyond.

The goblins in the Green danced faster, they danced with more merriment. Their eyes glowed with brilliance and their song intensified, and the Green separated into individuals. Mark stood bound by the tree, watching as Rot flowed through him, into the spaces between the Green goblins, into flashes of something between everyone. He couldn't tell what those flashes were.

The Rot slicked into the dark space right in front of Mark, and the dark space became a whole family, as seen through a dream. A memory of a garden party, half-there, half-gone.

A marriage, maybe? Mark didn't know.

The Green goblins, dancing around the memory exposed by the Rot, by the dark, bared their teeth. They bit into the memory, devouring it, transforming it into more Green. Into more goblins. Blood and viscera vanished into the dark between the Green, and the big tree sighed, chuckling as it spread its canopy over the murder of countless dreams.

Devouring, devouring, devouring.

Mark tried to yell. To break free.

Instead, Mark had to watch as another person (or maybe the dream of a person?) was taken in the dark forest, devoured by goblins, and transformed into more dancers under Wongod's broken tree.

Mark tried to fight. To stop the murders.

Instead, Mark watched as the broken tree stood up straighter, taller, and a gleaming spike of black corruption broke free of the surface of the tree, like a buried wound exposed for the first time. Mark watched, in the real world, as Wongod gasped and stood taller, and something black and horrible itched out of his skin.

Mark tried to stop his Union, to stop whatever he was doing, but others were in control of his powers. Puppet was there, hand to one shoulder, controlling him directly. Stupid Goblin was on his other side, hand on Mark's other shoulder, preventing Mark from stopping. Greeplox was behind Mark, white flower petals on Mark's back, seeping around Mark's chest. The flower petals flickered up now and then, as though a great wind flowed through the miasma-choked land, revealing Rot crawling out of Mark and into the world. The goblins were as tall as Mark, or maybe Mark was as small as them.

Wongod grew taller, skin smoothing, ears flickering, Green deepening. He smiled in a light of his own making, sighing as though injuries long held close were finally breaking, finally falling apart.

Mark felt himself shrink further, his eyes going dim. His sense of self growing small. Mark was a person inside of flesh that was not his. And then he wasn't even a person. He was a memory inside of his own body, attached to a heart that did not beat with his blood, floating in a mind that sparked with ideas not his own, pushed around by lungs that breathed without him.

Had he been…?

Was he a…?

"Ahhh… There we go. The easy part is done." Wongod chuckled as he plucked a black shard from his chest. It was one of a thousand such black shards. "The healing will take a while, but it will happen, too, and my revenge upon this world will be legendary. We will devour the sun and claim eternity, and humanity will be as they should be; as slaves and food. You, Mark, your body, mind, and soul will be my left hand, along with BiggestBaddest, and all of the others. As for your deepest self, you can watch. In time you will regain yourself, I am sure. In time, you will harmonize with your goblin, becoming one person. Maybe someday I will even allow it. Perhaps, when the time comes, I will even teach you that resurrection spell that you so desire." Wongod grinned. "It won't work how you want, though. Even if you tried resurrecting your parents right now they would be teenagers in the bodies of adults, most of themselves lost to the Dark. In a few more years? Shells, and nothing more." Wongod threw his head back and laughed, wrinkles vanishing and his face becoming soft, brilliant green. His flesh turned handsome, and he proclaimed, "A hundred years from now, when my revenge is complete and I allow your return, even the shells of your human parents will not be retrievable! But you can certainly try! Try, try, and try again! Like a proper goblin!"

The Wrong-Made God laughed.

Something snapped in Mark.

Mark rebelled.

The world dissolved into black and Green and laughing, chortling, victorious goblins.

Mark thought; frantic, desperate, final.

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