The sky black as twilight, the orb, hanging mid-air as if a celestial sphere wanting to gaze into them, pulsated with its volcanic glow, dazzling the onlooking goblins. There was a likeness between the orb and their hearts, as the latter pulsated with hope. History was changing, and they were simultaneously harbingers and harvesters. Soon, as the goblin sages prophesied, they would be able to spend their days in endless creativity. None of them knew exactly what this would be like, for their imagination was only great—and it truly was great—insofar as it dealt with the imminent. Every zap, every thrust and javelining of the spear, and every burst of drumming that went into their harvest rituals filled them with an urge to harvest more. The more they harvested, the more they hoped.
This also explains why they didn’t spectate the orb for very long. Their hopes came in jolts, not in waves. Sensing the need to continue reaching closer to their next jolt, half the goblins raised their spears which shook, buzzed and sparkled, progressively growing a wire-colored, electric orb; the other half banged their drums, mirroring the electric tension of the evolving orb. Abruptly, the drumming ended and a long second of silence passed. Then, the electric tension released into a beam that stretched toward the volcanic orb. Once the beams pierced the orb, gushes of goo burst.
The drumming goblins had switched to their spears, attracting the goo-gushes into them as if they were magnets. Those spears, now sharing in the volcanic glow, were then used to poke every tree in the orchard as easily as if it were butter. With the spear penetrating, the tree glistened with volcanic droplets. Meanwhile, the other goblins used their electric beams to move the orb over a cistern made of stone blocks partially covered with moss. After putting away their spears, which neutralized them of their energy, the orb dropped into the depths of the hole. After a minute of silence, giant volcanic jets violently shot into the air, then retracted back into the abyss, reverberating like thunder.
One by one, the goblins launched into the cistern. It is hard to know what it must have felt like for a goblin to freefall in this manner; however, creatures of jolts surely thrived amidst fear and frenzy. Down the narrow hole they went for almost a minute until their spears, serving as electric hooks, latched onto a cable, suspending them above the rushing channel of volcanic goo. The goo illuminated the horizontal tunnel as if torches burned on the walls of the mine. After several minutes of gliding along the cables, the goblins approached the precipice of cliff where the goo surges into an enormous abyss like a waterfall. The echo of the crashing waves was a deafening garble. Running perpendicular of the cable route was a suspension bridge providing a route for a conveyer of mine carts. As soon as a goblin intersected the mine cart route, they would jump off, using the electric beam of their spears to guide them into the cart if they missed the natural landing. As the mine carts approached an extremely narrow tunnel, their speed accelerated. Through twist, turns, and drops, they traversed the arteries of the mines.
After a long ride—although, the duration is likely relative to one’s tolerance for commutes—the goblins entered their marvelous and terrible destination. It was a massive chamber walled with jagged rocks colored with a breathtaking tints of purple and pink and filled with a raging volcanic sea. Looking upwards, there was an endless view of ladders and bridges. There was a central pulley system where enormous buckets full to the brim with the volcanic goo emerged, one by one, from the sea’s surface. After a long ascent, the buckets would be redirected, in what seemed to be a thousand different directions, by the goblins stationed on the bridges. The arriving goblins hopped out of their carts and made their ways to the various ladders. The arriving volcanic goo that had originally emanated from the floating orb in Igor’s kingdom gushed the side of the chamber, splashing into depths of the sea.
All this was a fantastical scene to behold, but the most wonderful—and most terrifying—of all was a towering sphere hovering above the volcanic sea. While orange, it had a blood-red hurricane at its center, and there were flashes of lightning behind its foggy surface. Streaks of vertical clouds in a spectrum of dark orange shades surrounded the vertical poles like spectacular, webbed walls stitched from spidery strings. Across the entire width stunning silvery glare. Every now and then a thunder would boom, piercing every inch of the chamber’s walls and forcing some of their jagged rocks to fall into the burning sea. Defying gravity, there was a column of the volcanic goo in the center of the raging pool being pulled into the orb above. While imperceptible to spectators, the orb was slowly enlarging its colossal circumference, intensifying its internal, gassy gale, and swelling its thunderous symphony. Onlookers could not tell who was doing the looking. Amidst this marvel, all goblins somewhat feared, some marveled, and most hoped.
The orb spoke…