Husband of the Goblin Tribe

[v2] Chapter Twenty-seven – In which Ark explains the various types of love to Diana Artemis

“Want to run away again?”

After the party held out in the open yesterday, most if not all of the goblin tribe went back to their usual daily lives. It was currently raining. Nothing too fierce—little more than a steady drizzle, not cool enough to make me catch a cold with my body soaked as it was. I was once more at the tree line, staring out endlessly into it while not really thinking about anything in particular.

Diana Artemis had once more come to me, not bothering to put a knife to my neck as she had before. She took a seat on the muddy ground next to me and leaned her head gently against my shoulder.

In that moment, I wished I could say I was just her father. But that line had been crossed and I was the very thing she had always called me from the start—her Husband.

“No. No matter where I go, I’m convinced that too will become a prison for me.” Was all I could answer.

“What’s a prison?”

As it turns out, for the Bloodmaw, there is no real concept of a prison. If there was internal strife within the tribe, it was mediated by someone strong like Spear-hand, Old One, or even Prima. Anyone captured would obviously either be raped or eaten. Why keep someone alive just for the sake of keeping them alive if they had no other use? These goblins are practical to the extreme. I mean, I’m not a prisoner. I’m a breeding slave.

“It’s supposed to be a place where people who do bad things are kept. A place where no one really cares about them. But sometimes even good people wind up there for the wrong reasons, or because of the scheming of others. Sometimes they are kept there for a short period of time as a punishment, and sometimes they are sent there and will remain there for the rest of their life.”

“Does Husband think Goblinhome is a prison for him?”

“I won’t deny that at the start of my stay here, I thought it the case. If I still think of it as being one these days, then Goblinhome has become a prison of my own making.”

“Why?”

“Because of you. Because of your sisters. Because even if you won’t ever call me daddy, I will never be fully able to see you as the beautiful and powerful independent female goblin huntress that you know yourself to be. I find it hard to even think of abandoning you all. To me, even if you wish to have strong-ones of your own with me which pains me emotionally, you will still always be my daughters—my strong-ones. I can try to come to terms with it, twist my way of thinking to deceive myself that you are an adult no different than Berry, Vera, or even Prima who don’t share my human blood… but it will always be a fact of life that I made you, and that in the world I was once a part of, it’s considered a human crime—punishable by being put in prison.”

“Even… if Diana Artemis loves Husband in the same way humans love?”

I scoffed for a moment, but not in an offensive way. While I have a considerable amount of life experience over her, she’s still just over six months going on sixteen candles… there’s so much she still needs to learn about love. I mean, hell, barely a few days before she was born was the first time I had ever held a woman in an intimate embrace… even if it was really just Prima raping me in the most peaceful way possible.

“In the lands of humans far, far, away from here, there was a big tribe known as the Greeks. This tribe are the same as the ones who worshipped the Goddess of your namesake. They also determined that humans had eight ways to love each other and gave a name to each one.”

Diana Artemis tilted her head up and looked at me with great confusion.

“Isn’t love… love? Berry said…”

I shook my head gently, not letting her finish her sentence.

“I’ll tell you about them in detail, then maybe you might understand how different it is from whatever the Bloodmaw equivalent is. To answer your question, Love isn’t simply love—at least not to humans. One of our bad habits is the need to sort every single thing in this world into its own place, much like how quickly Truffle can identify a specific mushroom just from hearing you describe it.”

“The first kind of love is called Eros. It is the same as the love felt when making strong-ones.”

“Diana Artemis likes that one.”

“It’s usually the most enjoyable.” I quickly quipped.

“Diana Artemis is glad she got to know how good Husband’s seed-stick inside of her feels.”

“I figured you’d enjoy the biting part more.”

“That part is also good but feels different.”

“Yeah…”

My short time spent as a goblin, especially with Melon, taught me what my wives and daughters felt when we exchanged bites and tasted each other’s blood. A surge of power and knowledge transferred between each other in a preternatural way.

“The next type of love is called Philia. That’s considered the kind of thing where you think… I love being around this goblin the most. I suppose the best examples of this are Truffle and Ivory as well as Button and Glace.”

Diana nodded before adding “Also Ebony and Mint… Luna and Nova.”

I quickly agreed seeing that she understood the gist of it quickly enough.

“The third type of love is called Agape. This is the kind of love where you’re willing to sacrifice yourself for another. For me, it would have been when I stood against Prima and the Great Protector so that I could make sure you had space in Berry’s cave-hole for you to grow up well in. Actually, in the moment I probably did it for Berry more than you, but you were certainly on my mind after having met you for the first time.”

Diana’s wickedly sharp-toothed smile beamed when I said that.

“Diana Artemis knows this love. Felt it when we hunted Black-claws together.”

She was spot on. If one of those damn wolves would have gone for her, I would have shielded her with my life. I imagine she believes she would have done the same.

“Alright, then we’ll move to the fourth type of love called Storge. This is the love a maker goblin has for their strong-ones and sister-goblins. This one is incompatible with Eros. This should be the feelings you have when it comes to wanting to protect and take care of Berry and I, as well as the feelings you have as a big sister goblin towards Orchid and Lilac—specifically.”

Diana crinkled her brow for a moment nodding only slightly at my explanation.

“Something confusing about it, Diana?” I asked.

“This is not part of the goblin way. Strong-ones do not usually bring food to their maker goblins. And I only became a big sister goblin to Orchid and Lilac because of Husband’s warning.”

“My warning?”

Diana recounted what I told her about being strong by force, and how if she was benevolent to Lily’s twins that they would one day help her when she needed it the most rather than abandon her. It’s impressive to me how a single lesson can be fully retained by her at the young age she was back then.

“Mm. Then maybe that’s proof there’s some human way inside of you somewhere.”

“Not just Diana Artemis. This kind of love only exists in the Bloodmaw because Husband created it.”

I was momentarily stunned by her admission of that. Power is Hierarchy within the Bloodmaw, such things as care and generosity were foreign things to them. Did I really have such an influence on the whole tribe regarding this aspect of love?

“Alright let’s move on to the fifth type of love called Mania. It happens when your feelings of love overwhelm your otherwise normal rational reasoning, usually as a result of a desire to possess someone or something completely. It’s not considered a safe or healthy form of love, but it exists, nonetheless. I would think you suffered from that directly when you underwent your Blood Fury and decided to become an adult goblin the first time without obtaining my permission.”

Diana frowned at that last bit I was still aggrieved enough to tack on at the end.

“Diana Artemis did not need permission. Adult goblins make strong-ones! To make strong-ones, need seed-stick and big-seed. Husband’s job is to give it to all goblins that are ready.”

Yeah, try telling a pubescent teenage girl that she’s not an adult. It’s easier to win a knock-down drag-out fight with the Great Protector…

“Forget it. The Sixth type of love is called Ludus. It’s the enjoyment one feels when playing around with and teasing others. I dare say that this is the kind of love you might see between myself and either Jewel or Pepper. I don’t think they particularly care for me as a Husband in the same way say… Vera does. But most definitely they enjoy the benefits that come along with me being everyone’s Husband here and having limited time with me.”

Diana seemed to grasp that one quite comfortably with nothing to add. I do flirt with everyone, and it’s inline with normal everyday operations here.

“Then the seventh is probably the one you’d most be able to understand. It’s called Pragma. It’s the kind of love meant to fulfill an obligation. In my case, if any of the adult goblins love me for a specific reason, it’s because I am here to make strong-ones with them. It’s the reason why I am everyone’s Husband and can’t belong to any individual goblin. It’s also the reason I’m sitting here right now. Not only am I every adult goblin’s Husband, I’m also every strong-one’s daddy, too.”

Diana also signaled her understanding of this type of love.

“Husband is wrong. Diana listens to Old One talk about what it means to be Clan. What Husband is saying about this type of love is more like being Clan.”

“Oh?”

“Being Clan is important to the Bloodmaw.”

I got a small lecture from Diana about her understanding of Clan as she understood it from Old One which was somewhat different than the explanation I got from Toy, the first person I became Clan with. Apparently, in the past of the tribe, Clan considerations were based not only on selecting a mating partner or partners, but also their compatibility with fellow Clan members and how complementary their acquired skillsets in life were. Diana really did nail it on the head.

“Okay, you’ve got a point.” I conceded. “So, finally, there’s the eighth and final type of love called Philautia. While all the other types of love involve other people, this one is specifically about loving yourself—or at least being comfortably proud of what you are. If Diana can say to herself that she takes pride in being the next Guardian of the goblin tribe, and that she also take pride in others acknowledging that about herself, then that’s pretty much what it is.”

“Same as how Husband is proud that he can use Human stone magic to make the Bloodmaw stronger?”

“Yes… and no. What I love about myself is… well… being your daddy. Being all your sisters’ daddy. Even if you are completely Bloodmaw in appearance and ability, to me, you will always be in some part—human. You are my family no matter what, and that makes me feel like I have good worth.”

I don’t know if Diana Artemis fully understands this last one, since it’s a bit more subtle than its nearest neighbor, Narcissism. What she was fully understanding of at this moment, however, was Eros. Diana, in a single swift movement, had occupied my lap and put her hands around my neck. With only a soggy, muddied loincloth on, her bare tan colored chest, enhanced by the physical transformation of her body after her Blood Fury that had happened not too long ago, perked out in front of me with youthful indiscretion.

Giving in to the taboo which had already been broken, in the drizzling rain, my eldest huntress and I became a beast with two backs once more. We rolled in the grass and mud and Diana Artemis did her damnedest to try and make a strong-one as she desired with the absurd amount of human genome she extracted from me.

My reward from all of this?

“Achoo!”

Was to be, for the first time since arriving in Goblinhome, to be the recipient of a cold…