The Goblin Bride (Beneath Sands Book 1) by Emma Hamm (good short books TXT) 📕

shadows shortening as they came around the bend of the ledge. Just when she was certain they would going to grab her, they walked past her. Their feet stepped close to her head and hands. At the very end, Jane and her companion were scooped up by the last goblins. She was pulled up by her elbow. The creature bent her arm back until a spark of pain lanced through the socket. A whimper trickled from her lips but the sound only made the creature wrench her harder.

 The edge of the cliff was so close to her feet that once she slipped. Rock crumbled beneath her heel and she tilted dangerously to the side. For a moment she thought she was dead. Jane was certain that the goblin would let go of her and she would be sent tumbling into that dark oblivion that didn’t seem to have an end.

 Yet the creature pulled her forward once more. They didn’t look at the humans, instead they kept their eyes firmly on the goblin in front of them. Though she tried to speak to it, to reason with it, the goblin would not even give her the benefit of a glance. She was shoved and pulled up the precarious ledge until she realized that there were other outcroppings like the one she had been on.

 Each ledged area had a few other humans on it. Some of them she didn’t recognize, but most she knew the faces of. All of these men were miners. They were the same men that had rode down the elevator with her every morning and the same men that had laughed with her on the way back up. Jane was desperately trying to piece this situation together in her mind. She understood grabbing her. She had attacked one of their own kind, or at least it would have looked like that. But the others? Why would they go out of their way to get the other humans in the mine?

 It made very little sense, but by head count she guessed that there were about twenty of them down here in what everyone called Below. Twenty men that went missing and she had to wonder if anyone would really notice.

There was not a single man that seemed to have helmets or pickaxes with him. Her head throbbed as she tried to think harder. The smaller one that Simon had killed flinched back when she turned her helmet towards it.

 The light. It had to be the light. They lived down here far from the sun and it seemed like the only light they needed was that of the soft blue stones they held in their hands. These had their own light within them, glowing with some kind of inner coating that the goblins shook every now and then.

 That was why in the stories there was always a helmet left behind. She didn’t know much about evolution or species. There wasn’t any schooling for those that were destined for the mines. But Jane did know that these creatures were sensitive to light. It was a thought she would file away for later when she tried to escape this hell on earth.

 Finally they started to slow, the line moving at a snail’s pace as they started to reach the top. Jane looked up, realizing that the glow seemed stronger up above them. It appeared that they were going to be entering another cave. The line of men and goblins were slowly making their way over a small lip and to a better lit area. She couldn’t see much still, and shadows seemed to move in the unearthly light, but at least it was no longer pitch black.

 She entered the large cave with her goblin companion. The same companion that wouldn’t let her turn her head too much to look at him without giving her a firm shake. By the time they had gotten to the lip of the cliff, she had been shaken so many times she was seeing bright spots in her vision. Her head had been hit harder than she originally thought. Jane would have been more concerned by this if the sight that awaited them inside the cave hadn’t stunned her into silence.

 There was a raised dais at the center of a wide circle. The lights were coming from more of those strange stones, all gathered around what looked to be a throne. Carved out of crystal, it was one of the most impressive things she had ever seen. The shear amount of gemstones here would have made any man drool with the promise of riches. Just one hunk of these would have brought enough at the market to send a man off to the City rather than living off of the mines.

 Like the others, she was too focused on the stones to notice the gathering of goblins seated around them. Though none of them were resting on the throne, they did perch themselves on the other crystals that were emanating light around them. Ten in total, Jane was one of the first to start scrutinizing them.

 They weren’t what she had thought. The two goblins that had left lasting impressions on her were not dressed like this. They had seemed barbaric even to a woman who was raised outside the mines. Loin clothed and leather clad, they had radiated an animalistic quality. And with those teeth, who could really be surprised that they didn’t seem like a progressed species.

 Yet these monsters did not seem like monsters at all. They were dressed in fine fabric that she did not recognize. So sheer that they wore layers upon layers and so smooth that the light was reflecting off of them. Jane had never seen such colors in her life. Her world was all yellows and blues, hues of these colors were seen perhaps but never the vivid greens and indigos that these creatures wore. Her eyes didn’t know what to focus on, the strange deathly pallor of the monsters or the