Chapter 16 - One Week to Lillinberg (Day 2)

Clint never dreamed. He never had the time nor the security needed to sleep deep enough. Even as he slept, Clint was achingly aware of his surroundings. He was always ready, even when unconscious. He simply couldn’t afford anything else.

So to dream the way he did tonight was a very odd thing. Perhaps it was the warmth of the fire and the rare occasion of a full stomach that drove him into a sleep deeper than any he had slept before, or perhaps it was something strange about the woods around him. It mattered not, for just this once, he did dream.

A little girl was running toward him. She was a patchwork. One moment she was a toddler, barely able to walk, the other she was around ten or eleven. She changed appearance, hair going from short, to long, from flowing, to braided, skin changing from brown to white, even to green now and then. Despite her constant changing, there was a continuity to her. She was always the same girl, and he knew inherently who the little girl was.

She ran closer, but fell to her knees. Clint saw himself from the third person, standing over the girl. His face was uncharacteristically emotive. He was younger and less worn down. He crouched down to comfort the girl, reaching a hand to her shoulder. He spoke something only Clint could hear, somewhere deep in the back of his mind. Not real human words, but something he understood.

At his touch though, the girl sank. She sank into the floor, much like a slime returning to the earth. It seemed to go on forever, that sinking, but eventually she was gone. Just a pile of blood on the floor.

His hand was in that pile of blood now, the hand that was supposed to comfort her.

His pistol was now in that blood covered hand.

It was pointed straight at his face.

He was standing before his younger self. He was pointing the gun at him.

He fired.

Rustling from the bushes awoke Clint. Only quiet, but loud enough to serve as an alarm to his hyperaware ears. He was the first one up, already on his feet as an assault on the sleeping party began.

Goblins. Horrible things. Though they resembled humans in shape, they were anything but in nature. They had green skin for camouflage and boggled yellow eyes made for finding food in dark environments. Their heads were oversized with wide pointed ears like bat’s wings, which allowed them to listen out for one another’s shrill, barking calls. Then there were their fat little bodies and spindly over-long limbs, which completed their ugly visages.

Goblins weren’t fighters, they were evolved for a scavenging lifestyle, only existing to steal from unsuspecting travellers and poorly protected civilisations, so their aggression was odd. The explanation was clear, but Clint was too unfamiliar with the beasts to see it. These specimens were extremely underweight. They were visibly on the edge of starvation, and like any starved beast they had grown desperate. Desperate enough to pick a fight.

A goblin lunged toward Clint, sharp claws swinging wildly at his face. He swiftly evaded it, sending it careening past him and into the ground below. The others scurried around at about knee-height, raiding their bags and doing away with the meat and cracker-bread. Clint attempted to fight them off, but more goblins came to their aid, throwing themselves at him and forcing him to play defensively, using swift dodges and intercepting kicks to keep the tiny horde back.

Goblins are opportunistic creatures, they’ll take any advantage they can get. As such, they had no qualms about attacking the sleeping twins. One goblin, slightly larger than the others, came barreling toward Sol, a large makeshift wooden club between its greasy hands. He was intent on bashing the prince’s skull in before he could wake. Clint made an attempt at an interception, but found a trio of smaller goblins charging him, forcing him to retreat a step.

That step was enough, the goblin was upon Sol now, bringing his club sharply and cruelly down on the prince’s head. It cracked.

The club did, at least. Sol sat groggily up with a yawn, eyes still not open to the attack. “Keep it down, would you?” he muttered, unaware of how this goblin’s ultimate attack had been totally negated by the sheer durability of his skull.

Survival instincts kicked in for the goblin and it made a hasty retreat, chittering and croaking some kind of warning to its peers in their approximation of a language.

The desperate, starving goblin legion did not heed this warning however, instead setting their sights on the only easy target left: The sleeping princess Luna. A few of them rushed toward her, sharp claws at the ready.

Clint’s yellow eyes widened. He knew Sol had the strength of a bull, a physical assault from such weak creatures would obviously be meaningless to him. But to Luna? His body moved before his mind, a remarkable feat when his mind worked so quickly. His feet drove him forward, stomping goblins beneath his boots without missing a step.

He was fast, faster than anything the goblins had seen before, even amongst the many other monsters that existed in their world. His bulldozing assault seemed impossible to stop, so they resolved just to slow him, throwing their fat green bodies against him to form a wall of flesh. That was enough to just about half his pace. The goblins he had left behind, the ones that could still move at least, grabbed his legs from behind, claws sinking into the leather of his chaps, unable to find flesh.

There was a strange nobility in it; these savage creatures giving all they had to defend their brethren. Of course, there was nothing noble about the sneak attack they were due to give Luna.

They were upon her now, claws raised, thirsty for blood. Clint beat at them, crushing goblins before him and behind him in an attempt to make that last little bit of distance…

But he fell short. Simply outnumbered.

The goblins' claws tore through the air as they were certain to tear through flesh, inches away from Luna’s sleeping face. Behind her closed eyes, she was blissfully unaware of the fate she was soon to suffer.

Blue.

Being forest dwellers, goblins were used to green, their own skin was green after all. They had the odd flower or mushroom that provided a splash of colour, sure, reds and purples were common enough. Oranges and browns too, when autumn came.

But blue was alien. Even the water in the woods was rarely blue. Not like the clear ocean, it too was made green by algae and duckweed. Only the unreachable sky, glimpsed rarely through the treetops, was blue. In their little minds, though they had no concept of faith or God, blue was something close to divine.

Imagine the confusion they felt as Luna’s eyes opened, revealing that sacred colour captured within her irises. Imagine the pain as they felt a hand the size of their heads snapping their limbs like twigs. Imagine the horror as their lives were all snuffed out in a moment by a girl who wasn’t even trying.

“Aaah!” Luna screamed, instinctually countering the goblins around her, powerful and fast strikes from her hands parrying and cracking at the goblin’s outstretched arms. She shimmied back, a blur, somehow smashing each one into the ground with her palm before any could reach her.

This was the final blow for the goblins’ morale. The few that survived made a desperate retreat, taking all the supplies they could carry with them back to the nest, leaving the bodies of their comrades scattered on the floor around the party.

After a moment, they each got their bearings. Clint shook the goblin blood off of his legs, stepping out of the pile of bodies. He stared, eyes wide at Luna. He hadn’t even noticed, but he was breathing heavily.

“Uh, Clint, you okay?” Sol asked, pulling himself from his sleeping sack and investigating the campsite.

“Gah, goblin guts…” Luna grumbled, wiping her hands down. “Gross.” She spoke as if it were spilled milk, seemingly unaware that she herself had slaughtered the goblins.

“'I'm fine.” Clint muttered, finally taking his eyes off of Luna “The little bastards stole our food.”

“Ugh.” Sol groaned. “I knew we shoulda paid for the goblin repellent.”

Refreshing cold. It was a sensation Clint hadn’t felt in far too long. He was often cold, but never refreshingly so; whether it was the icy air of a desert night or the embrace of coming death, it wasn’t often a good thing to feel cold.

But as the water of the river came pouring over his neck, he was refreshed in a way he hadn’t been for a long time, baptised by the liquid of this strange new world.

They had come to the river to wash off the goblin blood. It came off easy for Clint, washing away from the leather as it had so many times before.

Sol sat next to him, gathering the river water into skins to replenish what they had used already. Luna was downstream, bathing to get the goblin remains out of her hair and clothes. Her books had been discarded, prompting Clint to take a closer look at the one that caught his eye before “Fist of the South Sea.”

He flipped it open. Sure enough, it was pulpy, some kind of action novel about a wandering fighter who struck so fast he could kill his enemies without them realising. He quickly put it back down, finding it strange that such a story was popular in this world. Surely that kind of thing was commonplace here? In fact, he knew it was, given the speed he had seen Luna strike down those goblins.

“Sol.” He grunted. The prince perked up like a dog, excited at the call of his name. “What’s with your sister?”

The half-elf swished his feet in the water, unsure of the question. “What do you mean?”

“Today, with the goblins.” Clint elaborated slightly, believing only those few words to suffice.

“Oh yeah, that was weird for her.” Sol chuckled. “She doesn’t usually like getting her hands dirty.”

“Didn’t look that way to me.” He remarked.

“I mean, I guess it’s not too strange.” He leaned back, allowing the few cascading rays of sun that pierced the treetops to warm him. “When we were kids she-”

They both heard a set of soft familiar footsteps, heralding Luna’s arrival. Sol stopped what he was saying and shrugged. “Maybe it’s better if you just ask her.”

Clint didn’t respond. He wasn’t the type to be so direct.

“That goblin attack was odd.” Luna began, not giving the others a chance to respond. “They chose to attack three people in the woods who were clearly adventurers. They’d never normally be so bold.” Her hair was still dripping wet, but she paced around unperturbed, fiddling with her headdress that she held in her hands. “They must be desperate. Starving, perhaps, judging by the skinny state of their corpses.” She had an odd habit of growing quieter as she spoke, like she was hiding a private conversation with herself from the prying ears of others. “Lillinberg is still a few days away, but if they were that desperate they’d make the excursion with a large raiding party. There’s been no rumours of any higher level monsters in these woods, so they’re not simply being outcompeted…” She sighed. “Not enough data.”

“At least we won’t have to worry about them for the rest of the trip. Our rations’ll keep ‘em fed.” Sol grumbled. “We’ve only got two pieces of cracker-bread left!”

“‘S fine. We got water. That’ll hold us for a few days.” Clint stood up, ready to begin walking once more.

“Just water? For a few days? Come on, we’ll starve!” Sol complained. “There’s no way we’ll make it to Lillinberg like that.”

Clint had forgotten the twins were royalty, used to three meals and full stomachs every day of their life. They were resilient enough to ration, but to march for days on empty the way he did would almost certainly be too much for them.

Luckily, there was a simple solution; “We could hunt.” Clint offered. “Gotta have deer or somethin’, right?”

Luna jogged over, piggybacking the idea already. “Dire deer!” she smiled. “Monsters, technically, but with all the same nutritional value as a regular deer.”

“Why a dire deer though? Can’t we just eat a normal one?” Sol asked, still sitting.

“We could, but regular deers are skittish, they can take days to track and one wrong move’ll send them running. They’re far more effort than they’re worth. Dire deers are bigger, slower, and much more aggressive. If we can just aggravate one into fighting us, we’ll have no trouble.” Luna explained.

“Still gotta track ‘em though.” Clint said.

“Nope. Dire deers are Dire Creatures. Unlike most animals, Dire Creatures have mana. It drives them crazy. The magical potential within them causes their physical form to warp and become monstrous.” She lectured, hair now dry enough from all her pacing and excitement to put her headdress back on. “As a side effect, this mana allows us to easily find and track them with Detect Magic. Like so.”

A pulse of blue energy came from Luna’s finger, forming a large ring. Concentric circles continued pulsing from the middle, scanning. Eventually, a few dots of red began glowing amidst the blue, signalling the positions of other magical creatures. “There! Seems there’s quite a few in these woods.”

“Great, so we don’t have to go hungry?” Sol chimed, finally getting to his feet.

“Not quite.” Luna hummed. “The closest is… About a day’s travel away.”

“So… no dinner tonight?” Sol muttered, almost horrified.