32 - Villains Approach

Vance

Vance, Feckle, and Peckle tromped through the forest…quietly. Nervously, one might say. On tiptoes and with a rather twitchy disposition, one might think.

Something snapped in the distance.

Vance’s head whipped around, his eyes wild. He hissed, “Monster check!”

Feckle and Peckle were already back to back, heads bobbing and darting this way and that like a bird.

“I see nothing!”

“Where? Where is it? Bloody Mary, help me! I don’t wanna die!”

The trio stood with chests heaving, on a knife-edge of panic, not that Vance would ever admit that he was that scared. They stayed frozen and extra wary for a good two minutes before they were ready to believe that a fresh death wasn’t descending on them.

Vance was the first to relax. “It’s fine. Fine. Totally fine. Just the wind. Probably.”

Feckle anxiously nodded from behind his kite shield, but his eyes continued to survey the nearby forest. Thankfully, they were now in a region where the trees were old and the undergrowth sparse, making it more difficult for anything to sneak up on them.

Peckle gulped, the last to lower his guard even a little. He was very aware of being the weakest one in the group. “Guess we know why they told us to stay the fuck out of this forest.”

Feckle rapidly nodded his head. “We’re stupid. We’re so stupid. We never should have come here. We are so low level.”

Vance sourly growled, “Oh, shut it. We’re alive, aren’t we?”

Peckle shivered. “Only because you have so many healing potions.”

“I’d have more if I hadn’t brought you two along. You two owe me big time.”

Feckle was pale. He’d been pale since after the goblin raid. “The minute I levelled up and got danger sense, it hasn’t stopped going off! It’s been screaming in my head this entire time!”

Vance arched a brow at him, not entirely as calm as he was pretending to be. “Still?”

Feckle paused and seemed to be listening to something only he could hear. Both his brows rose slightly. “Actually, either I’m getting used to it, or maybe it’s gone down slightly?” He allowed his shield arm to relax somewhat, though he remained fairly tense. “It feels like, ‘Run, you moron, run!’ and not so much, ‘You’re already fucked!’”

Vance, however, took that as a good sign. “See? We’re getting close to the edge of the forest again.”

Peckle darkly muttered, “Hopefully.”

Vance gave him an annoyed look. “You got a problem?”

Peckle’s stress levels had gone so high that he was past caring about how subservient he should be around Vance. He pointed an accusing finger. “You said you knew which way the goblins had fled. Said you could track them. Said we were going in the right direction. Right before trees nearly ate us. Fruckin’ trees!! Treants are supposed to be fictional!”

Feckle shook his head in disbelief. “Treants, man. The mouths on them…”

Peckle continued, “And then you told us to run, and we followed you. Right into a nest of leaf monsters—”

Feckle interjected, “Katiedudes.”

Vance rolled his eyes. “Giant katydids.” Then he, too, shivered.

Normally, katydids were nocturnal insects about the size of the leaves they imitated, and they had long stick-like legs. They were utterly harmless and quite cute. But here, some of the trees were quite large, and some of the leaves were rather broad, the size of dinner plates. They’d passed a trio of such trees, marvelling at their nature. Then Peckle had taken a leak against the trunk of one and somehow startled a few, which then caused hundreds of the insects to emerge from their daily slumber in full self-defence mode.

And these katydids’ wings weren’t just shaped like blades; they were blades. So when the startled insects began flitting from one tree to the next in panic, it filled the air with a storm of death. The trio of adventurers had all nearly lost their heads before ducking and running while only their armor had kept them alive. Only Vance’s stock of healing potions had kept them from bleeding out.

Peckle was far from finished. “And then the mantis things. Mantises the size of bloody horses! Who punch so lightnin’ quick you can’t even see them damn arms movin’!” He was so shaken that his language skills were suffering, the legacy of a poorer upbringing that he usually tried to suppress.

Vance half-shrugged. Even he had to allow that the mantises had been bad. He’d been arrogant enough to try to fight one and nearly lost an arm before he could be within reach. They were far, far above Vance in terms of speed and power. Only the fact that the mantises walked so slowly had allowed them to flee for their lives — again.

Feckle shook his head. “I don’t know how we managed to kill those goblins or how something so weak was living out here. But everything else is an insane gold rank threat or worse.” He hunched his wide shoulders as he continuously checked the surroundings. “We gotta get out of here. I can’t believe we’re not dead yet.”

Vance nodded, silently feeling the same but not wanting to look weak, but saying it out loud. “We’re close. These woods look like the kind of forest where we came in. I don’t think we’ll have to spend another night out here.”

Peckle nodded so fast, his neck might snap. “Th-th-the mothmen! We’re not going through that again! Nope. Fruck no.”

They’d come in the moonless night while sleeping rough. The mothmen were moths the size of swans, with wing spans wider than arm’s reach. They were speckled brown and gray, and the dust they gave off made victims sleepy and lethargic. Their humanoid bodies had four arms, each ending in a needle-like point. They were very light but strong, so high-level that they were too strong for the three rookies to damage. Worst of all, they had super long, slithering tongues that they tried to send up your nose or into your ear to feed, worming all over your face as they tried to invade, wanting to suck the fluids out of your body.

All three shuddered at the same time.

Then Feckle’s head sharply rose. He wildly looked around, raising his shield high again and gripping his axe hard. “Danger sense is up. Danger sense is back up!!”

Vance and Peckle jumped into defensive stances, Vance with both blade and rondel at the ready, Peckle knocking an arrow, ready to draw.

It came over a rise in the distance, maybe fifty meters away. Low and flat, it was an armoured tank two meters wide and at least eight long. The head was shaped like an arrowhead, the body a series of overlapping chitin plates, much like a trilobite beetle but far, far larger. But this one had nasty ridges along the sides with sicle-shaped hooks, and beady eyes that stared right at the trio of idiot humans like they were prey.

Peckle gulped at the sight of it. “Did…that thing just grin? It did. It’s fruckin’ grinning at us!”

They ran. They ran fast. The trilobite monster rolled over the landscape and wove in between trees with the skill of a centipede.

Thankfully, the beetle didn’t seem big on long chases, and soon tired. Good thing, too, because running in chainmail was the worst. Vance was light on his feet thanks to his enchanted leather armour, but the other two laboured like beasts of burden in the summer sun. They eventually collapsed to their hands and knees, chests heaving great gulps of air.

Vance looked down at the pair with a measure of disdain. Actually, that’s how he looked at them most of the time. This time it was because he knew he’d have been better off on this trip without the pair. They were just too much of a liability. Without them, he could have been sneaking around the forest and avoiding trouble altogether. At least, that’s what he told himself, and he was arrogant enough to believe it.

Vance sheathed his weapons and got walking again. “Come on. This whole expedition has been a waste. The sooner we get out of here, the better.” He was really annoyed.

Feckle picked himself up, dusted off his knees, and then helped Peckle to his feet as well. As they hurried and caught up to Vance, the trio walking a double-time pace, Feckle tried to cheer him up. “We didn’t bag any non-green goblins. But we did find goblins. And we did see one that wasn’t totally green.”

Peckle agreeably added, “Yeah. It was, like, brown-green. That proves the theory, right?”

Vance scowled. “No. Because who’s going to believe us without proof?” He reached into the magic bag on his waist and pulled out a string of fresh goblin heads, still dripping blood. They really only needed the ears, but he planned on piling these up at the Adventurers Guild to make an impact. He studied them yet again, though he’d already gone over them twice. His tone was full of disgust, “Not a single one is anything but common green. Boring.”

One of the heads, male or female, they couldn’t tell and couldn’t care less, fell off the string and bounced on the ground. Feckle accidentally kicked it and sent it rolling across the forest floor.

Peckle laughed and somehow found the energy to chase after it. He danced with the head, bouncing it between his feet. “Look. Football.” He clumsily played with the macabre ‘ball’ and then passed to Feckle.

Feckle, who was a keeper in the sport, flicked the head up with one foot and then tried to juggle it. He managed to bounce the head off his knees three times before the imperfect sphere went flying. He let out a laughing groan. “Ohhh. That was terrible.”

Vance wasn’t one to miss an opportunity to show off. He was, after all, a well-known striker, and showing off was the reason most strikers became strikers. He went after the head, caught it between both feet, then expertly flipped it up behind his back and over his head. Watching it closely as it came down in front of him, he caught it on his foot and proceeded to juggle much better than Feckle had.

Peckle laughed and clapped at the sight. “Yeah! That’s sick. Sick!”

Proudly, Vance skillfully passed the ball to Feckle. “Psh. Easy.”

Feckle caught it on his foot, then tried much harder to juggle. This time, he got up to eight bounces before passing to Peckle.

Peckle had more eagerness than skill. He repeatedly tried but couldn’t even bounce the goblin head more than twice before losing it. “Bleh. I suck. It’s not round enough.”

Vance smirked. “You can’t juggle a football much either.”

“Can so! I’ve been getting better.”

Feckle praised, “Yeah, you have. You’d been working hard at it.” He always backed up his best friend.

Peckle nodded once with appreciation. “Yeah, I have.” He tried to kick the head up into his hands with his feet and failed several times. Finally, he gave up and just picked the thing up. Kept in stasis, the head hadn’t been able to rot, so it was still quite fresh. Peckle grabbed the dead goblin’s jaw and worked it, mimicking a squeaky voice, “Look at me! I’m a football. I little, ugly football who smells like doodoo and looks like ass.” He cackled. Then he made an underhanded throw to Feckle.

Feckle caught the head. He examined the face. “These things sure are weird-looking. Kind of elven but like the ugliest baby elves ever. Gross.” He handed it back over to Vance, and the trio resumed their journey while Vance stuffed the head in his bag.

Peckle mused aloud, “You think they’re related to elves, then? Maybe they were elves, but like, midget versions, and the elves who are all about being perfect and pretty all the time didn’t want any small folk around, so they cast them out, and the small folk became goblins?”

Feckle mulled it over with a frown. “Hmm. But why are they green?”

“Cuz the forest is green?”

“So they became green over time.”

Peckle jumped into a whole new theory. “Or maybe the elves did some kind of magical experiment on babies that turned them green and stunted their growth. And they kept them in cells, but they escaped one day into the forest, and now they live wild.”

Vance snapped, “Don’t drop your guard. We’re not out of the woods yet.”

Both Feckle and Peckle instantly grew more serious and leaped into monster checks.

Vance could have said something snarky about their elf-goblin theories, but kept silent. Nobody knew where goblins came from; it was assumed they were just another monster. But no sense in laughing even at such outlandish theories in case they turned out to be true. There were, after all, a bunch of elves living nearby.

They trekked in silence for some time. Which turned out to be fortunate for them. It would turn out to be very unfortunate for everyone else.

As they walked, everyone always on high alert, Vance was the first to spot movement in the distance. He held up a hand. The others froze. Then all three slowly lowered themselves and crouched.

There was a hill in the forest, not far away. A monster had appeared, one that was a very distinctive green. It seemed to come out of the hill and then go into some nearby bushes. Not long after, the creature returned to the hill and vanished.

Vance’s frown and worry melted into a greedy smile. “Found you.”

Feckle spoke as he stared at the spot where the goblin had gone. “Another lair, you think? Or is it the ones that escaped?”

Vance licked his lips. “Oh, I hope it’s the big one. The brownish one. I want that thing so bad.” He drew his weapons. “Let’s find out, shall we? Feckle, at my side while I check for traps. Peckle, watch our backs. Make sure nothing sneaks up behind us.”

Both silently nodded. Together, they crept through the oak forest toward the hill. They took it nice and slow, Vance keeping trees between them and their destination to help obscure them from anyone watching. Soon enough, they were at the edge of the hill, and there was no sign they’d been seen yet. They circled to where the goblin had been sighted.

Vance puzzled over the area. There was a distinct trail from the side of the hill to the group of bushes, but no cave or door that he could see. Even when he put a hand on the soil and grasses, pushing and pawing at it, trying to locate an opening.

Peckle whispered from the bushes, “Latrine.” He wrinkled his nose, pinching it to block the smell. He flinched as a fly flew by his face.

Feckle also studied the place the goblin had gone. “Where’d it go?”

Vance became more aggressive in his search but still came up with nothing. He looked around. “I don’t see an entrance. Either really well hidden or magic, maybe. Come on. Let’s go around and see if there’s another.” He gestured to the right.

The trio quietly circled the hill, softly placing each step, always on the alert. Goblins were supposed to live in warrens and often laid traps everywhere. It was strange that the group encountered none. That led Vance to suspect that perhaps this wasn’t an established lair, and that somehow the fleeing goblins had found a place to hide here. But where?

Then they came around the far side of the hill.

Vance grinned. “A cave.”

Feckle and Peckle exchanged a smile and then fist bumped.

Vance took a deep breath, trying not to let his excitement get the better of him. “Feckle, how’s that danger sense?”

Feckle considered. “I don’t think it’s changed much?”

“As bad as that armoured centipede thing?”

“Nah. Less. Still screaming like we should run, though.”

Vance fairly tingled with anticipation. “We’re going in. I’ll go first to spot traps. Feckle, get ready to switch if we’re attacked.”

“Got it.” Feckle hefted his shield and drew his axe.

“Peckle, that bow probably won’t be very useful in tunnels.”

Peckle looked disappointed. He shrugged. “Yeah. Fair. Got my long knife though. See how much room we got inside.”

Vance could barely contain himself. If that off-green goblin was here, Vance was going to take his entire corpse back to the city and show the world. He’d be famous. Spinning his dagger in his hand, he stepped forward. “Let’s go.”