Chapter 7: Goblins (P2)

I'm a big fan of magical worlds and all the diversity they bring to the table. In fact, one of my favourite strategy games takes advantage of this very diversity to create wholly different factions for players to pick from and battle out on a world with a rich history.

However, what I wasn't a fan of was meeting these things up close. Goblins have been depicted across a large spectrum of good to evil, and with the many things I've come to realize in this world, you just couldn't tell what could happen.

Usually, RPG's gave you a close up encounter with these creatures. It may be a tutorial fight or they may be your mentor, otherwise you find out from the many NPC's you're forced to talk to about the creature's alignment. More often than not, they are the bad guys.

In this situation, I'm hoping they aren't. Even though Anselm cries definitively that they are monsters of the greatest evil, I couldn't seem to trust his word on anything we might have to fight. That's and perhaps I'm just fixing to catch a break.

After the big discovery, I spent the whole day and another raising the proficiency of Animate Animal I'd gotten another 2% when I realized that using a single type of animal would only give ever depreciating results until it stopped giving any result at all.

Stuck at 12% proficiency, I failed to unlock access to my puppet's eyes. This put a considerable wrench in my plans to spy on the Goblins and come up with an actual plan. Now all I had was Anselm and his mana expensive ghost abilities.

"Why can't you phase through walls without my mana anyway?" I ask the cowardly squire. We sat together around a fire roasting rat on a stick.

He turns the pike to the other side, making for a complete roast. "Well, I don't know actually. I never left my body until you summoned me, not because I didn't want to but just because I couldn't."

"What do you mean you couldn't. You haunt me every time I don't have you summoned."

He chuckles, "Well sorry, you're then most interesting thing in here that I can follow." He plucks the rat off the pike and inspects it, nodding with satisfaction he piles it onto the other two roasted rats I was intent on eating. "I used to be able to move, in fact there were two of us." He jerks his thumb to the other skeleton, the one right beside his.

"But soon after we die and were exploring the cave and world outside, actually doing ghostly things like haunt and spy on people, the both of us were suddenly drawn back here, to our rotting bodies. And the next thing I saw was the brightest light. My knight was prepared, in fact he was ecstatic about being taken, but I fought it."

"So, it left you here, all alone."

"I didn't think I'd be alone. After the light left, I tried leaving the cave only to be redirected back to my body. I've watched all sorts of people come into the cave, I even watched when those men dumped you in here. Then you turned around and change everything, gave me a body with your mana," he smiles softly. "Even if it's only for two minutes."

For a moment I begin to see him no less than I did another human, I can sympathise with his plights; there was likely a lot he was missing out on, both here on earth and in the afterlife.

He'd been forsaken though, thrown aside for his ignorant defiance and it didn't feel right. This light he spoke of seemingly expected all dead mortal men to long for it and not the many familiar things they've built relationships with on earth. For the first time since I woke, I felt something other than a desperation to survive, I felt a righteous indignation and at a god no less.

"Well, you can follow me about then, I'll try to summon you a body more often."

"You sure?" His face lit up with joy.

I shrug and take a bite out of my roasted rat, "Yeah, I need the practice anyway." I dust myself off as I got to my feet, pocketing the remaining two rat-kebabs, "But to ensure that we need to get out of here. I don't intend on eating rats the rest of my life."

He gives me a curt nod, jumping to his feet, "Yes, so what's the plan?"

He wouldn't like the plan I'd come up with. No, no he wouldn't cowardly as he is, for a moment I thought of tricking him into it, but I saw no route in doing so. The main objective now was getting through the boulder and into the goblin camp and to do that I needed someone to open it up from the inside.

"You'll have to possess one of the guards." I mutter, studying his reaction.

He looks like he's going to scream with fear, he even takes a deep breath. But at the end he just lets it all go, breathing it out and steeling himself with a grim look on. "I'm ready."

I smile. He'd gotten me to change my view of him twice in a single setting; right now, he didn't look so cowardly.

***

We stood once again before the boulder, Anselm of course was frightened, I don't bother reminding him that he couldn't be hurt by physical means I was a lot more frightened than he was. Though I wasn't shaking and shivering, I was plenty scared of getting my skull bashed in.

He gives me an unsteady gaze and nods.

"Summon Spirit." I mutter yet again, shooting his ghostly spectre with green mana. "Two minutes, less once you start the possession. Remember, push the boulder out of the way by any means necessary."

He says nothing and pales out of my view, likely phasing through the walls. The plan is, as always, simple; Step One-Possess the guard and push the boulder out of the way. Step Two…? Well I'm still working on that part. But if there was to be an altercation, I find myself more than prepared.

I wait a few seconds, pushing mana all round my body, invigorating me and assuring me of my defence. At the slightest sign of attack, I'd activate Soul Drain.

Luckily, I don't have to. Fear washes out of me as the boulder rolls to the side to reveal a well dim lit room, upright with what look like tents, tents filled with green creatures of all sizes-all asleep.

The creature that rolls the boulder away in the first place is an ugly towering being, it sports a fat but hard looking shiny green potbelly, below its torso was the only article of clothing on its body, and it barely covers what it should.

"Anselm?"

The creature groans and grunts, affirming its identity. "Might want to pop out of there just in case the spell ends and wakes him up." I get another grunt as a response before I take my first steps past the boulder.

There is little difference inside to out. The ground was a wet squelch of moss, yet also crunched when I stepped on the crystals that illuminate the room. The most notable difference however is the loud endless pouring of my treasure; water. I couldn't help but laugh.

The water fall pours endlessly into a pool that glistens beautifully underneath the moonlight, yes, I'd finally lain my eyes on the sky and it was wonderful.

There was something so different and good about having the fresh night breeze wash over you after breathing in the stuffy air of a closed off cave.

I ran over to the pool, splashing into it without a care and gulping down near gallons of water down my dry throat. I sigh with satisfaction as I stared down at myself. A stranger looked up at me. I'm slightly taken aback as it dawns that this is the first time, I've seen the face of the body I inhabited.

I look no older than twenty, despite all the time I'd spent without proper hygiene in the cave, my chin had trouble producing the barest stubble. My hair fell into a black as dark as the night sky I near worship and my eyes glow a deep mysterious purple.

The colour of my eyes scares me the most, and I realize, as though I'd previously forgotten, that I was in another man's body.

With my belly full of water and heavy with food, I began to wonder the life of the person who owned this body, the man who was apparently over a hundred years of age yet sported a boyish look, the man who'd been given a moniker entrenched in his renown practice of pyromancer and likely his worship of the lesser god of burning.

Fear racks through my body, not only because I was finally getting out of the cave and into a world I knew little of, not only because I'd just noticed the second glowing celestial body in the sky, a second moon but also because within the reflection of the pool of water I laid eyes on the angriest Goblin I've ever seen and this one sported a club.