Morning came quickly. The drums approached from down the road where I had spent the night before and slowly approached until the sounds echoed in the woods at the edge of the clearing, before vanishing like morning mist. I ate a quick breakfast and steeled myself. I finished setting up the rest of the traps: tying the final knots, and setting the final triggers and tripwires by noon before packing up my rifle and strapping my pistol and sword to my belt.

I maneuvered through the field and triggers without setting off any of the many traps I had set. The meadow and hilltop were a mile and a half away from the ‘outpost,’ and the number of goblins increased from 50 to 54 in the two days and nights it took me to get here from the tower. I crept through clustered woods in between the hill and the outpost, and once the treeline began to thin, I lay prone and crawled forward to peek out from under a bush, much like I had done with the patrol.

The outpost was constructed hastily built fortifications of thick steel beams wrapped in barbed wire in the shape of large x’s as walls in front of a chainlink fence. Within this enclosure was a domed-roof building, and an old truck that sat idle underneath a carport. There were a couple of other buildings: blocky structures that seemed to have been put up hastily. Goblins meandered within the court, and in and out of the building. Smoke rose up from the center of the camp, and the smell of cooking meat tickled my stomach.

A pair of towers: made of aged wood, stained greed with moss and mold, and cracked with rot, watched over the road. I pulled the rifle from my back slid it across the ground and aimed it down. It was difficult to aim with just the iron sights. Especially when half of the rifle got buried beneath layers and layers of duff. I dropped my rifle where it was, and reached into my jacket to pull out my PID: resting between the layers of cloth, and the breastplate. I scrolled through Jack’s message chain and typed out a message that simply read:

“Could you get me a scope or a sight or something?”

Before sliding it back in place, and picking up my rifle. I shifted it with the duff and tried to aim at the nearest tower. I took a deep breath and imagined a stream of energy flowing into my rifle as I pulled the trigger. The cradle of the tower exploded into shards of wood. The goblin at the top protected its face as shards of wood slammed into its crossed arms. Fuck, I missed what I was aiming for. I adjusted my sights, as the goblins in the camp went into high alert. They rushed toward the sound: a few gathered around the base of the tower, and a few gathered in front of the small outpost, scanning the treeline where the shot had come from. I took another deep breath and exhaled before firing again.

The bullet found its mark: one of the tall, wooden legs of the tower. The rotted wood exploded, and the tower lurched forward as the goblin on top tried to shift its weight to keep it from collapsing completely. The tower, however, didn’t react to the attempts and fell on top of a group of goblins gathered underneath it. Most of them managed to crawl out underneath the rubble of the collapsed tower, some, however, didn’t. The PID vibrated five times.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

I shifted the rifle toward the crowd of gathered goblins, slid back the bolt, and squeezed the trigger. The gun roared to life, and one of the goblins fell backward dead. Aiming didn’t matter now: all that mattered was speed as the goblins took note of the direction of the muzzle flash, and began moving in my direction. I slid the bolt back and fired again. Another died.

A rather large goblin: with a more defined, less bulbous neck, a bright white mane, and dark green skin covered by what looked to be a part of a car door torn off and hung over its neck like a breastplate, emerged from the centermost building and barked an order in their primitive tongue. They spread out before I got the fourth shot off. The goblins fanned out into a semicircle and rushed toward the treeline. There were still 100 or so meters in between me and them as they began their rush. I fired again, and the large goblin barked another order as the next goblin died. Shield users raised their shields as they approached, and the other goblins fell back behind them so that they marched in orderly lines.

I took a deep breath, exhaled, and fired. The bullet slammed into the shield of one of the goblins: exploding it in his hand. The bullet burrowed into the goblin’s arm, and it dropped its guard. The lead goblin barked an order and it fell back, and the remaining shield users closed ranks. Fuck, this was going nowhere. I hadn’t killed as many as I would have liked, but if I waited around any longer, there was a chance I could be overtaken. I picked up my rifle, and the goblin leader barked an order as I turned tail and ran.

The sound of pursuit was close behind. Just like the rats, Lyle. Just like the rats. Do not falter. I weaved through the thin trunk birches and hopped over fallen logs. Old brush clustered on the ground pushed up the legs of my pants and scratched at my flesh. I flung my bag over my shoulder, dug around in the frontmost pouch pulled out a small leather drawstring bag, and dumped its contents on the ground behind me.

I had spent a couple of hours the day before grinding up the Cassandra’s Thorn I had picked on the way to the hill, and smearing the paste on pieces of barbed wire that I had found curled around some of the sandbags on the hilltop. I chanced a glance back as I fastened my bag. Some on the front line froze a little as they worked to pry the barbs out of their feet. Those ones wouldn’t last long. Sure enough, a few minutes later: their elevated heart rates drew the poisonous paste into their hearts, and I got a total of five notifications on my PID, letting me know that they were dead.

I hadn’t run this far, this fast for years. My heart felt close to bursting, and my legs felt as if they were about to fall off. I wanted nothing more than to slow to a walk, and then to a crawl, but the goblins giving chase wouldn’t allow me that luxury, so I continued the run. I also take into consideration the fact that I had to stay in view of the goblins, and didn’t lose them in the thickest parts of the wood: if I did then all of this would have been for nothing. It was a constant game of slowing down at the right times and speeding up. Spears and javelins struck the trees beside me, but as thin as I was, I could easily weave in and out of cover making myself a difficult target.

There: a break in the trees, and a fallen log, stripped clear of bark on one side, indicating the path I should take so I didn’t inadvertently trigger any of my own traps. I could only hope, once I had made it to the clearing, that everything would work as I had planned.