"What the hell, man!"

For most people familiar with high fantasy and fiction in general, goblins are a divisive species. On the one hand, they're brainless, slobbering mooks with nothing but perverse and violent intentions, often likened to a pack animal driven by base desires. On the other hand, they're a more human species, often silly and lovable little guys who are as much gremlins as they are unorthodox green pals.

For Courtney, some knife-eared shitter from a Halloween movie just jumped at her with a shiv, so she didn't have much time to debate the moral quandary of goblinkind.

"Fuck is that?!" She yelps, before taking a closer look at the malformed creature she ragdolled across the dirt. "Is that a guy?"

"My goodness, milady…" Ronister whistles, lowering his warhammer a bit. "Your attack and reaction stats must be very good – he's completely unconscious."

"Oh, good, he isn't dead." Courtney sighs, not sure if she's quite ready to become a killer on her first day on the job. Granted, she wouldn't feel particularly bad about it, but it'd still be pretty crap.

"I suppose it's good that a hero cares for the monstrous races…" Ronister mutters to himself, and Courtney just knows that she's missing important cultural context, with the way that he says it.

Does… does she have to deal with real-life moral quandaries, in addition to being stuck in fucking Narnia? If she finds out that there's a monster-based apartheid or slave trade in this fantasy-land, heads will roll. Probably slaver heads. Lincoln is her favorite president, after all.

Before Courtney can dread otherworldly ethical principles any further, two other little green jackasses come hopping out of the other bushes.

"Glimbo, you idiot!"

"Stupid humans, we'll steal your ribs for that!"

Okay, well, they sure sound like goblins. And the one that Courtney kicked was named Glimbo?

Glimbo the goblin.

…These ones also have weapons: one with a spear, the other with a slingshot and a bag full of rocks. They're pretty simple weapons, but definitely enough to hurt someone. Courtney's staring at that spear, specifically, taking a step back.

"Hey, Ronister? You hold off the one with the spear," what with him wearing at least five-hundred pounds of armor, and all, "I'll get the one with the rocks."

"I, ah, yes, milady!" Ronister yelps, before trudging into combat.

Watching him clunk over to a little green man to do glorious battle, Courtney grumbles and turns to face the other goblin thing she's supposed to deal with. Seriously, though, a slingshot? What's he gonna do, hit her with a pebble –

CRK – KEEEEEN…

Courtney screams and curses as a fist-sized rock slams into her left temple, blood now painting the side of her head. Her palm presses tightly against the wound as she staggers to stay on her feet. It's hot, it's wet, and it smells like a fresh coat of rusted iron. It's all she can focus on, if she doesn't want to think about the ringing in her skull.

Angry eyes laser to her assailant in question. Garish yellowed fangs creak into a rage-inducing smile, the goblin's bulbish nose wrinkling as it grins. Creepy little fingers reach into the bag of rocks again and before she knows it, Courtney is dead-sprinting towards the little fucker before he pelts her with another brick.

She's a moment too slow to intercept the second one, but at least she knows it's coming. As the next rock flies, she shields her face with her right forearm, curling her body to be smaller as she runs. It beans her in the stomach, but that doesn't hurt nearly as much, and it feels like it doesn't have as much power as the first shot. Fine. Whatever. Screw it, live with it. Just get to the thing and kill it.

Hard to care about the purpling bruise on her abs, not when Courtney is finally on top of the little fucker who dented her skull. There's really no time to think about pain or consequences, not when her heart is pounding out of her chest, and her nostrils flare so hot that her breath feels like ice in her lungs.

Courtney can feel its little body squirming and struggling under her as she buries fist after fist in its godforsaken face, wiping its smug smile off with two white-knuckled erasers. Oh, yeah, it tries to kick her off, buck her off like a wild horse, but she's too busy disassembling its jawline to give a shit.

There's really no need for descriptions, here: Courtney is just beating the dog shit out of this thing, wildly and without further consideration. Its teeth hurt like a motherfucker against her fists, so she settles for eye shots, halfway through. Somewhere in the middle, she slides a right hook into its trachea, for good measure. The goblin goes unconscious within a reasonable time, and Courtney stops laying into it after… well, she wasn't counting, but she stops hitting it long after it's knocked out. More than morally acceptable, honestly, but who's counting?

Climbing off the little green fuck, Courtney gives it one last kick in the ribs for good measure. She wipes off the blood getting in her left eye with her forearm, drying globs of the stuff now splattering on the dirt, before turning around to see where Ronister is.

Oh my god, he's still fighting the goddamn thing. They're clashing weapons.

Grabbing the forgotten bag of rocks, Courtney yanks it open to palm some sediment and starts chucking stones at Ronister's assigned opponent. She hasn't thrown a softball in years, so she doesn't land shit until her third rock.

Still, it's enough to notify the spear-wielding goblin that both of its allies are comatose. Seemingly at a loss for a moment, the gremlin makes up its mind and runs away, back into the treeline where it jumped out from.

Courtney throws a middle finger at it. Bitch.

"Thank you for the assistance, milady –" Ronister starts as per usual, and Courtney doesn't want to hear it, not when she's got a goddamn laceration gushing out of her brain.

"Do you know first aid?" She cuts him off bluntly, before hissing and applying pressure to her cut again.

"I – well, that is –" Ronister fumbles, and Courtney clicks her tongue in frustration.

"I got hit, Ronister, do you have something for it or not?" The cheerleader demands, fury bubbling in her chest. She knows she needs to tamp it down, like, calm down bitch, this is a middle schooler – but God, it's the right mix of pain and annoyance that can get Courtney pissed off at just about anyone.

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Going nonverbal, Ronister drops his pack from his back and cracks it open, shoving his gauntlets deep into his inventory. He pulls out his waterskin, some gauze, some cloth she can wrap around her head. Courtney's shoulders sag in mild relief: he has some basic survival stuff in there, at least.

"Milady, if you could take a seat…" He mumbles, looking up at her.

Subconsciously unclenching her teeth, Courtney sighs and squats down to the ground, letting Ronister do his thing. The water on her wound feels a little better, and the blood trickling around her eye isn't bothering her anymore.

"It, ah, it is not a dire hit, at least," the diminutive wannabe-knight assures her, "facial wounds oft bleed more, but there is no great risk to your health."

"...Well, sure." Sure felt like Courtney would have gotten a concussion from a rock that big. She's still a little dizzy, and all. Ronister's not a health professional, it's fine. "I'd rather get it clean and treated while I can, though. Hurts like hell."

"Wise decision, milady." Ronister acquiesces, and that's that.

Once Courtney has a palm's worth of gauze wrapped under a tight headband, she stands and looks to the two goblins currently lying on the floor, a hint of wariness in her throat.

The one Courtney punted – Glimbus, or whatever his name was – is still unconscious, but not all that worse for wear, relatively speaking. The one that she curbstomped… looks to be on the brink of death. It's choking on nothing, and she'd bet twenty bucks that it'll start gargling on its own blood if it isn't laid on its side or something.

Courtney feels a little bad for pulverizing it, but… well. It slung a brick-sized rock at her. Two, in fact. She could have easily died, Cain and Abel style, if it was more accurate. Her brain immediately starts justifying her actions in every way possible: it was self-defense, this sort of thing was the usual for fantasy settings, nobody would care about a violent green highwayman dying in a puddle of its own blood.

Wordlessly, with a cold look in her eyes, Courtney trudges over to the beat-down goblin and kicks under it, flipping it onto its side. Some blood spills out from between its missing teeth, and it stops choking.

"Milady? What are you doing?" Ronister asks, putting away his first aid supplies.

"Seeing what I can loot," Courtney lies without missing a beat, "aside from what you got for allowance from your mom, we're gonna be pretty broke until we get to the Capital."

"I see. Yes, that would be a good course of action." Ronister nods, as if looting broken bodies was a normal thing to do on a weekday afternoon. Oh, who was she kidding? This was video game land. Of course it was. The wolves probably dropped gold and potions, too, or something.

"Sucks that the other one ran." Courtney grumbles, picking at some dried blood on her cheek. "A spear would be helpful. I don't know how to use a slingshot."

"But you seemed quite proficient in pugilism!" Ronister perks up, looking over his shoulder at her as he crouches to retrieve some gold off one of the goblin's little belt-sacks. "Do you plan to take up the monk class, once we reach Gran Tidel?"

Reaching down to help him retrieve their well-earned fight rewards, Courtney's brain conjures up the image of a Gregorian monk, with the bald bowl cut and everything, and she cringes. "What the hell do pugs have to do with monks…? No thanks, I'm not super religious."

"Religious…?" Ronister asks in confusion, before unhooking the dagger's sheath from Glimbob's waist. "Well, if you wish for a weapon, milady, then this one had a dagger."

"Yeah, that works." Courtney shrugs, taking it from him and sliding it onto a belt loop.

"Oh, and this one had a minor magic potion!" Ronister grins, holding up a flask of blue… stuff.

"La-di-da. Y'know any spells, Ronny?"

"Well… We can still sell it, methinks."

"Yeah, fair point."

----------------------------------------

"And I heard there was this amazing fountain in the center square…" Ronister yawns next to her, lazily yapping about Gran Tidel after Courtney asked about it about thirty minutes ago, "As big as a mansion, by itself…"

Under the pale moonlight, half-listening to her travel companion, Courtney pokes at the embers of their campfire, the remains of their dinner settling into her stomach. Tonight's entree was two servings of adventuring rations. Thankfully, with Smallwood not that far behind them, the meal was still fairly fresh, albeit initially cold. Courtney didn't particularly enjoy bread, nuts, dried berries, and beef jerky, but it wasn't as bad as she thought it'd be.

As always, the Qliphoth Bastion of Sanguillon looms in the distance, the moon casting a heavy shadow on its intimidating silhouette. It's definitely scary, relatively speaking. Again, it's something out of a video game, so it isn't mind-numbingly terrifying like Ronister thinks it is, but it's still got a hell of a presence.

What's really scary is the prospect of going there.

That was the whole point of this, right? Courtney would be made a hero – like many before her, probably – and she'd be sent to kill the bad guy. Pretty standard. But it takes her a while to just stare at the place and realize how huge it must be. How many creatures and demons and probably people she'll have to fight, and kill. It takes up a sizable amount of the skyline, like when you see a distant city on a cross-country bus ride. Is it the size of a skyscraper? Bigger? An entire city?

The thought of facing off the entirety of New York City – well, demon New York City – sends chills down her spine.

Courtney got her face fucked up against a single goblin. One. And that bruise on her stomach is starting to hurt now, too. If she didn't get lucky and punt Glorbo or whoever, she might have gotten stabbed, too. And she's supposed to face a city's worth of bigger, badder, stronger enemies?

She's very likely to die young, and that realization only now just hit her.

"Ronister?" Courtney shudders, the cold of the night starting to seep into her bones. "It's not too late to go back."

A soft snore is all the response Courtney gets. Ronister, all tuckered out, nods off, his eyes closing. Softly, the boy's head rests on her shoulder, and he's fully asleep.

Her eyes flicker from the distant Bastion to the low orange of the embers in front of her, and Courtney snorts.

Yeah. Sure.