Or rather, I needed to wring more power out of someone or something else. Hell if I was going to go toe with any kind of undead, let alone this one.
The undead stood from Garrett’s maybe-corpse, casually twirling a knife in its fingers. It stopped with the tip lightly clasped between two fingers and bowed gracefully, stretching its remaining arm out to the side and bringing its stumpy left arm across its chest.
The undead whipped its arm around, sending the razor edge of Garrett’s knife blurring towards my foot. I hopped awkwardly, but the blade skipped off the floor with a splash of oil and cut the sole of my foot anyway. Ah, fuck. That was gonna get blood everywhere. At least it only had so many knives to throw.
The undead dipped his foot down into one of Garrett’s pouches, sinking it far past the point that could have been physically possible. It bent down on its other leg, sinking as deep as its knee before it rose up again.
When it withdrew its foot it had at least half a dozen knives held precariously grasped between its toes. It flicked them upwards and snatched them out of the air as they fell. It touched each for a barely a fraction of a second before sending them careening towards me.
I whirled and dodged, adrenaline pumping through my veins at the breakneck speed of my runaway heart. Flashing blades shot by me on every side, weaving around me even as I did my best to thread the needle. Moments later I fell to my knees, the air clear of blades again, but blood trickling across my skin from a handful of shallow cuts.
The undead wheezed in a strange wheezing patten, air hissing through dry and withered lungs. After a brief instance of panic at this new sonic attack I realized the truth: it was laughing at me.
“Heh..” I fell forward, only barely catching myself on the palms of my hands before I fully face-planted. “HehehehahahaHAHAHAH!” I broke down laughing, going from slight chuckle to full cackle in half a second.
This fucker thought I was funny. Well, I’d show it just how hilarious I could be.
I needed either a hell of a lot of oil, or to get more power out of it faster. There was an easy way to do that, and the creature had already given me exactly what I needed to kill it.
I threw myself back to my feet, snatching up a fallen blade as I did so. I upended my crude bark satchel and dumped out its contents, all save the most critical: char cloth. Char cloth was charred cloth, not exactly complicated, but it was also extraordinarily flammable. I’d made some from a few scraps of my own ragged tunic on my third day and added it to my case of miscellaneous survival supplies.
I threw my char cloth to the bottom of the satchel and struck down with my flint onto the steel of Garrett’s dagger. The sparks shot downwards, bouncing off the sides of the satchel to land amid the gathered kindling. I spun, scooping the satchel through the two inches of puddled oil.
I lunged forwards, dragging the satchel along behind me by the straps. The creature’s eyes widened, and its stance shifted to run. I pivoted, spinning around to gather momentum and slammed the bag into its side.
The crappy construction broke like a balsa tree beneath the weight of an elder dragon, oil flying in every direction. Most though…..most followed the ever helpful laws of inertia, soaking the undead from head to toe.
Faint orange flames flickered at the corners, all but snuffed out by the sharp movement. The undead stumbled backwards, its entire body hissing as the holy oil burned away at its unclean flesh. Shit.
The undead lunged forwards and I realized the flaw in my plan almost immediately, I’d said it myself barely a minute ago: there was nothing more dangerous than a cornered beast. The only thing keeping the undead at bay had been fear of the pain that the oil would bring. With oil dousing its whole body and that pain already omnipresent even that flimsy shield was gone.
With any hope of it managing to survive unscathed destroyed there was no reason to hesitate, no path forward but coming at me with its full strength and killing me before I could kill it.
I threw myself to the side, mind racing. My own damn thinking had gotten me into this, it had damn well better get me out of it. True unrestrained combat was something rarely seen in any conflict, and for good reason. Throwing caution to the wind could make any opponent dangerous in the manner of a rabid dog, but rabid dogs got put down.
Case-in-point: the undead’s flying tackle failed to touch me, unless you counted the splashes from the wave of holy oil as it face-planted in the puddle. I whipped back around to face it, feet hydroplaning in the oil. The undead was pushing itself upright, but it was already too late. The brief pause had given the flames the time they needed to spread, and they were flaring up around its entire body.
The whole room lit up as the flames reached its skin, the faint orange flames turning an incandescent blue. The undead turned its head towards the sky and screamed, waves rippling through the oil puddle as the sonic force drove it away, but the blue flames liming its body just flared brighter. The reaction had already begun, and there was no stopping it now.
The undead took a halting step forward, then another, resembling a mindless zombie more than the deadly revenant I knew it was. Little more of it was left than the inky black shadows of bones with the blue fire, but it didn’t seem to care for the limits of mortal biology. The creature picked up speed as it ran, but that speed did it no favors.
On the third step whatever necromancy still held it together gave out and the kneebone popped out of place, letting the shinbone slid past the thigh bones and sending the whole mess down to the ground. The rest followed the the kneebone, falling apart and turning its once coherent skeleton into a spray of bones. I scrambled straight to the other end of the room, but the collection of loose bones that had once been an undead showed no sign of reassembling themselves.
Their fall had sent them right into the puddle of blessed oil, and if my improvised bucketful of flaming oil had hurt it, there was no way it was coming out of this intact. Half the floor had gone up in blue fire, and its remains were in the center of it.
Still, I kept a wary eye on the conflagration until the flames died down into a mild orange flicker in place of the blazingly incandescent blue. It died out entirely a few minutes later, and a closer inspection revealed little more than greasy stains on the floor. I double-checked the ceiling, but there was no sign of lingering smoke.
That was damn well encouraging. There was no door, but I wasn’t about to accept my slow death of starvation just yet. The ceiling and the floor both lacked the constructed look of the walls, having more in common with natural caves, and the rough ceiling could easily hide any number of little cracks and crannies. The more of them there were, the better the ventilation was, and the more likely that I’d be able to find some path to worming my way out of here.
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The next step was my still bleeding foot, which I was more than happy to address with what I found in Garrett’s pockets. The poor bastard was still unconscious and conveniently provided no objections when I went through his various extra-dimensional pockets for a first aid kit.
And if I happened to run into some other valuables while I was looking, well I could hardly be blamed for finding them, could I?
Alas, there were no bandages to be found. I did find a full set of alchemical supplies, but they weren’t fucking labeled. Goddammit Garrett. Why did you have to go and do something smart? With the various bottles and vials unlabeled I couldn’t really steal them, cause there was no way I was putting any of that in my mouth like that.
I mean maybe I could figure it out, but did red mean healing potion or firebomb? Green could also mean health, or maybe poison. Yeah, no.
Of course, bandages weren’t that hard to make, and I had the perfect materials right here…
Garrett was pretty seriously damaged by the undead, but not irrecoverably so, and it didn’t take him much longer to wake up. He stirred groggily at first, but after a second he shook himself and shot up straight.
“Welcome to the land of the living.” I said from a safe distance.
Garrett grunted, putting one hand to his jaw. “Mrmph.” He looked down at the neat lines of alchemical products I’d looted, then shifted to glare at me.
I grinned. “Why yes, I did line up all your potions so you could fix your face. You’re welcome.”
“Mrmph.” Garrett snatched up one of the red ones and uncorked it, swirling it around in his mouth before swallowing. The skin shifted as his broken bones realigned themselves. “Such kindness. Truly, you are a hero among men.” He stood. “Now give me back that pouch you’re hiding.”
“Pouch?”
Garrett growled. He did a pretty good job for a human, solid A for effort, but good for a human wasn’t good enough to impress me. “One’s missing, and these potions didn’t create themsel- Is that my cloak!?”
Ah, so he’d noticed. “No.” I said innocently.
Garrett glared at my wounded leg, one hand going to his shoulders, notably absent of the cloak that had once hung from them.
“Oh, this?” I gestured at the bandage binding closed the wound on my foot and wrapped around a good portion of my leg for added stability. “I think you’ll find that was your cloak. What it is is a bandage.”
Garrett’s hand vanished into one of his pockets, doubtlessly reaching for some weapon or other. “You little thieving bastard.”
I smiled, taking care to restrain it enough to avoid showing off my teeth. “Guilty on both counts.” I picked up one of the red potions and held it up in the light. “So, do you drink these, or just dump em onna wound? Difficult to tell with my limited experience.”
“I could do either, what you do with it is put it the hell back.”
I popped off the cork with my nail. “Duly noted.” I dipped my nail into the vial and lifted it above my head, carefully letting a drop fall into one open eye, then the other. “Damn that stings.”
I kept my eyes tightly shut, locking in the healing fluid.
“Goblin. You live only because I know you must have saved my life. Do not test that mercy.”
I snorted. “Yeah, let me tell you something kid. I’ve met monsters. Real monsters, not the shit you label such.” I opened my eyes to stare him down. “There are plenty of people out there cold enough to kill someone sitting across from them all peaceful and friendly like. You ain’t one of them.”
Garrett fiddled with a dagger he’d drawn at some point while my eyes had been closed. “You… you aren’t a someone. You’re the monster.”
I cocked my head. “That so. That would be why I’ve repeatedly spared your life as you’ve done your level best to kill me I suppose.” I calmly dripped a few more drops down into my ear. My vision was already a bit better than it was before, at least as far as I could tell. Difficult to say given the circumstances, but I wasn’t about to pass up on a chance to fix the lingering ringing in my ears.
“I- You-” Garrett stumbled over whatever he was about to say. I decided to be charitable and assume it was about how handsome and amazing I was.
I held my head at its funny angle, letting the healing potion dribble down through my inner ear. Hopefully it would be able to reach whatever it was that that undead fucker had damaged with his stupid screaming.
Garrett finally managed to get his words out. “You’re tricking me.”
I raised an eyebrow, though I’m not sure how clear a message that sent from this awkward angle. “Sure I am. People trick each other all the time. That usually isn’t considered worthy of death, not unless you’re doing something terrible with it. And all I’m really shooting for is survival.”
“Do you expect me to believe you have no desire for vengeance? No hatred for the human race?”
“Allow me to let you in on a secret here, Garrett. I don’t care. Nobody. Cares. About. You. I don’t want to destroy the human race, I don’t give a shit about the human race.”
Garrett was suddenly holding daggers in both hands. “You had best be silent.”
I snorted. “Sure. Wouldn’t be the first time I did something stupid. The point is you’re seeing things that don’t exist. Why would I harbor a ‘hatred for humanity’ anyway? That makes no damn sense. You’re not just assuming I’m evil, you’re assuming I’m some kind of demon, driven by pointless spite over my own self-interest.”
Garrett hadn’t put his dagger away, but he wasn’t actively pointing it at me, which was something. “Not exactly setting yourself high standards there.”
“High standards are for people who can afford them. Life can be as complicated as it wants, when it bears down on you with its full pressure other concerns tend to fade into the background. I wanna live, and that's something you can count on.”
I paused to quaff down what remained of the potion. Might as well get rid of all my annoying little scratches in one go. Garrett’s eye twitched, but even polishing off an expensive potion wasn’t enough to get him to kill me. Neat. “Look, mate, you can trust my self-interest, if nothing else about me. And sometimes that’s all you need.”
“I fail to see ho-”
I leaned in closer. “We’re straight fucked mate. Your teleporty bullshit dumped us both in one hell of a hole, with no way out in sight. Literally.” I gestured at the walls on every side with my empty bottle. “I mean, can you feel the mana down here? Like the forest above, but ten times thicker. We’re in deep. Only way we’re getting out is together.”
Garrett snorted. “Are you seriously suggesting that we can trust each other? You’re a goblin, and I was sent here specifically to kill you. Are you really dumb enough to forget that?”
“Are you really dumb enough to remind me of that?”
Garrett growled. It was just sad really. Humans simply didn’t have the vocal chords for it, but he kept trying. “Remind me why I shouldn’t kill you again?”
I smiled. “Cause I pose no threat to you, and you don’t have the guts to murder someone who doesn’t. I can trust you because you simply don’t have the skill or ability to deceive me, and you can trust me because my best odds of surviving involve you surviving too. There’s no reason we have to fight instead of working together.”
Garrett’s hand unfolded and regripped his dagger in a rippling wave. “I… why? What could possibly compel you to propose a partnership designed to last only until one of us can betray the other safely?”
My smile gave way to a full grin. “Not seen much of goblin society, have you? Cooperation by necessity works better than no cooperation at all. If I thought there was another way to work with you I’d take it, but c’mon, we’re never going to be friends.”
Garrett paused. “Its telling that I haven’t even gotten to this, but what exactly the point of this idiotic partnership anyway? I’m an adventurer. Dungeons are what I do.”
“Not alone from the bottom you don’t. Face it, the only reason either of us are alive is because we were lucky enough to land in an enclosed space where nothing could swarm us. As soon as we figure out which wall faces the rest of the cave system and break through it we’ll be surrounded by unknown enemies on every side. Your bag of fancy magic doodads isn’t gonna get you out of this one.”
Garrett raised a skeptical eyebrow. Aw, he did know more subtle nonverbal communication than growling! “And a goblin can?”
“Skulking about in tunnels, navigating underground, hiding from enemies too tough to fight… you tell me who’s got those skills, an adventurer or a goblin?”
“That… is actually a fair point.”
“Yup. Focussed on the trust shit, cause it seemed more immediately relevant, but I do sincerely believe our best bet is working together. So?” I held out a hand.
Garrett might have looked like he was holding back vomit, but he reached out and took it.