Inside, amid a pile of emptied potion bottles and broken glass, sat Garrett. Well I’ll be damned, the bastard was still alive. Not exactly in good shape though. He was more crumpled onto the ground than really sat down and however many potions he’d drunk, it wasn’t enough to let him breath without struggle.
I stepped into the room. “Have a fun time?”
Garrett’s head snapped around and his entire body jerked as he turned to face me. “You! You’re alive!”
I nodded sagely. “Truly, you are an insightful man, Garrett. Your wisdom is beyond measure.”
Garrett staggered to his feet. “I had to burn off my very soul to survive, and where were you?! Hiding in some corner like a rat.”
I narrowed my eyes. “Whereas you were so very concerned about my safety during your own struggle.”
Garrett opened his mouth to spout some further nonsense, but I cut him off. “I hid like a rat, you faced a hundred ghouls head on like a dumbass. Ultimately we both made the same choice; to save ourselves as best we could with no thought of the other. What did you expect? Me to risk my life for you? I never expected anything more than a mutually beneficial arrangement that would last exactly as long as it was worth more than it cost. You expected the exact damn same, and we both know it.”
“We are not the same!” Garrett jabbed his finger at me. “I didn’t hide, I stood and fought with honor, as an adventurer should.”
That was his argument. Of fucking course it was. “Cause honor is so important when battling the undead. Hate to see them think ill of you.”
Garrett gritted his teeth. “I am not. The. Same. As. You.”
I snorted. Honestly, I was questioning the worth of putting up with Garrett. “That’s the point you take issue with it? If you have an argument then make one, if you don’t shut the hell up.”
Garrett glared down and his hand twitched towards his blades. “What argument need I make? Humans have built a civilization while your kind scrabble for scraps in the dirt.”
Oh, you wanted to go there did you? I answered his glare with my own. I lost a degree of intimidation value with the several foot height difference, but I liked to think I made it up with my blood red slit-pupilled eyes. “My people live in the dirt because yours put us there. So congratu-fucking-lations, you’re the king killers of shit mountain.”
“We fight with honor, not the barbarous raids of near-beasts!” Garrett was looming over me now, blocking off the direct light of his stupid alchemical goo-light.
“What is your damned ‘honor’ worth!? It's a construction by the powerful, for the powerful! You don’t fight ‘fair’ cause it's right, you fight with your bullshit honor cause when you’re on top ‘fairness’ stacks the odds in your favor enough to keep you on top!”
“Honor keeps the innocent safe! We don’t drag off women and children to be our slaves!” Flecks of Garrett’s spittle sprayed across my face.
“You fucking moron asshole idiot child! Why don’t you fucking sit down by the light and let me tell you a campfire tale, maybe that’ll get reality through your underdeveloped brain!”
Garrett drew himself up to his full height. “You are not my mas-”
“When I was a fucking dumb brat, almost as dumb as you are now in fact, I knew that slavery fucking happened. Part of life really, hobs already saw all the rest of us as toys for their amusement, why not humans too?”
“Exactly, goblins are greedy, evi-”
“I ain’t fucking done, dipshit! I was an idiot, but, much like you, still recognized some things as wrong. Couldn’t do anything, but once I was grown I said fuck it, why not? So I freed them. Not the work slaves, they’re barely worse off than us goblins anyway. No, I raided the hobs’ harem and guided them out. Hell of an effort, but worth it. I guided them from the shadows all through the danger of the wilds, right up until I had the satisfaction of seeing them reunited with their families back in the village they’d been taken from.”
I paused to take a breath, and Garrett managed to open his fool mouth again. “...just because you’ve done one admirable deed-”
“They died. They all died, all but one.”
Garrett blinked. “I...I don’t understand. What’s the point of your stupid story if they all get killed in some retaliatory raid anyway?”
I cast him squinty glare. “Wasn’t goblins that killed them. Their families were mostly happy to see them, but the rest… They weren’t exactly overjoyed to see a bunch of ‘goblin whores’ dropped in their laps. There was no life for them in that village, not anymore. Even if they could have managed to work past that somehow, one of the women was a noble lady, taken from some caravan or another. Her dear father couldn’t have it be known that his property was damaged, now could he?”
I met him straight in his panicking eyes and stepped forward. The human adventurer backed up, all his looming intimidation worthless before a truth he couldn’t face. “The lord swore his retinue to secrecy and ordered them to move in on that village, no witnesses would escape.An entire town burned to the ground so he could get a better deal when he sold off his daughter to some other noble. Such honor on display!”
Garrett shook his head in silent denial. “That...that isn’t true.” Oh well, there it was. So much for silence.
“Face it fucker. My people are terrible little shits, you ain’t wrong. But in the end, so are yours. The innocent people you want to protect…they just don’t exist. We’re all bastards.”
Garrett’s gaze hardened again. “You’re just another monster, twisting my mind with lies!” His hand whipped across his body, drawing a knife along the way.
My eyes widened and I shifted my weight to dodge, but my goddamn ranting had gotten the better of me. Finally, I’d found an emotion more powerful than my paranoia, and something more surprising than getting a blade across the face; surviving it.
The blade slid through skin before skidding across bone and sending me tumbling backwards. I rolled as I hit the ground, getting extra distance before coming back to my feet and bringing my gaze back to Garrett. He was reeling from his own blow more than I was, stumbling on the follow through.
That blow should have damn well killed me, even with that shitty knife he was using. Well, as shitty as his knives got, the lucky bastard. I’d never get a blade that good unless I killed a guy for it.
Which, you know, was rapidly becoming the plan.
Blood streamed down my face and dripped into my right eye. I stepped forwards and drove my own blade at the adventurer, but he simply slapped it aside with one hand. The force jerked my arm to the side and I nearly lost my grip on the blade. Garrett flipped his dagger into a reverse grip and brought it down at my shoulder.
I twisted at the last second and the dagger skated off my collarbone and cut a shallow gash down my chest. I whipped up my own dagger and caught the inside of his arm as it descended. My own narrow stabbing blade was no better at cutting than his and skittered off his forearm bones without going deeper, but I had the momentum of his own strike to add to mine and there was a hell of a lot more important fleshy bits clinging to his arm bones than there was on the outside of my ribs.
Garrett recoiled backwards and I followed, ducking down and grabbing his wrist with my free hand. I ducked in closer and sent a flurry of stabs up into his stomach. The slender blade was quick and nimble, perfect for stabbing with lightning speed, and I landed half a dozen attacks in the first second after our exchange.
Not a single one penetrated past the muscle and fat to get at the critical organs beneath. As soon as my weapon got within a few inches of his skin it felt like I was trying to stab through mud rather than air and I just couldn’t get more than a flesh wound.
Garrett twisted, yanking his blood slick arm free of my grip and regaining his distance. His dagger slipped from limp fingers and he pressed his wrist against his side in some attempt to restrict the blood gushing forth. I stepped in again, going for the kill as Garrett fumbled a hand into one of his many pouches.
Whatever boost he’d used to beat the ghouls was no longer in full effect, but his Stats were still too high for killing him to be easy, at least not with my own lack of offensive Stats or Skills. I had to aim for somewhere where even shallow blows could be lethal.
I darted between his legs, blade flashing out to slice open the artery on the inside of his thigh. The quick blow catches on nothing, nearly tearing itself from my hand as I keep moving. When I spun to face Garrett again there was no new red on the blade’s edge, and I couldn’t see so much as a tear in his pants.
Fuck.
Garrett turned after me, hand coming free from his pouch along with a viciously recurved blade and coming down at me with the full force of his momentum. Yeah, no way was I taking that head on. Unfortunately while I was more nimble than Garrett by far once he got going in a straight line I couldn’t beat his speed and my feet weren’t in a good position to dodge. I was forced to lean over backwards and ultimately drop to the ground to avoid getting my head lopped off.
I rolled to my feet and drove my dagger upwards into the softest, most vulnerable spot I could think of. His balls. I struck as hard as I could, not seeking to get a shallow wound, but as if I had to pierce past full armor. I felt the blow land, sliding through flesh as its razor edge bit into his flesh.
Garrett gave out a gasping choking noise as his entire body spasmed, blade tumbling from his fingers. I snatched it from midair as it fell and brought it across Garrett’s throat. The slashing weapon barely broke the skin before I abandoned the attack, hopping back and raising my guard.
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Garrett fell to his knees, slapping both hands down on the stone to keep himself from collapsing completely.
I stepped back slowly, getting a bit more distance and keeping a keen eye on the adventurer. I wouldn’t expect him to fake it, but he’d surprised me before.
Blood seeped from the shallow gash on Garrett’s throat to form a steady stream down along his neck and beneath his collar even as the deeper tear on his wrist pumped a steady flow to pool on the barren stone. His breath came in deep gasps and his attempts to stop his blood loss were slow and fumbling.
I took a few more steps backwards before relaxing my deathgrip on my pair of stolen blades and settled into a comfortable crouch. I was far from from the best when it came to hunting, but I knew enough to recognize when the fight had ended and the waiting had begun. All I had to do was wait.
Garrett looked up at me, reduced to shooting glares instead of blades. “Monster.”
I shrugged. “What makes ya say that?”
“You… kill and consume.”
“Don’t we all?”
Garrett spat. “Why don’t you ficking care! I’m dying damn it!”
I cocked an eyebrow. “It didn’t have to end this way. I waste any time feeling guilty for shit that ain’t my fault and next thing you know I’m gonna get a goddam martyr complex. No thanks, if I die for anyone’s sins it's gonna be my own. At least that way I’ll go out full and content on a pile of money.”
Garrett sighed, blood bubbling out from his throat. “But the indifference…”
“I meant what I said. I honestly don’t give a shit about you and it didn’t have to end like this. The malevolence, the hate, the malice….it's all in your head. Your death doesn’t satisfy me. It means nothing.”
Garrett’s last breath drifted out and his chest stilled. The adventurer was dead.
Well, probably. I stepped over and rammed a dagger through his chest. Yup, that was dead alright. Even if getting cold steel straight between his ribs and into the left lung wasn’t enough, Garrett’s corpse bore none of the supernatural defenses he’d had in life. That wasn’t something I’d thought about before, but it was a dead giveaway. Our powers stemmed from the soul after all, so it made sense that they would disappear when the soul left the body.
I grabbed the bandolier of loot around his chest, but I couldn’t quite seem to tug it off. After a few embarrassing minutes of struggling to roll the heavy bastard over it occured to me to try looking for a buckle.
“Goblin.” A cold voice spoke, barely audible even in the silence, yet somehow seeming to echo from every direction at once. “Have our people truly fallen so far?”
I jumped, whirling around to scan the entire room. It was the first time I’d really looked at it and there were plenty of places to hide. Long stone blocks about the length and width of a human body sat around the room and the edges of the room were overgrown with vines and thorns.
I snatched up my blade and leapt up onto one of the stone platforms. I looked around, but my new vantage point revealed nothing. There were a few ancient pots and urns tucked into corners and fallen from rotten shelves, but neither people nor any space big enough to hide them.
“I remember elder days, when our kind did more than scavenge for scraps. When all was ours to take.” That voice… where the fuck was it coming from!?
“You need only ask… And that power could be yours again.”
“Gee, incredible power offered by a creepy voice in a tomb. How could I resist?” I muttered to myself. I swiveled my ears behind me as I scanned the room ahead of me visually. I’d find this fucker, one way or another.
“Why such distrust?” No sign of anything in front of me. I closed my eyes, the useless bastards, and relied on my ears.
“All I’m offering is a chance.... A chance to hunt instead of hide, to wield a greater power than some human fool could ever imagine.” My ears slowly tracked the sound, feeling out the strange echoes as it bounced off the floor and ricocheted off the stone platforms. Yeah, that definitely wasn’t natural. Whatever was speaking to me was using some power of its own to conceal its actual location.
That was comforting. If it needed to hide, than that meant its physical body wasn’t invulnerable, assuming it had one at all.
I really hoped it wasn’t a fucking ghost. But no, I was getting closer…
“Why do you hesitate child? You could be a lion among sheep, a predator of men. Why live as a rat?” My ears slowly stilled, focused on a single location.
I turned and glared at an ‘empty’ spot on the closest wall. “I ain’t your kid.”
“Oh?” The voice chuckled. “Your parentage is irrelevant. You could be aged a thousand years and still be but a child to me.”
I stared at the spot I knew the voice was coming from. It took a few seconds, but as I inspected it I picked out its shape from the thorny vines that entangled it. It was an ancient corpse, embalmed and mummified into a ghastly display of desiccated skin. I could see the plants grown into its skin, burrowing through flesh and winding around bone. Even its face was covered, skull bound immobile by a crown of thorns and tiny roots spider-webbing beneath its flesh to stitch its eyes closed.
It grinned back at me, showing brown orange teeth. I shuddered. Whatever had been done to blind it hadn’t been enough, it could still tell I was looking at it. Worse, this was no human corpse, the stained teeth and ragged scraps of fur weren’t much to go on, but it was more than enough for me to recognize it for what it was.
“You’re a Hob.” It wasn’t a question, and honestly I wasn’t even sure why I said it. I guess I wasn’t operating at my best.
The corpse of the ancient Hob grinned wider.
“Clever little fellow. Now come here, that I may offer you power beyond any mortal comprehension.” His voice rang loud and clear, confirming my suspicions. It’d dropped his echoey act now that I’d found him.
I eyed it warily, but I couldn’t spot anyway it might squirm free. The overgrowth that bound it was quite thorough. Brute strength on the other hand… not without tearing itself asunder on the vines worming through its flesh. I was safe enough from it. “Let me guess, all I have to do is free you and swear myself to your eternal service?”
“Ha! You, break the bindings of Ashael-ha? I think not. No, what has lain here shall lay here still… but what has only just arrived may leave freely, and take whatever lays within its soul with it.”
I immediately began to back away, raising both hands. “Uh-huh, not happening. No one fucks with my soul but me.”
The Hob teeth closed even as its grin stretched wider and wider, tearing apart the skin and opening up his dozens of razor teeth to the air. A cold blue light flared up within, shining through and casting shadows across the room. When he spoke it was with something far more threatening than sound. Like those human toys you’ve used already? No, I’m afraid this will go… deeper.
Foreign magic slammed into my soul. I stumbled back, desperately trying to raise some sort of defense, but the Hob just howled with laughter. My vision flickered and dark shapes crept at the corners of my sight.
I fell over, shattering brittle pottery beneath me on my way to crack my head against the floor. My sight of the room went black and something else took its place. The same room, the same stone platforms, but bustling with activity, each stone plinth bearing a corpse.
No. Those weren’t corpses. I could hear their heartbeats, even as they slowed. They were unbound without so much as a single link of chain in sight, but none of them moved even an inch. They trembled and twitched, every vein pulsating as they struggled with some internal force.
But whatever it was they were fighting, it was winning. They lay still even as the robed humanoids bustling about slit their throats one by one. The blood ran down into deep channels in the stone, flowing across the room and turning the patterns engraved into the floor a deep blood red.
I rolled over and pushed myself up on one hand. My palm slammed down into the pooled blood, but the liquid stayed level and my hand stayed bone dry. The vision flickered around me, and the sharply cut channel full of blood faded to reveal a shallow groove.
Goddammit. I threw myself to my feet and sprinted at the door. Fuck this shit, and fuck the goddamn loot. Wasn’t worth dying for.
Dying? A dry chuckle echoed in my mind. Who said anything about dying?
My leg jerked to the side of its own volition, catching on a loose stone and sending me tumbling back to the ground.
I assure you, neither of us will be dying anytime soon. I do need that body of yours after all. Why, you’ll live to a ripe old age as my puppet!
I gritted my teeth and called up my soul sense. I could see my soul surrounded by a foreign force again, clinging to it like a frog’s tongue and stretching out to connect to the undead Hob.
Its some pretty neat magic if I do say so myself. If can shove your soul to the side a bit and squeeze myself in there I can keep a quasi-possession going indefinitely, all without letting any magic detect you’re any different from your ordinary self or even severing my connection to my original body!
I reached out, establishing a mental connection to the mana of the world around me.
I mean, there aren’t great odds of me ever managing to dig out my original body again, but I just couldn’t bear to let it rot away. It really is a work of art.
I called up the ambient mana of the dungeon and mixed it in with the Hobs magic to dilute it, just as I had with Garrett’s teleportation scroll. The magical energy performed beyond my wildest expectations, not merely loosening his grip, but flaring up and burning away at his power. As soon as his grip weakened I took off again, sprinting away.
Heh. Stubborn. His grip around my mind and soul cinched down again, mana interference be damned. I could feel him seizing control of the ambient mana himself, filtering out parts of it to discard and subverting the rest to empower his spell rather than stop it. But I’m not about to let go so easily. You really think a little bit of foreign mana injection is going to stop me? I’ve spent millenia trapped in this place, I know every nuance like the back of my hand!
I had really expected that to work, but I wasn’t about to give up either. His magic seized control of my limbs in starts and bursts, never for so much as a single second, but for more than long enough to send me tumbling the ground.
At least when I wasn’t ready. I put every ounce of my inhuman speed and agility to the test, detecting and responding to every involuntary spasm he sent my way. I looked like a crazy man, twisting and lurching as I countered his attempts to send me back to the ground, but my mad acrobatics were enough to keep me moving, and that’s what mattered.
I’ll admit it, I underestimated you. That’s actually some pretty impressive maneuvering, you know, for a goblin empowered by nothing more than a bastardized version of the human Soul System. But I’m afraid it’s not going to save you.
I ignored the Hob’s words as much as I could ignore something in my own mind. Just a few more steps and I’d reach the door…
And since we’re gonna be such good friends, why don’t you get to know me a little better?
The world disappeared around me again, but I wasn’t looking at some vision of the room’s past. My entire perspective was shifted, shoved into a body not my own. I was stretched across a crude stone operating table, limbs bolted down and chest cut open.
And when I say bolted down, I’m not talking about chains or shackles. I mean literal bolts drilled through my bones and down into the table beneath me. Dozens of them were anchored in bones all across my body, tight enough to render any movement impossible. On another day, I might be quite upset at the pain of cold metal screwed straight through my very bones.
On another day I wouldn’t have my fucking chest cut open. My skin was pulled back from the y-shaped incision with articulated metal arms, leaving my organs on open display for the masked creatures standing above me.
“Mmm-mm~” I quivered as a hooked knife was slid through my skin ever-so-gently, hardly slowing as the point was pulled along my arm, leaving a smooth cut behind it. Nimble hands followed, folding back the loose skin and pinning it to the table to keep it out of the way. I opened my mouth to scream, but nothing more than a dry gasp came from my throat.
“Initial results promising.” A tweezer poked into exposed muscle, lifting it up as the creature holding it leaned in for a closer look. “Subject appears to have taken to the non-invasive procedures quite well. We can begin with the second stage immediately, assuming you have no objections?”
The second masked being shook its horned head, loose mask swishing beneath the black void of its eyes. Darker than a moonless night, they promised the end of all light. “Not yet. Release the burrower beetles.”
The first figure chittered happily, cloth mask shifting with the movement of hidden mandibles. “Of course!”
NOPE. I squeezed my eyes shut, the full extent of my autonomy in this illusory body, and focused on the real world, my true body. C’monc’monc’mon. Work dammit!
I heard the distinctive sound of a bottle uncorking. “Found ‘em!”
Nononono. There had to be some way out of this! How could I fight back? I had nothing, even my jaw was wired shut...in the illusion. But this wasn’t real.
Concentrating harder than I ever had before, I commanded my jaws to open and, ignoring my body telling me I couldn’t, stuck my tongue as far out between them as I could. And then I snapped my mouth closed.
I felt a slight twinge, the strange echo of something unreal, like watching my reflection in a rippling pool. There! I focussed on that, that one sensation I knew to be true, and hauled my consciousness along the only lifeline I had.
Slowly, painfully, desperately, the pain grew greater. My tongue began to ache, and then to scream, even as the pain throughout the rest of my body flickered and shattered like a broken mirror.
My eyes snapped open to stare at the plain stone floor my face was squished up against. I was free.
Well, free from the illusion. The deathgrip on my mind and soul was not only there, but stronger than before. I growled into the dirt. I wasn’t about to become a corpse’s puppet. I seized at the ambient mana again, trying to hold it steady in my mental grip rather than throwing it at away in a pointless failed attack.
Oh, back are you?
I pushed myself up off the ground, leaving the severed tip of my tongue behind me. Every inch was a struggle with my own body as the undead Hob fought for control.
You pulled yourself out of that memory surprisingly quickly, but how much of your body are you willing to sacrifice to escape?
My attempts to move forward got me nowhere. The Hob had gained greater control, where he’d previously been unable to overwhelm my own command of any given muscle and could only try to trip me up by throwing unpredictable jerks into my movements he could now simply fight me toe-to-toe. No matter how hard I tried to move my muscles, I was just flexing in place like an idiot.
I focused on the mana in my grip. It was my only hope, and honestly it wasn’t that promising. I sighed, closed my eyes, and focused inwards.
Finally giving up? Good.
The mana I’d gathered roiled within me, unhappy at being caged. It was difficult to control at the best of times, closer to a liquid or gas than a solid, and I needed to do some finicky bullshit with it if I wanted to escape.
When he’d countered my first attempt at mana interference, he’d separated it out into two parts. If I wanted to counter his counter, I’d need to do the same. Just in reverse, hitting his spell with the kind of mana he’d been unable to use himself and disrupting it in a way he couldn’t turn to his own advantage.
The mana was already trying to squirm through my grip and I began to carefully let it slip through my fingers. I was barely able to tell the difference, let alone control them separately, but I did manage to let one kind filter out in slightly larger quantities, leaving me with a handful of mana with a better ratio rather than fully purified mana.
It would have to be enough. I tensed every muscle in my body and hurled what I’d gathered into the Hob’s spell.
Trying your little tricks ag-
If my previous attempt had burned, this one exploded. The Hob’s spell blew apart like a shack caught in a hurricane and I shot forward as his control over my body disappeared.
“NOOOOOO!”
I didn’t stop running until long after the Hob’s screams had faded into the distance.