Chapter Twenty-Four
Breathing heavily despite the fight only lasting thirty seconds, tops. I looked over to the treeline, checking to see if the Goblins had any friends following them as backup. Seeing that the coast was clear for the minute, I started taking huge, sucking breaths to get rid of the tension. Despite the fact that everything going my way, and while I had managed to stay wound free, I could feel my heart pounding inside of me as my body, as my mind tried to process the first actual life or death fight I had been in on my own.
I didn't count the fight with the troll as one. While I was actually no doubt in more danger during that fight, I never really felt it, as Gaian had always held the giant string beans' attention. Also, that had felt much more like butchery, whereas in this last fight, I had no doubt if I had any missteps, the goblins would have buried their teeth into me in a second. Pulling up on my spear, I ripped it free from the bodies before lowering myself back to the ground in an effort to stay unnoticed if any more of their friends came along the treeline.
Before I could start to gather up either any of my own weapons or claim the spoils that the goblins had dropped, I felt the charging up of energy that I recognized from before when the Troll had died. Seeing the streams of angry energy coming up off the three dead goblins building up and swirling in the sky. I immediately sat down in a lotus position and started breathing slowly and easily.
Praying for Serenity as I watched it gather up into a circle in the middle of the three bodies. Seeing the amount that gathered could only be compared to a rainstorm up against the Troll's hurricane, I felt more confident as tendrils came out of the rotating energy and dove down towards my chest. Closing my eyes I focused on my breathing as I felt the pinpricks of pain enter my chest and dive to the point I remembered my core being at. As it streamed straight toward it ignoring all of the channels I had empowered, and dove down through my heart into the extradimensional space of my core, I felt my mind being drawn along with it.
As I entered, I saw all of the energy pouring through the walls of locked Order and Chaos like it wasn't even there. Again part of it swirled into a storm as if it was consciously controlled while sending a quarter of its forces to make its initial attack to soften up my defenses for the main attack that was sure to come. More prepared and confident from having survived the hurricane that was the troll's energy, I maintained my calm and continued breathing. While I was waiting for the storm’s advance attack to hit, I noticed that as I continued my breathing patterns, the Chaos that was locked in the Order panes was pulsing from pane to pane in time with my breathing.
Wishing I had more time to dig into that, I could only maintain my calm as the energy dove past the free Chaos rotating around the speck that was at the center of my core. As it dove down I could feel it trying to get inside of who I was. It wanted to infect me with its rage, its anger, its need to go forth and rend and consume. Part of me wanted to laugh in its face, but I refrained. I continued my calm breathing in time, giving the anger and hatred no part to grab onto and infect me with their monstrous feelings. With none of the troll’s massive waves of hatred coming at me and being steadier from the knowledge that I had survived worse. The first attack began streaming out of me, giving up, not even to make the slightest hole into the calm aura. I kept imagining that the way I was able to project out that aura was from the black speck, which I was now starting to think might be a representation of my soul. The epitome of who I was as a person.
More and more anger and hatred came diving down at me, only to be rebuffed by the stillness emanating from my center. With nothing to latch onto while I was maintaining my calm, I forced myself to remain focused despite the pricks of pain that were coming through. Letting my soul's jujitsu send everything that came crashing down into I,t back out into the greater universe outside of my center. As the storm swirled around one last time and sent everything down in its last ditch effort to invade and infect me with its madness. I laughed as it was repelled, feeling nothing like my last battle when I was wrung out and exhausted after fighting off the hatred. Despite my best efforts, I was unable to maintain my focus in my center as the last of the anger and hatred came pouring back out of me bringing my consciousness back out in their wake.
Coming back to my body, I looked out as I saw the dark forces that were previously in me take off into the sky. Wondering where they might be heading, I ignored that problem for now content to leave it to someone else. I glanced down at the bodies of the goblins, where I saw the same green energy pooling over the bodies calmly as the scene from the Troll’s death repeated itself.
Feeling a hunger coming from the speck that was in my core, I knew this time it was actually coming from me, as I had left the contaminated core back at camp. As I felt the presence start to build its energy to reach down and claim the pools that hovered over the goblins, I reached out my arm to claim part of it for myself. As the soothing liquid-like substance started streaming up and around my arm, at my supposed command. The energy then entered my mouth and lungs in a move reminiscent of the Order and Chaos from the hell ball. I was confused as the kill energy went directly through my body aiming for my soul. Also, this new energy didn’t bring pain, instead, it went smoothly down my throat, like a cool drink of refreshing sweet tea on the hottest summer day.
This calmer cleansing energy made its way through my channels instead of heading straight for my core. The gentle soothing liquid made its way through me on its trip to my center, but I soon noticed tiny bits and specks of it were dropping off into my body through the slight tears and holes I had made in my channels. Initially nervous, I tried expelling it, but it didn't seem to respond to my conscious thoughts. As the majority of the gentle essence was dragged along in its march towards my core. After a bit I began to grow calmer as I felt my physical body responding to the energy being injected into it. Like an energy drink after an all nighter my body was almost vibrating, I felt like I could run a hundred miles without stopping, jump off the cliff where I had come into this world, and land at the bottom unharmed. As the rest of it entered my mountainous globe of a core I was anxious to see what happened when this new empowering energy hit my soul.
Only to stare in amazement at it, despite the hunger I could feel coming from the black speck, the green energy stayed glued to part of the wall of order, a small round green spot the size of a putting green inside of a globe that Mount Everest could fit into with room to spare. I tried everything I could think of to call it over to the center but it only continued to rotate around the outer wall. I was soon only able to tell where it was because the dot that was my soul would always have itself focused in that direction, but the minuscule size of the puddle meant that it was soon lost in the immensity of the chamber.
With nothing to continue holding my mind in that space, I soon felt myself drawn back out into my outer body where I could still feel the remnants of the green power empowering my body. As the vibrating seemed to die down with my body processing the energy. I felt like I was the tiniest bit stronger and more alive, but how much of that was my imagination, and how much was real? It seemed like I had no way of knowing at this time without any meaningful way of testing it.
This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
Looking back out in the world, I felt the gathering super presence pull back as if in confusion, unable to sense the power I had consumed before it got there. As it pulled back into the sky, I wondered if I had made a mistake in taking something that an entity that powerful considered worth its attention, mindless though it seemed to be. With the vortex disappearing into the sky, rather than picking me up by my heels and shaking its due out of me, or worse killing me and taking the energy from my core that way. I could only conclude that either it was an automatic reflex like a finger twitch or blinking. Either that or I was too small of an entity to focus on and my core chamber blocked whatever signal the green energy sent out to call the presence down from the sky.
As my focus once again grew outward to look at the actual world around me, rather than the metaphysical one that seemed to be layered over it. I realized that I could hear the rabbit still crashing away in its effort to escape. It seemed like no actual time had passed during my inner battle and subsequent feast. Picking up my spear I had dropped when the energy invaded me, I first cleaned the blade on the grass next to me, looking at it carefully before setting it back down. With no cracks or nicks in the blade, I was happy. Despite knowing I had weakened it in my effort to help Gaian, the spear was still the best weapon I had to keep the swarming critters off of me.
Gathering up my own knife next, I wiped the little bit of, what I was just going to call dirt, off onto the grass. Digging into my pocket for my last remaining clean rack, I gave it another wipe to make sure there was nothing on it that was going to corrode the blade, before returning the steel to its home on my left hip. It took me a little more time to clean the ax that had been buried into the goblins' back. While I was able to get most of the gore off in the grass, I had to dirty my rag more than I would have liked getting the last bits of blood the turf wouldn’t remove.
Cursing under my breath as I noticed that the edge of the blade had been nicked, doubtlessly on the Goblin's spine. Returning it to my right hip, I resolved to remember to file it out when I got back to camp. Not as good as my larger files back on Terra, my smaller fishing tools would just have to do. Moving on to the goblin’s weapons, at first, I was content to clean them off on the grass, but after tapping the straight blades against each other and hearing them ring true, I focused on doing a better job of scrubbing them clean.
I hoped when I got back to my camp I could get the small bits of rust off with more sand, and that after sharpening them, I would either have two more backup weapons. Or, perhaps I could kludge together a better spear to replace the one I had ruined the temper of. Maybe even trying to make a second backup spear, or perhaps just using it to replace one of the smaller tools that I had brought from home that were for camp work, not combat. Looking at the club, my first instinct was to throw it away, feeling it was not worth the weight of bringing it back with me, but on closer examination, I noticed it actually wasn't poorly made at all.
The rock fitted well into the curve of the wood, it seemed to be held in place with a thick resin or glue. Pulling my knife and tapping the stone with the handle of my own weapon progressively harder, I wasn't able to dislodge it at all. While the handle had some small nicks and gouges from its former owner’s claws, it wasn't a bad weapon at all. If I could smooth it out and clean it up, it might make a nice weapon to throw for a first strike. Or, maybe it might just be a good idea to have something that wasn't going to get stuck in an enemy. Who knows, there might be some goblins out there with full armor that my weapons wouldn’t work against.
With more deaths seen in the last two days than I had ever experienced back on Earth I was quickly losing hope that I would be able to make my way to any kind of safehold, without a massive amount of luck, Gaian's strong paws and a lot more killing than I wanted to participate in. But if it was a choice between killing or being eaten, I knew what side of the equation I wanted to be on.
No pouches on these small goblins, I took the cleanest vest I could find off of the one that I had chopped into with my ax. Dragging it along the ground, I did my best to wipe off the ‘dirt’ from it before I began to roll up the two straight daggers and club I had claimed for spoils. With a start, I remembered what I had been wanting to check on with my bigger pile of goblins back at camp.
Picking out the dagger with the sharpest edge, I rolled up my sleeve and headed back to the goblin I had got my ax into. Rolling him onto his back I stomped my foot down onto him turning his ribs into kindling. Digging the blade into his chest I sawed it back and forth, reaching my hand slowly in and gagging a little at the stench. I really hoped I never grew so hungry here that I had the need to cook and eat goblin.
Digging around and under the heart, moving my hand slowly, so as to not squirt any of the gunk out onto my clothes. I felt around to where I imagined my own core was, feeling around until I felt something round, I grabbed onto it and pulled it out. Walking gingerly over to a clean patch of grass I swiped my arm back and forth on it until it was as clean as it was going to get. With the dirty dagger I had confiscated from my attacker, I cut into the turf to get to some nice clean dirt underneath. Grabbing out a handful I rubbed it onto my arm to mix the remaining blood into it until it disappeared and once again did my best to rub it clean on some more fresh grass. Picking up another handful of dirt I plopped it down onto the bit I had pulled out of the Goblin's chest, mixing it up until most of the blood was gone as well. I rubbed it onto the grass until the dirt disappeared.
What remained was a green disc slightly smaller than a dime, this core differed from both what had been in the Troll's body and what the shaman and his lieutenants had carried on them. In the case of the currency, this disc had a slight green glow to it, although this green was a much deeper green than what I had consumed earlier that the vortex had been searching for, it did give off the same feeling to me. In the case of the Troll's core, it didn't have a secondary color running through it and it didn't have emotions emanating out of me telling me to try and consume it.
Sighing softly at my new conundrum, my pack rat mentality wasn't going to let me leave behind a possible resource, especially not something so small. But I really didn’t want to go digging through the little rats' innards. Groaning in my head, the little bastard won, and I picked back up the dirty blade and got back to work digging into the other two to retrieve their cores, before once again cleaning everything back up. Dropping the now clean cores into a pocket, I rolled both daggers and the club up into the vest I had commandeered before adding my now filthy rag to the outside of it.
Stealing what I could now indeed confirm was a rope belt, from one of my dead attackers. I bundled everything together and tied it onto the end of my spear. With one last dirt bath to clean the last bits of blood and gore off of me, I picked back up my bucket. With no desire to explore possible goblin infested woods with nightfall about an hour away.
I decided instead to start heading back to camp, crouching while I walked to stay below the tops of the tall grass. I held my spear out in front of me to not advertise my presence, like the mast of a ship, just in case there were watchers from the tree line. The mentality of my three attackers didn't lead me to believe they would be content to watch, but again, why take a chance?
Continuing my awkward walking for a couple of hundred yards, before standing back up and putting my spear over my shoulder to carry it easier. I once again sighed at the image I was putting out. Covered in filth and with a bag tied to the pole, I had fulfilled the hobo part I hadn't wanted to become. The murder part was still up for debate, at least in my mind...
The Goblins might have a different opinion.