Starting back awake as a rough tongue came dragging across my face, I looked around frantically as the previous moments of terror came crashing back into me in waves. Gasping I sucked in air as I looked into the brown eyes of an incredibly furry face and a wet black nose inches from my eyes.
Shoving the dead goblin that lay on top of me away, I looked around to see that the one who had knocked me out was now lying several feet away with his chest caved in. Reaching up and rubbing the ears of the bear who was still sniffing at me I said, “I'm okay, thanks for the save brother.” Grabbing onto the back of his neck, I used his bulk to help lever me up, wincing with a start, as a sharp pain in my right side told me that the one who had managed to come close to ending my time on this moon, had managed to get a second swing in lower on my body before Gaian had crushed the Goblins own ribs in turn.
Taking a long breath, I slowly kept inhaling past the point the pain tried to stop me at, as I kept going the sharpness of the ache soon turned dull. Smiling grimly, I thought that he had only managed to bruise my ribs, not that I had anything along that I could wrap my ribs in if they were broken, but I was pretty sure I wasn't crippled yet. Holding my head as the stars threatened to take me back to dreamland, I slowed down my turn as I tried to take in the carnage around us.
Looking around slowly, I could only groan out loud as I saw the energy start streaming up off of all of the corpses lying around. Smaller bits from the fifteen than what I had gained from the three I had met earlier, but those were dwarfed by the amount coming over from the four that lay dead both in front of me and where I had ambushed them at the beginning of the fight. Looking up at the whirlpool glowing in the sky, I could see that all of the energy put together wasn't going to equal what the Troll had sent at us. Shaking my head as my subconscious screamed something up at me turned out to be a mistake as my head continued its pounding from the smacking I had encountered earlier.
Rubbing the top of my head I could already feel a knot starting to form on the top of my pate as the water falling from the sky continued to run down my face. I could only limply try to pull myself into a lotus position as I prepared for the invasion coming at me, wondering all the while what my smarter half was trying to warn me of.
Looking up into the darkness above, I saw three funnels separate out from the cloud whose glowing intensity to my eyes wasn't reflected in the soft glow that the chem stick lit up for my companion. As I saw the larger funnel coming down towards me, I tried to call the one aiming for Gaian over to me as well, but whether it was because of the pounding headache or my own lack of aptitude, I still wasn't able to change its trajectory. As I saw the third funnel, equal in size to the one heading for the bear, start heading toward the archer I had struck with my club at the beginning of the fight. I realized three things that my smarter subconscious had been trying to warn me of. One, the death energy didn't seem to be related to who killed what or which group you belonged to. Two, either the greater portion was being drawn to me because of my relatively higher sentience or something else was unique about me. And Three, one of the little buggers was still alive…
As my focus was drawn down into my inner world, I could only hope that the monster had as much trouble fighting off the effects of the death energy as I did and wasn't about to kill me now that I had lost the agency to my body. Finding myself once more in my core, I saw the funnel already halfway in, driving past the Order and Chaos edges like they were nothing more than a screen door. Emptying my mind of all the pain and anger I was feeling, I tried regulating the breathing of my core space by focusing on the simplest pattern that I could remember, the box pattern. In four beats, hold four, out for four beats before holding once again for four and repeating.
Unsure at first if I was able to actually control my body while my mind was trapped inside the mountain, I saw the Chaos start rotating both through the Order and pulsing in the center along with the pattern I imagined I was breathing to in the real world. Inside the Order panels, the Chaos motes were bouncing steadily for four beats before moving through the tunnels during the next four beats, repeating the process over again as the simple pattern restarted. The inner cycle of Chaos had an even simpler movement that had them rotating as tightly around the black speck in the first four beats before moving out to rotate around as far out as it could with the following four.
Once again my mind couldn't help but wonder if this was all some delusion in my head or if this was actually doing any good, but as the trapped inner Chaos continued rotating tightly before expanding I saw that the green energy that had previously been stuck to the outer wall was drawn over by the motion the inner motes were making. Faster than the funnel, the pale glowing energy was dragged around the inner boundary that seemed to be the repository of the free Chaos that I had managed to hold onto when the ball had deposited me here.
Rotating around the invisible boundary when the Chaos was in the inner cycle, the green energy fell back but continued its rotation, as the Chaos charged forth to the limit of its tether. God, I needed to come up with something to call the energy I had stolen earlier, but I had way too literal of a mind to come up with anything clever as it hadn't displayed any unique characteristics yet. As the funnel of hatred came streaming down through my inner core, it started running into the bits of green that seemed to be controlled by my free Chaos. As I was preparing my mind for the upcoming onslaught of emotion, I was expecting invading emotions to ignore it like they had done everything else on their way to my black speck that was the target.
Instead, I was pleasantly surprised, which slightly caused me to let the pattern lapse, as the green glow tore into the invading funnel, ripping parts of it away. Quickly resuming my pattern of breathing to hold my new defender in place, I noticed it didn't take much, but I resolved to quickly drain every last bit I found from the dead goblins outside, once I had dealt with their funnel of anger and hatred. Blanking my mind I started feeling the emotions coming towards me, as they reached the last inner barrier that my black speck seemed to be sending out on its own.
Again I was able to deal with the invading emotions easily, as the introduction I had from the Troll was so much worse than this. With nothing making it through the last barrier to tear into the speck and hurt me, I saw most of the raw emotional energy again streaming back out of my core, seemingly giving up and retreating. Looking back to what was happening with the green energy that had gathered up some of the invading torrent. It looked like from the green spots that were flying in their circles that each of my motes of Chaos seemed to be controlling a small section of the whole. If that was true, then I must have ten motes of Chaos that I had managed to keep behind when I was deposited on this moon. I had never managed to count them before, as they had always been bouncing randomly around my center, preventing an accurate tally. But now with their rotation controlling separate puddles of the green energy, I was counting ten small circles flowing around my center.
Looking closely at one of the puddles, I saw that the energy it had torn out of the tornado was violently trying to escape from the center where the puddle had encapsulated it. Tendrils of the puddle came streaming up out of the side before diving back into the center and ripping bits off of the morsel it had gobbled up. As more of the tendrils grew out at first I was reminded of a wiggling octopus, but soon I began to feel that analogy was wrong.
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
More and more I was getting a feeling that screamed out to me of the rampant growth cycle of nature. Consuming, growing, dying, and being reborn in an endless cycle, it looked so much like I was looking at carnivorous vines growing out to dive in and take a bite out of what they had caught. Eventually, I was shocked to see that when all of the energy was gone, a green brick popped out of the top of the puddle of energy while a colorless speck of Chaos was sent streaming into the center to join its fellows. Looking back into the center I was again unable to count anything with how fast they were moving about, but as I looked back to the pale green puddles that were continuing to circle around my center, I saw that they had divided again and now there were twenty smaller ones. Four of which themselves looked to have managed to rip meals of their own from the last of the funnel cloud before it started streaming out of my core.
Apparently consuming the emotional energy hadn't increased the amount of green liquid in my core but instead, the energy had managed to increase the amount of Order and Chaos in my core, surprised that the twin primordial energies hadn't combined as that had been their natural inclination in the hell ball, I wasn't going to look a gift horse in the mouth. Instead, I would just add it to the growing list of mysteries I had to solve before I could have my own magical powers. Looking around the massive expanse that was my center I wasn't able to see where the green bricks of Order had disappeared too, but as I wasn't feeling any pain in my center, I left that mystery as well for another day while I tried to leave the energy to its meal and return to my outer body before the Goblin I hadn't managed to kill managed to brain me while I was afk.
Coming back to myself with another gasp, I saw that the Goblin still hadn't woken up yet from the blow I had given him. Unsure how any creature managed to sleep through the inner turmoil that the hatred wrecked on oneself, I looked over to the bear to see how he was managing to take the influx of evil. I saw his brown eyes staring straight at me as his muzzle was baring his teeth in a snarl, my hands immediately went for the two blades I had dropped when the bruiser had nearly brained me. Slowly I started backing away so as not to startle him when I realized his gaze seemed to be looking through me instead of planning his next meal.
As I saw the conduit begin to appear out of the sky, I really didn't want to let it get anything, now that I saw how useful this gentle energy was. Shuffling from Goblin to Goblin, I slapped my hand to the small pool that had formed over each of their chests. Doing my best to ignore the pain pounding in my head and the stitch that was threatening to rip my side in two, I couldn't even feel the bites in my calf or my arm anymore with the pounding headache taking most of my focus to ignore. As I gathered up what was hovering over the two bruisers, before moving on to the smaller ones, I was disappointed when I felt the energy moving through me.
The soothing green energy didn't seem to be miraculously healing my wounds or doing anything to lessen the pain that had me seeing spots. With no easy button for healing appearing, part of me was disappointed that this new universe didn't make increased regeneration a given. Scoffing at myself for being greedy, I continued on to harvest what I could before it was taken from me by the slow forming funnel from the sky. Heading over to the two smaller goblins that had been shish-kabobed with my spear, I reclaimed the weapon at the same time as I took the small pool hanging above them.
With a weapon in hand, I instead used it to help me hobble around to the rest of the smaller goblins. When I got to the ones in the trench, I tried using the channel I had carved into my right leg to absorb the lower pools, so that I wouldn't aggravate my chest bending down. Feeling the soothing calm moving up my leg, part of me wanted to stop and meditate on how it was moving through me, but I wasn't willing to give up any of the harvests to the invisible tube that had nearly finished being generated above me.
Circling around to the left, away from my friend and his struggles, I focused on stepping as carefully as possible, with the rain continuing to fall in sheets down from the sky that was still being lit by streaks of lightning. The ground was quickly turning to mud and I didn't want to slip, fall, and further aggravate my ribs. Making my way over to the elites that had fallen in the beginning, as I gathered up the energy they had left behind, I thought about ending the life of the goblin that was still breathing.
Whether it was because it was a native and used to the kill energy entering him or if it was just because the goblin was a monster of lore either way, the violent energy didn't seem to be affecting it at all. Thinking about just driving my spear into its chest and ending it, too big a part of me wasn't ready to cross the line yet. Sure they had attacked me in the middle of the night, but for all I knew they were just tracking someone that had murdered three of their tribe members. While I was doubtful I could figure out a way to communicate with the greenskins, I thought I owed it to myself to try before I started killing in cold blood.
While I might consider them monsters, they were still tool users and for my mentality, that put them on the wrong side of the do not eat line. Sighing I realized that I didn't have anything to tie him up with, also I wasn't willing to track a bunch of water into my tent and soak everything that I was trying to keep dry. Glancing around the camp, I looked over to the makeshift sled that I had made. Hobbling over I quickly unraveled the harness and went back to securing the little green monster, bending down to gingerly pick up my chem light on the way. Looking at it carefully for the first time, I realized I wasn't just going to be able to tie up its hands and stake it down to the ground and hope for the best.
I’ve been joking with myself about them being little green monsters this entire time, no doubt to help me sleep at night, but as I actually took the time to look at them closely I saw that was true. While they had a bipedal stance every time I had seen them, I had to wonder if that just wasn't because they had weapons in their upper hands. Their upper arms were longer in proportion than mine, which made me think that it came from running more like a primate using their front limbs to propel them forward. Looking at its hands the claws seemed to be more than just long fingernails like a bear or a dog. They looked like they were partially retractable and sharpened so I was going to have to make sure they didn't reach whatever rope I used to restrain it.
Glancing over to the fallen archer I realized I was being an idiot, while part of me was happy to lay the blame on the pounding headache. I also realized a good part of it was just the nonstop pace I had been pushing myself at to try and survive this insane new universe I was finding myself in. Looking at the fallen warrior I realized I had two crappy bows that I could cannibalize, as I certainly wasn't going to use them for anything other than firewood. Waving my little light around I finally spotted where the broken one had been flung to, walking over I collected it before repeating the process to find the one that had been thrown at me.
As the tube finally finished forming and started hovering over the Goblins still lying next to the bear I started shaking my head to try and clear it, but stopped as the pounding just grew worse. Hobbling over to the six pools of energy I had ignored in my efforts to secure my prisoner, I made it over before the tube in the sky had managed to get even half of what had been there to start. Not quite concussed enough to be dumb enough to try sticking a limb into the tube and fighting to drag what it had taken back out.
I instead forced my inner treasure hog to be content to just sip from the pools still available. Placing my hand into an individual pool, I looked at the streams that the tube was collecting trying to figure out how it was able to pull from them all simultaneously. As my head continued to pound, I left off shaking it in frustration at its seemingly frozen state and continuing inability to think.
Moving my hand to the next pool as soon as the first was emptied, I took a deep breath and told myself it was going to be okay, yeah I was probably only going to get a third of the energy from these dead Goblins, but I had managed to get all of the pools that the elites and the other nine smaller ones had left. Don't be greedy I thought, always remember pigs get fat, hogs get slaughtered.
In the future, I was going to have to make sure greed didn’t foolishly have me consuming everything. If whatever was spawning these tubes kept coming up with zilch, it would eventually no doubt send off some kind of alert, and I didn't want anything that was powerful enough to make something like the funnel paying any attention to little old me. So yeah, maybe whatever minion they sent down would rescue me, on the other hand maybe they would be insulted at my presumption to sup on something that they considered entirely of their purview.
I had no idea how this world worked so I was willing to put off fighting any young masters or old monsters for their resources yet. Moving onto the third pool as I told myself I was still in pig territory, I took my last little sip as the tube finished gathering the rest of what it had formed for. As it started dissipating into the atmosphere I heard a scrabbling to my left. Looking over, I saw the last of the Goblins getting unsteadily to its feet. Cursing myself for a hog I started to turn fully towards it while trying to keep a grip on my wet spear.
As the little rat looked over to me with unsteady eyes, I spun my spear around and hurled the weapon at the monster, not willing to let it go for reinforcements. Only needing to throw it a short fifteen yards, I still fell into the mud as my leg gave out in pain, continuing my slide forward in the slippery mess, I looked up to see the instrument of death miss the center of mass I had been aiming for...
and slam into the monster's green head.