DAY 3

Again, I woke up before the others. I had picked one of the side tunnels, and carefully hid the book under a thin layer of my own chewed up dirt. Hopefully that would keep the others from eating it.

There was faint fuzz on my arms, chest, and I could feel it on my head as well. Only a few others I could see showed any sign of it. I suppose the fur experiment was a success. Or not, I was still just guessing with a sample size of one. After a moment of thought I looked around again, none of the tree goblins were in here.

I crawled out to the surface with my hands over my eyes but let them drop once I was out. The sun seemed less painful today, and I could squint and bear it. I looked around the trees and looked right past the tree dwelling goblins the first few times. They were either sitting against the trunk or dangling like sloths and just looked like bumps on the bark.

The berry bushes nearby had been completely destroyed by now, most ripped out of the ground entirely. I didn't feel as hungry today, which lead me to thinking about if we would starve and eat each other, or if we'd stop needing as much food. At the rate we were going, we'd soon destroy the nearby food sources unless they magically respawned.

It seemed a few hours of daylight were left, so I hefted my stick and started running towards the clearing. If I waited too long to do this I would talk myself out of it. I felt stronger, larger, able to run faster and longer than the night before.

The clearing was empty. Only faint traces of the camp remained, cold ashes and disturbed grass. I dropped down to all fours and sniffed around. I recognized the smell of rabbits, the cold oily smell of metal, and the scent of whoever had been here. Not the same as goblin. Their bootprints were twice the size of my own feet. A rabbit carcass had been left near the fire and I crunched it down. The person's trail went off in the opposite direction of where I had come from, with a very faint trail of having come from that direction the day before. A few tracks showed boots of some kind. By the smell of it, they probably had a several hour head start. It didn't seem likely I could catch up with them.

It was both simultaneously relieving and disappointing. It spared me the tension of first contact.

I looked around the area one last time, and then spotted a flat rock near the ashes. Using a claw I scratched my name into it. I had no idea if this person would come back, or if they would understand it, but I had to try.

I had just turned to leave when the sun reflected off something on the ground nearby. When I got closer I saw a beaded cord, with one loose end and a few colourful and polished beads scattered on the ground. It smelled strongly like the person. I picked it up and tied the end shut again. It was smaller than it used to be, but still large enough to fit on a goblin wrist.

Night had fully fallen by the time I got back to the burrow. The entrance had been completed, and a cluster of goblins was in the process of transplanting bushes onto the outside of it. It was looking almost exactly like a dirt pile. Still, it was fast progress. The day before they had been eating bushes and dirt, and now they were landscaping.

Inside a few of the side rooms the bark-skinned tree goblins were busy puking into small holes in the ground. They didn't seem to be doing anything with it, just chewing up plants and spitting them into holes before moving on to the next one. As I approached the central cave I could hear slapping and scuffling. Cautiously I peeked into the entrance, and saw a circle of about two dozen goblins watching as two in the center fought. One was Abe.

“Abe!” I ran forwards, readying my stick. Grob's large hand grabbed me from behind.

“No.” He growled. Overnight he had grown even more and now positively towered over me.

“Why?” I shouted, struggling out of his grasp and stepping back.

“Strong.” He pointed. For the first time I realized that Abe was winning. He had also grown overnight, now half a head taller than the others and I. He had the other goblin in a standing headlock, their posture unbalanced, and with a shout he flipped them over and threw them into the crowd of bodies. Holding his hands up he shouted his name a few times, some in the crowd echoing it as he strutted away. Two other goblins rushed in and began flailing at each other.

“What was that?” I asked as he came towards us.

“Winning.” He licked his hand and rubbed it over the line of claw marks on his chest.

I didn't have a response for that, so I just shook my head. We watched a few more rounds of fighting. Most were uncoordinated swinging and scratching, but a few were surprisingly competent. One match turned feral, the winner trying to bite the loser and the crowd rushing in to separate them. That surprised me, yesterday they would have, and had, pounced on any weakness and eaten them.

“What is happening to us, Abe?”

“Training.”

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“For what?”

“To…” He trailed off in thought. “Live.”

“I have a life. I want to go home.”

“You are home.”

I swallowed down the growl that was building in my throat and looked back at the combatants. One of them had three arms, two of which he was using to hold onto the other goblin while punching it in the gut with the third. That fight didn't last long at all.

The next fight featured one of the rather rare goblins with two torsos sharing a pair of legs, which turned in an unexpected direction as one of the torsos sided with the opponent and started choking its twin while they both got pummeled.

"I feel dumber already." I turned to leave, but stopped short as Grob bumped into me and sent me stumbling back a step. He was wider than before, looking like he had been taking the scrawny goblins lunches.

"Fight."

"No." I pushed my way out through the crowd. What the hell were we even doing?

When I was outside again I leaned against a tree. The lump in my throat was even worse now, half forgotten memories whispered to me, calling me to fight, to show them I was strong. I clenched my fists, feeling the claws digging into my palms as the red agony burned through my head like lightning. The memory swirled up around me.

I was on the ground between the picnic tables at the camp, on all fours gasping from a sucker punch to the gut with another kid standing over me and stepping in for a kick. I rolled into his leg to intercept it, wrapping my arms around his shin and driving my shoulder into his thigh and he fell back against the group cheering him on. As he struggled, I grabbed his foot and twisted it with all my strength. He got in one solid punch to my ear right as something in his ankle popped. We both screamed, and someone ran in and hauled me back by the collar of my shirt. He towered over me, shouting something I couldn't hear over the rushing blood in my head.

"Karl." The sound surprised me, the memory vanishing. Abe had followed me out.

"What?"

"Fight."

"Why?" I rubbed my head, but the itching sensation was inside it, not on the surface.

"Be strong."

"I don't need to prove anything to...them."

I stomped off into the forest. My heart was still pounding and my head ached with phantom pain.

A squirrel chittered at me from a branch overhead.

"Shut up!" I grabbed a rock, and as I threw it a shining red line arced through the air, and the stone followed it to bounce off the tree trunk. The squirrel ran off, but I was staring at my hand. Had I really just seen that?

Picking up another rock, I concentrated on where I wanted to hit, a budding sprout on the trunk. The red line appeared again just as I threw the rock. Grabbing a handful of rocks I started throwing them one after another. The red line was getting more precise, adjusting to more closely match where I was aiming, and also appearing earlier, before the rock had been thrown. Having a rock ready and focusing on where I wanted to hit would make it appear.

It was close to midnight, and my shoulder was aching, by the time I called it quits. My aim had improved dramatically. Having something to focus on had helped me ignore my headache until it went away.

The forest was quiet now, all the animals having been scared off. I sat down and leaned against the tree.

"Wake up." I whispered, staring up at the stars shimmering overhead. Something rustled a bush nearby, I looked over, expecting it to be Abe again

.

"Hey, I--shit!" I scrambled away from the shape emerging from the bushes. Jagged horns and shining eyes were all I saw before it reared around and fled with a loud bleat. Some kind of goat thing, that probably would have been more than capable of goring me if it had felt inclined. It had stood shoulder height on me. Why were so many of these things so freaking large?

A moment later a goblin shrieked from the direction the goat had fled, and then a small posse of them came scrambling out of bushes to give chase. I didn't know what was more pitiful, that it had unintentionally stumbled into the midst of a goblin camp, or that the wretched fools could only run around chasing after it. If it had fought it could have probably killed half the group by itself.

The hunt became more organized when Grob and Abe emerged, and they each began hurling sticks like javelins. One managed to hit the goat and although it didn't do much damage the goat did stagger and the horde caught up as it stumbled. A dozen goblins rushed over it like a wave, biting and clawing, devouring it alive.

I was a bit curious. I hadn't seen any trajectory lines when they threw the javelins. Picking up a rock, I aimed to the side, the line appearing. Nobody reacted, even when I swept my point of aim over them, so I just dropped the rock. It was unclear if they could learn to notice it, after all, a band of feral goblins was a pretty sorry benchmark for just about anything. I wasn't about to ask one of them to throw things at me to test.

The unplanned feast kicked off a festive mood and they started sprawling out for a nap until Grob began shouting at the goblins to form into groups to go patrol. The new squad hurried off in what was probably random directions. I sat against the tree and everyone seemed content to leave me alone.

When the majority of the others had departed, I glanced around and then gestured in the air, as though I were tapping a touchpad. Nothing happened. I had been sure that would work. Slapping myself on the cheeks, I stood up to go find something to eat.

I looked around for my stick for a second, before just breaking a new one off a tree and setting off in the direction that smelled the least like goblin musk. After walking for half an hour or so I found myself in relatively unexplored territory. My steps slowed as my ear twitched in a decidedly disturbing manner. Something had rustled a bush ahead. It was downwind, so I couldn't smell it. It apparently could smell me though. A rabbit's head lifted up, freezing for a second, and then fleeing. A dark shape swooped down with barely a whisper of feathers. A second later the giant owl was gone with the rabbit in its talons. It was probably large enough to carry me off if it felt inclined.

I went to sniff the spot the rabbit had been, and could smell at least one more, upwind. Cautiously I started stalking in that direction.

About twenty minutes later I had another rabbit in sight. Raising my stick I aimed and the trajectory line appeared when I made the decision to throw. The stick followed the arc through the air, catching the rabbit right in the chest. Although it wasn't sharp, it had enough mass to do some damage and the rabbit collapsed with a wheeze.

I felt something pass through me. Amorphous and alien, I didn't know what it was, just that I could feel it in my chest, spreading out and leaving me feeling inexplicably different. The word to describe it would probably be on one of those word of the day calendars, probably something French sounding. Holding a hand out, I willed the primal forces to be conjured and shaped to my will. After a second of nothing happening I sighed and walked over to grab the rabbit.

It was weird, but I was hoping that if I speared enough rabbits I'd learn magic. That's usually how these things went. Or I'd find a nice set of steak knives or a pair of pants on the body. Pulling the carcass apart I searched it for treasure and found only guts.

The size differences of some animals had me curious. This rabbit was normal size, but the owl would almost certainly stand taller than me on the ground. Even with me being pint sized, I was pretty sure owls weren't supposed to be people sized. Maybe they were large to fit the loot inside them, like piñatas. I would feel a lot more comfortable with something other than a mildly pointy stick to take down an animal that size though. Especially if the owl had a magic sword inside it.