Jon was lost in the darkness of his mind, with only the dull pain in his head to keep him company he floated in the thoughtless void between his trip into the underworld and wherever he was now. It was a persistent companion though, and slowly, but surely it dragged him back from the brink and towards the surface. It wasn’t what finally forced him from his miserable sleep, and into full consciousness though.
That was the noise.
It was the rough, quiet sound of stone dragging on stone. It rose above the closer sound of flowing water that dominated the darkness, but only barely. It wasn’t the volume that disturbed him though. It was the threatening nature of it. It was like a blade being sharped on a whetstone, though, he doubted a goblin had ever done anything so proactive. That image persisted though, as he heard it a second time, and then a third. At first, it got closer and closer, and it was only when he sat there unwilling to even breathe that it finally started to move away again.
Something was down here with him, and even though he couldn’t see it, he was sure it was a goblin. He could tell from the smell. The cavern he’d been in before everything had gone crazy had smelled like damp stone and moss. This one though. This one smelled like decay and shit. Somewhere along the way he’d stumbled into the lair of something dangerous, and it was only by the grace of the gods that he hadn’t been ripped to pieces yet.
Jon had no idea what had happened, but as the noise of a weapon carelessly dragging against the wall got further and further away and his heart started to slow down, he struggled to remember what had happened exactly. He’d been chasing his father through the underworld, hadn’t he? Did that mean he was dead now, or was that just a dream? He wasn’t sure, but he didn’t exactly feel dead, at least, he didn’t until he realized he might have left his weapon somewhere along the way. That very nearly gave him a heart attack as panic shot through him.
For the first time since he’d woken up, he moved. His muscles complained loudly as he unclenched his cramped limbs and adjusted his position carefully to avoid making a sound loud enough for the goblin or goblins that were here to hear. It was only when he untwisted his arms from the way that he’d wedged himself in this crevice and reached out to stretch them that he realized that there was something clutched tightly within his left hand. For a second he was confused, and he started to open it, but as soon as flickers of light began to spill from between his fingers he regretted it and closed it immediately. While he desperately wanted light right now, it was the last thing he needed. Light might let him see where the goblin was, and if there was more than one, but it would definitely let them see him. They’d be drawn to him like moths, and he doubted he’d survive that assault. Even the chance wasn’t worth the quick peek.
It was a terrible irony that seemingly the only thing he’d managed to keep in the strange fugue state he’d suffered was an item that was impossible for him to use. The fear that he’d left not just the knife but the engineer's brand behind somewhere in the dark was growing so palpable that it was making it difficult to breath, but he searched with the one free hand he had anyway. He was too afraid to give up. He was too afraid of what that would mean. It wasn’t just the weapons. It was the water skin too. Not having that dramatically lowered the odds that he’d be able to get to the surface even if he survived this encounter. It was that fear that kept Jonathan groping blindly around the crevice he’d wedged inside long past the point where he’d given up hope of finding it. Eventually though, he was rewarded by the feeling of rough canvas instead of slippery limestone as he felt the very edge of it wedged even further beneath him.
“Bendona be praised,” he sighed to himself, finally able to breathe again.
He didn’t need to fight anything, he told himself as he groped through the sack, checking to make sure that everything was still in it before he pulled out the knife and unsheathed it. He just needed to hide long enough to sneak away and find his path back to the glowing moss. It shouldn’t be too hard to locate considering that it was the only thing down here that was glowing, he decided. From there Jonathan was certain that he could make his way back to the albino pool and eventually, the train tunnel.
He sat there breathing deeply and slowly, trying to reassure himself that he couldn’t have gone too far. That was when he noticed that the goblin was getting closer again.
He had no idea if he’d made too much noise, or if the thing had seen the flash of light. He didn’t even know if it knew he was there or if it was just blindly groping blinding in the dark for a way out, but the thing was definitely getting closer. This time the sound was different though. This time it seemed to be searching, and he could hear the sound of scrambling claws against stone before it periodically stopped to sniff the air loudly again.
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It definitely knew something was there, and that it was something edible. Something he’d done had given him away, and it wasn’t going to rest until it found its prey and tore it to pieces.
Jon began to grope his way out of his hiding place as silent as he could, with his knife in his right hand and his sack and his light stone in his left. It was an agonizingly slow process that was made worse due to the fact the goblin was getting closer to him much faster than he was moving away from it, and there was nothing Jonathan could do about it. Not without giving himself away. One trip over the uneven ground, or one scuff against the scree that was left behind in some of the depressions, and the thing would be on him in an instant with its teeth in his throat.
It was a nerve racking game of hide and seek. Jonathan would move very slowly and deliberately, groping his way through the dark toward the sound of flowing water that was coming from somewhere ahead of him and to the right, and the whole time the goblin was snuffling and scratching ever closer to him. Once it growled before its weapon slammed into stone in a way that was both resonate and grinding. It sounded much louder than it actually was to his ears that measured volume in heartbeats right now, but even knowing that it still sounded like the din of some terrible battle that almost made him jump out of his skin.
The goblin continued to dig around in what he could only assume was the crevice he’d so recently abandoned, which meant that he was only a few yards from the creature. The thing had his scent now, but there was nothing he could do to go faster.
Still, for minute after agonizing minute he managed to stay ahead of the savage thing, and finally it began to move away from him, circling back the other way. That behavior made him think that he might be going the wrong way. After all, if it had his scent, it stood to reason that it was following the trail he’d left previously, right? While he was lost in his thoughts and his sense of relief that was when he tripped, sending him sprawling. He’d lifted his foot high enough to step over the rock he thought was in his way, but not quite high enough for the stalagmite that had actually been there. It snagged the heel of his boot as his foot tried to pass over it, and in the darkness his balance wasn’t enough to save him.
Even worse than the noise that his fall made though was that the light stone slipped from his grasp and went skittering and bouncing across the ground in a crazed light show of flickering shadows.
Jonathan took advantage of the moment to get a good look around as he pulled himself to his feet. He was a long, ovoid shaped cave with frequent stalactites and stalagmites along with a very uneven floor. The result was something he wouldn’t enjoy crossing with the brightest of torches. He was surprised he’d made it as far as he had without incident. In the few seconds before he grabbed the stone and plunged the room back into darkness he saw that the cavern had two exits, the crevice he’d hidden himself away in, and one emaciated goblin glaring at him with eyes full of hunger and rage.
The goblin screamed in wordless fury and charged him as Jonathan plunged the cave back into perfect darkness. In that single moment Jonathan’s life flashed before his eyes as he marshalled every relevant fact he could think of and tried to decide what he should do. Goblins couldn’t see in the dark, even though he thought they could before now. Goblins were stupid but vicious. This goblin was starving, and the sharp stone it was using as a weapon had almost no reach unless the thing decided to throw it.
Even though he was terrified he was able to draw one awful conclusion from all of that. The goblin would charge him in the most direct way and try to bash his skull in or rip him to pieces. There was nothing he could do to stop that, but there was a single moment when he knew exactly where the goblin would be as it tried to kill him, and that was where he was standing right now.
That was his chance. His only chance to kill this thing before it ripped his guts open and devoured the human at its leisure.
With a cold feeling of detachment Jonathan moved to one side where he knew a ledge waited for him and readied his weapon above where the goblin would be momentarily. Time seemed to slow down in that dark terrible moment, and even though it hadn’t even been five seconds, it felt like five minutes had passed as he waited for the moment to strike.
When it finally came, targeting was easy because the goblin wouldn’t stop it’s screeching. The only reason that Jonathan knew that he’d struck was because of the resistance, and because the pitch of the screaming changed from rage to pain.
His first reaction was to pull the knife out and stab the creature again, but he resisted. Goblins were terribly quick, and if it got free he didn’t know if he’d be able to strike it a second time. Instead, he used his superior size and strength to bear it to the ground and pin in there. The thing squirmed, and scratched at his arm ineffectually, but there was nothing it could do as its screams got weaker and weaker while it bled out.
When it was done, Jonathan was gasping at the shock and the panic that was flowing through his system while he held down a corpse and decided what he should do next.
That was when he heard the howls in the distance. The sounds of the struggle and the dying goblin or the smell of blood had attracted the attention of other goblins, and from the way their volume was increasing, he only had a few seconds to decide what he should do next.