I was honestly impressed by the young goblins' endurance… and lung capacity.

She’d been putting on quite the display for the last few minutes.

Repeatedly srceaming things like “What the shitting fuck!” And “Ambush!” While wildly attempting to swing her shovel in every direction at once.

I would’ve made a run for it like i’d planned but firstly the young goblin was such a furious ball of shovels swings I wasn’t confident in my chances of making it past her unthacked, and secondly I was just plain curious just how long she could keep up such an enthusiastic level exertion.

It was as it turned out, a pretty long time. I watched in increasing fascination as the minutes stretched on.

At some point the declarations of “You’ll never take me alive!” And the like gave way to gritted teeth and wordless snarls of defiance but she just kept swinging at the air like it insulted her dog.

After a while longer still she was breathing heavily and started to flush an interesting shade of teal but barely slowed her relentless attack on nothing.

That was a lot of determination. I wasn’t even sure she remembered why she was engaging in the targetless onslaught anymore.

I was starting to get a little concerned actually. Her face was almost entirely bright teal now and her gaze was starting to look dazed and unfocused.

I popped off [Delver’s Insight] again just to make sure she wasn’t doing herself any harm. I wasn’t sure what I could do if she was but I would come up with something if it came to it.

[Giggera The Mercenary]

[Monster type: Goblin]

[Level:6] [Hp:14/14] [Mp:1/12]

[Title: Denizen]

[Perks: Mercenary Spirit, Gobbish Tenacity, Dungeon Babble]

[Drawbacks: Cornered Frenzy, Enforced Contract, Winded ]

[Dungeon Points: 2 ]

Ok, health was still full but she had been burning though [Mp]. Must be leaning on that to keep up the shovel barrage for as long as she had. Now that I thought about it

I was hard pressed to remember a goblin tiring out mid fight. Easy bet that was [Gobbish Tenacity] at work.

Still at the rate she’s been going she's bound to run out of juice right about…

She splashed onto her butt like a puppet with its strings cut. Hair lank with sweat and huffing in exhaustion. Shovel at her side where it had fallen from her grip. Her lantern was still half submerged in the stream where it had been discarded at the beginning of the stationary rampage.

I cocked my head as I studied the panting and bleary eyed goblin girl as she recovered. At Least she was still conscious, making sure she didn’t drown would’ve been a pain.

Yeah, I was pretty confident the little basket case infront of me wasn’t much of an immediate threat. Maybe she’d be a bit more receptive to my diplomatic overtures now that she’d worked all that aggression out of her system and I could back up my stance of non hostility with the fact that her eyes remained unbitten even in her current vulnerable state. Though I thought it was best to leave that specific point as subtext.

“Um, are you done with… whatever that was?” I asked, making a gesture with my paws to try to encompass what I just watched.

She tracked my voice up to where I was perched and managed a passable glower.

Both her eyes were almost looking in the same direction and everything.

“You can’t fool me! *huff* You laid a clever trap *weeze* I’ll give you that, but

I won’t let your hidden hoard of *pant* vicious rat minions *gasp* take me by surprise!”

“Sorry to disappoint, but I don’t have a single minion, hidden, vicious, or otherwise. Let alone a whole hoard of them.” I said while looking around the clearly empty tunnel to emphasise my point.

She looked somewhat bewildered at that revelation, noticing my lack of a rat army or an obvious place to hide one. After a long pause that allowed her to get most of her breath back she finally actually responded to something I said. Progress!

“Ha! They would have never been able to *cough* breach my ablostle defence technique anyway.”

That had been pretty comprehensive as flailing about goes. I'll give her that much.

She reached over and righted the lantern laying at her side before staring at me for a long while. Eventually some last puzzle piece seemed to click into place in her head as her eyes gradually gained focus and she began to engage with reality again.

“So, you aren’t some like legendary super rat-lord here to capture me to, uh, further your nefarious schemes or the like are you?” She asked, only a hint of disappointment colouring her voice.

With an imagination like that the kid should be writing fiction.

“Nope, I’m just lost.” I answered.

~~~~~

While I was confident we were past the worst of our rough first impressions, things were still understandably tense. We kept our distance and were alert for any sudden movements.

I already missed Tim’s self-evident philosophy of ‘Speak softly and ride a giant battle chicken’. That attitude just made this kind of encounter so much easier.

It was time to unleash my ultimate diplomatic weapon again. Awkward small talk.

Oh yes, laugh all you like, but there are few things that tear down walls and create an instant rapport than shared awkwardness. Done correctly the natural reaction is almost an involuntary feeling of ‘Hey we’re both just people, huh?’. So my occanail social fumblings are completely totally intentional and beneficial to my long term goals. You can’t prove that they’re not, so there.

“Well, um, I take it you’re down here to unclunk the, uh, clunk, right? You might need more than a shovel for this one.”

She looked at me, then looked at her shovel. “Eh, don’t see why? Probably just another silt clump. Poke a good hole in it and the water will clear out the block in like an hour or two tops. Easy job except for all the sweaty fart stink.

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“Yeah, it’s not silt. Here, let me show you.” I paused, thinking better of taking sudden unexpected action.“Hopping down now. No freak outs, Ok?.”

I hopped down. She didn’t freak out. The ultimate weapon had worked its magic yet again.

~~~~~

“Uh, fucking gross. We’re standing in badger juice.” Was her first comment after realising what the ‘blockage’ actually was.

“It’s more like badger soup but basically, yeah.” I agreed.

She flopped down and set her back to the tunnel's wall, still clearly rung out from her earlier efforts in single handedly vanquishing a nonexistent army. Looking more than a little put out by the new obstacle she now had to deal with.

It was as good a time as any to pick our conversation back up.

“The name’s Rowan by the way.” I said, hoping she’d respond in kind. Yeah, I already knew her name but sneaky info perks are no replacement for polite introductions. Gotta build those social bridges one brick at a time.

She looked over at me and stared for a moment before coming to some decision,

Before sticking a thumb to her chest and introducing herself in turn.

“Giggera the Mercency, but everyone calls me Gig and I like it that way.”

Hey, I could relate, no one who actually knew me called me ‘Rowanoak’. Hell that was only a goof on my height till it somehow made its way on to my paperwork. I just rolled with it after that. Wasn’t worth the hassle of dealing with the guild's bureaucratic wing.

“So, eh what’s your deal anyway? Never seen a talking rat before. You some sort of fey changeling type thing?” She asked, the new topic bringing some sparkle back to her eyes as it distracted her from her ongoing badger problem. “I met a brownie once. Nice guy, smelled like nutmeg. Let me try on his hat.“

Deflect. Deflect. Deflect.

I just gave her my best non committal rat shrug. “It’s a long story, I’d rather not talk about it. Let’s just say the gods are assholes and leave it at that.”

No outright lies there, but nothing Incriminating ethir. With just enough of a hook to not come off as complete stonewalling. The wonders of vagary at work.

She seemed to accept that for the moment. Between Tim and now Gig it was looking like goblins weren’t much for prying, which is something I was thankful for. Though the curiosity still burned in her eyes now that she was seeing me as a novel oddity rather than a new and unknown threat.

“Fair ’nough I guess. Then how about you tell me how you ended up down here in the guts of nowhere?” Gig asked instead.

“Short version. I fell in. Slightly longer version. We fell in.” I said, pointing to the badger dam in front of us.

“Wow, dodged a respawn, eh?” She said looking over the badger with renewed interest. “Not bad.” Likely picturing an epic confrontation far more exciting than the reality of getting briefly stuck to its nose.

“Any ideas for getting it unstuck?” I asked, trying to avoid the embarrassing topic of my badger fighting skills.

“Nope. I’ll have to head back to town and get some rope or something.” She said, her voice slipping back to announce. “Maybe an axe.”

My ears perked up at that. “Town? That wouldn’t happen to be Pitfall by any chance?”

“Huh? Oh, yeah. It is.” Gig answered off handedly, her mind still occupied with possible carcass removal methods.

Yes! I knew I couldn’t have been dumped that far off course.

“I’m looking to make my way to Pitfall and could really use a guide. Any chance you’d be interested in helping a rat out?” I asked, getting excited at the possibility of getting back on track to somewhere, finally.

“I mean sure, I could, but that sounds like work and I never work for free. It’s against my moral principles.” She said with the thoughtless ease of a well worn automatic response.

Ah, Mercenary. Right.

Still if there were any way to strike a deal, it would be infinitely preferable to wandering alone in the dark hoping to stumble across it myself. I racked my brain for something I could offer but it was like I have a lot on my just a rucksack full of junk and… Oh, hell worth a shot.

“Yeah, all got on me, our some coppers.” Two fucking coppers to be excat. “I could give you those now as, um… a down payment.” She looked less than enthused her attention still clearly elsewhere, so I quickly added. “Just till we get somewhere I can trade my dungeon points.. I need a merchant or something for that right?”

The mercenaries' full attention immediately snapped back to me.

“Woah, hey now. You got points? You can pay in Points!” She declared eyes suddenly aflame with undisguised avarice.

Then she caught herself, straightened her posture and got a cagely look on her face. I could instantly tell I was about to get put over a barrel.

“A priority job like this on such short notice? For my elite expert services? I’ll have to charge you the maximum rate. Really no getting around it. My hands are tied. Sorry.” The goblin said, not remotely sorry.

I glanced at my Dungeon Points, they were sitting at a hard earned eighty eight after the bat bounties. Hopefully I’d still have enough left to get myself provisioned.

“What’ll it cost me?” I asked, doing my best to cover my trepidation. This was a seller's market situation. Sure I could probably get away with just trailing her back to town but the chance at having a local in my corner right from the start was just too valuable to pass up. With luck even if I was going to get overcharged the extra goodwill earned would cover the difference.

She held up three fingers with a wicked grin.

What? Thridy? Ok, that’ll leave me fifty eight. If hiring a merc cost thirty then fifty eight such still stretch pretty far.

I gave a grudging nod. “Yeah, I should be able to swing that.”

“Ha ha, easiest three points ever!“ She crowed in obvious triumph, like any true master negotiator would.

Oh, huh. Ok. Guess dungeon folk don’t use the same bartering shorthand as the outside. I’ll have to remember that one.

Kinda begged the question, was I dungeon rich already? I hoped I was dungeon rich. Though I was getting the feeling Gig wasn’t exactly on the high end of the pay scale just yet. I probably was, at most, dungeon flush. Still I’d take it over being Dungeon poor hands down.

In any case I’d have to see what kind of favourable terms I squeeze out for myself. Gig wasn’t the only one with ‘moral principles’ to uphold.

I groomed my whisters in thought for a moment before getting down to business “So, since this a priority job I assume those three points are going pay for, getting me to Pitfall, you acting as my tour guide for a bit once we get there and, generally trying to prevent people from stomping on the weird talking rat by mistake or otherwise?”

She mulled that over a little before setting terms herself. “Yeah. It should cover the a day of all purpose bodyguarding once we get to town. But if you want to retain my exclusive and extremely valuable services after that, which you will cause I’m the fucking best, you gotta keep paying in points. No coins or barter. Points.” Then she looked back to the badger blockage, made a face and sighed. “Also, you're gonna have to wait till I deal with this shit first. I’m still on contract to clear the tunnel soon as possible. I’m no [Welcher] and never will be.”

“Sure, sounds fair. It’s not like I’m in a rush.” I replied. “Though that does remind me of something that’s been bugging me a while now. How do you manage to track days here anyway? Seems a bit tricky without a sky and all that.”

“There's a clock in the status.” She said, giving me a look that clearly added a silent ‘DUH’ to the end of the stence.

I paused for a second in surprise then tried thinking ‘Clock’ real loud. Sure enough the face of a little time piece sprung into view.

It was late afternoon. Neat.

I shook off the distraction and got back to the matter at hand.

“Ok, Looks like we’ve got a deal. How’s the whole contract thing work?” I asked. I’d seen the [Enforced contact] drawback in her status so I was sure I was in for some more dungeon nonsense. I just hoped it wouldn’t need access to the spawner interface since that might lead to some awkward questions.

“We shake on it.” Gig answered with another silent ‘duh’ tacked on the end.

I shrugged and held out a paw to her. She took my tiny rat grabber in her little goblin mit. Once we shook on it I got a prompt in my vision.

[ Accept Mercenary Contract? Yes/No ]

I gave [Yes] the little mind poke it needed to do its thing.

My dungeon points ticked down by three before more text popped into view.

[You have contracted the [goblin] [Giggera the Mercenary] [Lvl 6] [Desienian]

Warning: Failure to uphold the terms of the contract will result in a loss of [Dungeon Points] and infliction of the [Welcher] drawback.]

Oh, no. If I’m seeing this then…

Gig’s gaze became momentarily unfocussed, reading something I couldn’t see. Then her jaw dropped and her eyes bulged in surprise.

“DECEASED ADVENTURER?!”

Opps. Cat’s out of the bag.