Gig and I were sprawled out in the Rock-Biter’s burrow. The creatures were known to be strictly solitary ambush hunters and the [Territorial] drawback I caught sight of only served to reinforce that notion. So, it was a safe bet the place would be nice and vacant now that the beast was just another snack for Old George. Not to mention it was closer and was less risky than braving the surface of the Green Sea just at that moment. All and all a convenient, if a little cramped, spot for catching our breath and getting Gig patched up. It wasn’t like we were in any kind of rush. This whole venture was an exercise in killing time after all.
It only took a bit of backtracking up the spike ladder to set an anchor in a spot that would let us swing over to the opening. The entrance was a short tunnel just wide enough for Gig to squeeze through. It led into what seemed to be the central chamber of the burrow. Large enough that the Goblin girl could lay down comfortably but with a ceiling low enough she had to watch out against scraping her head when standing upright. There were also a handful of narrower tunnels connecting to smaller chambers. Some had connections to each other, some not. I’d found that out by doing a quick reconnaissance of the whole little cave system as soon as we arrived.
Just cause it should be empty didn’t guarantee it would be. Best to make certain there weren’t any surprises, which luckily there weren’t. We had the place all to ourselves and with the Rock-Biter on its way to respawning wherever it had come from it was likely to stay that way.
Honestly, it was a lot less gross inside than I had been expecting. It was mostly just a lot of rock dust and a few well gnawed bones. Even what I suspected to be the monster's privy was pretty inoffensive as such things went, just a pile of petrified pellets that smelled faintly of sulphur. The result of a [Stone Chewer]’s diet if I was to guess.
The burrow was the perfect little cosy base camp to explore the Green Sea from. An excellent recompense for the hassle of fighting the bastard thing. First things first though, we needed to see to Gig’s injuries.
~~~~~
Gig’s arm, thankfully, looked a lot nastier than it actually was. The gash was uneven and had bled like a bastard but was shallow for all that. Now, I was no Healer but it would require a concerted application of willful ignorance to not pick up at least some of the basics of the craft after years of adventuring. As such it was a pretty simple matter for me to clean out the wound and wrap it up with strips taken from the food sack. Might leave an ugly scar but even that would only stick around till the Goblin’s, all but inevitable, next respawn. Then she’d be back fresh as a daisy and ready for all new scars. Which was an odd realisation for me. There was still so much to try and get my head around when it came to the realities of Dungeon life.
The broken nose Gig had picked up when she face-planet against the wall was the worst of the injuries she’d taken in our scuffle with the Rock-Biter, the rest just being bumps and bruises that would take care of themselves. She gasped out some of those truly awful Goblin curses when I set her nose straight again for her. The curses left me with sore eyeballs for a quarter hour but at least her nose wasn’t whistling when she breathed through it anymore. I really needed to start writing those down.
Should have bought some stationary supplies from Dinkum now that I thought of it. Oh, well. Next time.
“Shit me, that hurt worse than breaking it.” Gig said, poking at her still tender nose.
She then noticed me rubbing my temples in a fruitless attempt to ease the throbbing in my brain before seeming to realise what she’d done, stumbling to add “Er, I mean, thanks Boss. The whistling was fucking annoying.”
“Anytime. Pick those up from Tim?” I asked while rubbing my temples. “He hit me with a string of something similar once.”
‘Huh, Oh. maybe? Don’t remember.” She answered with a very Gig shrug.
~~~~
I set out the Bag of Looting and kicked off the emptying process so we could have a decent meal while we recovered. Once the contents had finished dumping themselves out I picked a likely looking cured sausage and hacked off the nub end for myself. I had no idea what kind of meat it was made from but it was spicy and pleasantly greasy in just the way I like, so I didn't really care much in any case. I followed it up with a few more of those tasty dried grapricots while I contemplated the fight. If I was gonna hold up my end on the whole mentor thing I had going with the Goblin it was as good a time as any to dust off an old reliable lesson the guild tried to hammer into all its rookies.
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A tired looking Gig slumped against the cave’s wall going to work on the remainder of the sausage.
“The fight back there, you did good.” I said, breaking the quiet that had settled over our meal.
Somewhat to my surprise, my words seemed to elicit the opposite response that I’d have expected of Gig. She hunched her shoulders and grumbled “Fuckn’ lost my axe.” in a tone laced with more embarrassment and self recrimination than I’d have expected based on what I’d seen of her demeanour thus far.
Still, after I thought about it a moment from her perspective it made a kind of sense. If she was in the mindset of trying to impress her fancy new adventurer friend to only, in her view, beef it immediately… It seemed adolescent angst was truly a transcended force.
I clapped my paws together using a minor exertion of Vitality Burst, generating a surprisingly loud noise to snap Gig’s attention back to me before she could get herself stuck in a funk. “It happens.” I stated with all the authority I could muster to cut off that line of thinking. “That’s why you carry a spare. What matters is, you didn’t let losing your weapon shake your focus in the moment.”
Gig’s back straightened at my words, her glum expression slowly giving way to one of renewed determination, and gave a nod in acknowledgement. That was good, she should be in a better place to tackle this properly now.
“Besides that, what did you think about the fight? What did you learn?” I asked. Now this, this was the actual important part. It might not seem like much but, clear eyed self reflection was a skill that could take you further than any fancy parry or spicy
fireball. If all I managed to do with my time with Gig was lay the foundation for the habit I would have more than held up my end of our bargain.
I sat back and returned to nibbling on my hunk of mystery meat, letting her take all the time she needed to mull things over. This was a tried and true process. Ideally I’ll be able to have similar little talks like this with Gig whenever we have downtime like this after action. Steering her away from any of that kind of reflexive self recrimination she just showed and towards being able to take a step back to honestly analyse the positive and negative both. You can’t learn proper lessons without the complete picture after all. Sounds easy enough, sure, but that kind of mental reframing is damn hard work in reality, especially around things as emotionally charged as life or death battles.
Gig fiddled with the remainder of the sausage we’d been making a meal of and scrunched up her face in thought. It seemed she was taking my question seriously, which I was glad to see.
“Most times… when shit goes sideways things get all tangled in my head.” She started haltingly. Clearly working though her thoughts out loud. “[Cornered Frenzy] kicks in and everything just blurs. When I'm back fight’s over one way or other, but you callin’ shots? It was like I only had to do half the thinkin’ myself. I could tell [Cornered Frenzy] to just go fuck off and get down to kicking ass.” She Smirked as she finally reached the conclusion she’d been grasping at. “Thinkin’ and fightin’ at the same time fucking rules. I want more!” She finished with a final burst of energy before she settled back down with the look akin to a self satisfied cat who’ just stumbled on some grand secret of the universe.
Well I gotta admit that wasn’t in the spectrum of answers I’d been expecting. Dungeon stuff was going to just keep making things weird wasn’t it. How was I going to hand off any of my go to veteran adventure wisdom after an answer like that. “There's no bravery without fear blah blah blah” just wasn’t going to cut it here. I mean my response here wasn’t all that important, the main thrust was just starting her on building some decent self improvement habits but still I needed to maintain some amount of credibility to keep the lesson going long enough to stick.
“Uh, that’s good? Yeah, ok, yeah…” I spat out reflexively while wrecking my little rat brain for something remotely useful I could add to that. Unconsciously my tail started to twitch back and forth while I cast my attention around the rocky chamber gasping for any inspiration. Having fallen well and truly off script at this point I just gave up and opened my mouth to let fly what may.
I was cut off before I could get the first word out of whatever nonsense I was about to spout by a sudden rattling snore, looking back I saw Gig slumped against the wall fully and totally conked out. A snot bubbled springing from her nose the likes of which I’d only seen in a broad sheet’s cartoon section.
Ah, well It had been a hell of a long day after all.
Sighing to myself I felt more relief than the situation probably actually called for.
I paused in thought for a moment before I reached for the dog eared skill manual I’d picked up at Dinkum’s. It was as good a time as any to get some reading done.