Chapter 18 - Apex Predator

I jolted awake. It was still dark, and not the dark of the bottom of the sleeping mound. It was the dark of full night. The first time I’d woken up at night after eating since coming into this new goblin body.

I felt an immediate sense of danger. We’d completed the wall and closed up the shelters. There shouldn’t have been anything able to get in and trouble us in the night this time, but something wasn’t right.

I pulled myself to the top of the pile and looked around. Plenty of light from the moon bathed the hilltop well enough to see most of the village through the slats in the shelter. I couldn’t see any movement. I rolled down from the pile and pressed up against the poles that comprised the shelter’s wall for a better view.

A scraping noise behind me drew my attention, and I whipped around to the other side. I scrambled back up onto the pile, disturbing a few of my mound-mates in the process. I looked through the poles on that side. I could see the sloth cub’s enclosure, still undisturbed, and the curled form of the infant inside, dozing off its dinner of scraps from the fish and fowl.

The scraping, again, behind me.

This time, I looked up.

Bright yellow eyes stared down at me through a hole in the roof of the shelter. A long, hooked beak worried at the opening, prying loose the weave to enlarge the hole. Whatever it was, it was big enough to block out the moon, and had small hands at the ends of bat-like wings.

I won’t lie, I screamed. The goblins below me rolled over, annoyed, saw the bat-thing and also screamed.

Then the beaked creature screeched in alarm at having been caught out, and that woke up the rest of the goblins. It beat its wings against the cage, enraged, as the group inside became a hive of frenzied activity.

“Kill it!” I shouted, horrified. The silhouette of this creature, the light of its eyes, and the curve of its beak all triggered very deep, primal fear responses in my goblin brain that my human mind was powerless to stand against.

“Kill it, kill it, kill it!”

The shelter capsized as most of the mound threw themselves at the far wall to get as far from the creature as possible. This thing had already been responsible for at least five goblin deaths, coming to haunt the tribe night after night. I’d never considered that it might be something that could fly. The wall was useless, and our shelters were only marginally better. What was worse, the System superimposed the level over its head. 18.

The night haunt thing’s wide tail lashed at the air as it flapped backwards. The entire hilltop was awake now. All forty-five members of the tribe pushing out of their shelters and running for crossbows and spears, or even just simple clubs.

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Now open, the creature dove in among the goblins from my shelter, snapping one up in its beak and shaking its head violently. It flung the goblin away.

It pounced on another as it tried to flee, pinning the unfortunate goblin to the ground with its hands and digging its hooked beak into my tribemate’s back.

This high-level creature was swatting down goblins like we would swat down flies. It turned its eyes. I followed its gaze and saw Buzz coming with a spear. He raised it high, but the thing pounced again, sweeping aside the stone spearpoint.

“No!” I shouted and threw myself at it.

Its head snapped to the side, and its beak caught me around the middle. It squeezed. It squeezed so hard I thought I would pop.

I screamed from the pressure and pain of the fatal blow that had passed to another goblin. It readjusted its bite, and the pressure tightened around my chest. I couldn’t inhale. Claws raked at me. Hateful yellow eyes stared down, confused at why I was still alive. It let go of my chest and drove its beak into my midsection.

Buzz was up, and Neil with him. Fitting, I suppose. They both had ceramic-tipped spears, and they drove them into the creature. Neil put his spear into its side, while Buzz pinned one of its wings to the dirt. It shrieked with pain, so loud half the goblins on the hilltop dropped and pressed their ears flat against their skulls.

Neil dropped the spear, still in the thing’s gut, and pulled out two flint cleavers. He jumped up, and then rolled as the nighttime terror of my tribe snapped at him. He lashed out, and the creature recoiled, blood spurting from two jagged cuts.

“Boss!” shouted Buzz.

I turned, and scrambled out of the way as Sally and her team of engineers readied their crossbows. The crack of 15 bows going off at once sounded more like a gunshot than a bowstring. Several shots went wide, and one bow exploded in its owner’s hands. But the majority of the stones struck home on the bat-thing’s side and head. It staggered, hurt and clearly dizzy. Neil saw his opportunity and dove in, driving both cleavers into the creature. By this time, most of his hunters had found their courage and their spears and menaced the thing from a distance. The night haunt curled around Neil, claws raking and beak snapping.

“No!” I yelled. I bounded in on my prosthetics, pulling the knife from my belt. One of those big yellow eyes was in front of me, and I drove the tip of my knife straight through it. The creature tensed, shrieking. It tried to pull back, but I leaned in and pushed harder, wrapping my hands around its head. My prosthetics slid through the mud as it thrashed and pulled at me. It howled in pain and panic, trying to throw me off as I held on for dear life. But it slowed, finally stilled, and then went completely limp.

“Get off him!” I shouted, beating at its side. I turned to the rest of the tribe. “Help me!”

Several goblins came over, and together we rolled the carcass of the flying creature off of Neil, who was curled in a ball, bloody from several deep scratches, missing an arm, but alive. I breathed a sigh of relief. I’d never gotten the notification of another death.

I sent goblins for mud and moss to pack the wounds and staunch the bleeding while I tied a tourniquet with cordage. Luckily, I didn’t have to worry about infection.

That arm would mean he’d struggle to fight or hunt in the future. But Neil was a hero goblin. Even when I’d cowered in fear, he’d leapt in without hesitation. The rest of the tribe seemed to recognize his bravery too, because they hoisted him up and carried him in a lap around the village, cheering and hooting.

I didn’t join them. I was watching the sky, where I saw other winged forms circling, along with the glint of moonlight off yellow eyes.

This was just the beginning.