Chapter 24 - A Missed Engagement

I don’t know if night haunts had a skill that let them paralyze prey with their screech, or if that was just a part of my goblin physiology. But when I heard the noise directly behind me, I locked up.

I’d never seen the night haunts around the village before full dark, but apparently, they began patrolling the skies near dusk. Or maybe this one saw me from its roost and flew into a rage. Either way, it tore a gouge in my left wing on its first pass.

The glider bucked and dipped to the left, having lost a good portion of its lift on that side. I cursed, and tried to level out, looking around for the night haunt. I spotted him gaining altitude off to the north, preparing for another strike.

I dumped altitude, trying to build up speed so I could get low and fast over the tree tops. The glider was completely defenseless against the aerial predator. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw it tuck in its wings for a stoop and come at me again. I yanked back on the controls, exposing the underside of the wings to the buffeting wind and slowing drastically.

The night haunt overshot and ended up in the trees. I leaned my weight forward and banked to the right—but my turn was sluggish. And I now had a huge problem: My glider no longer had the energy to make it back to Village Apollo.

I saw a clearer stretch of woods off to my right and leaned into a turn. It was sluggish, with my left wing struggling to maintain lift, and I lost a lot of altitude adjusting my heading. The tops of the trees started to slide past, and I flared off high to avoid impaling myself on the tallest branches. Unfortunately, the wind in my wings tore the left membrane further, and I started to spin left.

I shouted and braced for impact, but the tail caught on a branch, and I was ejected from the glider with a snap of the cords tying me down. I shot straight ahead, bounced off my head, and dug a head-width trench in the dirt when I landed again.

Right. Fall damage immunity. A crash like that back home would have been immediately fatal. I gave silent thanks for my new goblin body and pushed myself over onto my back and propped myself up on my elbows. Looking down, I immediately took it back.

One of my prosthetics had come off. A single running blade doesn’t do much good on its own. I thumped the back of my head into the dirt and groaned. I was going to have to make a sticky-stilt and hobble all the way back to Village Apollo. It was at least five or six kilometers away when I’d been struck by the night haunt. That’s a long trip through untamed lands as a healthy, adult human. As a goblin? Well, for all our wanderings, we’d never gone more than about three or four kilometers from the bluff. The woods were just too dangerous. If anything, I was closer to the first bluff I’d visited with the completely sacked village.

That wasn’t a comforting thought. Village #3 was at war with lizards. I still didn’t know what had destroyed Village #2. I had my guesses, but this land was full of so many threats to a tiny goblin tribe that it’s a miracle they survived at all.

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A crash on the other side of the brush drew my attention, and I saw a pair of bright yellow eyes in the dimming light. The night haunt pushed its way into the clearing, and I scraped at the ground, trying to pull myself away.

I might not be able to die while members of my tribe were there, but I could still feel pain. I didn’t much think the feeling of being torn at with the long, sharp beak and claws would feel great. And there was nothing saying I couldn’t lose more limbs.

“Look,” I said, scrabbling. “I didn’t mean to make your friend into a glider. It just sort of worked out that he was there and I had the tools and needed an airfoil. No hard feelings, right?"

The night haunt crawled forward on the claws at the ends of its wings. Its head was low to the ground, and it growled. Its tail was poofed up like a startled cat, and it approached me in a serpentine, pacing back and forth as it drew closer.

“Nice monster… niiiice monster,”

I could see the muscles in its haunches bunch up. It snarled, dug its claws into the turf, and then flinched as a spear embedded itself into the ground between its front paws. It yowled, hissed, and began to back away into the foliage.

My blood went cold. Goblins didn’t scare night haunts. Which meant it hadn’t been a goblin that threw that spear. That thick, heavy spear with a metal cross-bar. I rolled my head back, fixing my eyes on the broad, bearded forms of the javeline rutters that had come out of the woods. Three of them came into the clearing, and the System helpfully put their levels at 7, 8, and 11. One looked down curiously and nudged my prosthetic with his spear. Another went to retrieve his own spear. The last started poking around the remains of the Mk. 1 glider.

“Hey,” I said.

The one with the spear pointed at me stumbled back, drawing the attention of the other two. “It talk!” he said. His voice was a low rumble.

“So what?” said the one at the wreckage. He picked up my other prosthetic, looked at it for a moment, and then discarded it. “It vermin. Kill. Take tongue.”

“Wait! I’m not—hyurk!”

The pigman standing over me thrust his spear down into my chest. It was like lightning zapped through my heart. Every bit as painful as the accident, and then some. I could feel the blade going into my lung.

The rutter pulled the spear out. I gasped, rolling onto my side. I pressed a hand to my chest, and it came away bloody, even though the wound had transferred to another member of Tribe Apollo. That didn’t lessen the pain, though. Tremors shook through me, and I had trouble drawing a breath.

The one at the wreckage stomped back. “I say kill, Mitri! I have highest level. You listen me.”

“I did kill, Rotte! Look!”

The one called Mitri held his spear up, where wet blood glistened in the moonlight. The others looked at it. Rotte, the one that seemed to be the leader, rolled me onto my back with his hoof, looking down at my chest. He grunted, angling his spear down.

“No, please!”

He brought the spear down and I screamed as it bit into me again.

The pain was a searing, white-hot rod. I’d already died once, and now I wanted to do it again. Would they just sit here and keep stabbing me until they killed every member of my tribe and then me?

I couldn’t bear it. Buzz, Neil, Sally, Chuck. I couldn’t lose them like I’d lost Dave and Sandra. I couldn’t take any more loss, and I couldn’t take any more pain. There’d been too much already.

“System!” I gasped. “I renounce my job! Make me not a king anymore!”

The spear fell again.