DAMN IT.

I’m running like crazy towards the increasingly brutal sounds of combat, the dingy hilt of the iron scimitar clenched between my teeth.

“I knew you’d make the right choice!” Swiftrunner barks beside me, genuinely excited, it seems.

“Well, that makes one of us!” I bark out the side of my mouth.

Before we go any further, I feel a sensation run through the ground alongside us. Something familiar…

How did I do this before? I closed my eyes. I focused. Focused and breathed and –

[Snoop]

Enemy presence: 20ft

“Look out!”

I trip Swiftrunner as I roll to the side and take him with me, just in time to see the spike of vicious nettle to tear through the ground where we stood and pierce the tunnel ceiling.

“By Lyca!” Swiftrunner barked. “The corruption has spread to the den!”

I look up at him, desperate eyes pleading for him to just say we should retreat.

But I think he interpreted my sight as some kind of defiant rage, for his next words were a bellow filled with the confidence I’d come to expect from him.

“Forward then, brother!” he roared. “Your conviction has strengthened my resolve! We fly towards the fight. Let us strike back at our enemy!”

And without a second thought he gripped me with his teeth, sat me on his back, and speed off down the tunnel.

And while I’m wondering why EVERY wolf in this cave is borderline suicidal, I feel the prescence of more nettles snaking their way to bar our path.

“There’s more of them!” I shout.

His sharp eyes blink. “Where?”

“Eh…twenty, no, ten meters – left! Now!”

He hops to the side as another thorn slams through the ground, and he howls with pure adrenaline.

“We will make it, little brother! I can already taste our victory!”

“WATCH OUT!” I cry in response. “Five meters. Dead ahead!”

He leaps through the air and the emerging thorn just grazes his tail, drawing nothing more than a snarl of annoyance from him.

“Nothing less from the Lightborn,” he chuckles as we continue on our suicidal path. “Your powers are already staggering.”

“You want them? You can have them!”

“Hah!” he shouts back, sidestepping yet another attack as the cold winds of the outside world buffet my fur. “I am not meant for greatness, brother. I am not meant to be the savior of this world: You are!”

YEAH, AND THAT’S THE WHOLE PROBLEM. THIS WORLD IS SCREWED!

He rolls to finally get us over the mouth of the cave, narrowly avoiding a final spike growth that blocks the entrance behind us.

If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

He lays me down as we both take in the sight:

This den is built on a rocky alcove overlooking the whole forest below – and I see it now for what it is: a dull, dying place. No green pokes through the leaves which still peel off the last trees. It looks more like a barren graveyard than a lush woodland – each dead tree a stake wedged into the ground; a life drained of everything that once made it beautiful.

Packs of wolves – probably the most experienced warriors in the tribe – are laid low before us, twitching, their bodies strewn with bloody tears and spear-like branches. Some were bound up by vines stretching from the dead ground, or coming from the long, swamp-green fingers of the bark-covered goblins that stood as one before the final defender.

COMBAT ENCOUNTER JOINED:

WOLVES X2, CORGI X1 VS GREENSKIN (SEEDED) X5

“Witherfang!”

Swiftrunner calls out to him like a son watching his grandfather slowly expire. The old wolf had pinned a goblin to the ground, was tearing through his wooden limbs like a knife through butter, and I watch in mute horror as the limbs simply grow back, and the old wolf is tossed towards us like a mere chew toy.

“Elder!”

“Peace, Swiftrunner,” the old wolf growled, staggering to his feet and casting a sidelong glance at me.

“Snappingjaw told me she would convince you,” he said with a bruised smile.

I gulp up at him as Swiftrunner stands to attention, crouching to a predator’s killing pose, angling his long white snout at the slowly advancing goblin brood.

Five of them, I count. One had been more than enough to ruin me…

“She is well, Elder,” Swiftrunner says. “But the corruption has spread to the den. I fear the den cannot hold.”

“Of course it won’t,” Witherfang replied. “We knew they would come. Thank Lyca that it at least held the Lightborn for a time.”

He casts his gaze toward me.

“You have come to aid us?”

“I…” I begin, backing away in the face of the twitching bulwark of twisted, corrupted barklings that surge towards us, stepping over their wounded enemies.

“Of course he has!” Swiftrunner all but snarled, turning back towards me with a grin of pure pride. “He made the right choice.”

I can only stare back at them. Yeah, I’m here alright. I’m here, ready to throw my (already pretty short) life away at the edge of this dingy forest…because some wolves told me I was their chosen one.

Bad Attitude: LVL II -> -

Yeah, yeah, I know. You don’t have to punish me. I didn’t say I wasn’t helping them, right?

One goblin at the head of the pack shambles forward, dropping his head and twisting it this way and that, his movements just like the other one I killed back on the forest floor.

Then his mouth opens and lets out a deathly, tuneless, almost mechanical croak:

“Give – us – dog.”

The wolves tense us, even as Witherfang’s muscles visibly ache.

The goblin meets their gazes.

“Give – us – him – and – we – leave.”

His arm raises to point a vine coated finger at me.

“We – want – him – alone.”

And it’s only now that I realize it: the attack. The suffering. The wolves twitching out here or huddled away in their besieged home…mother’s…pups…noble creatures reduced to desperation, fighting a suicidal battle they know they can’t win…

It’s because of me, isn’t it?

“You’re a fool if you think we would trust the words of the Darkseed’s minions!” Swiftrunner barked back.

Witherfang grunted out the side of his mouth. But, lifting my tiny head to his eyes, I could see what was really going on: he was afraid.

Because this is it. The ground under my feet seems to turn at once to ice as my own stupidity comes washing down over me.

It’s my fault.

The goblin leader’s face breaks apart into a bone-chilling cackle.

“You – all – die.”

The wolves brace.

“Little brother,” Swiftrunner whispers. “Are you with us?”

The answer, to me, has just become so completely obvious.

“No.”

Their stares are piercing, matched only by the manic cry suddenly let out by the goblin brood whose hands twisted to form thorn-coated blades.

But what they find facing them isn’t the two wolves.

“You should have told me from the start,” I say, gripping the hilt of the scimitar tight in my teeth, and just about ready to drop a huge steaming turd from my quivering butt.

“You should have just blamed me for all this,” I say, seeing the minions of darkness charge towards me. “That would be more convincing than calling me a hero.”

My thoughts turn to the nights I spent in that cage down there, shivering away under the mirthful laughter of creatures just like these who now plummet towards me with nothing more than the mechanical drive to kill.

“Because I’m not a hero,” I tell the perplexed wolves behind me. “I’m a Corgi. And Corgis aren’t meant to hurt those who care about them.”

The goblin leader leaps towards me and stretches out both his elongated claws.

“We’re supposed to protect them.”

The creature bellows another monstrous roar.

“So, you aren’t going to fight anymore,” I say as I close my eyes, feel the power running in my little jiggly form, and begin to direct it towards my tail. “You’re going to stand back and let me do my job. No more wolves will die because of me.”

And while my brain screams at me to stop acting like I’m some action-packed-fantasy-story star, my dumb little mouth just can’t help itself as I open my eyes and stare into the possessed face of the goblin:

“GET. OFF. OUR. LAWN!”