I awoke to agony.
Every part of my body from my head to my toes was telling me that I had been through a meat grinder, and they each needed to tell me about it in great detail. It was not like some uniform throbbing, either. Each pain was unique. They ranged from itchy scratches all up and down my torso to the drilling headache washing back and forth across my scalp to the almost numb ache coming from my arm. I had not even opened my eyes yet, and I wanted to pass out again just to not have to deal with it all. Instead, I vomited.
Roughly spitting the acid from my mouth, I rolled over to my back. Or I tried to, anyway. One of the aches that had previously gone unidentified made itself known in the form of a burning sensation coming from my wrists. Whatever it was, was keeping my arms pulled behind my back. Had I been bound?
Cracking open an eye, I tried to look around. Night had fallen. That was the first thing that my brain identified. The rest came slowly, like I was not yet functioning at full capacity. Then came the faint flicker of light reflected off of… something. The ground maybe? But it was striped… That did not make any sense. Blinking rapidly to try and clear my vision, I looked further up. Off in the distance, I could make out lots of little fires. Torches or campfires, probably. It was hard to make out.
Staring at those lights for a while, I could see a steady stream of shapes passing back and forth in front of them. Gradually, now that I was paying attention to it, I could hear lots of excited yelling, muted by the distance, filtering through my consciousness. Taking a deep breath to get some oxygen flowing through my system, I started a sputtering and hacking cough at the hint of acidic gorge that filtered through.
“Donum? Are you awake?” someone said. But it sounded funny. Off somehow.
Shifting as slowly as possible, so as not to awaken any new pains, I focused on the sound. There were several shapes nearby. People shapes. But my vision was refusing to focus beyond that. Squeezing my eyes shut again, I tried blinking the fuzziness away, but they refused to cooperate. I might have a concussion, I realized.
Taking another breath, I eventually remembered that words were an option, so I decided to try that. “Yes, I’m awake. Who’s that?”
The shape I was staring at shook its head, “I don’t understand, my friend. You’re using that other language.”
Other language? What… Oh… Closing my eyes again, I tried to summon up… What was it? It… it started with an ‘L’? Finally, my slowly ticking brain arrived at what I wanted, and I focused once more on the blurry shape in front of me. “Wha… What is happen? Who talk?” I croaked out. Those were good questions, I decided.
“It’s me, Menda,” he paused expectantly, but I didn’t react. “The merchant? From the wagon train?”
I started to nod, but the dizziness that washed over me at the movement caused me to reconsider. Words for now. Stick with words. “Remember,” I affirmed. “Where this?”
“Well…” he sighed, “to that, I am afraid I have some bad news.”
I blinked slowly. Things were starting to come back to me now that I was having a conversation, stilted and halting as it was. The Gobs! The… We had a battle… I fell? Right?
“After we were overtaken by the swarm, the Goblins gathered up those of us who were still alive and threw us in here. That was hours ago. They’ve been… uh… feasting… ever since.” He winced visibly at his implication.
Feasting? I paled. Looking around, I tried to make out the other shapes, but my eyes were still refusing to cooperate. Finally, I asked, “Jax?”
Menda shook his head, “Not here, I’m afraid. I haven’t seen him since before we were captured.”
The beginnings of concern began to overtake me, but before I could speak, a blue box flashed in front of my eyes. I tried as hard as I could to focus on it, but reading was not among the things I could accomplish just then. After a few moments, the box vanished without my permission, and I heard a voice.
“TEMPORARY AUDITORY COMMUNICATION ENABLED.” The voice boomed in my head, and I writhed on the ground in fresh agony.
“Donum? What’s wrong?” Menda asked worriedly.
“Too… too loud,” I whimpered. The voice had been indescribable beyond the sheer volume of it. I would be hard pressed to say that a human being could even make a sound like it.
“Too loud?” he asked. “Really? But…”
I lost whatever else he was saying when a loud and drawn out tone overwhelmed me. I tried to clamp my hands over my ears only to be reminded by the fresh pain coming from my wrists that that was impossible. Instead, I gritted my teeth and pressed my head to the floor. The sound was high pitched and intermittent, almost like the noise from cable television when they decided to censor something.
Finally, I heard a sigh, followed by a defeated yet feminine voice saying, “Your Lilum, Jax, was defeated in combat. Time until revival: 12 hours, 14 minutes, 32 seconds.”
“My friend, are you alright?” Menda said, nudging me. Opening my eyes again, I looked up to see that he was kneeling over me. It looked like his hands were bound behind him just as mine were.
Slowly, I nodded. “I… I think…” I paused, searching for the right word, “deity? Bline. Yes. Talk me.”
He seemed confused by my answer. “The Lady of Power spoke to you? And it caused you pain?”
“Too loud,” I said again.
“Ah, I see,” he seemed somewhat relieved for some reason. “You are in a bad way, my friend. I think you may have a head injury… amongst other things.”
I tried not to roll my eyes at the man. I had figured that part out for myself, after all. “She say… Jax defeated. Back twelve hour.” In what sort of condition, I could not say, and I really did not have the mental capacity to contemplate that just then, to say nothing of the fact that the Goddess had just spoken to me and the other weird shit that had just happened. And been happening for that matter. Maybe, I was just getting used to it.
He tilted his head. “That… what? I am afraid I don’t understand what you are trying to say.”
I sighed. I really did not want to try to explain that just now. I did not know if I could explain anything. I just wanted to go back to sleep. But that would be a mistake. Instead, I said, “Hold. I need heal.”
“You need to heal,” he corrected me. “Actually, all of us here could use some healing, if you can.”
That was a big ask. One thing at a time, though. “Will try. Need silence.”
He nodded quietly and sat back to wait.
Gratefully, I closed my eyes and mentally tried to summon up the will to get a Renewal going. I had no idea how much it would really help me, nor did I know if I had the Life Energy reserves to sacrifice just then. Ugh… Too many questions. Too much pain. Setting it all aside, I just focused on what needed to be done. I would leave the rest for later.
It took me a long while to piece together the words once more. They were there, but it was as if they were behind a fog. Like one of those times where you forget a random, yet totally obvious thing. Like that time back in middle school when I forgot how to spell the word, ‘with’. Weird that I would remember that just now. Eventually, though, the words came, and I was once more blanketed by that oh-so-welcome warmth. The relief flooding through me almost caused me to pass out once again.
By the time the spell had run its course, most of the miscellaneous wounds about my body had disappeared, and my head felt a lot clearer. My shoulder still felt pretty jacked up though. Better, for sure, but not fully healed. I would need to get it going once again to get back to one hundred percent. Maybe twice.
My stomach growled loudly. That was a bad sign. Opening my eyes again, I found that I could actually focus now. Finding Menda, I said, “Okay. Better now.” I tried to sit up, but my shoulder started screaming at me. Looking at him again, I asked, “Help? Shoulder bad.”
He chuckled lightly, “Yes, I’ll bet it is. I think you might have dislocated it.” That did not sound good. Though, it was better than a break. Right?
It was an awkward thing, what with the two of us both hampered by our bindings, but we eventually managed to get my feet under me. Looking around, I found that the stripes I had seen reflected in the fire light were, in fact, bars to a cage. That made sense, and in hindsight, it should have been obvious. The bars were made of simple branches lashed together with plant fiber, and they extended both above and below. They did not look all that sturdy.
“Do… um… weak bars. We leave?” I asked in my broken Laoi’na.
“Oh, yes,” he answered promptly. “Provided, of course, that we can wake her up.”
Following his gaze, I saw that Sherr Hess was in here with us, still passed out drunk. I knew from the Goddess’s earlier pronouncement that it had been almost twelve hours. Shit… that’s right. In my prior state of mind, I had been unable to really process what She had told me. Jax had been ‘defeated’. Whether that meant dead or unconscious in a ditch somewhere or… I looked out at the campfires and shuddered. Best not to think about that. He would be revived, one way or the other. Provided that I was still alive. And this woman was our best means of making sure that happened.
Was she ever conscious? And how much alcohol did a person need to consume to lapse into a coma of over twelve hours? The Goblins, I saw, had not bothered to put her pants back on. Not that I would have, either, if I were in their position. Looking her over, I noted that she had been tightly bound, from head to toe, with a thin and fibrous rope. Her captors certainly had a degree of respect for her power, not that she was in any condition to apply it. Taking a closer look, she did not seem to be suffering from any wounds. Thinking back, I was sure that she had taken quite a few swipes and scratches and at least one arrow. There was no evidence of that now.
“Does she have skill? Regenerate?” I asked, turning to address Menda.
“That is very likely. Warriors such as her often choose such skills,” he said with a one-shouldered shrug. “Can you wake her up? How did you do it the last time?”
“Well…” I hesitated. Most women, in my experience, would not want me to talk about something like that. Then again… given her manner, she might not care in the slightest. “In wagon. Gob came. Fell on her. Was hit in face. Penis.”
“A Gob’s…” he fell silent. Clearing his throat, he continued, “Do… do you think?”
I gave him a flat look, “Gob not alive.”
I was not being overly descriptive, I knew, what with my current lack of skill with the language, but his imagination did a lot of the work for me. His face slowly drained of color. “Right. Of course.”
Dismissing that idea, I began searching for alternatives. Was there some way I could heal the alcohol from her system? It would not hurt to check. My stomach growled. Probably. Closing my eyes, I muttered, “Bline, will Renewal of Consumption work on alcohol poisoning?”
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There was a pause, followed by, “Oh… is
Curious. Now, that I was more fully aware, this state of being able to actually hear the Goddess was quite nice. Although, it was strange that She seemed to be having trou…
“AUDITORY COMMUNICATION DISABLED,” the other voice boomed. The sudden shock of it caused me to jerk back, and that in turn, caused my dislocated shoulder to spasm. Tears started to leak out of the corners of my eyes. Whatever thoughts had been threading through my mind were shattered by the chaos of sensations that had just occurred.
“Are you quite alright, my friend? You seem in some distress,” Menda said from behind me.
“Fine. Fine,” I said, shaking off the disorientation. “Head trouble. Fine now.” I really did not have the vocabulary to try and explain the situation. Instead, I indicated Hess’ unconscious form and continued, “Not heal poison. Me? I not heal poison.”
He nodded in understanding. Looking behind him, he jerked his head at the other figure in the cage with us. “Perhaps, we should leave that for now? If we can revive Broahn, we may have at least some chance.”
Broahn was one of the guards from the caravan. He, like Menda and most of the caravan members, was a laoi. To be honest, I did not know that much about him, save that he tended to walk around with a longbow over his shoulder. Many times, I had seen him go off on his own to hunt in the evenings when we had made camp. Otherwise, he was a man of few words.
Much like Sherr Hess, he had been securely bound and stripped of armaments. As for his wounds, well… It seemed that Broahn had taken an arrow to the lung. The shaft had been broken off, and the stump of it was still stuck in his chest. At least he had stopped bleeding, though that meant that he had scabbed around the arrowhead. The man was deathly pale and his breath was restricted to a hitching rattle.
I sighed deeply, “Need remove arrow. Then heal.” I was afraid that the regeneration effect would simply heal around the arrow and not push it out. It had not done anything for my dislocated shoulder, after all.
Menda frowned at that, “He will bleed out quickly if we do that. Is your spell strong enough to help him?”
“Not know. Use not much.” I looked over at Menda to try and explain, “Spell give effect… uh… regeneration. But use Life Energy… uh… mine. Mine person Life Energy.”
He slowly pieced together what I was saying, “You mean, ‘The spell uses my Life Energy.’ Correct? To function?”
I nodded, cataloging the pronoun usage. I would master this language.
“That is a heavy cost for a spell. Are you working on your Toughness? That will give you a larger reservoir.” I raised my eyebrows. That was news to me, but welcome information. Fortunately, I had been, so I nodded happily. “Wonderful. How much Energy do you have left?” he asked.
I made a face, “Much hunger now. Use many time.” I looked back at the broken man. From his color, he had probably lost a lot of blood. He would almost certainly die if we did not do anything. “Will try. I will try.”
“Good man. Look here. I will remove the arrow. But prepare your spell. You need to have it ready to fire as soon as I do this. He may go rather quickly if you do not.” Then, more softly, he added, “He may go even if you do.”
Preparing myself, I focused on the spell once more. It needed to be strong if it was to be of any use to this man. I just hoped I would not suffer too much for doing it.. Bringing the words to my lips, I gave the go ahead to Menda.
Bending down, Menda took the arrow stub between his molars, and biting down hard, he yanked the arrowhead free. It looked like it probably took a small chunk of lung tissue with it. Hurriedly, and doing my best not to think about that, I let loose the spell before he bled any more than he already had. I pushed it as hard as I could while I was able, and then it was over. I sat there quivering for a long while. I felt as if I had just completed a triathlon. Or what I imagined I might feel. Like the hell I had ever tried a triathlon. Either way, if I kept this up, I would need to update the size of my waistline. Lose forty pounds with just this one neat trick. Doctors hate him!
I did not look to see if my spell was helping or not, instead opting to keel over and rest my face on the ground. My head had decided to start pounding again, and I felt faint. Maybe trying to lose weight with this spell was not such a good idea after all. That was the last thought I had before I passed out again.
I came back to consciousness when a wrenching pain seared through my shoulder. Gasping, my eyes flew open, and then the pain went away. Mostly. Looking around in confusion, I found myself in a radically different situation. Or maybe, not so radical. I was still a bound prisoner to Goblins and their kin. Now, however, I was being carried along rather like Luke Skywalker and company when they were captured by the Ewoks. My hands and feet were tied to a long pole, which had been hoisted to the shoulders of a pair of the ugly green monsters. My shoulder must have been reset by my bouncing along as I hung there. Thank Mercy for that. Now if only She saw fit to help me just a touch more…
Searching for some way to get myself out of this situation, I found Menda and the other two being similarly carried nearby. When Menda saw that I was again conscious, he smiled grandly. “Ah, good! You’re awake! I must say, you had me worried there for a bit, old boy.” I blinked, trying to reconcile his apparent mood to our situation, but he continued, “Listen! I have some good news. We’re not to be eaten! Isn’t that lovely?”
Yes… I had to suppose that was a good thing to hear. But… “How know?”
“Look there, behind you,” he said, indicating something with his head.
Twisting to see what he was talking about, my eyes widened in disbelief. That… I squeezed my eyes shut and blinked rapidly to try and get a clearer look. What I saw was as before. My eyes were not playing tricks on me. There was… a Goblin lying over there. That was what it looked like, anyway. Except… Except this one had to be eighty feet long!
“What the…”
“Incredible, isn’t it! I hardly believed it as first, but it explains a great deal. How else could such a large tribe of Gobs be out here so close to civilization?” He chuckled to himself, “The Enbraden will have a field day when they discover a Dungeon Mouth so close to their territory.”
My head whipped around to stare at him, “Dungeon Mouth? That is Dungeon Mouth?”
He tutted, “’That is a Dungeon Mouth.’ Really, my friend, indefinite articles are not so hard to master.”
The fuck? I stared at him hard, but he was not looking at me to feel my glare. Finally, giving up, I said, “Explain. Why?”
He looked at me incredulously, “It’s just a functional word. Used before singular nouns?”
I was going to strangle this man, I realized.
Seeing my heated look, he finally understood what I was asking. “Oh, yes, I see. Of course.” Smiling again, he said, “They are going to toss us in.”
“What?!” One of the Goblins kicked at me. I guess he did not like us getting so loud.
“Naturally,” he continued. “How else are they going to swell their numbers? The Dungeon will reward them for their gift. Provided we die in there, of course.”
One of the larger Goblins had mounted a podium above us and was giving some kind of speech in their crude language. He was wearing a headdress fashioned of bones and other trophies and was shaking a thick tree branch with a rattle fastened to it. At the moment, though, I could not have cared less. I had questions. A lot of them.
“How you… How do you know this? Why this is good?” I shout whispered at him. One of the Goblins kicked me again.
He winced, “Almost there. It’s ‘why is this good’.”
I growled at him.
He sighed, “Yes, yes. My apologies. It’s because in there, at least, we’ll have a chance. The Dungeon is always fair, they say.”
A chance? Fair? I closed my eyes in resignation. Menda had cracked. Here we were, about to be tossed back into the Dungeon, and he seemed to think we were packing for a picnic. I had only just gotten out of there! And the last time, I had had food and weapons. Would we even be untied before they tossed us into that gigantic gaping maw? I had my doubts.
Opening my eyes again, I noted that daylight had returned. How long had I been out? Wait… I have a timer going… uh… “How much time until Jax is revived,” I asked quietly.
Time until revival: 4 hours, 32 minutes, 58 seconds
It seemed that the blue boxes were back again. And I had been asleep for eight hours? No wonder Menda had started going loopy. Sitting alone in that cage for hours on end just waiting to be eaten? Although…
I twisted, trying to see the other two people from the cage. Sherr Hess was just behind me. From my angle, I was staring right at her… I looked away in embarrassment. I now knew something about the woman that she would probably rather I did not. Apparently, she was an outie. Putting that from my mind, I shifted so as to see around her admittedly shapely backside. Stretching, I found that her head was hanging limply back, and her hair was dragging in the dirt. She was still out. I could even hear her snoring above all the ruckus. Of all the useless… The Goblin kicked at me again.
Ignoring him, I tried to find Broahn, but I could not see him. There were simply too many Gob-kin all around us to see properly. Some of them were standing around and listening to the guy on the podium, but most were just sitting there and chewing on bones, obliviously. I paled when I put two and two together but shook my head. Now was not the time to start freaking out. Although, if not now, I was going to need to give a serious thought as to when.
“Menda, Broahn? Uh… Did Broahn… better. Get better?” I asked, haltingly.
“Yes, somewhat,” he replied. “And, our captors were none too pleased to discover it, let me tell you.” He chuckled, “I think they were hoping he would die, the gluttons.”
The man was taking this far too lightly, I decided. “Menda, you is… are much happy. Too happy? All friends dead!”
He shook his head sadly, “Not all. Not all. And time enough to mourn if we survive. Until then, put your best foot forward! That’s what my dear old mother used to say.” He turned to me, “You and I shall have an epic wake when this is done, I assure you!”
Well, that was an attitude to have in this situation. “Where Broahn? Is Broahn?” I asked.
“Oh, he’s just over…” he stopped. “Well, he’s just behind that fat fellow over there, last I saw.” He indicated the Gobborn standing about twenty paces away. “Still unconscious, the poor man. That spell of yours did quite the trick, but it ended before it could completely heal him.” He looked back at me, “How are you, by the way? You did not look at all well after you cast it.”
I grunted, “Shirtless healer needs food badly.” It did not translate so well into Laoi’na, but I was proud of myself for properly constructing the sentence, all the same.
Menda chuckled, though he was, of course, oblivious to my reference. “Yes, I am quite peckish, myself.”
Suddenly, all of the various Gob-kin around us let loose a wild and exuberant cheer. It would seem that the Goblin ‘shaman’ or whatever had finished. Our time was up.
Sure enough, all of the Gobs started in on some sort of primitive dance and clap routine, which would have been thrilling had I not been hogtied and bound for a gigantic Dungeon Mouth in the shape of a Goblin. Though, it was just as naked as all the rest of them, and as an aside, let me just say, I do rather wish that they were familiar with the concept of the loincloth, my angle was such that I was mercifully unaware of its most significant feature. The thing was sprawled on its back, apparently asleep and snoring cavernously with its mouth wide open. The Gob-kin had constructed a crude set of stairs up over its chest with some sort of altar just over its mouth. It was all rather clever, actually. I would remember to be impressed by it later.
Before long, they had ascended the stairs with us in tow. The two carrying Sherr Hess went first, with me just behind them. They turned parallel to the altar and waited there while the shaman said a few more words of ceremony. They were sweating and trembling a bit from carrying the heavy woman for so long. The shaman seemed quite oblivious to this, as he swirled a bowl filled with some sort of liquid above his head. He then dipped his fingers into it and flicked some into Sherr Hess’ face.
She snorted. “Wha— Heeeey, whassa big idea?” she said drowsily. She pulled one of her arms loose of the binding and reached to wipe the liquid from her face, like she had not even noticed that she had been tied up. Everyone froze.
Even me, like a dumb-ass. Finally realizing we might have a shot at getting out of this, I started shouting, “Hess! Wake useless ass up! Fool dog woman!” One of the Goblins started kicking me frantically.
“Shh~ Be quiet… ‘m sleepin’,” she said. Trying to roll over, her other arm popped loose, and her head fell to the ground with a thump. “Owww… Tha~ huuuurt.”
The Goblin shaman started yelling frantically at this point, gesturing to the gaping maw below. The two handlers jumped at the command, and started dragging Sherr Hess forward.
“Raaah… Wa’s goin’ on? Whadya think y’r doin’?” she drawled as she was dragged along. The two Goblins heaved as one and hurled the branch she was attached to into the Mouth, but the throw did not take into account the dead weight from her now distinctly unattached torso. As her legs swung into the air, she made a frantic grab and swept the leg of one of the Goblins, which went tumbling into the darkness. That did not help her over much, though. Still quite drunk, she managed to just stop herself from falling by grasping the lip of the overhang with her fingers. “Buh~ugger,” she belched out, swinging there in a daze. “Wha’ the fuck?”
The other Goblin started jumping up and down on her fingers. She just looked up at it like it was an annoying fly, and reaching up, she grabbed him by the foot and dropped him. Screaming incoherently, it managed to grab onto the branch swinging below her. Her fingers slipped just a fraction. “Hey,” she said, giving it a little jiggle, “leggo.”
The rest of the Gob-kin up on the platform were starting to panic at this point. At least half of them had started to run in blind terror. The rest were looking around uncertainly, hoping the shaman would know what to do. The shaman, for his part, starting yelling instructions. Two of them drew some weapons they had no doubt captured from our caravan and started clumsily hacking at Hess’ fingers. “Hey~,” I heard from below. “Yer pissin’ m’off.”
Seeing that somehow that was not working, the shaman came over and hurriedly sprinkled some water in my face. Mumbling something under his breath in haste, he then motioned for my handlers to drop me. The two stumbled forward quickly, displacing the two who had been hacking at Sherr Hess’ fingers, and took aim.
“Oh~,” she drawled up at me, “Hey, Donum!” She gave a flirty wave, like she was not even aware that she was hanging over a giant snoring Goblinoid Dungeon Mouth. She probably was not.
“Hess!” I yelled, completely freaked, “Catch me!” Not waiting any longer, the two Goblins carrying me hurled me right at her face.
“I got ya!” she called out, letting go. And down we dropped.
“Useless dog woman!”