They looked like goblins. Or at least what I thought a goblin might look like. They were shaped like humans, with normal-looking arms and legs, but they were impossibly thin, with bald heads with a few wispy patches of hair coming out here and there. And they also had pale, green skin covered with spots and boils. They all had sharp but broken and rotted teeth.

They held knives that were bigger than a dagger yet smaller than a sword.

“What do we have here?” one of them said in a voice that sounded like he’d been chewing on glass.

My captor, whose name I still didn’t know, even though I’d seen her completely naked, turned to me. Through clenched teeth, she said, “See, I told you that you were going to attract their attention.”

“Good,” I said. “Maybe they’ll kill you.”

She sneered at me, those bottom two teeth poking up like spikes. “Maybe... And if they don’t, I’m going to kill you when I’m finished with them. Coins be damned.” She looked deadly serious. “And if they do kill me, then they’ll eat you. So either way, you’re fucked.”

I swallowed hard. That wasn’t good. I shook the remaining stars from my vision and stood. “Well, shit.”

She looked at her sword, which was still leaning up against the wall of the old house. A couple of goblins stood between her and it. She sighed, then pulled the knife from her boot. “Here we go.”

Then she ran for her sword.

The goblins between her and the sword were taken off guard by her sudden and quick movement, and before they could react, she struck out quickly, cutting one’s arm deeply, causing him to drop his weapon. She struck quickly again and jammed her blade into his throat. Dark green blood squirted from the wound.

The rest of them, now shocked out of their hesitation, moved in on her fast.

She yanked her knife from the dead goblin's throat, and a thick stream of green blood shot out of his neck like some nightmarish water fountain, and the goblin screeched and fell to his knees. She slashed another one, cutting his belly open so deeply that his guts slid out of him and landed on his feet.

I wanted to throw up.

She turned, and two of the goblins were on her, biting and scratching and swinging their blades all at one. I saw her knife blade flash and heard their nasty screams. She ducked as one of the goblins swung his blade at her, and using her momentum, she scooped up one of the short swords one of the dead goblins had dropped and swung it so fast I couldn’t see where the blow landed. A goblin screamed, and a hand holding a sword fell to the ground.

The remaining goblins rushed her, their blades flashing in the sunlight. I heard grunts and cries, and one more goblin came away from the melee missing an arm at the elbow.

The melee was in full motion, nothing but blades and screams coming from within. I saw her sword, still leaning where she had left it against the building, and knew what I had to do. I ran to it, spread my hands as far as the tightly wound rope would allow, and started to saw the rope on the blade. It was so sharp the edges almost glowed, and it cut the rope deeply on the first pass, then another pull, and the rope was off of my hands.

I turned just in time to see a goblin’s blade coming for my face.

I instinctively swung my arm up and knocked the goblin's arm away, and then we were face to face, his hot, rancid breath almost knocking me out. “You’re gonna taste good, boy,” he said. He tried to stab me in the stomach with his blade, but I caught his hand at the wrist. I felt his wrist bones in my fingers, small and light, and I squeezed and twisted and heard something crack. The goblin cried out and snapped his teeth at me, missing but so close I could feel his breath on my neck. If he had gotten me, he would have ripped out my throat. I tried to push him away, but he dug his sharp claws into my arm and held on. I tried to ignore the pain and focus on my next move. To be so skinny, he was stronger than he looked, and I couldn’t get him off of me because we were too close to throw punches.

I had to think of something fast, or he was going to bite me.

I stepped down hard on his foot, hearing more bones snap, then wrapped my leg around his, swung my weight into him, and hip-tossed him over me. He went over and landed with a thud on his back. His eyes got big as I raised my foot high above him, and he saw what I was going to do. Then I stepped down hard on his throat and heard a crunch. He clutched at his neck as he gurgled for breath.

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I saw the sword, still leaning against the wall, and picked it up. I had to get out of here. I had to run.

I saw the end of the crumbling town, then the woods beyond. I had to get there. It was my only chance to get away from these monsters and also away from the woman. If she did live, I didn’t want to be around for whatever she was going to do to me because I’d drawn the goblins' attention.

I heard the horses whinnying from where we’d left them. I started to run toward them. I’d get a lot further, a lot faster, on a horse.

A goblin stepped in front of me.

He had a long nose and black eyes and was baring his razor-sharp teeth. He didn’t say anything, just opened his mouth and shrieked.

He didn’t have a blade, so I swung the sword at him thinking he couldn’t block it. He stepped in, though, and grabbed my arm, sinking his claws into my skin, trying to rip the blade from my hand. I couldn’t let him do that. If he had the sword and I had nothing, I’d be powerless to stop him from killing me. I held on like my life depended on it.

The pain of his claws burned my hand as he bit at my neck. I wedged my elbow into his chest to keep his mouth away from my flesh.

We spun around, both trying to wrench the sword away from the other, our momentum causing us to go faster and faster like a twisted, sick dance.

We were spinning so fast that everything was a blur, the dizziness starting to hit me. Then I lost my footing, and we were flying, going down, and hitting the ground hard. I felt the sword come loose from my grip.

We scrambled around. The goblin started to crawl away, trying to get to the sword. I grabbed his legs and jerked him back towards me. He kicked me in the face, stars exploding in front of my eyes, my nose feeling like a bomb had gone off inside of it.

I shook it off. I knew that if he got to the sword, I would be dead. I pulled his legs hard again. Wrenched his foot around, trying to break it off. I heard the bones snap, and the goblin shrieked. I pulled myself on top of him, pinning him to the ground, his bony body jutting into me, sharp points jabbing into me, the stink coming off of him in waves and making me want to vomit.

I blinked through the pain and saw a broken stone lying in the grass. A piece of the building. I grabbed it, heavy in my hand. I brought it down on the back of the goblins skull so hard that there was a loud cracking noise.

His body jerked underneath me, then I brought the stone down on the back of his head again, and again, and again.

I was in a fury and had no idea how many times I’d hit him. When I looked down, the back of his head was green mush. And he wasn’t moving. That’s the only thing that mattered.

I staggered to my feet, and I started to run. I wanted to get out of here. I had to get out of here. For some reason, all I could hear was the Monty Python guys yelling “Run away!” in their British accents, like the killer rabbit was right behind me and going to bite my head off if I didn’t get out of there.

I took off, forgetting the sword. I’d made it three steps when I heard the green woman cry out. “No!”

She had two goblins on her still, and it looked like she would finish them off, but one of the goblins she had wounded was on the ground and still alive. It reached up and tripped her. She went down hard on her butt. One of the goblins jumped on her and bit her on the shoulder, sinking its sharp teeth into her flesh.

She punched it in the side of the head, but it didn’t let go. She didn’t have her dagger anymore. It had been knocked free. The other goblin grabbed her feet and pounced on her, pinning her legs underneath him and biting her on the calf. She cried out in pain and tried to kick it away, but it had the leverage now.

While she struggled with the one on her legs, the goblin who’d bitten her shoulder reached for a nearby blade and grabbed it. Then it jumped on her, pinning her arms down. It raised the knife over its head, ready to sink it into her chest. She couldn’t move with his weight on top of her and with her legs pinned by the other. She saw the blow coming and knew there was nothing she could do to stop it. She’d almost beaten them too. If she hadn’t been tripped, she would have killed them all.

All except my two, of course.

It was a split-second decision. I had to. It was the right thing. I could have run and maybe even gotten away, but I couldn’t let her die like that.

I hoped I wasn’t going to regret this. But I knew I would.

Without thinking, I grabbed her sword and swung it down at the knife the goblin was about to thrust into her chest. The blade was sharp and sliced through the goblin's hand, cutting off several of its fingers. The knife fell to the ground as the goblin screamed and clutched at its ruined hand, green blood spurting everywhere.

I jammed the sword into the back of the goblin pinning her legs and biting her calf. It shrieked and let go of her leg.

Seizing her opportunity, she kicked free of the melee and was on her feet before I knew it. Without hesitation, she grabbed the sword from me and plunged it through one goblin, then the next, silencing their screams. I stood there in shock. Was it really over?

She walked over to the goblin that had tripped her, still alive but unable to get up due to its wounds, and jammed the blade into its chest.

We both watched silently as the goblin I had stomped on gurgled for breath, its one unbroken hand still clutching desperately at its throat, until after a few moments, its gurgling stopped.

She held the sword, and with green blood gushing from her shoulder and leg, she looked at me. I put my fists up. She was going to have to work to tie me back up.

“Rhux.”

I stared at her, not understanding what she meant. “What?”

“You wanted to know my name,” she said. “It’s Rhux. My name is Rhux.”

“Oh,” I said. I lowered my fists.

“And yours?” she said.

“Jack. My name’s Jack.”