We moved back into the dungeon. Wilmette didn’t give me any direction this time, so I sunk into the shadows again and as soon as he started to fight I drained the first four goblins I saw. I moved with as much quiet as I was capable behind a hobgoblin.

Using about half of my the Mana I had stolen from the goblins, I amped up my strength, my toughness, and my speed and in the second I had to use it, sent my dagger down into the hobgoblin’s spine. It fell, spine severed, not even able to twitch on the floor as its nervous system was separated from its brain.

The other demi-humans around it were already turning towards it, but I was already going back into stealth. In that instant, I discovered I couldn’t kill something and keep my stealth runes working. The gnack overwhelmed everything. I probably wouldn’t even be able to use a healing spell while using my body gnack. For a moment I envied Wilmette his healing gnack. It was handy. But there was no point in crying over what could not be.

Nothing here could see life, so I drained another four goblins, and I guesstimated that I was now holding the life energy of six of the little fucks. It was time to try something more significant.

I crept behind one of the gobble gobbles. It was pounding the ground with its massive fists, and every time it did, the ground shook like a localized earthquake. I had to move as carefully, as I did silently, keeping to the shadows.

Then I saw my chance. The giant gorilla goblin, lifted it fists to pound the earth again, and I activated everything, speed, strength, stamina. I used all of it, all the stored mana. In that one second, it was as if time was trying to wade through shoulder-high water. Every microsecond forward seemed to stretch on forever. And I could dart through times murky water like a minnow on steroids. My sword took the gobble-gobble in the spine just like it had the hobble gobble, but instead of just taking out the spinal cord, it dug right through the monster and came out the other side and the blade buried itself in the dirt. My arm was wrist deep in the gobble-gobble’s back.

The second ended, the gobble-gobble’s fist began it’s decent to the ground, to pound the earth again. Then somehow it saw, before it felt, my sword coming out of its gut, my arm deep into it’s back, it tried to turn, attempted to look at me. Then it fell to the ground.

Then I discovered the drawback of using that much power. Not only did the gobble-gobble fall forward onto my sword, burying it with its weight, but the blade itself had dug itself into the rocky ground from the strength of my strike.

I hid in the shadows again and began to steal the life from goblins. Building up, this time not to kill, but merely to flip the damned gobble-gobble over and retrieve my weapon. I managed to drain two more before running out of goblins then there were none. So I looked around for something more to kill. Wilmette was lashing the last hobgoblins to the ground for his own mana needs, all the gobble gobbles were dead, and as far as I could tell all the goblins were killed. The fight was effectively over.

Using some of the strength and fortitude I’d stolen I flipped the gobble-gobble up, only to discover that my sword had broken. I sighed and started to gather stone knives. Better than nothing.

After resting for a little bit, we moved to the next room. The same pattern repeated itself except I made use of the stone blades and my leftover knife. I had to make sure not to put too much force into my hits. I didn’t care if I broke any of the goblin’s weapons that I found laying around, but I wanted to make sure that my steel dagger lasted.

There must somewhere a set of runes that made weapons more durable. I was surprised that the sword and knife I was using didn’t already have those spells. Or maybe I was putting much more force into my thrusts than I even knew.

We made our way through the undergrowth, killing as we moved. The two of us developed an unspoken pattern so that we stayed out of each other’s way as we fought. Eventually, everything was dead, and we stood in front of a large stone door.

The stone entrance was the first thing that I had seen in this dungeon that was made out of anything other than wood. It rose from the forest floor as if it had been grown from the very elements. Inlaid in into the stone in high relief was a depiction of a vast battle between humans, monkeys and ape creatures. Looking closer, faintly etched in bas-relief I saw, to my horror, an arm holding a torch buried in the sand.

“We finally really did it,” I said in Magrithiam, “You blew it up. Damn, dirty Goblins.” Could the dungeon core be a two lived?

Wilmette looked at me oddly but said nothing.

“So how do you want to do this,” I said.

“Expect big boss fight,” Said Wilmette. “First we barricade door. Use dead gobble and gobble-gobble bodies. Pile up high in front of door. I hide.

“You open door, then you sneak to top of pile of gobble bodies. Try to bring back to me.

“Lead stupid ones out of room. Move back. Fall back to me. Let them come out. Let them come, one by one, to us. Crawl over mound.”

I nodded. It was a simple plan. I was small and vulnerable looking. The doors were a choke point. A pile of corpses was hard to climb over. If the goblins saw Wilmette, they might wait to come in. Or not. Just me they might charge. I wasn’t the same kind of killing machine as Wilmette was.

We got to work piling up fresh corpses against the door. Luckily the doors opened inward or else this stupid idea wouldn’t have functioned. We also made our heap higher than we wanted it to be and also increase the hight on the left and right sides of the door.

When we were ready Wilmette focusing and using his nature gnack; he commanded hidden alcoves to open up in the trees and thorns that grew above the door. I grabbed hold of an overhanging branch, while he backed away from the massive pyramid of the dead and drew his bow.

Wilmette’s body took on the glow that I now associate with his gnack working. I guess it was now or never.

With one hand holding tight to the branch that in the alcove on the roof, I pulled up on the rope we had tied to the leaver on the majestic handle that functioned as a door nob. The weight of the bodies pressing against the door pushed the door open, and as soon as I knew the door was opening, I dropped the rope grabbed the branch above with my remaining hand and pulled myself up into the alcove.

The avalanche started slowly. But then, as the doors open wider and wider, dead goblins began to pour into the room. We had piled them higher on the sides, and so this was where the majority of the bodies which flooded into the boss room.

I spared a look into the room.

It was like a forest throne room. Something out of Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings. The council of Elrond. Except it was full of monkeys. They walked along paths against the the walls, swung from the ceiling, there were a dozen gobble gobbles crowding the floor engaging in monkey business. It was an all you can eat monkey buffet. And behind it all, in the midst of standing was a 20 foot tall orangoutang sitting on a throne of human skulls; the throne was gilt in gold and wreathed in what looked like Juniper and Silphium.

It took a while before the last body had tumbled into the room. All the simian faces were looking in my direction in shock. Now was my turn.

Swinging down from the alcove where I was hid I tried to make myself as visible as possible. Within seconds a garage of shit was being thrown at me.

I started to dance like a monkey “ooh ooh ooh eee eee eee aah aah aah” I said while jumping from one leg to the other and making fart sounds with my arm pits. I don’t know if they understood the insult, but when I looked down below, I could see the rage in their collective eyes. All the while I am using my Witches’ knack to drain the nearest hobgoblin I could see.

Then I turned to run, set to dash back to where Wilmette was standing with his bow knocked. Where my bow and arrows were ready for me. I turned, and in that moment, the single most ridiculous, improbable, cliched stupid thing imaginable thing happened to me.

I slipped on a banana peel.

I mean it wasn’t a real banana peel. More a metaphorical banana. Maybe it was a bloody arm. Or a smearing of brain. But here I was slipping, and I was surrounded by things that looked a lot like monkeys, so for all intents and purposes, it might as well have been a banana peel.

One minute I was turning to dash away, the next my legs are slipping out from under me, and I am falling down the pile of dead bodies and into the room with all of the monsters.

And all the while I am falling I am panicking thinking that I am going to die surrounded by goblins in a pile of goblins. End over end, bodies mixing with bodies. Buried into bodies, hidden among the dead bodies.

Seconds pass.

More seconds pass. I am still alive.

I lift my head up. The world is different. I see less color that I did before. It is like I can’t see the full spectrum anymore. Variations of green are so intense I wonder how I missed all the detail. Blue is gone altogether. Red is angry and I seem to be able to see the heat coming off warm things like some of the more recent bodies and the goblins that are rushing up the pile of bodies, some of them stepping around me, as I move to get back on my feet.

I look down at myself. I’m no longer Elm. Instead, I am some nameless Hobgoblin. I snarl for effect. Yup, that’s me.

Right now the last place I want to be is near Wilmette. I don’t even want him to see me until I can figure out how to de hobgobblify myself. And before I figure out how to un hobgoblify myself, I need to figure out why I became a hobgoblin.

I hope this isn’t perfect. My old body wasn’t the greatest, but it was mine. Forget it not being easy, I didn’t like being green.

While I was pulling myself together a goblin looked at me oddly, I screeched and jumped up and down and shook my fists and beat my chest and the goblin looked away. Slowly I made my way to the edge of the ravaging simian horde. Casually as I could make myself I tried to push to the edge of the boss room.

By the thorn forest wall’s edge I was glad to discover I could still cast magic and within seconds I had sunk shadows invisible to everything except something with mage sight. I knew the hobgoblins didn’t have it, I knew the gobble gobbles didn’t have it. But I worried about that damned orangoutang. It was massive.

But it was time to start slitting some throats. They all had knives and wanted to kill me, and I had a stone knife and tried to kill them, so the way I saw it was monkey see, monkey do.

Keeping my eye what must have been the boss creature, I pulled out my grabbed a stone knife firmly in my hand and made my way quietly to a nearby hobgoblin. Using some of the mana I pulled in, I amped myself up and in the one second I had, drove my stone blade into the goblin’s carotid artery. Arterial blood sprayed in an arc about three feet in a diameter around where I had been standing, but with the last of my speed I was already moving on.

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Nearby stood a gobble-gobble. I waited the five or six seconds it took for my gnack to refresh and then again, a quick dagger took the most vulnerable gobble-gobbles in the most vulnerable parts of their bodies I could reach. This time it was the jugular vein as it made its move to climb the pile of bodies.

In this way, I killed six more of the damned things and drained another four hobgoblins and a goblin. Freud would probably have had a field day with my running around looking almost exactly like the creatures I savaged and slashed.

Then I was noticed.

The orangoutang launched herself off her throne. I was deep in the shadows, but it was clear she could see me. She must have mage sight and this was going to suck balls.

Vines started to wrap around my body, and swarms of bees and wasps flew out of the foliage directly at me. I focused every bit of mana I had on fortifying my body, and like The Flash the world slowed down to a crawl around my as I shot across the throne room. Just as the 1-second mark hit I ended my run in the biggest group of hobgoblins I could find.

We meandered around and began climbing the pile of dead goblin bodies. Mysteriously six goblins screamed and dropped over ended as we hobble gobbles growled and climbed.

Then I shot off the pile of bodies, again burning every drop of mana I had stolen. My stone knife cutting through the necks, effortlessly decapitating three hobgoblins as I passed them on my way to the monstrous orangoutang.

It took me a tenth of a second to cross the 50 feet to the boss monster, and my knife cut deeply into her side. Then I turned and flung myself onto a pile of the dead, just one more corpse among the many.

Six seconds later and six more drained goblins and I was moving again. But this time I saw a glow around the orangoutang like the glow I’d seen around Wilmette so many times. As I approached dagger in my hand, the massive ape moved too. Nowhere as fast as I was running, but it the speed she was travelling wasn’t insignificant. Suzuki Hayabusa verses Harley Davidson Softail speeds.

Every ounce of strength went into slice I took. I went low and cut the giant orangoutang’s Achilles tendon, and she fell, smashing in slow motion into the ground. And even though she couldn’t catch me, couldn’t keep up with me, when I was going at full speed, she kept her eye on my every move.

Then my 1-second window of super speed and strength and endurance was done. The orangoutang finished her tumbling smashing decent into the ground. The ground shook when she hit. But as I watched her leg began to heal up, and my body wrapped in vines, layers, and layers of cocoon.

I had stopped pulling mana from goblins and was trying over and over again to create a link to the boundless mana of the orangoutang. But the monstrous boss must have had more of a will than anything that I had encountered so far because my link kept slipping away.

Goblins were showering, and feces down onto the place where I lay and I was being pummeled from a barrage of debris from the vines above. I heard the buzz of bees, wasps, hornets coming closer and the thump thump thump of a massive, monstrous orange orangoutang dragging its knuckles along the ground as it made its way towards me.

Fuck.

I lashed out with my Witches sense, tying once again to drain from the boss, but failed once again. I grabbed the mana from a goblin but even though I could connect with one there was no way I could drain enough of them before big momma monkey would be here.

But I tried, and managed to drain a second.

The shaking grew closer.

Mana and power were coursing through me; I could feel the overflow in my veins and all of my body. In desperation, I forced all my mana down into the last spell that I had learned before I had run off to follow Wilmette. In desperation, I slammed every bit of my overflowing mana into the arcane magic that I had created to hide all of my life energy.

In that moment I felt something click and then it was like everything shifted and I moved into a kind of negative space in the world. Everything was shadow and light. Black and white. And I seemed to be drawing the shadows, the darkness into me. Every shadow that came into my body and my body surged with mana.

And I was free here.

I moved from where my body lay and as my body got fuller and fuller with mana I walked across the dungeon floor, and then as a feeling of being bloated came upon me, and I felt like I could hold no more, I somehow managed to figure out how to force myself out of the darkness. It was just a matter of stepping into the light.

In the normal world, I shot like a lightning bolt. One second, more full with mana than I had ever been before. I don’t know how many goblins' worth. It was like I had just gorged myself on a twelve-course mana meal. One second and nothing but a half broken steal dagger and a stone dagger.

So I increased my strength in my body and also the durability in my arm far away and above the speed in my legs and sent myself barreling like a bullet both knives outstretched with less finesse than merely trying to use my arms as spears to ram the beast.

And I succeeded. I hit. Hard. Like twin ballistic missiles, the knives went in, and my arms sunk in up to my shoulders. I got a face full of Orangoutang fur. Monkey fur stunk. I’d yanked my arms out, leaving my knives embedded in the bones they got jammed into. A fraction more of a second when my second wore off I had backed away from the boss monster.

When I slowed down, I tried to find a way to get back into the darkness, and when I couldn’t see one, all I could do was hide myself in the spell that his my life mana from mage sight.

Instead, I sent a link out to a goblin up above and drained it, then when I had linked to another, I felt the world shift around me and once again I found myself in the strange world of darkness and shadow.

When I stepped out the orangoutang was pushing herself up off the ground, the gaping impact wounds that I had stabbed into her side were extraordinarily bloody but healing.

I knew I had to end this quickly. With her ability to regenerate this could go on forever and sooner or later she would get a shot in. Unlike her, I couldn’t take more than one shot from those powerful arms. I was a glass cannon in the very worst sense of the word.

So with this burst of speed, I did the same. Lots of velocity, but even more strength and a massive amount on making my arms rock hard. Stone daggers held straight out; I ran full bore right at that damned monkey’s face.

My right stone dagger entered the orangoutang’s left eyeball, and my left-handed dagger went crashing through the soft ocular tissue of the simian’s right eye. Both eyeballs popped like grapes, and momentum propelled me and my blades into the orangoutang’s frontal cortex, and through and through and on into its occipital lobe.

The giant ape began to twitch, and it fell to the ground. I pulled my arms out of its skull wiping cortical fluid and grey matter on my pant legs than before it could somehow regrow its brain, I began sucking the life out of the few remaining goblins that were still pelting me with filth.

When I had enough Mana stored up, I grabbed my last stone knife and putting all my mana into strength and stamina I cut off the boss’ enormous fuzzy orange head.

Then turning to the left over goblins in the I defended upon them like a discrete shadow born periodical reaper. Six seconds of reprieve followed by one second of intense death.

And then, at least in the room, I was moving in, they were all dead. And I stood in the shape of a hobgoblin covered in splattered gore. There was the sound of fighting still coming from the other side of the massive pile of corpses, and I needed to figure out a way to get out of this shape before Wilmette crested the heap and decided I was the last left over living being to kill.

Instead of trying to track down the dungeon’s core, I sat down in the orangoutang’s throne and began to think. What was the feeling I had when I had changed shape.

… Well, I had been falling in a pile of bodies. I had also been in the process of linking to and draining a hobgoblin. And lastly, I was full to the brim of mana.

The sounds of fighting stopped on the other side of the heap of semi-human bodies. I had emptied myself of the overflow of mana numerous times as I’d fought. The battle had been quick. In long intervals, but quick overall. But even so, I had drained an recharged myself nearly a dozen times. A lack or a fullness of mana had nothing to do with the shape change.

Nor did draining a goblin. I had drained goblins, gobble-gobbles, hobgoblins in this fight. The only thing that I had unsuccessfully been able to pull mana from had been the boss orangoutang. If stealing mana from a creature caused the change then, I would have shape changed multiple times.

I could hear Wilmette start to swear. I didn’t know if that meant he was draining hobgoblins he’d captured or if he was now climbing the pile of bodies. Either way, I needed to hurry. I didn’t want to be his next lunch snack. Though, a part of me kept telling me that I might be able to take him.

Concentrating on changing my arm from green to pink and pushing some of my overflow of mana into my body, I tried to relax simultaneously, think of me as me, and think of not being a goblin.

And it worked, something inside of me clicked. It not a mental or audible click, rather it was the familiar kind of falling into place that I had experience when I had stepped into shadow. I found myself in my own body. The only exception was that I had a bright-bright pink arm.

Better than nothing. Though idly in my head the thought passed that my arm would be way cooler if it were a giant lobster claw. Getting that though out, and only focusing on being entirely me again, and then projecting the overflow that was still pulsing in me into my bright pink arm I pushed back, and I was solely the way I should be. From the tips of my tippy toes to the follicles of my hairs.

Breathing a sigh of relief I leaned back into the throne of human skulls and signed in relief.

The throne itself was a bit gristly. I mean keeping in mind that it was made for a 20-foot tall knuckle dragging subhuman. And I wasn’t talking about Wilmette since at worst he was only a 5’10 knuckle dragging subhuman. Or at least that is what he spoke.

The bones in the top of the chair had been worn down and polished by generations of orange monkey butt rubbing wiggling her ass across the seat. It was comfortable. If I could ignore the arm rests, well out of reach, were constructed out of human tibias and gilded with gold leaf. Weaving through the entirety of the chair was a motif of ivy, rendered in aged green copper, green gold, and emeralds. This Ivy wound in and out of the bones, through eye sockets, and twisted around femurs.

Leaning back, I surveyed the throne room. If I were an evil twice lived Dungeon Core, where would I hide.

There didn’t seem to be any other rooms attached to this one. No alcoves, no vestibules. There was a majestic processional walkway that led from the great doors to the throne, some sort of hard black stone, that rose out of the forest floor. Not onyx, but similar. And a small tinkling waterfall formed a pond over to the left. There were flowers everywhere. But no massive mysterious glowing gemstones.

After a while Wilmette’s head appeared over the pile of corpses. He looked at me in shock. I waved back. He looked around the room. He paid special attention to the dead boss monster. He looked at me again. I shrugged then waved again.

Scrambling and muttering about fuckers Wilmette made he over the hill of bodies and towards me.

“How.” He demanded.

I shrugged. “Lucky,” I said. “Boss, trip over her own feet. Stab herself in eye. After that, you just good teacher.”

He looked like he was going to argue. He looked like he doubted me.

Changing subject I said, “Where is dungeon core?”

He motioned that I get up off the throne. I was reluctant, somehow being king, even of rather small and pathetic dungeon seemed to fit my ego. But eventually, I stood up.

The glow of power surrounded Wilmette, and he bent with his knees, found a leverage point under the dungeon and lifted. The throne of bones rose, silently and smoothly, revealing a hidden set of stairs going down, underneath.

Pulling out a torch from the pack he was carrying, he lit it, and then Wilmette took the lead, and we descended into the darkness.

The room we entered was small. The size of a studio apartment in most metropolitan cities back on earth. A few hundred feet at most. In the center was an alter with a glowing sphere on it. Unlike what I had imagined, the dungeon core was not a gemstone.

The stone carried an aura of power, and when I looked at it with my mage sight, it seemed to radiate magic so intensely that it almost overwhelmed me.

Wilmette walked up to it and without a second thought, lifted it from the pedestal, wrapped the core in a cloth — a spare shirt that smelt of body odor and was covered in food stains — and placed it in his back pack.

He then turned to me and said. “Elm want to see something funny?”

“Sure,” I said.

He walked over to a part of the wall that was exactly like every other part of the wall, except when I looked at it with mage sight and saw that it looked just a shade lighter.

Wilmette kicked that wall section and yelled: “Come out ya fuckrs” then backed up.

A door opened. A gnome stuck his head out. “According to section 11013 of the treaty, we are immune.”

“Fuck off,” Wilmette said.

“Is there any way we can barter?” the gnome leader said again.

“Fuck off again,” Wilmette replied.

“Can we at least make it honorable?” The gnome said.

“Yup.”

The gnome sighed. The door closed and stayed closed for a few minutes. Then the door opened again. He called back behind him. “Company form up.” Then “Company march.”

Ten gnomes in full uniforms of the Roman legion marched out from the door that opened in the side of the wall. The gnome who had been talking, and then in perfect military parade formation, three rows of three bearded one and a half foot tall gnomes followed him. Even the three women gnomes had beards. Tiny little women with bright cerulean beards and hair. Some of them square shields with an emblem of a coin and an acorn emblazoned upon it.

When the leader had led them away from the door in the dungeon wall, he turned to Wilmette and said, “I’ve taken your mana signature and lodged a complaint.”

Wilmette shrugged.

The lead gnome sighed again. He turned his back to Wilmette and as if yelling an order, shouted “Company, Present Arms!”

The little platoon of gnomes, pulled out their tiny metal swords and held them aloft to the sky in perfect unison. “Company,” he yelled again. “Gnome Rule!” “GNOMES RULE!” Yelled the company of gnomes in unison. Then as one they turned their swords around, gripped the handle with both gnomish hands, and in tandem their blades drove down, down, down, as every gnome stabbed themselves trough the heart.

Wilmette giggled.

“What the hell!” I yelled.

Wilmette was laughing outright. “Stupid Gnomes!”

“You knew that would happen!”

”Of course. We done now. I look around some more. Elm find his own way out of dungun.” It was not a request. Wilmette obviously wanted some alone time.