I want to reply something witty but my tongue seems to have detached from my mouth and left on an extended holiday. I force my neck to pivot left and right as I search for the imbecile who decided a prank like this would be funny.

I see none. I cross my arms. Alright, then. Maybe if I wait long enough, they’ll crawl out of this illogically large suit. Until then, I’ll leave them to bake in the sun.

Seconds pass. No one comes leaping out with brochures in hand and a depraved smile in an attempt sell me this one of a kind costume.

I swallow. Feel the clump of saliva descend into the bottom of my stomach.

This means the thing before my eyes is no faux body suit, but a living and breathing Orc. A creature from the annals of fantasy lore, famed for their innate violence and bloodthirst toward anything not of their race.

The Orc’s upper body is completely bare, marking it a male. I could confirm my assumption by pushing aside the armoured loincloth obscuring his lower half to peek at his groin… but I doubt it will be appreciated.

He holds a classical Orc weapon in one hand, a large club with a rounded and dangerously blunt head, and I don’t seek to test the weapon’s durability.

What also stops me is that the Orc doesn’t look like he needs a weapon to do any damage. He towers head and shoulders above me, a set of prodigiously muscled arms to match his bulging, accented chest. He could throttle an ox with his bare hands.

First a mutant reptile, and now a creature plucked from literally any fantasy themed material ever I stare dazedly at him. I blink a couple of times to make sure I’m not dreaming.

“Useless goblin. All like this, don’t know how to greet.”

I barely dodge the swing. The club smashes the ground near my feet. Seeing the portion of soil get completely flattened, I flinch and take a couple of steps back. I stumble out of the way. When I’m off to the side, my legs finally give out from under me. I drop into a kneel.

The Orc lets out a piggish snort. He raises a sausage sized finger and points at the corpses littered about. “One dead Ravager. One, two… two dead human.” He moves in stomps to peer at Badass Wizard. “Hmpf, tiny goblin get lucky. If Ravager not here to kill humans, then you be like dead like them. Baha!”

He throws his head back, losing himself in his ghoulish, choked laughter. I see a slight movement behind his shaking frame and take two sneaky steps, edging past.

I see them, two small creatures drenched in his looming shadow.

They embody the namesake Badass Wizard had labelled me. I swallow. Goblins, my mind supplies. These are goblins. If I didn’t see the Orc, I would be losing my mind at the sheer impossibility of everything.

I take a good long look, staring hard enough to burn holes in the sides of their bald, green heads. I should think my eyes look like two points of burning flint to an outsider.

When goblins don’t react to another ten seconds of laser eyed focus, I give up. Apparently, being of the same race doesn’t give me telekinesis.

I can’t overlook how weird it is they haven’t acknowledged my presence. Their beady eyes remain fixed on the Orc’s broad back. Are they doing this on purpose? Some kind of newcomer hazing, maybe?

I cup a fist over my mouth. “Ahem.”

…there!

My eyes don’t deceive me. I might have missed the twitch of their ears if I wasn’t looking for it. It’s a tiny reaction, almost superfluous, but it’s one nonetheless. It proves they are aware of their surroundings and are living beings, not dolls controlled by arcane voodoo.

My excitement fades when they don’t make further movements. Are these really goblins? They really don’t seem like it. They should be excitable and mischievous, if not malicious and chaotic; not stunted wooden dolls that might fall over in a slight breeze.

I glance at Orc. I’m missing vital information. It probably has something to do with that unreasonably gigantic asshole over there.

Two goblins, one orc. On paper, you could say they’ve got him outnumbered. But the orc’s sheer size likely translates to more power that a mere two goblins can match up with. Another acceptable reason would be that they’re one rung below the orc in the creature hierarchy in this world.

One goblin has a rusted short sword hanging from its hip, and I dub it Goblin A. The other one is unfortunately, weaponless, so he gets dubbed Goblin B. Once I settle their names in my head, I step closer to the two to get a closer look at them.

Um… wow. Up close, they are somehow worse than they look.

It’s not the shiny bald head they’re sporting or any of their individual traits that peg them solidly in the ‘gross and ugly’ category. It’s the culmination of everything. Pointed bat ears, a large but flat nose, almond shaped eyes locked in a permanent squint, tied together with a mouth shaped in a grimace made cruder by the fang-like teeth protruding from the bottom lip.

Ignoring minor differences like height and body size, they look completely identical. My head spins at the thought of me looking at that face in reflections for the rest of my life.

I’m not vain, but this is kind of unfair. In my old body, I had a reasonably average face. Maybe even pretty if judged by lower standards. To go from a six on a scale of ten to negative zero?

I groan into my hands. Then, I shakily lift them to the sides of my head.

I hope and pray for there not to be– never mind. I have the exact bat shaped ears. I rub the tips with trembling fingers. So pointy. Poking an eye out with an ear is very possible. If I knew I had these earlier, I wouldn’t have disturbed the dead.

My fingertips trace the contours of my eye. Damn, even the shape of our eyes... If they aren’t shorter than me, I’ll think we were cloned. I’m glad I have at least half a head of height over them.

A weak smile tugs at the corner of my mouth. Though I’m taller than the other two, I’m still significantly shorter than the orc. From all the way up there, he must see us as tiny rotund olives.

“Goblins really useless, always waiting for order.” The Orc has finally gotten over laughing at his own, dumb joke. He turns to his followers, a partial snarl on his face. “You! Go check dead humans and find for treasure! Their stuff sometimes good.”

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Goblin B takes slow, awkward steps towards him. The Orc must think it too slow because he reaches down, lifts him by scruff of his neck, and tosses him like flimsy sack of rice.

“Gege!” Goblin B lands on his feet.

I let loose a strangled breath. Then, I’m swamped by awe. Does this mean I can do that too? I’ve always wanted to be a more agile.

I watch Goblin B scurry over to the pair of deceased bodies. It starts with the woman, rummaging through her clothes with clumsy hands that look more like claws. The Orc watches impatiently, barking out an insult or two when the goblin gets stuck trying to undo the knots I retied after my search for the sake of keeping her honour.

It doesn’t display a hint of stubbornness. No tantrums, no refusal. The Orc simply gave an order and it rushes to complete the task.

Hey, hey, even if you’re typically early game fodder, shouldn’t you have more pride? Even if orcs are stronger than the average goblin, his attitude is too arrogant to stomach. This is almost like a master and slave relationship.

I fold my arms, trying to recall such instances of the goblin race being completely deferential in this way. Books, no. Shows, maybe the popular one about that badass slayer…? No, goblins still had a measure of autonomy and not to mention, they were far more vicious and hormonal than this bunch. Games… hm, what was the last thing I played?

“Goblin search too slow,” A loud roar derails my thoughts. “Bah, stupid humans not even that big. Search faster!” What a bigmouth. I hope others of the same race won’t be similarly annoying. “Oh, now what this, you finally found treasure?”

“Gege! Gege!” Goblin B offers up the box I abandoned, the one with gold markings etched on its top lid.

Ah, I forgot about that. I cast an apologetic glance at Badass Wizard. I don’t think he wants anything of his to fall in the hands of a bunch of backwards creatures. I can’t deny I’m not curious to see what’s inside, though.

“Baha, good, good!” The orc’s head bobs as he thumps the head of his club in the dirt. “Quick, open and show what inside. If good treasure, I bring to Borg as gift. Borg will give me happy time with human!”

Goblin B begins the arduous task of prying the box open while I turn the name I just heard over in my head. Borg. It sounds awfully familiar. I scratch my head. B-O-R-G. I mouth each letter like they are keys to a memory I’d buried deep inside my mind, locked under layers of cobwebs and forgotten musings.

I nearly pop a vein trying to remember something, so I take a different approach. Instead of trying to recall anything and everything related to Borg, I filter out what I need should look for.

It’s a name, so it might be someone I know. I sift through internet handles, shitty email names of yore, but still, zilch. Hm, okay, this is getting tricky. Maybe it’s something I’ve seen on TV, in a book or game?

A game, huh. The most recent game I played was… right, how could I forget? It was Ascendance, the game Athea and her brother worked on.

I knead my temples. Borg. Ascendance. An NPC?

I sense the faint memory just below the surface of my thoughts. I grasp it and pull.

The image of pixels rendered into cutting angles and spirals, dark coloured bricks hewn into an ominous castle surrounded by a poison moat, fills my head in something close to high definition.

Borg, I suddenly remember, is one of the enemies I faced in very early into the game in a side quest I stumbled into.

To have someone named Borg here, it proves I am in entirely different world from the one I know. Unless you wanted your child to be bullied, Borg was not a name sane people would come up with, even at gunpoint. But it is a name fitting for someone in this distinctly fantasy setting, and an interesting, if a little creepy, coincidence.

My head tilts back, and I gaze up at the overhang of deep vivid blue, like all the water sources were sent back into the clouds and held prisoner. It’s not a sky that can exist. It’s devoid of everything I’m used to, no commercial or cargo airplanes or helicopters, is a great honking hint of its abnormality.

…I really did die. And for some unfathomable reason, I’ve been given a second chance to live.

I glance at my hairless green skin. This body is not ideal, but if I’m being honest with myself… this body is probably karma for all the shit I’ve pulled as Han Mei Ling.

I scoff. Actually, if this is punishment for my mistakes, I’m getting off lightly.

I have opposable thumbs, working limbs and a head on my shoulders. I have vocal cords too, and somehow understand the language here. I don’t know how it happened, although if magic exists, this body have some kind of magical property.

As I think this, my internal protests toward this goblin body gradually fades. I might not be human, but it shouldn’t stop me from acting that way.

“You take too long!” The Orc’s groans drag me out of my reverie. I see Goblin B still struggling to open the box. It’s impassive face twists in the beginnings of frustration, the most emotion I’ve seen capable of thus far. “Bah, stop! Give to me. You too weak. All of you too weak!” Orc snatches the box from Goblin B.

Wow, rude. Size doesn’t equal strength… or so I wish I can say, if he didn’t look like he could kill me with one swing of his club.

“Now watch,” the Orc says proudly. “Me will open!”

Ten seconds of silence wash over us as he tugs at the lid. The muscles in his arm is straining under the sheer force he exerts, ropey veins pulsing intermittently.

Goblin A and B stare blankly at him, and I do the same. If we’ve gone through so much trouble trying to get it open, there must be some precious inside. I’m invested in knowing what secrets it might be hiding.

The lid trembles. The Orc grins, the corners of his lips pulling back and accentuating his mouth-tusks. A little more, and…

“GRAAAAAAH!”

A monstrous ball of fire consumes his entire head. I jerk back in shock as the box he throws bounces off the ground and toward me. I watch, horrified, as the Orc screams in anguish, his large hands frantically pawing at his head in a lousy attempt to put out the flames.

“BURNING,” he screams, and picks up Goblin B, using the poor creature as a face towel.

The flames undulate recklessly. The Orc’s attempts to put it go nowhere and the fire gobbles oxygen to further fuel its rampage. Ignorant of his screams, it cooks him alive.

The smell of burning flesh is stronger than I can handle. I clamp a hand over my face when my lungs start to tingle like I’ve swallowed a handful of needles.

I step back until the feeling subsides. I sniff the air cautiously once I can breathe, and smell smoke. The charcoal tang is still present but not as cutting.

It seems goblins have a heightened sense of smell. I would be happier at the discovery if I didn’t almost choke to death.

“GEGEGE!” Goblin B shrieks, the sound blending with the Orc’s to create a symphony of pain.

I snap out of my daze at their combined howls. This is too painful to continue watching. They might be dangerous, but I’m not sadistic enough to stand here and do nothing.

I look around for something that can help, but there’s not drop of water in sight. Only miles and miles of empty grassland. Abandoned structures dot the vast expanse of land while a mountain range towers in the far distance. The scene is awfully picturesque, but I find no enjoyment in it.

Solution first, sightseeing later.

I pace around the two figures of soon to be piles of ash. Damn, is there really nothing that can be used to help?

I shift my feet, suddenly realizing I’ve been barefoot the entire time. Soft and malleable soil moulds itself into the arches of each foot, and I exclaim, “Oh, this could work!” This is what it means to not be able to see the forest from the trees.

I hastily make preparations. It takes me a solid minute or so to finish, but too little and it wouldn’t work. I run over to the flaming forms of orc and goblin.

“USELESS, ALL U–” I kick out the back of the Orc’s knees. He falls like a freshly sawed tree, taking Goblin B with him, both falling directly into the pile of dirt I scrounged for them. My rescue mission has left dirt buried under my nails. It feels disgusting, but it’s a small sacrifice to make.

The Orc’s roar of surprise immediately turns into groans of relief. He lets go of the goblin, gathers as much soil into his hands as he can, and buries his face in it.

“This… better,” he sighs.

As I wait for the Orc to come out of his relieved stupor, I scramble to stand by Goblin A, who remains motionless amidst the ruckus. I can’t figure out if it has nerves of steel or is simply mindless.

“Bah,” the Orc is facing away from us, but I don’t need to see him to know he’s sustained a heavy injury. “No more burning. Lucky I check before bring not-treasure to Borg.”

He lowers his head. I follow the Orc’s line of sight and see Goblin B struggling to get on its feet, the creature in a similarly hurt state. My casual glance brings my attention to the patches of raw flesh on various parts of its body. The patchy brown top it’s wearing is singed in multiple places. The second most glaring wound is purpled bruises stamped on Goblin B’s forearms.

I watch the miserable creature get to his feet, stabilizing himself with flailing hands. I give it a sympathetic glance. Goblins might be ugly, but it doesn’t deserve all this abuse. My feet slowly begins to shuffle towards it. It shouldn’t be out of character for two creatures of the same race to help each other, right?

Goblin B tilts its head up. I notice too late the Orc has his club until he takes a swing at the goblin’s head.