Backwoods Dungeon

Chapter One

A Sudden Fight

I dodged to the left moments before a bloody hatchet would’ve taken my arm off. Instead, the rusty axe skidded on the rocky ground below, casting sparks into the air.

The creature was off balance. I finally took the opportunity. I’d already missed half a dozen just getting over the shock of being attacked in my own backyard.

My shovel came down in a heavy overhand swing before smashing into the surprised goblin.

I didn’t know what else to call it. It looked like a goblin. It was red-skinned and thinner than the Tolkien-brand goblins in my head. Four feet tall, wielding a rusted-ass hatchet and talking gibberish at me.

Goblins. In my backyard! Mythical creature or not, the same thing happened to it that would happen to just about any human hit in the head with a shovel.

It crumpled to the ground in a red heap.

I didn’t have any time to celebrate, though. There were at least four more of them. I’d been running from them for… god, four hours? It was probably only a few minutes, but panic was doing strange things to my head. I was breathing hard, winded. The rocky terrain wasn’t familiar to me even though I owned it, and I was pretty sure I’d ruined one of my tennis shoes on the sharp rocks of my mountain.

Two more were climbing up the mountainside, chasing me. The cliff's steep grade was becoming a problem. Hell, the only reason I’d made it this far back up the slope was the multitude of wiry, thin trees serving as handholds.

I couldn't go much further, though. The slope was getting steeper. There were parts of the mountain that were damn near vertical, and these little fuckers were herding me right towards them, either hoping to catch me with nowhere to go or send me tumbling to the bottom.

I spared a glance back as I stopped between handholds. The goblin had rolled about ten feet down the slope before it caught a particularly thick bush. To my horror, it wasn’t dead.

‘I hit that thing as hard as I could! An elk couldn’t have gotten up from that!’ I thought fearfully as I watched the goblin fail to pick itself back up.

Another goblin stopped long enough to kick the injured one in the face again before taking its hatchet.

I blinked, surprised at the lack of camaraderie.

I turned away from the climbing goblins and took a few steps further up the slope, grabbing hold of a sturdier tree. They weren’t going to stop chasing me, whatever they were, and I was starting to get angry.

My home had contracted a goblin infestation. My home. What the hell was I doing? Running? These things were the size of kids!

'Kids with stupidly sharp knives,' I thought. The long gash along my arm and the burning, coppery feeling of dirt in the wound could attest to that. I thought it was a joke at first. Just some kids playing a prank right up until that dagger drew blood.

I had a shovel, but I hadn’t actually intended to use it when I’d first come out here. I wished I’d been smart enough to pick up the first goblin’s hatchet, but a shovel was still a shovel. I had a longer range than any goblin.

I was sweating through my t-shirt, and I suddenly noticed that I'd bled all over it. It was one of my favorites. It had a Final Fantasy VII logo on it. I got it from Gencon last year… For that absolutely asinine reason, I suddenly exploded in anger.

After this shit heap of a week, on top of a shit heap of a year, now my favorite shirt was ruined.

The next goblin had almost reached me, its friend close behind. Two more at the bottom of the slope were just waiting for me to fall, leering up like vipers. Neither were aware of the drastic change in my temperament.

Rather than wait for the lead goblin to attack, I left the safety of my tree to add both arms to the power of my swing.

It blanched, shocked that I’d suddenly started to fight back. It raised its dagger in time to parry the blow, but its spindly little arms were nothing next to the weight of my swing, backed up by two hundred and eighty pounds of body fat.

The dagger spun off into the woods as my shovel slammed down onto the goblin's head even harder than the first one. I heard a sickening crunch that had been absent from my first swing. That one wouldn’t be getting back up.

Its ally quickly capitalized on my reckless swing as it darted up a little higher on the hill and sliced at my shoulder with the hatchet.

Shocked, I fell back, and with nothing to grab, I tumbled down the steep cliffside. The hatchet didn’t hit me, but I screamed as my back hit the rocky ground before tumbling end over end. Pain lanced through my wounded arm as I rolled over underbrush that was too flimsy to stop me.

Ten feet further down, I crashed onto a large tree with a howl.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck!” I screamed. Sweat was burning my eyes, my shoulder felt like it had been hit by a truck, and my arm would hurt less if it were literally on fire, but I had to get back up.

Easier said than done. I wasn’t in shape anymore. Hadn’t been for a long time. I had made half-assed efforts towards jogging now and then, but nothing near the intensity of fleeing for my life!

I wasn't sure if I was going to even be able to get back on my feet, but I found new motivation when the goblin charged down the hill after me.

“I swear to god, I will work out every day if I survive this,” I swore as I painfully readied the shovel I still held somehow.

I looked up, ready to meet the charging creature, when I realized it had made a mistake. It had underestimated the slope. I could see the moment it went from furious attack to wild careen, its feet moving faster than its brain.

Rather than engage, I simply threw myself to the side as the goblin continued past me, screaming and shouting in its strange guttural language.

It caught a thin stick of a tree halfway to the bottom of the ravine. Its smaller size allowed it to recover from a fall that would’ve sent me all the way to the bottom, but now I had the high ground.

The two goblins at the bottom of the slope stopped focusing on me, laughing at their fallen companion instead. Wild guffaws that seemed more at home in a cartoon than the actual life-and-death situation this was proving to be.

The goblin got back to its feet faster than me, glaring up. Most of my fear had faded now, though. I was mad. My arm hurt, my shoulder hurt, I was sweaty and gross, and I couldn’t imagine how much I was going to itch later from all the bushes I'd run through.

All of that fell to the side in a moment of clarity. The thirty-acre slice of heaven my wife and I had bought had a damn goblin problem.

Rather than wait for it to get its bearings, I began stalking toward it, the slope more forgiving now that I was closer to the bottom.

“What… the fuck… are you doing here!?” I shouted through ragged breaths.

“Burka Keddba!” it shouted back as it stood, bearing its dagger, drool leaking between its pointed teeth. It had apparently lost the hatchet in the fall.

I took my time slowly descending to the goblin’s level, and apparently, I cut a pretty impressive figure. My torn shirt, bleeding arm, and the shovel slung across my shoulder must’ve looked pretty intimidating because the defiance seemed to seep right out of the goblin. The two further below also seemed suddenly hesitant. Good. I was coming for them next.

I was three steps away. Two steps, my face a grim rictus of rage as I grasped the shovel with both hands, preparing to smash through the goblin's flimsy dagger.

The creature lost its nerve and took off down the slope again.

Son of a bitch!

At this point, I was so mad that I didn’t care if I had to roll my pudgy ass down this mountain. My wariness from before forgotten, I took off after the cowardly monster, barely keeping my footing as I charged.

They scurried like mice as I bellowed louder than my neighbor’s cows.

By the time I reached the bottom, all three goblins were fleeing in pure terror. The closest one found a small ditch and ducked behind it as the land leveled out. I leaped over the ditch and spun, intending to smash it, but instead of solid ground, I found that the ditch disguised the entrance of a small cave.

I crashed to the floor, a full three feet lower than I was expecting, and screamed as I twisted my ankle on the unexpectedly low ground.

The goblin hadn't been surprised, already swinging for my face. Adrenaline coursing through me, I reached out and caught the goblin’s wrist, but the blade still managed to slice a shallow cut in my forearm.

Shocked, the goblin met my eyes before I twisted. Its tiny little wrist broke under my grip, surprising me almost as much as the goblin. How flimsy were these things?

The red-skinned creature yowled, but I silenced that with a wild left punch. I didn’t hit it very hard, but it was enough to stun the red-skinned little creature. Another punch, this one better aimed, sent the bastard sprawling to the steep ground.

I had dropped my shovel to catch the goblin’s wrist, and it tumbled further into the cave, but the Goblin’s dagger was right there. I grabbed it and tried to rise but winced as the pain in my twisted ankle momentarily blinded me.

I grit my teeth and dragged myself closer to the goblin with my good foot, knee scraping along the rocks.

The goblin was still dazed, and I didn’t give it time to recover, burying the dagger in its chest. Blue blood followed from the wound as I pulled it out and stabbed again.

It screamed. Squawked as it grabbed vainly at the dagger buried inside it, but it was already weakening.

“Ebuukkarss…” it hissed at me, glaring to the last before its beady eyes darkened and it slumped.

I heard a sudden sound in my head, like a mix between a snare drum and a gong. At the corner of my vision, I saw a small… button. Two buttons. To my left, a green one, and to my right, a red. Both buttons had the same symbol. A plus.

“Wh-what… what the hell?” I murmured as I caught my breath.

There were still two goblins – maybe three – but I’d seen how afraid they’d become in those last minutes. They had bolted. If they’d been close enough to hear their little friend die, I doubted they’d be in a hurry to come down here.

Down. Here. Where the hell was I?

‘I would’ve… thought that a cave would’ve been mentioned whenever we bought this place on the damn survey,’ I thought. ‘Thousand dollars down the drain.’

The adrenaline was fading, and with it, the pain of my excursion was returning with a vengeance.

I had a twisted ankle, a bloody gash on my arm that was bound to get infected, a bruise on my shoulder the size of a whale, and now I was hallucinating buttons.

“I… so need therapy,” I wheezed with a laugh.