Backwoods Dungeon

Chapter Two

A Very Confused Man

A moment after the goblin died, there was a small jingle and a splash of what sounded like bubbles popping. Three or four little coins and a vial of some red liquid popped out of the air.

I stared at the coins and the vial, trying to figure out what the hell was going on.

I picked up one of the coins, and it disappeared in my hand. I turned my hand twice, wondering if I’d dropped it. No. The coin was just gone.

“What in the hell?” I said aloud.

I wearily scooted closer to the dead goblin and picked up another coin, only for it to disappear as well.

I grabbed the vial and was surprised to see a small label on it. “Health. Small.”

I blinked, but the label didn’t go away. Nor did the vial disappear like the two coins had.

“Okay. This… is a bad dream. I’m having a bad dream. I got fired. I passed out on the couch and imagined seeing those kids down at the tree line.”

I wanted it to be true. In my head, I willed myself to wake up.

“My arm is killing me, I feel like I just ran a marathon, and I just killed something that could talk. This had damn well better be a dream,” I said as the pain refused to abate and the world refused to reorient itself.

I was stuck in a cave in my backyard well outside of shouting range from my house with a twisted ankle and a dead body, and it did not appear to be a dream.

‘Okay. First things first. How far did I actually get from the house?’ I thought, staring out of the small mouth of the cave.

It wasn’t a steep slope. Well. It was, but there were plenty of places where the grade was climbable. If I could walk, it would be simple to pull myself out, but even the thought of stepping fully onto my twisted ankle sent shudders down my spine.

‘Good god, this fucking hurts!’ I thought.

It seemed like there was a pretty obvious solution right in my hand, but I wasn’t just going to drink some random potion that I got from killing an honest-to-god goblin in my backyard.

I turned my eyes toward the cave and realized it appeared to descend much deeper than I’d first thought. I’d have been thrilled to show this to my wife in other circumstances. She was a bit braver than I was most of the time and loved hiking, especially if there were caves to look at. She’d probably jump at the chance to go spelunking in our backyard.

That was for later, though. For now…

I tried to step up onto my leg but was stopped by agony. My ankle hadn’t been twisted. It was broken. “I… can’t walk.”

The idea of pulling myself back to the house up the mountain by my hands was not pleasant, and at least two more goblins were still out there. I didn’t think they’d be all that intimidated by me anymore.

“Well… crap,” I thought as my options began to dwindle. I couldn’t go down, and I certainly couldn’t go up. Shouting for help would be even worse. Rio wouldn’t be home for two days, and worse, it might attract the damn goblins.

I took another look at the vial. Potion? I was fighting goblins with daggers, and they dropped loot. This was already insane. I might as well call it a potion.

I had two choices if I wanted to return to the house intact. I could call an ambulance, which would probably work, but it would mean I’d be stuck here until someone could find me and drag me out.

Or…

I eyed the potion warily. Fantasy was intruding on my life, and I still wasn't entirely certain if I was hallucinating this whole thing. What I knew was that my ankle really hurt, and red vials were always health potions.

Would it fix a broken bone?

Well. If it didn’t, I’d have to explain the red goblin carcass in the cave behind my house, and that was assuming the two goblins still out there didn’t successfully kill my unsuspecting would-be rescuers.

It was only luck that I wasn’t dead in the first few minutes. Odds were that EMTs, or even cops in this backwoods community, wouldn’t be so lucky.

I decided to take a chance. I uncorked the vial – it had an actual cork! – and downed the potion.

Surprisingly, it didn’t taste all that bad. I had nothing to compare it to. No drink I’d ever had tasted like this. The only way I could describe it was… healthy salt. There was a hint of copper, like blood, but the savory salt flavor heavily muted it.

I noticed the effect almost immediately. The bones in my leg started to realign. The pain in my shoulder eased, and the wound on my arm began to close. That one had actually worried me. I didn’t think it had nicked an artery, but there had been a lot of blood. While it was surreal, seeing the wound seal itself was a welcome change.

I couldn’t really tell when it was done. It might’ve still been working ten or fifteen seconds later, but when I felt well enough to move, I tried to put weight on my broken ankle.

Sore. Almost unbearably sore, but to my joy, my foot could hold weight again.

Okay. Goblins, gold coins, and potions were in a cave in my backyard. What… exactly did I do with that?

I wasn’t going to be making any big decisions now. I pulled myself out of the small crack in the ground where reality had decided to unwind a few screws and took a second to get my bearings.

The other goblin, whose skull I’d caved in, lay motionless a little ways up the slope. My house was up that way somewhere, so I decided to see if it had dropped anything like the potion on my way back up.

Images swam in my head of selling potions like that one for thousands, tens of thousands of dollars. I knew what I would pay to have a broken bone healed in a few minutes. How much would rich people pay? It was mind-boggling.

Unfortunately, the other goblin hadn’t dropped any potions. Instead, there was only a quiver with about thirty arrows in it.

‘If it had arrows, why didn't it try to shoot me with a bow? This makes no sense,’ I thought wearily as I continued my achy trek back up to the house. As I walked, I began to ruminate on what had brought me down into the little valley in the first place.

Goblins… fucking… goblins…