Chương 27: The First Kill

Caleb committed, pouring Stamina from his body into his legs and executing a [Dash]. The ten yards of gravel separating them vanished in a blur of motion as the world compressed, his spear leveled at the goblin's heart. But in that fraction of a second before impact its eyes met his. Intelligence registered in those orbs: recognition of danger, maybe even fear. Caleb saw a living thing that didn't want to die. His thrust went wide.

The spear point that should have punched through the creature's torso caught its shoulder instead, ripping through leathery hide in a spray of dark blood. The goblin's shriek tore through the air in a high-pitched, utterly inhuman wail. Crumb! Then the creature slammed into him, the collision knocking him backward as his boots skidded on loose gravel. Caleb had expected it to flee or attack with its claws from a distance.

Instead, it barreled straight through his guard, getting inside the spear's reach where the weapon became useless. Too close! I can't— Claws raked across his abdomen. The leather cuirass caught the attack with a sound like tearing canvas; luckily, the material held. But the blow had surprising force. Caleb stumbled, and the goblin's momentum carried them both to the ground. They hit hard. His back crashed into stone, the force driving the remaining air from his lungs.

The goblin landed on top, its face inches from his, teeth snapping at his throat. Its breath reeked of rotting meat and something worse. His forearm shot up instinctively, jamming into the goblin's gnashing mouth. Needlelike fangs bit into his skin, punching through his sleeve to draw blood. The creature's good side clawed rabidly at his torso, carving light wounds across his arm while his cuirass absorbed the worst of it.

"Ahhhhh!" Caleb cried out in pain. All his training evaporated. The careful forms, the practiced movements: none of it mattered. This was nothing like Captain Hatch's controlled drills. The fight devolved into a frantic scramble where the only thing that mattered was to keep jaws from his neck. The goblin twisted its head, trying to get around his blocking arm. Saliva and blood splattered his face: his or the creature's, he couldn't say.

Dropping his spear, he pinned its good arm, a desperate stalemate to keep the claws from his throat. But its other hand, the one with the ruined shoulder scrabbled where it could. Weakened or not, its nails still scored him, digging stinging furrows into his skin. He bucked his hips trying to throw it off, but the creature clung on tenaciously. Its legs squeezed his torso, clawed toes digging through his pants into his thighs. His cuirass ground against the gravel, each jagged stone scraping against his spine.

Weapon! I need a weapon! I need— An image flashed through his mind of his earlier survey of the ambush point. One foot to his right, partially buried in gravel. There was a broken piece of quarry stone, its surface naturally jagged where it had sheared from the wall. [Perfect Memory] showed him exactly where it was, just how far to reach. He pulled the goblin's good arm to his other hand while continuing to ward off its fangs, protecting his throat as best he could. Then reached out, fingers closing on rough stone.

The edge sliced into his palm but he didn't care. He gripped it tightly and brought it around in a wild arc. The first impact caught the goblin's temple with a dulled crack. It reeled, its hold unbroken. If anything, its attacks became more frenzied, claws and teeth seeking his life with renewed energy. The stone connected with the side of its skull once more, and this time, he felt something give. The goblin's grip loosened. Its eyes rolled, unfocused. Again. The crack echoed off the quarry walls. Again.

Dark blood splattered across his face, thick and warm. Again. The goblin's body went slack. Again. Just to be sure. The sudden quiet was deafening. Caleb lay there, chest heaving, straining his ears against the ringing silence. He listened for the shrieks of alarm and the stamping of feet from the main cave for minutes. Nothing. He looked up at the massive spoil mound standing twenty yards away. It had apparently done its job. The violence in this secluded pocket had remained a secret.

He was vaguely aware of a series of soft chimes that had sounded during the struggle, lost in the struggle for survival. A stack of translucent blue windows now hovered at the edge of his sight, their silver script unread. He didn't have the time or the will to look at them. If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation. The creature's body pressed down on him, just dead meat. Blood, so much blood, pooled around them, mixing with the gravel to form dark mud.

Caleb shoved the corpse off and slipped back, crawling on all fours. He moved unconsciously as he took in what he'd done, pure instinct driving him away from the thing he'd killed. Five feet. Ten. His back hit the quarry wall. The shaking started in his fingers and spread outward. Great, wracking tremors that made his teeth chatter. His stomach clenched, twisted, and then everything came up. He retched until nothing remained then retched some more, dry heaves leaving him gasping.

The goblin lay where he had left it. Its skull was... wrong. Misshapen and broken. One eye stared at nothing while the other was lost in a mess of bone and brain matter. Blood spread in a dark pool, seeping into the thirsty ground. He'd done that. Killed with primal desperation: nothing but a stone clutched in trembling fingers and the animal will to survive. He felt so small. Oh, how he missed his wife in that moment. One of Thal's memories unlocked then, unbidden and perfectly clear.

Meriel kneeling beside a fernhorn doe, her green hands gently resting on its still-warm flank. Young Thal had watched from behind a tree, trying to understand.

"We take only what we need," she said, her voice soft and certain.

"And we honor what was given." Her fingers traced a pattern over the deer's heart, some Mycari blessing Thal had never learned. When she drew her knife to begin the harvest her movements were swift and respectful. Every cut served a purpose. Each motion honored the kill.

"Death feeds life, little sprout. But we must never forget the cost." The contrast sickened him. Meriel's clean kill versus his bludgeoning frenzy. Her respect for life versus his wild scramble to save his own. The shame burned worse than what the claws and fangs had done. He forced himself to look at the goblin again. Really look at it. Beneath the blood and damage it was... young. Thin. Those marks on its hide that he'd identified as wounds from pack mates stood out starkly now.

This creature had been hungry and probably in pain, definitely at the bottom of its social structure. Just trying to get water. Just trying to survive another day. Like him.

"I'm sorry." The words came out cracked, barely audible. He cleared his throat and tried again.

"I'm... I'm sorry." His apology was rougher than Meriel's blessing, stripped of her words, her faith and cultural framework. Still, it was something. An acknowledgment that the act had been just as necessary as it had been terrible. His hands still shook as he pushed himself to his feet. Every movement hurt. The scratches on his shoulders were bleeding through his shirt and his forearm looked like it'd gone through a wood chipper. His palm was a mess of cuts. But he was alive.

That fact was bedrock he could build upon. He forced a deep breath into his aching lungs, then another. Compartmentalize. The word was an old tool, a mental switch he'd flipped a thousand times. The emotional response is a liability. The task is the priority. He had a contract. Proof of kill was required. The job wasn't finished yet. He retrieved his spear first, checking it for damage. A few more scratches had been added to the shaft, but the head remained sharp and secure.

Then he looked up the steep slope toward the forest edge. His pack. His knife. He had left them up on the observation rise to keep his approach silent. Now, they seemed a mile away. The climb out of the quarry's pocket was a misery. He scrambled up the scree, his boots sliding on loose stone even as he tried to maintain [Stealth]. Every step agitated the claw wounds on his legs. When he finally reached the ferns and retrieved his gear the safety of the forest was right there. He could just walk away.

Leave the carcass. Leave the bounty. He looked back down into the pit. The southern pocket was a deep, isolated bowl behind the spoil ridge. Going back down there felt like descending into a grave. It's not just the ten silver, Foster… there could be a spirit stone worth one gold piece in that thing. The practical part of his mind asserted itself through the fatigue, remembering Felicity's instructions to search the sternum. His gut roiled at the idea of more butchery but the grim math was undeniable.

A single stone was worth more than a month of laborious work at the inn. It was another step away from being the helpless victim in an alley. He descended back into the kill box, exposed, a tiny figure trusting his life to a pile of dirt and the inattention of monsters three hundred yards away. He reached the corpse, prodded it with his spear, and laid the weapon aside. Unsheathing the knife he grabbed the goblin's clawed fingers, the skin cool and rubbery beneath his own.

He tried to channel Meriel's reverence as he worked. Quick cuts at the knuckle joints separated claw from finger with minimal additional damage. The knife was razor edged, he'd made sure of that, and the job went fast despite his unsteady fingers. Two thumb claws, check. He could leave now… Just do it. Stop being a baby when you've already come this far.

Gritting his teeth against a fresh wave of disgust, he repositioned himself and used Gareth's knife to make a deep, exploratory incision through the creature's chest. The blade grated against the ribs. He explored the cavity, his hands slippery with gore as he sought a hard object within the soft tissues. All he found was bone and viscera. The emptiness of the creature's chest cavity felt like a final, bitter joke. With a shuddering breath, he accepted the result.

He trudged away from the body holding his gorge as he used a piece of cloth to wipe Gareth's knife clean. The barbaric work had been a failure, leaving only a sour taste in his mouth and blood on his hands. He wrapped the claws in another piece of cloth from his pack, tucking them away securely. Then he stood, shouldering his pack with a wince as the straps pressed against cuts. One last look at the goblin. It would be gone within a day, he figured. Scavengers would come.

Other goblins might drag it back to their cave, who knows? The forest would reclaim it, as surely as it reclaimed everything, eventually.

"Thank you," he whispered. For what, he wasn't sure. For dying? For teaching him what violence really meant? For showing him the vast gulf between planning a kill and executing one? All of it, maybe. He turned his back on it and faced the slope leading back to the treeline. Time to go. A screech split the air. Caleb snapped his head up. A figure stood atop the spoil ridge, silhouetted against the morning sky.

It rose tall on the mound of waste rock, scars crisscrossing its hide as it looked down into the secluded pocket. The large goblin raised a clawed finger and let out an undulating cry. Movement erupted along the ridge. A dozen feral goblins crested the spoil pile, lining the top of the earthen wall like vultures. The bulk of them were already scrambling down the scree toward the slope, moving to cut off his path to the treeline. Others spread along the ridge and blocked any retreat over the top.

The kill box had become his cage.