Wilmette was gone the next day and for that I was glad. It would have been easier if I had managed to somehow keep the newt to study there was no way that I could manage that.

Instead, I began to work out a spell, base upon the most complicated spell I knew — the healing spell Wilmette had taught me — in order to accomplish something similar.

Oh, there were differences, for one thing, I needed to leave out specific localizations and concentrate on my entire body. Or rather, since I wasn’t testing on myself, I needed to concentrate on Mr. Bigglesworth’s entire body.

It was also important that this wasn’t just the life affinity that I was using, but rather tiny bits of every affinity. There was a big part of myself that was pretty terrified and awed by the fact that I needed to play with nearly every affinity to do this well. Not everyone had access to every affinity. Or at least that seemed to be the dominant way of thinking. In order to do this properly, I would need access, even in small amounts to all the major magic groups.

All of this, I needed to keep up even when I was moving or switching from between one type of area to the next.

The newt I’d found had had it easy. There really weren’t a lot of variations under that log. For example, the only time the Newt would really need to blend into a lot of fire affinity was if the forest was on fire, and if that was the case, the newt had bigger things to worry about than whether the grubs saw it, or a bird wanted to eat it. The same went for Death, Metal, Life, Wind, or even Water in large quantities.

My spell needed a lot more flexibility.

So while I actually managed to succeed in rebuilding what I thought was a good imitation of the Newt’s ability after two days. Let me restate that, so while I managed to rebuild an awesome imitation and far better version of the Newt’s ability after two days, I still wasn’t happy with it. And it took me an entire week to make a version of the hiding spell that would keep me hidden and in a graveyard, on a battlefield, in a library, or in a church, or in a hospital.

Fortunately for me, it seems as if I had access to every type of magic, and on the fourth day of working on the spell, I actually switched out runes for individual affinities and substituted a sentence of mirror runes and a bunch of general affinity runes that would fill with whatever affinities were nearby.

While I was making this spell, not for the first time it occurred to me how like and unlike this magic was to an earth programming language. I was working with a structure of runes that each reference a different aspect of the natural and spiritual world.

But these runes were really simplifications of more primal impulses of natural magic. They were a kind of meta-structure that had been built over and simplified incredibly complex yet incredibly simple ideas like fire, wind, movement etc… that were in their own ways like the world’s assembly language.

Finally when it had gotten to the point when Mr. Bigglesworth I could make all but invisible to my mage sight, and I was sure that he wasn’t developing any sudden tumors or demonic auras I cast the spell that I’d made on myself then made myself scarce — basically wandered off to go hunting — until Wilmette returned.

Hunting was easy using the level of stealth that was now in my repertoire, I could walk up to an animal, and as long as I wasn’t making too much noise or drawing too much attention to myself I would seamlessly blend into the background. What that meant was that using the natural stealth and hunting camouflage techniques I had learned from Wilmette over the past months — months that were now stretching out towards a year — that I could become nearly invisible in this forest environment. The more attention I called to myself, the more I would stand out. Hunting while riding a unicycle, dressed in loud purple and green polka-dots, playing Death Metal on a tuba was completely out. For now.

Up ahead on my hunt, there was a herd of the kind of antelope that lived in the southern great clearing that bordered the forest. They were small creatures, basically the size of medium dogs, and formed family groups of 20 or 30 to graze. They didn’t often come close to the forest edge because ambush predators tended to hunt there. But when they did, they came for the leafy goodness that the trees and shrubs provide.

In my new stealth abilities, I was able to walk right into the center of their herd, and they ignored me. Choosing a young male, just under the age it would undoubtedly try to challenge the dominant male for herd alpha status, I walked up to it, pulled out my knife, put my hand on it’s back and slit the young antelope’s throat.

Which turned out to be a bad idea. While the Antelope could not see me, the could see their friend, herd-mate and fellow antelope fall to the ground suddenly spurting blood. The herd panicked and took off running for safety. Invisible as I was, I was almost trampled by a bunch deer the size of corgis.

Taking the time to gut and clean my kill, I thought about what had happened. If I had put a version of the stealth spell I’d been using on Mr. Bigglesworth on the antelope before I’d killed it, the herd might not have panicked. They weren’t that intelligent, how many of their kind would they notice disappearing into thin air before they realized something was wrong.

But then I also had to question my strength. Two maybe three things was pretty much the limit of my abilities. And even then. Frankly holding up this spell for hours at a time was exhausting. I couldn’t imagine holding it up on two living beings for an extended period. So an extended stealth kill was probably out.

Add to that was the fact that bakka, life energy came easy to me, but other elements were significantly harder. For example, I had tried to create a fireball spell and only to see it fizzle out three or four feet away when I cast it. I was missing something, and I couldn’t figure out what.

I trudged back to our campsite, carrying the cleaned corpse of antelope I’d killed.

Wilmette was back, so this was another chance to test my new stealth skills. I walked through the camp, walking within about 3 feet of him as he sat by the fire. I noticed that there was a fresh group of goblins in the cage. Neither Wilmette or the Goblins seem to notice me as I strode through the campsite. Though when a small breeze fluttered through the clearing, I might have imagined it but Wilmette seemed to sniff and then for just a moment, a fraction of a second, looked puzzled.

When I got to the other side of the clearing, I walked about 300 yards out then stopped my stealth spell, and walked back to camp.

“Food,” I said, holding up the antelope.

Wilmette motioned towards the fire. Then he pointed at the cage. “Gobbles. Tomorrows, all.” I would be fighting all the goblins tomorrow. I did a quick count. There were eight. Over the months I had gotten to the point where I could safely handle six.

Sometimes, though rarely Wilmette even allowed me to carry my bow and a sling with me into the cage so I didn’t need to climb the cage to go after ranged goblins throwing feces. I had also found a way to embed a little bit of life magic into my arrows, various rocks, and blades while I focused on them, they caused a lot more hurt when they hit; small scratches became deep slashes and deep slashes becoming killing blows.

I wasn’t worried about eight, though the fight tomorrow would leave me exhausted.

The next morning I got up even before Wilmette and stretched and took a quick jog around the campsite. There was a low hanging tree branch that I sometimes used for pull-ups, and I did a dozen or so of those before heading back into the camp to make breakfast for the both of us of some roots, wild grains, honey, and leftover antelope.

Wilmette said nothing when he got up and said nothing about the breakfast. Not that was unusual. He wasn’t all that talkative, even in the best of moods, and the morning was never one of this better times of the day.

After breakfast, I quickly stretched again, gathered my gear and stepped into the cage. Wilmette scooped up goblin after goblin and with a practiced manner, unshackled them.

I charged while they were still disorganized, a quick slash and then another slash and two goblins were out of the fight and bled into the dirt. They would die eventually, though they would probably be in shock for the next few minutes. The third goblin who was unshackled looked at me in fear, as I began to charge at it.

Then I felt a rock hit my feet, and I tripped. Somehow my legs were trapped on something. I looked up, and Wilmette smiled as he put down another rock. I saw life and nature magic glowing from that rock and looked at my feet and saw that a similar pattern of life and nature magic was holding me down.

The goblin that had once been terrified was slowly approaching me, while Wilmette was now quickly scooping goblin after goblin and depositing them into the cage with me and unshackling them.

I threw my knife, and it took the goblin in the eye, with the life magic that I’d embedded into the blade before entering the cage almost half it’s face was ripped away. I concentrated quickly on the magic holding my feet. It was an incredibly simple spell.

Feces and rocks started to rain down on me, and I could hear the pitter patter of little goblin feet as the first ones there were unshackled were charging at me.

I couldn’t panic, I needed to stay calm. Instead, I flooded the spell that was holding my feet down with life mana, sort of like what I had done with the exploding chipmunks. I made sure to target Wilmette's cast runes only and not my feet. But I needed to act fast.

The first goblin got to me and a stone knife started to arc in my direction. Still concentrating on trying to blow up the spell I rolled and thrashed out of the way of the defending blade and for my luck only took a cut in the shoulder, another goblin got there and he stabbed at me and I got a deep cut in my side.

Then the spell gave out, and my feet were free. With my full concentration, I twisted and used the leverage of the dirt to bash the legs out of a goblin with my head. It stunk.

A knife thrust from a stone dagger took me in the stomach, but it didn't lacerate my skin deeply enough to kill me instantly. The pain was almost unbearable. Another almost got me in the side. But now my short sword was in play. I had never dropped it, but I couldn’t use it while lying in the dirt.

A deep uncontrolled slash and the one who stabbed me in the gut also got a deep cut through its breastbone that, when you considered the excessive amount of life energy I was pouring into the blade in my semi-panicked state it acted as if a chainsaw had ripped through the goblin’s chest. The sweep of my sword continued onward, only slowing down a little, and angled itself into the next goblin standing beside it.

The final goblin up close charged madly and suicidally. I pulled my sword out and held the blade straight, like a boar charging a spear, and that goblin embedded itself on my edge and continued running until its guts slid all the way down to my hilt.

The last two goblins were clinging to the sides of the cage throwing feces and twigs at me. But I had a deep cut in my stomach that would kill me if I left it much longer, so I moved to the furthest part of the cage away from them, concentrated and set wave after wave of healing energy targeted there.

The wound closed up. It wasn’t gone, and it still hurt, but it was good enough since I was in no danger of dying in the next few minutes.

The rain of debris continued to rain down. I’d never really gotten used to the horrible stench. Even when I cleaned out Mr. Bigglesworth’s cage, the smell of his filth was horrendous. But for combat, I’d figured out a few simple runes to channel wind magic away from my nose, and it blocked the smell somewhat.

Ready again, I picked up one of the dead and dying goblin’s stone knives. I concentrated and filled it with damaging life energy that I used on my sword and when it was ready, ran forward and as soon as I was close in, tossed the goblin's knife up and threw the stone blade at one of the goblins.

The knife hit. Not by the blade but it didn’t matter since the whole thing was deadly to anyone touching it except me. The simple brush of the stone against the goblin’s skin was enough to cause a horrible welt on its body, and it fell off the side of the cage in pain. Then I walked over to it and stuck my sword into its chest.

The last goblin was a little harder but not much. It managed to dodge three thrown stone daggers, but the fourth one I threw took it down and it too died with a sword buried in its guts.

I turned and glared at Wilmette.

“Wut wuz that?” I said. “Wut wuz that before we start?”

“Kill gobbles too easy. I give unexpected. Always look unexpected,” Wilmette said. Or Killing goblins was too easy. He was adding an element of the unexpected, and I should always look out for the unexpected.

“My blood,” I said.

“Wah. Wah. Cry itty baby,” he said.

I let the matter drop. Someday there would be payback. Though whether I would rip Wilmette's guts out when he was sleeping or name my future children after him remained to be seen.

The rest of the day was spent cleaning up the cage and resting, and doing my best do drive Mr. Bigglesworth crazy. Out of sheer boredom, I had created a laser-pointer spell, and when Wilmette wasn’t around, I would casually sit beneath a tree about 4 yards away while a tiny red dot would randomly flick around my pet Goblin’s cage.

Who'd have known it, but goblins are like cats after taking a catnip shower when they see a red dot. Who would have known it?

I also took a few short naps, well out of sight of the campsite.

Wilmette was, of course, off somewhere out of sight torturing and breathing in the life goblin’s essence. He always kept at least one of the green skinned almost humans after the fight as his own. Sometimes he kept two. Either way, he would be gone for a couple more hours, and I didn’t feel like doing anything productive.

Besides I had a plan.

That night I pretended to sleep. And when Wilmette left the campsite four hours later I followed him, hidden in the shadows, dark by my new spells to his mage sight.

Slowly through the deep night air and guided by the starlight we made our way to the dungeon. It was the first time I had been back here since I had found it months ago. Wilmette had warned me to keep away. According to him, this was his dungeon.

Which was bullshit. But I let him think it was his since there was nothing I could do to take it away from him.

In the darkness, I could see that all around the base of the trees there were rotting corpses of goblins. Some were staked out and tortured. Others had been stabbed and had been left to rot. The air smelt of death.

The foliage made a perfect wall that filled with thorns. Somehow I expected a dungeon to be a hole in the ground, leading to a cave system. Instead, Wilmette began to climb a massive tree whose branches grew in places where an adult could easily climb.

Looking through the darkness with my mage sight I could see death energy from branches surrounding the climb up. Dead goblins. When Wilmette had first gotten here he must have had to climb that tree, the only path into the dungeon, while goblins pelted him with rocks, knives, arrows and their own turds.

Now I could see places in the tree were dead goblins lay in hidden nooks, ready to stick knives in an unsuspecting climber.

But the aura of death was everywhere. This part of the dungeon had already been cleared, and the dungeon was either incapable or unwilling to respawn the creatures that filled these trees.

By now Wilmette was lost in the canopy of trees. I slowly made my way to the tree he’d climbed and started to scrambling up the branches behind him.