Gladil

Gladil had never really been one for face to face combat. Even back when he was in the Corps he was a long range sensor and archer who stayed back and peppered the enemy from a distance. His only real experiences from face to face combat could be counted on a single hand and none had really been life threatening, usually boiling down to a young boy with a knife cowering in his home while Gladil did sweepers for hiding soldiers.

Sometimes life just throws you a fast one though, and you need to react as fast as possible. After what felt like ages, but really only encompassed a breath or two, the tusked-menace launched itself across the room to punish the trespasser. It was armed with a stone spear so after Gladil fired off the single arrow he had prepared, he tried to unstring his longbow as fast as possible. Predictably, the cave goblin scrambled to the side and avoided the arrow before rushing to close the distance once more. Gladil’s fingers fumbled on the string and in the end he was forced to use his dagger to cut through the string. The sting as the bowstring whipped around and slammed into his leg was painful, but much less painful that the head of that spear looked.

Now armed with an unstrung longbow, the elf used his weapon like a staff to parry and keep the creature at bay. The floor boss’s spear was slightly longer than the bow, but Gladil had more reach because of his longer arms. It did not look like the creature had much experience with the spear, because rather than stabbing and slashing, it continuously tried to batter the elf aside as if it were using a club. After a few minutes of heavy breathing and grunting from both sides, the creature disengaged. Gladil had managed to get a few solid thwacks, but the wild unpredictable flailing left him with a few scratches on his arms. Added to the fact that his leg was still screaming at him from the recoil off his snapped bowstring, he was not looking forward to a battle of attrition.

It seems that his opponent had a similar thought process. The green humanoid tensed up, as if he were going to charge again, and then threw his spear at Gladil. Thanks to a combination of a poorly weighted spear and the elf’s reflexes allowing him to dive to the right however, the spear went wide and Gladil found himself an advantage. He rolled to finish his dive and jumped to his feet to swing his ‘staff’, but was quickly knocked aside by a charging creature.

As he attempted to get to his feet once more, he put his hand to his side. It came away wet, and warm. The floor boss had given up on using the spear and was now running on all fours with his tusks out as weapons as if it were a beast. A silent thank you was sent up, he’d been grazed in a passby rather than skewered on the end of its tusks. He’d have to be more careful and keep it at bay using his staff. Unfortunately it would take too long to restring the bow with his spare. He would have really appreciated the stopping power of a well-placed arrow, and if the spear was out of play then using his archery seemed a lot more viable.

Gladil’s plan to keep his opponent at bay with the staff did not seemed to be in the gods’ plans, and on the next pass by he managed to snap one of the tusks when the creature did not dodge the swing of his staff. His staff was pushed aside and the creature took him to the ground with a tackle. Gladil released the staff and held onto the still functioning tusk with his left hand as he pushed the creature’s face away from his own. It slashed at his arms repeatedly as he reached with his left hand to grab his dagger from where it was sheathed on his right side. It was very awkward but he managed to get his dagger out and slash at the boss.

This was nothing like disarming a human child, or breaking up a bar fight. The creature pulled its head out of Gladil’s grasp in order to shift its weight and kneed in his stomach while battering the dagger out of his hand in one swift motion. It then smiled down at him very maliciously.

The elf who had come so far was treated to the image of a mouth full of three rows of sharp needle-like teeth. It kicked Gladil in the stomach two times as it stood, and after it was sufficiently convinced the elf was not going anywhere anytime soon, it strode over to its discarded spear, intent to finish the battle the way it started.

As he lay there on the floor in pain he reflected on his life, not for the first time this day. He could only hope that judgement would be swift, and that he’d be dead before that creature started gnawing on him with those wicked teeth. A part of him had always known this dungeon would be the death of him. Ever since he first entered with Echil and was beset on upon by that spider. Ah, poor Echil. He may have been one of Gladil’s bigger regrets. The young elf had barely live his life, and Gladil should have been there to save him as he’d saved Gladil.

No! He couldn’t let it end there. His longbow had been kicked away by the boss creature while it walked over to its spear, which it had retrieved and was currently licking for some reason, but the dagger was still almost within reach. His legs were not responding but he managed to crawl over and lay upon it as the creature walked over to him. It was not a throwing knife, and he would never be as good at throwing knives as the young rogue Echil had been, but it was his only chance.

As he’d assumed, the creature did not intend a swift death for him. He felt a kick to his side as he was laying on his stomach, dagger in hand, followed by a second and a third. On the fourth kick, he pushed himself upwards and allowed the foot to flip him in the air so he’d land on his back. There was a disgusting guttural noise that Gladil took for laughing, and the creature began prodding at his face with the end of its spear. The elf had managed to conceal the dagger in his right hand and not impale himself on it as he landed with it beneath his back.

The creature straddled the fallen elf and continued laughing at him. Drool descended from its maw and spattered against Gladil’s upper neck and chest, splashing onto its face. Finally, the one-tusked green monster brought its spear into a two-handed overhead hold, with the spearhead pointing downwards at Gladil’s maw, as its laugh reached a crescendo, then the laugh was cut off with a dagger impaling the roof of its mouth. It dropped the spear, which ended up impaled in his left arm, and staggered forwards before falling on the elf.

There was a moment of silence in the cave as nothing moved, a silence that stretched on to eternity. A slight dripping of water was all that could be heard and the silence was almost deafening, only to be interrupted by a cacophony of coins ringing out against the cave floor. Gladil snapped out of his stunned silence as he realized that he was still alive. He’d lived through the fight, and come out the other end a victor. The ringing of the coins had died down by this point but the cave was soon filled with the sound of elven profanities and grunting as he pushed the dead creature off of him, followed by sound of a battle-fatigued and injured elf vomiting the contents of his stomach onto the corpse of his slain enemy.

He took a moment to collect the money dropped after pulling the spear out of his arm and using it to stand. He also collected his dropped weapons, including grabbing his dagger from where he’d propelled it into the cave of the creature’s mouth, where it had lodged into its brain, before staggering back into the safe room.

To his surprise the room was now brightly lit by moss on the roof that he’d sworn was not there a minute ago, and there was a fountain in the center of the room that had burst to life, surrounded by more brightly colored fungus than he’d seen before.

Hoping that they’d be more potent healing mushrooms than the brown ones he’d found in this room stumbling in the dark, he staggered over to the fountain. He ate a couple and drank some water before sitting down. He felt his wounds numb, either from blood loss or healing, and laid back to stare at the roof of the room. Gladil noticed that the room was significantly smaller than he’d remembered somehow, but that wasn’t the thought that was taking up most of his processing power.

The forest deity that controlled this dungeon had not given him an impossible task. It had merely pushed him to his limits and forced him to prove his dedication.

It was truly a god or goddess worth following.