I sank to the floor, too exhausted and in pain to move further away. I needed some rest, and I had to do some healing.

After taking another drink from the rapidly depleting gourd of water, I first attempted to create makeshift bandages. First priority had the stomach wound, which was gushing blood with every heartbeat. It was not exactly a fountain of blood, but I couldn’t afford to lose that much that quickly. Yes, amber mana should allow me to heal some of the damage, hopefully enough to survive, but I needed time for that. And I was not sure if amber mana could replace blood.

I ripped apart the sorry remains of my t-shirt and, with a grimace on its dirty appearance, created a few bandages to hold against my wounds. They immediately soaked full of blood, but it was better than nothing.

Despite the reduced bleeding, I could feel myself getting lightheaded and weaker by the second. There was no time for subtlety, so I simply pushed the amber mana into the stomach area with the image of healing the gaping wound – it was ad hoc and lacked any detail in the image, so I didn’t expect a considerable improvement. But it had to do. Given the blinding pain and the time pressure, I simply couldn’t afford to dabble around trying to improve the efficiency of the healing.

Immediately, the pain lessened substantially, and I leaned back with a sigh of relief. A few minutes later, I took off the bloody rags to peek at the wound and saw with amazement that it was partially closed and crusted over with scab.

Shaking my head, I leaned back and took a few deep breaths, trying to ignore the metallic smell of the copious amounts of blood, and the odor of piss and shit coming from the goblin corpses laying uncomfortably close to me.

Unable to move, I was just sitting there, trying to regain the energy to start moving again. And there was no way to avoid the sight around me… four dead goblins, illuminated by the flickering light of the torches they had dropped to the ground. Four deaths that I had caused. Sapient beings. And two more in the other room. Just like that, I had ended six lives, snuffed them out like candles.

And I had nearly paid with my own life.

For what? A skewer of meat and some water? Was that the value of a life?

Sure, I could argue that it was them or me, or that they were savage brutes, just as likely to kill each other as dying by my own hands…. But the fact was that I had been the executioner.

So many deaths since I had come to this world.

With a pang, I realized that I had not even thought about my parents at all during these crazy last couple of days. I hoped that they were fine and didn’t grieve too much. Knowing my mom, though, she would be crying her heart out.

At least I was glad that they had not been in Lake Placid yet when all of this happened… not sure how they would have handled things. Which made me think of all those people in Lake Placid that had lost loved ones to monsters and the threshold criteria of whatever magic had transported us to this world.

I didn’t have kids myself, luckily, so I could only imagine how terrible it might be for those grieving parents. And I strongly suspected that those kiddos were stuck in the netherworld, likely for all eternity. A shiver ran down my spine just thinking about that empty space and the lack of meaning and identity of those souls trapped in there. I had not shared my harrowing experience with anyone but Annie, deeming it none of their business. And, perhaps, it was a blessing of ignorance for those that indeed had lost someone - better to have uncertainty than to know for sure that something terrifying had befallen your loved ones.

Fuck those depressing thoughts!

Where did all that come from out of the sudden anyway? Killing a few goblins made me melancholic? Those fuckers had it coming for them. Sapience or not… it was them or me.

With a groan, I slowly lifted myself off the ground. All told, my muscles felt surprisingly good. Weak, yes, but it almost looked as if my arms and legs were getting some definition, which was ridiculous, since just the previous day they had been all flaccid and flabby.

Soon I might be able to flex in front of a mirror again and actually see something move! I had to chuckle at the image in my mind. Of course, that depended on my getting back to civilization at some point…

So, I had to get moving. It was just a matter of time before more goblins would show up. So far, I had been lucky.

And, of course, that jinxed it.

I could hear the door to the kitchen slam against the wall of the hallway and a menacing voice shouting guttural commands. The noise of metal scraping on metal, and many sturdy boots hitting the ground painted a grim picture of my chances for survival.

Running was out of the question, with my leg injury and the low energy level. So my only chance was to somehow hide. Based on the reaction of the goblins during the previous fight, pulling the black mana into my skin was a fairly effective way to camouflage myself, at least as long as I was not right next to some light.

I grabbed one of the torches and tossed it as far as I could down the third corridor as if I had rushed down that hallway and dropped the light on the way. Hopefully, that would split the group and give me a chance.

Then I rolled the bodies of the dead goblins on top of the remaining torches, filling the hallway with the smell of burning flesh and a lot of smoke from singed hair and burned clothes – ideal for me to hide in plain sight.

I covered my skin with black mana, and, gagging slightly, draped the bloody and smelly bodies of two of the goblin corpses over my chest and legs.

Just in time, it turned out.

Not even a second after I stopped moving, the first goblins arrived at the intersection, milling around the area. Thanks to their uncaring nature, something I had counted on with my risky gambit, they mostly ignored the dead bodies of their fellow goblins, which allowed me to remain unseen for the time being.

The goblins were mostly armed with swords, daggers, or axes, and a few of them even wore a random assortment of ill-fitting pieces of chainmail and boiled leather.

After a few seconds, I was getting worried that the goblins would just stick around, but then the largest goblin in the group, about a head taller than the average goblin, with broad shoulders, and a massive sword, at least relative to the goblin’s size, barked several commands in his rough guttural voice and the group of goblins split up in groups of five, each going into a different hallway. Clearly, my attempt at fooling the ugly cretins by throwing a torch down one of the corridors had not worked as well as I hoped.

I held my breath when the group of goblins rushed past me, but evidently shouldn’t have been worried – they caused such a racket that it drowned out all other noise and any glance in my direction simply skipped over my body as if I was not there.

Luckily, torches are pretty poor sources of light, contrary to common D&D rules or Hollywood movies. And the flickering light actually played into my hand, because it made my camouflage of shifting shadows that much more effective, especially when surrounded by other bodies.

Unfortunately, the big goblin had stayed back together with two smaller sidekicks. I had hoped that perhaps I might be able to slink back toward the kitchen and get out through the other exit there, avoiding all the heavily armored goblins, but to do that, I had to get through the big guy and his two cronies.

Quietly.

Which seemed a long shot.

But it was not as if I really had much of a choice. And if I couldn’t do it quietly, I had to do it quickly, instead.

Carefully, I wriggled my way out from underneath the goblin corpses and, crouching next to the wall, sneaked slowly toward the intersection. The large goblin stared into each of the hallways, one after another, and periodically cocked his head to the side to listen for any noise.

Perhaps he was waiting for a sign of the goblins having found me, maybe it was that he was wary of an attack.

But regardless, I was sure I could still get the first attack in, because no matter how prepared he was, if I came jumping out of the dark, at most he’d be able to defend. And I needed to make that first strike count because I absolutely couldn’t afford to have a drawn-out scuffle. Once the big guy was down, I hoped that the smaller ones would be easier pickings, or even run away.

My body was shaking slightly, perhaps from nervousness, or maybe the rush of adrenalin, or possibly because I was fucking weak. As I was getting closer, my temple began to throb, and I got a kind of tunnel vision, locking in on the heart of the goblin, trying to will my weapon to cleanly strike a vital spot and end the fight before it would even begin.

And then the shit hit the fan.

The group of goblins down my passage must have found something because they started shouting in the distance. Immediately, the big goblin grabbed its sword and jogged into the corridor, straight toward where I was, followed by the other two.

And I acted like a deer caught in the headlights – I just stood there, frozen in shock.

Thoughts raced through my brain, as I was trying to figure out what to do. Hide? Too late. Run away? I would get caught between the goblin and the group further down the passage. And it was only three goblins after all… so I had to fight!

And, ultimately, it played into my cards that the goblin was moving – he was going to be slightly less alert and be making noise himself, masking my approach.

All of this went through my head within a second. And then it was time to act.

I jumped out of the shadows with the sword aiming straight at the goblin’s chest, but he was a lot faster and alert than I had expected. He turned slightly to the side, and, rather than impaling him through the heart, my sword skidded off his metal shoulder pauldrons, leaving only a shallow scratch on his upper arm.

Before I could lament my poor execution, his riposte slashed toward my head, and I had to contort my body awkwardly to bend out of the way. The sword whistled a hair’s breadth over my head and smacked into the wall – which was my chance. Instead of lunging at his chest, which he clearly had expected, I rushed past him and slashed my sword down into the back of his poorly protected leg, cutting through ligaments and muscles. While that was not a killing stroke, it would take the goblin out of the fight for the time being, which was all I could really hope for. The goblin grunted in pain, immediately tried to turn around and tackle me, but instead stumbled and fell to the ground when its leg gave out.

I didn’t stick around to finish the goblin, but instead turned around and put my sword in a guarding position in front of me.

And none too soon.

The other two goblins raced down the hallway right at me, screaming wildly and brandishing their weapons, a rusty dagger for one and an ax for the other. More than a head taller, I had the advantage of reach over the two goblins, but that would only help me against one of the two.

Before I could decide on a good plan of action, the two goblins were on me. I tried to keep them at bay with the tip of my sword, stabbing at either one coming too close to me. And after I had managed to poke one of them in the chest, causing a thin trickle of blood to run down its shirt, they stayed back, neither one willing to take an injury just so that the other one could get through.

We were at an impasse.

If I had been in top shape, I was sure I could have taken them without too much difficulty. Alas, I was not, so I struggled to just keep them back. At the moment, the goblins were faster than me, and, it seemed, slightly weaker, but had, obviously, no formal weapon training – their idea of an attack was simply to stab or chop, irrespective of the angle they were at.

But there were two of them.

Even worse, the sudden movements had opened many of the wounds I had suffered previously, and I could feel blood slowly seeping through what few clothes remained on me, which, at that point, was pretty much my pants and socks.

The pain was a distraction, and I could feel the blood loss making me slightly light-headed again. The longer this fight was going to last, the smaller my chances for coming out of this victoriously.

So I had to go for it.

I fainted high on the goblin with the ax. Predictably, it raised its weapon to deflect the blow. The other goblin saw the opening I had provided and lunged at me with its dagger stretched forward to stab me in the side.

Which was what I had expected.

In the last moment, before my sword would have clanged uselessly against the shaft of the ax, I whipped it around and cut the attacking dagger-yielding goblin across the side of the neck, causing it to instantly collapse

Rather than try to move my sword back en garde, I used a sidekick on the ax-goblin’s unprotected abdomen to give me the precious second I needed to get back in position. At least that is what I tried to do. The moment I was lifting my leg for the roundhouse kick, I felt a body slam against my other leg, throwing me off balance – the big goblin had gotten back into the fight at the worst possible moment.

Cursing, I flailed around with my arms to try and keep my balance, but to no avail. At least, I managed to fall on top of the big goblin and slam the pommel of my sword into the back of its head in the process, temporarily dazing it.

Before I was able to use the tip of my sword for some real damage, I heard a grunt from the other goblin and saw from the corner of my eye the ax descending rapidly toward my head. I managed to lean back just a tiny bit and, instead of splitting my head, the ax blade carved a deep gash down my cheek, before hitting the big goblin underneath me with almost full force, cleanly separating its spine.

This was fucking hilarious.

Despite, the wounds, the pain I was in, and the stress of being in a life-and-death situation, I had to laugh. Which probably came out as somewhat deranged, especially with blood pouring down my face.

The ax goblin stared at me with bulging eyes and slowly backed away, whimpering. Laughing even louder for the sheer weirdness of it all, I stood up and raised my sword menacingly. With a screech, the goblin dropped its weapon, turned around and ran away as fast as its short, spindly legs could carry it.