Tulkuth woke from the vision, the strange musty smells of Earth invading his nostrils. It smelled humid. Like water. He’d only heard stories about the times when water, life-giving water, would fall from the sky back on Heloth. He hadn’t experienced this on Earth yet, but maybe today would be the day.

Since he’d undergone the metamorphosis a few days earlier, his senses had been sharpened to an unbelievable degree. He could tell how many Turuks were in the camp at this moment simply from the combination of smells and noises. He could also taste the flesh of the delicious livestock in the air.

But he put these thoughts aside. It had been three days since he’d first had the vision. A ‘man’ with pitch black hair and eyes, moving silently in the shadows. In his hands was the dagger that the Devourer, Hekamuth, had blessed him with when Tulkuth had crossed over from Heloth to this new place. He knew that having the same vision over and over again, from Hekamuth nonetheless, was most definitely not a good sign. The Devourer was not known for his patience. He would have to find this man, and quick.

One of his trusted scout leaders had run off with his precious dagger a week ago, and he had killed five of his kin in a fit of rage that day. There had been enough blood essence for the dagger to soon produce yet another Blood Crystal.

Thankfully he’d hidden away a few Blood Crystals in the case of an emergency as such, and had been able to successfully speed up the metamorphosis from a week long process to an overnight one. The looks on the faces of his ‘rivals’ had been priceless, and worth all of the groveling he’d had to endure over the years. He’d stabbed them promptly.

He rose from his bedding, made with pelts of the strange animals that seemed native to this place. A few of them had four eyes and two pairs of wings like the regular animals of Heloth would, but they always seemed to be in pain or mad. Strange.

He also took the gnarled staff he had used back when he had simply been Tul, instead of Tulkuth, before the metamorphosis. It was a bit small for him now, but he’d need it until the plants of Earth finished adapting to miasma and he could use them to fashion a new staff.

He raised the flap of the tent and took in a deep breathe, assessing the layout of the camp. The human livestock stared at him with empty eyes. As delicious as they looked, the feast would have to wait until he’d recovered the dagger. He had directed the tribe, his tribe, he realized with an elation, to continue to hunt animals, but to bring back any humans alive.

He had hoped that one of the scouting parties would bring back the black haired human, but instead, many of them had gone missing themselves.

The high shaman of the First Tribe had warned them all that this might happen, that it wouldn’t be long until that the creatures of Earth started adapting to the higher levels of manna, the life-force of all things. Earth was turning more dangerous for the Red-Kin, but the damn Duruks would never make a deal with the smaller Turuks. The muscle bound fools thought themselves the lords of Heloth’s deserts with their largeness and tusks they so admired. If there had been just a few more years of food on Heloth, the Turuks would have drowned their puny tribes like a vast ocean of blood.

He had been sipping his favorite soup from one of the skulls that had been lying around when a commotion arose from one of the entrances. It seemed to be two humans making the racket, and the guards lay at their feet, a barely recognizable bloody mess.

Tulkuth immediately screamed a war-cry and roused the camp, pointing at the offending humans to be bound and brought to his feet. His tribe hurried to their feet, picking up the crude spears and knives they had fashioned from the some of the rocks and wood that seemed resilient to their manna. The dimensional rifts, to their dismay, did not allow them to bring anything but their bodies, minds, and spirits.

They were a male and female pair, or a man and a woman. The woman was a strong warrior. She turned into a tornado of metal with axe in hand every time one of his own warriors closed the distance. And the ‘man’... That was the human from his visions!

Excitement boiled and spilled over like a steaming pot of stew.

Tulkuth had not been sure how many more visions he would have before The Devourer simply devoured him instead, but it seemed he wouldn’t have to worry about that anymore.

He gathered his manna, invoking the blood and spirit of his ancestors.

Then the humans turned tail and ran, and Tulkuth nearly choked on the spell he had been about to utter.

Why would they flee so suddenly after apparently having challenged his tribe at the mouth of their camp?

Over and over, he screamed at the tribe, all of the tribe, to chase them, chase them and bring them to his feet. He wouldn’t fail, not after everything he had sacrificed to rise from being a runt of the litter, to enter this new world of bountiful food, to finally gain the true form of the Turuk which had not been seen in generations for the lack of food.

His tribe would hunt down the puny humans, and-

Pain blossomed from the back of his knees, sides, and then the neck, and Tulkuth stumbled to his knees, choking on the blood that flooded his mouth.

Suddenly in front of him was the human with the black hair, eyes glowing as fiercely as the Earth’s strange sun, as he stabbed him multiple times in the chest with the dagger he had been searching for.

Tulkuth slipped away into the embrace of the First Mother confused, wondering how the human could be in two places at once.

-----

Noel ran through the streets, arms pumping furiously as the entire fucking goblin tribe chased her with an ungodly ruckus..

She’d grown a bit stronger in the last three days, but not nearly as much as Ed had, who’d probably be able to outrun these fuckers in a flash. Or probably beat up half of them.

All pride aside, she’d really have to ask him if he would train her after all of this.

He did owe her a ‘favor’, after all.

The figure of Ed running in front of her outpaced her, seemingly skipping playfully as though this wasn’t a life or death situation, and suddenly jumped over a large portion of the road ahead.

Noel grit her teeth and followed suit, just barely sailing over the mark that they had placed this morning.

The horde of goblins ran over each other trying to get to Noel, who had stumbled and slowed, when the ground fell underneath their feet. They fell a distance of ten feet and impaled themselves on sharpened stakes, on which Ed had spent all of his free time in the last three days. He had quietly whittled the sticks Noel scavenged for him with an intense focus, even though his eyes didn’t glow like it sometimes did. It had been kind of creepy.

Noel was panting like a dog, but she took a deep breath and rose to her full height. She turned back to face the remnants of the goblin tribe, who were milling about with panicked cries as they watched their kin die slow and painful deaths. There weren’t many of them.

Noel grinned viciously. Ed had told her she grinned viciously, and she'd liked hearing that.

It was time for these fucking invanders to get a taste of what that could be like, coming from the other side. She hefted the axe that had saved her life multiple times over the last few days, and felt the energy burn through her body like a torrent of fire.

Besides her, a white monkey hopped about, flitting from the tops of ruined cars to the ground and back again in an excited frenzy. She let out a roar, and jumped.

-----

Ed remained with his gaze locked with the hobgoblin as life slipped away from its eyes.

Having gotten used to the dagger in the last few days, he could feel the dagger swell with the hobgoblin’s blood essence as it greedily drank.

It was more blood essence than he’d gotten from the last three goblin scouts he’d ambushed with Noel combined.

There were a couple of goblin stragglers, either injured, old, or young that had been left behind in the camp, and Ed hunted them all, eyes shining in the shadows. By the time he was done, the dagger had produced another Blood Crystal, the third Blood Crystal he’d produced with the dagger.

He deactivated the Dao, pure exhaustion hitting him with the force of a truck. He had really pushed himself to his limits today, using the Dao of True Sight for the hyper-focus and awareness to dodge the goblin’s attention and find the ideal route for infiltrating the camp.

Noel’s distraction had been a lifesaver.

Ed remained standing, despite the weakness entering his limbs. He still had one more show to put on, after all.

He walked over to the center of the camp, where the hobgoblin’s tent had been. He would loot it later.

He passed the tent and approached the reason he had worked so hard in the last three days.

“Hello. I’m here to free you.” he said.

A dozen gazes looked back at him blankly as rain began to fall, mixing in with the tears that rolled down their faces.