Gate, gate, gotta focus on finding the gate. I don’t even know what it looks like. The little dragon was no help at all, falling asleep in the bright sun. I didn’t get a feeling of hostility from him, but damn he was heavy. He made the board gradually sink and I had to keep pumping mana into it to reinforce the levitation.

A whizzing arrow flew by my head, the instincts of keyed up nerves keeping me barely alive. Turning sharply on the board, I whip it towards the nearest goblin hiding behind a tree trying to put another arrow in his bow. Jumping off the board to the river shore I hurl a tremor through the earth as I land on the sand, knocking down the little fucker and his unseen friends. Their surprised cries enlightening me to their location. Springing forward and driving my knife, Gungnir, into the first one’s chest was satisfying. Gungnir turned into a mace as I smashed the head of a second goblin five feet away and then into a spear as I channeled another earth tremor through it to the surrounding area. There were about twenty goblins that I could feel with my magical senses, and I could hear a bunch more in the surrounding brush, their shrill cries alerting the rest of their number.

I stabbed Gungnir into the soft sand with both hands, “Protect me and kill goblins!” I yelled, testing out my staff. Might as well see if it can do shit on its own since I decided to dive into combat without a solid plan. I called water from the river to me, forming two solid ice maces that I reinforced with constant mana from my pocket generator and capping all of my armor with overlapping scales. Fueled by unending stamina from the amulet, it was a slaughter. Ice maces crushing goblin skulls while their blows bounced off my ever-present mana shield, spikes of earth ripped through their wimpy small bodies as the trees themselves answered my call to battle. Their rugged roots tripping them showering leaves to impede the goblins vision. It almost didn’t feel real, the battle. It was too easy. I was a storm of slaughter and they were grass before my momentum. Sinking their bodies to mask the evidence and stench took more time than the battle. Using the water I had called to me, I rinsed off the green blood and banished it, though I still kept my shield active. Can’t let my guard down. I could feel the Gate, it wasn’t far away. Now that the goblins were dead, its magical signature was far easier to feel.

“Nasty little fuckers. Never taste good, no matter what planet you’re on.” The tiny dragon with no wings sauntered up next to me. “The only thing keeping them alive is the amount of fucking they do.”

“Ok, ok! Shut up, I really don’t wanna picture that!” I snapped, “Got more important things to do than worry about goblins.”

“Haha, don’t know about that, you leave two goblins alone and you’ll have thirty running around in two months. They’re your version of locusts.” He replied.

“What’s your name anyway?” I asked, realizing I may have given offense to this powerful creature, his demeanour making me treat him like a fellow human.

“Gorgorath. Close enough to what you can pronounce.”

“Well, I’m calling you Rath, with one ‘R’, easy to pronounce and similar to ‘Wrath” with ‘W’.”

He squinted at me, “Fine, you’re lucky I’m in a good mood right now. Just gimme some of that raw mana rolling off of you and we’ll be square. Hard enough being on this planet with barely any free mana floating around. I had to become tiny and everything. That’s why you won’t see any truly powerful beings yet.”

Aha! Leverage! I knew I had some, but didn’t realize it till now. My generators of mana put me head and shoulders everything else right now. There simply wasn’t enough mana to sustain most mythological creatures at this point, but that would change soon. I did have time, some, but I really wasn’t sure how much. The upcoming war for Earth possessed the tiniest possibility of being managed if I played my cards right. What I needed most right now was information, and this little lizard had it.