We spent the rest of that evening doing our own practicing in the room. I learned that the earrings she was wearing had two basic commands to them: “I’m dressed,” and “I’m naked.” I was fascinated by this concept of ‘wind clothes’ and asked her a whole bunch of questions about them. Apparently, they do move as she moves, even though I first thought she might walk through them like sticking a hand through fog. She called it “aerokinetically fluid responsive”, and I just call it a ‘moving cloud’. The finer details of how it works, I’ll leave up to the wizards like Izzy to sort out and understand. All I need to know is it works.

I’d also asked about why she needed to go through the pain of being pierced in those places, and why the magic wouldn’t just work if she wore the earrings normally. That was to “minimize the amplitude of mystical resistance”. Her answers were worse than anything we normally studied in class! Apparently, what she meant here was simply, “the further the phantasm is from the enchanted item that’s creating it, the faster it runs out of juice.” Wear an earring on the ear, and have it make a phantasm across the hips, and it’d use about twice the energy as a phantasm just across the hips. From what I gather, it’s almost as if the magic had to make a whole dress, with a completely transparent top, just so the skirt would be there and look solid.

I finished stitching up my coveralls that evening. It wasn’t the best job, but it was better than leaving them all full of holes. Besides, since I’d used Izzy’s hair as the thread to sew them up, it was almost as if a piece of her was always with me.

Isabella went back to her insane stretching technique and was reading from her book again. She was determined to learn at least one more magic before we left here for good, but I didn’t ask which one. I’ll simply deal with learning what it takes to be a shield to protect her and she can be the one to worry about all that mumbo-jumbo magic stuff. Sure, it was impressive, but I didn’t even have the mysticism to open the book to learn it, and I saw no reason to spend a whole bunch of cheat points to be able to. I’ll just work up my skills elsewhere, and that’s exactly what I did.

Once my coveralls were all stitched, I grabbed the little goblin and dragged him by the scruff of the neck back into the bathroom where I’d ‘modified’ him before. I untied his hands and feet, and he just shuffled back into the corner away from me and whimpered and curled up on himself. I tried to work on my taunt skill after that for the next few hours, but I never could coax him into attacking me. In fact, at the end, the little bugger pissed all over himself, all over the bathroom, and all over me, and then fainted!

DING!

Congratulations, you gained a new skill: Intimidation (1)!

Dammit! That wasn’t what I was trying to do. I guess the fact that me and Izzy had already tortured the thing several times, along with the fact that it didn’t understand a single word of what I was yelling at it, combined to simply increase its fear and not its anger. Disgusted with the little beast pissing everywhere – especially on me – I went over and tied it back up while it was still unconscious.

Dragging the little bugger into the other room, I told Isabella, “Here. He’s probably lively enough for you to have a snack. Eat up and then come join me for a shower.” She put down her book and stretched like a cat before getting up, and then skipped over to the goblin with a hungry look in her eyes. I went on into the bathroom and started the shower and tuned out the runts little whimpering screeches. If he didn’t want humans to do him like this, then perhaps him and his kind shouldn’t do what they did to us.

A few moments later, Isabella came sauntering into the bathroom, climbed into the shower behind me, and helped scrub my back. “You know, I’ve been planning on how we can get past the Guardian safely,” she said.

“How’s that?” I asked while enjoying her gentle scrubbing.

“Well, it’ll depend on how strong that tail-spike you found off the Rat Champion is. If it’s something quite durable, and I think it is since The Guardian didn’t consume it, then we can use it to chisel through one of the walls.”

“You want to break a hole into the goblin area?” I wasn’t certain this was a great idea. Any hole we made into their home to get in, was one they could use to come out and get to us. “That might not be the best idea,” I told her honestly.

Isabella just giggled and then leaned forward and pressed her soapy front against my back and hugged me. “No. We’re not going to break into the goblin area. We’re going to dig a hole at the corner of the two rooms at the intersection of this north hallway and the west hall that leads back to the central hall and the goblins. Once we’ve got a hole chiseled out, I think we can lure the guardian around the bend of the two halls there, and then I can Flash Freeze it.

“Fire doesn’t work on the beast, as it seems mostly to be some sort of liquid gel, but I’m thinking cold might. If I can freeze it, that would trap it from moving for a while. We could go in the room on this hallway then, climb through the hole you chiseled out, and come out on the north hallway with the creature behind us.

After that, we can try and break though the goblin wall and into the main hall. You have a ton of health now, and if I’m at full magic to help support you, we can power our way past a lot of those things, I think.

“And, if things start to go badly, we can always run back the way we came. Even if the goblins try to chase us, I can flame the guardian to thaw it back out. Once it starts moving and they see it, I think they’ll scatter like the wind.”

It seemed risky to me, trying to power our way through the goblins like that, but we were getting to the point where it was time to take some risks. We’d both been training and trying to grow as much as possible just for this moment. Our food was dangerously low, unless we wanted to eat greenskin in the other room, and I didn’t much want to do that. Not that I wouldn’t, if I had to. I just didn’t want to. I didn’t really want to eat rat either, but they’d been our staple food for the last few weeks.

Finally, I just nodded. “We have to try something. If worst comes to worst, I’ll hold them off and you get back here and make certain to hide until I can come back and join you. It doesn’t seem like these things are crawling out of any more cracks like they had been, so there’s only a limited number of them. And after today, there’s five less to worry about.

“When I first encountered the rats’ nest, I wandered in there and they swarmed me in massive numbers. I had to lure them out, a few at a time like what happened today, and whittle down their numbers before I could deal with the Champion. They aren’t coming back, and we can gnaw at them like a dog chewing a bone, until eventually we wear them down to nothing.”

Stepping out of the shower, I shook myself as dry as possible. We didn’t have any towels anymore, so I just made do by standing there and drip drying. Isabella turned the water off and got out right afterwards, which kind of surprised me. I was still used to her having to spend extra time to wring her hair out and all, but with it short now she didn’t have that problem.

Finally we went back to the main room and I pulled the cushions off the couches and pushed them together to form our make shift bed. I laid down first, and Isabella giggled and told me to, “Move over. You sleep on the other side tonight.”

I wasn’t certain why it mattered which side I slept on, but I slid over and then turned around to face her as she climbed down beside me and wrapped herself up in my arms. She turned and snuggled her back to my chest and then pulled my arm down so that I had her breast in my hand. “Sorry,” she giggled, “but the other one’s still tender, so I’m just going to use the other arm for my pillow tonight. You can kiss or hold it tomorrow if you want, but for now all you can have is the other one.”

I just nodded and then leaned up and tried to nibble on her ear lightly while gently squeezing the warm mound in my left hand. Sometimes she might say things which I couldn’t follow or understand fully, but even I could understand what she was saying tonight. She’d just pierced some place that was rather tender, hadn’t healed from it fully yet, and didn’t want me messing with it. I could respect that.

And like that, we passed the night together in each other’s arms.

The next morning I awoke to light little giggles as Isabella wiggled her soft rump back and forth against me. Since I’d already determined that something like this wasn’t going to break my ‘first’, I pulled her tight up against me and enjoyed a good half hour of front-to-back action. Once I’d finished, and I knew it was better to finish inside in her case, we just snuggled in each other’s arms for a bit.

Finally, Isabella stretched and got up and walked into the kitchen. “Hungry,” she asked?

I have to admit I was, but instead I said, “I’ll wait for a bit to eat. I want to take a look and see where Jello-Muncher is, and if there’s any sign that the goblins might have tried to come out this way to look for us.”

Isabella just nodded and put the wrapped up package she had back into the top of the fridge. “Give me a moment to grab a quick snack from our friend, and I’ll join you. I’m not going to wait in here this time for you to get yourself into trouble without me being around to do anything to help.”

I was going to tell her to just stay here and be safe, but I could tell from the determined look in her eyes that she didn’t want that. As she was recharging her energy once more from the goblin, I pulled the same pair of coveralls that I’d had on yesterday, on this morning. I grabbed up my club, tucked my tail-spike into my belt, and I cracked the door ever so slightly opened.

I listened for a few moments and heard nothing, and then cracked it a little wider so I could see into the immediate hall. Since it still looked clear, I finally opened the door and stepped on out. Both ways were currently clear of anything, so I motioned for Isabella to come and join me.

As she came out into the hall, I started down to the roof exit. I didn’t want Jello-Muncher to sneak up on us, after all. Slowly I went, glancing into the few rooms between the exit and us. I think something had been in these rooms last night, but honestly, they were such a mess it was hard to say for certain. Things seemed like they might’ve been moved or shuffled somewhat, but I wouldn’t swear to it.

The idea that something might’ve been through here last night put my nerves to edge, and I was starting to get paranoid when I rounded the corner to head up to the roof and almost walked into a goblin coming down it! He screeched and yelled seeing me. I roared seeing it. I don’t even know what the little guy was carrying or wearing to be honest, but with my nerves on edge, I immediately flung my club the short distance between us and it smashed with a loud WHUMP into his groin.

Now, I don’t know if they’re built to feel pain like we are or not, but this one crumpled and tumbled head over tail down the steps to crash into a heap at my feet, where I promptly stepped on his head as I rushed up towards the door. Right as I got to the door, another goblin with a spear was starting to come in it. I could tell he didn’t expect me to be there from the shocked look he had on his face as I grabbed his arm, turned and tossed him over my shoulder to crash down at the bottom of the steps.

I didn’t pause to see if I’d killed it. I didn’t even listen for the ding to confirm if he’d died or not. Isabella was behind me, and she could burn those two bastards to death, or else grab them and pull the life out of them easily enough. I had faith that she could handle two injured goblins as I rushed out onto the roof like a mad bull. I wanted to get up there and see how many I was dealing with, so I’d know whether to tell Isabella to get back to safety or not.

Bounding out onto the roof, there were five of the little green men there, and they charged me as I charged them in return. Three tiny little spears jabbed into me, and I barely felt it. I’d currently trained my life up to over 180 points, and even with three of them poking me at once, I lost less than 25 health. They weren’t going to take me down that easily again!

I grabbed my tail-spike from my belt, yelled my battle cry -- “BOOBIES!!” – and leaped onto of the little goblin in front of me. We crashed into the ground together, and I stabbed away at the little beast several times as blood splattered, until it quit moving. As I was stabbing it, the other goblins were stabbing away at me, and I lost another 35 life.

As I finally jumped back up and spun to face the little creatures, I saw something unexpected in their eyes. Fear. Even though they had me outnumbered, I could see that they were frightened almost out of their minds. I suppose I’d be scared too, if something barreled into a group of me and my friends, we filled it full of holes, and it kept coming for us!

The four were cautiously circling around me now, and holding their spears out to keep me away. I guess they thought any rational being would wait for an opening before trying anything. I wasn’t rational. I just charged the little guy in front of me and let him thrust his spear into my gut as I ran up it and stabbed him in the face a few times. This time, when I spun to face the other three goblins, they were backing away and starting to move towards the stairs.

The spear was still sticking out of my side, I’d pin cushioned myself with it by charging ahead as I had, and that one blow had did another 30 points of damage to me, and I was bleeding. Still though, I had about half my life left, so I rushed at the nearest goblin. As I did, the other two screeched and screamed and ran towards the stairs to try and flee.

I was stabbing away at the goblin I’d caught when I saw the first one that rushed through the door fall back out with a spear stuck deep in its chest. The last goblin just froze, torn between the fear of me and the fear of the unknown whatever that had killed its companion. Before it could decide which fear to try to make it past, two blue balls of flash whooshed out past the entrance of the steps and set the creature aflame. It staggered and crumpled to its knees as another two balls followed the first and it finally just flopped face first, burning, on the ground.

As quickly as it had all began, it was over. I took a quick moment to inspect the scene around me. Several goblins full of holes, one burning away, with Isabella rushing up onto the roof and heading my way, while I stood there with a spear thrust through my gut.

I guess that just goes to prove: Sometimes even the best laid plans of men and goblins go astray. Advertisement Support "The 8th Day" PayPal Patreon Previous

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