“Isabella, come feed some on me.” I sent her the thought through the party chat system.

Her confused response was almost funny. “Huh?” It isn’t very often that I get to confuse her, and it always amuses me when I do.

“Not a lot, but we may have a little while before the goblins come to switch with lookouts. Take ten life or so, and use it to help recover some of that magic you used. I’d rather have you with too much energy in a fight than not enough.”

“And you can take 10 from me as well,” came Brandr’s quiet whisper.

“Gu.. guys!” Isabella’s thoughts sounded shocked, but it made sense to me. Who knows how long it’ll be before the next shift change. If it takes the goblins several hours before they have a shift change, we could heal and be drained several times in that period and restore a large chunk of the energy she’d used to make and maintain those phantasmal walls. And, if they showed up just moments after she drained me, ten points wasn’t enough out of my almost 200 to put much additional strain on my survivability.

“Just do it,” I told her, and she finally nodded.

Since she was already in the other room and near Brandr, Isabella placed her hands on Brandr’s shoulder and did a quick drain of her life. Izzy was getting quite a bit faster at the process, as leaching ten points was now done within less than a minute.

If the process hurt Brandr, she didn’t show it, and soon Izzy as silently slipping into the room where I waited with club ready near the entrance. We didn’t know when the goblins would show up, so the best we could do is stand ready and tense and be prepared to strike at a moment’s warning. Isabella feed silently, and then moved back to position herself around the side of the igloo. She shouldn’t be so easily seen there by any goblins that walked in, and she could easily dash around the corner and offer support to Brandr through the door if it was needed.

And then we waited.

And waited.

And waited some more.

I really am beginning to think that a warrior’s life was mainly large periods of waiting, filled with sudden short bursts of insane activity. In fact, hadn’t I heard something like that in a movie once? If I hadn’t, I should’ve. That sounded good, even to me.

As I was praising myself for my own wit, out of the blue a goblin walked into the room on Brandr’s side. With a quick swipe of her blade, the beast was cut almost in half. Knowing that our advantage now was surprise, I dashed outside and prepared to thump the goblins coming to my room upside the head mightily – and was instead only surprised myself to see my hallway still clear. Apparently either they don’t change shifts at the same time, or else the ones who should be here to relieve the guards in my room were just slackers and late.

Figuring I didn’t have time to ponder on the issue, I simply shrugged my shoulders once and then charged full barrel forward into the main goblin lair.

As I burst through the door and into the main area, lots of little goblins looked up in confusion in my direction, and I released my loudest and most powerful battle roar. “RRRAAAAAAARRRGGGGGHHHHH!!!!”

And all hell broke loose.

Little gray skinned female goblins screeched and threw whatever they were carrying into the air – a few threw towards me, but most just flung whatever they had in the direction they were currently facing. Mushrooms flew around; a dingy loincloth flapped through the air in front of me; a bowl and dirty water arced wildly through the air. The little females themselves were just as chaotic, dashing blindly forward and crashing into each other. Into me. Some crashed into the wall and staggered, and others tripped over broken furniture and junk and then tried to throw it behind them.

The little ones bouncing into me were nothing more than a slight nuisance. I was twice their height and probably three times their weight. A little goblin would bounce into me, and I’d simply trample over them. The problem wasn’t moving forward at this point. The problem was trying to identify the males in all the mayhem!

Glancing around frantically, I saw one on my left trying to grab a spear and throw it, so I turned and made a beeline towards him. As he drew back his arm to toss, I hurled my club across the distance separating us and hit him soundly enough that he did a flip over backwards. Not planning on giving him time to get back up, I pulled my spike from my belt and advanced on the dazed opponent.

As I was nearing my target, a slight sting of pain flickered into the side. Another male had dashed through the confusion and sliced across my right side with his short blade. Whirling to face the new threat, gave him time to slice me once again. A quick glance at my health confirmed that these weren’t much stronger than the ones we’d faced before. Both hits had only did about a total of twenty points of damage to me.

I still had over 150 left, which was unfortunate for the little guy in front of me as I turned and repeated jabbed him about his face and shoulders with my spike. He scratched me once more for minute damage before he finally fell to the ground in a bloody mess.

Looking back over, the goblin I’d thumped with my thrown club was now back up and charging towards me with his spear. With a battle cry of, “BOOOO BEEEEES!”, I dashed forward towards him and then twisted to the side the moment I saw it close its eyes to brace for impact. I suppose it’s an almost universal instinct to tense up and close our eyes when we think we’re going to crash into something.

The goblin’s spear lightly grazed my side, and the little beast ran stumbling past me. As he ran past, I spun and cracked my spike hard into his upper neck and spine, and blood sprayed everywhere. It staggered and fell, and now there was two less beasts to deal with that I knew about.

Brandr had mentioned a dozen males, but we’d killed at least five in the guard rooms – the four guards and at least the one relief goblin that I saw Brandr put down myself. If there were two that had shown up for relief work, then that means six was down. That means what? No more than ten left?

I was spinning and looking all around for the remaining males, when a blast of cold blue fire streaked surprisingly close in front of my face and a goblin smoldered and screeched off to my side. Seeing it, I charged the yelping goblin and quickly bore down on it, causing us both to crash to the floor. A few repeated jab, jab, stabbity-jabs later, a pool of blood started to spread out around us. Another was down, and I was slipping in the hot blood trying to get up to find another.

“Where,” was the only thought I sent to Isabella. She usually stayed back, so hopefully she could direct me to the next target.

“They’re down,” came Brandr’s quiet voice in response.

“I don’t see any more of the males moving,” confirmed Isabella.

Looking around, most of the females were cuddled up in a ball by now and hiding their heads between their knees with their arms arounds wrapped around them. Most were whimpering and a few were rocking themselves back and forth. Isabella was back near the entrance of the room and didn’t appear injured, and Brandr was calming cleaning blood off the edge of her sword on a goblin’s corpse. Her health had dropped very slightly, so something must have hit her at least once, but she too was still fine for battle.

Looking at myself, I couldn’t help but chuckle at the difference in our conditions. My health was still as high as either girl’s, but my appearance was once again blood covered and my clothes were full of small holes and slices. Isabella was a little sweaty, but as clean as ever; and Brandr didn’t seem to have any issue with the splatter on herself or her clothes now.

Only I truly looked like I’d been through a bloody hell from the brief, but furious battle. But looks really didn’t matter. The really important thing was, we’d conquered the first set of goblins!

Now just what the hell was we supposed to do with all these sniveling females? And which ones of these were the coveted "fruit makers"?