Things had changed; I was no longer entirely in the better spot. Even though I was at the top of the ravine, they could now shoot across from the two bows they had. So I backed up just a little so that I was in the brush, which would make it a bit harder to get me, and then started the rush out and hit gremlins game.

I would wait till one of the little ones climbed out of the ravine, and then I would kick it back in or knock it back in with my staff. I figured with a few kicks and falls to the ground, they would die, and I wasn’t giving them much of a chance to shoot me since I was moving from cover.

They seemed to not fully understand how to aim, and several of the gremlins were shot off the wall. But unfortunately, our impasse wasn’t on my side for the long term. Sure I could keep knocking them off the edge as they came, and I was killing them as I was going, but I would have to have a break at some point.

With around 40 of the little ones, and it looked like approximately 10 of the bigger ones, they stood a great chance of winning this in the I’m dead way. What I needed was a way of taking out a group of them or even taking them at range. None of which I had.

After about ten minutes of me killing the little guys and getting shot at, a lucky arrow found my right shoulder. It didn’t go in deep, but this made them a little crazy, and so the 8 bigger ones without bows jumped down into the ravine and started making their way towards me. They were yelling at the little ones, and if a little one was too slow, it would get knocked out of the way.

Anyway, I looked at this; it would be a nasty fight. So then, I scanned one of the bigger ones and saw that the name wasn’t a gremlin but was a goblin.

Goblin Bully

HP 22

Weight 40 lbs

Armor rating 1

Weapons

Worn Bronze knife

Goblin Bullies use gremlins as hunting dogs. They will send out groups to run animals down and then come in to kill the tired animal.

Goblins tend to work in groups of around four or five as they fight with each other if there are too many. Larger groups tend to either be led by a war chief or shaman.

Yeah, this wasn’t going to be good no matter what. I could do at most 5 damage if I didn’t use fire strike, and if I did, I could do up to 10 with the strike for a total of 15, and this guy could take that and then some. The good thing is that I had just a little bit of time, so I might be able to use that to help me. I started to do my ritualistic dance for a medium casting of my fire fist. I figured that if I could make it two minutes, then the added fire damage would be helpful.

It was about the 90-second mark when the first of the goblins came up and over. I polled it in the face with the end of my staff, and it went back over. Next came two, and I went for a swing at one of them and saw that Blink attacked the second. She wasn’t waiting for it to get fully up. No, Blink went for the hands as they came up. She raked her claws against the hands as they had the goblins’ full weight on them. Then one that I was swinging at ducked right at the right moment, and I whiffed the goblin, which put me off balance as it came at me.

It hit me low on the right leg with its shoulder, and I buckled and went down. As I went to one knee, it pulled a knife on me and jabbed it into my back. Which hit my pack and was caught in the frame. Blink then pounced on the goblin and bit at its face. I jumped up as fast as I could, and the goblin fell off my back. I wanted to finish it off, but I saw another fresh one come over the edge.

Right as it came up, I planted a side kick to its face, and it went over the edge. As it fell, it took the one behind it down. This gave me just long enough to see that the one that Blink was fighting with was standing and clawing at her. The goblin had its back to me, and so I hit it with my fire-strike that I had been building. It caught fire and started to scream and run.

I turned back to see two more standing on the ledge. One of them had unslung a mace; it looked huge for the goblin, which meant that it would be a one-handed weapon for me. The other one drew a short sword that it was using like an arming sword.

The one with the mace was on my right, and it came at me just a hair faster than the sword guy. It started to swing, and I backed up. The little guy was using a weapon that was too big for it, and as it swung, it went off balance, and with me moving, it went right to the ground. As the end of the mace made contact with the ground, I hit with everything I had on the guy with the sword. I figured that he was the one that I needed to worry about the most. I made contact with a fully charged up staff. I just thought with the mana that I pumped into fire strike and the strength that I hit it, I should’ve been at about my max damage. The end of my staff took the goblin on the left side of its chest. My strike was rising from the bottom left and snapped into its ribs, catching its tunic on fire. The goblin faltered and fell, thrashing around.

The one with the mace had recovered and was swinging at me again. Happily, his aim was off, and he spun in a circle when he missed. As he was turning, Blink pounced. It was over quickly and with lots of screaming and blood.

The sword goblin was back up and was now charging me again. Right as I would strike, I felt a sharp pain in my left thigh as an arrow found me. The arrow stopped my movement, and the sword goblin cut down on my chest, slicing through my armor and hitting my sternum.

I snapped my staff up to hit the goblin again and caught it across the head and saw it cave in. There was a satisfying crunch and a small amount of brains falling out of the skull as it went down. Then, as I was about to reach to break off the arrow, I heard Blink hissing, and I turned back to the ledge to see the last three of the goblins all coming at me.

The middle one was the biggest he had on his head, a chainmail coif that draped down to around the tops of his shoulders. In his right hand was a cleaver, and in his left hand, he had a seax. He was genuinely spitting mad, with foam and everything, and he was charging right towards me with his cleaver high and his seax low.

The one on my right was the smallest he was using a hatchet like an axe and was also running at me. He had a look of pure animal anger. The one on my left had the first proper spear that I had seen. But, sadly, it looked like it had been a longer spear that had been hacked off at the end. He was a little behind the other two but already had his spear pointing at me.

All three of them combined weighed less than me, but they had something that I didn’t. Metal! Which meant that even with their weakened swings, they could do some significant damage. Also, with there being three of them, it would make it harder for me to defend.

As great as a battle buddy Blink was, she didn’t communicate very well with me. So falling back on my training from being a teenager, when fighting more than one, you use your opponents to block your other opponents. You try to never split them but always go to the outside. So I had to pick do I go left or right, axe or spear.

I chose to go for the spear and took a long step to my left as I used my staff to ground the tip of the spear. The ugly guy did the rest of the work I needed, and he buried the point with his speed right in front of the big guy who was turning. This made a big guy trip. Now while the big guy tripped, spear dude was still going forward, and so he tripped. This created a small goblin pile right in front of me.

Axe guy kept coming, and he went to the right of the mess since he was already there. I took another step to the left as the axe swung, and he tried to compensate for the move but was terrible at swinging and put the hatchet/axe in the back of spear dude. Spear dude screamed, let go of the spear, jumped over big guy, and tacked axe guy.

As big dude was getting up, I was behind him and dropped the tip of my staff right on the small of his back with everything I had. It was a lovely crisp textbook staff strike on a fully supported surface. I heard bone break and saw his back buckle as he went down. I started forward to engage the two that were fighting when I felt an arrow take me high in the back. Yeah, the archers were still there taking shots. The other arrow missed me and got to the ground.