by Deck Davis
Ash looked around. Across from him was a cozy-looking farmhouse with ancient stonework and a thatched roof. There was a giant barn nearby. Most of the ground was dirt and grass, though Ash saw cables snaking along it and lead to generator. To offset the stone walls that surrounded the ranch, someone had planted beds of flowers. This was a place where you could feel safe, but also feel at home.
“Let’s go see Marg,” said Tony, and strode off across the yard.
They found Marg around the back of the ranch underneath the shadow of a large elm tree. She was sat next to a plastic foldaway desk that had ham radios stacked on it. Overhead was a plastic canvas designed to protect the equipment from rain, though it was rare that it rained in Pasture Downs and it’d usually be foretold by the appearance of mean looking clouds. The sky was completely clear today.
Marg was a big woman who looked like she’d win an arm wrestling contest with a barbarian. She wore tight-fitting blue jeans, and a blue shirt with the sleeve rolled up to reveal tattoos on her arms. She had a cigarette hanging out of the corner of the mouth, and it moved up and down as she talked.
“This is Shore 08, is anyone picking up, over?” she said into the receiver.
The radio crackled. Ash couldn’t tell if it was someone trying to talk through a bad signal, or just interference.
“This is Shore 08, say again?”
“Hello!” said a voice on the radio. “Name’s Clyde from the…”
Marg’s attention was drawn away from the radio and to the wall on her right, where a wooden structure clacked against the stone. Ash was shocked to see that it was a wooden ladder that had been propped up against it. Soon, the green head of a goblin emerged at the top of the ladder.
“We’ve got a green-skin,” said Ash.
It jumped down, held its dagger aloft, and ran at Marg, its mouth opened to show razor sharp teeth, and a shrill war cry sounding out.
Marg lazily picked up a revolver from the table, aimed it in the goblin’s direction without looking, and fired. The bullet tore through the creature’s forehead and it slumped to the ground. Marg set the gun down, took a drag of her cigarette, then picked up the radio receiver.
“Sorry hun,” she spoke into it. “You were saying?”
Tony laughed and marched forward. He and Marg enjoyed a sickeningly hug-filled reunion, after which Tony introduced her to the survivor group.
“This is Ellie, her son Jake – I’ll explain later – the young guy is Chad, and this asshole is named Ash. Remember the blue orb I found? Well this young ass-squirt found one too.”
Another goblin climbed the ladder leapt over the wall and sprinted so quickly that it had reached Marg before anyone had time to react. Tony raised his rifle but Marg was quicker, pulling a knife from her belt and stabbing it under the goblin’s jaw. She pulled it out, wiped it on her jeans, then faced the group. She gave a beaming smile.
“Pleasure to meet you all,” said Marg.
The pleasantries were interrupted by the sound of more ladders clacking up against the wall.
On the opposite side of the yard, something thumped into the metal access door, raising a booming sound that seemed to shake the walls.
“Chad,” said Tony. “Go and check what the heck that is. There’s a peephole in the door.”
“Yes, sir!” said Chad, giving an exaggerated salute. He ran over to the gate.
The green faces of goblins appeared at the top of the ladders now. How many were there? He counted eight ladders and eight hideous green beasts. God knew how many were still waiting to climb up.
Tony raised his rifle and fired off a shot. The bullet ripped through a goblin’s cheek and knocked him off the ladder. A chorus of squeals rose up, and seconds later another goblin appeared above the wall.
They leapt over the walls, and landed in the yard. More followed, clambering up the ladders with urgency.
Tony’s rifle cracked once…twice…but with each dead goblin, another appeared.
The ones in the yard wasted no time in having their weapons handy. Ash saw a mix of ragtag equipment ranging from rusty axes to blood-stained short swords.
“They’ve cut a tree down to make a god damned battering ram!” shouted Chad.
“Ellie, get Jake inside,” said Ash. “I’ll go and deal with the slutflaps with the battering ram, and you guys can slaughter the green-headed cunt-sticks in the yard.”
He ran across the yard. There was an almighty crash, and the gates shuddered. He wondered how much force they could take.
He needed to act quickly. If the gates burst then they’d be facing a fight on both sides.
Ash climbed the wall next to the access gate and fired a chain of Ignis at the goblins. The flames took hold and scorched them one by one. The creatures screamed in agony as the arcane flames licked their skin.
When they died, their battering ram hit the ground with a thud. Ash Life Drained them like a greedy vampire sucking a virgin’s blood.
Behind him, a mixture of gunshots rang out. Magically charged bullets from Tony’s rifle zipped through the air. Marg’s hand-cannon boomed, while Ellie and Chad chose their shots wisely and picked off the goblins at the sides.
More and more of the goblins streamed through. No sooner was one wave finished, then another, even bigger, one would take its place.
Tony shouted as a goblin stabbed him in the arm. He dropped his rifle. Ash blasted the goblin with Ignis, knocking it ten feet across the yard.
They started to tire. Tony grabbed his rifle, but he began to miss his shots. Marg was slower in reloading. Chad’s M16 jammed.
Swarm after swarm came over the wall until the yard was filled with the stink of frog-skinned bastards. It was as if there was no end to their ranks. He cast a quick look at the ladders.
Phew. No more were coming over. Now they just had to deal with the ones in the yard.
Two goblins approached Chad. One leapt up and latched onto his head and began scratching his face. Chad frantically tried to shake him off, while the other goblin stabbed him in the thigh. The soldier stumbled to the ground.
“Leave him alone, you bastards,” said Ellie. She pressed her revolver against a goblin’s head and blew a hole in its skull.
Ash used his chain Ignis when he got a clear shot. The problem was that the smaller minion goblins were under the command of slightly taller ones, and these ones seemed to possess a shred of intelligence. When they realized how many of their soldiers Ash could kill, they began ordering them to move further apart and put as many obstacles in their way as they could.
Clever goblins was the last thing they needed.
The swarmed at them on all sides. Ear-splitting screeches and high-pitched squeals filled the once-quiet air. The yard grass was trampled, chickens who flocked from the now-broken coop were slaughtered in the chaos.
“What did the chickens do to you?” he said, and scorched the groin of a goblin who’d just stabbed one of the birds.
Rifles cracked, Ignis flames flew through the air. Gradually, the group were forced back.
“Keep it tight,” said Tony. “Don’t let them surround you, and take your shots carefully.”
The group hemmed in toward each other. It meant that the goblins couldn’t surround them. Together, they fired their guns while Ash blasted flame balls.
The fight felt like it lasted hours. In reality, only ten minutes had passed by the time the last goblin fell, though Ash was soaked in sweat as if he’d run a twenty-hour marathon.
The ranch was littered with dead goblins now. Some of them were peppered with bullets holes, while others were charred black from Ash’s Ignis flames. As he walked through the yard, one goblin, clinging onto its last seconds of life, grabbed his leg and raised a dagger. Ash lifted his boot and stomped its head, killing it instantly.
“We better loot them,” he said. “See what they have. Potions, gold, anything. The alchemist won’t accept dollars, only gold coins.”
Ellie had suffered a gash to her a
rm, Chad had a scratched face and a stab wound in his thigh, but the worst was saved for Marg. The woman was tough as nails, but right now she had a knife-cut running from her chest down to her stomach. Blood poured from the tears in her ripped clothes.
“Ash, can you do something?”
He needed to top up his own HP badly, but Marg had the pesky problem of being mortal, and he sensed he wouldn’t get much of a welcome in the Shore ranch if he let Tony’s wife die.
Ash used Blood Share on Marg, draining HP from the dead goblins and into her until her wound began to close.
"Thanks," said Tony, kneeling next to his wife.
Ash's own HP was still pitiful. He’d used too many Ignis blasts and Transfusions during the fight, and now he was down to just 25. He needed to heal.
Luckily, there were still plenty of dead goblins littering the yard for him to drain. Life Drain level 2 meant he would be able to drain all the corpses all at once, filling him with lovely goblin life force.
“God damn it!” shouted Tony.
“What?”
“Watch out!”
Tony struggled to raise his rifle. Marg spun around, but she was too slow.
Ash had no time to react before a goblin behind him, a devious little creature who had must have been playing dead, got to its feet and ran towards him.
No time for Ignis.
He drew his dagger, but he wasn’t quick enough.
The goblin sunk its blade into his spine. Crippling pain washed over him, made him feel sick. He moved away, dizzy with the feeling that the dagger was still lodged in his back.
A rifle shot boomed out.
Ash raised his hands to cast Life Drain, but his was too late. His meagre HP drained instantly. The world around Ash faded to black.
Chapter Twenty
The Kraken Has Arisen
He awoke in a bed, tucked up tight under a duvet sheet with a power ranger printed on it. At first he wondered if he was waking up from a crazy night on the town, and that everything that had happened was just a dream concocted by his drunken mind.
He struggled to wrench himself free of his, admittedly quite comfortable, bondage, before finally getting his arms loose. He sat up. He was in a child’s room, that was obvious, but Tony hadn’t mentioned having a kid.
Mornin’, sleepy balls, said FF.
Nope, definitely not a dream. Was it morning? Ash had lost all sense of time. He got out of bed to find he was naked except for a pair of purple briefs.
He rubbed his head. The remnants of a headache rattled around his skull.
“What happened?”
We died, said FF. We respawned a few miles away from Pasture Downs, near where you left your car. Tony Shore drove out looking for you after his mind-construct told him that you’d come back to life.
Ash rubbed his head. “Is there a way of setting my own respawn point? Otherwise, death’s gonna be quite an inconvenience.”
There’s a way to set a respawn point…but Dr. Aitken must not have known exactly how, because I don’t have that knowledge.
“I better cancel my career as a stunt driver, then. No point travelling miles away only to die only to respawn next to this shit bucket town. So, this is how it feels to die, huh? Not as bad as I imagined.”
I haven’t told you about the penalties yet.
Ash sighed. “Go on then, FF, I know you much you love it.”
Well, you don’t get any EXP from the last battle, how’s that for a start? Also, you’ll get a 50% EXP reduction form future battles for the next day.
“Fine, I don’t give a badger’s cock about it. We’re not leaving the ranch yet anyway.”
On top of that, your spell cost is doubled.
“For a day?”
For the rest of your life!
“I would criticize your sense of humor, but I’m guessing you’ll only tell me that you got it from my own mind.”
Correct. And yeah, I’m kidding. It’s for a day.
“Dickbag. Fine, I’ll wait it out. Anything else?”
I was saving this one for after I gave you the bad news. Kind of like giving you a cake after feeding you a shit sandwich.
“A delightful image. What is it?”
Transfusion level up to level 3! [MAXED]
- Mass transfusion; heal multiple creatures for the price of one
Blood Mage Tier 2 increased to 25%
“That eases the pain of death a little, I guess.”
Gaining a better Transfusion ability was great and all, but Ash really started to learn how to take better care of himself. For such a self-confessed asshole, he was doing an awful lot of healing, and sometimes he was doing it unnecessarily. Not with Marg, of course; he was hardly gonna sit back while she bled out. But did he really need to heal Chad when he cut his thumb? Did he need to Transfuse Tony’s headache away?
From now on, he’d only heal Tony in battle. They needed to start stocking up on healing potions from the alchemist, because relying on a Transfusion from Ash was unpractical. God knew if healing potions would work on Chad and Ellie, though. Maybe potions from Rapto would only be effective on people who’d fondled a blue ball.
“FF,” he said. “Is there any way I can program a spell? Like, set up certain conditions for it to activate?”
Sigh, said FF. We’ve been through this, Ash. Take your head out of your arse. Just think about what you need the spell to do, and as long as it isn’t mind-numbingly stupid, it’ll happen.
“You don’t actually say ‘sigh’,” said Ash. “You just do it. It’s a noise. You let out a breath of air in a frustrated way, like a guy who’s fallen in love with a hooker only to see her take cash from another man.”
Dr. Aitken was sometimes a little too literal in his programming, said FF.
Fine, thought Ash. Enough bullshit. What he needed was to set up his Life Drain spell to automatically activate under the following conditions:
1) His health was below 50%
2) There were corpses in the vicinity that he could drain from
3) He wasn’t already in the middle of casting another spell
“Did that work?” said Ash.
Looks like It’s logged to me.
With that done, he looked around the room. He saw a bookshelf full of kids’ books. The bright colors and simple titles suggested they were for someone under the age of ten. That meant that Tony Shore had fathered a child when he was in his fifties. Tony, you sly old dog, he thought. Didn’t know you still had it in you.
He found his black leather battle jacket left folded for him at the side of the bed, along with other clothes. He walked downstairs and found everyone in the kitchen. It was an old-style kitchen with cold stone walls. The smell of bacon was so strong his stomach twisted. Everyone was sat around an oval oak table, except Jake how’d he passed as he lay comatose on the living room sofa.
“Sleeping beauty wakes up!” said Tony, “And she’s lost all her looks!”
“The kraken has arisen!” replied Ellie, “And he’s taken a crap, named it Ash and flung it onto dry land!”
“You’re ugly!” said Chad.
Ash laughed. He was shocked to admit it, but he was happy to see them. He hadn’t known any of them for long, but it felt like they’d been through a lot together.
“Yeah, you might wanna work on your insults a little, Chad.”
“Come on,” said Marge, with a cheeky grin. “Give him a break. He’s not so bad looking.”
Tony stood near the oven top and flipped over a rasher of bacon. “Heard that,” he said. He nodded at Ash. “Have a bite to eat, and then I wanna show you something.”
“Gotcha. Any news?” said Ash, sitting down.
“We don’t need to worry about the power plant anymore,” said Ellie. “Marg spoke to a guy on the radio, said the plant is gone.”
“It’s gone? As if, disappeared?”
“Kind of. Turned into some kind of dungeon.”
“Guess that shouldn’t surprise me,” sa
id Ash. “Maybe we should go there.”
After having his fill of bacon and coffee, Tony excused himself and Ash and led him out into the yard. It was a chilly morning, and a wind lapped around the yard and shook the leaves from the trees. There was a stench coming from one corner, where all the goblin bodies had been piled.
“We’d appreciate an Ignis blast on them,” said Tony. “Thought about using gas, but we need to save what little we have.”
