Monster Empire

by Michael-Scott Earle

  Not only would I have to fell a shit-ton of trees, but I would have to plane the logs and cure them somehow. The roof was going to be a lot of work too. Besides that, I needed to set up a wall, booby traps, and other fortifications. We were close enough to the river to not have to worry about a well, but given how dangerous this place had already proven to be, I wanted to create a home where we could hold out for weeks if need be, and that meant having our own water supply at home.

  The more I thought about everything I needed to do, the more I realized that I didn’t even have half of the tools that I was going to need. At some point I was going to have to go to Hamstead or some other village for supplies and tools. Given how quickly Nika had wolfed down the dozen trout, it seemed that I would need to procure much more food than I could get by fishing and trapping alone. I thought about foraging for extra food but ruled it out for the time being. This world was a lot like Earth, but it was a hell of a lot different in other ways, and I wasn’t about to risk eating wild berries or mushrooms that I thought were safe. Maybe I could procure some seeds in a nearby village that could provide us with the vegetables we would need to maintain a balanced diet, but for now, we were going to have to get by on fish and whatever else I could catch.

  Nika returned an hour later and reported that she hadn’t found any entrances to the underdark. She rubbed her stomach when she said it, and I thought that it already looked a little bigger.

  “Are you hungry again?” I asked.

  “No, but the baby is,” she replied with a mischievous grin.

  “Oh yeah? Does the baby want more fish?”

  “Yes, many, many more fish.” She nodded happily. “Why don’t you go catch some more, and I’ll tidy up the house?”

  “Sounds like a plan,” I said as I guided her through the break in the wall where the door had once sat, “but first I want to show you what I have in mind. This stone wall is in good shape, and so are the fireplace and chimney. I plan on replacing the walls, obviously, but I want to dig out a root cellar as well. I’ll need to build an outhouse too, and a shed or a barn wouldn’t hurt.”

  “What is an outhouse?” she asked.

  “A place to go to the bathroom,” I explained.

  “What is a bathroom?”

  “A place to shit,” I explained bluntly.

  “Ooohhh,” she said as she scrunched up her cute little nose. “That is a good idea. In the goblin city, we have holes in the stone that go down hundreds of feet called poop chutes.”

  I chuckled and planted a kiss on her cheek. “Nika, I don’t have the tools to build the house properly, so I have to go into one of the nearby human villages and get some.”

  “Like Hamstead? That sounds dangerous. Should I make you a disguise?”

  “Wouldn’t hurt. I sure can’t go to the village dressed like this. But Nika, it worries me to think of leaving you out here all alone, what if--”

  “I’m a goblin, silly, and we are experts at hiding and sneaking. Tomorrow you should go to town for supplies and not worry. Today, you should catch more fish, okay?”

  “Alright, that sounds like a good plan,” I agreed and kissed her on the cheek.

  While Nika tidied up the shell of our future home, I went back down to the river to catch more fish. If this morning was any indication, she and the baby were going to need a boatload more, and I made a mental note to buy a net since the kobold net was unfortunately too big to catch fish with. I knew I was a pretty good angler, but catching enough fish with poles was going to be tedious, and I had a million other things that I needed to do already.

  At the bottom of the hill, I noticed a patch of clover that appeared to have been munched on, so I made a quick detour to search for a rabbit den. I didn’t find any in the immediate vicinity, but I figured there might be hares around, so I put down my molle pack and took out the snare line. I figured that if there were any rabbits about, they would go through the underbrush leading to the clovers from the forest.

  I found exactly what I was looking for after a quick search. There was a small game trail leading from the forest through the underbrush, and I carefully set a hoop snare along the path. Content with my work, I returned to the river and dug up more worms.

  Two hours later I returned to the future site of our home and found that Nika had fashioned a broom by attaching some stiff grass to a tree branch with some sort of thin vine. She sang to herself as she swept the floor, and when she saw me, she lit up. Or maybe it was the fifteen fish I was carrying.

  “Oh, good,” she said. “I’m so hungry. You’re such a good provider.”

  “I thought it was the baby who was hungry,” I teased.

  “Him too,” she said as she grabbed one of the fish hanging from my line and bit off its head.

  “You mind if I cook some of these up?” I asked. “I’m a fan of sushi and all, but I prefer them cooked.”

  “I don’t know what sushi is, but I’ll clean them for you while you get more firewood,” she offered.

  “Thanks.” I handed her the fish and wondered if any of them were going to make it to the fire, and then made my way back down the hill.

  I checked my snare wire while I was out, but to my dismay I hadn’t caught anything yet. If I could catch a rabbit, not only would we have another source of food, but we would be able to use the hide as well.

  I didn’t know if this planet had seasons or not, or if I was near the equator, but I thought it couldn’t hurt to prepare just in case winter was on its way. Maybe in town I could learn more, but it would be tricky to work the idea of winter into a conversation if the seasons never actually changed, and it would immediately mark me as an outsider.

  The nearby forest offered a plethora of dead wood, and I stacked up a big pile close to the river. Then I used my finger saw to cut down a few small oak trees for larger firewood and hacked off what limbs I could with my spade. The larger branches required the finger saw again, but soon I had four twenty-foot long trees and a pile of branches. I went through the stack with the shovel again and hacked off the small branches that would come in handy when setting up the new lean-to.

  Once I had prepared the trees and branches for transport, I returned to our site and dropped off my molle pack. It took me five trips up and down the hill to transport all the wood, and when I finished I plopped down on the half wall of the cabin and drank greedily from the water tube that connected to my pack.

  In the time it had taken me to haul the firewood to the site, Nika had cleaned all the fish and laid them out on a smooth stone. She had also found time to fashion herself a skirt out of long woven grass.

  “Do you like it?” she asked as she twirled for me. When she did so, the leaf skirt fanned out and gave me a peek at her toned green ass.

  “It looks great, how did you make that so fast?”

  “I’ve been making my own clothes all my life, silly. Every goblin knows how to do it, or else they just go naked. You can tell who is not very smart by how well their clothes are made,” she explained as she gestured at me. “When I saw you and your clothes, I knew right away that you were very smart.”

  “Sorry to burst your bubble, babe, but I didn’t make these clothes myself,” I admitted.

  She frowned, but then her features brightened. “Ohhh,” she said. “You must have been very rich on Earth, or else a king. Were you a king?”

  “No, I told you, I was… I mean, I am a warrior.”

  “Then who made your clothes?”

  I shrugged. “I guess factory workers. You know, people who are very good at it. Everyone where I come from usually has one job, and some people’s job is to make clothes. We have entire stores full of outfits, but most clothes are made by people in other countries.”

  “Are they your slaves? Are they people you have conquered?”

  “What? No, they get paid for their work. But not much I guess.”

  She shook her head. “Earth sounds like a very strange place to me. You are lucky you are here inste
ad, Ken Jewell.”

  “All I know is that I’m lucky to have met you, Nika.”

  I forced myself to get up from the half wall and set to building a fire. The fireplace was nearly two feet wide and offered ample room, but we didn’t need a big fire, just enough to cook the fish over. The night before had been mild, perhaps sixty-five degrees, and Nika and I had stayed warm beneath my military issue blanket.

  Once the fire was going and the fish were cooking, I started work on the new lean-to. I wedged three of the straight branches that I had procured into the eastern wall and made sure to keep the center pole slightly taller than the two outlying poles in case of rain. Then I tied the end of my tarp to the poles with rope, spread it across the frame of the house beside the fire, and attached it to the half wall. The resulting shelter wasn’t permanent, but it would do for now. There was no indication of rain coming, and even if it did, we would stay dry beneath the tarp against the shelter of the half wall.

  Satisfied with our camp so far, I sat down with Nika and ate fish on the hill overlooking the river. It had been a long day, but both suns were still out. I noticed that they were roughly in the same position in the sky as they had been the day before when I fell into the ocean, and I consulted my watch. Forty-eight hours had passed on Earth since I got here, but only one daily cycle had transpired on this strange new planet.

  No wonder I felt so bushed, I had a serious case of interplanetary jetlag.

  After we ate, I decided to take a nap, and Nika insisted on massaging my tired feet. Before she got started, I realized that I needed to make some sort of bed for us. Nika had already started working on a woven mattress, but it was going to take some time before that was ready. In the meantime, I had an idea.

  I retrieved the net that the kobolds had used to try to trap me and held it over the fire with a stick until I got the stink out. It needed a good washing, but for now fumigating it would do. I used a few of my straight branches to make two stabilizer bars, one on each end of the big net, and then tied off both ends to the half wall with my rope. The result was a hammock cocoon of pure bliss, and I happily sank into it as Nika took off my boots and began rubbing my feet.

  Then I was out in a matter of seconds.

  I had hoped for dreamless sleep, but ever since my first tour in Afghanistan, nightmares had haunted my rest. This time I dreamed of an angry mob of pitchfork-wielding villagers chasing Nika and me through the forest. The angry voices of goblins soon joined the human’s, and they demanded that we hand over the baby. Nika’s belly was fat and swollen, and as we ran through the underbrush and tangling vines, she started to go into labor.

  “Give us the child!” the goblins chanted.

  “Burn the traitor, kill the goblin!” the humans countered.

  Nika stumbled, and I took her up in my arms so that we could get away. I pumped my legs and urged my body on faster, but it was no use. It seemed that the harder I tried, the slower I went, and I soon found myself slogging through thick mud.

  A giant basilisk suddenly appeared in front of me, and I screamed as it sprang toward us.

  “Nika!”

  I awoke with a start and swung for the imagined basilisk. It was a dream, of course, and I sighed with relief as I lay there in the hammock.

  Nika strode in then with a handful of long reeds, shook her head, and put down her load. “What are you doing, silly? You should be sleeping.”

  “Bad dream.”

  “Awww,” she said as she reached out her fingers and scratched through my thick hair. The feeling was exquisite, but I knew I should be getting to work.

  “I’m okay,” I said as I looked up into her beautiful face. “Thanks for the scalp massage.”

  “Of course, Ken Jewell. That is why I am here; to take care of you, make you food, make you clothes, and make you lots of strong babies. I’ll get back to work.”

  I untangled my feet and shook off the final remnants of sleep. Then I took a long drink and poured some water over my face. As I pulled myself together, I glanced at the suns. One was a few hours from setting, and the other was just a little bit past noon. It looked like I had napped for about six hours, but I felt like I had been blindsided by a truck and just woke up from a three-month-long coma. I didn’t know if my exhaustion was from the heat of the holy twins or some kind of UV rays that I was unaware of. Maybe it was just hunger. It was a challenge to eat enough fish to replace the calories I was burning each day.

  “Are you hungry?” Nika asked. “I cooked up the croc meat, it’s on the stone by the fire.”

  “Oh man, thanks, Nika,” I said as I eagerly moved to the fireplace and sat down to eat.

  “You are welcome,” she replied. “I know that to have a strong warren, it must have a strong leader.”

  Nika had grilled the croc meat on long pine branch skewers balanced on rocks beside the fireplace. It was a little tough, but it had a hint of chicken flavor that I enjoyed, and I felt much better after I had filled my belly.

  My stomach replenished, I set about my tasks for the day. I still had a lot of work to do, and night would be upon us sooner rather than later. The croc meat and water had squelched my immediate hunger, but my mind was still on food. I remembered my snare wire, told Nika I would be right back, and raced down the hill.

  When the snare came into sight, my excitement died. From my angle it looked like I hadn’t caught anything, but then my eyes widened as I moved closer and beheld my catch. Caught up in the snare was a big fat brown rabbit, and the catch caused me to give a triumphant whoop as I hurried to untie my snare.

  I raced back up the hill to show Nika, and when she laid eyes on the catch she burst with joy. “Yay!” she cheered. “But what is that monster?”

  “This, my love, is a rabbit. Trust me, you’re going to love it!”

  Before I cleaned the hare, I wanted to build a proper table. I had gathered about a dozen wrist-thick branches that would work well enough, so I set about the task of preparing them. With my finger saw I cut the wood poles down to about two-and-a-half feet long. Nika used my survival knife to shave off the bark and the more stubborn knots, and soon we had ten pieces for the table top. Next, I sawed four thicker branches down to two feet. These would act as the legs. Once the pieces were the correct length, I cut two more branches to support the table top from underneath.

  While I had been sleeping, Nika had spent her time finishing the bed and weaving vines and grass into strong cordage. I thanked my lucky stars again for the brilliant goblin woman and used some of her rope to secure the branches for the table top. As I tied the cordage, Nika offered me some good ideas about how best to wrap the wood together. Her advice was clever, and an hour after we had begun, our table was done. We still needed chairs, but the table would do for now.

  “Alright,” I said as I rubbed my hands together. “Let me show you how to skin a rabbit.”

  Nika watched me cut the skin off intently, but I had a feeling she could have performed the task easily. Once the hide was removed, she set it on the drying rack next to the crocodile skin, and I started to quarter the hare. I would have liked to make a stew, but I didn’t want to risk eating anything that I wasn’t familiar with. I had seen what looked like leeks, and then there was the clover patch, but for all I knew such plants were poisonous here.

  “Hey, Nika. Do you know anything about the plants on the surface? Like what is alright to eat or not?” I asked.

  “Oh, I don’t know much about the plants here in the sunlight. In the underdark, we eat mostly mushrooms and meat. Sometimes the males who go raiding brought my father different food from the surface, but he usually kept it all for himself or used it to impress his stupid friends.”

  Once the rabbit was ready, we skewered it with sticks and set it over the fire to cook. Soon, the thin white meat began to sweat its aromatic juices, and the scent made my mouth water like a hungry dog’s.

  I pulled it off the fire it twenty minutes later, unable to wait any longer. Then I handed Nik
a a stick with a thigh on it and took the other one for myself. We blew on the food, smiled at each other, and then laughed when I huffed on my scalding first bite. I juggled it around in my mouth while she giggled at my antics, and then I laughed at her when she did the same. The rabbit was greasy and delicious, but I wished we had another half-dozen or so of them to eat.

  We finished off the rabbit meat and watched as the first sun set in the west. The tops of puffy clouds burst with violet and dark blue that changed to yellow, orange, and fiery red toward the bottoms. Together, the two suns were as bright as my own, but with only one in the sky, a slight twilight descended upon the new world.

  Content with our most recent meal, Nika and I got back to work. I fashioned a pair of chairs out of my straight branches and Nika’s cordage while she continued to weave her vines and grass. The conversation turned to my home and my parents, and I did my best to keep the information on a narrow path where I could easily explain my soldier job without all the political aspects.

  By nightfall Nika had finished the bed. It consisted of two seven by five-foot grass woven sheets with soft grass sandwiched in the middle. The padding was about six inches thick, and she had even made a couple of woven pillows to go with it.

  I had been hard at work digging a shithole and a box made from branches to act as a toilet seat. Nika’s cordage came in handy again, and I used it to secure the branches that acted as the walls of the outhouse. The finished product wasn’t anything you’d see in Better Homes and Garden, but it got the job done. All that was missing was toilet paper, so I had to settle for some tufts of balled-up grass instead.