Fantasy Online_The Runestones of Tritinakh

by Harmon Cooper

  His half-formed Reaper skull takes shape on his head, handshakes with the drone, and soon, FeeTwix announces his discovery.

  “Luckily for us, murder is legal in Bluwid!”

  “Jatla blantakh trek tata ganakh blotae suutakh,” Zaena laments as she turns the corner to find Hiccup sitting on an overturned crate, a pair of teenage goblins before him, knife wounds in their backs.

  “Fick!” He spits a dragon wing out as soon as he sees the Thulean. Naturally, she dodges the projectile, and it just so happens to smack Ryuk in the face.

  “Dammit, Hiccup!”

  “Ha! Fick, kid, my bad. And Liz, did you just call me a dirty goblin with tits filled with sour milk?” Hiccup snorts. “That’s fickin’ one of the cruelest ones you’ve come up with yet! I’ll have to totally, totally, use that on Spew Gorge next time I see him. I told you all he’s technically my son, didn’t I?” Hiccup asks with his mouth full.

  Enway gasps. “You murdered these young goblins and…stole their food?”

  “Who fickin’ died and made you the morality police? Oh wait, they did. Fick yes I robbed these little ankle-biters fair and square. Any goblin with a half-ounce of brain matter knows better than to eat barbeque in a Bluwid back alley. There’s loads of gentrification here, Elfy, and one can never be too safe. Me? I’m all about gentrification, as long as I’m not the one forced out by high rent prices.”

  FeeTwix’s drone lands and he returns it to his list. “Wish I could have used you longer, buddy,” he tells the device.

  “So, we ready?” Hiccup hops down from the crate and burps. Nursing his lower back as he picks up his new Gilius Thunderhead Axe, which he has set sideways across a trashcan. “Besides, I had to test this shit out.” He burps again. “Fick, never eat dragon wings two at a time, kiddos.”

  “I hate you.”

  “Yeah, Liz? Well, I hate you, you hate me, we’re a happy family. And fick, did Dave give you some new duds? You look fine as a lizard can look!”

  Zaena’s angry glare softens. “He did. Do you like them?”

  “Do I like them? Fick yes, I do. I’d hate to see the kind of stuff Twixy’s fans do when they watch his feed.”

  “This way,” FeeTwix says, instead of engaging the goblin.

  “Well, at least let me clean my fickin’ paws.” Hiccup slowly bends over and wipes his filthy, dragon wingy hands onto one of the dead goblin’s tunics. The process of standing squeezes a small juicy squeak from the goblin’s nethercheeks, which he quickly blames on Wolf.

  “Just this way, I believe,” FeeTwix says as they exit the alley at its northeastern entrance. His eyes turn black. “I’m back everyone, just in time to tell you about an exclusive offer from McStarbucks! Ever heard of overpriced coffee? Of course you have, but you’ve never heard anyone complaining about McStarbucks selling overpriced coffee. Sure, they’re basically charging you eight to ten dollars for a few centimeters of milk and a couple inches of condensed coffee, but you’ve never been the type to question your retail overlords, and that’s why I, for one, welcome McStarbucks’ newest item, the Happy Latte McMuffin!”

  “That sounds interesting,” Zaena says as she hooks her hand around FeeTwix’s arm.

  Hiccup elbows up next to Ryuk. “What do you want, Hiccup?”

  “Easy, kid, just checking to see what Dirty D hooked you up with. Tell me he gave you a pair of truck nuts to hang from your lady choop.”

  “He gave me a shotgun,” Ryuk says, unaware of the term ‘truck nuts.’

  “Whatever happened to gun laws in Tritania? That shit doesn’t have a bump stock, does it? I’ve been writing my congressgoblin ever since I met that vain Swede: we need stricter gun laws here, believe you me.”

  He places two mechanical fingers in his mouth and whistles. “Wolfy, I need you.” Wolf approaches and Hiccup climbs on. “There, that’s better. Need to save my stamina for the fight.”

  FeeTwix finishes his ad read just about the time the Mitherfickers reach a narrow lane. Health code violations disguised as restaurants line the right hand side of the street; tchotchke shops and secondhand stores the other.

  Goblins seem to like a wide variety of collectables and used items, which may partially explain Hiccup’s constant looting.

  Enway stops in front of one of the thrift stores. “There’s always something interesting in Bluwid,” she tells Ryuk.

  “I believe that.”

  “And that, everyone, is what I call a dungeon.” FeeTwix nods to a two-story building on a hill. Lit by torches, the building is made of yellow and gray bricks. While it isn’t very tall, it is exceedingly large, easily the length and width of an entire city block.

  “What’s the plan?” Zaena asks, her chest inflating as she takes the lead. “The more goblins killed, the better.”

  “Hey!” Hiccup shrugs. “Actually, you’re right. Less goblins equal more poontang, loot, healing potions, and glory for me. I’m with Liz, let’s kill us some fickboys!” The goblin points his finger at the dungeon and Wolf charges.

  “Hiccup!” Ryuk clenches his fist as the goblin and the wolf continue up the hill.

  “Looks like we have a classic Mitherfickers plan here,” says FeeTwix.

  “What’s that again?” Enway asks, unable to hide the skepticism in her voice.

  “Kick ass, and then take names! Babe, can you hand out the leveling pills Dave gave us?”

  FeeTwix takes his pill and the others lift into the air, each finding their recipient.

  “It’s too big to swallow,” Ryuk says as he judges the size of the blue pill.

  “That’s what healing potions are for.” FeeTwix pops his pill in and takes a sip from a fresh potion. He passes the potion to Zaena, who does the same before passing it to Enway, who passes it to Ryuk.

  Once the pills are ingested, FeeTwix takes the lead. “Let’s go, and please, give the goblin his pill once we catch up to him!”

  (0)__(0)

  Hiccup has already started the first fight by the time the Mitherfickers reach him. The sky above them is dark, the battle lit by torches and interrupted by the shadows of passing foes.

  Now dismounted from Wolf, the goblin swings his big axe, both hands gripped tightly around the handle.

  Instakill!

  The head of a robed goblin sprays right just as Wolf leaps into the air to catch it. He lands, and starts whipping the head left and right.

  “Fick, Wolfy, I already killed that one!”

  “Goblin, eat your pill!”

  “Pill?” Hiccup calls over his shoulder.

  “From your hero, Dave.”

  “He is my hero, and I’ll take just about any pill he gives me.” Hiccup rolls his neck back and opens his big mouth. “Toss it in, Liz.” He gulps as soon as Zaena uses her ghost limb to transfer the pill over to his hungry mouth. She drops it; he swallows the pill without the help of a potion. “Fick yeah.”

  “Don’t expect me to ever do that again.”

  “Come on, Liz, you fickin’ liked it and you know it!”

  FeeTwix springs right into action with his new AUS hose gun. The metal canister on his back, he hoses down a horde of goblins approaching from the western gate.

  Insta-Insta-Instakill!

  The ones that aren’t hit start freaking out.

  “Fick! Fick!”

  “Yoy!”

  “Fick, yoy, fick!”

  Hiccup joins in the chorus of ficks. “Fick yeah, Twixy, fick those liddle fickered fickturds up! Red team, go! Blue team, go!”

  Red team? Blue team? Ryuk looks around to try and figure out what the goblin is shouting about.

  -232 HP! Critical hit!

  Hiccup takes the arm off an especially muscular goblin just as a message appears on Ryuk’s pane of vision.

  Hiccup: Marbles, fick me. You’re blue team because you’re emo. Elfy is red team because she has demon eyes. Red team, blue team, go. Get it?

  “Fuck you, Hiccup!” Ryuk lays down a cluster of goblins now spilling out of the
front of the shaman’s dungeon.

  Click-click. BOOM! Click-click. BOOM!

  “That’s the spirit kid…Yoooooy!” A robed goblin punches Hiccup in the stomach and sends the Mitherfickers’ loudest member flying backwards with an uppercut.

  -69 HP!

  Hiccup gets his bearings as he stands, his legs wide. “Ha! Sixty-nine, fickers! I’ve been waiting for someone to get that number…shit! Shit, shit, shit! Front and center, Marbles, we got a fickin’ trojan horse coming out of the main gate. Elf, where the fick are you? Magic out the wazoo, pronto! Twixy, ballistics. Wolf, chomp, chomp!”

  Ryuk hears the squeak of the wheels before he sees the large wooden horse tear out of the gate, a good ten goblins riding the wooden horse’s back and who knows how many of the fuckers inside.

  Click-click. BOOM! Click-click. BOOM! Click-click. BOOM! Click-click. BOOM!

  Splinters of wood mixed with bits of flesh tear away from the wooden horse as Ryuk unloads his entire cylinder of black and sword marbles at the odd goblin transport.

  Insta-Instakill!

  Zaena launches into action.

  With a one armed front flip to boost herself forward, she springboards and hits the air, coming down blades a-spinning like a damn helicopter crash.

  Imagine the sharpest ceiling fan in the world coming loose and falling onto a tightly packed barnyard full of angry, snorting pigs. The red “instakills” that appear on Ryuk’s vision pane are too many to count, unsettling to say the least.

  Zaena lands on the horse, balances on it like a surfboard, and then backflips to the ground, just in time to greet the goblins funneling out of its ass.

  Snarling, Wolf drags a goblin across the battlefield and quickly rips his throat out.

  Instakill!

  “Fick that bitch up, Wolfy!”

  For his part, FeeTwix has equipped a croquet mallet, which he uses to knock the living goblin out of any Bluwid local who dares approach.

  -46 HP! -29 HP! -58 HP!

  “That’s right everybody, three point five million viewers! Tell your friends, family members, enemies, frenemies, queens, kings, and failed government leaders! Tell your doctors, lawyers, baristas, soldiers, and law enforcement officers. If we reach four mil by the end of this, I’m doing one big ass giveaway!”

  Taking cover now so he can reload his Marble Shotgun, Ryuk catches Enway shift in and out of time.

  One moment she’s here, the next moment she’s somewhere else, zig-zagging her way to the back of the battle. Once she’s there, she slips into a shadow cast from an open door.

  Ryuk sees the glint of her hourglass necklace, and as it glows, a mist of pink magic falls over a troupe of goblins tearing out of the open gate.

  The “ficks” and “yoys” that follow are almost too much to bear.

  His Magic Eye skill activated, Ryuk can tell that Enway has cast some type of algomagic, which usually affects the psyche. It’s once the goblins start killing each other that he comes to the quick realization that this isn’t your ordinary spell.

  Ryuk: What did you just cast?

  Enway: Arcane Tide. It forces the enemy to relive a traumatic experience and can cause madness.

  “Fick, that’s some seriously psycho shit right there, Elfy.” Hiccup says as he pulls a healing potion out of thin air. He takes a swig from it, waits a moment, and once a female goblin separates from the fray, he domes her with the empty potion bottle.

  Instakill!

  “Fick yeah, level up, baby. Anybody else feeling that golden shower of levels raining from above?”

  “I got a level up,” Enway says, a big smile on her face as her hourglass necklace recharges, the sand falling in the opposite direction now.

  “Golden shower? What in the fick are you talking about?” a fat goblin, who has just arrived on the scene, screams.

  “Fick you, fatty!” is Hiccup’s reply.

  “You’re fatter than I am you two-ton, pink-haired, humpty dumpty fickcake!”

  “Humpty dumpty fickcake?” Hiccup snarls. “Marbles, put a cap in his candy fickered ass!”

  Click-click. BOOM! Click-click. BOOM!

  Instakill!

  Ryuk sends the fat goblin flying backwards, a hole the size of a basketball where his center mass used to be.

  “Fick yeah plus one! Marbles, I take back all the nasty things I said, especially the part about attaching a pair of truck nuts to your female choop.” The goblin looks around. “Now, where were we? That’s right. The gates are open, Mitherfickers, let’s get in there, fillet some Jonestown fickboys, get us some mad loot, and grab the runestone while we’re at it!”

  FeeTwix knocks the crap out of a goblin with his croquet mallet. “Hell yes!”

  “Aye! Aye! Aye!” Zaena shouts, all four blades in the air.

  “That’s the idea, Liz,” Hiccup says as Wolf pulls up to his side, his maw wet with blood. “Now, Twixy – potion me, pronto; Marbles – reload your shooty thing and no funny business when we’re inside; Enway – stop looking at me with your Exorcist eyes; Liz – slice and dice, you know the drill; Wolf – you’d better bring me back some goblin throats. Let’s do this!”

  (0)__(x)

  The Mitherfickers quickly clear out the dungeon entrance, putting a dozen more goblins in early graves and leaving their trojan horse in flames. Everyone has gained a level now, and Ryuk suspects they’ll gain several more as they make their way through the dungeon.

  It has been relatively straightforward so far, without a lot of routes to take. This changes when they hit a trapdoor and the six fall several stories down.

  “Yoy!” Hiccup rolls sideways and decompresses by airing his grievances, which instantly muck up the already foul air of the deep hole.

  “Boombakh toll.”

  Hiccup chortles. “An elephant anus, huh? You sure are creative for a princess. Most I’ve met had a silver spoon up their toll.”

  “I’m curious, how many princesses have you met, goblin?” Zaena has not only saved herself from the fall, she also used her ghost limbs to save FeeTwix, who now stands by her side in his sleeveless overcoat.

  “Let me see,” Hiccup says as he gets to his feet. “You, Ryuk, and the Empress.”

  “Baka,” Ryuk whispers as he sits up.

  “I don’t speak Chinese, kid, but I do love me some spicy Asian dragon wings. Shit is yum in my tum.”

  Ryuk gets the urge to pistol whip the goblin but he’s instantly calmed by Enway’s cool touch. The chromatic mage helps him up and dusts his shoulder off. “You okay?”

  “Yeah, I’ll be fine.” His dream armor took the brunt of the fall, easing his landing.

  “So cute, you two, really. But what is a well-endowed, stable genius like myself to do? Let’s get back to the top of the dungeon before the shaman’s followers start tossing shit onto us. And by shit, I mean ‘feces.’ Most of what Liz says about goblins is true: they are dirty fickers.”

  A headlamp now on his head and casting a bluish cone of light, FeeTwix quickly finds an exit point from the hole they’ve fallen down. To reach it, Ryuk goes for his gravity marble, the Swede his steam boots, and Zaena her limbs, which of course leaves Enway, Hiccup and Wolf still at the bottom of the hole.

  “Not to worry, guildmates!” FeeTwix rolls out a ladder, which Enway climbs with relative ease.

  “How the fick is that supposed to help your four-legged friends down here?” Hiccup calls up to them.

  “The goblin doesn’t have four legs,” Zaena comments matter-of-factly, “but for once, I do see his point: he would either destroy your ladder or overexert himself by climbing up.”

  “Good point, babe,” FeeTwix says as he looks over the edge into the hole.

  “I can hear people talking up there, but no one is tossing me down a ghost limb, cough, cough, hint, hint, Liz.”

  Zaena looks to FeeTwix and cringes.

  “I have some hand sanitizer,” Enway offers.

  “Fine. I will touch him. But if he says anything remotely se
nsual I will drop him, and we will finally be rid of the goblin.”

  Wolf barks and Ryuk hears his paws scuffling at the bottom of the hole. The Ballistics Mage looks down and his Extreme Focus skill kicks into high gear, illuminating the trapped space.

  When his Magic Eye skill kicks in, he notices that there are a few rocks illuminated in green algomagic.

  Strange, he thinks, as Zaena lugs the goblin up.

  “Careful, Liz, I’m fickin’ ticklish and I can be held responsible for what I do if I’m tickled.”

  When she gets Hiccup over the platform, the Thulean is sure to drop him in a way that adds insult to injury.

  “Yoy!” He grabs his knee. “I think it’s broken, Twixy, better hit me with a potion.”

  “You’ve had too many potions, Hiccup.”

  “Oh, so you’re my doctor now?” The goblin moans as he gets to his feet. “That’s right, I guess you are my doctor, seeing as how Marbles here doesn’t provided healthcare to his employees.”

  “Quiet, goblin, before I toss you back into the hole. How should I lift Wolf?” Zaena asks FeeTwix.

  “Well, I have a doggy harness, but that’s for the pooch I had back in Dead City. Um … how about a blanket? I have a fire blanket that you could wrap around him.”

  “This isn’t some sort of culturally inappropriate remake of Pocahontas, Twixy. Just grab him by the belly, Liz. He’s a dog, treat him like one.”

  Pocahontas? What in the hell is the goblin talking about? Ryuk glances at Enway and they both shrug at the same time. He’s the first to laugh, and soon, she’s laughing alongside him.

  This brings a big smile to the goblin’s face.

  “You finally get my joke, don’t you, Marbles?” He sniffles. “Fick me to tears, I’ve never felt so honored.”

  “Um, yeah, sure. I get your joke, Hiccup. Sure.”

  Enway laughs again. “You’re clearly the funniest member here.”

  By the time Hiccup gets done fake crying and thanking the Academy for nominating him, FeeTwix and Zaena have gone with FeeTwix’s idea and used the blanket to get Wolf to the platform.

  Ryuk looks down into the hole one more time and sees the wall accented by green algomagic.

  Something is in there, he thinks, but instead of telling the others, he lets FeeTwix take the lead.