by Logan Jacobs
Another brown kobold came at me, and I remembered the woman blocking with her sword when I had used both of my blades.
She was just behind me with her weapon at the ready, so I spun around and snatched it away from her before she could enter the battle. The surprised look on her face made me grin.
“Thanks!” I said to her as I easily parried the kobold’s attack. “I kind of lost my sword in that guy and needed a new one.”
Her mouth dropped open slightly, and although I would have loved to just stand there and stare at her adorably confused face, I had a horde of kobolds to annihilate.
I cut through the brown kobold like he was made of water, and I concluded that her sword must have been at one-hundred-percent durability.
It was right then and there that I realized I could do this. I could save the town by killing all of the kobolds, and I could keep her alive. She had no weapon of her own at this point, and if I grabbed my sword from the other kobold, she would be left with only a dagger if she chose to take mine from the body of the kobold. I had only seen her use the sword, but I imagined that a dagger would be no problem for her. But it wasn’t the best weapon to use in the face of a large horde.
I had found the key for the lock. Now I just had to figure out which way to turn it.
If I could learn to wield a sword in each hand, even without any real skill, I could save the town and the woman. The key was being able to parry an attack with one hand while killing with the other. That had been too tricky with a dagger, but with two swords, it was possible.
I had all the time in the world to learn and study the movements of the kobolds now that I had decided on my tactics.
I died a dozen more times, but I discovered that it was always a gray and green one on each side that I took out first, and the big brown one would always come charging at me after that.
I died another dozen times. Or maybe it was a hundred. Or maybe a thousand. I didn’t care. The shocked look on the woman’s face was always worth taking the sword from her, and I smiled at her each time I knew I was saving her life. She didn’t care too much for the time I told her that a beautiful woman like her shouldn’t be fighting, and the pain that blossomed in my face after she decked me told me she probably broke my nose.
I kept my joking light hearted after that and always got the adorable confusion and the gaped open mouth for my effort.
I fought a thousand mini-wars.
I learned, and I got better, and before long, I was easily cutting through these kobolds. It helped that I pretty much knew what they were going to do before they did it, but I also got better at holding my swords, and twisting my hips to deliver the strongest possible blow. Eventually, I was cutting through their masses like an angel of death, and I knew there was only going to be a few more tries before I’d killed all of them myself.
I got in front of the horde once again and took a deep breath before I drew my two weapons. I could feel that this time was different from the others. It was going to be my final attempt at taking down the horde, and this time, I was going to win.
I rushed forward before the kobolds recovered from my sudden appearance and took down the gray and green ones easily. The big brown bull rushed forward, and I buried my sword into his gut right to the hilt, like a perfect sheath. Then I turned and snatched the sword from the woman and gave her what I hoped was a confident grin.
“I’m so glad you’re here,” I said as I parried the oncoming brown kobold, and her eyes widened. “You don’t need to worry anymore. I’m going to take care of everything.”
And I just knew that I was right.
I shoved the brown kobold back and drew my sword from the big bull’s body. If I had a bit more skill, I would have spun the blades around all epic-like how they do in action movies. But I had tried that in one of my previous attempts, dropped the thing, and gotten my ass murdered, so I just tried to look like a badass by killing every single kobold without being too flashy.
The brown one fell to a follow-up slash with the woman’s sword. Then the speedy green kobold tried to get under my defenses, but I had already learned to keep my openings tight. I feinted, and as it tried to sneak in closer, I sliced its head open like a watermelon with the woman’s sword. I dropped my sword and grabbed its body to use as a shield against the brown bow-bold that tried to take me out from the left. The astonished look on its face paired well with the tip of my sword going through the middle of its forehead. I picked up my sword again and faced my next opponent.
A pair of green kobolds tried coming at me from opposite sides, but I knew they were coming. I let them get close enough to see the excitement in their eyes before I dropped to one knee and swung the swords at them. Her sword sliced through the meat and muscle of the left one’s leg. My sword cut a deep gash, but it wasn’t as satisfying. I pulled my leg up and shot backward just a second before the two smashed into one another. They yelped and shrieked as they clawed one another in their tumble, and I silenced them with a blade each to the chest.
I easily dodged the bolts from a pair of bow-bolds standing behind me because I knew they were coming, and then I danced around a third bolt fired at me. I rapidly closed the distance, and the first two bow-bolds screamed in panic as they tried to reload.
“Too slowwww!” I sang as I swung my swords out and took both their heads out, and then I kicked the skull of the asshole on the right so that his head David Beckhamed into the face of an oncoming lizard-man.
While that dude was distracted, I swung both blades together at the fourth kobold, and it died with a piercing shriek that was drowned out by the tolling of the town’s bell.
I was already halfway through the horde, and I made it look so easy.
I cut through a pale brown kobold with the woman’s sword on my way to finishing off the three remaining bow-bolds. They saw me coming and loosed their bolts at me at the same time, but I knew they were going to do that since they had done it a dozen times already. I used the pale one’s body as a shield, and then slapped the other two bolts out of the air with my sword like I was swatting flies. Then I tossed the body I’d used as a shield aside, pounced on the nearest bow-bold, and jammed my sword into his ribs.
I swung her sword at the other two and managed to slice off the gray one’s arm. While it shrieked, I used my foot to yank my sword out of the first body, and then I continued the momentum to spin around. I silenced the one-armed kobold and drove the sword in my left hand through the final bow-bold’s stomach.
Now I didn’t have to worry about getting a bolt stuck in my leg.
A bellowing green kobold rushed me while trying to use a one-handed sword with two hands. Its face was twisted in pain, and I could only assume I had just killed its mate or child or whatever. The rage made it a little bit harder to kill, but I had already done this a dozen times before, so after a few parries back and forth, it left itself wide open for my sword to tear its stomach open. Greenish blood seeped into the ground and splashed new color onto the golden stalks of the plains, and then my follow up stab ended its life.
Another brown bull came at me with its head down while my sword was stuck in the skull of the angry green one. This brown asshole had knocked me down and killed me once before, but if it thought it was going to get the drop on me again, it was about to be surprised.
It let out a triumphant howl and, just before it could knock me over, I twisted and dropped the green one into its path. There was no time for it to correct its movement, and it tripped over its companion.
“Ole!” I shouted all Spanish-bullfigher-ish as it fell, and then the woman’s sword ended its life quickly and with a satisfying squelching sound.
The next two kobolds were dealt with in rapid succession. They came at me as one but weren’t very coordinated. The darker one was younger than the other, and that made it too eager. It swung its sword at me, and I just stepped to the side to avoid it.
As the young kobold went hurtling past me, I lunged for the older one. I eas
ily parried the slash at my face, and I tore the woman’s sword across its unguarded stomach. All of the older asshole’s guts spilled out like a turned over bowl of pasta, and it let out a dying scream as the young kobold came rushing back into the fight.
“Too late to save your friend,” I taunted as I flicked my left wrist, shifted the sword in my hand, and impaled the little devil’s chest right to the hilt of my blade.
The final kobold was always the big orange brute. It was always at the corner of my eye, but it had never jumped into the fray to try to save its companions.
A final showdown between us was just fine by me.
I had watched it kill the woman so many times that I felt like I was avenging her all over again, even though she was still alive and had no idea how many times she’d tried to save my life, I’d tried to save her life, and we’d both died.
The orange brute was walking backward with a taunting sneer on its face. I knew it wasn’t actually trying to run away completely because it had done this a few times before.
I followed the kobold to the back of the group and shoved my original sword into the last body I passed. Using the two swords worked when I needed to keep both sides covered from multiple attacks. With just one enemy, I only had to watch wherever it was, and besides, there was a certain poetry to using her sword for the final battle. The woman wasn’t dead in this attempt, nor in any of the most recent tries, but I still felt the need to avenge her death from the times before that.
Plus her sword was way better than mine, and I could use all the help I could get.
I was kind of hoping that the orange kobold would lift his hand and motion me forward like in all the epic last-battles from the cool movies. But it just stood there and readied itself for the fight.
So disappointing.
It lunged at me, and I just barely managed to block the heavy overhead sword blow. I gritted my teeth and tried to throw it back, but it was like trying to move a mountain because its hind claws were extended into the ground to help anchor it into place.
I guess I had to remove the anchor.
I released some of the tension in my sword so that the kobold’s blade slid closer to me. Triumph glittered in the beast’s eyes for a second before turning to surprise as I ducked down. I pulled my sword with me, and the kobold staggered forward. As the left claws retracted, I thrust the blade along the ankle. The metal scraped against bone, and I felt a strange release of tension like I had cut a string. The kobold shrieked above me and lifted its left leg up with its claws extended to slash through my eyes.
I rolled backward out of the way and used the momentum to spring up to my feet. The kobold was leaning most of its weight onto its right side, so I sprang forward and clashed swords with it again, and because of the injury, the kobold couldn’t hold its ground against me. I pushed it in a circle, and its snarl of pain told me its endurance was quickly fading.
I was going to win.
I leaped back for a second before I lunged in again. I feinted to the injured left side before I dragged the sword along the exposed right thigh. The kobold shrieked and staggered back again, but I followed and easily parried its weak attack. It tried to keep some distance between us, but I continued to bear down on it while parrying its pathetic attempts at defense.
My blows became too much for it in the end, and its legs collapsed out from beneath it. The kobold let out a begging sort of simper just before I plunged the woman’s sword deep into its chest. Then I put all of my weight down on the hilt until the creature’s head lolled forward in death.
I withdrew the woman’s sword from the kobold’s body and looked around at my accomplishment. The tall grass was trampled on either side of the faint path and was drenched with the greenish blood from all the kobolds. I gave myself a quick once over to check for injuries. My left sleeve had been torn open and a small scrape welled with blood, but that was the worst I had to endure. Compared to the twenty lifeless bodies around me, I was lucky.
I’d won.
Fucking finally.
I turned toward the town and retrieved my sword from the body I had left it in. Both blades were covered in the greenish ooze and would need proper cleaning. For now, I merely wiped my sword on the grass and then shoved it into its sheath. Then I made my way back to the first brown bull, pulled my dagger free of its stomach, cleaned it, and then put it away.
“Time to smooze,” I said as I made a new savepoint before I headed toward the woman.
She still stood on the land-bridge and looked around the battlefield with an expression that was equal parts amazement and horror. Her eyes finally came to rest on me, and I could see the questions spinning in her brain.
“This belongs to you.” I handed her sword to her before she could open her mouth.
“Uhhh… How… Did… What?” She hesitated before she took it from me, and even then, seemed to regard the weapon like it was something she had never seen before.
“I would have cleaned it before I gave it back,” I laughed, “but I don’t have anything to clean it with properly.”
I was hoping for a laugh or something, but when she finally dragged her eyes away from her blood-stained blade, she simply gaped at me.
As I opened my mouth to ask her name, a cry of relief filled the air. I barely noticed the bell had stopped tolling since there had been too much death and angry kobolds around me to pay any attention to distant sounds, but I looked back to the town and saw that the citizens were surging out onto the land bridge between the two trenches, and they eventually surrounded the woman and I. Over a dozen hands reached out to me and dragged me toward the town. It seemed like a thousand hands were coming from all directions to try to tug or touch me.
The townspeople were shouting over one another in a confusing mass of voices.
“That was incredible!” someone shouted.
“You’ve saved us, you’ve saved us!” a woman cried.
“What if the kobolds return? What if this only makes them angrier?”
I tried to pinpoint the worried voice, but there were just so many people around me, and I could barely hear myself think over all the noise.
“Don’t just stand there!” Someone nudged me from behind. “Come in, come in!”
“Hey, wait, what?” I had no choice but to stumble along as the hands continued to shove or pull me.
I was dragged in front of a muscular man with auburn hair and a neatly trimmed beard. He wore an iron chestplate, but was only wearing one vambrace over his left arm, so I had to guess that he had been in the middle of suiting up when I swooped in and saved everyone. He wore a wide smile on his face, but as the townspeople pulled their hands away from me, he gave a hesitant glance out to where the piles of kobold corpses were, so I guessed that he was either still worried about them attacking again, or he was worried about me.
Maybe both.
“You have come at the most opportune moment, my friend,” he said as he shook my hand. His voice was deep but filled with exhaustion. “I am Elrin, the lead miner of the town of Addington.”
“And our leader!” someone chimed in from the back.
I expected that this should have been met with laughter or some humble nonsense from the man himself, but it was met with tension-filled silence.
“When we saw the kobolds coming, I thought it would finally be the end of our town, and our lives,” Elrin said with an air of defeat. “And then you appeared out of nowhere and slaughtered them all single handedly. Amazing!”
There was a burst of applause, but it didn’t last long nor was it accompanied by any cheering.
“How did you do it?” Elrin asked. “You barely have a scratch on you. I’ve never seen anyone fight as you do.”
“I guess I’m just lucky,” I said with a shrug, and was met with total silence.
It was like I had suddenly returned to the catacombs. The silence was absolutely deafening, and I could tell from frightened and angry looks in their eyes that not a single person believ
ed a word I said. They must have thought I was a demon or a warlock or something bad, and that didn’t bode well for me.
I wasn’t about to wait for the accusations and the stone-throwing. After two intense battles almost back-to-back, I was tired of fighting. I let out a deep sigh and concentrated on the most recent savepoint I had created.
Chime.
The ice flowed in my veins, and the woman was standing before me looking astonished again and her sword was still in my hand.
“I believe this is yours,” I said as I handed the sword back to her. As before, she looked at it in wonder. “It saved my life more than once out there. Thank you.”
She turned her face up to me, and I had to resist the urge to kiss her on the cheek. The questions were swimming in her eyes, but I still remembered the one attempt where she had busted my nose. I would get my chance to kiss those full lips of hers, I just knew it.
The crowd surged forward as I entered the town and I was once again accosted and dragged before Elrin. The man introduced himself the same way and looked just as haggard as before.
“How did you do it?” Elrin asked. “You barely have a scratch on you.”
Humility had been the wrong answer. The truth seemed like a worse option, but the poor town looked like it could use some good news.
“It’s kind of a long story,” I said.
“A long story?” he asked as his eyes narrowed.
I shook my head as I thought about all that had happened since I had been summoned to this world. It felt like it had been a thousand lifetimes ago, but the sun overhead said it had only been a few hours, tops.
“I was summoned in the Great Catacombs by a sorcerer named Raijin Thornheart.” I certainly had their attention now. “I am the God of Time, and I have come to champion this world.”
