21 – Even the Odds

Andy exploded through the brush, and, just as he did so, an arrow hissed through the air to strike the goblin furthest from him. The closer one, the one he was charging, clambered to its feet, hooting, but only made one utterance before Andy’s spear hit a spot that just looked like a perfect target for his Sneak Attack skill. The creature croaked, coughing a splash of dark blood, and then it was still. Meanwhile, Lucy’s victim flopped limply on the dusty, rocky ground, weakly clawing toward the gully.

Andy ripped his spear from his victim and lunged forward, driving it into the other goblin’s back, right where he just knew its heart would be. It shuddered and died. Soft footsteps heralded Lucy’s arrival, and he watched as she retrieved her arrow. He nodded toward the gully. “Let’s keep advancing before they send a patrol or something.”

Lucy wiped the arrow on her thigh, staining her jeans with a dark smear. “I’ll hang back a little.”

“Good plan.” Andy readied his spear and began hiking up between the two hills. His mind was reeling about the situation; why were the goblins living as a pack in the desert? Hadn’t they been humans yesterday? What brought them all together and got them working on their crude little society? The only thing he could think of was the System. The System must also be offering quests to the monstrous “sapient” species on Earth.

The gully was narrow and had boulders partially obscuring the pathway in several spots, so Andy and Lucy had to crawl around and over them. Before long, though, they came to a broader section where an unreal scene was playing out. The two of them hunched behind some dried-out tumbleweeds, observing.

There were seven young children—they couldn’t have been much older than seven or eight—huddled on the far end of the tiny box canyon. Two goblins watched over them, one wielding a framing hammer and the other a handaxe. Meanwhile, several goblins gathered brush and mesquite branches into a pile, clearly intending to build a fire. Closer to Andy and Lucy, a single, much larger goblin sat in the sandy bottom of the canyon, using that same sand to scrub the blood and flesh off tiny bones. Altogether, Andy only counted six goblins.

He leaned close to Lucy, whispering in her ear with just the barest touch of breath leaving his lips. “I’ll kill the big one. You shoot the ones that come running.”

Lucy nodded, her arrow already set in her bow. She looked fierce, her dark eyebrows angled down, her mouth set in a firm line.

“Here we go, then.” Andy gripped his spear, backed up to avoid crunching the tumbleweed under his feet, and then crept past it on the left. When he was just two steps from the big goblin, he picked his target area—just to the left of the spine, about a third of the way down. He lifted his spear and lunged…

…and the goblin grunted, rolling to the side, causing him to miss the mark, only shallowly slicing its shoulder. “Shit!”

The goblin didn’t scream or flee; it roared, opening a wide mouth with protruding tusk-like teeth. Then, violet, sparkling light danced on its fingers, and an arc of crackling lightning snapped through the air, hitting Andy in the chest. The world went white, his body tensed, and he collapsed, but he didn’t feel himself hit the ground.

His vision cleared gradually, a widening black-walled tunnel, as his struggling heart pumped blood to his brain. He felt the rocky dirt under his knuckles, the smooth wood of his spear haft in his hands, and then he realized the goblins were coming, charging, screaming, brandishing weapons. Suddenly, his adrenal glands woke up, and he lurched, gasping to his feet.

The big goblin was on its butt, an arrow in its chest, but it wasn’t dead. More purplish lightning began to dance on its fingertips, and Andy hoisted his spear, hurling it like a javelin through the ten feet that separated them. The throw was perfect! The spearhead caught the monster in the center of its chest and punched in a good ten inches. Andy was right behind the weapon, and as the big goblin fell back, he grabbed the haft and yanked it out, trailing a splatter of dark blood.

He was just in time to defend himself from three goblins that fell on him with various goblin-sized weapons. His spear was perfect to fend them off and turn the tables, laying into them, punching deep, deadly wounds into their thighs, bellies, and chests. Arrows whistled past him, thunking into more reinforcements—the children’s guards.

Andy was a goblin killing machine: stab…advance…stab…advance. He knocked their pathetic attacks aside, and when his foes were dead, he finished off the ones who hadn’t died from Lucy’s initial arrow wounds. When it was over, he was dusty and bloody, and his ears were still ringing from the lightning blast that had nearly put his lights out.

Lucy ran up beside him, panting, her hands trembling as she worked to recover her arrows. “I thought you were dead,” she said, breathless.

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“Thanks for saving my ass,” he said, rubbing his chest. “That guy threw lightning at me!”

“I saw!” Her voice was raspy and raw as she continued to collect her arrows. “It was purple!”

Andy looked past her to the kids huddled across the way. They were bound together, tied at the ankles with jump ropes. Andy scanned the dead goblins, looking for a knife he’d seen one of them wielding, and when he saw it—a ten-inch chef’s knife—he snatched it out of the dirt and ran over. “Hey, guys. Let me cut those ropes. I bet you’re scared to death, huh?”

One little girl started to cry, but a boy with short ginger hair said, “Thank you, mister!” More thanks, whimpers, questions, and tears followed as Andy moved among them, cutting the jump ropes off their ankles. “You all from the trailer park?”

“I am,” said the ginger-haired boy.

“Not me,” A little dark-haired girl said.

It turned out that only three of the kids were from the trailer park. The others were from nearby neighborhoods. “Well, listen,” Andy said, squatting to be more on a level with the huddled kids. “Me and that nice lady over there”—he pointed to Lucy, who was watching the gulley, her bow ready in case more goblins were out and about—“are going to take you to our trailer park, and then we can see about trying to find your families, okay? The important thing is to get you out of the desert and away from more monsters, right?”

The kids mostly agreed, though some simply cried, shellshocked from what they’d been through. Andy gathered a couple of jump ropes, tying them together. “I want you all to hang onto this. I’ll tie it to my belt loop here.” Andy did so, then he passed the rope to the fierce little red-headed boy. “What’s your name?”

“Liam.”

“Liam, I want you to walk at the back and make sure everyone keeps up with me. Can you do that? I don’t want to leave anyone behind.”

“I can do it.” He nodded solemnly.

“How old are you?”

“Nine.”

“Perfect. You just holler if someone’s falling behind.” Andy looked at the rest of the group. “Who’s thirsty?”

They all raised their hands, and Andy took his waterskin, poured a few big gulps in his mouth, then passed it among them. As the first little girl began to drink, a System message flashed in front of his eyes:

***Congratulations on your heroic victory over the Smashbelly Clan! You’ve earned enough experience for level 8 in your Umbral Warden Class and also gained an improvement point.***

***You’ve made progress on your quest: Picking up the Pieces. Escort the children to safety to complete the quest.***

Andy called over his shoulder, “Did you see that?”

“Yes!” Lucy replied, her voice hoarse.

Andy let the rest of the kids finish drinking, then tied his magical water skin to his belt. “Now, is anyone hurt?” To his amazement, none of the kids seemed to be. A few scuffs and bruises, but no cuts or broken bones. They all still had shoes on their feet. He wondered what he would have done if they hadn’t.

“Let’s go, kids. We’ll get some food as soon as we get back to the trailer park.” He started walking and paused, looking back to ensure the kids were all following along. “Don’t look at those goblins. They’re gross and dead, and you don’t need to see ’em. Just look at the person in front of you and follow me quickly, okay?”

When the kids agreed, Andy started walking, hurrying past the scene of the battle. Lucy took up the rear, making Liam’s job a little less critical, but Andy figured it was good to give him a sense of purpose anyway. When they got out of the gully, he rushed past the two dead goblin guards. Then, standing on the trail, he paused and got his bearings. He looked toward the Catalinas, then scanned the desert. They’d gained some elevation following the goblins, and he could see the rooftops of the neighborhood where they’d run into Sandy. He knew the trailer park was a couple of miles further across the desert, or at least the road leading to it.

When Lucy walked up beside him, he pointed. “I think we can save a lot of time cutting across.”

“I was going to say the same. We’re halfway if we don’t double back to get to the road by the school.”

“I just wanted to make sure you agreed, ’cause the last thing these poor kids need is to get lost in this desert.”

Lucy smiled, gesturing with her hand. “If we walk that way, we’ll hit the gravel road that runs to the trailer park.” She turned and pointed behind him. “Just keep that peak at your back.”

Andy nodded. He’d had the same thought. “Just make sure I don’t steer us off course. You’ll watch the back of the line?”

She reached over to squeeze his shoulder. “Yes. You’re doing fine.” She nodded her head in the direction of the school. “That wasn’t your fault. None of it.”

He smiled wanly. “Same to you.”

The kids were fidgeting, but they were quiet—too quiet for kids—and Andy knew he needed to get them someplace safe, so he got moving, weaving a path between cacti, shrubs, and the occasional palo verde or mesquite tree. While they walked, he kept thinking about the horrors he’d seen at the school. He kept thinking about the goblins and what they must have intended for the children. He couldn’t help thinking about the statistic the System has so blithely announced in the morning—thirty-seven percent of humanity wiped out. How many had been innocent kids?

He wanted to hit something. Killing the goblins had been a brief outlet for his frustrations—his impotence in the face of the System’s power—but that was over now, and he was left with the remnants of his gut-wrenching sense of loss. Loss—that was the word for it. He’d lost control. He’d lost his society and his future. He’d probably lost his mother, but even that loss was lost to him; how could he allow himself to wallow in self-pity when so many had suffered so much more? The children behind him were just one tiny example of that.

Where could he direct his anger? Should he rail against the System and the mana it had brought to their world? Had it known so many of them would become monsters? Had it intended for their numbers to be so viciously culled? He looked over his shoulder at the quiet, shellshocked children stumbling through the dirt under the hot Arizona sun. Maybe he couldn’t feel sorry for himself, but he could feel sorry for them. He was determined not to see them hurt any further. The rules had changed, and things weren’t fair, but he would do what he could to even the odds.