Chapter 6: Isekai Life & Night Ambush

“Voss! Calliope! To arms!”

Our ambushers did not like me shouting a warning, and began edging out of the trees. Squat, pale green humanoids armed with rusty knives and simple wooden clubs- goblins. Stupid but cunning, they are not to be underestimated, especially in great numbers. And this group had an obvious sergeant, a slightly larger, raggedy goblin with filthy leather armor, a shield and a shortsword. Worse, they had friends- taller forms with glowing, yellow night-eyes slinking in the dark. Worgs, evil direwolves that worked with goblins on occasion.

I heard the horse whinnying somewhere behind us, and I cast the thought out of my mind. As much as I liked our horses, they’d have to take care of themselves for now. We had bigger problems.

I mentally tallied our forces. Unfortunately, our current party configuration swapped most of our most useful party members in favour of our weakest, overall. I knew Calliope was still level one- we’ve used enough incidental magic since leaving Tresens that I knew she still had only two spell slots- and Voss was never as strong in combat as Katriana. Worse, our two casters were dead tired, and our fourth party member couldn’t communicate, just great.

I chose to buy time. “What do you want?” I growled in the guttural language of the goblins, “This camp ours, you go. We have big magic.”

A few of the lesser goblins hesitated, but when their sergeant started cackling the whole crowd picked it up. The sergeant gestured for silence and answered, “Biggus heard that before, human. We want meat, slaves, steel and women, and if you not slave then you meat. Make choice.”

Behind me I heard Voss curse and scramble out of his tent, with similar sounds coming from my tent. I switched back to common, ordering, “Voss, when those wolves hit us, you’ve got to distract them and keep them off us, okay?”

“What wolves? I don’t-”

“Enough talk!” the sergeant, howled, “You die!”

I heard Calliope intoning her Shield spell. Good, I thought as I tossed the torch aside, stepped in front of Yua and made the Sigil. Let’s see how these goblins burn.

The sergeant screamed as he scrambled back, flames licking up his arm. Of the two goblins on either side of him, one went up like a candle and died screaming, the other hissed and sidestepped my flames, horrifically burned. As soon as my fire guttered out, though, the sergeant scrambled towards me and stabbed wildly with his sword, the blade deflecting off my unseen magical armour just an inch from my body.

Voss shouted a warcry of, “For Prince Theodore!” as he lunged forward, taking advantage of the surprise to skewer a goblin and flick the dying vermin in a smooth two-motion movement, only for a second goblin to scramble onto his shield and strike home with it’s dirk, causing Voss’ sleeve to darken with blood. But I was soon distracted- the goblins surged forward everywhere, and bounding out of the shadows came the worgs, snapping with jaws full of brutal fangs.

There was a flash of light from behind me and I turned to see Calliope’s magic missile explode a goblin’s head, but she was surrounded by five others. I canted and threw a pinch of sand in her direction, and all the goblins there fell over, asleep- but Calliope also clutched her head groggily and slipped to the ground, collateral damage of my spell.

Of course, if it wasn’t laughably weak it would end up being too effective.

I felt a tug on my sleeve, and was hauled back, twisting to see the sergeant’s arm rearing back to strike again with his shortsword- only to have shining steel strike downwards, slicing the back of the goblin’s skull off with a ringing sound, clear as a bell. Yua spun, kicking the goblin away with a back kick, ad came up sword in a protective stance to ward off on oncoming worg. The worg was too cunning by half, though, and ducked under her blade to savage her in the thigh.

I snatched up the fallen torch, and waved it at the beast, warding it off long enough for Yua to recover, slamming the runed greatsword into the beast’s side and scattering it with a yelp. The beast darted in to nip at Yua again, but this time she slid aside nimbly. I jumped forward into the gap, swinging the torch, not harming the worg but keeping it from getting within Yua’s striking range, giving her the time to smoothly step forward and behead the worg with a single stroke.

We turned and saw Voss struggling with the other worg, bleeding from half a dozen wounds. I jumped forward, shouting and waving my torch, and the worg danced away, growling- straight into Yua’s sidehand swing. It was able to dodge from Voss’s spearthrust, only to get run through by Yua’s counterstroke.

And just like that, the violence was over.

Still standing: Myself, unharmed. Yua, bitten by a worg. Voss, fucked up by multiple goblin and worg wounds.

On the ground: Calliope and five goblins gently sleeping. Two dead worgs, eight dead goblins including the sergeant.

Well, okay, four sleeping goblins. Three. Two. Okay, Yua really doesn’t like goblins.

“Aren’t you concerned?” Voss asked, “That was the goblin language you were speaking, right? You could interrogate one of them, get them to tell us where their camp is.”

I weighed my desire to extract more goblin-related information against my desire not to have a goblin loogie spit in my face.

“Hey, help me get Calliope back in the tent,” I replied, “She’ll wind up with a sore back if we just leave her out like that.”

Voss and I moved Calliope where she could sleep comfortably, then he sat on a fallen log while I fetched the old sewing kit and started to clean his wounds and at least prevent him from bleeding everywhere. The fighter was pretty messed up, and it look some doing. Add to that the darkness and my sleepiness, and the process took awhile.

“Ow! Hey, careful with that needle!”

“Sorry, sorry...”

Yua, for her part, went and checked on the horses, then turned our single torch into a respectable campfire. From there, she stood vigil over the campsite, standing at the edge of the firelight, facing the darkness, sword drawn and held against one shoulder. I found the time to go over to her and tell her, “Thank you, we would have died without you.” She bowed her head in response, as if to say, “Just doing my job”.

As soon as we understood each other better, we’d have to have a discussion about her sudden prowess with a sword.

As we were cleaning up the campsite of the assorted gore and corpses (for which I got to use Tenser’s Floating disc for the first time, yay), I was lost in thought. These goblins didn’t seem like a regular random encounter. While the presence of the worgs didn’t necessarily mean anything, the rules-as-written goblin encounter was 4d6 goblins with no worgs in sight. Similarly, worgs come in 3d4 packs with only a one-line mention of goblins.