“Jana, Jana! Wake up! We have to get your mom and get out of here!” Nedoma exclaimed as he was shaking Jana. “Emi, wake up!” As Jana began to wake up, he grabbed her hand and began to drag her towards the door. In her almost-asleep state she stumbled a bit and nearly crashed into the wall.
“Stop! What's going on Nedoma?!”
As if to answer her question, the door to enter the house suddenly began to shake violently, accompanied by shrill inhuman screaming. After a few more attempts, the shaking stops. Only to be replaced with the loud crunch of metal meeting wood. Their impending doom had a rhythmic swing to it, repeatedly beating towards the door. It was quite in contrast to the grotesque cackling that was the goblin's laughter outside. Nedoma, seeing that the exit out of the house is now blocked by at least one goblin, stood frozen in the hallway as he tries to formulate some plan. Whatdowedo whatdowedo. Is there a window in the back? No...Damn! We have to force our way out! As Jana finally grasps the reality of the situation at hand, Emi dashed out of her bedroom.
“Nedoma, grab anything from the kitchen that can be used as a weapon! Jana, grab the lantern and come help me in the storage room!”
As Nedoma rushes into the kitchen, his mind began to race, trying to remember what things are in this kitchen. Platebowlfork – I wish I had the garden fork – spoonknife – knife! Nedoma began slamming open and closing different cabinets and drawers looking for the knife. He finally comes across one – the butter knife used for spreading. A knife! Nedoma stared at it for a brief moment. USELESS. He quickly puts it down on the counter top, not completely committed to throwing it away just yet, when he murmurs to himself. “Butcher's knife.” At the invocation of this phrase, his brute force method of opening everything in the kitchen ends and he dives straight for the cabinet in the corner. As he pulls out the not-so-much-knife-but-cleaver, he inspects it. At least this one has some sharpness to it. Nedoma thinks to himself as he looks back at the butter knife he found. Still aware of the constant beating of the door, he continues to look through the kitchen for anything else that could be used as a weapon, to little avail. He spots a broom, whose length and wooden end could make it feasible to use, and grabs that as well.
As he steps out of the kitchen into the hallway, he turns to look once more at the door while shouting out, “Did you guys find what you're -”. The rhythmic beating on the door ends concludes with the next bash. Splinters and wood fly. The mechanism through which the door locks is rendered useless as the wood supporting it becomes dislodged. As the door finally is swung open, Nedoma feels as if time begins to slow. A goblin holding a small axe begins to run through the doorway. He drops the broom that he was holding in his left hand and immediately begins to raise his butcher-knife wielding right hand. The goblin charges forward, it's face plastered with a twisted grin. As Nedoma begins to move himself to meet that charge, the goblin tosses its axe at him. It buries itself in his left shoulder. Nedoma feels heat and pain emanating from the fresh wound, but adreneline guides him forward. The goblin leaps at Nedoma. The butcher's knife descends. Shit. Nedoma had meant to aim for the head, but misses slightly. He manages to cleave through the goblin's left ear, and then proceed downward into the goblin's shoulder, causing a deep wound. The momentum of the goblin carries it forward, crashing into Nedoma. It's vocal chords unleash a torrent of pain and rage. Mixed in with this sound, he swears he can hear Jana call his name. As Nedoma struggles under the goblin, it begins to claw at him, using its jagged nails as weapons. He abandons his grip on the knife and pushes the goblin off of him. Both of them scramble to stand up. Realizing his knife still lies in the goblin's shoulder, Nedoma instead reaches for the axe dug into his. As he attempts to stand up and pull the axe out in one motion, the pain of removing it hits him and causes him to grimace for a moment. The goblin began to charge once more, abandoning the thought of removing the deeply embedded cleaver and going after the injured human in front of him. Nedoma swings vertically once more, this time managing to bury the axe into the creature's head. It lets out one last cry, before finally going limp and toppling over. Whether it is Nedoma's uncertainty at the death of the goblin or revenge fueled by his injuries, he swings the axe twice at its neck to cut off its head. The goblin's blood begins to stain the floorboards, joined by his own blood coming from the gash on his shoulder as well as the claw marks on his cheek. He releases a few heavy breaths as he stares at the corpse. I thought I would be more tired. He grimaces as he touches his wound. Aah.
“Nedoma!” He turns around to see Jana, who flinched when she saw the shallow claw marks on Nedoma's cheek, but then turned her attention to his more serious injury. “Your arm!” She seemed on the verge of tears.
“Yeah, he got me with this,” he says as he shakes the axe he was holding.
“Emi, Nedoma's hurt! You have to hurry!” Jana ran back into the storage room. As a mixture of hurries and come-ons escape the storage room, Nedoma keeps his gaze on the doorway as he removes the cleaver from the goblin's shoulder, and tries to clean off some of the blood and fat from the blade.
A pair of steps signals the return of both Emi and Jana behind him. Jana is holding a sword, and Emi is holding what looks like a staff. That's right. Jana mentioned that when her parents did the adventurer program, her father got selected to be a Guardian, and her mom a Cleric. Nedoma figured that that the sword belonged to the Guardian class, and the staff to the Cleric.
Emi said “We kept our weapons instead of returning them for more silver...It's been a long time since my training, so I don't know how well the spell will even work. I've tried it a few times over the years but never on anything this serious.” Emi held the staff with one hand and extended her other hand's palm towards Nedoma. “Gift of Mortae, Recover!”
Nedoma suddenly feels more...whole. He looks toward his shoulder and sees his flesh restored, looking almost strange with the cross section of his white skin coming into contrast with the red blood that surrounds it. He rubs his hand over where he was clawed and finds no indentation there. There is only one thing that Nedoma can think right now.
Incredible.
