Goblins

  “Be careful with that thing!” Ratskeller growled at Pumpkin while staring at the blade impaling the brick wall only a foot from her face. Since separating with Louie, they had moved east to make space between themselves as whatever had attacked the zoo. However, they had not gotten too far because they kept running into the stinky humans with the glowing green eyes. This had given them some loot and skill upgrades, but their most recent loot had Rats wishing they hadn’t received it. Or more specifically, Pumpkin had not received it.

  The loot in question was a very light weight penetrating blade designed to be attached to a tail. Unfortunately, Pumpkin was having a tough time adapting to the weapon. At first, she walked wobbly because of the weight on the end of her tail, but she quickly adapted to that. However, she would occasionally forget she had the weapon and would flick her tail and jump when she noticed a slight weight on the end of tail. This is probably a much more dangerous situation than one would normally assume. Pumpkin, with her increased stats, could jump extremely far and her tail was her flight control which now had to be recalibrated to adapt to the increased weight and length of the weapon. Picture a scared cat barrel rolling through the air trying to control its momentum by swinging around a six inch long blade attached to the end of its tail. Ratskeller thought it was very reminiscent of that Tasmanian Devil creature she used to watch with her little human on the picture box.

  “We’ve got a group of four coming from the left.” George announced.

  “I’LL KILL THEM…” Honey started his charge, but Ratskeller stopped him with a held out paw.

  “I’ve got this, I still want to try that new skill.” Ratskeller said as she dove into the ground to swim at the approaching stinkers. Her golden fin circled the stinkers faster and faster as they clumsily reached for her. LANDSHARKNADO! Ratskeller called out as she rose into the air blurring into a golden funnel surrounding the green eyed, grey skinned humans. Zombie parts started flying out of the top of the funnel to splash everywhere. George quickly made the air shimmer to protect their group from the flying globs of grossness.

  A few seconds later, the funnel disappeared and a very happy Ratskeller trotted back towards her friends. She must be a very good girl to get a skill like that. As she approached, her friends began backing away. Confused, Ratskeller began to fear that maybe she wasn’t a good girl. Why were her friends scared of her? She stopped and George walked out and carefully touched her with a glowing finger. Ratskeller jumped when stinky body parts fell off of her to the ground and then realized they had been stuck on the spikes of her armor.

  Honey gave her a respectful nod. “That is a powerful skill.”

  “Does it make you dizzy when you fly that fast?” Yuki asked as she twirled around. “I used to get dizzy when I’d spin for my human.” For some reason, this made Honey growl and Yuki’s face turned sad before she wrapped an arm over Honey’s back and nuzzled her head into his muscular shoulder. “I’m sorry, Honey. I miss her too.”

  Honey shook her off and continued down the street muttering to himself. As the group followed, Yuki explained. “Honey didn’t like anything or anybody besides me and our human. He would let her scratch his ears at night when it was just us and she’d bring us snacks.”

  “Do we need to go back for her?” Ratskeller asked.

  Yuki shook her head and her eyes teared up. “No. She’s gone. Snake…” was all she could say. Pumpkin and George tried to comfort her. Ratskeller began looking for snakes to chomp. Honey swung his paw and sent part of a large white moving box flying.

  The door on the side of the box opened and a human dressed in blue came out. “What the heck? That’s government property.” The human said before his eyes went wide at the sight of Honey flying at him. “Oh krap!” A glowing blue bag appeared in his hands and he stuffed it into honey’s mouth. Honey viciously attacked the bag. The human tossed it and Honey away from the vehicle and started to close the door but froze when he saw Ratskeller.

  “Ratskeller?” He asked. Ratskeller tilted her head and lifted her ears. “I’m Braxton. Jeri sent out a text saying to watch for a daschund, a cat, and a raccoon.”

  Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

  Ratskeller stepped closer and held out a paw like she had seen her humans do, “I’m Ratskeller. Nice to meet you Braxton. Is Jeri okay?”

  Braxton reached down and shook her paw. “That’s some nice armor you’ve found. Jeri’s fine. She thinks she may convince the supervisors to let us go home, but the higher ups say we have to keep delivering. Oh. She also said you might want to know that there are a lot of zombies and other things attacking humans downtown. They’ve fortified the courthouse.” Braxton said as he climbed into a hammock hung between the shelves in the back of his van and picked up his phone.

  Seeming to remember something, he sat back up and grabbed a glowing box off of a shelf. “Are you guys hungry?” He asked as he pulled out a handful of meaty snacks. Honey stopped attacking the bag and followed his sniffing nose to the van where he spat out the satchel. The others also crowded closer to the door. Yuki stood on her hind legs and clapped her paws together in front of her. Ratskeller sat up on her hind legs. Braxton chuckled and threw them each a snack.

  Ratskeller felt strength flood into her body after she swallowed the treat. Braxton said, “I think I can give you a map update to help you search for your humans.” Ratskeller saw a glowing light in the corner of her vision and a map came up in front of her face. Braxton explained, “The areas marked in blue are where the humans have gathered. The green is where the green eyes are in large groups. Purple shows areas where other dangerous creatures have been spotted. I marked the VA for you on it.”

  Ratskeller was able to locate the VA and saw that it was surrounded by green and purple. Braxton saw her concern and explained, “The VA has the largest group of hostile creatures attacking it, but there is a summoner there that is protecting everybody. I’m sure your humans are fine. Some of the other groups are thinking about risking moving to join them.”

  Ratskeller moved her head around. “I can’t see though.”

  Braxton let out a laugh. “Shrink map will minimize it, but try transparent map and it will fade when you aren’t wanting to look at the map. Or you can…”

  ‘I’ll watch the map and you can focus on being ready to chomp, Rats.” George said. She looked at him and nodded.

  Braxton hopped back into his hammock and his phone lit up. “Well, I’ve got to get back to work. Good luck.” He slid the door closed after waving them goodbye.

  “I think I see a relatively safe path to the VA. We want to continue along this street for a few more blocks.” George said, pointing down the road.

  *****

  “What are they?” Yuki asked. The group was peering around the corner of a building as they watched a group of small green creatures with long noses and big pointy ears. They were sneaking from house to house.

  Ratskeller felt George doing some of his “magic stuff” as he stared at them. “Goblin scouts.” He announced. Everybody looked at him waiting for more info, but he shrugged. “I don’t have any idea what that means.”

  Suddenly George’s eyes went huge. Pumpkin’s head turned to see what he was staring at. She let out a hiss and disappeared. The others turned just in time to see Pumpkin appear behind a large grey wild dog with a goblin riding on its back. Her tail knife penetrated through the dog’s skull and it fell down shaking while she decapitated the goblin with her claws. Pumpkin looked down the street in the direction they had come from before running back to the group.

  “There are a lot more coming on foot and riding the dogs.” Pumpkin reported. Howls suddenly sounded from what could be no more than a couple blocks away. “They aren’t very tough, but…”

  “Let’s get going. We shouldn’t fight until we have a better idea what is going on.” George said. The goblins across the street were busy inside a house, so the group ran across the street as fast as they could. They made their way to the backyard of a house and through the fence to the house behind it. Maneuvering their way out to the next street, they could see another group of the goblins working their way down the street.

  Ratskeller let out a low growl. Those goblins weren’t good boys. She could tell from the smell. She wanted to chomp them all. Honey apparently felt the same as he also let out a growl of his own.

  A stinky came out from between two houses and began lumbering towards the goblins. However, they held up something shiny and the stinky turned around to make its way down the street. After a few seconds, the goblins put the shiny thing away.

  “We need those shiny things.” Pumpkin said.

  Ratskeller asked, “Why? Stinkies are easy enough to deal with.”

  “They’re easy for you to deal with, but I can’t do much against them. I wouldn’t mind having some of those things to keep them away.” George said. He looked around and said, “I’ve got a plan.”

  *****

  The goblin scout led his team out of a house. They hadn’t found anything in that house. So far, this planet has proven to be pretty boring. The natives they met didn’t put up much of a fight and their clan was using the pendants they had been given by the witch to drive the infected towards the pockets of humans that were putting up a fight. If the green eyes couldn’t finish off the humans, they would at least wear them down.

  Catching some movement out of the corner of his eye, he crouched down and motioned for his team to freeze. A small orange and brown creature with a ringed tail was sitting with its back to them eating something under a tree. He motioned his team to silently follow him as he approached the oblivious creature from behind.

  The goblin raised his spear to strike. “I’LL KILL YOU. I DON’T GIVE A CRAP!” Something large fell on him from above. The heavy beast that had dropped on him was tearing into him when he saw a blade pierce through his teammate’s skull. The creature that had been sitting under the tree lifted its hands and rays of fire penetrated the skulls of two others. As a golden glowing figure rose from the ground to split another of his companions in two with a single chomp, the goblin only had time to utter a single word as the world faded, “Ratisskeller.”