Sweet Embrace

I jumped up, desperately clutching my throat, trying to find the arrow and do... do... do something! But there was no arrow, nothing but phantom pain, lingering behind.

"Arrggh!" I shouted out, falling to the ground, clutching my bloody heel. Something had cut my Achilles tendon!

I looked around and came face to face with a knife-toting, green-skinned, child-height, ugly bastard of a creature.

'Is that a fucking goblin!?'

The creature had a flat face like it had been slammed by a frying pan, with long pointed ears and a wide mouth filled with razor-sharp fangs. It was no more than two foot and its arms hung down to its knees, in one hand it held a bloody dagger made of black metal.

The creature bared its fangs, letting out a high-pitched squeal. I stabbed towards me with the dagger, its dull eyes watching my face.

'Screw this cunt.'

I rolled to the side, the goblins dagger bouncing off the rocky ground. I reached out and grabbed its leg, yanking it down to the ground with me.

With my other hand, I grabbed the biggest rock I could reach, raising it above my head. I tried to shout as I brought the rock down towards the goblin, but it came out as an animalistic snarl.

The rock slammed into the goblins skull, cracking it open like an egg, hot blood splattering my face, blinding me in one eye.

I dropped the rock and lay down on the ground.

'I killed it. I survived...

Why am I not dead? I'm certain I died already.'

Looking around the tunnel I could see the same torch from before and a bloody arrow on the ground. But no sign of my corpse.

'I don't know how I'm alive, maybe the system did it, maybe it's because this is a tutorial, maybe it's something else. But I sure as hell don't want to die again, that shit hurt.'

The phantom pain from my neck was still lingering, not to mention the throbbing pain coming from my heel.

I placed my hands on the ground, trying to stand up.

Bang!

I fell right back down the second I put any weight on my right foot.

"Hee, hee, hee," a high-pitched laugh, coming from the darkness around me.

"Who, who, who's there?" I stuttered panic taking over.

'I'm in no shape to fight right now if more of those green twats come along screwed!'

At least ten goblins stepped out of the shadows, black daggers and bows in hand.

'Yeah, I'm screwed.'

I tried to crawl away, in one last desperate attempt but an arrow pierced my calf, stopping me in my tracks.

I lay back down on my front, shutting my eyes and waiting for the sweet embrace of death.

It never came.

I felt tiny, clawed hands grip my side and roll me over. I stared up at countless dull eyes gazing back down at me. The goblins were drooling mouths opened fangs bared. From here I could see two sets of sharp, yellow teeth. The first was made of long knife-like fangs, the second made entirely of flat molars.

Countless hands held me down on the ground, I was far stronger than one but I didn't have the strength to resist this many.

The goblins brought their salivating maws towards my flesh and bit down, the ones behind laughing in their high-pitched grating voices.

I screamed myself hoarse as they ate me alive.

...

I was back.

Back in that dark, dim cave. Back in this nightmare. The swarm of goblins still crowded in front of me, blood dripping from their fangs.

I turned and ran into the darkness. I didn't care that I didn't know where I was going, that I had left my only source of light behind. I ran and I ran and I ran.

Until the inevitable happened.

I tripped on a rock and went tumbling down, my body rolling along the floor like a ragdoll until I slammed into a cold tunnel wall.

My entire body ached as I sat up against the wall and began to cry. I cried and I cried and I cried, my eyes turning red.

I don't know how long I cried, I had lost all sense of the time by that point.

"Damn it!" I shouted, "what the hell kind of nightmare is this!"

"Hee, hee, hee."

I visibly shook, that squeaky laugh piercing my ears, fear filling my brain.

And at the same time, a burning rage flooded through my veins, the burning desire for revenge, to make them as I had suffered, threatening to burst out like a tidal wave of fury.

And burst out it did, I could feel the anger moving through my veins, gathering at my heart, it broke off a piece of me and travelled down my arm and into my right hand.

It coalesced in the form of a battery-powered lamp.

"What?" I asked out loud, jaw dropping.

'Fuck it, I'm not about to look a gift horse in the mouth.'

I quickly switched the lamp on, looking up to see a goblin aim a bow at me. I jumped to the right as the goblin shot, the arrow sailing over my shoulder.

I sprinted towards the goblin and punted the little bastard in the chest, the creature flying into the wall like a green cannonball.

I grabbed a rock, ran over and cracked its skull open like an egg.

This time I could still walk.

This time I was swimming in a pool of violence-fueled glee, adrenaline still running through my veins as I stared down at the damn thing.

But my anger was not gone. Not one bit.