Copyright J.B. Norman
“Look out!” Lucia shouts. “Goblins!”
“They might be friendly,” Alda offers. “We should at least get to know them first.”
Roland nods and takes a step forward.
“Hey, Goblins. Are you guys friendly?”
The Goblins exchange glances between themselves. Their eyes shift slowly back towards Roland.
“Not really, no,” one of the Goblins says.
The Goblins draw their swords. Roland and Petra raise their fists, Apolline calls her magic to her fingertips, and Lucia flashes her claws.
Celeste tilts her head quizzically. Being waylaid by Goblins is a new experience for her.
“Yeah, we were planning to beat you up and steal your stuff,” a second says.
“Thanks for not just assuming we’re evil, though,” a third adds. “That means a lot.”
“But you are evil!” Lucia protests.
“Yeah, but we’re evil and Goblins, we’re not evil because we’re Goblins,” the first Goblin notes.
“Sure,” the second Goblin says. “I know plenty of non-evil Goblins.”
He frowns to himself.
“Bunch of goody-two-shoe chumps. I hate them so much.”
“Furthermore,” the third Goblin begins. “Waaaaaaaah!”
He promptly goes sailing through the air as Petra strides forward and kicks him somewhere into the next fiscal year.
“Hey!” the first Goblin cries. “No fair!”
“Fair?” Lucia repeats incredulously. “How do you care about being fair? You literally just admitted you’re evil!”
“Well, yeah,” the second Goblin notes. “You’re supposed to be fighting fairly. And we’re supposed to be using all kinds of underhanded tactics to take advantage of your overly trusting natures.”
“Can I punch them yet?” Roland asks.
“Yes, Sir Roland,” Apolline says. “You can punch them now.”
“So, uh,” Celeste whispers into Lucia’s ear, surreptitiously stepping closer to the Wilderling woman, “I’ve never been in a fight before. What should I do?”
“Well,” Lucia offers, “just throw something Alchemy-y and either poison or explosive at them.”
Celeste blinks in surprise.
“Wait. Do you think I just go around carrying poison?” she asks.
“Wait. You don’t? What are you going to do if you need to fight bad guys?” Lucia asks.
“I don’t know!” Celeste says, throwing her hands up in bemusement. “I’m usually a shopkeeper, on a normal day, if I have to fight somebody, something’s going terribly wrong!”
“Oh yeah,” Lucia mutters. “Well, I guess just watch us fight them.”
Celeste watches as Roland rushes the two remaining Goblins.
“Hmm,” Celeste says. “I think I have some spare Skremmler’s Combustible Powder capsules in my satchel.”
“Alchemy Punch!” Roland cries.
“Oh,” Celeste stammers, watching his example. “Um, Skremmler’s Combustible Powder… Combustion!”
She throws a handful of powder capsules and, true to its name, it combusts, knocking the Goblins off their feet.
“Like that?” Celeste asks.
Lucia shrugs.
“Yeah, more or less.”
Petra and Roland keep cautiously edging towards the Goblins to continue to fight if necessary.
“Right,” one of the Goblins says, staggering to his feet. “We’ll call it a draw.”
“I don’t know,” the second Goblin suggests, “I say we win a split decision on points.”
“No deal,” Roland says. “Alchemy Punch!”
Follow me here:
If you’ve enjoyed my content, please consider supporting me through Ko-fi or Patreon, or through Paypal by scanning the QR code below:
Follow Realmgard and other publications of Emona Literary Services™ below:
Subscribe to the Emona Literary Services™ Substack newsletter here.
And check out my full-length stories here:
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
The author prohibits the use of content published on this website for the purposes of training Artificial Intelligence technologies, including but not limited to Large Language Models, without express written permission.
All stories published on this website are works of fiction. Characters are products of the author’s imagination and do not represent any individual, living or dead.
The realmgard.com Privacy Policy can be viewed here.
Realmgard is published by Emona Literary ServicesTM
