6 – Heroine vs Goblins

Three versus one. Those odds were not what Alexandra had been hoping for when she set out to hunt. Still, there was no backing out now. The goblins wouldn’t let her.

Sickle in hand, she took a fighting stance. Her best impression of a fighting stance was to stand sideways, knees slightly crouched, her sickle holding hand raised behind her.

The goblins didn’t seem to care much about her. They grouped up slowly, their gazes never leaving her. Their smiles ran all the way up to their ears, leaving just enough space between their lips to peek at their sharp teeth.

None of them were even holding weapons.

Alexandra told herself that was a good thing. Fewer things to dodge. Simple math. She was good at math. Well, decent.

She was not, it was becoming clear, particularly good at fighting.

The goblins spread out around her in a lazy half-circle, in no apparent hurry, their long arms hanging loose at their sides. Their fingernails—claws, really, she should start calling them claws—caught the morning light in a way that highlighted their sharpness.

She tightened her grip on the sickle and tried to look threatening.

The first one came low and fast. She swung. The blade sang through empty air while the goblin ducked under it and shoved her leg on the way past. Not a real strike. More like a greeting. She stumbled backward anyway, got her feet back under her.

Okay. Okay. So they were fast.

She reset, sickle up, and made herself breathe. Slow. In through the nose, out through the mouth, like she was doing yoga.

Fuck, this wasn’t yoga.

The second goblin feinted left and she didn’t take it. Then the third came in from the right and she turned, swung and actually connected. The blade dragged across its forearm with a sound like tearing cloth. The goblin hissed, reeled back.

Her heart thumped.

A goblin raked a hand across her calf and danced away before she could turn. Three thin lines of heat bloomed on her leg. Not deep. Definitely on purpose.

They circled again, unhurried, easy, one of them licking the cut on its forearm like it was something interesting rather than something that should hurt.

That was when she understood.

They weren’t trying to win. They were playing. Testing the shape of her, seeing what she’d do, having a lovely time at her expense. And the worst part was that she couldn’t do anything about it yet, and they knew that too.

She exhaled slowly and adjusted her grip.

Fine. Let them play. She just had to last long enough to get good.

She took the initiative, swinging in a wide arc at the closest goblin. It stepped back, dodging without a sweat.

She repositioned.

One goblin came in low and she caught it across the ribs on the backswing. A solid hit, she felt it connect. The goblin hissed and skipped back. Good. She turned to track another, swiped at it, missed, caught the last one instead with a glancing blow across the shoulder. She was moving faster now, or she was reading them better, she couldn’t tell which. Maybe both.

She landed another hit, then another, the long edge of the sickle opening small cuts across green skin, arms and sides and once cleanly across a thigh. She was finding the patterns she’d been looking for.

Yet they were laughing. A low bestial cackle echoed through the field.

A goblin was already inside her next swing, closer than it had any right to be, and its claws dragged across her forearm before she could pull back. Blood flowed. She spun, swiped, connected with nothing.

She shook her arm, trying to dispel the pain, but another strike caught her across the shoulder on her blind side, tearing through her shirt. She stumbled forward, turned it into a step, swung wide to buy herself space. The goblins scattered and regrouped, easy as breathing.

She pressed in again. Caught one with a decent slash across the chest, another with a kick to the side. They hissed and moved as they bled. Not enough. She took a cut across her thigh in exchange, then one across the back of her hand that made her fingers go briefly numb. She lost the count of her own wounds. She didn’t need to know.

She reset. Breathing hard.

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Her slashes felt wrong. Weak. Every hit that landed seemed to slide off, pulling away before it could go deep.

She looked at the sickle. Really looked.

The curve.

The tip.

The first attempt was clumsy. She snagged a goblin’s wrist with the tip of her sickle more by accident than skill, and it twisted free before she could do anything useful with it. But she felt the principle of it, the way the blade wanted to pull rather than cut, and she chased that feeling.

The second attempt caught the same goblin by the ankle mid-lunge. She pulled. It went down face-first into the dirt and she was already moving to the next one. Her growing smile was pulling on her wounds, but she didn’t care.

She hooked the goblin’s arm, felt it stumble, and lost it before she could do anything useful. Messy. But the sickle was doing something now.

She kicked.

The goblin staggered, found no ground to recover on, and she was already pivoting, hook finding the shoulder, catching deep under the joint, and she pulled. It screamed. A real sound, high and sharp and nothing like the wet laughter from before. Nothing like the call to its brethren. The goblin dropped to one knee, its arm hanging wrong.

Her lips pulled back. It hurt. She let them.

The other two goblins stopped moving.