That utter bastard.

I lay on the ground with my mouth filled with pebbles. My blood was rapidly leaking out of my body, and I was on the verge of losing consciousness to shock.

Casting the last spell that I’d cast, the torture spell. It was freshest in my mind, but more importantly, it had a vital element — the “Aware” and “Conscious” runes would keep away the shock. I was sure that was why Wilmette had kept it until last.

Of course, I wasn’t thinking all that rationally. My lizard brain was processing things at it’s most instinctual level. Still when the spell kicked in I was suddenly hyper-aware of my surroundings, of the pain from the slash in my stomach with my guts leaking out, of my broken legs, of the pebbles and twigs poking up into my body, and most importantly of the “Pain” component of the spell I just cast.

Even though I had decreased the level of pain, it was incredibly hard to focus, on the next spell. A gut wound is incredibly painful and takes a long time to kill you. At least that is what I remember hearing on Television in a world of bullets and stab wounds. Not sure how that transferred over to intestines splayed across the dirt.

Forming the spell in my head, remembering to keep the comfort aspect out, to speed up the casting time, and adding runes specifically for intestines, internal organs, bleeding as well as adding a no rocks, no dirt, no plants, a light anti-bacteria meta-component probably took minutes, though in my agony it felt like it took hours.

Finally, I cast the spell.

Unless it happens to you, I don’t recommend the feeling of having your internal organs sucked back into your body, while the cut they spilled out of slowly seals itself back together, and all the tiny bits of stone and twigs shoot out of your belly like popping corn.

Until finally the most damaging wound was healed. At which point, I discovered that I had no idea how to end the torture spell I’d cast.

The torture spell had been designed to start easy and build up in pain, over the period of the spell. Luckily I had made changes before casting it on the goblin. From 6 hours to 10 minutes. From absolute mind-numbing pain to lesser pain.

But for 10 minutes I had to lie there in the dirt while feeling like every cell in my body wanted to explode. While feeling like all my bones were on fire. While my nerves were stretched and pulled to their maximum.

Wilmette was a sick fuck, and I would fuck him over big time for this. That was the only thing I could think of as I lay there. I did manage to heal my legs. But that was almost as an afterthought. The thought that had I simply, unquestioningly followed his lead, that I would be lying here for 6 hours, it almost made me want to scream.

But I held it in. Focused on different things. Four more minutes. I have scars from training, from the fight yesterday, from my father. Might as well see if I can get rid of those while I am… Arrghhhhh!

Until finally my body was as pristine as a baby’s bottom. Well, to be fair, a baby’s bottom that had developed calluses and character from rough living and constant training.

Like clockwork, the 10 minutes were done. I got up. Went to where I kept my short sword and dagger. Didn’t bother to hide, since he would be expecting that. Casual and quick. I would saunter up to him like it was just any other day. He would see me coming, but he wouldn’t see me coming if you know what I mean.

I casually walked over to Wilmette. Acting like I had a question that only he could answer. Pretending to look hurt and betrayed by what he had done to me. Well, maybe I wasn’t acting. Inside I was seething in anger.

Wilmette was hunched over the goblin we had been using as a practice dummy. He had vivisected it, and with my mage sight, I could see slow wisps of its life force leaving its body.

He turned to me. “Gud. Gud. Yu not ded. Hurt make yu fucus. New soft boy wud chage spell. Tom’ro fit 5 gobbles. Only win, use spell fighting. Think on foot.”

What he seemed to be saying was that he somehow anticipated that I would change the spell, not that he was a sadist. And that tomorrow I would be fighting 5 goblins and I needed the practice of casting in a life or death situation to survive the combat.

Not sure how much I believed the stuff he was saying, but I backed down. Instead, I walked over to the cage of goblins reached in and grabbed one by the back of the neck, like I’d seen Wilmette do. It struggled in my hands but shacked like it was, there was very little it could do. Then I turned to Wilmette and said “My gobbles.”

He laughed “Yo, gobbles.”

At heart, I felt a bit guilty using these things as inhuman monsters, but to be frank, they were inhuman monsters. Still, I took it back to my area and cast the basic sleep spell I had taught myself on the poor monster.

The spell itself was a crude variation on the original calm spell I had used over a year ago on the potter’s daughter. Now having seen how healing spells were constructed, I was sure I could create something better.

Instead, though, I spent the rest of the night just studying the way that life moved through the goblin while it slept. Well to be accurate. As the goblin snored and farted. Other than that, I did nothing to it, though I did keep it shackled and tied it to the back of my leanto.

The next morning I got up and began stretching. If I was going to have to face five goblins, then I might as well be at my best. After a good stretch followed by a short jog, I sat down and broke down the torture spell that Wilmette had taught me.

The first thing I did was take out the pain component. Once that was done I cast the spell on my captured goblin. Its eyes lit up and it started to bounce around frantically at the end of the rope I used to tie it up with. It was also fidgeting uncontrollably.

Thinking about my experience from the night before, I had mostly been distracted by the pain I was going through. But awareness and alertness without inhibitors, memories came back. Suddenly I knew, remembered, the pain I had endured had kept me from an alertness equal to a thousand cups of coffee, a Godzilla dose of Ritalin, It was like cocaine if cocaine were on drugs.

This spell desperately needed limitations. It could oh so easily become addictive. I could see myself, in some darkened burnt out building, casting the spell on myself over and over again, only stopping to increase the potency. Letting the world, and thoughts of unimportant things (like food) slip away. A part of me could now see why the torture element had been added, though a bigger part of me still suspected that part of that was Wilmette’s not so well hidden bloodlust and sadism.

Limitations needed to be on the spell. Now it would last for about three minutes, would fade away quickly, and had the potency of about 15 cups of coffee or like the buzz from three energy drinks, at it’s most potent point. I also added a general heal. The heal wouldn’t do much, but it might give me a few more seconds in a worse case situation.

I would need to practice this spell until I could cast it on myself without thinking. At a moment’s notice. It had to become reflex because there was a very good chance that someday it would save my life.

At around eleven Wilmette got up. He usually was up earlier than that, often before the sun came up, most of the time before Elm himself was up. But the night before he had stayed up late torturing the goblin and absorbing its life essence, and hadn’t gotten much sleep.

He had a kind of dark energy around him this morning. The same kind of energy he’d had the day before. It was a kind of abundance of life, a bounce to his step, or seen under mage sight, an abundance of life energy.

I shrugged it off. As long as he was killing goblins and not me, his habits didn’t concern me. Considering I had a goblin tied up outside my improvised shelter that I intended to use to study magic, that would have been incredibly hypocritical.

When I saw him, I stripped down to just my pants and was about to take off my sword and knife when he stopped me.

“Yu’s man. Use man wepuns. Even runt boy,” he said.

So I tightened my belt with the sword and dagger. Did a couple more quick stretches to limber up again, and then stepped into the cage.

Wilmette grabbed the long pole he was using to control the goblins. And then grabbed one, and then another and lifted them into the cage with me. Then he cut off their shackles. He dumped a bunch of crude stone knives for them to use in afterward.

One of the tricks I had learned from the first day of fighting goblins was not to let them get to their knives. It was much easier to kill them when they were unarmed.

I ran at one of the two. It turned to face me, snarled, its tail lashing, then it turned and ran, not towards the knives but at the cage walls. But I had the jump on it. I grabbed it by the back of the neck and with a swift jerk I had broken its spinal cord, it twitched and fell limp.

The second goblin had managed to get a knife and was now climbing the ropes of the cage on the other side of me. When it got to the top, the stupid thing started to chitter and screech at me. Then it shit, and began to throw gobs of its feces at me.

This time, I simply stood my ground and started to send a stream of life mana its way. It was sentient and in its own way intelligent, because of that, it took a considerably bigger effort to overcome the stupid thing’s mental resistance. All the while I stood there, it pelted me with feces. But eventually, maybe four or five minutes later — just like the chipmunks, like the rabbit and the frog — the goblin, filled with too much foreign matter exploded, and bits of flesh, blood, and viscera in microscopic particles rained down to coat the cage.

I turned to look at Wilmette, and he, in turn, looked at me closely. “Witch,” he said, and nodded to himself. “Our secret. No, let others see. Stay secret. Keep secret.”

Ignoring him, I picked up three of the stone knives and tucked them into my belt. While I was doing this Wilmette was dragging three more goblins from their cage into the main fighting cage. They seemed a lot more reluctant to come than they ever had even yesterday. My exploding their “buddy” must have made an impression.

As soon as Wilmette had unleashed their hands, I took off after one of the goblins. But this time I had a couple of stone knives and so I threw one from my off hand at one of the other two goblins.

I reached the goblin I was running at and while I was more focused on the goblin I had thrown a knife at, the first one, I’d been chasing managed to bite my throwing arm, as I was pulling back from the throw. Unfortunately, my knife-wielding hand was already plunging my good steel knife into it’s back. It was out of the fight. Not necessarily dead, but definitely bleeding out.

The one that I’d thrown the stone knife at was still in the game. The knife itself hadn’t done much. Hadn’t even cut the goblin. But it had knocked the monster off its feet. Basically, I’d thrown a big rock at the thing, which by coincidence happened to be shaped vaguely like a knife, but had none of the aerodynamic or cutting properties of a good throwing knife.

The third goblin had managed to get a knife and was charging me, so I decided to charge it back. We met in a clash of stone and steel and it came away without a head and I got a cut across my left knee for my pleasure.

I turned to face the third goblin, but damn, the second one must have hit me harder than I thought. I limped and almost tripped. The second goblin had a knife now and was headed for me. I quick cast a general healing spell. There was no time to change the focus to my knee. For this I didn’t need the awareness spell, I was in no danger of going into shock.

With my limited mobility, the last goblin was hardest to kill. It actually took me three strikes, and I had to put some weight on my now only wounded right knee. I endured the pain though, and with my short sword managed to gut the little thing as it tried to drive its own stone dagger into my heart. It missed, I didn’t and the second fight was over.

Moving to the back of the cage, I cast a much more complete healing on myself. Then bent over and began to breathe deeply to catch my breath. When I was done, I walked over and slit the throats of the two goblins who I’d taken out of the fight, but hadn’t actually killed outright.

Wilmette gave me about a half an hour to prepare myself. Then when I indicated I was ready, he shoved the last five goblins inside the cage with me and cut their bindings.

Even while the others were being freed two of the goblins rushed me. So I rushed them. Grabbing it by the neck, I stabbed up with my sword into the first one’s chest, while the second bit me in the side and its claws raked my side.

I grabbed hold of the goblin I had just killed and threw it at the mass of goblins that Wilmette was still in the process of unleashing knocking two of them down.

But I was in trouble, the little shit had a firm grip on my Achilles tendon with its teeth and even after I lopped off it’s head, sharp tiny little goblin teeth clamped into my skin and sawed with every move.

I cast another quick general heal, then violently kicked the head off my leg sending it spinning into a charging goblin. A rain of feces, stone daggers, bits of dead goblin rained down at me from above as two of the goblins pelted me with their scat from afar. For some reason, I thought “Damned ranged DPS’s.”

The one on the ground seemed to actually be talented, or maybe I kept on being distracted by the vile-smelling refuse that was being lobbed at me from above. Still, I managed to get in close and spear it through the side and down through its pelvis with my short sword.

Keeping Wilmette’s advice that I keep my exploding magic secret, I chose not to blow up the last two goblins. Though I have to admit that I really wanted to. Goblin shit is… indescribably foul — and this is coming from the poo boy himself.

Instead, I picked up one of the corpses on the ground and threw it at the two goblins. The lobbed body didn’t hurt them, and it didn’t stop them from pelting me with the worst of the worst. How is it possible that such a small creature can hold so much filth in their buttocks? Nature magic, I guess, though it was not a spell I wanted to learn.

What the lobbed body did was separate the two creatures. And when they were separate, I picked up the same dead goblin and threw it again, and again. Separating the two filthy little brutes as much as possible.

And then I climbed.

Which was probably stupid. I mean, how wise is it to climb after something that is basically an overgrown clumsy monkey. I did it anyway. And the thing scampered and chittered at me all the while lobbing me with shit.

But I was fast too, and furious. And motivated. And though the monkey was agile, I was now an incredibly fit and nimble eleven-year-old and this was basically an overgrown jungle gym. We were both, ahem, in our element. And when I caught the little shit, I took a great deal of pleasure in breaking its neck.

Which was of course what the last goblin had been waiting for. I hadn’t noticed that it had stopped throwing shit at me but instead had stealthily been creeping up behind, as I monomaniacally chased the other little monster around the cage.

I felt a sharp jab in my back as a stone knife took me from behind, and I lost my grip and fell from the top of the cage to the floor.

As I lay on the ground, I ignored my short new life flashing before my eyes. I ignored my body quickly shutting down. I only had seconds. Instead, I cast my new awareness spell. Now I had a couple more seconds.

From the corner of my eye, I could see the goblin climbing down the side of the cage. I ignored it, I fitted the rune for back into my healing spell, and cast. This needed to be quick.

The goblin was raising its stone knife to finish me off just as my spell finished casting, my back immediately began to knit itself together, and while blood was pouring out, I managed to roll out of the way as the dagger fell down.

I stood. The awareness spell had reached its apogee and had begun to descend. I felt a strange combination of extreme energy and complete exhaustion. The skin on my back was coming back together. I knew I was barely holding myself together, but I launched myself at the goblin.

I’d dropped my sword. I’d dropped my knife. They were across the cage somewhere. Instead, I grabbed hold of the goblin’s knife hand with my own hand, and the goblin’s neck with my other hand, and simply lifted the goblin up and drove it into the ground.

And then did that again.

And again.

And again.

I don’t know how long I kept picking that goblin up and smashing it into the ground of the cage, but the awareness spell had worn off, and I was holding a corpse and was covered head to toe in blood and goblin shit.

I looked at Wilmette. He waved his right hand. So-so. The same gesture as from Earth. Then in utter exhaustion, among the bodies of my victims, I passed out unconscious.