What the fuck just happen- my voice cut off as I heard a low, gurgling, clipped laugh.

My head jerked toward the dimly lit tunnel connecting to the cavern. I backed toward the wall, hands scraping into the rough stone as the laugh pitched higher and higher, tingeing with an inhuman manic quality. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up as the laugh grew nearer, along with a grating, ringing rasp of metal dragged against rock.

I frantically swept my gaze around the room looking for another exit, but there were none. The only way out was the flickering tunnel in front of me.

Grab that rock! Grab that fucking rock! I yelled at my human half. I snatched up a rock big enough that it barely fit into my hand, as the pool of light under a torch in the passageway formed into a vague outline, and a shape emerged from the gloom.

As the shape solidified, it broke into a run.

It was coming.

My brain jolted with adrenaline; hands and feet becoming slightly numb, vision sharpening and expanding as my pupils widened to let in more light, a slight dizziness and head rush as my blood abandoned periphery functions to increase the speed of my thought. It felt like the panic before going on stage without a script, or, you know, the terror that you’re about to be killed by a monster charging you out of a tunnel.

My last stray thought before my focus was entirely subsumed in the fight was huh, I always saw myself as more of a flight or fright guy. Surprising what you find out about yourself when shit gets real.

The thing burst from the tunnel.

Fast, very fast.

Sparks, metal dragging on ground.

Knife.

Big knife.

Cleaver or machete.

Yellow eyes, crazy eyes.

Can’t throw rock, psycho, would keep coming.

Pain won’t work.

Scaring won’t work.

Have to put it down.

Little.

It’s little.

Only kid size.

Not heavy.

Have to throw it off balance.

Charge it.

It’s close.

Only a few feet.

Shoulder muscles moving, going to swing.

Overhand chop.

Dodge.

Can dodge.

Jump left.

Turn shoulder sideways.

It missed.

Can’t hit with rock, bad balance.

Weight on left foot, I can kick.

My brain continued to race. I kicked out with my right foot, weight on my left. When I jumped out of the way, I jumped too far and too hard which threw my balance off. I had no training, and no skills, so the kick wouldn’t have done anything to a human, but it was good enough to move the two-and-a-half-foot tall body.

I connected, but I was falling onto my side as I kicked. My right leg was moving out fast enough that it hit before I fell though, and I’d moved quickly enough that my leg flashed in over the knife as the monster tried to bring it back up for another swing. His arms came up into my leg just before it made contact; the impact point moving from his chest up to his neck. My shin slammed into his collar, throwing him backwards onto the ground with a nasty cracking sound.

I was lucky he was so small, because with my shoulder rotating against my kick and my body falling, the kick had very little power. I feel awkwardly toward the ground, folding in my arms and clutching my rock to my chest as I rolled to my side. I popped back up and saw the sub-three-foot greenish brown creature had rolled head-over-feet backward from my kick and was staggering upward with a glazed look in his eyes. He looked like an animal who’d been owned by Michael Vick. A furry body, but with large clumps missing, looking as if they’d been ripped out in chunks. Jagged scars lined its ribcage, visible through the holes in the fur. A canid body walking on two legs, with a head that looked like a hyena.

APPRAISAL! I shouted in my mind, and the results came back immediately

Appraisal

Lesser Kobold

Level 4

Holy shit, I’m gonna-

Shut the fuck up, focus!

I was right, I didn’t have time to move back into my meta brain. The kobold took a staggering step towards me, reaching down to retake the cleaver he’d dropped when his head impacted the hard ground.

My instincts kicked in. Growing up I’d always been the type to run away or get in as close as possible, so I moved forward hoping to reach him before he reached the knife.

I reached my hands forward to grapple him but forgot I still had a rock in my hand and as I stretched my hand out for his head, I inadvertently blasted him in the face with it.

He reeled back, blood spurting from his nose and cheek as I scrambled to pick back up the rock I’d lost in the impact.

I looked up from the ground, rock in hand just as a screaming mass hit my midsection. We fell backward as I slammed the rock into the thing clawing and biting and shrieking into me. I felt something compress, like when you crush a ping pong ball, or hit a watermelon with a bat, but I also felt teeth dig further into my stomach, so I kept slamming the rock into the body on my stomach again and again. Twice, three times and a fourth before I rolled over, pinning the thing under me and punching at the side of its head repeatedly as I struggled to rise, first to my knees and then to my feet.

With one last punch, my bloody knuckles detached the mangled body and I finally registered the sound and notification that had happened sometime between during the moments when I had been smashing the rock into the kobold’s broken head:

*DING* [ENEMY DEFEATED – LESSER KOBOLD LEVEL 4 – 146 EXP GAINED]

Apparently, I’d killed the monster already and had just been smashing its dead teeth further and further into my own body, as evidenced by the fairly large tears in my abdomen.

They go well with your collection of gashes. I told myself.

I looked myself over and saw that I had cuts up and down my chest and waist from the creature’s sharp claws.

I look like I’ve been attacked by a herd of cats.

At least no one’s around to see. Last time we owned cats, everyone starting thinking you were a cutter.

I laughed as I flopped down on my back; tired, scared, disgusted, and elated.

I had won.

I was alive.