I pushed away the restless little guy and shouted:
“Leave me alone!”
Navalik had no intention of doing that. He jumped up and grabbed me by my shirt collar, forcing me to lean down to him, then stuck his hooked nose in my face and hissed, spit flying:
“Stop showboatin’ like you’re the High Priest of Maglubiyet or Emperor Kragosh himself! Yer a walkin’ corpse, just like me, and we’ll be dead before we even have time to take a shit…”
“That’s why I don’t want to talk to you.”
“Huh?”
“I need time to take a shit.”
Snorting mistrustfully, Navalik backed off, leaving me in peace. Finally! I needed to look at what I had.
I leaned back against the wall and stood in a stance that Oyama used during one of our sparring sessions. Hammerfist! An ordinary strike, no Hammer component. I didn’t even move the air, but the goblin’s laughter sure did.
Stunning Kick! The way special moves worked was that I did them myself, but the game system turned the movement into a super-strike…
Crack! The move must have been a sight to see — the earth disappeared from beneath my feet, I lost my balance and fell, painfully hitting the back of my head against the wall.
“Ahaha-ha!” Navalik’s uproarious laughter hurt more than my head. “I thought I’d seen it all, but I ain’t never seen nobody take a fall like that! Thank ye, heartless Maglubiyet, for consoling me in my final minutes!”
The goblin must have seen better in the dark than me — he approached and hovered over me.
“What’re ya wavin’ your hoofs for anyway? You don’t look like a clown or one of them circus freaks in a hat.” A bony hand flashed out of the darkness. “Get up, buffoon.”
Navalik helped me up, and that very second the cell door swung open. An indifferent voice filled the air as if from nowhere, sounding more mechanical than alive:
“Convicts, leave your cell. Follow the light to the portal. Fail to reach it in time and you will be disincarnated. Convicts, leave your cell. Follow…”
A timer began counting down:
Total surviving convicts: 981 of 981.
Disincarnation in: 04:53… 04:52… 04:51…
“Whaddaya waitin’ for? Let’s go!” The goblin grabbed me by the arm and pulled me to the door.
We emerged into a tunnel lined on either side with cell doors. It was already full of people. Navalik and I were first pulled ahead into the crowd, then pressed against a wall and dragged along in the stream. The convicts cleared their way with elbows, knees, shoulders, fangs and teeth, punching each other furiously and rushing for the portal. Flashing magical arrows on the ceiling pointed the way.
We were pushed forward a little, to the doorway of the next cell, and only then could I take a breath…
“Mooo-oo-oove!” an enraged roar rang out with the clatter of hooves…
Crash! A freaking minotaur had taken a run from the back wall of the cell and smashed right into the crowd. Unfortunately, the goblin and I were the first in his path. Intense pain shot through my ribs — I was impaled on one of the horns! My goblin cellmate emitted muffled shrieks from beneath one of the idiot’s hooves.
Groans, screams and all manner of swearwords came from the crowd. Twisting, I pulled myself off the horn, rolled into the minotaur’s cell and struggled to pull in a groaning Navalik. The crowd suddenly surged from the other end of the corridor and the idiot minotaur was trampled under dirty feet.
The crowding in the tunnel forced a few sentients through our door. I opened my eyes, saw nothing but a rear end with a tail, reeled back. The tail belonged to a dryad, a woman with the body of a deer. She shrieked piercingly, thrashed her legs and started to push her way outside. Her bouncing hooves cracked me in the nose and head and the dryad skittered away across the heads of the crowd. My health was in the red.
Navalik groaned nearby. The cell was empty and the press of people in the tunnel was beginning to thin out.
Disincarnation in: 00:37… 00:36…
“Run!” Now it was my turn to pull the almost expired goblin to his feet. “We have to hurry!”
“Nah…” He coughed, spitting out black blood. “I can’t… My legs… Get gone…”
“I’ll carry you!” I said, trying to pick the goblin up.
I couldn’t do it, not with my stats at zero. I had to drag Navalik, tripping in the darkness over the corpses littering the tunnel. I crawled over the trampled minotaur, his skull caved in. Once we were by the portal itself, I saw one of the deceased disincarnating, like a glass sculpture exploding into shards.
“Is this the Ordeal?” I asked, not expecting an answer, but the goblin heard and replied:
“Nah, just the damn… prelude… They wanna get rid… of the slowest…” The goblin was dying, his voice weakening and barely audible, lost in the roar of the crowd and his own coughing. “Listen here, Scyth… On the other side… You finish me…”
“Go to hell!” I snarled, dragging Navalik through the portal…
Chapter 32. The Ordeal
WE WERE THROWN OUT onto the flat surface of a cliff surrounded by a bottomless drop. Tiny particles floated in the air and emitted a dead light, but the stars were still shining.
“My ribs’re goners…” the goblin groaned, constantly coughing. “My lungs are pierced… Ugh… What a shit-show…”
Navalik’s last health points were melting away — he was breathing, but it sounded like a death rattle. Bubbles of blood formed on his lips.
Once I was sure that nobody was planning to kill us
