My second life as a dungeon

I woke up seven hours later feeling like I had only slept five but I couldn’t sleep any longer as I had a job to do. I begrudgingly got out of my bed and donned my armour with the help of my aide, five minutes later I was outside my tent overseeing my soldiers getting ready for the coming battle. They may not have been professionally trained to be soldiers but the eagerness for bloodshed that drove them to join the army also made them passable soldiers.

There was a murmur of excitement going around each of the six platoons that was ready to pop at any moment. I wasn’t worried about a fight breaking out as they weren’t savages but they might leave without the rest of the platoon to find the ogres and get themselves killed. As soon as I saw the last goblin form into the sorry excuse for a formation in front of me I started my final speech before the battle.

‘I see all of you in front of me and I see a sea of death ready to take down anything it rolls over.’ I shouted hoping that I was loud enough for everyone to hear me. ‘This isn’t your first battle and it won’t be your last. The ogres may be bigger, stronger and tougher than you, but you are faster and more numerous. It matters not how strong your swing is if it never lands, it doesn’t matter how tough you are if you get hit a thousand times.’

‘Size means nothing in front of a smarter and faster foe, I trust that we will win this battle and once we do we will have a feast to celebrate our victory.’ With that my speech finished with a huge roar erupting around the camp as three hundred voices joined together in a war cry. With that each of the platoons left camp and made their way, separately, to the ogres with the scout’s help. 

After an hour of trudging through the thick, wet and tall grass we finally saw the ogres. They were sleeping in a pile around what I assumed to be a campfire from the smoke coming from their location. I quickly led my platoon into position to the north of the ogre pile before sending out the signal, the call of a radiantcrest. The radiantcrest was a large bird indigenous to the sunless valley and so would be incredibly unlikely to be heard in a mountainless savanna.

Over the next ten minutes I heard five more calls of various birds that lived anywhere but the savanna. I then signalled my platoon to get into position, each of them quickly knocking an arrow into their bows and drawing it until the bow was fully taut before waiting for their next signal. As soon as I saw the final goblin finish pulling their bow I yelled ‘FIRE.’ At the same time as I let my own arrow loose.

Fifty-one arrows flew through the starry sky into the pile of ogres with only one being different. I had used my magic to ignite my arrow so that the other platoons all knew the attack had started. This worked as planned as each of the platoons had fired their own arrows before mine had even landed. The first volley caused a huge roar to erupt as the ogres woke up in pain.

It took two more volleys before they had all woken up and three more volleys before they started charging us, all going in a random direction as they were unable to organise and pick a direction to go as an army, exactly as I had planned. The next part of my plan started with me yelling ‘Retreat’, causing my whole platoon to start running away from the ogres while shooting any arrows they could.

The goal of this part of the plan was to lure the ogres away from each other as far as possible so that they couldn’t get reinforced from the other groups. Meanwhile half of my army would rejoin with one of the lure platoons and surround the ogres, killing them. Since I was the leader of this small army I had decided to oversee a bait platoon, although I had also told my lieutenants to reinforce me first as I was technically the strongest goblin in this battle.

I wasn’t able to pay attention to anything other than my platoon and the ogres charging us so I had no idea when we would be getting reinforced. All I could tell was that with each volley we sent out the enemy was slowly getting closer and fewer of them were falling than I hoped. After I had run what felt like a full marathon I had lost count of the number of volleys we had sent and the ogres were close enough to start striking. I realised that the reinforcements wouldn’t be here in time.

I was prepared for this as I moved on to plan B and yelled ‘SCATTER’ while dropping my bow and unsheathing my longsword, a beautiful artisanal piece that I had received as a gift for becoming an officer from my family. The sound of fifty swords unsheathing at practically the same time told me that the fifty soldiers under my command followed suit as I started to run towards the nearest ogre.

Up close they were bigger than I was expecting and the part of me that hadn’t gotten totally absorbed by the character I had built for myself faltered a little bit before I gritted my teeth and kept on charging. The rest of the world faded around me as all I could see was my oversized prey in front of me, all I could hear was the wind rushing past my ears as I ran silently through the grass and all I could feel was my heart hammering in my chest as if it was trying to break out of jail.

I had turned around so fast that the ogre couldn’t react before my sword had drawn first blood, causing a huge gash to appear across its huge belly. My sword may be a beautiful piece to look at but it was still meant for the battlefield, not some retired generals fireplace mantle. The hulking ogre yelled in pain but didn’t fall so I turned around and ran back at it.

This time it swung its huge club at me but at the last second I dropped my body as low as I could while still running forward, this time my sword rendered a deep gash on the upper thigh of its right leg, causing it to almost fall to one knee. This went on for a while as each second a new wound appeared on its behemoth body and I was starting to get into a groove when I was overconfident and failed to dodge one of its attacks.

It had swung low to the ground in order to bait me into jumping before quickly redirecting the club upwards, straight into my chest. The force of the blow sent me flying up until I was about as twice as high as the ogre was tall. I used my dexterity to regain control of my rapid descent so I didn’t get hurt by the fall but the strike had caused my focus to falter for a second.

I was unable to regain my focus as I saw something in the corner of my eye that made me want to be sick. A goblin body lay on the floor without a head, it had been crushed beneath one of the ogre’s clubs. Then all of a sudden sound returned and I could hear other soldiers running around in desperation, some were still fighting, determined to make it out alive, but most of their morale had broken by now and were just screaming for help in desperation.

I tried to shut it out by telling myself that this was all fake and that the trial had created all these goblins but I failed as I heard a club hit flesh with a thick squelch as one of the voices shouting for help went quiet forever. The visceralness of the sound made everything suddenly more real and I felt tears well up in the corners of my eyes. I somehow managed to fight them off as I looked at my enemy without shutting out my surroundings.

My strikes had managed to wear them down to the point that they could barely stand up and their breathing had become heavy, this was the perfect time to end this small fight. If I got hit again I was unsure if I would get back up again. I lowered my sword so that the point was practically scraping across the ground as I charged one final time at the ogre. The ogre, expecting me to try the same thing as I had before, swung its club across the ground so low that it crushed the grass.

At the last second I jumped above the club to dodge it, just like last time the ogre once again twisted its arm so that the swing was suddenly going vertical. This time I was prepared though so instead of getting crushed by it I used it as a launch pad to send me flying even higher than before. As I reached the zenith of the arc I raised my sword above my head pointing down, at the ogre’s throat.

By the time it realised what I was doing it was too late for it to dodge so instead it raised its arms as sacrifices to ward off my strike. Unfortunately for it I was falling with too much speed and my sword was too sharp, as I landed on its stomach my sword sunk straight through both its arms, severing one completely, and into its throat.

As I watched the lights slowly fade out of its eyes I thought its death was ironic, if it had just accepted death then its head would have been completely severed and it would have had a quick, painless death. Instead it died slowly and painfully as it drowned in its own blood. Before it had even fully died I had turned away from it and towards the next target, I had subordinates to save.