"What now?" the former lawyer now Bard asked. "I say we go into the woods, hunker our asses down, and wait for the cavalry to arrive."

  "The cavalry?"

  "You know, tanks, jets, the Marine Corps? Shock and awe, the whole nine yards." Quint huffed. "Just last week my folks were drawing up plans on how to resist such an assault, and here I am hoping for Uncle Sam to come rescue me. Funny how that shakes out."

  This mirrored how I felt about his people. Had I met any of them last week, I'd be crossing the street. Instead of pointing that out, I dumped a bucket of purple rain on his parade.

  "The Sensates first appeared around Geneva."

  "I'm not sure I follow." A look of confusion contorted Quint's face, making me notice that his skin was now perfectly smooth and his cheekbones more prominent.

  "My point is, we're in Colorado. I'm not going to do the exact math, but we're pretty much as far away from Geneva as you can get."

  "What you're getting at, Buck?"

  I sighed. "Unless the Sensates took offense to our particular style of pizza and went all 'fuck these guys in particular,' I think it's safe to assume that this thing is world-wide. There is no cavalry. Not anymore. If I'm right, hiding out in the woods is a terrible idea. I say we go out and explore. Find out what they've done to our world and how we can screw with that." I paused, looking at Quint. "I'm sorry, I can't do this. Why does your face look like that?"

  "Like what?" Quint, who up until that moment was sitting on a log, hopped up and started to explore his face with quick, panicked motions.

  "Like you're about to turn greyscale and start flexing at me. And is your chin actually more square now?"

  "I don't know. Is it? Do you have a mirror on you?"

  I shook my head. We spent the next minute rummaging through the camp in search of anything reflective. As it turned out, goblins weren't too big on beauty. And their steel was all chipped and rusted, which made it a terrible substitute for a mirror.

  "Now why'd you have to go and add me to your party?" Quint whined, having just kicked over a cast-iron pot. Or maybe it was a cauldron. Point was, it was so black and unreflective, it didn't have any leg for calling out kettles. And that made it into a conduit for Quint's frustration.

  I thought we were past this. Since we weren't, I wanted to quickly steer the conversation away from this topic.

  "You're still you, Quint. Only manlier. This must be the effect of your increased Charisma. So quit complaining and continue tossing this place. Maybe expand the search past just mirrors. We'll need supplies. Weapons. Tools. Like that pot of yours. Doesn't seem like it held any shrunken heads in recent memory. We should definitely grab it."

  "Looks more like a cauldron to me," Quint insisted.

  "I say we leave cauldrons to mole-nosed crones and stick with pot."

  "Fine," Quint agreed. "As for weapons, I already got myself the only one I need." He slapped his hip where his revolver was holstered.

  "Yeah, unless you know how to make gunpowder from scratch, you're shit out of luck, amigo. Even if you have a few shots left, your armory is now," I trailed off, pointing at one of the camp's shaky tents.

  "Well, I'll be," Quint said after examining his gun to find its cylinder filled with spent casings. He surveyed the camp and the dead monsters from last night. "Guess we oughta be able to scare up a bow here."

  I didn't ask Quint if he'd ever shot a bow before. Based on my own earlier performance with the cane, his Ranged Combat skill should take care of that.

  With that bow as our main goal, the two of us scoured the camp. Turned out, it wasn't a type of weapon favored by goblins.

  The only goblins I've met by that point were dead, but they already weren't making a good first impression. Their camp was less a living area and more like a cluttered junkyard. Finding anything useful in there was a nightmare.

  I was never the neat one in my marriage. A sink stacked with dishes never bothered me. Neither did empty cans on the coffee table, nor the occasional sock strewn about. Even so, my inner slob had nothing on goblins. Their tents were torn and soiled. Their personal belongings were scattered on the ground in piles where rags were mixed in with what looked like random bits of rusty metal and, most disgustingly, chunks of greasy yet borderline raw meat.

  If not for how dire our situation was, the stench alone would ensure I wouldn't come near a place like this. Thankfully, with my mind still reeling from everything that's happened I didn't have the capacity to pay the stench the attention it deserved.

  A large part of my brain power was dedicated to figuring out how this new UI of mine worked. Another to trying to convince myself I was not in fact crazy to accept having a UI now. Whatever else I had to spare, I put to sifting through the garbage. This left just a tiny part for occasional glances at the sky to make sure no new Sensates were coming.

  This story has been unlawfully obtained without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

  Aside from their untidiness, the other thing about goblins that annoyed me was their size. They rarely went past four feet in height. This meant we couldn't borrow any of their clothing. Filthy as they may be, they were still preferable to our current attire.

  When I suggested to Quint we should look for clothes, he turned his nose at the idea. Or maybe it was a particularly pungent aroma from the garbage pile he was exploring at the time.

  But I was thinking ahead with this. If we ever ran into someone less outright hostile than goblins, we would struggle to fit in looking like we did. Our modern clothes would likely cause a commotion and be a shining beacon for any Sensate on the lookout for people who survived whatever it was they did to our world.

  Still, if we were to find any appropriate clothes goblins wouldn't be the ones to provide them. The same applied to provisions. Their supplies were either on the verge of rotting or way past that point. Plus, looking at those chunks of meat, I couldn't be certain where they came from. A gourmet meal for a goblin could very well have been our initiation into cannibalism.

  We did find some useful things in the camp and among the fallen monster bodies. First, there were the coins. We've discovered a few small pouches among the trash. Several of the dead goblins had those same pouches on their belts. These usually had a few coins inside.

  The coins themselves were the color of old pennies and the size of quarters. Most of them were bent or chipped. All were dirty. Their uniform size and shape clearly designated them as currency. On one side they had a crown and on the other a bird that could have been a phoenix. It was hard to tell with how weathered they were. In total, we gathered around a hundred of them. I wondered what that would buy us.

  As I was counting our meager fortune, Quint startled me with an excited yelp. I shifted my stance to that of combat readiness, only to see him holding up what looked like a brown leather bag the size of an orange. Beaming from ear to ear, Quint produced a small stone from it and showed it to me.

  "I think marbles are supposed to be round. But, I guess it makes sense for you to lose them in these circumstances," I noted, not sure what it was that got Quint all excited.

  "It's flint," Quint explained. "This pouch has everything we need to start a fire."

  This was a good find. I gave him a thumbs up.

  "You know how to use it?"

  "Yup."

  "You've known it before or is this one of your skills talking?"

  "You ask me yesterday, I wouldn't recognize flint from gravel, Buck."

  Even that single level of Survival was already paying dividends. This should've made me feel better, more confident. It didn't. I was worried about potentially missing other crucial skills. Those we didn't know existed. Pushing the thought away, I returned to the task at hand.

  With my cane broken, I wanted a decent weapon. This has proven to be an impossible task. On top of their other deficiencies, goblins didn't really do decent. And this wasn't limited to how loosely they fitted their loincloths.

  Goblin weapons were all chipped and covered in rust. Worse than that, they were dull. And this wasn't my assessment. It was right there in the description I got by examining the weapon I ended up choosing for myself.

  Dull Falchion

  A single-edged sword of average length, the falchion is the machete of temperate climes. This particular one has seen better days, years, or perhaps even decades before neglect has gotten it to its current sorry state.

  1-4 slashing damage

  It was hard to believe this thing was actually worse than my cane. Before I broke it, that is. The difference was minor enough to not really matter when considered with my Strength bonus. I also liked the machete comparison. This meant I could use the falchion as a tool in a pinch.

  My weapon sorted, we gathered a heap of only slightly bent javelins and found a more or less intact quiver for them. Quint promptly slung it over his shoulder. As he kept rifling through the goblin belongings, he practiced pulling the missiles out and sticking them back in. I had to admit, he was quick on the draw. The javelins themselves dealt 1-4 damage, like most of the goblin weapons we examined. Only their damage was listed as piercing.

  I was about to wrap up our search, disappointed by the meager haul. Then, that pot that originally caught my eye beckoned me. If we were to live off the land, having a solid pot to cook our food in could be useful. The thing looked like it was heavy. I barely noticed the weight.

  As an experiment, I asked Quint to hold it in an outstretched arm. With his 8 Strength, he could do it without issue, but there was a clear shake in his grip.

  Watching Quint, I rested my hand on a pole for a clothesline that held up a bunch of rags. The thing felt sturdy and solid. I examined it closer. This was no ordinary stick, but a carved piece of wood with sections reinforced by leather cords in the spots where you'd expect handgrips to be.

  It was a quarterstaff dealing 2-7 blunt damage, so already an upgrade over my cane. It also had the Reach property. I could guess what that meant.

  The falchion helped me free the staff from the clothesline strangling it. I then pulled it out of the ground and wiped it with a goblin rag. That done, I used it to snatch the pot out of Quint's hands.

  "Now we need a barrel to sleep in and we're golden, right, Huck?" I said with a grin.

  "Sure, you be Tom Sawyer. Kick a feller when he's down, why don't you," Quint retorted without any real bitterness behind those words.

  "We good to go?" I asked. "Better yet, we good?"

  "I'm not sure I'll ever be good again, Buck," Quint said. "I do apologize for my earlier behavior. I wasn't thinking straight. Thanks for saving my ass." He offered me a hand. I shook it. "And you're right, we ought to stick together to stick it to those bastards. I'll follow your lead since you're better equipped to deal with all this unholy juju here. Just answer me one thing."

  "Shoot."

  "What's with all the amigos and some such? We going to have to fight about who was right at the Alamo, or what?"

  "Sorry to disappoint, I'm as Red, White and Blue as you are."

  He tilted his head at me.

  "Maybe not quite," I admitted. "Point is, I picked that stuff up in my youth. My best guess is it came from me watching too much Fawlty Towers. Once that started, I kept adding choice words to my vocabulary. That satisfy your curiosity?"

  "Sure does, hoss," Quint said. "Don't get me wrong, it's not a big deal. You just don't look the type, is all." He then turned around to give one last look to the spot where his compound used to be. "Hold up, what's that?"

  "What?"

  "You see something glint in that there tent?"

  "Nope. But you've got more Perception. Let's check it out."

  Billy Joel Facts - Chapter 10: