Make it home

Flinch didn’t even care to take a closer look at the human he caught, there was no time. With the equipment he carried, he wouldn’t last two days outside the swamp so he ran like hell to make it to the village. He was about to cross through the bushes and vines covering the village entrance but hesitated. His still pounding headache reminded him of the unsightly new addition to his forehead, they wouldn’t accept him. So instead, he snuck in through a secret entrance he had built years back. He quickly put on his leather armour, strapped to knifes to his sides and a blowgun to his thigh. He packed a small bag with blowdarts, some paralytic poison and a bundle of thin but strong leather straps. Finally, he grabbed all the dried meat he could fit inside his backpack, a waterskin and flint.

Most goblins slept during the day, so he was able to move to the small well without being seen. He filled the waterskin and turned around to see a goblin staring at him. It was a woman just a few years younger than him and she looked terrified. Her arm rose slowly, pointing at his horn and then she yelled, “FLINCH WAS POSSESSED BY A DEMON! COME, EVERYONE, COME QUICKLY!”.

‘SHIT’, this was very bad. Immediately Flinch started running, he wasn’t strong or tall, but at least he was nimble so he rushed past the woman and the two guards at the village entrance. The next two hours he spent runnin, jumping, ducking and hiding. He even had to lure a group of goblins into one of his hidden traps to escape, the screams behind him made clear that there was no way back.

Flinch reached the edge of the swamp quicker than he ever had before and passed it without a second of hesitation. It was this or certain ****. The forest was unfamiliar to him, he had only been there a couple of times and never long, but his instincts carried him quickly between trees and through dense underbrush until he finally stopped in front of a mountain. He couldn’t believe he ran that far, the Razor Mountains had always seemed so far away. For a second he felt safe and then the exhaustion hit him like a falling tree. His burning lungs, his shaking legs, the sweat dripping from the tip of his nose, he felt it all at once.

Still, he couldn’t pass out in the open, so he looked around and after some searching he found a cave leading inside the mountain. He went inside, the darkness of it felt like a comforting blanket covering him. The cave appeared natural and looked like it went deep into the mountain, but Flinch just found an empty nook and crammed himself inside. He took one deep breath and passed out.