Polynya

“Fick me, Twixy, you do that shit again and you’ll be sorry!” Hiccup shouts from behind a rock.

Wolf barks wildly.

“The mutt agrees!”

“Mitherfickers gather ‘round, I have a gift from a fan.” As they gather, FeeTwix produces a small medicine bottle. “This, my friends, is a bottle of Fat Tony’s Go Juice!”

“Fat Tony’s what?” The goblin looks from the Swede to Ryuk.

“It was delivered to me by an EBAYmazon dragon.”

“When?” Hiccup asks. “I haven’t seen any dragons!”

“You were snoozing when it came. Anyway, this stuff will give us times 1.5 EXP for the next six hours, plenty of time to get through the catacombs.” FeeTwix takes a small quaff from the bottle. A green light slithers up his arms and legs, forms a halo over his head, and disappears. “So drink up!” He tosses the little bottle to Ryuk. “It’s time to kick some ass!”

To prove his point, FeeTwix charges forward, the first one into the catacombs.

(0)__(x)

The catacombs are surprisingly damp. Cold too,

Ryuk thinks after they’ve been inside for a few minutes. They’ve already moved from a cave to a large clearing big enough for a land dragon to nap.

Hiccup is at the back of the group, Wolf and Zaena at the front, and Ryuk is keenly aware that the goblin is close enough to him to jump into his arms if need be.

“It could be a ghost,” Zaena says.

“Gee fick, Liz, you know that’s my trigger word.” Hiccup steels himself. “Not scared – hungry as a fickin’ tardigrade, though.”

“You just ate,” she tells him.

“Yeah, but that was more of an appetizer.”

“I believe we were delivered three kilos of meat and you ate two,” FeeTwix adds.

“Like I said, appetizer.” The goblin looks around at the large, open space before them. “You know, this place wouldn’t be too bad for the upcoming Cave Edition of Wet Goblin Holes.

I should write to the editor.”

A bat flies past and Hiccup shrieks.

“Easy,” FeeTwix says. “It won’t take us long to get there now that we have a handy dandy map!” A backlit map appears in the air and twinkles out of existence. “Thanks goes out to Jack S. for his stunning cartographer prowess! If you need a map of a cave, dungeon – or hell, some of the flea markets in Hyperborea – look no further than Jack!”

Hiccup groans and Wolf makes a noise that sounds like a groan.

“Is he fickin’ mocking me?”

Ryuk laughs. “It sounds like it.”

Wolf starts sniffing the path up ahead. Once he’s sniffed off into the wall of the catacomb, he lifts his legs and takes a long, splashy piss.

“You think he could have done that back there,” Hiccup says with a cringe.

“Since when did you start hating the smell of piss?” Zaena asks. “I thought goblin mothers bathed their babies in piss to ward off ticks.”

“They do, and goblin piss smells way fickin’ nicer than Wolf piss, believe you me, Liz-tard. If you want proof, next time I need to drain the chalupa I can do so in your general direction.”

“I like you, goblin, I do, but if you value your chalupa

, you will never, and I mean never, pull it out in any way that I could see it, even if by accident. If you haven’t already noticed, I’m very fast with my swords.”

Wolf barks and runs ahead into a room with a low ceiling. He emerges seconds later, an imp gripped tightly in his jaw. He snaps the creature’s neck, Instakill!

, and shakes what’s left of the life out of it.

“Fick yeah!” A shield shaped like a triangle appears in Hiccup’s brass hand, his spiked club in his other. “It’s imp-killing time!” he shouts as dozens of tiny, devilish creatures crawl out of holes at the top of the big opening.

-169 HP! Critical hit!

Ryuk pings one of the imps with an explosive marble, sending a chunk of its shoulder and wing flipping into the air. More imps pour out of holes in the ceiling, cackling and screeching as they dance around. There are too many to tell their levels, but seeing how easy it is to kill them dead, Ryuk assumes they’re all around level seven.

Phwwoom!

FeeTwix’s double-bladed sword is already off its hilt, the rotating blades slicing through the imps and spritzing the air with blackened blood. Zaena is his back up act, her blades a flurry of metal death as she minces, stabs, and filets anything with wings, a devil’s tail, and a scowl on its face.

Damn!

Ryuk thinks as he watches Wolf leap through the air, take out two imps just by landing on them, and lunge for another.

Insta-Instakill!

Hiccup is clobbering imps likes he’s auditioning for a part as The Thing; he pauses once, just in time to bash an imp with his triangle shield. Ryuk sees an imp coming at the goblin from behind and his Extreme Focus skill takes over.

Instakill!

He pegs the imp between the eyes with a molten marble and it falls backwards, dead before it hits the ground.

Hiccup shoots Ryuk a thumbs up, winks in a way that makes him feel a bit uncomfortable, licks his lips, and gets back to fighting imps. Once he clears a few out, his shield momentarily disappears and a healing potion takes shape in his grubby paw.