Chapter 27: The First Kill

He committed. Pouring stamina from his body into his legs, Caleb executed a [Dash]. The ten feet of gravel separating them vanished in a blur of motion. The world compressed into a tunnel, his spear point aimed directly at the goblin’s heart.

But in that fraction of a second before impact, its pale eyes met his.

Not the mindless stare of an animal. Something flickered there—recognition, maybe even fear. Caleb saw not a monster but a living thing that didn't want to die.

His thrust went wide.

The spear point that should have punched through the creature's chest caught its shoulder instead, ripping through leathery hide in a spray of dark blood. The goblin's shriek tore through the air—high, piercing, utterly inhuman.

Crumb!

The creature slammed into him. Caleb had expected it to flee or attack with its claws from a distance. Instead, it barreled straight through his guard, inside the spear's reach where the weapon became useless. The collision drove him backward, his boots skidding on loose gravel.

Too close. Can't—

Claws raked across his abdomen. The leather cuirass caught them with a sound like tearing canvas, the material holding but the force of the blow sent him back. He stumbled, and the goblin's momentum carried them both to the ground.

They hit hard. His back crashed into stone, the force driving the remaining air from his lungs. The goblin landed on top, its face inches from his, needle teeth snapping at his throat. Its breath reeked of rotting meat and something worse—disease, corruption, wrongness.

Teeth! Block! Now!

His forearm shot up instinctively, jamming into the goblin’s snapping mouth. Needle teeth scraped bone, punching through his sleeve to draw blood. The creature’s free claws hooked over the edge of his cuirass, carving lines of fire across his shoulder.

All his training evaporated. The careful forms, the practiced movements, the skills he'd earned—none of it mattered. This was nothing like Captain Hatch's controlled drills. There was no technique here, only a frantic scramble to keep teeth from his throat.

The goblin's head twisted, trying to get around his blocking arm. Saliva and blood—his or the creature's, he couldn't tell—splattered across his face. Dropping his spear, he pinned its good arm, a desperate stalemate to keep the claws from his throat. But its other hand, the one with the ruined shoulder, scrabbled where it could. Weakened or not, its claws still drew blood, digging shallow, stinging furrows into his skin.

Can't breathe. Too heavy.

He bucked his hips, trying to throw it off, but the creature clung with inhuman tenacity. Its legs wrapped around his torso, claws digging through his pants into his thighs. His cuirass ground against the gravel, each sharp stone scraping against his spine.

Weapon. Need a weapon. Need—

The image materialized in his mind, every detail clear: his earlier survey of the ambush point. One foot to his left, partially buried in gravel. A broken piece of quarry stone, one edge naturally sharp where it had sheared from the wall. His [Perfect Memory] showed him exactly where it was, exactly how far to reach.

There.

His hand shot out, fingers closing on rough stone. The edge bit into his palm, drawing blood, but he didn't care. He brought it around in a wild arc.

The first impact caught the goblin's temple with a wet crack. It reeled but didn't release its grip. If anything, its attacks became more frenzied, claws and teeth seeking his throat with renewed desperation.

He struck again. The stone connected with the side of its skull, and this time he felt something give. The goblin's grip loosened. Its eyes rolled, unfocused.

Again. The crack echoed off the quarry walls.

Again. Dark blood splattered across his face, warm and thick.

Again. The goblin's body went slack.

Again. Just to be sure.

The sudden stillness was deafening. He was vaguely aware of a series of soft chimes that had sounded during the struggle, lost in the noise of his own panicked breathing. A stack of translucent blue windows now hovered at the edge of his sight, their silver script unread. He didn't have the time or the will to look at them.

The creature's body pressed down on him, no longer fighting, just dead meat. Blood—so much blood—pooled around them, mixing with the gravel to form dark mud.

Caleb shoved the corpse off and jerked back, crawling on all fours. His body moved without conscious thought, pure instinct driving him away from the thing he'd killed. Five feet. Ten. His back hit the quarry wall.

The shaking started in his fingers and spread outward. Great, wracking tremors that made his teeth chatter. His stomach clenched, twisted, and then everything came up. The morning's breakfast, last night's dinner, bile and water and horror all mixed together.

He retched until nothing remained, dry heaves that left him gasping.

The goblin lay where he'd left it. Its skull was... wrong. Misshapen. Broken. One pale eye stared at nothing while the other was lost in a mess of bone and brain matter. Blood spread in a dark pool, seeping into the thirsty ground.

He'd done that. Not with skill or technique or even courage. He'd done it with a rock and terror and the primal need to live.

Oh, holy crumbing-mackerel…

A memory returned, unbidden and perfectly clear. Meriel kneeling beside a fernback doe, her green hands gentle on its still-warm flank. Young Thal watched from behind a tree, trying to understand.

"We take only what we need," she said, her voice soft but certain. "And we honor what was given." Her fingers drew a pattern over the deer's heart—some Mycari blessing Thal never learned. When she drew her knife to begin the harvest, her movements were swift, precise, respectful. No wasted cuts. No unnecessary damage. She worked with the reverence of someone who understood the burden of taking a life.

"Death feeds life, little sprout," she told him, separating useful from waste with ease. "But we must never forget the cost."

The contrast sickened him. Meriel's clean kill versus his savage battering. Her whispered thanks versus his panicked brutality. Her respect for life versus his desperate scramble to preserve his own.

The shame burned worse than the claw marks.

He forced himself to look at the goblin again. Really look at it. Beneath the blood and damage, it was... small. Thin. Those scratches on its hide that he'd identified as wounds from pack mates—they stood out starkly now. This creature had been hungry, probably in pain, definitely at the bottom of its social structure.

Just trying to get water. Just trying to survive another day.

Like him.

"I'm sorry," he said. The words came out cracked, barely audible. He cleared his throat, tried again. "I'm... I'm sorry."

It wasn't Meriel's blessing. He didn't know the words, didn't have her faith or cultural framework. But it was something. An acknowledgment that this hadn't been glorious or heroic. It had been necessary and terrible in equal measure.

His hands still shook as he pushed himself to his feet. Every movement hurt. The scratches on his shoulders were bleeding through his shirt. His forearm felt like it'd gone through a woodchipper. His palm, where he'd gripped the stone, was a mess of cuts.

But he was alive.

That fact was a bedrock he could build on. He forced a long, slow breath into his aching lungs, then another. Compartmentalize. The word was an old tool, a mental switch he had flipped a thousand times. The emotional response is a liability. The task is the priority. He had a contract. Proof of kill was required. The job was not finished.

He retrieved his spear first, checking it for damage. A few scratches on the shaft, but the head remained sharp and secure. Then he returned to the goblin's corpse.

The contract specified two thumb claws as proof of kill. He kneeled beside the body, trying not to look at the shattered skull. The creature's hands were almost human in structure, just wrong in proportion. Long fingers tipped with those thick, yellowed claws that had torn at him.

He'd need to cut at the joint. His knife—where was his knife?

Right. His pack. Still up on the observation rise where he'd left it.

The journey up the slope felt three times as long as it should have, each step a fresh inventory of his wounds. He retrieved the knife Gareth had given him—a tool for harvesting, not fighting—and the return trip was worse. With the adrenaline gone, his body cataloged every hurt as he approached the still form, spear held tight against the possibility that dead things might not stay that way.

After prodding the goblin's corpse with the spear tip, he laid the weapon aside and knelt. The work had to be done. Unsheathing the knife, he took the goblin's clawed fingers, the skin cool and rubbery beneath his own.

He tried to channel Meriel's reverence as he worked. Quick cuts at the knuckle joints, separating claw from finger with minimal additional damage. The knife was sharpened—he'd made sure of that—and the job went quickly despite his unsteady fingers.

Two thumb claws. Proof of kill. Contract requirement satisfied.

He should leave. Get back to Deadfall, get medical attention, report success. But the practical part of his mind asserted itself through the nausea. One gold piece. It was a clear, clinical thought. Felicity said the stone is in the sternum. His gut roiled at the idea of more butchery, but the grim math was undeniable. A single stone was worth more than a month of backbreaking work at the inn. It was another step away from being the helpless victim in an alley.

Just check. Check. Gritting his teeth against a fresh wave of disgust, he repositioned himself. He used Gareth's knife to make a deep, exploratory cut through the creature's breast. The blade grated against ribs. His fingers, slippery with gore, explored the cavity, seeking a hard, unfamiliar object within the soft tissues. Nothing. Just bone and viscera. The emptiness of the creature's chest felt like a final, bitter joke. With a shuddering breath, he accepted the result. Low formation rate, indeed.

He trudged away from the corpse, holding his gorge, and drove the knife into the soft earth again and again to clean it. The barbaric work had been a failure, leaving only a sour taste in his mouth and a grime on his hands that felt as if it would never wash away.

He wrapped the claws in a piece of cloth from his pack, tucking them away securely. Then he stood, shouldering his pack with a wince as the straps pressed against scratches.

One last look at the goblin. It would be gone within a day, he knew. Scavengers would come. Other goblins might drag it back to their cave. The forest would reclaim it, as it reclaimed everything eventually.

"Thank you," he whispered. For what, he wasn't sure. For dying? For teaching him what violence really meant? For showing him the vast gulf between planning a kill and executing one?

All of it, maybe.

He turned his back on it and faced the narrow exit of the pass. Time to go.

A screech split the air.

The high, piercing sound was a clear signal.

Caleb's head snapped up. Against the morning sky, shapes appeared along the top rim of the quarry. They lined the sheer cliff on one side and perched atop the steep jumble of boulders and scree on the other. Hunched forms, utterly still. A dozen feral goblins. Maybe more.

In the center of the line stood a larger goblin. Scars crisscrossed its hide like a roadmap of violence. Its pale eyes locked onto Caleb's, and it raised one clawed hand. Pointed directly at him.

The gesture was unmistakable.

His kill box had become his cage.

Author Note:

Hey folks! ShindoAoi over on RR made a great point that I've not done a good enough job showcasing how Caleb's Impartments make him a special boy in the earlier parts of the book--I totally agree. I've made a slight revision in Chapter 8 to try to help this along, but the TLDR is... he gains proficiency A LOT faster. I tried to imply this with his Grandpa Foster flashback, but I've included another bit in the prose to help it along. Quote below so you don't have to go back. Context is Caleb had increased his Dicing proficiency to Practiced and just finished his sack of onions.

He reached for another onion and found empty air. The pile was gone. In its place stood a mound of diced perfection. His internal clock, honed by decades of corporate time management, estimated he'd been working for close to two hours.

A knife stilled at a nearby station. Caleb glanced up. A wiry line cook who'd been grinning at his early mistakes stood mid-chop, his eyes locked incredulously on Caleb's hands.

"Spirits." The cook's voice sounded over the kitchen din. "Took me a month of bloody fingers to move that clean. You ain't no farm boy, are you?"

A heavy thud pulled his attention back.

You advanced readers are going to have a better sense of this because of the spear training, but I wanted to update you all the same. Appreciate everyone reading!