It took us less time than I thought it would to loot all the corpses. Part of that was due to Mara’s plasma bombs basically melting the flesh and muscle, leaving things easy to reach in and yank out cores after Oliver cooled them off. There were no essences this time, and all the cores were on the smaller side. Hopefully we’d find a use for the things before long. It was starting to feel like collecting them was pointless and literally weighing us down for no reason.

  Oliver came around with a large, floating bubble of water that he helped clean everyone up with. Then he flung the disgusting water to the side where it splashed amongst the jungle foliage. I thanked him before wandering amongst the corpses to search for the perfect minions.

  I decided to raise two goblins. Even with the diminished intelligence penalty for raising more than one, having more eyes acting as scouts felt important. Especially if the locals were shooting poisoned darts as an ambush tactic.

  After several minutes searching I found the two least fucked up bodies and pumped some spiritual energy into them. They scrambled to their feet and stared at me for instructions.

  “Goddamnit!” Mara yelled behind me. “I told you to warn us before you did that.”

  I looked over my shoulder and noticed her with her arm cocked back, flaming plasma ball in hand. She’d only stopped the throwing motion because Ashley had grabbed her arm. I gave her a sheepish smile, “Sorry.”

  Everyone formed up back into our little marching order and I sent the minions out. One of them was walking with a limp as it was missing a chunk from its thigh. The other was short an entire arm. It appeared to have been ripped off rather than cut off. Once again there was the inability for them to walk more than a hundred feet in front of me. But, it was better than nothing in this dense jungle.

  We moved slowly through the dense vegetation. Slower than we had the first time. We were all trying to listen. To hear something before it happened. Although I’m sure we made enough noise stomping through everything as to alert everything around us for miles.

  We hadn’t been walking for very long when one of the scouts lashed out at the jungle around them. We all froze in place. Waiting to see what would happen. I held my breath to better hear the jungle around me.

  There was a rustle of bushes, and then a blur rushed in from the side, snatched my undead minion, and then was gone. The other goblin had crouched down and wildly stabbed in the direction of the blur, but I’m not sure if it got anything but air.

  I looked around frantically for my goblin, but Oliver was the one to gasp and point above us. I looked up and there some twenty feet above me was a giant spider in a web. It must have been ten feet across, and the web stretched over several trees. The spider was slowly spinning my goblin into a tight cocoon. It was still struggling weakly, but the spider seemed to have things well in hand.

  I looked around, but fortunately there weren’t more spiders or webs nearby. I called back my still living dead goblin scout and we backtracked away from the area before circling around. Just these first two encounters it felt like this dungeon was much more serious than the damn clown dungeon. You know, despite the clowns.

  We continued walking through the jungle. If anything we might have slowed down even further. My lone scout walked ahead of us, and I swear the little one armed bugger was nervous. I could already see the difference in its intellect compared to when there was another one. It moved much more smoothly and paid attention to its environment more. I was less worried that we’d stumble into trouble oddly enough. Maybe fewer, smarter undead was better than more, but dumber undead. I never thought I’d have to worry about the undead to intellect ratio of my minions, but here we were.

  If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  There was a rustle in the trees above the scout. It froze for an instant and that was all it took. Loud buzzsaw screeching rang out and my goblin was promptly overrun by a small horde of living goblins. They didn’t hesitate to attack my undead goblin like the last group had.

  There was a sting in my arm, like when you get a shot at the doctor. I looked down and there was one of those hopefully non-poisoned darts poking through the sleeve of my jacket. I yanked it out quickly and threw it to the side.

  Maybe I got it out in time even if it was poisoned. I took a step forward and the world seemed to tilt on its axis. Not a lot, but enough to make me stumble. And then my eyes got really heavy. And then my vision went dark. The last thing I noticed was Ashley’s voice screaming my name over the sound of her gunfire going off.

  The next thing I know I’m waking up in the chair downstairs at work. I shook my head. Wow, my head felt heavy and just way too large for my neck to support. I let it droop onto my shoulder and that seemed to fix things.

  There was a body on my table, waiting to be prepped for their funeral. I stood up and walked over, only stumbling a little. My head lolled onto the other shoulder as I looked down at the body on the table.

  I didn’t recognize her, but she was an older white woman. Not an unexpected client for me to be working on. I waved my hand over her body and she sat up on the table and started chatting my ear off while I started applying her makeup. I’m not sure what she said, everything sounded kind of fuzzy and tinny at the same time. It was a little hard to apply her lipstick while she was talking so much, but I was able to get it done once I sewed her lips together.

  Once she was all made up I pulled some clothes out of my dresser that was sitting close by. I handed her my favorite Green Day shirt and some booty shorts that I don’t remember buying. Mara must have left them over one night.

  The dead lady put on the clothes and hopped back up onto the table. She smiled at me and I waved my hand over her body and she went back to being dead-dead. What a pleasant client to work on. I wished they were all that easy. I chuckled to myself as I turned back around to sit in my chair while I waited for James to come down and wheel the woman away for her showing. I hoped she enjoyed it.

  ***

  I jerked awake, sucking in a deep breath as I sat up abruptly. My chest ached and my head felt a little fuzzy. I looked around at the faces surrounding me. Mara was smiling so big there were tears in her eyes. John was helping Oliver stand up from where he was crouched next to me. Ashley dove into my chest and knocked me back over. I wrapped my arms around her as I felt her sobbing into my shoulder. I rubbed her back and whispered soothingly that everything was ok. I was ok. Though I wasn’t exactly sure what had happened, I felt ok so it didn’t feel like a lie or anything.

  [Your party has killed: Jungle Goblins x 15]

  Well, I guess that definitely meant we were out of combat. I wondered what the heck happened to me. One minute I was watching my goblin get mobbed and the next I was having the most vivid, fucked up dream I can remember having.

  “I thought…I thought you had died. You just fell over and you weren’t responding. And oh my gods, I was so worried,” Ashley sobbed into my chest.

  “Fortunately for both of you, it was just a heavy sedative with some psychoactive properties from what I could tell. But it’s all cleansed from your system now,” Oliver said quietly.

  “What happened?” I asked.

  “You got shot by a poison dart…idiot,” Mara muttered at me.

  Oh, yeah. I kind of remembered pulling a dart out of my arm earlier. “I really thought the jacket would protect me more than that.”

  “Idiot,” Mara nudged me with her toe and swiped at her eyes.

  “Cry baby,” I teased. That was not a good move because Ashley pinched my side hard and I jolted sideways like six inches trying to get away. Mara just gave me the finger. “Ok! Ok. I’m sorry,” I cried out.

  That was apparently the right answer because Ashley squeezed me tighter and buried her head in my chest. I sat up slowly and she stayed attached like a limpet. She ended up sitting in my lap while I brushed my fingers through her hair.

  “What else happened? I know my minion is gone.” I could feel the absence of the link that tied us together before.

  “About that…” Mara hedged.

  “Mara went super saiyan when she saw you go down, and wiped the whole tribe plus your thingy. So, no essences, cores, or…minions from this.” John looked away as he spoke. Refusing to meet mine or Mara’s eyes.

  “Damnit, Mara…” I flopped backward. Ashley let out a little squeal as we fell and then pinched my side again.

  “What? I wanted to end things quickly so we could take care of you.”

  “It would have been faster if Oliver hadn’t had to run around and put out the forest fire your blast created,” John teased, smiling.

  “Whatever. It still worked,” Mara groused.