A Paladin, an Elf and an Old Man.

The war hammer arced ferociously downwards, hurtling towards my chest. I shimmied my body sideways, quickly, and the blow scraped dangerously against my armoured shoulder with a high-pitched squeal.  The Goblin reared and started towards me again, brownish yellow eyes flashing menacingly beneath his rust covered helm. I staggered backwards half a step, momentarily frozen by his sudden appearance. My hand reached downwards, grasping clumsily for the hilt of my sword. Too slow. The hammer fell upon me again, even more viciously this time, and directly at my head. 

I was furious. I had waited for this moment for months, and reaching this foul, dingy dungeon had not come without a fight. I had hacked through the bleached white hordes of re-animated skeletons and trudged slowly and agonisingly through putrid swamps. I had camped amongst the twisting roots of giant, crocodile infested mangrove trees. I had swatted mosquitos as big as dogs and chopped the head off a basilisk so massive that its teeth dwarfed even my own great sword. And here I had finally arrived, so close to my nemesis that I could smell him – literally, and I was about to die.  

The Goblin King was close by, I just knew it. The air always smelled more rancid when Goblins were around, and the vile Kings stench was notoriously bad, even amongst their wretched clan. Somewhere in this festering hellhole he was hiding; his enormous, putrid body trembling in fear at the very presence of me, his would-be vanquisher, inside his lair. He was going to die; he knew it, and before now I had known it too. I was so confident in myself. I had never been stronger or better prepared than this. For months I had toiled, refining my skills. My proficiency with a sword had grown with every duel, and every drop of blood spilled on its shimmering iron blade seemed only to enhance its lethality. I had researched and practiced the arts of alchemy and magic for countless hours, concocting tonics and elixirs that could bring even the most deathly-ill back to health or embolden and strengthen the most frail and weak. And for what? To have my skull crushed, right here on this slimy green dungeon floor? By a GOBLIN? How many of these rancid creatures had I slain, I wondered. Fifty? A hundred? At some point I had stopped counting, lulled into a sense of security by the ease with which I could kill them. Dodge, parry, swing. Such a simple formula, tried and tested through at least two dozen brutal battles. In this corridor, however, that mattered little. I had no space to dodge, no shield with which to parry, and the corridor, with its high but narrow walls, made it impossible to draw my sword. I had been too casual, too relaxed and I was about to pay for it. I sighed to myself deeply and looked down, ready to feel the cold, merciless strike of the hammer. 

One final blow.  

I closed my eyes, clenched my fists tightly and hunched my broad shoulders, waiting for the final blow. 

Nothing.  

I cautiously opened one eye. Was I dead? I didn’t feel dead. I opened the other eye. I focused my vision, surprised by the sight of my own enormous feet beneath me. They were green and dirty, of course, as all Orcs feet were, and yet they were most definitely alive. I glanced up towards the shadow looming over me, still wincing at the expectation of certain death. He stood there, towering, great war hammer still huge and terrifying and far too close to my head for comfort. He was frozen. Stiff. As dead as a doorknob. A soft white light faded slowly away from him, pulling back towards, and then over, me. I turned to follow its trail and was met with an extraordinary sight. A High Elf; majestic and tall, with a flawless, milky complexion, stood before me. Her long golden hair fell effortlessly behind pointy ears, and the pure white leather adorning her body seemed to glow, radiating energy as if the sun itself had been my saviour. 

I opened my mouth dumbly, and tried to blurt out a thanks -  

“Thank y–” I was interrupted immediately by a piercing, high pitched trill in my ears. 

 I jolted upright in my seat and swivelled towards the living room door, snapped rudely back to reality by the phone in the corner screeching urgently for my attention. 

*RING* *RING*  

I pushed myself away from my desk quickly and slightly too forcefully, so that the solitary lamp beside my monitor swayed dangerously for a long second, before settling again, casting a warm golden light across half of the room. I reached for my headphones and pulled them clumsily upwards, taking with them the small wire framed glasses which had, only moments before, occupied my face. 

“Bloody hell” I grunted as I rearranged the crooked spectacles, now fogged and smudged, back into position.  

I took a breath and slowly lifted myself out of my chair, pausing in a sort of half-crouch as the sudden weight of my body caught my knees unaware. With one more groan, I stood upright and stepped carefully sideways, skirting my office chair and making my way as hastily as I could to the phone.  

“Hello?” I said loudly, before I had even placed the receiver to my ear.

I was, at my age, slower to reach the phone than most people, and I had learned that every second counted when it came to stopping the caller hanging up before I answered. A loud and premature HELLO had saved me from a wasted trip to the phone on more than one occasion. This time, though, it did not. I was met with the disappointing hum of the dial tone, and, after one more hopeful, unreciprocated attempt at a greeting, I put the phone back in the cradle and hung up. 

I sighed deeply, smoothed the bottom of my green jumper neatly down and turned my attention back towards my office chair and computer. I had my strength back now, and strode confidently across the room this time, only to be stopped dead by a voice calling my name softly. 

“Tom...Tom...” It called. 

I looked wildly around the room, settling my gaze back on the phone. Was the voice coming from there? No, I thought, shaking my head. Even I knew how a phone worked. 

“Tom...Tom...” The voice came again, soft and yet somehow urgent.

I scanned the room, stopping this time at the fireplace. There, on the mantlepiece above, was the face of my wife Anne, staring, bright eyed, back at me. 

 “Surely not...” I mumbled quietly to myself, as I reached an arthritic finger to my glasses, readjusting them to a more comfortable spot on my nose. I squinted hard at her face, studying her every feature. I knew she hadn’t spoken. Anne had died several years ago, and, as much as I wished it, she was not speaking to me via a near 40-year-old portrait. Yet I was certain I had heard a voice. I looked intently at her once more and turned back to the rest of the room. 

“Tom...Tom...MR TURNER!”  The voice was yelling now, loud and clear and desperate, and even I could hear its panicked tone.  

“What on earth is that” I said loudly, frustrated now, before the answer hit me suddenly, as my eyes swivelled back to my computer. MY HEADPHONES.  

I shuffled briskly around the edge of my desk, gripping the arms of my chair and lowering myself back down, a perfect reverse image of my earlier movement, albeit with even less grace; and with a heavy thud, I was down. I put my feet flat on the floor and scooted my chair closer to the desk, reaching frantically for my headphones. The voice was louder now, and in a split second it was everywhere. All other noises were extinguished, but for the constant calling of my name. 

“I’m here, I'm here!” I spoke to the deafening voice. 

“Oh my GOD Tom, we thought you had fallen!” Sarah shrieked, relief and annoyance in her now-familiar voice. 

“I was about to ring 999!” Josh said sternly, his deep voice a loud shock to my ears. 

I realised, with some embarrassment, that my abrupt and evidently loud journey to the phone had caused them some concern. 

“Oh!” I chuckled loudly, “It was just the phone, nothing to worry about!”  

“Nothing to worry about? It sounded like something to worry about, I almost had a blinking heart attack!” Sarah sighed, but even in her frustration I could hear the warmth and smile in her voice.  

“Who the hell rings at 9pm on a Friday anyway?” Josh grumbled, and I instinctively glanced towards the old clock on the wall, shocked at the amount of time that had passed since I last looked. Almost 3 hours. 

“I don’t know” I said, rather sadly, “they hung up before I got there. I was too slow again.”  

“Impatient buggers!-” He said, “-and anyway, next time, tell them Friday nights are for DUNGEON MASTER, and you’re not to be disturbed!” He laughed, and I imagined him swinging an invisible sword through the air as he spoke, the Mighty Paladin of Dungeon Master come momentarily to life. 

“Josh, I'm in my eighties” I chortled, “I don’t get many late-night calls anymore, and it’s been a long time since I've had a good conversation with anybody that isn’t a High Elf or a Paladin, so you will have to excuse my enthusiasm when the telephone rings!” 

“What more company could an Orc possibly need?” He asked, and I grinned at the silliness of it all. 

Sarah interrupted, her voice brimming with excitement.  

“Are you too finished nattering? We’re on a perilous mission here, don’t forget!”  

A muffled noise came in response, the unmistakeable sound of Josh pulling off his headset in a hurry. A toilet break, we knew.  

“That’s the third time tonight, how much can one boy drink” Sarah murmured, to nobody. 

I stretched gratefully, extending my legs beneath the desk and linking my fingers together gently behind my head. Tufts of soft white hair brushed gently against my fingertips, and I smiled at how absurd my evening must have seemed to any outsider. Thomas Gerald Turner, Goblin slayer extraordinaire. A chance encounter almost two years ago had paired me with Sarah, the twenty-year-old waitress at a local gaming café, which I had erroneously mistaken for a regular cafe. This, and the subsequent meeting of her nineteen-year-old cousin Josh, had set in motion an unexpected change in my social life, which, at eighty years old, was in equal parts bemusing and exciting. Fast forward several months, many cups of tea, even more lectures on the difference between PvE and PvP and FPS and RPG and just about every combination of letters I could think of, and we had our party.  ‘The most,’ as Josh kindly put it, ‘lethal raiding party that also includes an eighty-year-old man in the WORLD.’  In truth, it had taken me the best part of two days to plug in the computer gifted to me by Sarah and get it started, but I had gotten there eventually, on my own. 

I smiled again. Absurd indeed, I thought. 

“I’m back, sorry” Josh panted down my ear, a few minutes later, and I straightened in my seat. I looked quickly around for my long-forgotten cup of tea, finding instead a slice of lemon cake set out to the side of me, bathed temptingly in the soft glow of the desk lamp, as if set out on the pass of a fancy restaurant just for me.  I resisted the urge to eat it, yet. 

“After you kill the Goblin King” I promised myself quietly. 

“What?” Asked the confused voices of Sarah and Josh in unity. 

I didn’t answer, and instead directed my eyes ahead at my monitor; it was time. 

The frozen silhouette of the Goblin still loomed over me, and, even in death, he cut a menacing figure. I stood quickly and turned to face the High Elf. Behind her, clad in impressive, inky blue armour that shimmered like starlight in the glow of his torch, entered the Paladin. 

“Take this Tom, you need it more than I do” he said, in Josh’s voice.

He reached around to his back, and when his hand returned it held a glass bottle. Inside swirled a liquid; gleaming shades of reds and pinks danced lazily in constant motion that signalled one thing; Magic. A healing potion. I took the bottle gratefully, and in one swift move had placed it on my gnarled leather belt, ready to be used in a hurry.  I turned back to the Goblin, took one big step forward and kicked him, hard, in the chest. In an instant he was gone, shattered to a thousand shiny pieces that cascaded noisily to the floor, before vanishing completely a few moments later. We pressed on, and as the end of the corridor opened into a large, cavernous room, I drew my great sword from its sheath. I wasn’t going to be caught unaware again, I thought to myself.  

“He should be on the other side of that door” said the High Elf solemnly, in Sarah’s voice. 

I followed the direction of her gaze and crept towards the rotting wooden door. It was an ugly circular contraption, ill-fitting and with barely enough pitted brown surface to cover the jagged hole behind it. A lazy attempt at defence, and one the Goblin King will regret. I smirked to myself. My confidence was high, but I approached cautiously still; any lapse in concentration now would prove fatal. I turned to face my party, took a deep breath and, with a nod from the others, pushed open the door, stepped over the threshold and entered the dark beyond...

“...Heal Tom, heal...” 

I raised my great sword wearily in front of my eyes, blinking rapidly as dust and sweat and blood settled on my face. The Goblin King lunged again, an enormous blow. The twisted, dull black metal of his axe cut viciously through the air. I braced, held my breath and blocked the blow with my sword. The strike sent painful shockwaves through the blade and into my hands. I winced.

Attack, I willed myself.

I shuffled slowly to my left, feigning an overhead strike before clumsily pulling the sword back to my chest, lunging forwards with a piercing stab. Too obvious. He swatted it away lazily, a palpable look of disgust in his bloodshot eyes. I stumbled again, thrown off balance by the heft of my sword. I was exhausted. The Goblin King roared a booming, echoing laugh and turned his back to me with disdain. I felt fear rising in my chest, a vice-like grip that snatched the air from my lungs, quicker than my mouth could gulp more down.   

“...heal Tom, heal!” I heard again.  

I focused my eyes beyond the hulking mass of putrid, slimy green flesh in front of me and saw the High Elf, climbing desperately to her feet as the Goblin King strode towards her. She was looking at me, at my belt...  

“THE POTION!” She yelled.  

Realisation hit me, and I reached quickly for my belt. My fingers grasped a cool glass bottle and pulled it loose. As I held it aloft, I was acutely aware of the state I was in. My huge, thick hand was a gross amalgamation of green skin and sticky, wet, red. I was losing health, and fast. I pulled the stopper from the bottle, glancing once more at the magical, swirling concoction inside. Its colour, I noted grimly, was not dissimilar to the blood flowing freely now down my arm; a warm river spreading slowly out across my wrist and hand, before dripping steadily off my fingertips. I drank. The potion was tasteless, but its effect was instantaneous. My legs felt stronger, and my great sword suddenly lighter. I stood upright, a renewed energy shooting like lightning through my body. I looked desperately towards the High Elf. She was dead. Still, her voice seemed to echo through the cavernous room, urging me forwards. 

“Help Josh!” it called. 

I heard a loud crash to my right and turned urgently to face it. The Paladin, his inky blue armour now scratched and dented, blocked another blow of the Goblin's axe with his shield. And then another, and another. He dropped suddenly to one knee, crushed beneath the weight of each blow. I stepped quickly forwards to aid him, the clash of steel masking my footsteps. I gripped my sword tightly and prepared my final blow.  

THUD.  

My legs gave way beneath me, drained instantly of their strength. My sword fell from my grasp, clattering on the rock floor as it was lost to reach. My eyes became heavy and blurred, and I could barely make out the shape of the Paladins body, cleaved in two, on the floor ahead of me. My head drooped slowly to the floor, and all was black. 

“BLOODY POISON!” Sarah yelled angrily, “I didn’t know his axe was coated in poison, we haven’t even got an antidote!”  

“He didn’t need poison to chop my Paladin in half!” Josh scathed. 

I sat, defeated, in my chair.  

“Sorry everyone” I mumbled, “I really thought we had the bugger then.” 

Sarah sighed loudly, frustrated. 

“What a night...” Josh said cautiously, “...Same time next week?”  

I slumped back and stretched my legs, glancing once more around the empty living room, and at Annes photograph. The smell of lemon cake wafted temptingly to my nose, and a grin came to my face. 

“Same time next week.” I said.