My Big Goblin Space Chapter 18 - Apex Predator

Chapter 18 - Apex Predator

I jolted awake. It was still dark, and not the dark of the bottom of the sleeping mound. It was the dark of full night. The first ti I’d woken up at night after eating since coming into this new goblin body.

I felt an imdiate sense of danger. We’d completed the wall and closed up the shelters. There shouldn’t have been anything able to get in and trouble us in the night this ti, but sothing wasn’t right.

I pulled myself to the top of the pile and looked around. Plenty of light from the moon bathed the hilltop well enough to see most of the village through the slats in the shelter. I couldn’t see any movent. I rolled down from the pile and pressed up against the poles that comprised the shelter’s wall for a better view.

A scraping noise behind

drew my attention, and I whipped around to the other side. I scrambled back up onto the pile, disturbing a few of my mound-mates in the process. I looked through the poles on that side. I could see the sloth cub’s enclosure, still undisturbed, and the curled form of the infant inside, dozing off its dinner of scraps from the fish and fowl.

The scraping, again, behind .

This ti, I looked up.

Bright yellow eyes stared down at

through a hole in the roof of the shelter. A long, hooked beak worried at the opening, prying loose the weave to enlarge the hole. Whatever it was, it was big enough to block out the moon, and had small hands at the ends of bat-like wings.

I won’t lie, I scread. The goblins below

rolled over, annoyed, saw the bat-thing and also scread.

Then the beaked creature screeched in alarm at having been caught out, and that woke up the rest of the goblins. It beat its wings against the cage, enraged, as the group inside beca a hive of frenzied activity.

“Kill it!” I shouted, horrified. The silhouette of this creature, the light of its eyes, and the curve of its beak all triggered very deep, primal fear responses in my goblin brain that my human mind was powerless to stand against.

“Kill it, kill it, kill it!”

The shelter capsized as most of the mound threw themselves at the far wall to get as far from the creature as possible. This thing had already been responsible for at least five goblin deaths, coming to haunt the tribe night after night. I’d never considered that it might be sothing that could fly. The wall was useless, and our shelters were only marginally better. What was worse, the System superimposed the level over its head. 18.

The night haunt thing’s wide tail lashed at the air as it flapped backwards. The entire hilltop was awake now. All forty-five mbers of the tribe pushing out of their shelters and running for crossbows and spears, or even just simple clubs.

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Now open, the creature dove in among the goblins from my shelter, snapping one up in its beak and shaking its head violently. It flung the goblin away.