Chad hefted himself over the final ledge, heaved his weight up and over, until he could flop his chest to the ground, and sort of wiggle the rest of the way. He was wearing lightweight armor, which seemed like it would make going up a mountain easy, but then he remembered that hiking up steep mountains wasn’t easy in jeans, let alone metal.
“How’s it goin’?” Wanda’s disembodied voice came from Chad’s back.
“Geez… us… I need… a minute… fuck…” Chad panted.
“You need to work out more.” Wanda commented.
“Thank you, Wanda!” Chad exclaimed. He struggled to his knees, and then gathered his strength to get to his feet. He could see the carved stone entrance of the ancient cave. Almost there and they could finally go home. He wanted a strength potion, but he used the last one on the last tier of slopes. This was exhausting, his heart pounded in his ears and his breathing was ragged. He thought he’d be used to physical activity since he played football and ran track back home, but he found so called “hell week” to be nothing compared to long stretches of walking intermittently interrupted by murdering some dumb animal to survive. Speaking of which… He heard a shuffle of movement in front of him, squinted to look for it, saw nothing, and as he was knocked on his back, he saw the shimmer.
Something solid slammed into his chest, like getting hit by a car. He was caught off guard and fell backwards square onto his back and weapons, knocking the wind out of him. The ledge was beneath his head and he wanted to cry. He knew what it was. A chameleon-goat, one of those weird camouflaged mountain-goat lizards. They weren’t particularly vicious, but they were territorial, but no one knew where their territory was, because they were always goddamn invisible.
“If you can throw dirt or mud on him, you’ll probably be able to see it better.” Wanda suggested.
“Or maybe I just look at the footsteps and shadows.” Chad said. They weren’t 100 percent invisible, once you knew what to look for, you could see it a lot better, like Predator. He turned to look at the ground and saw dirt over transparent hooves clopping towards him. The shadow was faint, but he could barely make it out.
“Okay, goatie, let me just get back up really quick.” Chad rolled himself back and forth a little to gain momentum to stand, and by the time he got onto his side, hooves smacked him down onto his back, and pressed him down.
He was in trouble now. He dreaded the next part and struggled pointlessly under the chameleon-goat’s weight. He tried reaching for his dagger, but the armor restricted his movements.
“You want I should help?” Wanda asked.
“No! It’s just a goat, that’d be like using Meteor on a Slime.” Chad said, tried to get up again, and failed. What looked like a mass of pink bubblegum ejected from midair and smashed into his face. He was treated to a sticky, slimy, tongue bath all over his head. The goat was tasting him. This. This was the part he was dreading. It smelled by a mixture between rotting breath, and skunk spray. Drool dripped down his face when the tongue retracted. He could see the weird bearded leathery face of the goat, and the strange cone eyes that darted in separate directions. The goat didn’t exactly have a color, it was kind of a silvery translucent mirage looking thing.
Chad spit saliva out of his mouth and blinked it out of his eyes as it oozed all over his head. The chameleon-goat bleated spittle into Chad’s face.
“I get it! I’ll go!” He finally rolled onto his side enough to tip the creature off him.
“Blaaaaaah!” The chameleon-goat bleated again, stumbled off, turned invisible, and kicked up dirt that Chad tried to track with his eyes. With a finally burst of strength he got to his feet and struggled to pull the foot-long pole looking device from his pack. His knuckles brushed past Wanda’s mirror, and it was like touching ice. He flinched and the collapsed spear flew out of his grip. He swore, and as it bounced, the spear telescoped open, near the chameleon-goat. It turned silvery visible in surprise, ran blindly into Chad, and Chad fell forwards this time. When he hit the ground, his forearm fell onto the creature’s neck, and his weight snapped it. It started twitching abnormally.
“Oh, oh no, no, no, oh, I’m sorry.” Chad stood back up, watching the poor creature struggle. It’s fur and skin started changing bleeding color from browns, tans, and blacks, like a weird Rorschach cow.
“Better finish it off.” Wanda suggested.
Chad sighed. He knew it would be for the best, to put it out of its misery.
“Because I don’t know if you’ll get the experience if you kill it by accident.” Wanda added.
“Thanks, bae.” Chad went to his spear and picked it...