Unlike the first time, Matteo didn’t know what hit him. Well, it was a goblin, but he didn’t know [i]why.[/i] One could draw a logical conclusion from seeing an arrow in one’s arm and an enemy standing nearby holding a bow. The same didn’t necessarily hold true for getting hit with a flying goblin when the only smoking gun was a prone girl who didn’t even speak at an audible volume half the time. 

Regardless of how, by this point the nearsighted Thief was still working through his indecisiveness when the creature’s body hit him. And it was [i]hard.[/i] He felt like he’d just been hit with a sack of potatoes. He wasn’t sure what hit him harder, the goblin or the shock. Or the club that the goblin proceeded to hit him with. By the time he got his bearings again, he was laying on his back in the leaf litter with the “local denizen” (as Mathers had called the creatures native to this area) about to choke the life out of him. 

It was sure a good thing Matteo had learned to [i]dislocate his bones[/i] in a tight spot, or the goblin’s hand around his neck would have—[i]right, can’t exactly dislocate my way out of this one.[/i] He had a feeling his adversary was already working on separating his neck bones. 

[i]Dagger…[/i] Had he [i]dropped[/i] it? Was it too much to hope it was still stuck in the goblin’s back from when he’d accidentally impaled a vital organ and that any second before Matteo passed out from lack of oxygen, the goblin would conveniently drop dead? 

A little too late—as usual, when the necessity was [i]literally[/i] crushing him—Matteo realized he should have been taking this seriously. [i]Stay calm. There has to be something I can do—[/i] The river was too far, he’d never be able to roll himself and the goblin over there before he lost the battle for oxygen.  

Gagging, head throbbing, arm bleeding, Matteo contorted his body wildly like a dying boa constrictor, scrabbling for traction with his boots to pry himself away. He just had to think of it like getting out of being tied up or one of the other insane exercises Seaweed had him do. Right? In sheer desperation, the youth hurled his weight to one side as quickly as he could, trying to catch the creature off balance and gain the upper hand.