Chapter 2: End Game Part 1

  Albuquerque was an excellent game to play. It taught some good skills to the young Goomers and built their strength, both magical and mundane, but it was still fun.

  Who doesn’t love digging in the dirt?

  Its goal was, in the name, to build a warren without taking too many rights. Gomm wasn't sure why that name had that meaning, but it didn't matter to him too much. Uncle Lester had taught it to all the young Goomers, though Gramma had gotten real mad about some of the more exciting ones.

  The other sessions mainly had been a series of twisting tunnels close to the surface so they could punch a hole here and there for airflow. Jerry looked at the entrance after setting down a bundle of the short support posts they would use to expand the warren they had been working on for the last few weeks with a slight twitch of his antennae.

  “I think we should start a new one.”

  Gomm sighed and said,

  ”Why Jerry?”

  “Don’t give me that,”

  Jerry replied in a huff,

  “You don’t want to have fun with the humans, so we should start a new warren for a change. The old one is getting boring. Why does Lester insist on not making left’s anyway?”

  “He says it’s the right way to play then laughs, so I’m not sure.”

  Jerry narrowed one eye at Gomm,

  “I think he’s fucking with all of us.”

  Sek’s muzzle wrinkled in distaste at the bad word and chimed in,

  ”You’re just pissy cause Gramma Choch don't want to start a row with the humans over playing with their kids,”

  She smoothed the plan sheet for their game on a nearby rock and glanced over it. After nibbling a small stick she would char the tip of it with a weak fire spell to draw out the tunnel paths.

  “I think we’ve almost run out of room in this area, though,”

  She looked to Gomm,

  ”I think we need to move to a new place anyway, Gomm,”

  She glanced around some more, looking at the various mounds in the area showing where they had dug previously.

  ”We can come back for the posts we already used and collapse these tunnels later. If we use too many posts, Grand-dam Choch will make us get more from the woods. I don’t want to dull my claws on wood when I could be digging.”

  Jerry piped back,

  “Doesn’t digging just dull them quicker?”

  Sek stuck her tongue out at him,

  “More evenly, dolt. Makes it easier to sharpen them again.”

  “Gina doesn’t dig, says it makes her coat too dirty.”

  The two started bickering back and forth with name-calling and scuffle with mock growling and biting until Gomm cut them both off. They stopped tussling as Gomm spoke up,

  “Okay! We’ll go with a new spot. Where do we want to set up next?”

  “Closer to the southern field,”

  Jerry said firmly.

  “It’s gonna be lunchtime soon, and I don't want to have to go all the way back to the warren to get it.”

  “Didn’t you put some food in your pocket?”

  Sek asked in a surprised voice. Her face turned suspicious, and her voice accusing,

  ”Or did you keep those damn marbles in there instead, like usual?”

  Jerry abashedly reached into the line crossing his chest fur, and pulled out a paw full of the shiny marbles he had found in the humans’ play box of sand during their spying sessions.

  “They’re pretty!”

  “But you can’t live on them!”

  Gomm yelled, frustrated at Jerry’s obsession with the shiny baubles.

  They were relatively pretty, he admitted to himself; even Gomm had a small collection of various shinies at home. All the Goomers did. If it was valuable enough, eating a small shiny could restore their mana quickly.

  “Oh, yeah?!”

  Jerry confidently threw a few small hard shinies into his mouth and crunched down before Gomm or Sek could say anything to stop him. A pained look crossed his face as he kept crunching slowly until he stopped and took what looked to be a tough swallow.

  “Okay,”

  He said hoarsely,

  This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

  ”Not gonna lie…that was not very tasty. It didn't fill me up at all, only a little bit of Mana. Must not be very valuable.”

  “Of course not, you idiot!”,

  Sek said scathingly as she stamped a clawed foot.

  “They were in the humans’ play box! You think they would leave valuable shinies in there? Out in the open like that?

  I don't even know why they let their young play in that box of sand where we go boom-boom sometimes to begin with! You’ve eaten boom-boom balls!”

  Jerry’s outrage knew no bounds as he squawked,

  “You did that without telling me? You monster!”

  Gomm shook his head as the two fell back to tussling and shouting at each other. Sek had packed a lunch, and truthfully, Gomm wasn’t too hungry as he had just feasted on those baby carrots. Jerry’s hunger would be a problem before long though. He always got extra bitey when he was peckish.

  The tight tunnels was no place to avoid Jerry’s nibbles of complaint when he got hungry. He had an idea.

  It was a little sketchy planning to raid the southern field during the day for a few ears of corn to feed Jerry, but since they would be building the tunnels, they should have a decent escape route if something went wrong.

  Sek was laughing at Jerry’s attempts to scrub his tongue off with a handful of gravel and dirt she had managed to cram into his muzzle when Gomm spoke up,

  “Alright, we’ll start closer to the southern field and burrow under that fence so we can grab a few ears for Jerry’s lunch. Two birds, one spell.”

  Jerry bounced happily as Gomm narrowed his eyes and glared warningly at the now excited Goomer,

  ”But we are in and out quickly. We don't stick around. Dash and grab? Got it?”

  Jerry nodded quickly,

  ”Two games at once!”

  Sek looked less enthused at the idea but reluctantly nodded her assent. The Albuquerque starting point decided; Jerry picked up some of the shorter posts at one end as Gomm took the other, and Sek flipped the planning sheet over for a fresh page to work with.

  The original side was almost entirely taken up with their practice warren and a few landmarks to remind them how to get back home. Chittering softly to herself as she started planning out the route the tunnels would take, she followed behind the other two Goomers as they moved closer to the southern field.

  The tunnels themselves wouldn’t take too long. However, ensuring the support posts they were lugging along were in place properly was essential. If the rooms or tunnels collapsed, it would force them to start over.

  Within a few hours, they had dug out a small entrance leading down about three feet which took a sharp turn into the first room. They hollowed out a space almost three feet tall with a small hole in the center for air to circulate.

  Enough room for them to stand next to each other without crowding. They then braced the ceiling with the posts along the walls. Their sharp, durable claws made easy work of the hard-packed dirt and a few large rocks.

  As it was a temporary tunnel, they didn't bother with cross braces as they would in a long-term warren. Doing the minimum would keep it from taking forever to start on the smaller tunnels and keep the larger space from collapsing at an inconvenient time.

  Stacking the sandwich from Sek’s pocket and Jerry’s shinies in a shelf cut into the side of the entrance tunnel, they used their pockets to move some of the larger rocks out of the hole, one pocket at a time.

  The dirt and smaller stones they shoved and pushed out in shifts. The dibbun Goomers were intent on making their internal pockert space a bit bigger. Filling it repeatedly was the best way to increase the capacity, or so the elder Goomer said.

  A deep pocket was a storage space within the Goomer’s body that could be expanded with use. Its ability to aid easy transport of pretty much anything was unbelievably convenient.

  Gramma Choch had warned against trying to fit anything living inside the pocket if they wanted it to keep living, and she seemed oddly serious about this. Gomm had tried it once when he was left on his own.

  The feeling of something dying inside him when he tried it on a field mouse had been…disturbing. But, strangely, when he removed the mouse, it was hairless and withered while his fur had grown softer. He had felt very small for a while after the experience and never tried again.

  Thankfully it didn’t seem to alter the taste of the food stored within and even extended how long food could be kept before it rotted or grew moldy. His Gramma explained further when Gomm asked why they didn't just keep all the food in their pockets.

  “We can keep some things in there indefinitely with very little cost to our Mana, but large portions of anything take energy to keep inside until we get much older. We would quickly use a lot of the food we kept to refill our Mana to keep the food we need to eat to keep the food,”

  She explained confusingly. She laughed at his facial expression and continued

  “Eventually, you will need to use less energy to maintain your pocket, and eventually, it will take very little as it does for me,”

  She paused and produced several large posts, some very shiny round disks, and three watermelons,

  ”You’re not there yet, though.”

  She laughed at his expression of one eye going wide and the other shrinking in surprise. Gomm pulled his thoughts back to the present, focusing on the game.

  Now that they had excavated a decent-sized staging room, they did some quick minor embellishments to the hard-packed walls. For anything they found that might be worth displaying as they dug.

  They mostly found gleaming rocks, though the occasional rodent skull would also grace their grand hall. Small shelves grew into elaborate trophy displays in their imaginations.

  Taking turns, they began tunneling towards the delicious cornfield, anticipating a fine repast after expanding their fiefdom. Unfortunately, the tunnel didn’t wind and turn in wide right pawed loops as much as usual since they were trying to break through under the fence line before lunch.

  Gomm or Sek would spy how far they had progressed every few yards by popping their heads out of the ventilation holes. These were necessarily quick peaks and only suitable for guesstimating how far they had to go.

  With mutual agreement, all three young Goomer decided the last thirty yards would have to lack the air holes for concealment from one of the farmhands or even farmer Jenkins himself.

  Jerry was adamant about not returning to the real warren for lunch, so it might have been understandable that he was digging with a little more haste than was a good idea. Finally, he reached the bottom of the posts of the fence underground. It heralded their arrival.

  Finally, at the fence line, he excitedly started to dig up toward the surface. He ignored Gomm’s and Sek’s hissing chitter of caution.

  A sturdy work boot smashed through the ceiling with an angry cry of, ”GOTCHA!”

  It almost crushed Jerry and caused all three of the Goomer to chitter in panic. Jerry’s panic was tinged with fury. Without thinking, Jerry sank his small fangs into the toe of the work boot, not penetrating very far.

  He started to try to shred the foot inside with his claws. This was more effective on a simple leather boot, as Jerry’s claws could easily dig through stone and dirt. Then, hearing a yelp of surprise and pain, the foot was quickly withdrawn.

  Cursing in the human language could be heard slowly fading away as the three Goomers skittered back down the tunnel in a panic.

  Jerry had broken one of their only rules: don’t hurt the humans. Gramma must know what to do.

  As they scurried back down the tunnels to safety, the planning sheet outlining their previous week’s play and a rough map leading to the home warren lay at the entrance of the tunnels. Their game was ruined, Gramma would be furious, and Jerry had royally screwed everyone.

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