26

  Now entering Upper Antellion - The Green Expanse - South

  The thin trails of smoke were everywhere on the valley floor, snaking up out of the trees into the slowly darkening sky. It was edging into evening, and I was stealthed, hidden among trees and undergrowth as I made my way down into the valley itself. I was moving slowly towards the outermost camps when I pulled out Softstepper’s Automap, and watched as it began to populate with terrain and the red dots of the mobs. Many, many red dots. I cursed silently as I watched them appear. Too many.

  I took a slow breath and began edging out and around the camps, slowly circling them as best I could to allow the map to get a complete picture. My detection detector was reading low, the indicator bar only gently wavering as goblins moved about their camps. There were small scouting parties and scavengers moving out on the periphery of the main body of camps, but I carefully avoided them as I wound my way through the trees and underbrush. I crouched silently and watched the goblins.

  They were preparing in earnest, their camps just as abuzz with activity as Spade’s Rest had been. The little green bastards went to and fro, organizing spears and arrows, small barrels and casks that I couldn’t really identify, but desperately hoped were not filled with gunpowder or whatever magical explosive might exist here. I was struck again by the appearance of the goblins; short but not diminutive, with overlong muscled arms and powerful legs. Goblins in RPG’s were mostly cartoonish and weak, but the creatures gathering before me were carnivorous predators informed by ruthless intelligence. They were fast, malicious, and devious. I had experienced what a group of them could do personally, and I had only survived because of my ring.

  What struck me the most were their glittering eyes, reflecting the wavering flames of their camp fires. They were malicious and pupilless and black. There was calculation there, and hunger. I could practically feel their anticipation and excitement from where I hid. I recalled from the quest description that this raid would be a rite of passage for many of them, which gave them an added cultural incentive in addition to just fucking eating people. It was also true that this night could give birth to many more hobgoblins.

  The thought struck me then that I hadn’t yet spotted one of the creatures. I did see at least five of the hulking Lyenas, but I wasn’t close enough to determine their level. They looked about as big as Lucky had been, which wasn’t a good sign. I began creeping further along the outer edges of the scattered camps, and I was on the north side of their encampment when I spotted the two bizarre figures. At first I could only see their silhouettes, tall but hunched, with a humanoid upper body and an insectile abdomen perched atop what seemed like god-damned spider legs. Where a spider’s spinneret would have been was instead a long hooked stinger that twitched as the creature moved around the fire. The other hobgoblin held what looked like an oversized polearm. It reminded me of a naginata, a Japanese polearm used by classical samurai. It had the long haft of a spear, but where the spearhead would be was instead a long, curved blade. The blade’s ragged edges rippled with sickly green light, likely an enchantment of some kind.

  Their faces were similar to the smaller goblins, mottled green, but without the hooked noses. Instead there was something akin to a wolf’s muzzle, filled with hooked fangs. A long, thin beard trailed off the muzzle, tangled and wet. The eyes were gently luminous, pupilless and glowing white. The hobgoblins didn’t speak, nor did they make any discernible sound as they moved around the campfire. After a time, a third figure entered the firelight, a goblin, though clad differently from the others.

  This goblin was more hunched, seemed older, and didn’t move with the predatory efficiency of the warriors. He was garbed in a tattered loincloth that fell between his knees, and his chest and arms were wrapped in tangles of red cloth. Strips of the fabric fell from his shoulders and arms, down off his wrists, to trail on the earth. His green head and face were covered in swirling tattoos that seemed to writhe beneath his skin. I started when I studied his eyes. They were sewn shut.

  The goblin raised what appeared to be a crystal sphere and it lifted off his hand to float up between the two hobgoblins. They peered into the glowing sphere, and I narrowed my eyes as I tried to discern what they were looking at. I thought I saw the small flicker of a torch, and smudges that might have been small humanoid figures. After a moment the hobgoblins backed away from the sphere, and a sound emerged from their fanged maws. It was a strange whispering sound that seemed to overlap with itself and unfold in pulses, almost hypnotizing.

  The smaller goblin, what I now presumed to be a shaman, lowered his hovering sphere back to his clawed hand. then bowed in deference before backing away. A few short minutes passed before I began to hear a cry rise up among the goblins. The activity became almost frantic, and I decided it was time for me to make my exit. My map was about as complete as I could make it under the circumstances, and I would study it more closely when I returned to Spade’s Rest. I tucked it into its ivory case, then put it into my inventory. I moved back and away from the outermost camps and slipped back into the night.

  ***

  I came upon the group of red dots perhaps a kilometer from Spade’s Rest. I’d escaped the flurry of activity at the camps as the goblins had begun to mobilize, but this was the only sign of any enemies closer to the town. A scouting party, maybe? If I were the goblins, I would have multiple advance scouting parties determining what I’d be up against. It would only make sense for them to do the same. I furrowed my brows, watching my minimap as I willed the mask into its war variant and began to move closer to the group.

  They were above me on the slow incline that led up out of the forest valley and towards Spade’s Rest, not far from where I’d emerged on the road when I’d first come to the town. There were five red dots in all, but I didn’t have eyes on them yet. I crept up along the incline, moving from tree to tree. The goblins were moving slowly northward, keeping cover in the trees as they advanced alongside the road. I came along behind them, gaining ground, my high stealth allowing me to move swiftly and soundlessly through the night. The night vision provided by the mask finally gave me a clear enough view that I could use the HUD to identify the mobs.

  Gathered together in a loose formation, there were two scouts armed with bows flanking a pair of grunts, led by a goblin class I had not yet encountered. He appeared to be their leader, and was both taller and more muscular than his counterparts. He had tattoos similar to those I’d seen on the shaman, but his tattoos didn’t move like the shaman’s had. His arms each had a tattered strip of red cloth tied at the elbows. He had a crossbow strapped over a shoulder and a pair of short swords belted at his waist. He was armored in form-fitting leather armor. His description read:

  Vyort - Level 6 Blackmarrow Goblin, Class: Commando

  I frowned. A bloody commando? Shit. This was a bad sign. I hadn’t been close enough to the goblin camps to identify individuals. How many of these bastards were there among the goblin ranks? He looked considerably tougher than the others, and he was level six, whereas the others were level two or three. My heart sank as I tried to imagine the townsfolk of Spade’s Rest facing down these enemies. They were just hardworking townspeople, a few hunters, a few who knew their way around a spear or a sword, but not soldiers. My heart picked up its pace as the anxiety crept in.

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  People were going to get hurt tonight. People were going to die. I gritted my teeth as I once again remembered Adeline. I felt a deep sense of foreboding as I watched the group of goblins advancing further towards the town. I knew that if I was on the road, I’d be able to see the north gate and hedged-walls of Spade’s Rest from where we were.

  I crept along, flanking them from deeper within the forest, my mind racing over my options. They couldn’t be allowed to live to report back to the others. That much was obvious, it was just a matter of how I went about killing them. Trepidation disappeared as I drew in a long breath and let my eyes study them like I was a lion crouching in the tall grass. This is what I do now, I thought. I used to clean fucking toilets. Now, I kill monsters. I felt something rising in me then, a sensation, a yearning that I hadn’t identified until now. It had been there before, but only hovering at the edges of my awareness. Now, it was front and centre. I should have felt a chill then. I should have recoiled, but I didn’t. I wanted this. The feeling was bloodlust.

  I slipped like a whisper through the foliage, moving carefully into position as I watched the commando signal his small troop to halt, while he began to edge forward on his own. I carefully calculated my next three moves. After that, it would be a roll of the dice. That was fine.

  I raised my arm and began tracking the commando as I narrowed my eyes and drew in the flow. The arcane bolt began to manifest as I injected momentum into the spell, built it, and released it in a streaking, spinning rocket that soared away towards the goblin’s back. Even as it shot away I was up and running. I saw my arcane bolt smash into the back of the commando and send him reeling. My regular daggers blinked into my hands as I burst from foliage at the back of the first of the two scouts, exploding outward to surge up behind him, driving a blade deep into the middle of his back. He cried out in agony, and even as the grunt to his right turned to look at his dying companion, I wrenched the blade free and spun into a wicked slash that cut the grunt deep, right across his eyes. Blood sprayed as he shrieked and clawed at his face as I kicked him away.

  Sage’s voice bloomed. Arrow incoming from 2 o’clock. Grunt inbound from 4 o’clock. The commando is getting to his feet.

  Shit. I had been hoping the spellsnipe, as powerful as a cunning strike, would kill the level six commando, but I supposed that was a little optimistic.

  I weaved to my left in time to dodge the scout’s arrow just as the grunt came in slashing at my left side, I danced back and pulled my arm in to let the slash whistle past then I shot in with my left hand to bury my squire’s dagger in his chest. I ripped the blade free and turned to see the commando, ten metres away, raising his crossbow even as the last scout was drawing back on his bowstring. A bolt and an arrow would be coming at me very quickly from short range. I angled at the scout and shot forward, focused on a spot at his back. Shit. Here we go. I gritted my teeth in anticipation and cast Veilstride.

  The burst of magical power swept me away through space to surge and unravel back into existence not behind the archer as I had intended, but directly in front of him.

  “Oh shit!” I shouted in surprise as my momentum carried me straight into the scout, bowling both of us over into a tangle of limbs. The goblin writhed and twisted beneath me, howling as I struggled to gain the upper hand, using my superior weight and strength to drive him into the ground and unceremoniously ram my baselard down into his abdomen. Once, twice, and he was dead. Fuck, I thought. I knew what was coming next.

  With me atop the scout, the commando had a free shot and unleashed his bolt, which sailed across the short distance, and I grunted as it punched into my back, just to the left of my spine. It didn’t puncture my armor fully, but I could feel the tip digging into my flesh, and I’d been staggered by the impact.

  Poison effect resisted.

  I silently blessed Kinnion’s ring as I twisted and began to pull myself up to face the commando. He hadn’t wasted any time, however, and he was sailing through the air towards me with both short swords angled down straight at my chest. I hadn’t quite made it to my feet, but I managed to shoot both arms up, daggers held in reverse grip. His blades scraped across mine, down and away from my forearms. But it was too late. The block saved me from his stabs, but didn’t stop his momentum as his leap carried him to smash against my chest, and we both bowled over.

  He desperately tried to cling to me, but I turned the fall into a backwards somersault and hurled him away using the momentum as we rolled. He spun away across the ground as I twisted around. I felt wet heat seeping down my right arm. I grimaced in pain as I realized I’d come away from the tangle with a savage slash across my tricep. Shit, I thought bitterly. I had a god-damned shield for this. It was clear I hadn’t fully integrated my new abilities. My arm trembled and nearly gave out as we both struggled to our feet. We simultaneously realized I’d dropped both daggers in the struggle, while the commando still had his shortsword. He would close the distance before I could arm myself again. Damnit.

  He knew what the score was. He grinned, but before he could shoot towards me and come in to finish the job, I pulled in flow and sent an arcane bolt streaking towards him, but I deliberately modified the flow to slow its pace. As predicted, he dodged easily to the side, which put him right into the path of my Spatial Rend. Got you, fucker. I swept my hand down hard like the slash of a blade as I activated the skill, and a literal tear in space ripped open from his shoulder down to his opposite hip. Blood fountained from the shimmering tear before leaving a horrific wound in its place. The commando’s forward momentum carried him towards me where he fell in a heap at my feet, still and dead.

  I sucked in breath, my heart thundering as the silence set in and the chaotic din of battle fell away. My arm throbbed, and I felt the wet heat spreading downward to drip from my fingertips. I pulled the crossbow bolt from my back with a grunt. That could have gone sideways fast. I hadn’t been able to pull any punches against the commando. I dreaded the idea of many of these particular goblins amongst the greater host.

  I felt the sickly sweet rush of cough syrup-flavour in my mouth as I popped a health potion. I looked down at the body of the commando and saw he had a satchel that sat low on his hip. It was filled with something spherical, and I reached down to open the satchel and pull out a gleaming crystal sphere. I instantly recognized it as the same as the one that the goblin shaman had shown the hobgoblins. Some type of far-sight magical device. I lifted it to eye level to study it. My HUD identified it as:

  Goblin Shamanic Scrying Glass

  Used in pairs, these spheres are connected by a magical link which allows visual and auditory information to pass between them. The connection between these devices is such that range is not a factor.

  As I studied the orb, a flicker of light sprang up from within it. The light pulsed and grew to fill the sphere completely before an image began to coalesce. My lip twisted as I saw the face of the goblin shaman and his sewn-shut eyes. His lips twisted as he somehow seemed to see me, or at least sense my presence. I just watched as the sphere blurred for a moment, shifting. Then a new face peered out at me. Twin luminous white orbs stared unblinking as the hobgoblin regarded me. His lips peeled back to reveal wicked yellow fangs, and I grinned wolfishly beneath my mask. I turned the sphere slowly around so that he could get a good look at the bodies of his compatriots, particularly the still form of the commando. I lifted the sphere back to eye level, and watched him snarl. Those shifting, warping whispers I’d heard from them before began to spin outward from the sphere. They sounded agitated, less ominous and more unhinged.

  I let him rage, knowing he was seeing only the war mask gazing back soundlessly. I tilted my head as he went on, just staring. I slowly lowered the sphere, letting our gazes remain locked. In my mind I saw the ruin that had been the bodies of Adeline and her parents. I couldn’t save her. But there is fucking nothing that will save you. I let it fall to the ground, and watched his eyes as I raised a foot and drove it down to crush the sphere into ten thousand crystal shards.