Chương 64: [The Scorched and the Shattered]

The kobolds raised their bows. Luka was already casting. The dome snapped into existence around all five of them just as the arrows loosed, the translucent force curving overhead and sealing the gap before the first shaft hit. Arrows hammered from the right and arched in from above, while two kobolds that had looped further out caught the barrier from a wide angle. Every thud pulled at Luka's mana in a way that made his stomach turn. He gritted his teeth and held it. Parmo fired through the barrier.

The Ice Shard cracked out and hit the nearest kobold square in the chest, the impact driving it back off its feet. A heartbeat later the shard shattered, the fragmentation spraying outward in a short burst, jagged shards of ice punching into the two on either side of it. One collapsed as the ice shredded its chest, spraying a mist of dark blood over the grass, while the other fell clutching its shredded throat. Its high-pitched clicking turned to a gurgling shriek that cut through the noise of the main fight.

The third stumbled, clutching at a face where the shrapnel had caught it, one eye gone and leaking fluid as it tried to raise its bow. Rika put an arrow through its windpipe before it managed it and loosed a second into the one beside it without breaking rhythm. Thirteen had become eight. The arrows kept coming. Luka winced as the next volley hammered the shield, a cold nausea building at the base of his stomach. His mana well was nearly dry and every impact pulled at what little was left.

"Can't hold this much longer," he said.

"Fog's going up," Sam said. He cast while the dome was still up, Umbral Shroud spreading outward from his feet and rising around all five of them.

"It's up," Sam said. Luka let go. The dome collapsed. The fog was already there. From outside, the boys were gone. The kobold line faltered. Their clicking went sharp and confused, bows half raised, pointing at the empty space where the boys had been. They gestured between themselves, one hissing at the fog, another staring at the space where the dome had vanished. Rika loosed twice more while their attention was split.

The first arrow spun a kobold as it tore through its side, spilling a slick of viscera across the dirt, while the second caught its companion in the spine, dropping it into a heap of twitching limbs. Six left. Inside the grey, the boys stood and watched their enemies. One kobold turned toward Rika. Then another. They were pivoting.

"Now," Leo said. Parmo fired twice in quick succession. The first shard hit a kobold in the shoulder, the crack of it sharp and clean, the fragmentation bursting outward and cutting into the two nearest it. One dropped instantly, clutching its throat where the shrapnel had opened it, the spray soaking the dirt in seconds. The second shard hit another square in the chest, driving it back, the delayed scatter catching the one behind it across the legs.

It went down screaming in that high clicking sound, its shins a mangled mess of bone and scales. Phil stepped right to clear the others and punched forward. Volcanic Blast detonated against the group with a boom that shook the air, the shockwave of heat rolling back over them. One kobold took the hit directly and came apart in the blast, the shockwave tossing the others off their feet.

Two slammed into the hard-packed earth with the wet crack of breaking ribs and didn't move again, their broken forms leaking dark fluid into the soil. A third scrambled to rise, its arm hanging at a useless angle, bone showing through the skin. Leo raised his hand and fired before it could get upright. Lightning Blast crossed the gap in a heartbeat, the white flash there and gone, and the kobold it found dropped and stayed down, the smell of scorched scales rising where the bolt had hit.

Two left, both wounded, both on the ground, one of them still making a wet rasping noise. Parmo moved through them without breaking stride, Ice Shards finishing what the fragmentation had started. The clicking stopped. Rika crossed from her position and put arrows into the ones still breathing, quick and clean, the same grim efficiency the guards had been showing since the charge began. The right side of the field went quiet. Leo lowered his hand, his arm shaking from the cost of it.

His mana bar was nearly gone, a sliver barely moving. Beside him Luka had both hands on his knees, breathing through the nausea, the colour gone from his face. Sam was pale but steady. Phil's shoulders were slumped in a way that said everything about what the casting had taken. Parmo checked his bar.

"Empty," he said.

"Pretty much."

"Same," Leo said. They turned back to the guard line just as it stopped holding and started moving. With around twenty goblins left, maybe less, the charge was broken into scattered clusters. The line wasn't a wall anymore. The left side was already beginning to arc inward, shields pushing forward and turning, starting to fold around the outside of what remained of the charge. The goblins caught in the tightening space had nowhere to push back to. They slipped in blood and stumbled over the corpses of their kin.

Torren moved through the left end of the press without breaking stride. A goblin pushed into him, club raised; he stepped into it and brought the maul down across its shoulder. The shoulder gave way completely, the arm hanging by skin and sinew as the goblin dropped, still trying to swing the club with a hand that no longer connected to anything working. He crushed its skull before stepping over it and drove the maul into the next one, the downswing catching it across the chest.

Ribs caved inward, pushing out of its back with a sound like green wood splitting. It collapsed in the spreading pool beneath it and didn't get back up. Nessa moved through the right side of the remaining press, fast and low, blades finding the spaces the goblins left between themselves. One turned to swing at her. She sidestepped, let the club carry past, and opened its side from hip to armpit in one clean draw. It stumbled two steps before it understood what had happened and went down. She was already past it.

Enjoying the story? Show your support by reading it on the official site. Rika put arrows into anything turning to run. She didn't miss. Shai was watching the hobgoblin. It stood behind the last cluster of goblins, sword loose in one hand, eyes moving across the field—reading it. The goblins were dead or soon would be; the kobolds were gone; the line was folding inward. She saw the moment it decided. She moved before it could act on the decision.

"Hob," she said to Torren as she passed him.

"It's going to run. We can't let it." She broke left in a shallow arc, cutting wide, running past the outer edge of the remaining goblins. The three on the far left of the goblin line, those not yet encircled, turned at the movement and started to give chase. The advancing shield line caught them before they'd covered two steps. Aldric's spear took the nearest in the throat, the thrust sharp and final.

A blade from the fighter ahead of him opened the second across the neck, the dark spray catching the third as it tried to turn back. The shield line rolled over all three and kept moving, the left arc folding further inward, starting to encircle the center of what was left. Shai ran. She cut the arc tighter as she closed the distance, putting herself between the hobgoblin and the treeline. It turned and saw her there, between it and the trees, and she watched it understand. The calculation changed. No running now.

It snarled, a challenge from something that had survived long enough to know what was happening. She pulled a dagger from a sheath on her leg and threw. The dagger left her hand fast and flat. The hobgoblin caught the motion and brought the sword across, the flat of the blade deflecting the dagger wide. It was fast—faster than she expected, likely not far from reaching its change to Bugbear.

She was already moving when the dagger spun away, closing the distance while its attention was on the throw, both blades coming up as she came in. On the left, the shield line had completed its turn. The encirclement closed from that side, the remaining goblins caught between the advancing shields and Shai's position. They had nowhere left to go. The right side of the line followed a beat later, the arc closing from the other direction, the space in the center shrinking. The goblins still standing lasted seconds.

Blades found them, the maul found them, Rika's arrows found the ones trying to push through any gap that didn't exist. They went down fast and ugly, the last of them dying in a collapsing ring of shields with nowhere to run and nothing left to fight for. Shai didn't watch any of it. The hobgoblin swung first, a wide horizontal slash aimed at taking her head.

She dropped under it, felt the air move above her, came up inside the reach and drove her right blade reverse-grip into its side, the point punching through between the ribs. The hobgoblin howled, a sound that carried across the now-quiet field, raw and furious. It wrenched itself back, tearing free of the blade, dark blood running freely down its side and pattering onto the grass. It swung again, a stabbing thrust this time, faster than the first.

She sidestepped left, the blade passing close enough that she felt it, and used the momentum of the step to spin, dropping low as she turned. Her left blade swept out behind her as she went down, catching the back of the hobgoblin's leg at the ankle. The tendon parted. The hobgoblin's leg buckled and it went down hard on one knee, the sword driving into the earth to catch itself, a scream tearing out of it that was tinged with panic. She came up behind it.

The second blade came across the throat in one clean motion, fast enough that the screaming stopped before it had finished. The hobgoblin pitched forward, hitting the grass face-first with a heavy, final thud, and didn't move again. Shai straightened, her breathing controlled and rhythmic. She didn't look at the beast she'd just felled; instead, her eyes swept the field, watching the guards methodically finishing the last of the encirclement. From the barricade, a line of trainees watched on in silence.

They stood frozen, wooden swords still clutched in white-knuckled grips, staring at the sudden, gore-slick reality of the Wilds. The off-duty guards finally began pushing through them, arriving in a frantic rush of steel and leather, weapons out and ready for a fight that had already been decided. Leo lowered his hand properly, let his arm drop. The shaking had settled but the mana well was still barely moving. The new spell cost more than anything he'd used before and he'd used it twice.

Parmo was looking at the ground in front of them.

"Man, it feels like I'm carrying a gun or something. I mean holy shit, did you see the damage our magic just caused..." he said.

"Yeah," Luka managed. The dome had taken more out of him than he'd expected. He'd held it under actual fire and now felt like he was going to throw up. Phil was looking at the scorch marks in the grass, the shapes where the kobolds had been.

"I'm going to need to get better at control, the collateral damage that causes is no joke," he said.

"I'm going to need to get the coat spell fast, there's no way I can use that at close range."

"Yeah man, that shit would send us flying at a minimum," Leo said.

"That shield-fog combo was class, Sam. How did you know they wouldn't keep firing at us?"

"I didn't." He rubbed the back of his neck.

"Honestly, it was a bit of a gamble. The goblins and the kobolds just seem so stupid. That isn't going to work as well against any real thinking opponent. I don't think the hobgoblin would have fallen for it..." Across the field, someone was wrapping Lucian's arm. He looked down at it, said something to the person treating him, and they shook their head. He looked at the cut again, at the length of it, and said something else. The person treating him said it would scar. Lucian looked at it for another moment.

"Just one more to add to the collection," he said, and let them finish the job. Shai crossed the field toward the boys. She looked at the ground where the kobolds had fallen, at the shapes in the grass and the scorch marks and the frost still melting where Parmo's shards had hit, then at the boys.

"When I said get inside," she began. Leo cut her off.

"We didn't plan to get involved. We saw the kobolds about to fire at the back of the line and had to act." Shai looked at him for a moment, then back at the bodies.

"You're right," she said, a small, tired smile tugging at her mouth.

"Thank you. All of you. We would have lost people today—good people. You stopped that." Behind her, Rika's wings fluttered, snapping tight against her shoulder blades before flaring out again, a restless release of tension. Torren watched the boys with a predatory gleam in his eye, leaning on his gore-stained maul like it was a walking stick. Mike arrived a moment later, shouldering through the trainees at the barricade.

He didn't stop to gawk at the monsters; his eyes performed a rapid, professional sweep of the field, the way he used to scan a floor for survivors. He catalogued the casualties, noted the scorch marks, and checked the boys for injuries in a single, practiced rotation. He wasn't looking at the victory; he was looking for the cost. He stopped beside Shai, his voice clipped and low.

"Casualties?"

"Lucian took a cut on the arm. Nothing serious. Everyone else is fine."

"How many came out?"

"Around sixty to eighty all included. Goblins mostly, kobolds on the flank. One hobgoblin leading them." Mike looked at the hobgoblin's body, then at the kobold kill zone on the right side of the field. Finally, his gaze settled on the boys standing at the edge of the carnage.

"How did you handle the kobolds?" he asked.

"The boys handled them," Shai said. Mike looked at them for a long moment, his eyes lingering on the blackened grass where Phil's magic had hit. Then he looked back at the field.

"Good work, lads," he said, though his tone remained heavy.

"I suppose the silver lining from this is people are going to want to put more effort into magic now. I just hope the trainees don't get it into their heads that a few flashy spells mean they can stop weapons training." He turned his attention back to the guards.

"We need to get this cleaned up; we don't want a rot to set in so close to town. I want to know if this is all of them or if something stayed in the trees." He looked north toward the treeline, his eyes narrowing.

"And I want someone watching that line until further notice."