Brave adventurers died in ballads all the time, standing strong against superior foes. Their deaths came first in minor keys, followed by a major, mingled grief and inspiration born of righteous fury to make certain their companion had not died in vain.

All I felt was a mix of confusion, terror, and sadness. Confusion because I wasn’t sure if Larendil had died at all. The leaves might be a trickery of her court. Terror because if this monster hobgoblin had taken Larendil out so easily, I was toast. And sadness because while I hadn’t known her very well, she’d seemed nice enough when she wasn’t poisoning our enemies and slitting their throats.

The monster (maybe) autumn-fae killing hobgoblin stomped on Zareb. Leaves swirled around its armored ankles. As the leaves scattered, I saw something Larendil-shaped crawling, one hand on her side, towards the wall.

Not dead.

Relief flooded through me. Maybe we stood a chance of living through this after all.

Things were bad, though. Zareb still glittered with holy light, but Baby Feet had thrown Zareb onto his back and now the paladin struggled to stand.

Xy’lint leapt, vestigial wings tight against zher back, body flowing like a golden festival streamer with gleaming claws through the air towards Larendil. As Xy’lint flowed past, the awful ice-spiked monster hobgoblin—way too long, that one—raised its whirlwind crystal arm towards the scalemaw.

I had to do something. Distract the armored gem encrusted horror—still too long, but it had a ring to it—so Xy’lint could get by, and Zareb could get up and get back to hacking at it with his sword and Khemri’s blessing.

Time to earn your coin, as they said on the road. I’d never been good with bardic spells, but enough drilling could get the basics even through a skull as thick as mine. And the best effects were mostly trickery and insults.

So, with a touch of mana to direct the effect, I threw my voice straight into the monster hobgoblin’s right ear. “Over here, Baby Feet!” I whispered it in goblin, using my mana to direct the sound and echo it.

If Baby Feet was a breed of goblin, as I suspected, the insult should distract it. Goblins prided themselves on their large, flat feet.

As the echoes sounded, a thread of music popped into my head, the melody a children’s song. I arranged the whispers into a round, letting the voices rise and fall to the tune of a children’s song. “Baby feet! Baby feet! Ugliest Monster a human could meet.” Yes. That was catchy! If I lived through this, I’d have to expand on it.

Baby Feet’s nostrils flared, and enemies forgotten, it smacked the side of its head with a massive roar. A whirlwind of compressed air flew from Baby Feet’s palm, whipping its head sideways. It cursed, pulling its hand away and swinging it wildly.

On the ground behind them, Xy’lint curled around Larendil, eyes glowing orange-red like twin embers. Zhe’s jaws opened, and smoke curled from Xy’lint’s mouth. As it passed over Larendil, the half-elf seemed to glow, embraced in a flickering, flamelike aura.

Probably a good thing.

I threw my voice again, moving the echoed, whispered music to Baby Feet’s opposite ear. Maybe I could get it to box its own ears and knock itself out. If nothing else, it would be a distraction.

Baby Feet roared again, and to my horror, swung its bulbous head towards me. Eyes like flattened rubies set inside puckered raisin orbs glared down at me. There was another jewel, a diamond, in the center of its forehead. I’d missed it before, thinking it a part of the armor. Now it glowed, the sort of white that grew faintly iridescent the longer you looked at it. I stared, even as a deep, animal part of my brain screamed. I needed to shut my eyes, to run, to do anything but stand out in the open, staring like a curious baby lamb two steps from the butcher’s blade.

Goose pimples blossomed over my skin as a compulsion echoed in my mind.

COME.

I heard Mischief awaken in a flurry of panicked notes as the spirit hummed a discordant melody through the lute’s strings to distract me from the order humming through my bones. My mouth opened, and I whispered, “Baby feet,” trying to throw my voice again, but the diamond’s power had hold of me. I couldn’t access my mana. I took a step forward, my own will battling the diamond, which seemed to fill my vision, each glittering shard slicing through my well-honed instincts for self-preservation.

Zareb shouted Khemri’s name, and with it came the ring of steel on steel as the paladin struck. Another ringing smash of steel on armor. Light flared. Zareb rolled, and a spear of fire passed over him. Eira threw another ice-bolt, and it hit the mind-controlling monster hobgoblin right in the face. As ice slammed into the diamond, coating it, the compulsion broke, and I dropped like a puppet with its strings cut. Every muscle ached, and even my bones seemed to throb. My eyes were wet, and they stung like I’d wept away a dozen fine hairs.

And then an idea hit me. A good one. Zareb was up again, his armor glowing with holy light.

“Go for the feet!” I shouted. Like all goblins, Baby Feet’s feet were bare on the soles, though it wore a shell of protective leather over the top.

As Zareb charged, I saw Larendil leap up. Her leather armor had a horrid gash where the ice had skewered her, the edges stained with blood, but it wasn’t slowing her down. The aura of Xy’lint’s smoke lingered as with movements like liquid flame, she slid in behind Baby Feet and slammed a dagger into the creature’s heel.

Baby Feet let out a screech, stamping and kicking.

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Larendil wove and dodged, thrusting another dagger into the soft underside of the opposite foot, stomping at her head as she rolled away.

The goblin’s leg gems flared again, and the ground beneath its feet swelled. As the wave hit a section of stone near the arched entrance to the portal chamber, something crunched, and a giant pit opened in the floor.

Hurggitt’s warning about the room came back to me: Traps! Big traps! Goblin crushed. Goblin burned! Goblin spiked! Goblin in pit fall and fall! Goblin killed.

I shivered and resolved to stay where I was if I couldn’t find the marked path.

Zareb struck next. He charged with the confidence of one protected by a higher power. The ruby-eyed jackal blasted twin streams of fire. One hit Zareb’s shield, and Zareb’s holy light flickered. Flipping his sword in both hands so the point aimed downwards, Zareb slammed the blade into Baby Feet’s left foot. The blade glistened with what looked like a waterfall of sunlight as steel sliced flesh.

Baby Feet screamed, a high-pitched keen of genuine pain.

The diamond on its forehead flared again as Baby Feet glared down at the Zareb.

I threw my voice again, whispering into Baby Feet’s left ear this time. “Baby Feet, dance, dance, DANCE!” I sped up the child’s tune and mixed it with the goblin reel that had worked so well with Snikkle and Nargle in the stewpot room.

Baby Feet made an odd, murmured yelp-roar and slapped at its left ear to try to either muffle or beat out the sound. I was unsure which.

Whether because of Khemri’s protection or my help or the pain of Baby Feet’s bleeding wounds, the monster hobgoblin didn’t even try to stop Zareb as the paladin yanked the sword free and slammed the hilt-guard into Baby Feet’s chin.

Baby Feet’s head snapped back, and the monster hobgoblin staggered. It was getting closer to the gaping pit, I realized, and Zareb drove it a step further as Eira slammed its face with another bolt of ice.

Baby Feet swayed mere steps from the pit, head drooping, flecks of blood dripping from the corners of its lips. Zareb kicked it hard in the chest. The paladin’s boot struck with the ring of brick, hitting an empty soup pot. A faint blue glow rippled over Baby Feet's belly, absorbing the blow. The blue light spread over armor and skin, healing the wounds on its feet and chin.

Baring teeth in a snaggle-toothed smirk, Baby Feet grabbed Zareb with meaty arms. The paladin struggled to break free, calling to Khemri’s aid. Baby feet growled, the blue of its belly pulsing again. From the frescoed wall, the blue-eyed jackal fired a jet of water straight at Baby Feet and the captive Zareb.

Burning pustules erupted on Zareb’s face and hands, where the water splashed over his exposed skin.

“Not Baby Feet!” the monster hobgoblin bellowed, squeezing Zareb tighter in an armor squealing embrace.

Baby Feet must have been controlling the frescoed jackals through the crystals beneath its armor. If we didn’t stop this, Zareb would be boiled and cracked like a crab at one of the Southland Shellfish festivals. Which, after this experience, seemed less like wholesome fun and more like a massacre with tubs of lemon butter sauce.

Worse, the layer of ice Eira had sealed over the spirit crystal on Baby Feet’s head was melting at the touch of the water jackal’s spray.

The issue was the armor. If we could get Baby Feet out of its armor, then we’d be able to destroy the crystals. Probably. Hopefully. But with the water crystal healing Baby Feet’s wounds, we stood no chance. And that armor was tough. Zareb had hit it a few times, and while the plate showed some scratches, it wasn’t breaking.

I remembered a prank Mischief, and I had pulled when a pair of drunken templars had taken offense and broken my year mate’s fiddle after she’d refused one of the knight’s advances with a well-deserved mug of ale in the face.

Itching powder.

Sending the four of them sprinting buck-naked and scratching from their formal presentation of arms for the duke's envoy had been satisfying. The coin we’d earned from the betting pool had been even better.

Unfortunately, I didn’t have any itching powder. Not even in my pack, which was an oversight. But Xy’lint was a healer. Zhe should have something useful.

“Xy’lint!” I called out. “I have an idea!”

The Scalemaw was currently breathing smoke on Zareb. It seemed to help, and one healthy Zareb was better than an imaginary vial of itching powder any day.

So, the itching powder was out. I did still have the second cinnamon stick, though.

I called Mischief again, doubling my offer of mana.

Mischief let out a creaking noise like a yawn.

“Please.” I sent an image of the situation as it was and thought of funeral dirges. Then I sent an image of Mischief’s spirit hand crushing the cinnamon into the monster hobgoblin’s face, and the creature sucking in breath and then letting go in a massive, ugly sneeze.

Mischief trilled a flurry of half-hearted laughter and reluctantly took my mana. That perked the spirit up a little. My mana was getting low. I really didn’t use spells very often, largely because I didn’t get into fights with horrifying monsters.

I was going to have a terrible headache after this. Unless I died horribly, in which case I’d wish I had the headache.

While I’d been negotiating with Mischief, Zareb had freed an arm. Unfortunately, it wasn’t the sword arm, so the paladin was wildly swinging a gauntleted fist at Baby Feet’s face. Blood streamed from the monster hobgoblin’s nose, which was flatter and farther to the left than it should have been.

Zareb’s face looked grim too with burn blisters over the skin and his left eye swelled shut. Khemri’s light still surrounded him, and though Baby Feet’s spirit diamond glowed, the gem hadn’t taken control of Zareb. One of the benefits of being in the direct service of a light deity. They were better at most at shielding a follower’s soul from spirit attacks.

I dropped the cinnamon stick into Mischief’s spirit palm. The hand wobbled through the air in a drunken flight path which showed the spirit’s exhaustion.

Larendil darted around Baby Feet’s legs, stabbing the point of at the side of the calf. With a snap of her wrist, she wrenched free a bronze buckle, the leather strap flapping behind it like an eel. She flicked the buckle away and ran in again.

It would take some time to free enough of the buckles and straps to pull open that section of armor, but Larendil moved with confidence.

Mischief’s hand darted towards the monster hobgoblin’s face. The creature clenched its jaw, lips pulled tight over its teeth as it tried to pull Zareb’s neck into the crook of its elbow.

Ouch.

I needed to make sure the paladin didn’t breathe in the poison himself, so as the spirit’s magic hand flew closer to Baby Feet’s face and mouth, I shouted, “Zareb! Hold your breath!”

Baby Feet sucked in a deep breath to do the same, and to my dismay, I realized the creature also understood Common. Many goblins did, though some chose not to acknowledge it.

Zareb slammed his fist once more into Baby Feet’s throat. His armor absorbed the blow, but the impact startled the monster hobgoblin into exhaling.

As the goblin pulled in another breath, I sent Mischief a focused Now! with a burst of intention and the clang of symbols. Mischief’s spirit hand crushed the cinnamon stick. It puffed outwards in an orange-brown cloud.

Baby Feet’s nostrils flattened to its face and froze.

Mischief, pulling back the threads of its spell, waited in tick-tock-taps as the monster hobgoblin’s face darkened.

Zareb went limp in the monster hobgoblin’s grip, and for a long, horrifying moment, I feared he’d breathed in a fatal dose.

Baby Feet’s eyes widened, the red orbs seeming to pop out like blossoming pustules from their puckered sockets. And then the monster hobgoblin opened its mouth and let out a deep, snorting laugh. “GOOD!” A stomp. Another. “GOOD! GOOD! GOOD!”