Two days later…
Blaise held up his hand to stop the party. Holding his index finger to his lips to command silence, his body became transparent. Ellen and Saran tracked his movements until they lost the slight distortion of his outline. Saran looked at Ellen, and held his hands to the side in the universal “what’s up?” gesture. Ellen shrugged her response, and motioned for him to get down. They had been taking the time to drill hand signals into him as they traveled, and he obeyed unquestioningly. They laid in the grass a foot from each other for what felt like hours, the only sounds the soft sigh of their breaths. Saran saw the depression in the grass in front of him, just before Blaise dropped his transparency.
Blaise crawled slightly forward so he could whisper into Saran’s ear. “What do you know about goblins?”
“They’re the children of dragons.” Saran said as if speaking from rote memory. “Dragons give birth to thousands of eggs at a time, which hatch as goblins. Though dragons are sentient, goblins aren’t. If one manages to absorb enough energy from the things it kills, that one evolves into an orc, which is the adolescent form in between dragons and goblins. Other than that goblins are essentially just ravenous beasts, and desperately try to eat any living creature they see. They generally travel as a horde, and will gladly die in droves to take down difficult prey.”
Blaise nodded approvingly. “Good memory, but I was thinking more along the lines of resistances?”
“Oh, well resistant to fire, and heat because dragons. Weak against cold because they’re cold-blooded. Their scales are tough, and hard to cut, making them difficult to kill without magic. Other than that no special resistances.”
“And Orcs?”
“Same resistances, but they’re smart. Cunning predators rather than a hungry horde.”
“Good, then you are prepared to deal with what is ahead.”
Saran felt a sinking feeling in his gut. “There’s a horde ahead isn’t there?”
Blaise nodded. “They’re coming this way. I believe they are tracking us by scent, which would make it difficult for us to escape in the long-term. If we flee, they will follow us wherever we go, and there are serious legal penalties for those who lead a goblin horde to a town. To be honest, by ourselves me and Ellen could easily defeat them; but, it would be dangerous if we did this and tried to hide you at the same time. The Orcs would likely go around us to hunt for you, seeing you as easier prey. Instead, we will treat this as a training exercise. We will guard you from the bulk of the forces while you gain valuable battle experience. “
Saran panicked. “You can’t make me do this! My father assigned you to protect me, not throw me into battle!”
Blaise shrugged. “Indeed I can’t force you, but I don’t believe the goblins have the same compunctions.”
A harsh keening sound met their ears as a lone goblin appeared from behind a tree, spotting them. It charged them, but fell immediately the moment it was in Ellen’s melee range. A portion of its head fell from it’s shoulders as brain matter spilled onto the ground, and Saran realized he hadn’t even seen her sword move. She tossed him a long dagger, almost a short sword in it’s own right.
“Wait, but I don’t have any training with a blade!” He yelled, trying to make himself heard over the sound of keening voices from the woods behind the dead goblin.
“The pointy end goes into the enemy!” Ellen cried, tightening her grip on the sword she held.
“But-”
“Also, try the sharp edges! Those work too!”
With that, the horde was upon them. They streamed from the trees, seemingly endless in number, and speckled among them were the orcs. The orcs held crude weapons made of bone; clubs and axes mostly. The goblins had only tough hides, and overly-large mouths filled with needle-like teeth. All were emerald green, covered in thick scales. Saran was relieved to see that though they were nude, there was no visible genitalia. Realizing his mind was drifting, he refocused, and began his spell-casting.
The trouble was he didn’t actually know any cold-related spells. Only fire, and spatial magic. Improvising he reversed several variables on a fireball spell, and created a sphere of cold. It had no physical component though, the way fire did. The moment he tried to use it, it would dissipate. Suddenly, something latched onto his leg, generating a burning pain, and he instinctively swatted at it, screaming. The ball of cold, moving with his hand, impacted with the goblin that was gnawing on him. It was the goblin’s turn to scream. It’s face began bubbling, and blistering. A moment later it detached from his leg, shrieking. Ellen strode over, her sword flicking, near-invisible with speed again as she decapitated the goblin.
“Why are you sitting there?” She yelled, as she stretched her hand out to cover his wound in a healing light. “Get moving! I won’t heal you again unless it’s a serious wound, so pay better attention!” She strode off again. The entire time as she talked and healed, her other hand had been slashing her sword through goblin bodies. Saran marveled at her skill with the sword, and ability to do so many things at once. He had tried healing magic himself once, and it took an incredible amount of mental processing power.
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He stood, finding himself faced with three goblins in the fraction of a second it had taken to rise to his feet after her departure. Armed with his new spell already active in his palm, he dived toward the goblins. The middle goblin took the spell directly in the ribs, and screamed as it’s bones began to explode internally, like tree trunks in the winter. He had packed more power into this spell than the last one. The other two goblins charged him, mouths opened for biting. Instinctively, Saran opened tears in the spaces on either side of him, causing the goblins to bite into each other instead of him. Once they had latched on, instinct demanded they feast, and they continued to tear into each other. After a moment, he closed the portals, their bodies still mingled halfway through. This had the unexpected side-effect of separating body parts on one side of the portal from the parts on the other. This was a possibility he had genuinely never considered. Viscera sprayed him as he refocused on the battle again.
Inspired, he quickly made a modified version of his portal spell in the interlude between opponents. Four more goblins charged him, and he flung his new spell toward them. The first in line severed neatly down the middle as if struck by an invisible blade, proving that his spell had worked as intended. The others charged heedlessly, and he severed another before the remaining two were on him. They latched onto his legs as he struggled to summon another ball of cold, but the sudden pain disrupted his casting. The chaotic forces, released with only partial commands, blossomed into a dome of frost ten feet wide in every direction. This time, Saran could feel his own skin blistering, and he realized he was so numb, he hadn’t even felt it when the goblin bodies had exploded. Shards of their bones now peppered his skin like shrapnel, and he fell to his knees as he found himself unable to care. “So tired....” He thought, beginning to fall on his face.
Suddenly, tendrils of shadow grabbed hold of him, and yanked him hard, out of the radius of his spell. Pain coursed through him, igniting his consciousness like the sudden flare of a candle before it overwhelmed him. He sank into an empty slumber.
Next to him, Blaise cursed. Tendrils of solid shadow extended from Blaise’s feet, whipping out at goblins and orcs all around him. Ellen sprinted up to him a moment later, setting her sword in a guard stance on the other side of Saran. She cursed when she saw his broken, pockmarked form. “Not bad for his first time, but damn this kid doesn’t fail small.” She said, sword lashing out around her as dozens of goblins charged the trio.
“Indeed, this is certainly one of the more dramatic mis-casts I’ve seen.”
In his surprise, Saran had accidentally poured most of his energy into the frost spell, and it continued to function. The two mercenaries used it as a wall, to which they put their backs. For their part, the goblins were oblivious to the danger; happily charging into the now-frozen field, only to explode a moment later. A tree caught in the field shattered a few seconds later, squashing a very surprised orc who had been keeping it’s distance.
Minutes passed as the stream of goblins slowed to a trickle. “Guard the kid, I’m gonna go for the orcs before they cut and run.” Ellen said, using magic to boost her speed as she ran. Up until this point, enhanced speed had been the main draw on her magical abilities, but as she charged, she channeled magic into her sword as well. It gained a sheen of frost, sparkling motes forming on the blade like patches of crystal.
The orcs snarled at her as she got closer, and the nearest one swung it’s club at her when she was in range. Something she knew about orcs that most people didn’t bother to remember was that they frequently used the bones of fallen comrades as weapons. In fact, their bones were almost as durable as steel. This is why when it swung, she activated a simple barrier spell over herself, and moved her blade up to intercept the club. The bone shattered explosively when it came into contact with the cold of her blade, and large chunks pierced the orc, killing it. Her barrier stopped the shrapnel from impacting her.
She moved on to the next, and this one was more cautious; an axe wielder, attempting to find an opening in her defense rather than swinging wantonly. Reacting to a sound from behind her, Ellen ducked a clumsy strike from a second orc, spinning her sword to slash into it. The sword slammed into its abdomen, the flesh bubbling, and blistering against the cold of her blade. As she completed her swing, the now-eviscerated orc fell backward screaming. The first orc had taken this as it’s opportunity to strike, but she had factored this into her strategy from the beginning. Using the motion of her turn to twirl past it’s downswing, she brought her sword up into its neck, and it died scrabbling at the bubbling flesh of it’s throat.
The final two orcs looked at each other, and fled in opposite directions. Ellen grabbed two throwing knives from her belt. With a thought, she imbued cold into the knives, and then threw one toward each target. The first landed in it’s target’s leg, cold shooting up it’s body through flash-cooled blood like a bubbling cancer. It died with a shout of pain as the cold reached its heart. The second had glanced back at the right moment, and managed to hold it’s weapon up to block the dagger. Seeing what was happening to its counterpart, and remembering how the cold had interacted with the weapon of the first orc, the orc tossed it’s club aside just in time. The weapon detonated harmlessly into the ground as the orc resumed it’s flight. Ellen sighed, and channeled magic into her sword. A sliver of metal rose from the frosted blade like liquid, and separated from the blade, hovering in the air. Suddenly, it snapped into the shape of a foot-long needle, and launched itself into the back of the fleeing orc. The orc screamed briefly as the needle buried itself in the creature’s spine. A moment later it fell to the ground dead.
Ellen policed the corpses, retrieving her first throwing knife, and the needle of metal. She cursed when she discovered the second dagger had been ruined by the explosion of the bone club. Quality throwing knives didn’t come cheap, the main reason why she only carried a few at a time. With a mental command, she melded the shard of metal back into her sword until there was no visible seam.
She turned to see that Saran was awake, and watching her. Blaise had begun the process of pulling bone shards from Saran’s body while Saran tried to focus away from the pain. He whimpered as a foot-long spike was removed from his leg, and Ellen sighed in sympathy. She’d had her fair share of battlefield medicine over the years, and knew how it felt. Smiling, she winked at him as she walked back over to the pair. He smiled back wanly, but shuddered, closing his eyes as another spike of bone was removed. Patting his head affectionately, Ellen cast a spell, and Saran drifted into a fitful sleep.