When Fin was just outside crossbow range, he donned his armor and slowed his pace. Surprisingly, as he approached, not a single bolt had flown from the battlement. He started to wonder if the goblins had even seen them when bolts and arrows showered down on him in a decisive effort to end his life. The projectiles attempted to push him off balance, but none penetrated his armor. The bolts that targeted Grant bounced off his stone exterior, but he did not break stride.

Fin wondered if the bolts were irritating Grant because he saw the elemental lift his hand as if to swat the projectiles away. To his utter horror, he realized Grant was waving. He briefly considered scolding the stone giant for waving to the enemy but decided to address it later. He had more urgent matters to deal with. The large wooden gates were rapidly approaching and he informed Grant that they needed to knock them down. He then unstowed his hammer and gave the first swing.

The hammer arched through the air and landed on the gate with an astounding blow. Reverberations ran through it, but it was otherwise undamaged. Grant took some experimental swings, but they, too, were ineffectual. The only thing Fin could do was keep hitting it and hoping it would eventually come down. He then considered something else that might work.

He tried to remember how the support rods were set on the other side of the gate. The only image he could recollect was a latch somewhere in the center. He wasn't sure if a wood beam spanned across the middle of the opening like other gates he had seen, but he assumed there was. With nothing to lose, he used Caustic Breath to cut a line down the center of the gate, hoping the ability cut through something important.

His breath, visible to Discern Earth and Discern Magic, cut through the gate like a spoon through an uncooked potato. He had to force the breath out of his lungs over several attempts. It was not easy. He became lightheaded and leaned heavily on the gate to stay on his feet.

A transient blast snapped him out of his daze as Grant took another mighty swing. The gate bowed in farther than before; Fin's efforts were working. Before he could resume cutting through the center of the gate, a group of goblins began gathering on the adjacent walls, launching bolts and throwing rocks.

If the goblins wanted to throw rocks, Fin had the perfect rock for them to throw. He positioned himself with his back towards the wall, unstowed the smaller elemental from his inventory, and heaved it to the top of the wall. Whether the elemental hated him or it had been frozen mid-attack, Fin did not know. What he did know was the second he unstowed the tiny, violent creature, it immediately started attacking. Or it tried to before it was flung to the top of the wall, where it met something else to take its aggression out on. The violent rock creature went into a frenzy, swinging at arms, legs, and little goblin shins.

Shouts of alarm and anger from above paused as Grant landed another mighty strike against the gate. The gate cracked and splintered, but it held.

"Grant, get a running start and ram into it with your shoulder," Fin called above the shouts and cries from above.

Grant backed up, and when he felt he was far enough, he charged for the gate. Just before he formed a battering ram with his shoulder, a goblin fell off the wall and landed directly in his way. Grant shuffled his feet to avoid stepping on the goblin, tripped, and flung toward the gate with destructive clumsiness. The gate exploded inward allowing the elemental in where he gradually slid to a stop.

Fin dispatched the injured goblin as the dust settled inside the gate. Looking in, he saw the staircase to the top of the wall and went for it.

"Grant, you can step on goblins," he corrected and considered the innocent people trapped inside. "But, only goblins. They're the green ones."

After climbing the staircase to the top of the wall, he decided to go in the opposite direction from where Voids' violent elemental had set up residence. It was perfectly content to sit on top of the wall as if it were enjoying a peaceful day on the farm. Fin looked for Void but didn't see her. It would have been nice if she had commanded it to attack the guards on the wall, but without Void, there was no controlling it.

Taking care to reserve his stamina, Fin started moving around the wall. He struck down his goblin and human assailants from the wall one by one. When he had gotten halfway around the track, the guards started running away from him and his catastrophic hammer. Instead of crossing paths with the territorial elemental, they began devising other ways to get down from the wall. Some jumped, some used ropes, and others were thrown off.

When Fin tried to pass, the elemental also attacked him. He seriously considered going back around or climbing off the side of the wall like everyone else had, but he didn't have the time. Instead, he mustered all his courage and reached for the animated rock cluster. The elemental scratched and swung at him and got a few good punches in before it disappeared safely into his inventory. He made a mental note to drop it down a well if he ever found one.

From his vantage point on top of the wall, he could see his allies had already begun approaching. They were fighting off waves of goblins that seemed to be trying to escape more than to do battle. Upon seeing the triangle formation with Brando in the front, the goblins ran either left or right. To intercept the goblins, the formation morphed into a reverse triangle that funneled goblins to Brando in the back. It was clearly the handy work of the good idea fairy, but Fin had other problems to consider.

Grant had run off somewhere in an effort to step on goblins, and Fin did not know where that was. He knew it was potentially dangerous for Grant to be left to his own devices this early in his life, but it was a risk that would mostly fall to the goblins. He let that consideration ease his discomfort if only a little and joined the formations.

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

Outside the gate, Fin met Brando standing in the center of the new cone formation and wondered out loud who had come up with the idea. Brando admitted accountability.

"Rogard is going to yell at you after this is done, you know," Fin warned. "He says that changing the plan mid-battle can get people killed. He calls it the good idea fairy."

Brando slashed at a goblin running towards him and turned to Fin. "It was his idea to do a cone formation in the first place. If he yells at me, I'll just tell him he started it and see how he likes a taste of his own medicine."

Fin doubted Brando would win the argument but put it out of his mind. "Let's share the center of the cone. We can switch every now and then, so we don't get tired."

"Now look who the fairy is," Brando chided as he kicked a goblin towards the sideline. "If Rogard yells at me, you got my back, right?"

"To the very end, brother," Fin promised.

The command to move forward brought the formations through the broken gate. There, scores of goblins advanced on them with many mismatched weapons. One of the more prominent weapons pointed sticks, brushed off Fin and Brando's armor easily. Fin noticed some of the goblins climbing the stairs to regain the wall. Before he had the chance to say anything, Rogard commanded a handful of dwarves to regain the stairs.

"Switch!" Brando yelled and fell back.

Fin immediately took his place at the focal point of the battle and faced the sea of cruel green faces. They charged him with teeth and claws exposed. He caught two of them with his hammer before striking out with his own claws. He activated Sharpened Talons and Crushing Grip and punched finger-sized holes into attacking goblins. He attacked, parried, and struck blindly around for so long that it felt like he was taking on all the goblins alone. He stole a glance behind him and saw Brando hunched over a body on the ground. Fearing the worst, he ran towards his friend when Brando abruptly stood.

"Catch this," Brando said, tossing something small and black into the air before yelling, "Switch!"

Fin caught the item with his fingerless gloves, feeling something warm and wet on his fingertips. A notification came up, and upon reading it, he dropped the item and wiped his hands on the ground.

Blood Quest Complete: Hold the beating heart of an enemy. +1 basic ability point, +1 talon ability.

Active Ability: Cleave

"Did it work?" Brando called out, cutting through more goblins.

Fin hesitated. He couldn't figure out what upset him, the macabre battlefield prank or the fact that he had just completed a quest he intended to ignore. If it was up to him, he would delete his remaining quests so he wouldn't have to look at them. He ignored Brando's question and called for a switch.

When he was front and center of the wholesale onslaught, he decided to try his new ability. He activated Cleave and felt energy gather in his hands. Immediately, he knew two things. He could use this ability with just one or both hands, and he should be very careful if he did. He swung his naked fingertips forward in a half circle. Energy formed from his fingertips to create a series of hairline blades that slashed out. Wood spears, hands, and heads split off and hit the ground in unison. The attacking goblins seemed more surprised than Fin, and, in their hesitation, he and Brando finished them off together.

"It worked," Fin admitted, so no one tried to give him any more battlefield surprises. "And I'm upset about it."

"I'm sorry," Brando apologized. "I thought you would be happy about it. I really did. I'll make it up to you. Cross my heart."

Fin shook his head but thought nothing more of it. Before long, they were marching through the encampment, looking for goblins in hiding. Eventually, they arrived at an old, familiar cast iron gate that led into the mine. Brando pushed it, and it opened freely.

"That doesn't seem right," Brando muttered more to himself than anyone. "It's not like them to keep this gate unlocked."

Fin followed behind, hoping to see some old faces, and he was not disappointed. Just through the gate stood dozens of familiar-looking, dirty-faced people in a big group. In the front of the group stood Heidle the Hammer, but he didn't look his cheerful self.

"Heidle! We came back!" Fin announced, barely containing his excitement.

"Ah, so you did, lad, and it's good to see you." For a brief moment, Heidle's face lit up with a genuine smile, and then it was gone. "I think it's time for us all to go, nice and easy like."

Fin's smile faded. Something didn't seem right, and Brando's grim look suggested he felt the same way.

Brando stepped forward to ask what was wrong, but everyone's face stiffened. Noticing the tension of the group, Fin held out a hand to stop Brando from approaching. He then spoke to the group, trying to keep the mood light.

"Sure, if you all want to leave now, you are welcome to," Fin stepped aside and gestured for them all to pass. "Good luck out there."

The group moved silently past him as if everyone was holding their breath at the same time. He tried frantically to understand why they were all acting so spooked when he saw something that made it all click together. It wasn't what he saw, but what he didn't see, an ear.

When he and Brando were first taken to the camp, they met a woman with a missing ear. She seemed to be the one running the operation. Fin realized that as the camp was being attacked, she must have thought she could disguise herself as a slave and escape with everyone else. By how everyone was acting, he figured she had a weapon against one of their backs.

While he tried frantically to devise a plan, the group of hostages had already made it out of the mine and were almost at the broken gates of the camp's entrance. Movement from the side caught his attention, and he saw something he couldn't believe. While everyone was fighting goblins, Sprout had been busy cultivating the largest weed Fin had seen in his life. Spiked leaves, too heavy to stand up, flopped to the ground around a large, white-seeded flower taller than he was. It was a farmer's worst nightmare.

He reached out to Sprout and asked where Void was. After the equivalent of a mental shrug, he removed the Oath Twig and made her an offer she couldn't refuse.

Fin had noticed a common theme among Sprites: They seemed to operate in terms of deals and contracts. He had only met two, but seeing how rare it was to meet or communicate with them, he could very well be the subject matter expert. The last time he made a deal with Spout, it was in Void’s favor. It could have been a lesson for the very young to agree to unfavorable deals, but he had learned something, too. Sprout was inexperienced enough to make another such deal.

"I will give Void this coin and gem," Fin unstowed a silver coin and a blue gem to prove his point, "If you do one little favor for me."