Karin wasn’t pain-free.

Far from it. Her hip screamed in agony with every bounce in the saddle, but it felt like it was another woman’s pain or happening to her in another time. It was an academic pain, like eye strain from studying the Goddess’s holy scriptures in wavering candlelight long after she should have been asleep. It wasn’t her pain to bear alone. The Goddess was helping her.

She’d been riding her mare hard for an hour, and with every hoof beat, the signs of goblins grew increasingly obvious. Broken stems. Cut tree-trunks. Splattered mud Now, their fish-and-sweat smell hung heavy in the air. And Aldric’s footprints had pushed deep into the mud-covered path, fresher than the goblins’ scars and stink.

Karin slowed her mare; she couldn’t get off the horse, not if she wanted to get back on any time soon—and the goblins’ lair had to be close. She’d ridden these forest roads before, in another life. A younger life—the campaign against the orcs had been fought in the forests near Riverbend. It had been treacherous territory for a mounted knight: low branches, winding paths, and enemies who could hide in every green-black shadow.

It still was. She’d need her horse to be fresh for the fight.

The mare trotted down the root-bound trail, Karin reining her in as they went. She couldn’t get her horse hurt or be thrown from the saddle—not when Aldric had been through here and might need her help. His boots had left heavy prints in the soft earth, and a fight with two goblins had churned up the stinking mud. The smell mixed with horse sweat and the fishy stink of goblins.

The goblins in question were just around the corner. One bore a trio of sword slashes; the broken spear nearby told her all she needed to know about the fight. Aldric’s longsword had cleaved through a parry and into the goblin, and battle wrath had done the rest. The Goddess avenges.

The second goblin’s skull had been caved in. A shield bash. She nodded approvingly, then narrowed her eyes at the triggered snare trap nearby. Another turn, and she could see the goblins’ crude village and hear fighting.

“Come on, let’s go,” she said, loosening her greatsword. The heavy blade wouldn’t be ideal on horseback unless she had charging room, but staying mounted would be the least of her worries if she got trapped.

The open but narrow path wound up a hill, and Karin took it at a canter. Her blade bounced against her pauldron, ready to snap down in a sweeping blow. The goblins’ hovels made the Riverbend villagers’ homes look like mansions; mud oozed under crude wooden lean-tos, and what walls they’d built were little more than deadwood piled against branch-stripped trees.

Her mare plowed through one with ease, and a moment later, the battle wrath was upon Karin. She swept her sword through a goblin, cleaving it in two. The halves squelched into the mud.

She expected them to turn, to fight her, or to try to kill her mare—leaving her helpless and easy pickings. But most of the monsters’ eyes weren’t on her, and as she cut a path through the swarm, she realized why.

Aldric stood at the base of an ancient, dying sycamore. The tree’s crown had broken off, and it bore the scars of lightning. Thirty feet down a rope and twenty from the ground hung a cage—a cage filled with dirty, screaming children.

A crude ladder had been lashed to the tree’s side, and Aldric had placed himself at its base. The goblins pressed in around him in a tide of greens and grays, swinging weapons that bounced off his plate or turned off his shield. But he wasn’t uninjured—far from it.

As Karin’s mare slammed through the sea of monsters, a goblin found a gap in the armor and drove a knife into his calf. He shouted, swung his sword, decapitated the goblin, and blocked another spear thrust. He was riding the owlbear, like it or not.

“Hold fast. The Goddess protects!” Karin shouted. Her mare stumbled, nearly tossing her from her saddle. Then the horse recovered, and Karin cut another goblin’s chest.

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“The Goddess avenges. Great-Grandmother Karin!” Aldric yelled back. He blocked one blow, parried another with his sword, and whirled in a wide arc that didn’t catch any goblins but did earn him some breathing room. “Why are you here?”

“This is my quest, and the Goddess aids me,” she replied. Silver-white light poured from her visor. Her mare shrieked in pain. It reared and lashed its hooves at the monsters around it, but she held the reins and kept to her saddle. The greatsword crashed onto the offending goblin, slicing through its spear and shoulder.

Karin twisted the massive blade before it could catch on bone, pulling on it with her free hand, but the torque twisted her around, and when her mare reared back again, she crashed into the mud-covered roots at the sycamore’s base.

Her hip’s pain cut through the shield the Goddess had given her. She screamed as it jarred against its socket. Popping agony filled her spine, and her vision narrowed to a tiny blot of light.

Overhead, she could hear something moving to cover her. She forced her eyes open. Aldric’s legs stood astride her, his shield covering her body, not his. He slashed at a goblin, but the angle was bad, and it shrieked as his longsword left a painful but shallow cut across its chest.

More and more goblins rushed her Shield, but she couldn’t help. The shattered hip felt like fire—and she’d felt fire in the Order’s crusade on Hell. She could only watch as a spear jammed into Aldric’s knee, in the weak spot behind the joint. Another punched into his chain mail below his chest, and he went down to one knee.

But his shield stayed over Karin, protecting her from another goblin. She was right. He’d make an excellent Shield.

Her vision blacked.

----------------------------------------

Karin had been here before.

Twice.

So she didn’t gawk at the marble hall adorned with tapestries of heroes armed and fighting, the long pool in the center, and the two doors on the far side. She walked painlessly down the hall, her hip no longer broken and her armor long gone. The Goddess’s tabard covered her body, and loose trousers hung from her waist to mid-calf. She felt twenty again. She looked twenty again, a fresh Sword ready to dedicate herself to the Goddess. Young, innocent, and zealous.

The greatsword sat on her shoulder. A woman sat next to the pool.

Fish nibbled on the Goddess’s toes as she swished them slowly through the cool water. She glanced at Karin and smiled, not quite laughing as the tiny mouths tickled her feet. “Sit, my Sword,” she said, patting a flagstone next to her.

Karin sat. A paladin of the Order didn’t ignore her Goddess, so when the robed woman gestured, she let herself dip her feet into the pool. Just as after the crusade and again during the war against the orcs, the minnows tickled her feet. She tried to relax, but as the seconds passed, a question built up inside her. The pressure felt almost crushing, and yet…

And yet…the Goddess simply watched the fish and smiled. Contentment seemed plastered on her face, and she made no sound save to swish her feet and stir the tiny fish into silvery clouds in the pool. The seconds turned to minutes, the minutes to hours, and the Goddess seemed completely still in both body and mind.

Finally, Karin could stand it no longer. “Is it over?” she asked. The words echoed through the empty hall like a dozen Karins, all asking the same question in slightly different tones.

“Would you like it to be over? A half-dozen children and your Shield remain behind. They have no hope of victory as it stands. He is not strong enough to fight the entire swarm of goblins by himself. But you are tired, wounded, and ready to move on. If you let it be over, it will be over. You have done so much for me, and I would welcome you home.” The Goddess gestured to the doors behind her.

Karin already knew where they led.

The iron one would bring her back—back to her shattered, weak body. She’d be a paladin still, a holy knight for another few minutes. Or another decade. Could she keep doing this into her ninetieth year? Her hundredth? And when would it be enough?

The silver door…that one would bring her past this hall for the first and last time. She’d be freed from her service to the Goddess, ready for a long, deserved rest in her embrace. But could she live with Aldric’s death? With the children’s deaths?

She had all the time in the world to decide. She had no time at all to decide.

The fish tickled her toes as they nibbled at dead and calloused skin. She swished her own foot, and the fish scattered. One brave one stuck around, though. She watched it for a minute. Her hip didn’t hurt here. It would never hurt here.

But she had more to give.

The Goddess saw Karin’s face harden in resolve. She smiled again, stood, and held out a hand to the ancient paladin. “You’ll stand, then?”

“I will. The Goddess protects,” Karin murmured, taking the hand. The Goddess’s strength poured into her, filled her with energy, and pushed the memory of pain away.

“I hope not to see you here soon,” The Goddess said.

Karin readied the greatsword and stepped through the iron door.