“Don’t even fucking think about it!” Hoy barked at me, his mocking demeanor suddenly switching to pure contemptuous rage—which was weird, since I wasn’t even doing anything at that moment except dithering in the realization of how out of my depth I was. “I see even one of you shitheads aim those things anywhere near me and I’ll strangle your families with your fucking colon! Shoot the other one, morons!”

Oh, he wasn’t talking to me, just the goblins behind me. Also, important thing learned: if I didn’t want to get shot in the back with a spiked grenade, I needed to stay within melee range of the goblin sorcerer who had a big spiky weapon that he could currently use a lot better than I could mine.

Lovely. Well, the upside was they couldn’t do the other thing either, since the pair of us were between the slingers and Yoshi.

Since there was nothing else for it, I lunged forward, stabbing at him. Hoy contemptuously swatted my thrust aside with his staff, then in my next attempt actually caught the blade of my rapier between the protruding tines of his own weapon. The little shit paused to grin triumphantly at me before twisting violently in a move that should have wrenched the rapier out of my hand.

It didn’t, because his fancy-looking custom bladestaff might as well have been precision-designed to make that impossible: the four crescent-moon blades curved outward from its top, meaning the twisting force just made my blade slide smoothly out from between them. It did wrench the rapier forcefully to one side, leaving me momentarily wide open, and Hoy didn’t hesitate this time, lunging in a brutal stab that would have skewered me had I not frantically leaped back. I barely evaded getting impaled, and only my Surestep Boots kept me on my feet after that clumsy backwards leap. I felt the distinctively disorienting sensation of my feet twisting improbably under me in a position that preserved my balance and didn’t sprain anything, a maneuver I would definitely not have been able to execute on purpose.

Hang on. The boots were still working… Why them, and not the sword or dagger?

There was no time to dwell on it; I was now out of Hoy’s blast radius, which was a deadly place to be. Indeed, a spiked grenade whizzed past the space I’d just occupied as I lunged forward to engage him again, arcing down into the canyon to explode against the opposite wall.

“Fire Lance!” he shouted, flinging the spell blindly at Yoshi to keep him pinned down while he whipped up his staff to deal with me again. I parried an attack, made him dodge a thrust, then forced him to retreat from my next stab before he could swing his staff to counter me. The frustrated anger was growing on the goblin’s face as he found me not quite as helpless as he’d expected.

Here was the thing about the Mastery enchantment.

The way to improve a skill is to practice it: to repeat the necessary motions correctly, so many times they become second nature and can be executed without thought. If you’re doing something with an artifact that enables you to do it perfectly, every time, you’re not just very effective while using said artifact, you are building muscle memory that doesn’t go away when you put it down. As soon as I realized this, I’d made a point to train with the rapier every day, against anybody at North Watch willing to spar with me. I hadn’t counted on the artifact itself ever being neutralized, but I was expecting it to be taken from me at some point (all my artifacts were looted from defeated enemies, after all). After a couple months of this, I was… Well, I was nowhere near the master fencer I could be with the Mastery enchantment working. But I was also better than a guy who’d been training with the blade for a couple months the old-fashioned way. Maybe not all that much better, but as it turned out, it was enough.

Barely.

Hoy and I probed at each other, dancing back and forth; this was an annoyingly close match. I guess he was like me, a sorcerer who carried a weapon as a backup and had never had reason to be more than just competent with it. It only took him a few seconds of this to lose patience.

“That’s enough of your bullshit,” the goblin spat at me, hopping back, lowering his staff and holding out his other hand. Realizing his intent, I frantically backpedaled and lunged to the side, not that I could possibly be quick enough to evade the—

“Fire Lance!”

Nothing happened. I paused uncertainly, raising my rapier to guard position.

Hoy’s face twisted in animal rage. “Shock!”

Again…nothing.

Boots, and also ring… Oho. So that was how it was.

I gave him my broadest, most shit-eating grin. “Yeah, that’s pretty fuckin’ annoying, isn’t it, li’l buddy?”

Hoy snarled at me, half-turned to hammer Yoshi with another Fire Lance, then lunged at me with his bladestaff again.

“Boss! It’s only protecting him from effects directed at him!” Biribo said out loud, now that I’d already figured that out myself.

“Right. Go update the others on the details, I’ve got this.” Radatina would have seen the same and informed Yoshi; I wasn’t sure what Rizz or Gizmit might have been able to pick up from their angles, but if I got them both on the same page, one or the other might come up with something while I kept the Void witch busy.

Now that I thought of it, I’d also been able to cast Heal on Yoshi, right past Hoy—and now I did it again, because he’d soaked up a few more Fire Lances since and just to verify once more that it worked. Yep, we were still in business. So I couldn’t use an offensive artifact on him—which apparently extended to the invisibility effect of my dagger—or cast spells at him. That left me with Surestep Boots to ensure flawless footing no matter how we chased each other around on this ledge that was increasingly covered in shrapnel and broken rock from all the explosions. He couldn’t target me with spells, either. Also, I had an artifact to protect me from lethal hits, and I could still cast Heal on myself to remedy anything else.

This was starting to look like an annoying stalemate, but that was a hell of a lot better than the hopeless debacle I’d thought it was seconds ago. And I still didn’t understand everything; Hoy’s posture at the start of this said he wasn’t worried about being shot with arrows or slingshots, and he had yet to reveal why. Fortunately there was a fix for that.

Unfortunately part of the initial problem remained: if our archers took a shot at Hoy, his slingers would retaliate and they had a massive edge in firepower.

So I knew what we had to do before we could take out the Void witch.

Okay, step one… Hoy was pissed off but not on the run, and he appeared more than adroit enough to keep us both pinned down by engaging me with his weapon and slamming Yoshi with fire spells. Yoshi couldn’t retaliate with magic thanks to his Void art and couldn’t get closer because Fire Lance packed a kinetic punch in addition to its heat; if he didn’t brace himself fully and cower behind his shield, each one would send him flying, extra crispy.

“Yoshi!” I barked, already dashing to plant myself between him and Hoy. “Switch! Use your Force Wave to stop them shooting bombs at us!”

“Wh—Omura, you can’t tank him! I’m in armor and I have a shield, you’re too squishy—”

What the fuck did he just call me?!

“Just do what I say, I’ll explain later!”

Finally shutting up, he pivoted, staying behind me as I re-positioned myself. I was still too close to Hoy to be a bombing target—and fully occupied keeping him from stabbing or bludgeoning me—but Yoshi could be possibly clipped by the slingers at this range.

“Force Wave!” he shouted, and my coat was tugged by the kinetic blast that ripped outward just as the telltale twang of slingshots fired twice. As before, the grenades were whipped right back into the goblins’ ranks; I heard two explosions and several screams, unable to suppress a wince. Hopefully Aster and the others were still hunkered down behind the doorway; they were in that direction.

“I have had it with you fuckers!” Hoy raged. “Force Wave!”

Oh, right, area of effect spells didn’t have to be aimed at me.

Man, getting hit with that thing point blank sucked. It was a fast-moving wall of pure kinetic energy; I’d been slammed into Yoshi before I could really process the full-body impact to my front, and then we were tumbling over each other. I found myself skidding across the floor, dazed, ending up with Yoshi’s fallen form just within my field of view. He’d managed to land a little more gracefully than I, awkwardly on one knee and bringing his shield back up with a grunt of pain. His motions were slow, as if he’d sprained something in the fall.

Heal! Heal!

The spell brought the air back into my lungs and rid my skull of the disorienting ringing, and got Yoshi back up to full strength as well. Of course, now we were at a bad distance from Hoy, who lost no time in firing off another Fire Lance to keep Yoshi occupied, and then another. I whirled toward the last remaining King-aligned goblins, unsure if my Windburst would be enough to turn back a bomb volley, but it was the only idea I had. Sure enough, a goblin was there, raising a slingshot one-handed—

Wait, that was Rizz. She was kneeling on another goblin’s back, her free arm holding one of his twisted painfully behind him, and taking aim at Hoy. The sorcerer glanced aside, did a double take, and whirled to cast at her.

Not fast enough.

The bomb flew true—then suddenly jerked to one side before it reached him, pinging into the ground barely a meter away. Huh, no wonder he wasn’t worried about getting shot by arrows from above. Unfortunately for him, bombs were not arrows.

The blast wasn’t close enough to properly finish him, but it was close enough that the shockwave and shrapnel sent him painfully to the ground. Toward the edge of the crevice, but sadly not close enough.

“C’mon!” I grabbed Yoshi by the collar of his armored tunic and tugged, leading him around behind one of the heavy pillars holding up the row of balconies above us. There, we gained at least a moment’s respite; couldn’t afford to linger here, but I had been struck by inspiration and needed to bring Yoshi up to speed on my new and improved strategy.

“Boss!” Biribo squawked, zipping back down to rejoin us just in time. “That was a spell—a normal Blessing spell! He’s got Repulsion Aura!”

“Probably got it from his devil,” Radatina added, “that’s a much more rare and potent spell than the others he’s been using. Sorry we couldn’t detect it until it was actually triggered, but now we know! That will repel any projectiles or spells fired at him.”

“The spell thing is redundant with his Void gift, but good to know,” Yoshi wheezed.

“Ah, Radatina explained that to you, good.”

He gave me a strange look. “What? Why would she need to? I figured that out as soon as my first Force Bolt fizzled. Haven’t you ever seen an anti-magic field before?”

Shut the fuck up, you little nerd. “Fine, listen, I know what we need to do now. Can you keep him occupied for a few minutes?”

“So your new plan is the same as the old plan?” he exclaimed in loud exasperation.

“Nonsense, that wasn’t the plan, it’s just what we ended up doing. Now we’re doing it for a reason instead of scrabbling around like idiots!”

“So the old plan was to scrabble around like idiots? You’re the Dark Lord! Aren’t you supposed to be good at making schemes and plots?”

“Sure I am, and sometimes they even work!”

“Sometimes?”

“I’d say one out of… What do you think, Biribo, four or five?”

“Sounds about right, boss.”

An explosion from far too close caused cracks to spread through the pillar we were crowded behind, spraying bits of stone to both sides. Yoshi and I huddled together and the familiars grabbed onto each other between us, which would have been hilarious under other circumstances.

“And what are you going to do while I’m keeping him occupied?”

“Rendering aid and comfort to the enemy!”

“Your new plan is the dictionary definition of ‘treason?!’”

“Part of it. There are steps.”

“I really hate you!” the Hero shouted over the noise of another bomb impacting way too close for comfort.

“That’s the spirit!”

We parted and charged out from both sides. Hoy had just been shooting Fire Lances into his own troops, frying goblins and setting off more bombs in the course of failing to nail Rizz, who skittered back through the doorway just as we emerged. He whirled and cast, reacting to the motion; unfortunately for Hoy, his first instinctive cast was at me, and did nothing. It took him only a split second to correct.

“FIRE LANCE!”

Yoshi, though, had been soaking those things up for the last few minutes and had the hang of it now. He hit the ground on one boot and one armored kneepad, turning his charge into a slide, shield-first. The Fire Lance hit him dead on, wrecking his momentum—but not negating it entirely. Yoshi kicked off with his upright foot, turning the last dregs of his energy from a slide back into a lunge, and finally brought himself within sword range of the sorcerer.

Hoy hammered at him with the bladestaff; Yoshi took it on the shield, which he then swept ferociously aside, throwing Hoy entirely off balance and lashing out with his sword next. Hoy had to leap backward, the blade nicking through the front of his coat and grazing him as he desperately retreated. Yoshi followed, not giving him a chance to regain space.

So he took matters into his own hands.

“Shock!”

“Heal!”

Yoshi was stunned for a split-second before I put him right again, and he wasted not an instant in pressing the attack.

“Sho—”

The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

CLONK. “Shut up!”

Ah, the oh-so-satisfying sound of a shield smacking a smug goblin. The ultimate counterspell.

I kept one eye on him while scanning the field for targets. There were a lot; the ground was pockmarked by grenade impacts and so slick with blood only my artifact boots were enabling me to move. Eugh, no wonder Yoshi had been able to powerslide across a stone floor. Goblins and pieces of goblins lay everywhere.

There was no time to do this right; I had to settle for doing it fast.

“Heal! Heal! Heal Heal Heal Heal HealHealHealHealHeal—”

My casting was slowed only by the fact that I did it vocally—projecting, of course, to be heard across the entire cavern. Because this wasn’t just saving lives, this was showtime, and it mattered that everyone present understood exactly what I was doing.

“What are you doing?” Flaethwyn screeched from the stone doorway behind which she was huddling, then ducked back out of sight when someone launched a bomb at her. Being fired from clear across the intervening space, it didn’t get all the way there, but still. I could sympathize; that was pretty much how everyone felt about Flaethwyn and her opinions.

Not every cast worked; some of those goblins were beyond saving. But I cast my spell of ultimate healing at every even mostly intact goblin I could see—and also Yoshi, every third or fourth cast, because he was getting constantly hammered by lightning and fire spells at point blank range and our current symbiotic relationship was that his meat shielding was both necessary for and enabled by my healing.

A goblin who’d just sat upright with a gasp at being Healed a second prior now turned toward me and picked up a loose bomb, since he didn’t have an intact slingshot to hand.

“Really, man?” I demanded, staring him down.

The goblin swallowed heavily and very carefully rolled the bomb away from us, toward the edge of the precipice.

“What the fuck are you morons doing?” Hoy snarled, battering on Yoshi’s shield with his bladestaff in a two-handed grip. “Somebody blast that fucking butt before he does something else!”

“Sure, you could try that,” I said in a deliberately agreeable tone to contrast with his vicious demeanor. “Maybe it’ll work this time?”

Pause one beat for effect; goblins were looking uncertainly between me and Hoy.

“You know, I’ve probably been in more battles than any of you,” I continued, “and I’ve gotta say, it’s really fucked up that you’re all dying from your own weapons and the fact your boss is using you as living shields. Yoshi, have we actually killed any goblins here?”

He stepped back twice, breathing heavily and regaining some distance from Hoy for the first time in a couple minutes. Yoshi was out of breath and sweating heavily—but to be fair, so was Hoy, hence the sorcerer not immediately taking advantage of the lull to blast him again. I was only doing slightly better myself.

“Does flinging their own bombs back at them count?”

“I wouldn’t blame ‘em for being pissed at us about that,” I said frankly. “Though if anybody in charge had bothered to set up a proper ambush that wouldn’t have happened. Hey, Hoy, explain something to me!”

“You’re fucking dead, you piece of shit!” the Void witch screamed, brandishing his staff. “I’m gonna rip your smirking head off and take a shit down your neckhole!”

“Damn,” I acknowledged, “the detail and specificity of that. Holy shit, man. Do you just spend your free time sitting around, thinking those up? How long did that one take you?”

I thought he was going to burst a blood vessel. Hoy flung out a hand at me, opened his mouth to call out a spell, then his eye began twitching violently as he remembered.

“Fire Lance!” he squawked at Yoshi, who ducked and took it on his shield as per usual.

“Hey, he said it!”

“Heal,” I rebutted, remedying any singeing Yoshi may have suffered. “But seriously, though. How come with the milling around in the center of the chamber? If I’d been running this ambush, I’d have positioned everybody in these floor-level alcoves all around here. Behind the pillars, see? Then when the attack comes, only those who can see it fire at it. That means you don’t get the entire group unloading on one spot, but why would you need them to?”

“Fire Lance!” Hoy screamed, brandishing a hand at me. He’d learned; this one whipped past my head to flash into the alcove behind me. The heat was scorching, but only momentary. I ignored it. “Force Wave!” I was too far away, taking only a mild push that barely required me to shift my feet.

Most important, all the surviving goblins were watching, silent, and not a one of them pointing a slingshot at me.

“That’s the thing about bombs, you really only need to land a few hits in the general area of the target,” I continued in my adamantly reasonable tone. “Plus, having everybody fire at the first target will screw you over if the enemy fakes you out and has a backup attack. Most importantly, they’re all in each other’s way and with ordnance like that, mass casualties are… Shit, it’s not even a risk, that’s just math. What the fuck, dude? This only makes sense if you wanted the juvenile satisfaction of seeing a really big boom wherever I popped up, and didn’t care how many of your people died for it.”

“You’re only talking because that’s all you have,” Hoy hissed, aiming the bladed head of his staff at me. “Some fucking Dark Lord you turned out to be, getting your ass kicked by a goblin!”

“Hey, don’t say ‘goblin’ like it makes it worse,” I chided, frowning at him. “I respect goblins as much as anyone. That’s why all this is happening, did you even know that? I’ve been making friends with goblins since I landed on Dount. I am down here to finish off Jadrak because your precious King was so desperate for my attention he murdered the goblins I was friendly with. Blood calls for blood, Hoy.”

“Bullshit! None of you inbreds better be listening to this lying crock of crap!”

“I can tell this is not something you’re capable of understanding, but I will explain it anyway,” I snapped, switching my demeanor. Cold, focused, relentless. “No one fucks with my people. I will protect who I can, and who I can’t? I will avenge. If Jadrak had respected goblin lives as much as I do, he’d get to live. But he didn’t. So he doesn’t.”

“Why the fuck are none of you fucking shooting him?!” Hoy screamed, actually stomping his foot. Big bad Void witch, right hand of the Goblin King, throwing a toddler tantrum right here in front of all of us. Holy crap, this guy really had never been told ‘no’ in his life; this was what you got for being the big frog in a tiny pond. “I swear by Virya’s fucking teats, if you shitheads don’t start unloading ordnance on this worthless fucker right fucking now I’m gonna round the rest of you up and…”

I let him rant, since he was currently doing my work for me.

“Biribo,” I murmured under the cover of Hoy’s screeching, “tell Radatina to tell Yoshi to maneuver him onto the bridge. Then tell Rizz and Rhoka to get ready. They’ll know what to do when the opening comes.”

My familiar buzzed off without another word. He zipped over to a few meters away from Yoshi, and a second later, Radatina fluttered down next to the Hero’s ear for a second. He glanced at her, then at me, and nodded, by which time Biribo had zoomed around the back wall to disappear through the door behind which Rizz was once again hiding with the others.

“…right in your fucking eye sockets! Now get to fucking work, you useless turds!”

Hoy finally had to stop for air; he was panting as hard after his tirade as he had been after the workout Yoshi and I put him through.

I kept an eye on him, though at this point most of my attention was on the surviving goblins he’d brought, at significant portion of whom were only still alive thanks to me. I couldn’t quite get a headcount under these conditions, but I estimated their numbers at around twenty-five. Maybe half what he’d brought here to die.

So I was able to see the first one to move. Group cohesion is a hell of a powerful force; in a situation like this, whoever went first would have to be powerfully motivated. This guy I saw staring at another goblin—a dead one, missing an arm and half her head. He cradled the slingshot in his arms, his expression twisting as he looked at the body.

Then he placed a grenade in his weapon, pulled it back and with a resolute expression, took aim right at Hoy.

The Void witch saw the movement and turned to face him, a particularly nasty grin contorting his already-unpleasant features.

“Bad move, shitstain. Your biggest mistake, and your last.”

Slimeshot.

Like the Fire Lance he’d hurled past me, I found it worked fine if I wasn’t aiming at him, or too close. The slime impacted the ground a meter from Hoy’s feet and disintegrated into a spray of slimy droplets—not dangerous to him or anyone, but sufficient to make him take a step back before he could punish the rebellious goblin.

By the time he regained his footing, three more bomb-laden slingshots were aimed at him. That was enough of a catalyst. One by one, every remaining Jadrak loyalist who still had a weapon turned it on their former leader.

Oddly enough, the perpetual rage seemed to leak away from Hoy under this threat. Instead, he actually cackled and spread his arms, one hand wide open and the other holding his bladestaff.

“All right, you know what? Fucking do it, losers. You treasonous little fucks can find out just how fucking stupid you are in your last seconds. You wanna side with tallboy interlopers, you can fucking die with ‘em!”

Yoshi and I locked eyes, knowing what was coming next: Repulsion Aura. Both of us quickly sidestepped, re-positioning ourselves to be in place to—

Grenades flew, and every one veered away from Hoy before striking him. It was chaos; a dozen explosives spun off in a dozen directions, half of them about to be lethally dangerous to the goblins who’d launched them. That is, if not for our heroic intervention.

“Force Wave!”

“Windburst!”

Even as a few goblins shrieked and cowered back as they beheld their ammunition boomeranging at them, Yoshi and I sent the errant bombs hurtling over the ledge. Explosions tore chunks out of the edge of the stonework, gouged new craters in the floor; one sent spinning nearly straight upward knocked down a stalactite, which hammered the ledge opposite the ravine, causing part of it to crumble into the abyss.

Hoy stood with his arms spread, grinning in sadistic triumph as he stood untouched within the maelstrom—until the Hero charged right through the shrapnel at him.

“Shock!”

“Heal!”

I’d seen that coming; our voices practically overlapped each other, the effect of his spell barely making Yoshi falter. Hoy only just managed to get his staff up and in place to hammer against his shield, forced back a few steps as it became a contest of brute strength. Yoshi had only been training for a few months and been some kind of teenage shut-in before, but he was also heavier than Hoy by a lot, and that counted.

Hoy retreated another step, gaining some distance. Yoshi’s eyes cut to the side, caught mine, and his head shifted once in an infinitesimal nod.

What? Was that a signal? A signal for what? That wasn’t communication! We needed to arrange these things before—

He lowered his shield, lunging forward, sword-first. It was a well-trained strike, but a move designed for use against a human opponent; at best, it would hit the top of Hoy’s head. And that only if he let it, because the Hero had left himself wide open in the center.

Oh. Now I got it.

The goblin grinned with insane, murderous triumph as he brought up his bladestaff in a thrust, directly through the gap in Yoshi’s defenses. The upper prongs sank right into his armor and through, the force of their combined weight defeating the hardened leather and chain mail.

“YOSHI!” screamed at least four female voices, most of which had been specifically warned not to give away their position. I couldn’t help cringing myself as blood spurted. Holy shit, was this how it looked when I used this gambit? No wonder the girls were always so upset. I should probably stop doing that.

Then the Hero dropped his sword and shield.

Hunching forward over the weapon impaling him, he grabbed it in both hands right behind the blades. His face twisting in a snarl to match Hoy’s, Yoshi flexed his arms and pulled the blades fully out of his body with an agonized grunt. Blood sprayed, as if to emphasize what a lethal mistake that was…unless.

“Heal!”

And Hoy found himself holding a tiger by the tail. Being the stubborn, rage-driven, petty little shit that he was, he of course did the unwise thing and refused to let go. Had he been willing to relinquish his weapon the way Yoshi had and fire off a spell, the outcome would have been very different.

But he wasn’t, and Yoshi planted his feet, twisted his hips, and let out a roar of pure adrenaline-fueled exertion as he whipped the staff fully over his head, pivoting mid-swing—with Hoy still clinging to it the whole while. The Hero swung the Void witch overhead like a sledgehammer, turning and bringing him arcing back down.

Hoy struck the surface of the iron bridge and bounced, finally losing his grip on his staff as he was stunned by the impact. Yoshi, just for emphasis, contemptuously tossed his fancy staff into the abyss.

I let out an exhilarated whoop and I’m not even embarrassed; that was the hypest shit I’d seen in ages. “And that, sir, is how it is done! RIZZ!”

She and Rhoka were already in position, slingshots taking aim. Not at Hoy, since we’d discovered that was useless. But Hoy was now lying dazed on a slender, comparatively fragile span of worked iron connecting the two ledges in the cavern.

Rizz and Rhoka bullseyed it at both ends. Grenades tore apart iron and stone; the far end of the bridge came disconnected entirely and the near twisted apart, barely clinging on by one of its anchors. The entire structure collapsed, tumbling down into darkness and spilling the great and terrible Void witch Hoy to his doom. It was about damn time something went right for a change—

“F-Flicker!”

Oh, fuck you.

He materialized on the far ledge in a momentary haze of blue-green light—winded, immediately slumping to his knees, and having lost his fancy hat along with his bladestaff. But still fucking there. Alive, the insufferable little bastard.

“Absolutely fucking not,” I growled sotto voce. “I am not having another recurring cockroach come back to ruin my day.”

Slimeshot! Immolate! IMMOLATE!

Being dazed and beaten didn’t shut off his Void power, apparently; I accomplished nothing except to singe his coat with a few useless puffs of sparks. Nor had we even managed to disable his defensive spell, as I observed when two goblins tried to shoot him and their grenades veered off into the darkness.

“Shoot around him!” called one of the goblins, reloading. “The ledge, the ceiling!”

They tried, bless them. Spiked bombs blew chunks out of the ledge, the walls next to it…but Hoy had struggled to his feet. Limping, but he managed to move. As explosions impacted the ceiling above him, bringing stalactites and then massive chunks of rock down, his livid green coat fluttered away down the tunnel through which he’d escaped.

Everyone stopped firing as the tunnel collapsed entirely. The ledge itself broke away and crumbled into the darkness below; now the entire cavern was trembling, and to judge by the expressions of those around me I wasn’t the only one nervous about it. Across from us what remained of the ceiling smashed down, sealing off what had been the main pathway into Jadrak’s old headquarters.

We stood in grim silence, listening to the last crashes of falling rock and feeling the faint aftershocks as the cave settled. At least the destruction wasn’t spreading; they hadn’t brought down the whole cavern on our heads. Just barricaded our most dangerous enemy outside it.

“Biribo?” I asked hopefully.

My familiar flicked his tongue out, then shook his head. “He made it out, boss. Still movin’ out there. Looks like he’s in full retreat.”

I wanted to scream and kick somebody and only my need to maintain a good image prevented me. Of course. Of fucking course he got out.

Yoshi laid a hand on my shoulder. “We’ll get him next time, Omura.”

I drew in a deep breath and let it out slowly, struggling to control my own fury. “All this for nothing. So many people dead, and for what? We just made him run away. Next time he’ll be more ready for us.”

“But we’ll be more ready for him, too,” he insisted. “I’m not saying it isn’t bad, but we can’t give up. He and Jadrak are only going to kill more goblins the longer they’re not stopped. And then humans, if they make it out of here. We have to press on.”

“Right. You’re right, of course. I just… I hate it when the the really bad ones don’t have the decency to die when they’re supposed to.”

“Yeah…that would’ve been nice.”

I turned around to see the results of our battle. Our people were trickling out of their hiding places; I knew my allies and probably Yoshi’s would be kicking themselves for having hid during that whole fight, but it was the right call and we all knew it. There just wasn’t anything they could have done against the Void witch except get fried by spellfire.

And the goblins. Twenty-five or so goblins stood there, looking lost. They’d come here to kill me—kill us—but ended up losing their own friends and allies to Hoy’s incompetence and malice, and now most of them owed me their lives. They were also cut off from the cause for which they’d thrown away everything just within the last few days.

“Well,” I said, “you guys are having a hell of a day, huh?”

“That’s…a way to put it,” a goblin woman ventured, clutching a slingshot in both hands as if for comfort.

“I’m gonna be straight with you: this will get worse before it gets better. I’m not reckless enough to promise anybody will get through this. You’ve seen how ugly a real war gets. What I will promise you is that I will never treat you the way Hoy just did. I don’t throw away people’s lives. I’ll protect who I can, and avenge who I can’t. We are in this together, and we’ve got to hope there’s something better waiting for us when all the blood settles.”

I paused—no, to be honest, I hesitated, looking at their expressions. Confusion, grief, hope. Man, I hated how familiar this sight was by now. I hated how good I’d gotten at this part.

“I know you don’t exactly have a choice anymore, but I’ll say it anyway: you stood up for what was right when it counted, and I won’t ever forget that. You stood by me, and I’ll stand by you. Welcome to the Dark Crusade.”