Unfortunately for this particular gang of Goblin King adherents, their leader had backed up so far into the crowd that he was pressed on three sides. Consequently, when the flames of Immolation took him, a good half a dozen got seared. Instantly what remained of their attack group dissolved into panic, with goblins bolting in all directions and those nearest the exploding sorcerer howling nearly as loudly as he now was, rolling on the stone floor to put out the flames which had spread to their clothes.

“Heal,” I said, for once voicing my spells aloud because I wanted it to be clear what I was doing. “Heal, Heal, Heal, Heal, Heal. Anybody else get—ah, there you go. Heal. Despite what you may think,” I intoned, still projecting at maximum strength and pitching my voice low so it wasn’t competing directly with the burning Blessed’s shrill howling, “I did not come here to slaughter goblins just trying to get by in the world, but to redirect your focus. As I have said, our real enemy—”

“He killed Fazfer!” somebody rudely shrieked in the middle of my speech.

“Fazfer, is it?” I gave the still-blazing goblin an appraising look; he was now in the fetal stage, the screaming petering out as his lungs and vocal cords were so much charcoal. “Relax, he’s fine. Or will be, in a minute. As for—”

“Who the fuck is Fazufero?” someone else yelled, brandishing a polearm at me which appeared to be a kitchen knife lashed to a length of metal pipe. “Stop him before he casts that again!”

These little shits were seriously testing my patience.

“Do you want to be next?” I asked. “You would already be on fire if that was my intention. Fazfer will be fine momentarily, he’s just learning what happens to those who are stupid enough to attack the Dark Lord. Jadrak is going to learn the same lesson before this is all over. None of the rest of you need to, unless—”

“DEATH TO THE BUTTS!” screamed the pipe-knife guy, charging at me and swinging it.

Excuse me, what? I was so startled by his inscrutable battlecry I almost let him stab me. I was forced to retreat a step to gain room to whip out my rapier, but once I did that settled the matter. What was a polearm to a goblin wasn’t any longer than a human-scale rapier blade and I was twice his height, giving me the advantage in leverage. I caught the improvised weapon against mine, deftly locked it between the blade and crossbar, and wrenched it out of his grasp.

The disarmed goblin looked amusingly nonplussed by this development, staring down at his suddenly empty hands, but I didn’t have time to properly appreciate that before three knives, a hatchet, and a dented metal plate were all hurled at me, the latter in frisbee orientation. And then I made a discovery.

As Biribo had explained it, the Mastery enchantment was an upgraded version of the Skill enchantment, giving its wielder not only the greatest possible skill with the style of weapon it was applied to, but augmenting them with all the necessary physical strength and agility to get the most out of that skill. With the Rapier of Mastery in my hand, I was essentially a peerless rapier swordsman—and it turned out that among the things a master fencer can do is parry objects flying at his face.

In the span of three seconds I deftly swatted five projectiles out of the air and had to dip deeper into showtime to avoid grinning in sheer satisfaction. Oh, this was handy. You don’t tend to think of a rapier as having much defensive use and it wouldn’t do anything against arrows—human reflexes do have their physical limits—but from now on I was going to have it drawn and ready before going into a situation in which I expected to have stuff chucked at me. Sure, the amulet protected me from insta-kills and Heal did the rest, but that approach was painful and also resulted in my clothes being full of holes and bloodstains.

Plus, this looked cool as hell. Even the attacking goblins retreated from me after this display of prowess.

“There, you see?” I pointed the tip of my sword at…what was it, Fazfer? The flames were in the process of diminishing and he was whimpering piteously, but burned skin was regenerating even as we all watched. “Reconsider your approach here, friends. The only thing you can hope to achieve is to press me hard enough that I run out of non-lethal ways to stop you. Don’t you think enough goblins have died already?”

Fazfer finally flickered out. He was gasping, whimpering, and his singled clothes emitted wisps of smoke, but he was very clearly alive and whole. The rest were finally quiet and still, at least relatively; the ongoing noise that echoed through Fallencourt now came from behind.

“And that is why you don’t fuck with the Dark Lord,” I informed them. “Your dear King Jadrak? He fucked with the Dark Lord, and will learn the price of it. His sole achievement as Goblin King was to attack the one person on this island he should not have pissed off. Jadrak’s fate is determined. The rest of you?”

Two beats for dramatic weight, and…

“That’s up to you,” I said finally, lowering my voice in both volume and pitch. Then put on a small, cold smile. “Are we going to be friends? Or are you in my way?”

The goblins considered their options for a moment.

“Run for it!” somebody squealed from several rows back, and apparently that was enough to generate a consensus. In a single mad scramble, the whole pack broke up and skittered off around me to my left. Because, I observed as I turned to watch them go, Aster was approaching from the other direction, artifact greatsword braced across her shoulders and her coat unbuttoned to show off her chain mail.

“This is not over, tallboy,” Fazfer hissed. Abandoned by his followers and still smoking, he staggered upright and pointed at me. Again, dramatically, but not enough to be impressive. Guy just didn’t have the knack. “You may be able to beat one little group, but when—”

“Oh, hush. You no longer matter here.” Windburst.

Being flung clear across the plaza and into the wall dazed him for a moment, but when he again stumbled to his feet his next action was to limp off as fast as his jarred little legs could manage, chasing after his own erstwhile lackeys.

“Okay, so, it’s pretty loud in here but I’m positive I heard that guy yell ‘death to the butts,’” said Aster. “What the hell was that about?”

“It’s a slang term,” Gizmit explained, striding past us toward the boarded-up terminal. “What part of you humans do you think is most immediately visible from a goblin’s perspective?”

We both blinked at her, for the first time taking proper note of exactly where her eyeline was relative to us.

“Well, then,” I said. “I guess I should just be glad they don’t call us crotches.”

“That one refers to humans who go after goblins sexually,” Gizmit called back, already at the door and trying to peek through one of the big cracks. “Zui! You alive in there?”

“And that is why I had Donon stay behind at the tunnel,” Aster muttered. “Girls! Form up, we’re clear out here. You know, Lord Seiji, I do believe that was the first time you’ve tried to talk someone down and I didn’t end up having to rescue you.”

“Shut up, Aster.”

The terminal door was opening, with much clattering and grunting from within as somebody dismantled whatever had been barring it shut. Deprived of that support, the abused planks began to give out and the whole thing partially collapsed to reveal a familiar goblin standing behind it.

“I was gonna ask what the hell you’re doing down here, but I guess this sort of explains itself,” said Zui, staring past Gizmit at me. “The question now is—OY!”

Gizmit casually slapped her upside the head, causing Zui to back away, protectively clutching her scalp, though not with the complaint I would have expected.

“Not the hair, you thug! What’s wrong with you?”

“Button it,” Gizmit ordered. “Your green ass is gonna be smeared on wyddh when Sneppit’s done with you. Of all the over-the-top bullshit, Zui, this is your crowning achievement in creating unnecessary work for everybody else!”

“Lives were at stake!” Zui shot back, getting right into her face.

Gizmit met her furious stare, profoundly unimpressed, then leaned to one side to look past her into the station. “Speaking of, did you manage to lose anybody?”

“All present and accounted for, Giz,” replied a male voice, followed a moment later by another goblin in akornin armor, cradling a weapon which I had to examine for a second to realize it was a large slingshot. It took me a moment to get down to that, because the shell plates of his armor were dyed a vivid, eye-searing pink. “It was looking like a close thing for a minute there, but we’re all solid, thanks to Zui and Rhoka.”

“You mean, thanks to me and the Dark Lord,” Gizmit retorted, turning back to Zui. “You hear that? It took the intervention of a Dark Lord to fix your mess this time, you—”

“That was surprisingly well-handled,” Zui said to me, striding out right past her. She planted her fists on her hips and gave me a contemplative look, having to lean back slightly in the process. “Not what I expected from you, but showing mercy was a smart touch.”

“I meant what I said,” I replied with a cheerful grin. “I’m down here to finish the shit Jadrak started with me, not to massacre goblins. Oh, and you’re welcome, Zui.”

“Should’ve killed the sorcerer, though,” Gizmit commented. “Jadrak does not need Blessed working for him; every one of those left alive is gonna bite us on the ass later. Still, good call, mercy is politically and strategically useful right now. All right, since you were good enough to bring a tram with you, Zui, we’ve got our exit. Let’s get that barricade rebuilt and fortified so Dap’s squad can hold it—”

Zui rounded on her in a fury. “If you think I’m gonna just leave them here after—”

“I think you’re gonna do as you’re told, because this time the alternative is doing as you’re told while knocked out and stuffed in a sack!”

“Holy shit, Madyn, that goblin’s got even bigger bodice bouncers than you,” Ydleth commented none too quietly, suddenly making me grateful the goblins were too busy arguing to pay attention to this. “Life’s just not fair, is it?”

“Hey, I’m happy with my girls, we’ve been together a long time. Besides, long as we manage not to get killed I’m coming out ahead just by seeing this shit. Finally, I’ve got a more exciting anecdote than my friend Maelind’s donkey story!”

Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

“We don’t need to hear that one, Madyn,” I interjected. Madyn was an inveterate storyteller and she had lots of anecdotes about this Maelind, who had been her mentor in the oldest profession.

“Oh, don’t worry, Lord Seiji, she didn’t fuck the donkey.”

“Well, that’s a relief, but what I said was—”

“No, it was two dwarves on a donkey’s back.”

I decided I would rather get in the middle of the screeching goblin argument, and left a grinning Aster to whip my own followers back into line.

“Can you two flirt on your own time, please?” I very courteously requested, immediately cutting off the shouting match and making myself the target of their mutual ire. “I’m anxious to finally meet the great Miss Sneppit, and not just because we are standing in a war zone right now. What do you need to get this tram moving?”

“The tram’s fine,” Zui huffed. “The question concerns who is getting on it, which is all of us.”

The pink-armored goblin cleared his throat. “If I may? Pleasure t’meetcha, Lord Seiji. I’m Dap; me an’ my team were told to keep this station secured while the trams’re shut down due to the, y’know…all this bullshit.” He gestured vaguely at the chaos of the surrounding city with the hand not holding his slingshot. “Like I tried to tell Miss Zui an’ the Arbiter, it’s nice of ‘em to think of us an’ all, but we got contracts with Miss Sneppit. Standing in the way of danger is the whole job. If we was to cut an’ run, we’d never work again.”

While speaking he had gestured at another approaching goblin who must be the Arbiter, the sight of whom caused me to nearly do a double take. This one was in a trench coat not unlike Gizmit’s, though hers was brown and more visibly battered, and had a broad-brimmed hat to match. So broad-brimmed, in fact, that I couldn’t see her face at all given the way I towered over her. Between the very fancy-sounding title of Arbiter and the fact that she had bands of purple cloth around both upper arms, I took this to be a figure of some kind of cultural and/or political importance.

Also, probably military, considering her weapon. The Arbiter was carrying what I could only call a mechanical polearm, a tapering metal shaft in multiple segments which looked like it could be made to collapse or fold in on itself, with heavier sections at both ends which appeared to house some kind of machinery. One had grooves and little levers on it, the other a wide slot on the top from which emerged a tapering blade the length of my shin. Unlike the mostly improvised weapons of the rioting goblins I’d seen so far, this thing looked polished and precision-engineered.

“Arbiter, huh,” I said by way of greeting. “What’s your story?”

The brown-clad goblin casually rested her polearm against one shoulder and neither responded nor lifted her head enough that I could see her eyes, though I did not miss the way she adjusted her posture to keep my own weapon in view.

“That’s just Rhoka,” Gizmit said dismissively, “the only person who’s gonna be in more trouble than Zui over this. Ignore her.”

“Boss, we got incoming,” Biribo reported. “Correction: incoming fast. They’re not headed for this position exactly but there’s a major kerfuffle on its way out of the side tunnels uncomfortably close. Situation in the city’s gonna get hotter in a few seconds.”

Everybody shifted position around us with commendable efficiency, starting to move before he finished speaking and creating a defensive line faster than I could respond. Dap’s security team, a total of eight goblins in matching pink armor (which I was struggling not to find hilarious) were armed with those slingshots, interesting designs which fastened onto their forearms and could be operated one-handed. They also had riot shields—metal ones—and placed themselves in an arc in front of the group, with Aster and Arbiter Rhoka holding the ends. Nazralind nocked an arrow to her shortbow and Ydleth and Madyn raised crossbows, positioning themselves behind the security goblins and leaving me at the rear with Adelly, Zui and Gizmit.

“I can’t see anything,” Zui complained, then dodged as Gizmit aimed a desultory kick at her shin.

Then, one level down from us and barely a block away, Yoshi and his team came charging out of a side tunnel.

They didn’t seem to be doing too badly, at a glance. Out of breath, sure, but I observed no visible major injuries; all of them were at least somewhat splattered with blood, but there was no telling whose and they were definitely moving more adroitly than people who’d lost a lot of vital fluids. The priestess girl, Pashilyn, was in robes and Amell the alchemist in sturdy work clothes, but the rest had armor on. Yoshi, I saw, was in chain and leather that was either mundane or one of those extremely low-power artifacts which were all he could probably make at this point, but the shield and arming sword he carried had the telltale glow of significant artifacts.

Also, wow, he’d lost weight. He was stocky, yeah, but nowhere near the pile of pudge I remembered from just a few months ago. Life on Ephemera would do that to a growing boy.

“Firecracker!” Pashilyn shouted, turning and throwing out a palm back toward the tunnel from which they’d come. “Firecracker! Firecracker!” Each cast produced a ball of sparks which didn’t look too impressive, but hit the ground and bounced forward several times before erupting in a burst of flames that scattered the goblins who were pursuing them.

Damn, I wanted that spell. Not much on its own, but imagine what I could combine it with…

“That is not where you said they’d be coming out, Gizmit,” I complained. “You made us wait while you made a whole big deal about how Jadrak’s army had them pinned down that other tunnel, way the fuck over there.”

“And Jadrak’s people are still congregated down there,” Gizmit said, peering around from behind Aster to examine the battlefield. “Hmph. Those clever bastards evaded the pincer and flanked them. When did they suddenly get competent?”

“It doesn’t surprise me that adventurers are more skilled at violence than investigation,” Zui said in a voice full of tension. “We need to leave. Now. Everyone.”

“Zui, hon, I love ya, but we got a job to do,” said Dap from the shield wall without turning to face her.

They weren’t going to move until this was settled, were they… “Why’s this important?” I asked aloud. “What’s the worst case scenario if Jadrak’s forces take the tram station?”

“Is that a serious question?” Gizmit demanded. “They have access to the whole tram network, including a straight line back to Sneppit’s HQ.”

“That’s bullshit and you know it,” Zui snapped. “There’s a thousand ways to get into those tunnels and if we take the tram and leave they can’t do anything but walk there, which’ll take twenty times as long! Also, half those tunnels run over impassable drops that can’t even be traversed without a tram.”

“The station itself is still an important asset,” said Dap, eyes still forward. “It’s defensible, it’s got stores of parts and fuel and tools to service the trams, and it’s a perfect staging area to launch an operation into Fallencourt from the tunnels. If Jadrak’s people take it they can fuck up the tracks and make it impossible to bring a tram back here. That’s worth defending.”

“It’s not as important as your lives!” Zui shouted, and this time I could hear the frustration and anguish cracking beneath her anger.

“I’d hate to find out whether that’s true on paper,” Dap commented with a grin. “But it’s Miss Sneppit who tallies up those numbers, not us. We got a contract, and we got our orders. We’re security, Zui, all of us are covered by risk of life and limb clauses, and you know Miss Sneppit pays out life insurance when the worst happens on duty.”

“Retreat while we argue, please,” Gizmit requested, already stepping backward toward the terminal doors. The rest of the group began shuffling along with her.

“Uh, I realize those guys are technically our enemies,” said Nazralind, still watching Yoshi and Company performing a fighting retreat along the level below us, “but they seem kind of…screwed. Should we do something about that?”

We were far from the only parties to have noticed their dramatic entrance. The main group of Jadrak’s army had come boiling out of the tunnel Gizmit had indicated earlier, and were heading right toward the heroes. As armies went, it wasn’t impressive: ramshackle weapons, little to no armor, no sign of any Blessed and definitely no organization or leadership. No wonder the adventurers had outmaneuvered them, this was just a mob with a nominally shared ideology. But it was a mob hundreds strong.

“The enemy of my enemy,” Aster commented quietly.

“Also, they’re right between us and those angry goblins,” added Adelly. “If they go down, we’re next.”

“Not if we leave,” Gizmit exclaimed in exasperation. “They will be fine—they’re all Blessed, they brought their own alchemist so they’re all buffed up on potions, and one of them is the Hero. Let them buy us time, at least they’ll be useful for once in their lives.”

I suspected I wasn’t the only one who could see at a glance that that wasn’t true. The adventurers had been fighting in tunnels, where five people could easily fend off hundreds, especially if the five had a massive edge in firepower. Right before our eyes, they were floundering as they came under a hail of projectiles from higher ledges and bridges, and found they didn’t even have enough bodies to make a defensive formation in the wider space they now occupied. The army was closing on them fast…

“Think we should let them into the terminal?” Dap asked, sounding dubious about his own idea. “Us, defensible structure, and a Hero party? We could actually hold it.”

“They won’t work with you,” said Gizmit. “Two of them are Fflyr nobility and the rest are King’s Guild. Goblins are vermin to them.”

“You!” I looked over at Zui’s sudden movement, finding her pointing up at me. “You’re the Dark Lord! You can order the team to retreat with us!”

“I, uh…”

“Lord Seiji does not have authority over Miss Sneppit’s personnel,” Gizmit shot back with a hard edge to her tone. “You of all people should respect that, Zui.”

“This contract you have,” Arbiter Rhoka said suddenly, and I whipped around to stare at her in surprise. I still couldn’t see her face, but her voice was young. Goblins had higher-pitched voices in general, but from the sound of it I was pretty sure she was a teenager. “It has a standard acts of the Goddesses clause?”

“Uh, yeah?” Dap replied, nonplussed. “That’s boilerplate.”

Rhoka’s wide hat shifted as she nodded once. “The orders of a Dark Lord are an unusually literal case, but Champions of Virya or Sanora are living acts of the Goddesses, by definition. It’s an old precedent, obviously; there’s been no opportunity for it to come up in arbitration in centuries. But it stands.”

“Really.” Dap finally took his eyes off the fighting for just a moment to look at me.

So did everyone else.

“Lord Seiji,” Gizmit grated, “Zui’s soft heart is an asset in its way, but this is an example of why Sneppit is in charge instead of her. Sometimes you have to make sacrifices to achieve goals.”

“This is not a strategic sacrifice!” Zui retorted, directing herself to me instead of Gizmit. “Holding the station is impossible with eight people and not worth the cost of their lives!”

“Sneppit knows more about the situation than you, and gave her orders.”

“She doesn’t know what it’s like out here! Who could have imagined that mob?”

Of all the fucking bullshit, at a time like this they had to shove an impossible moral dilemma into my lap! How the fuck was I supposed to know what was strategic or ethical, here? If I was actually competent at running an army I’d have conquered at least Gwyllthean by now! Couldn’t these people just do their own fighting and call for me when they need a dramatic spectacle or a big show of force?

“I…I don’t…”

“Whatever we’re going to do, we need to do now,” Aster interjected loudly. “Look, there they go.”

The front ranks of Jadrak’s goblins hit the Hero’s party, and that whole situation went right straight to shit.

“Force Bolt!” Yoshi’s voice shouted desperately, dispatching a blast of pure kinetic energy into the leading cluster of attackers and dispersing them, and then sweeping aside a much wider swath with his next. “Force Wave!” More spells I wanted. Pashilyn hurled more Firecrackers into the throng, then shouted a spell called Light Barrier which, true to the name, created a glowing wall of translucent golden light across the path in front of them, blocking off the attack. From behind the front line, Amell hurled a bottle of something—some kind of fancy magical molotov cocktail, to judge by the explosion that resulted when it hit the ground and devastated the oncoming forces.

Fuck me, they were actually doing it.

For about three seconds. The goblins just didn’t stop coming, and Pashilyn half-collapsed as her Light Barrier shattered under the sheer press of bodies.

The three physical fighters rallied valiantly. Yoshi’s sword and shield made for a solid defensive posture, and the two flanking him had reach, Flaethwyn with her Rapier of Mastery—same enchantment as mine, and I knew how potent it was—and Raffan jabbing with his artifact spear. The three of them simply could not hold that much territory, though, no matter their reach. In seconds they were being surrounded—

No, I saw, not surrounded, but flanked. The goblins pressed forward against the left wall of houses and storefronts, pushing the heroes toward the opposite side of that ledge, and I remembered Gizmit coldly explaining how goblins got rid of persistent interlopers.

There was no lower level beneath that ledge, just a drop of thousands of kilometers toward Ephemera’s core.

These were enemies. They were buying us time. I should just leave them. Yoshi was a dumb kid who didn’t deserve this, but…he’d chosen to be here. I remembered how eager he’d been, when Sanora appeared before us.

This was none of my business. It wasn’t my fault.

The spearman stumbled, shoved out of formation by two goblins who’d ducked inside his weapon’s reach. He was pushed against the rail—a barrier chest-high on a goblin, and little more than a tripping hazard for a human.

“RAFFAN!” Yoshi’s cracked scream of pure agony was a spear through me as the first of his friends tumbled into the abyss.

Fuck it.

I vaulted over the heads of Sneppit’s security team, rapier in hand, and dashed headlong toward the edge, then along it, veering to the side just as I came abreast of the Hero’s desperate last stand. Cursing my own fucking stupidity and desperately hoping somebody decided to come back me up, I leaped off and into the middle of the Goblin King’s army.