A goblin wearing the skull of a lizard-like monster emerged from the others. It raised an axe into the air and shouted at them in an angry and high-pitched voice. It screamed and jumped and yelled like a child, and the others did nothing but watch.

“Translate,” Dorian said. “What’s he saying?”

“We can’t use Wisdom,” Aletheia said. “I don’t know.”

Trito spun his spear in a single windmill. His eyes never left the skull-headed goblin.

“He wants us to surrender,” Trito said.

Trito and the goblin shouted to one another. Their voices echoed through the streets. Neither sounded happy. Corvo grabbed hold of Mother for safety, but she pushed him away, saying, “Stay behind us.”

The simple instruction came with a firmness no son could resist. He did as he was told.

“What will they do if we surrender?” Aletheia asked. “Ask him that.”

Trito thought of the words, and he said something back to the goblin.

From all three groups of goblins came hollering and snarling and shouting. They acted more animal than human. Their voices yapped like wild dogs.

A few climbed columns and ruined walls for a better vantage point from which to jeer. They held javelins and slings and bows with arrows, all crude but deadly.

“What are they saying now?” Dorian said.

“What do you think?” Mother snarled.

“They say they’ll kill us and eat us for the mana in our bloodstreams,” Trito said.

“Then why would we surrender?” Dorian said.

“I don’t think they thought that question through,” Aletheia said.

“There are too many,” Mother said. “A stray arrow could kill any one of us. We must use magic.”

“Only as the last resort,” Trito said.

“This is the last resort, elf! Better to use magic and die tomorrow than let ourselves die today!”

The goblin leader yapped something. The crowds around them quieted, and the echo of their barking faded.

Corvo pulled his jacket tight around his chest. He retreated until his back hit a long and tall wall. There was nowhere for him to run.

A goblin on a column yelled. It twirled a sling behind its back; everyone looked at it, and as it readied to let a bullet slip, Aletheia’s bowstring twanged.

The arrow sailed through the goblin’s chest. It fell from the column with a gasp, the bullet from its sling sent flying through the air.

Silence again.

She shot her bow at another goblin. And another. Both screamed as they went limp.

Chaos erupted. Projectiles flooded the air like raindrops in a storm. A barrage of rocks pelted each of them in the shoulders and arms, and the other goblins rushed forward to melee.

“Keep them busy!” she said. “I’ll take out their archers!”

Trito seized the opportunity. He sprinted toward the goblin leader and the ten others behind it.

Dorian and Mother locked shoulders before Corvo.

Corvo ducked his head and covered it with his arms. He was hit in his shoulders and wrists twice with heavy stones, but the tough mail of his jacket caught the impacts and rendered them harmless. He looked up to see Aletheia shoot at one goblin over them, and another, and a third, and a fourth; the hail of missiles slowed with each loose of her bowstring, but her quiver emptied quickly.

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Then it didn’t matter. She dropped the bow and drew her sword. They were all in melee.

Mother used height to her advantage. She let the goblins batter against her legs with their clubs while she swept widely with her sword. The enchanted blade of Corvo’s father cut effortlessly through skin and bone and scraps of armor, breaking shields and severing limbs. Black blood poured from each injury.

Dorian was not so protected. A rock hit him in the head, and he stumbled and was stabbed with a wooden spear in the thigh.

But Aletheia was near to him, and she cut open the gut of the goblin assailing him.

It was chaos to Corvo. Ten or thirty or a hundred goblins surrounded them, but the streets narrowed where they met, and they could not all fight at the same time. And these goblins were cowards—like the first creatures he had seen fleeing from the Tower of Keraz, like Gob herself, they did not want to fight, and no arcane force was here to command them to.

They hesitated with each death. A small injury caused a rout. Ten were slain as they pressed upon Mother and the others; and they might have overwhelmed the party, but the cost would have been too high. They screamed in fear and ran.

Mother pursued them. Her mail and the clothes beneath were drenched black. Dorian followed, but he stumbled to the ground, coughing up blood. Aletheia pommeled one last goblin in the head and dropped her sword to pick her bow back up, and she shot another archer with her final arrow.

The simple arrow had the force of an Elven bow behind it. It hit the archer in the bicep and severed his arm like paper.

He looked at the wound, screamed, and sprinted out into the ruins.

Corvo wanted to scream. He would have screamed. He was terrified. Gore and spit and sweat and scraps of cloth peppered him. He pressed his back hard against the wall, hoping Mother would come back to protect him, when he dared a glance upward.

A goblin stood on the wall over him. It had an arrow, and it drew it back; its misshapen face contorted into a grin, and Corvo could not think to do anything but cry.

The goblin’s fingers slipped.

The arrow hit Corvo in the head.

He fell to the ground, certain he was dead. He closed his eyes and wailed and did nothing more than that. And it was only after felt arms on his shoulders, only after he heard Mother’s voice, that he realized he felt no pain on his head at all.

Instead, his left arm ached.

The jade bracelet had deflected the arrow. And he was fine.

He looked up to Mother.

Her hair had fallen loose from its ponytail. She had blood smeared across her cheeks. She smelled like tar. But she kissed him on the forehead, saying, “Be calm. Corvo! Come with me. Be calm!”

She did not sound calm. But when she wiped away his tears, trailing goblin blood across his face, he nodded, and he followed after her.

He saw the wake of the battle. So much viscera was spread across the ground that it splashed in puddles at his feet. The goblin archer on the wall was dead, an arrow through its chest; Aletheia stood atop the body of another goblin she had killed with a snapshot. She must have pulled the arrow free from one and used it to kill the archer on the wall.

Mother led him toward Trito.

Trito finished his own slaughter. A field of corpses surrounded him. His spear’s blade dripped. None had escaped him; all ten bodies were ringed around him.

All that remained was the leader, the goblin with a skull on its head.

It had collapsed to the ground. It retreated, but it could not escape. It groveled, and though Corvo could not understand what it said, he knew it pled for its life.

Trito spun his spear and cleaved its head from its body.

The violence was disgusting. The gore was repulsive. But that decapitation did not scare Corvo. It fascinated him, like a suit of armor or a new animal. The terror of the battle calmed like the eye of a storm as he watched, enraptured at the sight of an unfamiliar manner of killing.

Mother had to tug at him to get him to look away.

They pressed past Trito and down the street.

“Demons will be sure to find us now, magic or no!” Mother said. “We must find the sorcerer and end its spell!”

Corvo looked over his shoulder. He saw Aletheia with Dorian, supporting his weight and leading him after Mother.

Trito nodded.

They followed the road, turned a corner, and reached another dead-end. They turned….

And their surroundings had changed again.

They were now in a grassy field. On the horizon around them were towers, like in the City, but there were no trees or ruins anywhere to be seen nearby. Like they had been teleported to somewhere totally unfamiliar.

“Reveal yourself!” Mother screamed.

But nothing was revealed. They spun in circles, looking for anything they could find, and saw nothing.

Corvo backed away instinctively.

He saw his shadow move.

“I see him,” said a whisper on the breeze. “I found him in the dark. Follow me.”

Corvo watched as his shadow left his side. It was cast by the clouds and short at his feet, but it left him, drifting away like an iceberg into the grass.

Corvo felt a chill cramp his muscles. He was too afraid to say anything.

Then he screamed, “There!” and he followed after his shadow.

The shadow. The Shadow Man.

He didn’t know why. But as the adults shouted and swore in frustration, he needed to do something—anything—he could think to do. And this was his one idea.

Luckily, the others followed.

“Corvo!” Mother shrieked. “Come back!”

But he knew they wouldn’t stay behind, so he didn’t come back. He continued after the Shadow Man, running through the grass.