WW Chapter 98: Fighting Retreat (Patreon)

This part of the plan was simple. To slow the goblin army’s approach towards the village while also picking off as many of their numbers as possible. Coming from behind and killing off a dozen of the three hundred goblins wasn’t a bad start, but there was plenty more still to do. Now, however, the problem was that there were so many of the goblinoids coming.

If it was only goblins, fifty wouldn’t be too much of a problem for the four Adepts. There would be some danger, for sure, especially if they let themselves get surrounded. However, their armor was good, and though Telemachus generally didn’t use a shield, the others all did, and they would be fine if they worked together and took it slow. If they were really cautious, they might even manage to do it without using much of their inner worlds’ reserves.

There was no opportunity to take it slow here.

The fifty goblins came screaming around the corner, their faces twisted into hideous grins. Their sharp teeth were ready to tear through flesh as they sprinted towards the small squad. Behind them came five bugbears and three orcs. As was becoming more frequent, the bugbears stayed back with their bows. As the furry, long-armed creatures started to draw arrows back, Ezra urged his friends back around a small bend. It was far from enough to actually provide cover for long, but it was enough to keep them from being shot in the head while they dealt with this threat.

“Dirk,” Ezra commanded, not having to say anything more. The short man stepped forward and braced himself, his feet sinking ever so slightly into the ground. Then, he was serving as the squad’s front line against the first goblins.

“Don’t hold back,” Ezra reminded. His axe fell again and again, lodging in skulls and throats as the meter-tall creatures threw themselves at the squad. He trusted in his greaves and boots to keep his legs safe as he opened himself up to attacks. He could only trust in Jhas’s spell to keep him going, because if he couldn’t, they didn’t have a prayer.

A steady rhythm of blows smacked against the metal on the outside of his thigh, giving him light bruises, whose pain nearly immediately faded. Ezra found himself grinning under his helmet as he carved through the green creatures. For a dozen seconds, there was only bloodshed and fighting. The goblins threw themselves forward, desperate. They found only death.

“Fall back two paces,” he shouted. “Three, two, one, now!”

As he said “now”, the others stepped back with him, leaving the blood-slicked, corpse-ridden ground to their enemies. Some dozen bodies lay on the road, bone and gore everywhere as the brutal fight continued. Ezra was uninjured, the crude clubs of the goblins unable to pierce through his armor. He heard on his right, where Luna stood on the other side of Dirk, a grunt of pain.

“Stab on my dominant hand,” she reported. “I need ten seconds to bind the sword to my hand so I don’t lose it.”

“Here I come,” Telemachus said, stepping forward and swiping his spear in a wide arc. Flame licked from the weapon’s yooperlite head, and, with the wide reach, he cut through no less than five goblins. After that, he dialed back his aura expenditure, but continued being deadly.

“Orcs are already here,” Luna called out. The sound was muffled as she used her mouth to tie her hand to the weapon, but she continued doing what she had said. “I’m back in three, two, one.”

The move was a practiced one, and Telemachus stepped back as Luna roared and shoved forward with her shield. Her aura flashed along the face, becoming a reflective mirror for a split second. Three blades stabbed out at the shield at the same time, each one bouncing unnaturally from it and lodging in one of the monster’s companions. Her position taken once again, Luna set herself. Her blade flashed, cutting down the goblins as the orcs closed in.

“I’ve got the orcs,” Ezra said, mentally checking his reserves. He was still over half, and he knew that he was in the best situation out of the four. “Taking lead in three, two, one, now.”

Again, they moved in unison as Dirk shoved forward, pushing a goblin back before stepping to the left and filling Ezra’s place. Ezra came up behind him, and, with his whole body twisting, swung his axe in an uppercut. The orc, which had been swinging down towards Dirk, was caught off guard as Ezra’s shield intercepted the blow. The iron-banded cudgel slid down the side of Ezra’s shield, and his weapon sliced into the monster’s groin and lodged in its pelvis.

It screamed in agony. The beast started to stumble, and Ezra pushed aura through his body to move faster as he dislodged his weapon. Then, as the first of the three orcs stumbled, he decapitated it with a flash of orange light and rushing wind.

The other two were right behind it, and one had a spear while the other also held a cudgel.

“Fucking spears,” Ezra grunted, as he danced past the heavy blunt blow of one and struck his axe into the spear of the other. It failed to break the weapon.

“If you’re jealous, you should’ve stuck with it,” Telemachus laughed as his weapon flashed past Ezra’s head. As the one taking the orcs’ attention, he couldn’t focus on the goblins right now, so Telemachus was dealing with them for him. “It’s a pretty good weapon.”

“I don’t need to be pretty,” Ezra snapped back. “I just need to kill.”

“Then show how good at killing you are,” Dirk grunted in pain as one of the goblins got a dagger into his hip. The chain mail he wore kept it from going deep, but that was, at best, an agonizing wound.

Ezra slipped into a sort of a trance as he dodged both of the orcs’ attacks. He was able to get glancing blows back in on the beasts, but nothing too debilitating while keeping himself from taking a solid hit. His inner world’s reserves were dropping quickly as he used aura to keep himself moving quickly. He wasn’t going to exhaust himself just yet, but he hadn’t managed to stop the attack as five bugbears came around the corner.

“Somebody’s gotta do something about that,” Ezra said, surprised at how he wasn’t panting despite the exertion.

“I’ve got it,” Dirk said, squaring his shield in front of himself and rushing forward. He slammed past two of the goblins, not even bothering to swing at them as he kept his shield between himself and the five archers. As he skirted past the orcs, the one holding a spear swiped at him. Ezra darted forward and took a heavy hit from the cudgel on his hip in exchange for lodging his axe in the spear-wielding monster’s gut. The blade of his weapon chunked through the bottom portion of the breastplate, and Ezra grunted as he reset his stance.

Ezra was surprised to realize that, while he felt very real pain from the hit to his hip, he was all right. A combination of the armor and adrenaline, along with Jhas’s spell and his own aura, kept him going. Looking around, most of the goblins were dead, their bodies laid out in piles as the four Adepts had made a fighting retreat. Telemachus jabbed his spear forward and caught the cudgel-wielding orc in the shoulder. Its arm went limp as Luna sliced it to ribbons.

Instead of saying anything, Ezra simply sprinted forward to assist Dirk as he left the mortally wounded remnant to his friends. The short, stocky man was tough, but not “surrounded by five bugbears and still be fine” tough. A couple arrows had smashed into his shield, but hadn’t managed to do any real damage. The issue was that now each of the furry beasts was trying to disembowel him with their claws.

He swung his weapon wildly, but he couldn’t reach the bugbears while they were pulling his defenses apart. One clawed hand gouged into his side, and he screamed in pain as his shield arm was wrenched away from his body. Another went to completely disembowel him, but Ezra was fast enough.

“Not like Helen,” he shouted as he swung his axe through two legs just above the knee. The two bugbears he struck went down, and as he continued on to smash the weapon into the crown of a third’s head. Just like that, three were basically out of the fight, and Dirk could deal with one while Ezra killed the other. Again, as the fight fully turned against the goblins, one bugbear threw its head back and howled. The sound was a strange mix of a pig’s squeal and a hunting dog’s bay, and it carried far.

“How is everybody?” Ezra shouted as he lopped the head off of one of the hobbled bugbears.

“My hand is fine,” Luna answered first. “It hurts, but my grip is strong and I remain battle-ready.”

“I’m gonna be slow,” Dirk followed up as he and Ezra jogged back towards the others. “My hip’s holding together, but it hurts like a bitch.”

“You guys all kept me safe,” Telemachus shrugged.

“And I got banged up, but I’m feeling fine,” Ezra closed off. “Seems like getting stabbed is the worst. If you get knocked around, this Divine Vigor spell takes care of you.”

“And that’s what I’m going to stick with,” Dirk grunted. “Getting stabbed is overrated.”

“It does leave scars, though,” Ezra joked.

“I plan on living a life more than long enough to give me scars. I don’t need them while I’m still young and pretty.”

“They were calling for reinforcements,” Ezra said, checking his inner world’s reserves. “I could maybe make it through a fight like that again without passing out from exhausting myself. All of you?”

“I could do the same once again,” Luna shrugged. “I barely used my aura.”

“I’m just about tapped out,” Telemachus said. “Cutting through so many in large swings like that was great to keep us all alive, but I’ve only got maybe one more aura-infused attack before I can’t do anymore.”

“Retreat,” Ezra said decisively. “They’ll be sending a force at least that size after us, maybe bigger. We need to, at the very least, find a more defensible position where we can’t get picked off by the bugbears.”

“Fully onto the next phase of the plan? Or start making our way into the hills?” Luna clarified.

“Let me see how many we have coming, and then I’ll tell you,” Ezra answered, flicking a glance at Jormun, who nodded and floated away as fast as he could. He didn’t explain anything more as he continued retreating, but fortunately, nobody pressed him for answers. Maybe fifteen seconds later, as the four made their way to the other side of a large boulder, Jormun returned.

I saw chained ones coming. They’re like orcs, but tougher and weaker. There’s four of them along with a wolf Dragonkin and a dozen goblins or more. The Dragonkin in charge seems to be confused.

“We pull into a defensible position then run to the village,” Ezra decided. “Onto the next phase, but we’re not going to be able to make it all the way there before we make contact. One of the wolves is coming along with a bunch of the goblins and some new visitors. We need to reserve as much strength as we can.”

“Then on we go,” Telemachus nodded. “Do you have a good idea for where we can hole up?”

A wolf’s howl filled the air as Ezra turned and led the way towards the first place that came to mind. They hadn’t done as much scouting of the surroundings, but Jormun floated in front of him to lead to the next destination. 

Now, Ezra could only hope that the next steps went as perfectly as this one had.