Chapter 52: Adventurers Take the Initiative!

The horde of hobgoblins cheered in unison at their orc captain’s call for violence, raising their own weapons in tribute to his horrible salute with the mutilated girl’s corpse spit on the end of his spear. Before any of the hobgoblins dared to drive their prowling wargs past the ring of fire which encircled the four adventurers, Samantha strode forward to approach the pack. Trusting her friend and comrade’s judgment, Lexi said nothing at this, although her insides twisted in nervous anticipation — not knowing exactly what kind of ice-breaker Samantha was going to kick things off with.

“Thunder Stomp!”

The monk’s voice rang out like a bell, piercing through the coarse laughter of the hobgoblins. When she called out the spell’s command words, Samantha clenched both fists at her waist, and stomped her left foot down hard, into a stance so deep that her enormously muscular thighs were both parallel with the ground, every corded muscle in her body practically bursting with stress and tension as she shouted out the spell’s incantation. The effect was almost instantaneous, and utterly shocking to the greenskins on the receiving end.

A deafening thunderclap shattered the night. The sound was so loud and sudden that more than one hobgoblin dropped his weapon, as hands instinctively reached to cover ears from the roaring blast. Traveling along the same course as the thunderclap, a deep trench was dug into the ground, as the sonic vibrations rent and tore apart the very earth. Thunder never travels alone, however, and coursing through the same cut in the ground, a river of sizzling and crackling electricity flowed out from Samantha’s forefoot.

The warg and rider directly in the lightning’s path were immediately wrapped in an electric cocoon of pure torment, as currents of magical energy coursed through their bodies, cooking them from the inside out, super-heating every molecule of liquid until it reached a boiling point. Eyes melted out of the sockets of wolf and hobgoblin alike, as the pair were quite literally broiled alive by the magical bolts of lightning. Before the spell’s energy was spent, the dead warg’s fur had caught fire, and the hobgoblin’s green skin had largely melted off of his face and arms into a gory puddle beneath his twitching corpse.

In the wake of the spell’s devastation, a deep crevice — twice as deep as any of the hobgoblins were tall — had been carved in the earth, extending from Samantha’s foot past the wood line. The warg riders stood separated into two groups, six riders on the left, and five on the right, with the orc captain and his dire wolf standing behind the latter group. Wolves reared from the thunderous ruckus, with their riders in many cases just barely able to hang on, fistfuls of wolf fur clenched tight in their green claws.

“Steady!” the orc yelled out, the translation of his harsh speech scrolling in bold white text across the bottom of Lexi’s field of vision. “Hold the line, you maggots! Hold the line!”

Taking advantage of the confusion among their foes, Danica cupped her slender hands to her mouth, and quietly whispered something into the night air so soft it was inaudible even to her fellow adventurers. Whatever prayer the elven ranger had whispered to the forest gods she served, however, must have heeded her call. A chorus of soft hooting sounds answered the elf from above. A smile blossomed across Danica’s lovely face amid the growing chaos in the grove, as the elf gaily twirled around on the toes of one foot, holding her arms up in the air as if waiting to be snatched up by some unseen companion.

At first, Lexi thought that the girl might actually just be delusional — until four enormous horned owls descended from the blackness above.

Working in perfect coordination, huge taloned claws gripped the tiny elf’s lithe outstretched arms. And, with a fluttering of their immensely powerful wings, the quartet of owls lifted Danica up off the ground, carrying the girl higher and higher until they reached the upper branches of a high maple tree which stood on the edge of the clearing. As nimbly as any squirrel, the young elf climbed astride one of the tree’s large branches, taking up a perch overlooking the entire scene below.

“Thank you!” Lexi heard Danica call out to the owls as they departed grove.

The last thing the paladin saw before she turned her gaze back to the, now divided, line of warg riders encircling the trio of adventurers who remained on the ground was the elf slipping an arrow out of her quiver and taking aim with the long bow which she had silently unslung from behind her back. Lexi grinned broadly at this, the realization dawning on her that Danica was getting ready to show these hobgoblins that for all her childishness, she was not an elf to be trifled with — when death came raining down from above on the feathered wings of elven arrows.

Not to be outdone, Gretel banged her fists together as she shouted out the command phrase for the new spell she had alluded to having up her sleeve for this encounter.

“Etheric Fists!”

As soon as the magical words of power left the mage’s lips, a pair of giant translucent fists — each the size of a watermelon — appeared hanging in mid-air directly in front of Gretel’s actual hands. The two magical appendages apparently mirrored her physical actions more or less exactly, the two etheric fists banging together in precisely the same manner as Gretel’s own. Reaching out with her physical fists to direct these bizarre conjured hands, the mage grabbed a hold of a hapless hobgoblin. Each giant hand clamped down on one of the creature’s arms, the limbs looking like those of a child’s toy in the enormous clenched ethereal fists.

Lifting her own clenched fists up in the air above her head, Gretel’s magically controlled appendages hoisted the hobgoblin up off of his mount, dangling the flailing creature nearly ten feet above the ground. Without any further warning, the mage jerked her arms out wide, making a “T” shape with her curvy body. Lexi watched in mixed glee and horror as the pair of giant translucent fists followed the motion exactly, plucking the hobgoblins arms off of its body as easily as a child might have pulled the legs from a prone beetle. Geysers of blood erupted from the ragged stumps that used to be the hobgoblin’s shoulders, as he collapsed into a heap on the ground, quickly bleeding out in a bright pool of his own lifeblood.

“Bwahahahaha!” the mage cackled madly, magical fists still holding the bleeding arms like a floppy pair of green fleshy clubs.

The magically controlled fists waved the bloody arms around wildly, spraying the dying hobgoblin’s companions with splashes of blood. The warg riders around the fallen rider drove their mounts off to the sides, scrambling to put some distance between themselves and the murderous mage’s conjured hands. The wolf which had belonged to Gretel’s first victim of the night had already scampered off into the woods by the time she even thought to look for it — perhaps making it the most intelligent member of the pack.

“Fucking brutal!” Lexi yelled out in encouragement, glad to see the mage taking an active “hand” — the paladin almost slapped herself for even thinking such an awful pun — in the battle. Although, given Gretel’s mixed performance in their last three encounters, all of which resulted in the mage ending up in some kind of compromising position, Lexi remained a bit worried that the temporary excess of power might go to her head. Surely that kind of power could be a heady drug, and with the odds still stacked so dangerously against them, the last thing Lexi wanted was for anyone in her party to take this group of miscreants lightly.

“Just keep your head on straight,” the paladin cautioned.

“Yes mooom,” the mage moaned sarcastically, pulling a face and sticking her tongue out at Lexi — which did nothing to assuage her concerns. Regardless, Gretel was a grown woman, and had to hold her own as a member of the party, Lexi reminded herself.

Hopefully, she’ll play it a little safer than last time, but it’s not like I can just stand here waiting for her to fuck up. After all, I still haven’t gotten to show these ugly green fuckers MY new toy.

The paladin dropped down into a low stance of her own, drawing her enormous broadsword back with the blade upraised and the pommel just beside her glinting blue eyes. Then, with as much fury as the futanari could muster, she belted out the command words for her newest spell.

Sword of Flame!

The entire blade of the huge sword burst into tongues of crystalline blue flame, illuminating the entire glade in a cascade of holy light so bright that every greenskin winced in pain, their eyes squinting from the magical glare. Not wasting even an instant of the confusion wrought by this burst of magical illumination, Lexi darted to the right side of the enormous crevice Samantha’s martial spell had carved into the earth, making a beeline for the nearest warg and rider.

Her feet a blur, Lexi reached the closest hobgoblin before the creature knew what was happening. And, with equal quickness, the paladin drew her flaming sword back, and leveled a mighty chop, cutting deep into both rider and mount alike. Chopping down at a forty-five degree angle, Lexi drove her blade clean through the hobgoblin’s hip bone, shearing his leg clean off, and sinking the blade deep into the spine of the wolf beneath him. Lexi felt her arms shudder as the blade crunched and ripped through flesh and bone, before becoming lodged quite deeply in the wolf’s back.

Your Attacks Hit!

-12 HP (8/20)

-11 HP (0/10)

The warg thrashed for a moment, but fell dead soon thereafter, its severed spine ending the beast’s life before the magical flames lit its fur ablaze, consuming the warg entirely in tongues of crackling blue fire. The now one-legged hobgoblin managed to stagger off of his mount, clutching and clawing at the ground, in a mad attempt to pull himself away from the paladin and her wicked blade. Lexi noted that the sword, its blade superheated by the spell’s fires, had the interesting effect of cauterizing the wound she had just delivered, leaving hardly any blood behind — only charred and smoking flesh.

Seeing that the hobgoblin had reached his dropped spear, Lexi tugged furiously at her sword, eager to finish off this injured foe before he either had the good sense to escape, or the stupidity to try and attack her in his gravely injured state. Not intending to give him either opportunity, Lexi strained every muscle in her body, finally managing to wrench the blade free of the wolf’s flaming carcass.

“Not so fast you gimp-ass motherfucker!” Lexi yelled at the hobgoblin, who looked back in terror at the paladin as she leaped over his dead mount.

“Graaa! Mercy!” the hobgoblin cried out, putting his hands up and cowardly casting his spear aside.

For the briefest fraction of a second, Lexi almost considered relenting. But, then she saw the pair of hands — hands which had no doubt once contained a soft feminine beauty — rammed onto the horns of his helmet through the bloody stumps of their severed wrists. A dark shadow passed over the paladin’s face and her heart turned as cold and black as the deepest stones beneath the mountain.

“Did you show her mercy?” she yelled at the creature, not even thinking in her fury that although she understood his speech through the game’s subtitles, her speech would likely be nothing more than incomprehensible gibberish to the greenskin. “Did you?! Or did you rape, and mutilate, and murder her?!”

Each word in the accusation was punctuated by a powerful slash from the paladin’s flaming sword, carving the terrified hobgoblin into a smoking mass of seared green flesh before Lexi had fully vented her fury.

Your Attacks Hit!

-7 HP (1/20)

-13 HP (0/20)

-9 HP (0/20)

-11 HP (0/20)