The world had narrowed to a single line. It began with the hate-filled, puffy eyes of the Hobgoblin, went through the obsidian arrowhead, and ended with Trenn’s face.

  The air was thick with the scent of sweaty Goblins. A snarling mass, a blur of hate, needle teeth, and wooden cudgels surrounded him.

  In the frozen, crystalline silence of his own impending death, Trenn could hear the frantic hum of his Wild Mage power, reacting to his emotional peak. The Hobgoblin’s lips peeled back in a triumphant, final snarl.

  The snarl became a choked, gurgling gasp. The creature’s triumphant expression shattered, replaced by uncomprehending agony. Its eyes, which had been locked on Trenn with murderous intent, widened in shock.

  Tyndral’s black-furred form materialized from the shadows behind the Hobgoblin. His long, curved claws had slid into the Hobgoblin's back, between its ribs.

  He yanked. With his claws hooked deep inside the Hobgoblin’s torso, he tore his hands back, using the natural curve of his claws as sharp hooks. A ripping tear of flesh cut through the chaos of the camp.

  The leader collapsed like a puppet whose strings had been severed. For a single, stunned heartbeat, the Goblin horde was silent, their beady eyes fixed on the mangled corpse of their commander.

  A collective, guttural roar erupted from the Goblins, a wave of undiluted fury that washed over the clearing. All strategic thought, all discipline the Hobgoblin had drilled into them, evaporated in that single, unifying moment of rage.

  Trenn was immediately overwhelmed. The world became a suffocating press of snarling faces and grasping hands. The air, already thick with their sour odor, became a wall of stench—a nauseating mix of bad breath, unwashed bodies, and the reek of raw aggression.

  He lashed out blindly with the kris knife, the serrated tooth-blade catching a nearby Goblin across the face, tearing a ragged, gurgling line, before he stabbed another. The creature fell, but for every one he fought, three more shoved their way forward to take its place.

  The sound of their assault was a constant, percussive drumming against the cured Reptile Kin leather armor. The crack of wood on hide and the sodden thuds of cudgels became a relentless cacophony that vibrated through his bones.

  The armor held, but the force of a dozen simultaneous blows rattled him, bruising the flesh beneath. A spear shaft, wielded like a club, connected solidly with the unprotected back of his head.

  A flash of white fire erased the world. A high-pitched ringing drowned the snarls, his vision collapsing into a useless blur.

  A Goblin, quicker than the rest, darted under his flailing knife arm. It lunged, its wide mouth open, and sank its needle teeth deep into the most vulnerable spot it could find: the unarmored, fleshy area behind Trenn's knee.

  The pain was a grinding violation, a savage tearing as teeth scraped against tendon and bone. A raw scream was torn from Trenn’s throat as his leg gave out, the muscles and sinews shredded.

  He crashed to the ground, his face hitting the dirt, the kris knife flying from his numb fingers.

  He was down. He was immobilized. And as he pushed himself over, gasping, he looked up into a sea of leering, triumphant faces and a forest of raised, crudely-made clubs, all poised for the final, brutal blow. He was helpless.

  Trenn threw an arm up in a last, futile gesture of defense. As the first blow was about to land, a shadow swept over the clearing, momentarily eclipsing the moons.

  High above, a flash of vibrant pink and yellow. Clutched in its strange, puffy, insectoid legs was a familiar grey sphere. It had retrieved Skate. Flying above Trenn, it dropped its payload. Skate plummeted, a silent grey stone falling from the sky.

  His pain-addled brain, running on pure, adrenalized instinct, processed the trajectory in a split second. As Goblins looked up in confusion at the sudden shadow, the sphere dropped to Trenn’s reach.

  He didn't try to catch it. He punched it from the flat of his back. A short boxer's jab, his fist lashing out from his chest. There was a solid, satisfying thump as his knuckles connected with Skate's pliable surface, transferring kinetic force.

  Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

  Propelled by both the momentum of its fall and the explosive power of the punch, Skate didn't arc or fly. It shot forward like a piston. A Goblin leaning directly over Trenn, who noticed the movement, couldn’t react in time. Skate slammed into its face at point-blank range.

  The distance was less than two feet. The impact was an implosion of cartilage, bone, and teeth. The Goblin's head snapped back at an unnatural angle, and it was thrown backward as if hit by an invisible truck, its limp body bowling over two of its comrades and creating a brief, chaotic, and desperately needed opening in the suffocating circle of death.

  Skate shot back towards its point of origin with terrifying speed, aimed directly at Trenn’s own face. His arm was extended from the punch, nowhere near ready to catch it.

  He had a split second to process the brutal irony: his own life-saving projectile was about to knock him unconscious. *At least I'm already on the ground,* he thought.

  He made an insane, instinctual decision. He couldn't block it, so he met it. With a guttural roar, he surged upward from the ground and headbutted Skate.

  Skate’s surface became pliable and shock-absorbent, molding to the curve of Trenn’s forehead.

  The force of the blow was dampened, a strange, jarring pressure rather than a sharp crack. In the same instant, it hardened. Using the kinetic energy of Trenn’s own desperate headbutt, it reshaped its own mass to explode outward with its combined momentum.

  Skate crushed the skull of a flanking Goblin, its head caving in with a wet crunch.

  Meanwhile, a Goblin with a crude club seized the opportunity.

  It swung low and hard, a vicious, horizontal strike aimed at Trenn’s wounded knee. He cried in pain and was rewarded with a spear hit to the temple.

  The pain was a grinding supernova that consumed his entire leg. He was stunned. Warm liquid was dripping from the side of his head. A raw, piercing scream was torn from his lungs as a club slammed into his armored ribs.

  Skate, a blur of kinetic violence, flew over Trenn and knocked out one last Goblin with a final, sickening crunch before its momentum finally bled away.

  It rolled across the blood-soaked grass and came to a gentle stop at Trenn's side, humming with a low, victorious purr that was a stark, horrifying contrast to the scene around them.

  The Goblins, having seen the destructive, unpredictable power of the grey sphere, had backed away, expecting Trenn to shoot it out against them at any moment. It allowed Trenn to regain some awareness.

  He was on the ground, with Skate, surrounded by a hundred angry Goblins.

  Through a swimming haze of pain, Trenn's gaze frantically searched the clearing for his allies. He couldn't see Mara. The flash of white fur was gone, swallowed by the tide of green-skinned bodies. But he saw Tyndral.

  The black-furred Guardian was on the ground, half-hidden by a swarm of frenzied attackers. He was no longer fighting. He was being mercilessly beaten by half a dozen Goblins, their cudgels rising and falling with sickening, rhythmic brute force. He was being beaten to death.

  A cold, heavy certainty settled in Trenn’s gut, a feeling more chilling than any pain. He clutched Skate, its familiar, solid weight the only anchor in a world that was collapsing around him.

  The Guardians, the elite, professional killers, were defeated. The entire camp, a hundred strong, was now focused on the two of them.

  This is it. This is how I die—beaten to death in the dirt by Goblins. There was no escape. There was no hope.

  There was only the closing circle of snarling faces and the slow, inevitable end.

  Through the fog of pain and despair, an insane idea sparked. He wasn’t a Slime Rock tamer. He was a Wild Mage.

  A silent, frantic plea echoed in his mind: please work, please work, please work. He looked up, his gaze locking onto the nearest Goblin, a three-foot brute with a notched, blood-stained club and a nasty, leering grin.

  "I... I surrender," Trenn croaked, his voice a hoarse, broken rasp. As the words left his lips, he focused all of his will, all of his desperate intent, not on the words themselves, but on the Goblin. He pushed his Mana into the creature. He *made* the Goblin hum with the frequency of his own power.

  Trenn made the Goblin hum.

  The effect was instantaneous.

  A wave of collective shock passed through the Goblin circle. The leering grins faltered. The snarling stopped, replaced by a series of confused, guttural “what?” The clubs, which had been raised for the final, brutal assault, were lowered by a fraction of an inch.

  Even the Goblins beating on Tyndral took a pause, stunned expressions on their wide faces.

  The brute Trenn had focused on took a hesitant step forward, its beady eyes wide, its leering grin slack with confusion.

  "You speak the Goblin Tongue?" it asked, its own voice a gravelly, shocked rasp. "How?"

  It worked.

  A dizzying, light-headed wave of relief washed over Trenn, so powerful it nearly made him pass out. They had understood him. He pushed his luck, pressing his one advantage.

  With his good hand, he gestured weakly towards the still, broken form of Tyndral.

  "You should keep us as prisoners," he said, speaking what, to his ear, sounded like plain English. He locked his gaze with the lead Goblin, pushing every ounce of his will and magic into the suggestion.

  "The other Hobgoblins... they will want to question us. They will reward your wisdom."

  It was a close call, but what was the most satisfying moment of the fight for you?

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