Delver Magic III: Balance of Fate, Jeff Inlo [most popular ebook readers .txt] 📗

any risks, don’t endanger yourself. Just go back to the center of town, it’s safer there anyway. Tell everyone you meet to find cover and stay put. I’m going to take care of the goblin problem.”

Joel appeared only mildly surprised, but questioned the delver anyway.

“Just you?”

“Just me.”

“How?”

“Fear.”

Joel eyed the delver and the shining sword that he grasped. He could not find it in himself to argue.

“Ok, I’ll go back and tell everyone help is on the way and to stay out of sight. Getting dark now anyway, probably too dangerous to do anything else. You’ll let us know when you’re done doing whatever it is you’re going to do?”

“I’ll meet you at the town square.”

Joel looked to the ground, spit off to the side, took a heavy breath, and simply turned around. He moved down the alley at a cautious steady pace, acknowledging this turn of events with sullen acceptance.

Ryson believed the man would not go back on his word, and thus quickly turned his attention to the goblins. The Sword of Decree shone brighter now as the light of dusk faded away into twilight. He held a beacon to the goblins that stood off in the distance, a target, but it would not matter. He would move at a speed that was beyond their comprehension.

He quickly eyed the growing number of dark creatures in the distance. Ryson reviewed in his mind what he now knew to be the serp’s forces. “Only goblins in this area to deal with, but there’s a hook hawk, a rock beetle, and at least two shags to worry about as well. Shags shouldn’t be too much of a problem, the big one is probably back with Sazar. The hawk just ate and is more a reconnaissance tool than anything else. The beetle could be a danger, just have to keep an eye on the ground so I don’t trip. Sazar did me a favor keeping the goblins in this formation. All I have to do is circle the city in expanding rings working outward. Eventually, I’ll clear them all out.”

Ryson targeted the closest group of goblins which stood one block to the northeast. He would hit them first. Ryson now better understood Sazar’s power over these creatures. He knew the serp kept them confused and fearful. The serp did not cast spells to influence his minions, but the magical energies that flowed through the air allowed him to press his will upon them. Once Sazar took hold of their minds, he used the magic and their own emotions to keep their individual will in check.

The delver had enough contact with goblins to understand their minds as well. Individually, they were weak and vulnerable, but as a horde they represented a threat to even the largest beasts. The serp used this natural tendency to belong to a horde along with the goblins weak will to maintain control over a large number. That control, however, would last only as long as the goblins individual instinct for survival did not interfere with the serp’s commands. It was this weakness that Ryson intended to exploit. The serp used fear to keep the goblins in check, but a creature of this character could learn to fear many things. If a new fear became larger than the goblin’s fear of the serp, then all bets were off.

Ryson switched his grip of the Sword of Decree to one hand and held the point out in front of him. The natural starlight around him magnified a hundred fold and he knew he was now visible for great distances. It would draw crossbow fire almost immediately, so he moved with greater swiftness.

Like a meteor streaking through the night sky, a ball of light advanced on the goblins. They stood dumbfounded at the scene, totally unable to comprehend who or even what was headed straight for them. A few found the courage to lift a crossbow to fire, but none accomplished firing off a single shot.

The Sword of Decree spun like flaming pinwheel in Ryson’s hand. He darted from one goblin to the next in a blur of motion. He stabbed with his sword, but not at vital organs and not with deep thrusts. He forced the blade forward just enough to cut through the swollen rubbery goblin skin at a shoulder, an arm, or an upper leg. When the point of the sword made contact, it burned. Such was the power of the Sword of Decree. It was forged with magic to fight off the shadow trees, and within its blade it had the power to burn souls, even the damned souls of twisted creatures such as goblins.

When these goblins felt the burning pain that went deep beyond the wound, they gained a new fear, a great fear. Their thoughts of Sazar dissipated like droplets of water thrown on a blazing inferno. They howled and cowered, most dropping to the ground in twisted, painful terror. So great was their fear, they could not find the strength to run. Ryson decided to give them the incentive to do so.

When Ryson wounded all he saw, he yelled out like a raving mad man. “This town holds your ruin just as I now hold your souls in this sword. I can make them burn! Leave this place and never return. Leave now and tell all others of your kind what you have felt here in Pinesway! This town is cursed and all that enter will die painfully!”

The goblins of this pack needed no further encouragement.

#

“He is removing them from my control! The sword is enchanted. It’s burning fear into anything it touches, so much fear that I can’t overcome it. He is also moving so fast that before long he will have sent every goblin I command scrambling into the woods.”

Suddenly, the serp gained yet another perspective that served to increase his disdain for the situation. The rock beetle sensed a new commotion, but this disturbance did not come from the town, it came from the trees, from the areas where his minions now retreated.

Sazar seized upon the last fragments of trace images he could obtain from these goblins that surfaced through their panic. He viewed their last visions with increasing alarm. Several fell into an ambush, slaughtered quickly and efficiently.

“Human soldiers waiting in the woods to attack! They are efficient in weapons. Burbon guards!”

Sazar pounded the walls in growing frustration as he now knew that a contingent of Sy’s men had reached a position at Pinesway’s edge. They simply waited patiently for the fleeing goblins to fall into their range. It took little effort for them to dispatch all that came into their path.

“That means the delver did not come alone,” Sazar bellowed. The rage of frustration, however, soon turned to distress. “These are soldiers of Burbon. If they have come, then perhaps the wizard…”

Concern over the possible appearance of Enin to his midst caused the serp to break off in mid-sentence. He blurted out his own realization, and the importance that it must not come to pass.

“I will not be trapped here.”

He sent out an order to his most prized minions. He ordered the rock beetle to burrow underground and tunnel into the forest, and he commanded the hook hawk to immediately take flight high into the night sky. The one shag still engaged in the battle he ordered to escort as many goblins as possible to exit the town through the eastern gate. The large shag was already on its way back to Sazar’s side, thus the serp simply encouraged the monster to move faster. To most of the goblins that still remained under his control, he stopped pressing them forward and instead hastened them to make for the trees in the quickest way possible. He hoped the scattering of the goblins throughout the forest in different directions would make it more difficult for Sy’s guard to eliminate large numbers of them. Sazar sent a final command to twenty goblins that had not yet been fallen upon by the delver. They remained to the southeastern outskirts of town.

“Move quickly to the square at the town center. You will find groups of humans banded together. Open fire upon them. If you see one moving at great speed holding a shining object, avoid it at all costs. Keep your distance, but continue to fire with your crossbows at any humans you see. Continue this until I call for you.”

Sazar, in fact, had no intention of calling for these goblins. He was sacrificing them so he could make his own escape.

#

Ryson’s pace quickened, hastened by the fact that the goblins were now in full retreat. He chased them down and continued to stab at them with his sword. He warned each goblin he wounded to flee Pinesway and never return.

At this point, the goblins needed little incentive to run off. No longer did they feel the pressing demands of the serp to take the town and kill its inhabitants. Instead, they sensed the new turmoil in the air brought about by the delver’s counterattack. They noted the retreat of the shags and the hook hawk. Some were even aware of the rock beetle’s quick disappearance into the ground. Most of the goblins were fleeing in retreat even before Ryson could reach their position.

In a spiraling pattern that continuously circled outward, Ryson became a blur of light that flashed down streets and alleys. From the distance, he appeared like a flaming arrow streaking through the air. He scorched well over two hundred goblins with his sword before he reached Pinesway’s outer limits. When his path led him around the southern portion of the town, he bounded into the warehouse which he believed the serp used as a hideout. As he expected, the building was now empty, Sazar gone.

Ryson quickly traced markings on the ground and walls and followed them about the open space and back to the door.

“He was here alright,” Ryson confirmed to himself as he stepped back out into the night air and inspected more tracks on the ground. “He took off when the big shag returned to him.”

Realizing tracking the serp further into the forest at this point would gain nothing, Ryson dashed off in a direct path toward the town square. With the sword still in his hands, he lit up the areas he moved through like the welcome sight of the sun after a terrible storm. When he reached the town center, he counted many people still hiding under stairs, beneath broken carts, and within darkened, empty buildings. He found Joel sitting on a bench, slightly hunched over, looking very tired and angry.

“You alright?” Ryson asked.

Joel looked up at the delver with an expression of sheer disgust. “Not hurt, but real annoyed. Why does a serp attack an abandoned town?”

“He wanted to take what the thieves here already stole and he wanted a base.” Ryson responded confidently. “He wanted the whole town. He was going to use whatever he could take here to buy more supplies, more weapons, and more food. Then, he was going to make it a haven for goblins he could control.”

Joel spat at the ground “Ok, and he was going to kill us all because I guess he didn’t want any humans as neighbors.”

“Would you want to live next door to a goblin?” Ryson offered, almost a little too lighthearted for Joel’s liking.

“No, I like living next to abandoned houses. No neighbor is the best neighbor.”

“Be that as it may…”

A familiar voice called out from the shadows that interrupted the delver in mid-sentence. “Ryson Acumen! There are goblins to your left about to fire upon you!”

Ryson immediately recognized the voice, but took no time to acknowledge it. He directed his attention