Mythica, book 1, Chapter 14.

Chapter 14.

It began to get dark as Sabine walked north toward the hills where the militia had been ambushed. There were very few farms to the north because the soil became rockier and more difficult to work the closer the farmers got to the foothills. The narrow trail petered out a bit past the last farm, and she followed the path of least resistance up into the hills. Knowing militia, they would have taken the easiest path to their objective, and it wasn’t hard to follow where they had gone.

As she traveled, Sabine tried to do what Hamish had suggested. She could see and feel the mana inside her, but other than using her Channel Mana ability to empower her weapons, or using the active ability on Eyes of Undeath, she seemed to have no control over it. Stubborn, Sabine didn’t give up, continuing to do what she already knew, empowering her weapons and using the skill for the first time to force mana into her armor.

Dozens of times she pushed the mana into her weapons and armor, trying to see how the process worked and find a way to control it better. When her mana dropped to half, she stopped her efforts and waited for it to refill. The mana in the area wasn’t nearly as dense as the mana inside a graveyard, but she was still able to see thin tendrils of dark mana and the occasional fleck of golden mana flow in and replace what she had used up.

It was when she watched the mana flow into her at a calm and sedate pace that Sabine got an idea. She had been trying to force things, to make the mana obey her by sheer force of will. While that worked when using her ability to power a weapon, finesse was worth a try.  She watched the flow; the roiling storm of mana wasn’t quite as chaotic as she thought. Gently, Sabine began to touch the mana with her mind and felt a connection. Instead of trying to force it to do her will, she coaxed it in the direction she wanted.

The threads of mana responded slowly to her efforts, and more than once, she lost control and had to start over. Instead of pushing the mana to her weapons this time, Sabine instead began to nudge the threads closer together. As the threads packed together more tightly than they had been before, the storm of mana started to calm a bit. Things were still chaotic, but Sabine could see a pattern in the motion. She thought that she could also tell a difference when empowering her weapons with mana. Of course, it might just be her desire to make progress that was clouding her perception.

Sabine found a secluded spot near a rocky outcropping that seemed safe enough. She stopped to concentrate on the task, feeling her mana and forgetting everything else. It was difficult, the soldier in her wanted to keep going and find the goblins to finish her task. This was important as well, and after a time, she was able to calm her mind shutting off each distraction one by one. Calm and focused, Sabine started to push mana toward the dagger in her off-hand. This time, the flow seemed easier, the mana less jumbled as it traveled from her center to the arm, and finally, to the weapon itself. A prompt startled Sabine from her efforts.

Your Channel Mana ability has evolved into Manipulate Mana. You have taken the first steps on the journey to mastering your new power. Brute force has its place, but sometimes, finesse, patience, and concentration can result in a greater effect. Your abilities now consume 1% less mana when used. Continue to practice this ability to improve its effects and evolve it further.

Her efforts had been rewarded. A one percent increase didn’t seem like much, but Sabine knew that with time, she would be able to further refine her mana and improve upon that percentage. There was also the hint of further evolutions of her ability, which could grow into something even more powerful for her.

Something was peculiar about the words that appeared this time, she couldn’t feel Gnessos’ touch on them, and neither could she sense Ana-Sett. No, this message was from somewhere else. She would have to let Hamish know about the breakthrough and the mysterious change in her ability when she returned to town.

Sabine continued to practice manipulating her mana, nudging the tendrils of power, coaxing them to condense and refine themselves. After a time, she felt she had reached the limit of what she could accomplish and needed a break. The further she drew away from the village, the more dangerous things became. She needed her full concentration to track the goblins, so work on her mana would have to wait.

Time had passed from the initial battle, but the militia wasn’t exactly trying to hide their passage, so a few clues remained. She spotted a boot print or two and a few broken branches from the scrub brush that covered the hillsides. Eventually, near the top of the hill she was on, Sabine found indications of the first battle. A pair of broken arrow shafts and trampled brush showed where a scuffle had taken place. The arrow shafts were shorter than normal, which could have been attributed to the smaller bows that the diminutive goblins preferred to use.

About the time she found the arrow shafts, Sabine began to hear movement nearby. Just over the crest of the hill, she heard one or two people running, possibly goblins, possibly someone else. They were moving at a quick pace and they were moving toward Sabine.

Goblins weren’t exactly the smartest creatures that walked the lands, but most had some grasp of the common language, and Sabine could even speak a bit of their tongue given the numerous fights she had had with their kind. If these were goblins, she would try to capture one alive. As the sound neared the crest of the hill, Sabine’s Eyes of Undeath confirmed it was a pair of goblins approaching.

Instead of positioning themselves for an ambush or calling for support, the two goblins ran almost right toward Sabine. As they crested the hill, the pair finally spotted her and gave shrieks of fear as they tried to change direction and avoid her. Sabine pulled the flail from her waist and moved toward the closest goblin. This one held a short spear with a crude stone point tied to the end of it. Not exactly the weapon of a fierce tribe that had been able to beat a small group of reasonably well-equipped militia.

The goblin, seeing he was losing the footrace to Sabine’s longer stride, turned, and thrust his spear at her. It was a clumsy strike, one that she easily blocked with the curved knife in her off-hand. Her return blow with the flail proved too much for the goblin to dodge, and the heavy iron head of the flail smashed into the top of the goblin’s head with a sickening crunch. With her first target taken out, Sabine turned to the other goblin. Many times, goblins would use the death of their kin to unleash a deadly sneak attack on their foes while they were distracted in battle, but this goblin hadn’t even slowed down to help his comrade.

Sabine began to sprint toward the fleeing goblin, which had a good head start on her. Her energy was full, and fatigue was not an issue as she quickly closed on the goblin who kept looking back to see how close she was, losing a step or two each time he did so. With the goblin’s panting breath, Sabine could tell he was about at the end of his rope. Rather than be run down by Sabine, this goblin also chose to turn and strike. The goblin’s rusty dagger proved no more effective than its friend’s crude spear.

Sabine once again deflected the blow. Her attempt to disarm the goblin with a follow-up strike proved a bit too effective. The flail’s head slammed into the upper arm of the goblin and crushed it. Screaming and looking at the shattered limb, the goblin made a last-ditch effort to defend himself, lunging toward Sabine with his mouthful of small, needle-like teeth. Slamming the handle of her flail into the goblin’s mouth, Sabine used a bit too much force and instead of knocking it back, the blow killed the creature.

“I never was one for subtlety in combat,” Sabine murmured to herself. Instead of a prisoner to pry information from, the second goblin was nothing but another left ear toward her bounty total. The two left ears joined the ghoul’s head inside the bag. Grisly trophies squared away; Sabine tried to figure out what the two had been trying to accomplish. They were poorly armed and not skilled enough to be some kind of scouts, and she didn’t think they had heard her approach.

A quick check of the area didn’t reveal any tripwires or other methods that might have given away her presence. It suddenly hit her that the goblins might have been running away from something, and not necessarily toward her. In fact, they had tried their best to avoid her once she got close. If the battles with the militia had somehow killed the goblin leader, maybe the others were involved in some kind of power struggle to determine who the new chief was. A bloody dispute could only help Sabine, and the more the goblins fought amongst themselves, the better.

In their haste, the two goblins hadn’t tried to hide their path, giving Sabine more than enough clues to track them to their lair. The goblin lair was higher up the next hill, a small cave that faced the north where it wouldn’t easily be seen by human militia coming from the south. There was a small stream nearby that would provide the goblins with a good water source. With the cave in sight, Sabine hunkered down behind some brush and watched for activity. Goblins were nocturnal creatures and there should have been some activity with hunters going out to find meat or gather water.

For over an hour Sabine waited, and during that time neither heard nor saw any goblins. Approaching as cautiously as she could, Sabine couldn’t help but make some noise as her gear rattled and her footsteps slid on the rocky ground. Stealthy attacks were never Sabine’s greatest strength, and she waited for the inevitable cry of alarm and horde of goblins spewing froth from the cave to attack. Instead of an attack, her clumsy approach was met with continued silence. Only the wind gently rustling the nearby brush, and the gurgling sounds of the nearby stream broke the silence.

The entrance to the cave was unguarded, and other than the garbage and debris strewn about by the goblins, she might have figured that she was in the wrong place. About ten yards further into the cave, Sabine found a tunnel that led deeper underground. She sat and listened for a time, but once again, all was quiet. Moving into the tunnel, Sabine kept both weapons at the ready. Her flail in her right hand and the best of her daggers in the left.

Heading down, the tunnel was a bit of a tight fit, but she still had enough room to fight when the time came. Barely able to walk upright, the low ceiling gave off a claustrophobic feel. Having dug herself out of a grave not that long ago, Sabine was immune to the feeling of being closed in. What she wasn’t immune to was the unsettling feeling that she was getting from the seemingly abandoned goblin lair.

The tunnel ended abruptly above a large open cavern. Goblins were, by nature, cowardly creatures, and their homes were typically compact affairs where the entire tribe could be close to each other. This sprawling cavern was a nightmare scene. Dead goblins and several human corpses were scattered around the haphazardly placed tents that constituted the tribe’s home. Bloodstains covered the rocky floor of the cavern, and the place was deathly quiet.

Had the human militia fought their way into the goblin cavern and done this much damage? Sabine traversed down the sharp incline toward the cavern floor. It would make a good choke point if the goblins were trying to defend against invaders. There weren’t any defenders to stop her and the bloodstains and the bodies of four hacked-apart goblins showed that their defense against the previous intruders had been inadequate. She took the opportunity to snag a few ears off the nearby goblins, bringing her total up to six. There were only four more ears to go, and plenty of fallen goblins deeper in the cavern.

It was going to be easy to hit the bounty’s objective, but that didn’t answer the question of who was attacking the village. Unless there was another tribe hidden nearby, which was unlikely, some other force was the cause of the village’s woes. Walking deeper into the cavern, Sabine quickly snagged the last of the ears for her bounty, including a few extras just to show a job well done.

Several of the tents had collapsed, but the largest, likely the one used by the tribe’s leader, was still standing. That tent was also where the majority of the human corpses were found. The least she could do was document how many humans had fallen here and let the villagers come out and claim their remains for burial. As she approached the large tent, Eyes of Undeath activated. All around her, the human corpses began to glow with a dark haze. These were no longer simple remains; the humans had been transformed into undead.

Sabine stepped back as the corpses around her began to stir. Over a dozen human corpses had become undead, and even a few of the goblins began to stand. She almost wished that Orren was here to tell her exactly what she was facing. These undead didn’t exhibit the speed and power that the ghoul she had fought held, but there were far too many for her to take out on her own. Their slow, shambling gait allowed Sabine to back away and keep her distance.

Heading back toward the tunnel, Sabine was slowed by the narrow incline, she was halfway to the tunnel when she sensed more movement ahead of her. More undead goblins were approaching from the tunnel, she was boxed in. The number in the tunnel seemed fewer than the swarm pursuing her from the cavern, so Sabine infused her weapons with mana and charged forward.

The flail proved the perfect weapon for the narrow ledge. Each swipe knocked an undead goblin off its feet and sent it crashing to the cavern floor below. The impact didn’t always stop them, and more than a few continued to try to crawl their way back into the fight. For the most part, Sabine’s blows were deadly to the smaller undead, but her progress was slow and the undead behind her continued to close in. Her knife blocked a swipe of an undead goblins fist, but she missed its bite which latched onto her arm.

A blow from her flail knocked the goblin off her arm, but the action tore a deep wound that wept black goo as her mana worked to heal Sabine. A blow on her back was deflected by her new armor, but more attacks followed. She was a blur of blade and flail, dropping undead one after the other, but even Sabine’s great skill wasn’t much help when stuck on a narrow ledge and swarmed by an enemy from two sides.

She stumbled as one of the undead fell onto her leg. Another from the other side slammed into her, biting at her armor, and pushing her toward the ledge. More blows landed as the undead redoubled their efforts. Her foot slipped, and Sabine found herself falling to the cavern floor. It was a twenty-foot drop from where she fell, and Sabine could feel one of her legs snap as she landed awkwardly.

“Kill her before she recovers, she is doing far too much damage to my creations,” A voice called from the tunnel mouth. She could see an elderly human dressed in common laborer’s garb pointing down toward her as he shouted. Sabine’s mana began to knit her leg together and work on the myriad of other small injuries she had sustained, but her movement would be hampered for a few precious seconds. She tried to crawl away from the approaching horde of undead, having a bit of breathing room as they clumsily tried to make their way down the ledge and pursue.

Several of the undead that she had knocked off the ledge crawled over to bite and hammer at Sabine. These undead were pretty banged up from the hits Sabine had dished out and the damage from falling. Even in her wounded state, Sabine easily handled the trio of damaged undead.

Having dealt with the immediate threat, Sabine continued to crawl away from the main horde of enemies. She made it only a few feet before two painful impacts hammered her back. On the ledge above Sabine, she could see that the shouting man had been joined by two other humans, both of which were working to reload the crossbows they held.

A glance over her shoulder revealed two bolts had easily penetrated the leather gambeson and were lodged deep inside Sabine’s back. Normally resistant to pain, the heavy damage she had just taken overwhelmed her ability to ignore it. Her leg was healed enough to stand, albeit a bit shakily, so Sabine hobbled her way toward one of the tents to break the line of sight from the two crossbowmen above.

The first of the undead finally caught up to Sabine before she could reach the tent. Sabine struck the undead down with flail and dagger, easily avoiding damage from their clumsy attacks. Unfortunately, the brief delay proved more than enough time for the crossbowmen to reload and fire on her a second time. One bolt slammed into her lower back, and another into the side of her head.

Sabine fell to the ground, her mana trying desperately to heal her, but Sabine’s reserves were running out. The ball of gold-flecked black mana inside her was a tiny sphere at this point, and she lacked the strength to even move as the horrible injuries were worked on. In moments, the undead arrived and began to pound and bite at her prone form. The last of Sabine’s mana was expended and the darkness she had faced with her first death returned once more.