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.