Chapter 28

In the aftermath Rain’s ears were filled with nothing but high pitched ringing. His jaw and throat ached.

He was stunned enough by his own roar that it took him a moment to realise that the Spider-goblin was drunkenly moving toward him holding up Cairn’s axe over her head. Blood ran from her nose and ears but she was still mobile. He struggled to move his body properly, everything felt sluggish and unresponsive. He held up his arms pitifully and the axe came down. By chance she stumbled forward as she swung and the head of the axe flew over the top of his feeble defence leaving Rain to catch the haft on his arms. Crazed eyes looked back at him, Lazia’s mouth opened in a silent scream of rage revealing strange spider like mandibles amongst fine white needle like teeth. Rain grabbed the axe and hauled down on it at the same time as he pushed upward. He smashed his forehead into Lazia’s face, breaking her nose with a burst of blood. She let go of the axe.

This seemed to knock her free of her mindless rage and fear momentarily crossed her gaze. Then however she seemed to commit herself to her chosen path, her jaw clenching in hard-hearted determination. Her hands snapped out multiple seals and glowing markings washed across her entire body. Violet fire bloomed above her abdomen once more, but this time it did not stop coalescing and the ball of fire continued to grow, three foot, five foot, seven foot across, the heat from the vast ball of fire was enough to scorch the grass.

Rain shielded his eyes from the growing brightness then, finally recovering some basic rationality, he began to step away, wary of the Spider’s intent. The Spider matched him and came on. Rain turned tail and fled as solar flares of violet fire began to jump from the fifteen foot wide fireball. It radiated so much heat he could feel it sear his back. The Spider chased after him, fingers swiftly dancing and forming ever more seals.

Rain gripped the axe from where he had been hugging it to his chest out of sight and suddenly, without warning, twisted mid bound, his arm whipping around as he swung his all into it. The axe flung from his paw like a bolt from a crossbow and tore through the air. But Lazia was ready. A solid violet disc conjuring into place in front of her chest to block the thrown axe. Unfortunately for her, Rain wasn’t aiming at her body. The axe came down on one of her legs and snapped it like a twig. Rain caught sight of a moment of open dismay on the Spider’s face before she came down hard. She crashed to the ground top half first and her abdomen rose up, fireball in tow, peaked, then came plummeting down to earth like a meteor.

BOOM!

Rain desperately flung himself away, but he was still picked up and thrown by the blast like a child’s toy to be sent bouncing and rolling across the grass.

He came to a halt in a heap.

Several minutes passed with him unmoving. Then with a groan he slowly lifted his head.

All that was left of Lazia was a crater in the ground.

“Crazy suicidal Goblin ... Now I can’t eat you...”

With difficulty, he sat up. Every part of him ached. Bruises and cuts felt like they’d been uniformly patterned over his body.

“Ow- m- e-rs”

Rain looked around to see Opal twisting a finger in her ear.

“I can’t hear you, hold on.”

Rain cracked his jaw and poked at his own ears. The ringing sound dropped off a little

“I said, Ow my ears. I think you scared the snot out of every Gobbo in the damned cavern. First that, whatever that roar was, and then kabooming spidey.”

“She was going to blow herself up no matter what I did, she was a, uh, witch. Goblin witches don’t seem to like me very much.”

“And the roar? I thought the cavern was going to come down for a moment there.”

Rain shrugged. “I’m not sure, I didn’t know I was capable of such a thing.”

Opal tapped at her chin. “Maybe it has something to do with growing. A bigger body, outsized strength, and, well, a bigger roar?”

“It was a little more than just a ‘bigger roar’. I straight up killed a Minotaur with my voice alone. I think if the witch had been on top of me as well she wouldn’t have survived either.”

“I’ll try think up some way to use that, but right now I’m going to make you hate me.”

Rain tilted his head to the side and blinked. “Why’s that?”

“What do you think the entire tribe is doing right now now that you’ve thoroughly spooked them all with all that noise and ground trembling? Yep, that’s right. They’re all fleeing toward the exits.”

Rain groaned and rubbed a paw over his face. “Meaning that they will be trying to figure out how to get past the obstacles we made and will sooner or later succeed...”

Opal simply stood there and with her hands behind her back and rocking on her heels excitably. “Can’t let food escape.” She grinned. “Coming?”

Rain pressed his lips together in a line but rolled to his feet.

The Goblin led him into the jungle and they made their way back to the main entrance of the cavern. It quickly became clear that as predicted the entire remaining population of the tribe was trying to escape at once. A crowd was fighting at the entrance, unable to keep order long enough to figure out how to move the stone disc and simply throwing themselves at it and shouting their frustration. A pile of them had built up, standing on each other to haul on the wooden pegs that ran along the part of the wheel. Unfortunately for them they had not noticed the stone wedge Rain had placed below so their efforts were wasted and in fact made it impossible for the few Goblins who had noticed the problem to remove it leaving them helpless.

There were a number of Human-goblins mixed in the crowd of regular Goblins as well as three Diredog-goblins. As the pair watched cohesion started to break down. The Human-goblins lost their temper and started laying into the regular Goblins with swords and clubs, the Diredog-goblins seeing this quickly joined in. This seemed to push the terrified regular Goblins beyond all reason and weapons were unslung and used with abandon. They swarmed the surprised half Goblins and through sheer dint of numbers overwhelmed them, though not without heavy losses.

“This would have happened sooner or later. This whole tribe was a tinder trap waiting to ignite and go up in flames,” said Opal.

“Mrmm, the ones in charge of all this had no idea what they were sitting on.”

A dozen regular Goblins survived, many of them injured, so when Rain pushed aside the foliage and stepped into their midst it was not a terribly difficult fight. However a couple did still manage to escape into the jungle. Opal drew her cutlass and stalked after them.

Rain went on to the exit he had blocked with a tree but found no Goblins near and the tree untouched. When he came to the next exit however he found a pair of Lamia frantically trying to remove stones from the hole they had filled. Unfortunately for them they were inside the partially cleared hole and had no way to escape so that when Rain dropped on them they could do nothing but scream.

He climbed out of the hole a little more bloody than before and moved on to the last escape tunnel. Unsurprisingly it was still blocked as the Cavebear-goblin he had dragged into it was massive and impossible to move. More surprising however was a second injured Cavebear-Goblin surrounded by the remains of maybe two dozen regular Goblins which had been smashed and sliced under foot and claw in what had clearly been a desperate fight. The Cavebear-goblin hadn’t escaped unscathed, the Goblins may have been weak but that hadn’t prevented them from exacting a heavy toll. There were only bloody pits where the Cavebear-goblins eyes had once been. Rain could only guess what had led to the fight but judging by the footprints around the hole the new Cavebear-goblin had tried and failed to remove the body blocking it prior to the fight.