This chapter will mostly be fighting, so I hope you enjoy!!
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Before their return to the goblin camp, on the path, there. The party moved in loose formation along the dirt track. Fin naturally walked at the front.
Shadowheart walked just slightly behind him.
It hadn't been a conscious decision on her part. She had simply fallen into that position and stayed there, yet her eyes lingered on his back for a moment longer than she intended. He moved confidently for someone wearing no armour and carrying barely any muscle. Each step was measured and never rushed. Even when the path narrowed or dipped into muddy ground, his pace never faltered.
Calm.
That was the word that kept returning to her mind.
Fin was calm in ways that most people simply weren't.
Shadowheart had spent years around zealots, crusaders, clerics, and rouges who claimed faith gave them certainty. Most of them compensated for their doubts by shouting louder than everyone else.
And yet Fin never shouted.
He simply acted.
Her fingers brushed the small prism resting inside her pack as she walked. The artifact hummed faintly against her thoughts, a constant presence she had grown used to. Usually, it made her wary. Today, it barely registered.
Because her mind kept circling back to something else.
To him.
When they'd first met on the nautiloid, Shadowheart, although thankful for being released from the pod, had seen him as another complication. Another stranger infected with the same parasite and clinging to survival through brute force.
That was all. At least, that was what she had told herself.
But things had changed since then.
He had listened when she spoke about Shar, actually listened. That alone was unusual enough to stand out, given that most people reacted to Shar in one of two ways.
Fear or judgment.
Even the ones who pretended to tolerate her devotion always carried that faint stiffness in their posture. That quiet assumption that one day they would need to "fix" her.
Fin had done neither.
When she mentioned her ambition to become a Dark Justiciar, he had simply nodded.
No lecture. No suspicion.
Just acceptance. Pragmatic company, she had called it in her own mind.
Though the truth was slightly more complicated.
Her eyes drifted back to him again.
Something was reassuring about the way he carried himself. It was… comforting.
Shar valued independence, valued strength, valued those who understood that the world was not kind and never would be.
Fin seemed to understand that instinctively.
Shadowheart exhaled softly through her nose.
Perhaps that was why she found herself watching him more often than she intended.
Perhaps that was why she didn't mind the idea of staying near him.
Perhaps...
Her thoughts paused for a moment.
The idea that followed was dangerously close to being embarrassing.
She could imagine...
Maybe.
Possibly.
If circumstances aligned.
Seeing him as something more than simply a travelling companion. Not now, though. Right now, she was simply trying to live as an arrow whizzed by her face.
A goblin warlock screamed as Lae'zel's blade tore through his throat in a spray of black-red blood. Shadowheart ducked beneath a wild swing from a rusted axe, the wind of it brushing over her head, and drove the head of her mace into the attacker's knee hard enough to shatter it sideways. The goblin dropped shrieking. She crushed its mouth with the backswing before it finished hitting the floor.
To her right, Durge moved through the melee like something that had been waiting all day to be unleashed. A male drow stumbled back with his guts spilling into his hands, staring down in mute disbelief as she smiled at him, then kicked him off the ice blade she'd formed.
A blast of sickly green magic slammed into one of the stone pillars near the throne, showering the chamber in shards and dust.
Ragzlin roared from the centre of it all, his massive frame already in motion, barking orders in Goblin as the room dissolved into chaos. Around him, the surviving fighters surged forward in a dozen ugly directions at once. Goblins with jagged spears. Another pair of warlocks near the rear. A human male with a longsword and shield pushing through the press with more discipline than the rest. One of the remaining drow vaulted over a broken bench, dual blades flashing in the torchlight as he made straight for Fin.
Fin met him head-on.
He slipped past the first slash by inches, one hand catching the drow's wrist while the other drove forward, the crack of impact carried even through the rest of the fighting. The drow folded around the blow. Fin tore the weapon from his hand, pivoted, and hurled it hard enough that it buried itself in the throat of a charging goblin behind him.
Shadowheart's breath caught for the briefest moment.
Then a goblin fighter lunged for her left side, and she snapped back into motion, raising her shield just as the blade scraped across it in a burst of sparks.
The throne room had become a crush of bodies.
Wyll was trading blows with the human mercenary near the broken steps below Ragzlin's throne, steel ringing sharply as the two of them fought for space. Astarion had vanished from sight entirely, which likely meant someone was about to get a knife in the back. Lae'zel was driving forward like a spearpoint, carving a path through goblins dumb enough to stand in front of her. Durge was laughing.
Of course she was.
Another warlock began chanting near the back line.
Shadowheart saw the glow building around his hands and lifted her own, divine power already gathering, her voice sharp as she called on darkness and pain to answer in kind.
Across the chamber, Fin stepped over a corpse and looked briefly in her direction.
Even here, in the middle of screaming goblins and blood-slick stone, that look hit her like a physical thing.
'Focus, idiot,' she'd thought.
Another goblin rushed him with a jagged spear, shrieking something about the Absolute that Fin didn't bother listening to. The creature lunged with all the reckless enthusiasm goblins mistook for bravery, spear thrust forward with its full weight behind it.
Fin stepped inside the weapon's reach before the goblin had even finished committing to the attack.
His hand brushed the shaft aside, redirecting the thrust just enough that it slid harmlessly past his shoulder. In the same breath, his other hand drove forward. His fist landed squarely in the goblin's sternum with a dull, heavy crack. The creature lifted clear off its feet, its shriek collapsing into a wet wheeze as the air was violently forced from its lungs.
It struck the floor several feet away and did not move again.
Another goblin attempted to flank him, blade raised high in what it likely imagined was a clever maneuver. Fin pivoted toward the motion, he caught the goblin's wrist mid-swing, twisted sharply, and used the momentum of the attack to drag the smaller creature forward into his rising knee.
It connected, and the creature's jaw snapped. The goblin's head whipped back as its body folded around the impact, collapsing limp against the stone floor. For a moment, three more goblins hesitated in a loose circle around him.
Fin simply swiped his two fingers in the air, sending out a dismantle which cut down the goblins, their heads dropping to the floor and their bodies soon after.
Across the chamber, Astarion appeared behind a goblin warlock, his dagger slipping beneath the creature's jaw before the warlock even realised he was no longer alone. The vampire lowered the twitching body gently, almost politely, before vanishing again into the chaos.
Durge was loving every second of the fight like something that had been waiting all day to be unleashed; she'd frozen a male drow's abdomen and smashed it, blowing his chest open. Lae'zel had already carved a path toward the throne steps, her blade rising and falling with brutal efficiency as goblins foolish enough to stand before her discovered exactly how sharp githyanki steel could be.
Dror Ragzlin stepped down from the throne platform.
The hobgoblin was enormous, even hunched slightly beneath the low ceiling of the chamber. Thick cords of muscle rolled beneath scarred crimson skin, and the armour strapped across his body looked less like proper equipment and more like trophies taken from larger opponents.
His yellow eyes locked onto Fin with growing interest.
"So," Ragzlin growled, adjusting his grip on the massive warhammer resting across his shoulder. "A True Soul who thinks himself a warrior."
Fin didn't respond.
Instead, he reached behind him slightly.
The weapon appeared in his hand with a soft metallic snap as its sections unfolded into a long three-part staff. Playful Cloud settled comfortably into his grip.
Ragzlin barked a rough laugh.
"You bring a stick to face me?"
Fin stepped forward.
The first strike came without warning.
The staff blurred through the air and slammed into Ragzlin's ribs with a crack like splitting timber. The impact drove the hobgoblin sideways, the armour along his flank folding inward under the sheer force of the blow as the air blasted violently from his lungs.
Fin didn't pause.
The second strike followed instantly from the opposite direction, Playful Cloud whipping around to smash into Ragzlin's shoulder. The force of the impact drove the hobgoblin backward several steps.
Ragzlin snarled and swung his warhammer.
The weapon howled through the air, yet Fin leaned back just enough for the hammer to pass within inches of his face.
The follow-up strike came immediately.
Fin stepped inside the hobgoblin's reach and drove the lower end of the staff straight into Ragzlin's abdomen.
The impact lifted the hobgoblin off his feet.
For a moment, even the surrounding goblins hesitated.
Their leader had just been launched across the chamber.
Ragzlin skidded backward several feet before planting his boots again, blood running from the corner of his mouth. The hobgoblin spat onto the floor, wiped his jaw with the back of his hand, and grinned through the blood.
"Good," he rumbled.
Then Fin moved again.
His stance shifted slightly.
Something instinctive settled into place.
Ragzlin's body seemed to divide before his eyes, invisible lines forming across the hobgoblin's frame like weak points waiting to be struck.
Fin stepped forward and swung.
Playful Cloud crashed into Ragzlin's torso along that invisible division.
For a fraction of a second, the air itself seemed to distort.
Then reality cracked.
An explosion of black energy erupted from the impact point with a thunderous boom that shook the entire chamber.
Ragzlin did not stumble backward.
He was blasted across the room like a launched projectile, smashing through his own throne and obliterating the dais behind it in an explosion of splintered wood and shattered stone.
Dust filled the air.
The entire chamber rattled.
Even the goblins stopped fighting for a moment.
Fin lowered the staff slightly.
"…That was new."
The dust slowly settled.
From within the rubble, Dror Ragzlin rose again.
Blood streaked down his temple and chest, and a long cut had opened across his torso beneath the damaged plating. But the hobgoblin was still standing, and Ragzlin spat another mouthful of blood onto the floor and laughed.
The sound had changed.
It was angrier.
"You hit hard," he growled, rolling his shoulders as he lifted the massive warhammer once more. "But you're still soft."
The next swing came immediately.
The hammer descended, smashing into the floor where Fin had been standing only a heartbeat earlier. Stone shattered beneath the impact.
Fin moved around him with quiet ease, stepping past the next swing, ducking beneath another, the warhammer passing through empty air each time by only inches.
Ragzlin's breathing deepened.
The hobgoblin's muscles tightened beneath his skin, veins bulging along his forearms as frustration and fury began to take hold. The next strike came faster than the previous ones, his entire body driving the hammer forward with savage intent.
Fin leaned back just enough for the weapon to miss again.
The hobgoblin's anger sharpened his movements. His strikes grew quicker, more violent, the hammer carving through the air in wide arcs that cracked stone and splintered the broken throne remains.
Fin watched the change carefully.
He was definitely getting faster.
Still not fast enough.
With a casual motion, Fin twirled Playful Cloud once.
Then the staff vanished.
Ragzlin blinked in confusion as the weapon disappeared.
Fin stepped forward again with his empty hands. The hobgoblin's grin returned immediately as he raised the warhammer once more.
"Finally ready to die?"
Fin rolled his shoulders slightly and cracked his knuckles once.
His stance lowered, and he loosened the joints
"Let's see."
Fin closed instantly as he stepped inside the arc of Ragzlin's warhammer. Without the staff in his hands, he looked underprepared against the towering hobgoblin.
Ragzlin swung anyway.
The hammer carved a brutal arc through the air, its iron head humming as it cut downward with enough force to cave in a man's chest.
Fin slipped sideways.
The hammer smashed into the stone floor beside him instead, exploding chips of rock outward as the impact cracked the tiles.
Fin stepped forward into the opening immediately.
His fist shot forward, driving into Ragzlin's ribs with a short, compact strike. The impact forced a grunt from the hobgoblin as the breath left his lungs again, and Fin followed it with another strike to the jaw, snapping Ragzlin's head slightly to the side.
It was almost repetitive. Fin would effortlessly weave the swings of the warhammer and respond with strikes when Ragzlin overextended.
But the hobgoblin was learning.
In his rage, Ragzlin had begun to sharpen his movements instead of clouding them. Each of his misses was coming faster than the last, something Fin would notice.
AS before, Fin could see the next swing coming, so he'd shift his weight to the right, which led to the hammer missing, though only by inches.
But it was closer than before.
Ragzlin snarled and swung again.
Fin ducked beneath it, stepping inside the arc to drive another punch into the hobgoblin's abdomen.
The strike landed cleanly.
Yet Ragzlin barely moved this time.
The hobgoblin's muscles tightened like iron cables beneath his skin as the fury building inside him continued to fuel his strength. His breathing deepened, chest rising and falling like a bellows as his yellow eyes tracked Fin's every movement with growing intensity.
The next swing came faster.
Fin leaned back.
The hammer whistled past his chest.
Too close.
He stepped around Ragzlin's flank and drove an elbow into the side of the hobgoblin's neck. The blow snapped Ragzlin's head sideways, but the creature barely seemed to notice anymore.
The rhythm of the fight was shifting.
Fin could still see every strike coming.
That hadn't changed.
But something else had.
Each swing of the hammer arrived a fraction sooner than expected. Each movement of Ragzlin's shoulders carried more explosive force than the last. Fin adjusted his footwork, sliding away from another overhead strike that shattered the floor behind him.
The hammer missed again.
But this time the wind of the swing brushed against his chest.
Closer.
Ragzlin's grin widened as he noticed it.
The hobgoblin lunged forward with another wide swing.
Fin shifted to dodge...yet the hammer suddenly stopped. The weapon never finished its arc, Ragzlin had let the swing die halfway through.
Fin's eyes widened a fraction too late.
The hobgoblin stepped forward and drove his other fist across Fin's jaw with a brutal, bone-crunching hook.
The impact echoed sharply through the throne room. Fin's head snapped sideways as the blow landed cleanly, his body sliding half a step across the stone floor from the force of it.
Ragzlin grinned, teeth streaked with blood.
Fin stood still for a moment, the pain bloomed across his jaw slowly, a dull ache radiating through his skull where the punch had landed. It had been a long time since someone had managed to hit him cleanly like that.
He tasted iron. Fin spat a thin line of blood onto the stone floor beside him, then he wiped the corner of his mouth with the back of his hand.
He didn't look angry. If anything, he looked thoughtful.
"Not bad," Fin said quietly. "You'd have taken my jaw clean off if I hadn't reinforce the area"
Ragzlin laughed.
"You're slowing down, True Soul."
Fin tilted his head slightly.
"Maybe."
Then his fingers flicked forward. The motion was small.
Almost lazy.
But the air in front of Ragzlin suddenly twisted.
A massive invisible slash ripped across the chamber.
The attack struck the hobgoblin across the torso before he could even react, carving through flesh in a single violent motion. The slash was large enough to hit an unfortunate goblin, who was sliced through completely. The impact blasted Ragzlin backward several steps as a deep gash tore across his chest, blood spraying across the broken throne behind him.
The hobgoblin staggered.
For the first time since the fight began, his expression shifted from amusement to genuine surprise.
Fin rolled his shoulders slightly.
"Turns out," he said calmly, "I've got some tricks too."
Ragzlin stared at the wound across his chest for a brief moment before a low growl rumbled from his throat, and the parasite behind his eye pulsed violently.
Fin felt it a split second before it happened.
A surge of invisible force exploded outward from Ragzlin's body.
"Repulsor."
The word was barely audible beneath the roar of power.
Stone dust, broken wood, and loose debris blasted across the chamber as the invisible force struck everything nearby like a battering ram. Fin planted his feet immediately, bracing himself as the wave hit.
The impact still drove him backward several steps across the stone floor, boots scraping loudly as he slid before finally stopping himself.
Across the room, several goblins were thrown completely off their feet by the blast, a few blasting into a spider den below.
Ragzlin straightened slowly. Blood ran freely down his chest now, dripping from the deep slash carved into his torso but the hobgoblin only grinned wider. His eyes burned with savage excitement as he lifted the warhammer once more.
Fin steadied himself and drew a slow breath through his nose.
His jaw still ached from Ragzlin's punch, the pain wasn't overwhelming. Ragzlin stood amidst the wreckage with blood running down his torso and a grin that had somehow only gotten uglier, the deep slash across his chest glaringly visible.
A soft divine pulse brushed over Fin before he could move again.
Shadowheart's voice cut through the chaos behind him, cool and focused despite the battle still raging around them.
Healing Word.
The magic settled over him in a brief wash of warmth, not enough to erase the pain entirely, but enough to take the edge off it. The ache in his jaw eased. The dull throb in his body lightened. His limbs felt steadier, his breathing a little cleaner, his posture re-centering itself as the small burst of healing stitched him back together just enough to matter.
Not much.
But enough.
Fin glanced briefly over his shoulder.
Shadowheart was still in the thick of the fight, one hand raised from the completed spell while she ducked a goblin's wild swing and crushed its face with her mace. Her eyes flicked toward him for only a second, just long enough to confirm he was still standing, before she turned back to the melee.
He faced forward again.
The warmth from the healing lingered faintly, but another sensation sat more heavily beneath it.
His reserves were an issue. Given how weak his body actually is, Fin had been compensating for that using Cursed Reinforcement. It wasn't at the point where is was dangerously low or anything, but definitely lower than he would have liked. Right now it was compensating for more than just his attacks. It was shoring up his lack of physical strength, reinforcing his frame, giving him the kind of durability his current body couldn't naturally provide against an opponent like Ragzlin.
So far his physical attacks weren't doing much other than annoying the brute, it was only though dismantle he was seeing any actual effect, but the amount of cursed energy he had to put into them for it to do any actual damage was too high for a long exchange.
And that there lied Fin's main problem.
Every exchange with the hobgoblin would cost him.
Every time Ragzlin's hammer came close, every time Fin braced, dodged, reinforced, accelerated, he was spending more energy than he'd have to. Dismantle was powerful, yes, but using it effectively against someone as durable as Ragzlin required a far denser output than carving apart normal enemies.
The slash he'd thrown earlier had hit hard because he had fed it enough power to matter, but he couldn't keep doing that carelessly, especially if this fight continued to drag on. But the fix here was simple.
Fin exhaled once, slow and measured, forcing the battlefield to narrow around what mattered.
Think.
His eyes flicked once to the first deep slash he'd left across Ragzlin's torso, the wound still bleeding freely down the hobgoblin's chest.
Ratio. He had an idea, it wasn't something he'd seen in JJK but he'd try it anyways. Across the throne room, Ragzlin rolled his shoulders and advanced again, dragging the head of his war hammer along the stone for a moment before lifting it back into both hands. Blood ran down his body, but his expression had only grown more eager. He wanted to crush Fin in front of everyone still breathing.
Fin raised one hand slightly.
The air twisted.
This time the slash that formed wasn't as dense, not as heavy with brute output as the one he'd thrown before. He fed less cursed energy into it deliberately,
The slash launched.
Ragzlin saw it coming and began to shift, but not quickly enough. The attack crossed the hobgoblin's torso and intersected almost perfectly with the earlier wound, the line of force biting into the same vulnerable ratio point and deepening the damage far beyond what the reduced output should have achieved.Ragzlin staggered with a sharp grunt as the crossed wound sprayed blood and opened wider across his chest, the two slashes now forming a brutal, jagged X over his torso.
Fin watched the result carefully.
Yes. Less cursed energy but the same damage.
That was useful. That was very useful.
Ragzlin looked down briefly at the fresh wound, then back up at Fin with an expression that was halfway between fury and admiration.
"You little bastard," the hobgoblin muttered, voice thick with blood.
Fin didn't answer.
He was already moving.
The next part would cost him stamina, and he knew it before he even committed. His body still wasn't built for endless explosive bursts, and chaining them in a fight like this would wear on him fast.
He'd done it once before when he was younger, but it didn't matter.
If Ragzlin had become harder to evade at normal pace, then he'd simply have to fight on a different level of movement.
Cursed energy reinforced his legs, then...flash-step.
Fin vanished from where he stood.
Ragzlin's eyes widened just slightly before he swung his hammer on instinct, but the blow smashed through empty air. Fin reappeared at the hobgoblin's flank and drove a sharp punch into the already-damaged side of his torso, right along one of the intersecting wound lines. Ragzlin grunted and twisted, hammer sweeping around in a brutal counter.
Flash-step again.
Fin blurred out of range just before the weapon connected, reappearing low and to the rear, driving a kick into the back of Ragzlin's knee hard enough to buckle the leg for a half-second. The hobgoblin snarled and turned with shocking speed, his hammer whipping around in a savage horizontal arc.
Once again Fin was no longer there, the hammer going through empty air. It was here that the hobgoblins stance was opened.
Fin's fingers twitched.
Two invisible lines snapped forward through the air.
They were not the massive tearing slashes he had thrown earlier, but instead much thinner, and they struck the backs of Ragzlin's legs.
The effect was immediate.
Both of the hobgoblin's knees collapsed violently beneath him as the invisible cuts severed the tendons behind the joints. Ragzlin's roar turned into a raw, strangled scream as his legs failed all at once, his massive body dropping heavily to the stone floor.
The warhammer slipped from his grip as he hit the ground.
Ragzlin snarled through clenched teeth, one arm scrabbling across the floor as he reached desperately for the weapon.
Fin stepped forward.
"It's over." Fin said calmly, and before the hobgoblin's hand could close around the hammer's haft, Fin's palm settled on Ragzlin's shoulder.
It was not a violent motion.
For a fraction of a second, nothing happened.
Cleave activated along the point of contact.
The air tore.
Ragzlin's scream cut through the throne room as the entire arm was severed cleanly at the shoulder, the limb separating from his body in a single brutal slice before tumbling across the blood-slick floor beside the fallen hammer.
Blood erupted from the wound.
The hobgoblin collapsed forward with a choking roar that quickly dissolved into ragged, pained breathing as his strength finally abandoned him.
Fin stood there for a moment, watching the body settle.
Then the adrenaline drained from his limbs all at once.
"...Jesus."
He exhaled sharply and dropped down, planting himself directly on Ragzlin's back as if the hobgoblin were a particularly inconvenient stool. His arms rested loosely on his knees while he leaned forward slightly, catching his breath.
The fight had taken more out of him than he would have liked to admit.
His chest rose and fell steadily, lungs dragging air back into his body while the fading hum of cursed energy beneath his skin slowly stabilized again.
Around them, the throne room had quieted.
The last goblin fighter dropped under Lae'zel's blade with a wet thud. Astarion pulled his dagger free from the throat of a fleeing warlock who had nearly made it to the door before collapsing against the wall. Wyll wiped his sword clean on the sleeve of the fallen human mercenary, while Durge leaned quietly on a wall.
No one else was left standing.
The scattered bodies of goblins and cultists littered the chamber.
The broken throne lay splintered behind Fin where Ragzlin had been blasted through it earlier.
And beneath him, the hobgoblin warlord of the camp wheezed weakly, his remaining hand twitching uselessly against the stone floor as blood pooled beneath his torso.
Fin let out another slow breath.
Then he leaned forward slightly and glanced down at Ragzlin.
"…You were annoying."
Behind him, footsteps approached through the wreckage.
The battle was over.
...
End of Chapter
Word Count - 4477