The arrow sliced the air with a shrill whistle.
"Down!" He shouted.
Aaron dropped instantly, the arrow snapping into the tree trunk behind him with a thwack. His eyes darted up to meet mine—sharp, alert, already calculating.
They were waiting for us.
From the trees and tall grass, they poured in: twenty-six goblins, more than I'd ever seen in one place. Wiry limbs, too-large heads, jagged teeth flashing in cruel grins. Crude weapons clanged as they emerged—rusted knives, chipped axes, splintering spears.
Aaron straightened beside me, exhaling slowly. "No running?"
"No point," I said. "We stand."
He rolled his shoulders. "Then stay close."
The first wave hit like a crashing tide.
I met it head-on, grabbing the nearest goblin by the throat mid-leap and slamming it into the dirt. Its partner came from the side I twisted, caught its swing on my forearm, and broke its jaw with a backfist. Bone crunched. Blood flew.
Aaron danced behind me—fast, fluid, methodical.
He weaved under a spear thrust and pivoted, delivering a sharp palm strike to the goblin's chin. As it reeled, he spun low, swept its legs from under it, and drove his elbow into its neck before it hit the ground.
Another goblin charged. Aaron sidestepped cleanly and trapped the creature's wrist between his forearm and bicep. With a clean jerk, he disarmed it and snapped the elbow with a precise motion. His knee followed—into its ribs, then up into its nose.
He fought like he'd been born to it an artist with fists.
Me? I was the hammer.
A goblin lunged, blade high. I caught it by the arm, twisted until it screamed, and hurled it into two others. One tried to flank me I elbowed it in the temple, then grabbed its leg and used it to bludgeon another. Their shrieks were loud, but short.
I turned in time to see Aaron leap up, using a tree stump to vault into a flying knee that shattered a goblin's collarbone. He landed clean, ducked under another swing, and landed a lightning-fast combination: jab, jab, hook, elbow—each hit a punctuation mark.
Twelve down. Still more coming.
We fought back-to-back now.
Aaron called out, "Three on your right!"
"I see 'em."
I ducked under a flailing blade and drove my fist into the goblin's gut, then crushed it with a knee to the chest. Another stabbed toward my ribs—I twisted, letting the tip glance off, and responded with a headbutt that flattened it.
Aaron slipped between two more. He caught one by the wrist, twisted its arm behind its back, and used the body as a shield against the second's blade. Then, with a pivot, he brought his heel around and cracked the second's skull.
He didn't waste movement. Every strike had purpose.
Watching him fight, something shifted inside me.
Maybe I wasn't the only one going easy during training... Maybe he was, too.
It made my chest tighten—half pride, half something else. He was stronger than I'd given him credit for.
I took a slash across the shoulder shallow, but hot. It pissed me off.
"Still breathing?" Aaron grunted.
"Barely," I said, shaking off the sting.
Twenty down.
The remaining six were smarter. They circled us, snarling, waiting for an opening.
That's when the goblin archer—the leader—stepped out from the treeline again. Black-leather scraps clung to its wiry frame. Its eyes were calm. Focused.
Aaron's eyes met mine. No words. We both knew.
He darted forward, reckless and fast. The archer loosed an arrow. I moved, trying to dodge it but I was hit in the back, after that poor excuse of a dodge with a grunt i threw Aaron forward, like a boulder from a sling.
He crashed into the archer and tackled it to the ground. A blur of fists followed. Crunching bone. Screams.
The remaining goblins broke.
Aaron stood slowly, breath ragged, his knuckles raw and bleeding. "That was… twenty-six, right?"
I nodded, panting. "You were faster than usual."
He smiled despite the blood. "Didn't feel like it."
We stood in the aftermath, surrounded by the corpse. My shoulder throbbed. Aaron's lip was split. But we were standing.
And the shadows felt deeper than they had before.
"Someone sent them," I muttered.
Aaron looked at the bodies, brow furrowed. "They were coordinated. Not a random swarm."
We turned toward the woods again, toward home.
But something told me this was only the beginning.
The sun dipped low as we left the forest, the sky burning orange and gold behind us. Aaron limped slightly, one arm clutched to his side, breath still uneven. I matched his pace, my own shoulder bleeding through a makeshift wrap. We should have been exhausted. But we were wired.
Something wasn't right.
It started with the smell.
Blood—lots of it—carried on the breeze long before we reached the hill crest. But it wasn't ours, and it wasn't fresh. The stink was thicker, heavier, like iron cooked in the sun.
Aaron was the first to speak. "You smell that?"
I nodded. "Death."
We crested the rise.
Then stopped cold.
Bodies. Everywhere.
Dozens of them, scattered like blackened leaves across the field leading to our house. Goblins—at least fifty, maybe more—lay where they had fallen. Some had been ripped open. Others had bones sticking out at wrong angles, throats crushed, skulls caved in like eggs. A few had weapons still clutched in dead fingers, useless now.
I scanned the field, slowly. There were no traps. No signs of magic. No other corpses.
Just goblins.
All of them torn down by someone fast… and terrifyingly efficient.
Aaron broke the silence. "This was…"
He didn't finish the sentence.
We both knew.
Our boots squelched through the gore as we made our way down the slope, past torn bodies and broken blades. The air buzzed with flies, thick and loud like static. Not a single goblin had made it past the garden fence. They'd gotten close—some of them—but none had entered the house.
The door was open.
Inside, our father stood at the basin, rinsing blood from his hands. His sleeves were rolled up. His tunic was soaked in crimson. His face, calm. Not shaken. Not angry.
Just… tired.
He looked at us, then at the wounds on our arms and ribs. His brow furrowed, soft and fatherly again, as if we were children who'd scraped our knees.
"You're hurt," he said gently.
"We were ambushed," I replied. "Twenty-six of them."
Aaron added, "We killed them all. Took some hits."
Father nodded slowly. "Good."
There was silence again, heavy and thick.
Then I said it. "There were fifty. Maybe more. Outside."
He dried his hands with a cloth, folded it neatly, and placed it on the table.
"I counted forty-nine," he said. "But one crawled into the well. So… fifty."
Aaron sat down hard on the bench, eyes wide. "You did that?"
"They came while I was preparing lunch." He simply said."Didn't knock."
"You killed them all. Alone."
He gave a slight shrug. "They didn't leave me much of a choice."
I stared at his hands. No sword. No shield. No armor. Just blood and thick forearms and knuckles that looked raw from impact.
Aaron whispered, "But you're just a farmer."
Our father looked at us then, something flickering behind his calm gaze. Not anger. Not pride.
Something older. Sadder.
"I was many things," he said. "Once."
My mouth was dry. "You're going to have to tell us."
He looked past us, toward the blood-soaked fields. "I know."
Then he moved to the fire, stoked it gently, and said, "But first, eat. You'll need your strength."
Aaron and I sat at the table, but the silence was different now. Not just stunned. Awed. We'd known him as the man who taught us to build fences and sharpen tools. Who made lentils too often and forgot where he left his boots.
But the man who left fifty corpses in the grass with his bare hands?
That wasn't a farmer.
That was something else entirely.
And as the shadows grew longer outside, one thing settled deep in my gut.
If our father had to become that man again…
Then something dark was coming.