Jesse moved ahead of them, low and quiet, an arrow already nocked.
The three of them waited behind some thick bushes, fifteen yards from the cave entrance. Ashara could see the two goblin guards from here. One was leaning against the rock wall with a spear across its lap. The other was squatting near the entrance, picking at something on the ground with its club next to it.
Neither of them was paying attention.
Jesse stopped behind a tree, drew, and let the arrow go.
It hit the spear goblin in the throat. The thing slumped sideways without a sound. The club goblin looked up, confused, its mouth opening, and the second arrow went through its eye before it could make a noise. It dropped face-first into the dirt.
Two seconds. Just like he said.
Jesse looked back at them and jerked his chin toward the entrance.
Daniela went first. She moved fast, lance low, and stopped at the cave mouth. She looked inside, then waved them forward. Ashara followed, Mira behind her.
The cave smelled like rot.
The kind of scent that stuck to the back of your throat and made your eyes water. Ashara breathed through her mouth and tried not to think too hard about what was causing it.
The tunnel was narrow. Wide enough for two people side by side, but not comfortably. The walls were rough stone, slick with moisture, and the floor sloped downward. There was no light except for a faint greenish glow from patches of moss on the ceiling.
Daniela moved forward, her lance angled so the tip wouldn't scrape the walls. Ashara kept close behind her, fists up, mana ready.
[Okay. Stay calm. Stay behind Daniela. Don't punch the walls.]
They made it maybe forty yards in before they ran into the first goblin.
It came around a bend in the tunnel, alone, carrying what looked like a bone with meat still on it. It saw Daniela and shrieked. Daniela's lance went through its chest before the shriek finished. She pulled the blade free, kicked the body aside, and kept moving.
[Damn.]
"Stay close," Daniela said, not looking back.
Another thirty yards. The tunnel curved left. Mira's ears were flat against her head, her daggers out, her eyes on every shadow. Ashara could hear her breathing behind her, fast but controlled.
A second goblin dropped from a ledge above them.
It landed on Ashara's shoulders.
[FUCK—]
She grabbed the thing by its arm and ripped it off her, slamming it into the wall. It bounced off the stone and hit the floor, dazed. Ashara stomped on its chest, pinning it, and drove her reinforced fist into its skull. One hit. The skull caved and the goblin went limp.
She stood there for a second, breathing hard, goblin blood on her knuckles.
[That was faster than last time.]
"Valoryn." Daniela was watching her. "Keep moving."
"Right. Yeah."
They kept moving.
The tunnel opened up after another minute, and that's when Ashara saw the body.
It was a man, face-down in the dirt, wearing leather armor. An adventurer. His sword was still in its sheath. His pack was torn open, stuff scattered around him. There were claw marks across his back, deep, and a lot of blood, dried brown, pooled around his torso.
Mira crouched next to him and checked his neck.
"Dead. Day or two, at least."
"One of the missing party," Daniela said.
Ashara stared at him. He looked young. Maybe her age, maybe younger.
[He came in here to do the same thing we're doing.]
"We keep going," Daniela said.
They stepped over the body and continued.
The tunnel opened into a cavern.
Ashara's stomach dropped.
The space was huge.
At least fifty feet across and tall enough that the ceiling disappeared into shadow above them. The moss was thicker in here, casting the whole chamber in a sick, pale green glow. Rocks jutted up from the floor like broken teeth. And between the rocks, around the rocks, on top of the rocks, goblins.
A lot of goblins.
Ashara counted eight before she stopped counting because more kept showing up from behind the rocks. Ten. Twelve. Fifteen. Some had weapons, rusty knives, clubs, and sharpened sticks. Some didn't. All of them were looking right at the tunnel where the three of them were standing.
[That's not eight to twelve.]
"Daniela," Ashara whispered.
"I see them."
"That's way more than the contract said."
"I know."
Daniela took a slow step back, her lance still raised, her eyes on the cavern. Mira had gone dead still beside Ashara, her tail rigid, her daggers white-knuckled in her fists.
"We're leaving," Daniela said, quiet, firm. "This is beyond the contract. We report back to the guild and let a higher-ranked party handle it."
Ashara didn't argue. She was about to step back herself when the sound hit her.
Screaming.
Not goblin screaming. Human screaming. Muffled, coming from somewhere deeper in the cave, past the goblins, past the rocks, through a second tunnel on the far side of the chamber.
Someone was alive in there.
"There's someone—"
"I hear it," Daniela said. Her jaw tightened. "It doesn't change anything. We are four amateur adventurers against a nest three times the expected size. We leave. Now."
"They're going to die in there."
"They might already be dead."
"They're screaming, Daniela. Dead people don't scream."
Daniela looked at her. Her dark brown eyes were flat and hard. She wasn't being cruel. She was doing the math. Four students (three, really, given that Jesse wasn't here currently), fifteen-plus goblins, an unknown cave system, one dead adventurer from the last team that tried this. The math didn't work.
"Our responsibility is to ourselves," Daniela said. "Your life, your call."
Ashara had a hard time arguing against that.
But another scream came through.
Longer this time, ragged, the kind that tore itself out of someone's throat because they couldn't hold it in anymore.
[Fuck.]
"Yeah." Ashara looked at the cavern. At the goblins. At the dark tunnel on the far side where the screaming was coming from. "My life. My call."
She looked at Mira.
"You in?"
Mira's ears were flat. Her tail was still. Her golden eyes went from Ashara to the goblins to the tunnel and back.
"..."
She tightened her grip on her daggers.
"Fuck it."
Ashara flooded her fists with mana and ran.
The goblins saw her coming.
The nearest three surged forward, shrieking, knives up. Ashara threw herself into the first one, shoulder-first, and sent it tumbling. She caught the second with a reinforced hook to the jaw. It spun and hit the ground. The third slashed at her arm and she pulled back, pivoted, drove her knee into its chest.
Mira was right there with her. She didn't fight head-on. She cut, moved, cut again, sliding between goblins, her daggers opening throats and legs in quick, clean strokes.
More goblins closed in. A lot more.
[Shit, shit, shit—]
A lance punched through a goblin that had been going for Ashara's back. The blade caught it mid-jump and pinned it to the cavern floor. Daniela ripped her weapon free and stepped up beside Ashara, her expression cold.
"For the record," Daniela said, putting her lance through another goblin, "this is highly idiotic."
Ashara grinned at her, blood on her knuckles.
"Noted."