They pushed through.
The goblins kept coming and they kept killing them. Ashara lost count after the seventh or eighth. Her knuckles were split open again, her arms were covered in scratches, and her mana was draining faster than she wanted to think about. Every reinforced punch cost her, and she was throwing a lot of punches.
Daniela fought like she'd been doing this her whole life. Her lance moved in clean, efficient thrusts, each one finding a throat or a chest, and she never wasted a motion. She didn't swing wide, didn't overextend, didn't get hit. She just killed things and moved forward.
[She's good. She's really, really good.]
Mira had disappeared at some point during the push, doubling back toward the cave entrance. Ashara didn't have time to wonder why before another goblin lunged at her and she had to put her fist through its face.
They cleared the main chamber and found a second tunnel on the far side. Narrower than the first, sloping downward. The screaming had stopped, which was worse than it continuing.
Daniela looked at her.
"Still want to keep going?"
"Yeah."
"Then stay behind me."
They moved into the tunnel. It went deeper than Ashara expected, curving and dipping, the air getting colder and wetter the further they went. The moss thinned out and the darkness got thicker until Ashara could barely see Daniela's back three feet in front of her.
Then the tunnel opened up, and they stopped.
The chamber was massive.
Way bigger than the first one. The ceiling was high enough that Ashara couldn't see it at all, just black emptiness above them. They were standing on a natural stone ledge, maybe twenty feet above the chamber floor, looking down at the whole thing like a balcony.
And what they were looking down at made Ashara's blood go cold.
In the center of the chamber, a goblin sat cross-legged on a raised stone platform. It was bigger than the others, draped in what looked like stitched-together animal hides, with bones and teeth strung around its neck. Its eyes were closed. Its hands were raised, palms up, fingers twitching, and mana, visible mana, thin glowing threads of it, poured from a circle of bodies arranged around the platform and fed directly into the goblin's outstretched hands.
The bodies were human. Five of them, arranged in a ring, unconscious, still breathing. Adventurers, from the look of their gear. The missing party, plus a few others. The mana threads pulled out of their chests in slow, steady streams, like the goblin was drinking them dry.
The rest of the goblins were down there too. Dozens of them, scattered around the chamber floor, some standing guard, some just watching the ritual. Way too many.
Footsteps behind them. Ashara turned. Mira came through the tunnel with Jesse right behind her, bow in hand, breathing hard.
"Went back and grabbed him," Mira said, quiet. "Figured we'd need the arrows."
"Good call," Ashara whispered.
Jesse crouched at the edge of the ledge and looked down. His face went tight.
"The fuck is that thing?"
"That," Daniela said, her voice low and flat, "is a Goblin Shaman. C-rank."
[C-rank.]
"We're F-rank students," Jesse said.
"I'm aware."
The shaman hadn't noticed them. It was focused on the ritual, eyes closed, mana flowing. The goblins below weren't looking up either. They had maybe a minute, maybe less, before someone spotted them.
Ashara looked at the captives. Their faces were pale. One of them, a woman, had her mouth open like she'd been screaming before she passed out. The mana threads were getting thinner.
[They're dying. It's draining them and they're dying.]
"Okay," Ashara said. "Here's what we do."
Daniela looked at her.
"Jesse, you stay up here. High ground, pick off as many of the small ones as you can." Jesse nodded. "Mira, you get down there and get the captives moving. Cut them free, wake them up, drag them, whatever it takes. Get them out."
"Got it," Mira said.
"Daniela, you go for the shaman. You've got the reach and you're the best fighter here."
"I appreciate the confidence, but I don't think I can kill a C-Rank monster."
"That's not what I'm asking for. Just distract it. Disrupt its ritual. That's all."
Daniela's expression didn't change.
"And you?"
"I run interference. Keep the goblins off everyone else."
"That's dubious at best."
"It's my call."
Daniela stared at her for a second. Then she tightened her grip on her lance.
"Fine."
They moved.
Jesse put an arrow into the first goblin before they even made it off the ledge. Mira dropped down the side of the stone wall, fast and quiet, hitting the ground running. Daniela vaulted off the edge, landed hard, and charged straight for the platform.
Ashara jumped.
She hit the chamber floor and the goblins swarmed her.
[Here we go.]
The first one came from her left.
She caught it with a reinforced straight that caved its jaw in and sent it spinning. Two more rushed her from the right. She pivoted, threw a hook into the first, ducked under the second's club, and drove her knee up into its chin. Teeth scattered across the stone floor.
An arrow hissed past her ear and a goblin behind her dropped.
[Thanks, Jesse.]
More came. She kept swinging. Hook, jab, pivot, hook. Celeste's combo, drilled into her muscles over just hours of training. Her fists were bleeding and her mana was burning down fast, but the goblins kept coming and she kept hitting them.
Across the chamber, Daniela reached the platform.
She thrust her lance at the shaman and a burst of green mana erupted from the creature's palm, deflecting the blade sideways. Daniela stumbled, recovered, thrust again. Another burst. The shaman's eyes were open now, yellow and furious, its hands weaving patterns in the air. Every time Daniela got close, the mana pushed her back.
[It's blocking her. That thing is blocking a lance with magic.]
Mira was with the captives, cutting ropes, shaking shoulders, trying to wake them up. One of them stirred. The rest didn't move.
Jesse's arrows were thinning the crowd, but Ashara could hear the gaps between shots getting longer. He was running out.
A goblin slashed her across the ribs. She grunted, grabbed it by the skull, and slammed it into the ground. Another one jumped on her back and she threw it off. Another came from the front, knife first. She sidestepped, caught its arm, and broke it over her knee. The goblin shrieked.
[I'm burning through mana too fast. I can't keep this up.]
Daniela thrust again. The shaman blocked again. This time, though, it didn't just deflect. It screamed, a sound that rattled Ashara's teeth, and threw both its hands forward. The mana threads connected to the captives went taut, then snapped, all at once, and all that stolen mana, every drop of it, rushed back into the shaman's hands and condensed into a single, blinding point of light aimed straight at Daniela.
Daniela saw it coming. She raised her lance to guard.
It wasn't going to be enough. Ashara could tell. That was too much mana for a guard to stop. That was too much mana for anything to stop.
Ashara was closer.
She didn't think about it.
She stepped in front of Daniela, planted her feet, put her hands up, and the blast hit her square in the chest.
It was like getting hit by a river.
The mana slammed into her and she felt her body try to reject it, her skin burning, her bones vibrating, every nerve screaming at once. Her vision went white. Her ears rang. She could feel the force of it pushing her back, her feet sliding on the stone, and she gritted her teeth and held her ground.
But, then, something happened.
Her mana pool opened up.
Not the way it usually did, not the slow, steady draw she used for reinforcement. This was different. This was her pool ripping itself wide open, expanding, pulling, drinking in every drop of mana the shaman had thrown at her. It poured into her like water into a dry well, filling spaces she didn't know she had, rushing through her veins, her muscles, her bones, deeper and deeper until she felt like she was going to burst.
Then something cracked.
Somewhere inside her, past the muscle and the bone and the mana, something that had been locked her entire life split open.
The white faded. The ringing stopped.
Ashara stood there, her hands still up, her feet still planted. Steam rose off her skin. Her whole body was humming.
She felt different.
She looked down at her hands. Her fists were glowing. Faint, amber, warm.
[What the hell just happened to me?]