Three hobgoblins at once is tougher than I remember it being.

  Sorin struggled to move his body fast enough to keep up with his mind. Though he clearly saw every strike coming, getting his sword in place to parry one and dodging another in that small fraction-of-a-second window was difficult. He was still winning, but only by brute-forcing opportunities when he couldn’t take advantage of the natural openings they left.

  Ice blades went flying out every direction, usually targeting a goblin with fatal precision, but occasionally striking one of the three hobgoblins surrounding him. They were particularly shy about their eyes being targeted, and whenever Sorin needed a sliver of a second more than he had, he sent razor-sharp shards of ice at their faces to force them back.

  The truly annoying part of the whole fight was that he had a Speed Burst soulprint in his bags, which was exactly what he needed. Three seconds of acceleration would be enough to slip past a hobgoblin’s guard and kill it. But without the ability to push past his body’s natural limits—and especially with his left hand still crippled—Sorin found himself at a standstill.

  Fortunately, the assault’s opening salvo had been everything he’d hoped for. Rue had killed a hobgoblin already, and Odric was helping her with a second. There were at least thirty goblins dead between Sorin and Nemari’s magic, and no reinforcements of any significance had emerged from the cave to help.

  In another thirty seconds, he’d have reinforcements. The goblins would be dead or scattered, and the rest of his team would converge on him. The only variable left was what came out of the cave, and so far, that had been entirely manageable.

  He could feel his soulspace start to strain as he got closer to maxing it out. Barring any sudden surprises, he’d push through to rank 4 soon. It wouldn’t happen this fight, but he’d been so much more efficient at killing monsters than the rest of his team that his lead would only keep growing. The hobgoblins were worth a lot more than their smaller cousins, but quantity had a quality all its own.

  He wasn’t keeping a count of his kills, but he was betting he’d split the goblins half and half with Nemari. He was also up by one hobgoblin over her, which put him solidly in the lead for this battle. Getting closer. Just a bit more. I bet another camp like this would do it.

  A trio of goblins rushed into melee, emboldened by their leaders holding him at bay. Ice blades tore out their throats before they could even bring their sticks to bear, and as a bonus, he even managed to kill a goblin right in front of one of its hob overlords, creating a tripping hazard to slow the monster up. Not one to squander his hard work, he took the opportunity to aggressively rush the other two.

  Sorin dodged around a heavy axe chop, then sent his blade up at the hobgoblin’s face. It jerked backward frantically, its eyes comically wide as cold steel shaved fur off its cheek. Before it could regain its balance, Sorin’s other hand reached up to point at its face.

  The hobgoblin saw it as a threat, which was a perfectly natural reaction. If it had been thinking clearly, it would have realized the truth. The hand was a distraction, and the ice blade came from Sorin’s chest. While the hob’s eyes were locked onto Sorin’s palm, frantically ducking away to avoid being blasted with whatever magic it thought he was about to summon against it, the actual attack pierced through its chin and into its brain.

  Two left.

  Blind Sense showed him both hobgoblins closing in on him too fast for him to escape. That was the price he paid for his aggression, but with the half a second he’d bought himself, he had an opening to pivot away from the lead hobgoblin and square up with the one who’d had to jump over the corpse to reach him.

  A sword scraped across his armor, but the angle was wrong to punch through, and the alchemical lacquering resisted the slicing edge of the blade. Sorin shifted away from the weapon before the hobgoblin could adjust his strike, then sprayed out a flurry of ice blades to get himself a bit more room. Within seconds, he had both monsters on the defensive, and now there was no third to come at him from behind.

  The fight was as good as over, at least for these two. They knew it, too. He could see it on their faces as they started considering the best way to sacrifice their partner in order to save their own skin. Sorin let it play out, knowing that it would give him an easy kill before he shot the runner in the back.

  They both broke at the same time, running in opposite directions and shoving any hapless goblin within reach behind them to obstruct Sorin’s pursuit. He cut down the goblin blocking his line of fire, then raked the back of one hob’s legs with ice blades. It tumbled down with a pained squeal, but scrambled back upright and kept running.

  Or it tried to, at least. Sorin was there, his sword coming down on its neck to behead the monster. With it dead, he took a minute to clear out some nearby goblins that were now running panicked, then took off after the lone remaining hobgoblin.

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  Pretty much as planned.

  * * *

  Nemari missed the opening minutes of Sorin’s battle while she focused on immolating dozens of goblins. Each one took two or three firebolts to put down, and she wasn’t nearly as fast at conjuring them as Sorin was with his ice.

  Eventually, the goblins were either dead or running, and she got a better look at the battlefield. Rue and Odric were working over a hobgoblin together, with Odric taking the hits on his forearms. They flashed to stone before each strike, but she could still see the injuries briefly before he healed them. Rue was working hard to get behind the monster and finish it off, which turned the whole fight into a running battle as they kept repositioning in response to each other.

  She cleared out a quartet of goblins rushing to help the bigger hobgoblin before they could arrive, then turned her attention to Sorin. Though he had the hardest job by far, she wasn’t worried about him. She honestly wasn’t sure if that was because she had that much faith in him, or if she just didn’t care if he died.

  Inviting him onto their team had been the single greatest mistake of her life, but she’d been blinded by greed when he’d demonstrated his skills. They were not in any way worth the baggage he’d come with, but she hadn’t known about that at the time. All attempts to push him back out of her life had failed as events spiraled out of her control.

  Nemari wasn’t ungrateful for the save, though it galled her to need it in the first place. The last thing she’d expected from her uncle was to be drugged and imprisoned, then handed over to a notorious gang leader. She’d understood why he’d done it. A rank 20 could wipe out their whole family. Only a few of the most powerful climbing families would have anyone strong enough to fight back against someone like that, and the Sildfalls were not among their number.

  The thing was that she wouldn’t have needed saving in the first place if not for Sorin. They would have had a scary but entirely manageable problem dealing with Rue’s handler. Instead of a few rank 5s, they had somehow attracted the interest of a man who could level the whole city by himself if he chose to.

  And what really pisses me off the most is this. I said it was too risky. He said we could do it. And he was right. Again. God, look at him go. Three hobgoblins, and it looks like he’s toying with them. How is he even seeing all those attacks coming at him, let alone adjusting to them? He makes Rue and Odric look like children, and they’re fighting two-against-one.

  That same spark of greed that had made her accept Sorin in the first place flickered to life again. He’d brought problems down on them, first in the form of that trio of rank 1 climbers who’d been baiting monsters to attack them, then again with Samael, but it was impossible to deny the gains. He knew what he was doing, and he fully believed he could have them up to rank 5 in a few weeks. That was an unheard-of amount of growth.

  Nemari’s strength was starting to flag now, but she’d cleared away a few dozen goblins by herself, which made this endeavor the single greatest anima gain she’d ever experienced. As long as Sorin could close out his fight without losing or letting the hobgoblins escape, the battle was all but won, and he’d just killed one of the trio he was fighting.

  The other two broke, only to be swiftly and mercilessly cut down. The part of the plan where Rue and Odric came to help him never materialized because they weren’t fast enough at killing their own target, but it was hard to blame them. It wasn’t like they were slow. A hobgoblin was a tough monster to put down. It was just Sorin who was insanely fast.

  How does he do this? He’s the best melee fighter I’ve ever seen in my life. He punches up three or four ranks against other climbers like it’s nothing. He’s a better mage than me, an expert tactician who adjusts on the fly, and his brain is an encyclopedia of climbing knowledge. I don’t think he’s ever failed to identify a single soulprint or piece of enchanted gear.

  Could his bullshit story actually be true? It’s impossible, but it’s getting harder and harder to pretend there’s any other explanation. If he’s telling the truth, it’s not the whole truth, but at this point, it’s not like he could draw worse trouble down on us, right?

  Setting her personal distaste aside was a lot easier with all the new anima she could feel nestling into her soulspace. The gains had been considerable, despite how individually weak goblins were. Sorin’s plan to target the hobgoblins had worked like a charm, and instead of getting swarmed by an organized goblin tribe, she’d been able to pick them off individually while they ran around confused as each hob pulled them in different directions.

  As she walked, she tossed out a few more firebolts at the few goblins still alive. The death of the final hobgoblin seemed to have broken something in them, or perhaps freed them from some sort of goblin-control ability the hobs had. Whatever the cause, they weren’t interested in fighting back anymore, and that let her kill a few with free shots to the back as they ran away.

  “That went surprisingly well,” she said as she approached.

  “Mostly,” Sorin agreed with a distracted frown. “More goblins went into the cave than I was expecting. There’s definitely something in there if they’re fleeing underground instead of into the foothills.”

  “Something we should be worried about?” Rue asked.

  “Probably not, but I wouldn’t relax just yet.”

  Just as he finished speaking, a rumbling tremor shook the ground. Nemari’s eyes snapped to the cave entrance at once, but there was nothing there. The rest of her team, however, tensed up, and the tremors didn’t stop. “What? What is it?” she asked.

  “You missed this the first time,” Odric explained while Sorin took a few steps forward to put himself firmly between the cave mouth and the rest of the team.

  “I think this one is going to be even bigger,” Rue added. “We’re not in an enclosed space anymore.”

  “Missed what?” Nemari asked.

  “That,” Sorin said, pointing with his sword.

  A massive gray hand grabbed the edge of the cave mouth and pulled, crushing stone beneath its fingers as it hefted a huge body out into the sunlight. An ogre crawled out on its hands and knees, then stood upright, revealing a full fifteen feet of height.

  “Why are the ogres on this floor so damn big?” Sorin asked.