From farther down the tunnel, Isadora saw it all unfold in flashes between torchlight and shadow as she and Kavisha sprinted back from the dead cave spiders.

  She saw Eleonora moving before fear could even touch her, planting herself between Lucien and the charging hobgoblin like a living wall.

  Her shield rising perfectly to meet a blow that would have ended a lesser fighter, the impact ringing through the sewer as the monster’s second hand ripped the shield away and tore something loose in her shoulder.

  Yet still Eleonora stepped forward instead of backing away and drove her sword into the beast’s stomach as blood steamed across her gauntlets as the creature howled in rage rather than pain.

  However, Isadora knew even at a distance the wound would kill it eventually, but it would not be fast enough to save Eleonora.

  She ran harder, her heart in her throat, as the hobgoblin seized Eleonora’s torso and crushed her poor ward while she still tried to fight back refusing to fall, until the monster shook her, slammed her helmet in its grip, and finally hurled her down the tunnel hard enough to crack stone, leaving her sliding broken and blood-smeared against the wall. forcing Isadora to run even harder.

  Her lungs burning while a building rage and terror choked her.

  An inhuman cry tore out of her without thought. It was raw, furious, and terrified.

  “Eleonora...NO!” she cried as she broke at the sight.

  Her boots slammed against wet stone, splashing through shallow sewer runoff as she forced every ounce of speed from muscles already tired from the earlier fighting.

  Her breath burned and her vision tunneled to just the beast.

  The sound of impact had echoed through the tunnel causing something inside Isadora to snap.

  “For Willowvale!” she screamed, voice cracking into something feral as she charged the monster head-on.

  The hobgoblin turned toward her, still roaring from the gut wound Eleonora had inflicted.

  Blood poured down its torso in thick, dark sheets, but it barely seemed to notice. Pain only made it even angrier.

  “Good”, Isadora thought, “let it focus on me and so it will forget the others”.

  As this thought passed through her she came into range of the beast and her sword flashed out into a brutal horizontal cut aimed at the creature's arms.

  Isadora’s blade bit deep into the creature’s right forearm creating a deep gash that began to spray hot blood across her gauntlet and faceplate.

  The beast howled and swung wildly at her, forced now to defend itself instead of finishing Eleonora off or turning on Lucien, rendering her sacrifice moot.

  Thankfully Isadora’s wild charge was all the opening the other party members needed to help Isadora kill the beast.

  Behind the hobgoblin, Kavisha moved like a shadow in the tunnel's darkness.

  Being a skilled rogue, she had already vanished from the creature’s direct line of sight the moment Isadora engaged.

  Now she slipped behind it, boots silent on the wet stone as her daggers reversed in her grip and her eyes flicked once toward Eleonora’s crumpled form as a sudden unexpected rage flashed hot and sharp at the sight before she focused back on the target.

  Even though it hadn’t been long, the girl had grown on her faster than Kavisha would have liked to admit.

  She’d realized she really meant it when she told Lucien the night before that she couldn't con the girl.

  Now that earnest and naive girl had very likely just sacrificed her life to save Lucien, her best friend, and possibly the only real family she had left in the world.

  The realization sat like cold iron in Kavisha’s chest, heavy and unwelcome, sharpening into something dangerously close to grief and something even sharper that she hadn't felt in a long time a fury at the world and its injustice.

  Stolen story; please report.

  Across the tunnel, Lucien staggered upright, bracing himself against the slick stone wall as his legs threatened to fold beneath him.

  His vision swam in and out of focus, the light of the tunnel smearing into long streaks of gold and shadow.

  His mana channels felt flayed open, like someone had scraped them raw with ground glass and then poured liquid fire into the wounds.

  Every breath made his chest ache; every heartbeat sent another pulse of burning pressure through his skull.

  But he knew he couldn’t collapse.

  Especially not now, after Eleonora had thrown herself in front of that monster for him.

  The bitter irony clawed at him.

  He was a towering mass of muscle, broad-shouldered and battle-trained, a man most people assumed would be the one standing in front when things went bad.

  Yet when it mattered most, he had frozen, became locked in place by raw, animal fear while a sixteen-year-old girl had stepped forward without hesitation to face something that could tear her apart with its bare hands.

  The shame settled deep and heavy in his gut, far heavier than the pain he was feeling.

  So even though every instinct screamed at him to stop casting and even though he could feel the mana poisoning gnawing at his very soul and with the very real risk of burning out his channels permanently he lifted his staff anyway.

  “Just… one more…” he whispered, voice rough and unsteady.

  Mana gathered slowly. Painfully. Like dragging barbed wire through his veins. The air around the staff shimmered weakly, unstable, nothing like the roaring power he normally commanded.

  Not enough for a full casting. Not even close.

  But enough.

  The hobgoblin raised its good arm, muscles bunching as it prepared to backhand Isadora into the stone wall hard enough to probably turn her to a red pulp.

  Lucien released his spell.

  The fireball that formed was small compared to his earlier one he’d used against the spiders, its edges flickering unevenly and the spellwork sloppy and imperfect. However, at this distance, it didn’t need any elegance.

  It just needed to hit his target.

  With surprising accuracy for such a shoddy spell his aim was true, and the fireball detonated directly in the creature’s face.

  Which lit up as a white-orange light filled the tunnel. Heat rolled outward in a tight, violent wave.

  The hobgoblin screamed, a raw, animal sound, as it clawed at its own eyes.

  Burning air blasted into its lungs, searing the creature's throat and sinuses while stealing both its breath and focus in one brutal instant.

  “NOW!” Kavisha shouted from her hiding spot behind the beast as she surged forward, moving like a shadow given life.

  Both of her blades drove low in brutal, precise arcs.

  The steel biting deep into the backs of the creature’s knees, and with an artful and surgical cruelty she severed the thick hamstrings that anchored hobgoblins massive frame.

  The reaction was a practically instanter as the hobgoblin’s legs simply stopped working.

  The large beast crashed to its knees with a thunderous impact that sent a tremor through the tunnel floor and splashed filthy sewer water outward in a wide ripple.

  Isadora didn’t hesitate for even a heartbeat.

  As the creature toppled forward, blind, crippled, and disoriented, she let her shield fall.

  It slammed against stone with a heavy clang as she shifted her grip, locking both hands around the hilt of her sword.

  She stepped in close so that she was well inside the reach of the hobgoblins wild and panicked flailing arms.

  “For Lady Eleonora,” she growled, her voice low and deadly in that moment as she drove her blade forward with everything she had.

  The sword punched through the front of the hobgoblin’s throat, tearing through the thick neck muscle before finally severing the spinal column.

  However, she didn't stop and kept pushing till her blade came out the back of the hobgoblin's neck in a spray of black-red blood.

  As the creature convulsed violently, hands clawing at empty air, strength still monstrous but already fading its body jerked once, then once more.

  On the second convulsion, the power simply drained out of it, like water pouring from a shattered vessel.

  The hobgoblin finally sagged forward into an awkward kneeling posture, its head lolling at an unnatural angle as blood poured down its chest and pooled beneath its now lifeless body.

  The residual heat of its body causing the blood to steam faintly in the cold, damp sewer air.

  While the hobgoblin was most definitely dead now but for several seconds, no one moved for a brief moment.

  Then Isadora yanked the blade free with a wet slurping sound and stepped back as her breath came hard and ragged, watching warily for any sign of movement for another second.

  Before she acted with a grim efficiency, as she grabbed the creature’s head and pulled it back so she bring her blade down in a brutal, final stroke to sever its head.

  The neck parted and she grabbed the severed head by the top of the skull and without ceremony shoved it into her storage ring.

  Kavisha, meanwhile, circled the hobgoblin once before nudging the body with her boot. “Yeah,” she said hoarsely. “That’s done,” the shock still evident in her voice.

  Isadora barely nodded at Kavisha's comment as she was already turning and running toward her ward.