Lucy

I knew that I’d likely never see Cyrus again as soon as we were forced to part ways in the camp. I hated it, and almost turned back to go and drag him out with me multiple times.

The only thing that stopped me from doing so was the fact that I was struggling just to survive myself. I had almost been crushed by several enormous chunks of glowing emberlite and my helmet had taken a few dents from heavy rocks tumbling down onto me.

So far I was still in one piece, just with a few scratches and bruises, but without my armour I would have likely already been seriously injured. I was taking full advantage of my size and speed to slip through the camp and the many outlaws who were also trying to flee.

Thankfully for me, most of the outlaws seemed to be heading towards a different exit to the camp to the one I was. I was headed for the gate that Cyrus and I had entered through, but I still ended up running into a couple of the bandits on my way.

Most of them were so shocked just at the sight of me, a half-goblin wielding a huge battleaxe and wearing a full suit of gem-studded armour, that they barely had time to react before I was upon them. I tried not to kill anyone, mostly taking out kneecaps with the flat of my axe or using my momentum to knock the outlaws down before I kept running past them.

I didn’t have the time to waste getting into a full on fight with any large groups. We were all just trying our hardest to escape the ravine, and I wasn’t about to start putting my own life in danger just to take theirs.

In truth, I had never liked the part of the job that involved killing people anyway. It was one of the reasons I had taken to the Scorch in the first place. Sure the pay was better than the majority of armies, and I could support my parents better working out here, but fighting monsters instead of other people was far preferable to me.

There were of course missions where we were sent to deal with particularly dangerous outlaws, mad mages, rogue bounty hunters and other threats of that type. The rooks were well-known enough in the Scorch that plenty would surrender as soon as they saw us coming, but there was more than one occasion where I had no other choice but to use lethal force in a fight against people trying to kill myself and my fellow rooks.

It always felt bad, but we all found ways to make our peace with it. Some were more comfortable than others with the idea, but it had always deeply upset me and I would always try to fight non-lethally when it came to dealing with people.

Crystal creatures on the other hand? I had no qualms about shattering them with the most violent of force. I encountered quite a few of them as I ran through the swirling starsand that had engulfed the camp ever since the rocks and crystals started falling.

Scorpions, vultures and spiders seemed to be the most common that the outlaws were “keeping” but I also spotted glittering ruby stag beetles, a couple of gem-encrusted centipedes that made my skin crawl and even a few regular chickens just clucking around the place in a panic.

Most of these creatures were also escaping the canyon, some scuttling away up the walls and others skittering in the same direction that the majority of the outlaws were running in, but one or two seemed to be milling around aimlessly, as if they weren’t sure what they were supposed to be doing.

I tried to steer clear of as many as these creatures as I could, and the few that did cross my path I disabled as quickly as possible, aiming for legs and eyes or just delivering a fatal blow as quickly as I could if it was possible. I would normally have used this opportunity to take out as many of the creatures as possible, taking away what must have been a valuable resource for the mysterious outlaws, but if I got caught or slowed down I knew that death was more than likely.

Once I finally reached the large wooden gate that Cyrus and I had entered the camp through, I was forced to dive to the ground as a powerful stream of shimmering liquid crystal shot through the space I had been a second before.

I saw it collide with the remains of a tent that had been flattened in the panicked evacuation, quickly covering the material in a layer of rapidly hardening blue crystal spikes. I swore under my breath and turned to face the creatures, throwing my revolver to the side and gripping the shaft of my battleaxe with both hands. If crystal webbing was in the mix, I knew the firearm wouldn’t do me much good anyway.

Sure enough, I found myself staring down a group of three spiders, too few to call a swarm but still enough to pose a huge problem for me. They were blocking my escape, two of them perched on the large wooden palisade I needed to pass through while one was sat on the ground between me and the others.

I didn’t fancy my odds in the slightest, especially given the fact that reinforcements could appear from behind me at any time. The spiders were all covered in glittering blue sapphire armour, which was at least something I could manage, but the fact that they were positioned in such a way that the distant ones could provide ranged support for the closer was definitely going to be an issue.

Knowing I didn’t have time to come up with a plan, and that the odds were only going to get worse the longer I waited, I charged forward for the closest spider. The two perched on the wall fired off two more ropes of crystal web, but they were too slow.

I had already swept my axe upwards and into the underbelly of the sapphire spider before me, cracking through the crystalline armour where it was weakest and lifting up the creature with the force of my blow. It acted as a makeshift shield for me, blocking the twin streams of crystal webbing as the spider let out a pained screech and tried to impale me on one of its many razor sharp legs.

I winced as the spider’s front-most legs came down on me hard. The left limb wasn’t able to puncture my armour, bouncing off my shoulder plating and leaving a deep dent. I wasn’t so lucky with the right leg, as that one was able to strike me with enough force to punch right through the crystal-reinforced plate and into my side.

The spiked limb thankfully didn’t cut too deep before it withdrew, but my side was now bleeding quite heavily and there were chunks of sharp crystal that had splintered off from my suit of armour into me. It hurt like hell, but it was far from the worst injury I had sustained on the job.

I had to keep fighting, couldn’t afford to slow down. Even if my muscles were starting to burn with exhaustion the adrenaline would be enough to fuel me for now.

First off, I shifted my grip on the battleaxe to a much lower one, giving me the leverage I needed to topple the struggling spider onto its back. It left me exposed but I didn’t plan on staying put for long. As the spider flipped over I went with it, ripping my axe free and propelling myself through the air with a smooth flip.

I landed close to the gate, which left me with the two sapphire spiders perched on the palisade while the first screeched and struggled. It would likely manage to flip itself upright soon enough, so I moved fast and threw my axe overhead with both hands.

The rapidly spinning emerald blade smashed through three crystal reinforced legs of the spider to the left of me and buried deep into the wood with a loud “THUNK!”. The injured arachnid fell to the ground, hissing and unleashing a wild spray of liquid crystal as it went.

I managed to duck and weave away from the worst of it, using the fallen spider as a springboard to leap up and rip my weapon free from the wall. Despite everything unfolding, I couldn’t help but grin slightly as I fell and brought the battleaxe down on the still-screaming spider underneath me, shattering and killing it with enough force to whip up a miniature storm of starsand around us.

My life back in Kenbry definitely hadn’t been easy for me. It was fine when I was young, and I still had a lot of good memories of playing with the other kids who lived nearby.

When it came to school, however, I noticed a lot of those same kids keeping a significant distance from me and talking about me behind my back. They didn’t want to be my friend anymore and I couldn’t figure out why at that age.

I had struggled with the academic side of school but always excelled when it came to anything physical. I could run faster, jump higher and lift more than the majority of the other human kids. I thought that this may have been what helped me make friends again, but ultimately it made things worse.

It turned out a lot of the other kids had been hearing stories about goblins from their parents growing up, and once we reached school and a lot of those parents realised their kids would be in the same class as a half-goblin? The stories became a lot more like a warning.

Goblins have a pretty poor reputation in general, a lot of them forming tribes far away from human cities and some even raiding human villages fairly regularly. My own family wasn’t like that and I had been born out of a loving relationship; but the majority of people didn’t care.

When humans saw me, I was nothing but a reminder of the ugliness and horror that other member of my species chose to cause. I wasn’t Lucy, I was just some abomination to them.

Proving that I was physically superior in a lot of ways to them definitely didn’t help. It just made me more a monster to them. I loved my parents deeply, and they tried their best to help with it, but our home had rarely felt like one to me after I started to grow up and notice how the others were treating me.

The rooks, on the other hand? They were people that not only respected me despite my differences but celebrated them. I had been nervous upon first joining, but my first squad had been nothing but kind. We had all pushed one another to grow stronger. There had been some light hazing and jokes but nobody had ever treated me as lesser for my mixed race.

The rooks had taught me that I shouldn’t have to hide who I was, and I had met a lot of people like me who weren’t human. My first squad leader had been a humanoid stag beetle and my first bunk mate an avian species that had shed feathers like crazy. It had been great to meet others that understood my experience.

More than that, after saving my first caravan from a swarm of vicious howlite hornets I had seen people cheer for and thank me. I had gone from outcast to hero in their eyes.

I knew better than to let that feeling go to my head. I hadn’t suddenly become a hero overnight. I was the same half-goblin I had always been. But now? People could see me for who I truly was.

I could proudly be Lucy, daredevil destroyer of crystal creatures, lover of gambling, drinking fresh geode juice, hot guys, lovely ladies and beautiful people of all walks of life, no matter where they fell on the spectrum of gender or what race they were. It felt good to be myself, and it felt awesome to let loose on a bunch of monsters like these spiders.

That was why I couldn’t stop myself from grinning as I whirled about, simultaneously smashing the first spider as it pounced for me and blocking the latest stream of crystal webbing from the other with the flat of my axe.

The first spider reeled back in pain but I had a problem. The emerald head of my axe had been coated in rapidly hardening crystal and it was now more akin to a huge and heavy mace than my easily maneuverable axe.

I whipped it around, trying to free it of some of the webbing before it hardened but to no avail. I did however notice that I could still swing it around quite easily. It was a strange shape, sure, and quite a bit heavier, but I could make that work for me just fine.

The spider that had pounced towards me was still reeling from my last blow that had fractured the armour around its head, so I had the time I needed to focus on the one still clinging to the palisade.

I didn’t like my odds of throwing my brand new sapphire mace, as it was far from an aerodynamic shape and I had no training with it. Instead, I simply dashed forward and twirled the shaft around above my head before slamming it straight into the wooden palisade.

The blow was powerful enough to splinter the wood and knock several of the large wooden stakes right out of the ground. I actually surprised myself with that one, but not as much as I surprised the spider.

I had been expecting it to leap down before it lost grip on the wall, but instead it tumbled roughly down onto the starsand, giving me the perfect opportunity to heave my crystal mace up over my head and bring it down with full force.

The crystal spider’s eight legs all violently shot out as the mace smashed it’s body from above, shattering and splattering it into nothing more than a pile of crystal chunks and goop staining the starsand.

“You know, I could get used to this…” I whistled, impressed at the crater I had just smashed into the crystal spider’s back.

There was still one spider left, the one I had started the fight by using as a shield. Blocking that crystal webbing had given it some extra plating on its back, but that just meant I needed to really put my back into the somersault strike I delivered this time.

With gravity assisting me the spider really didn’t stand a chance even with all the additional armour. It survived my initial strike and tried to skewer me, but it was heavily weakened and all I had to do was swat away its sharpened leg with my armoured gauntlets before plunging my fist into the gap I had created.

It was a messy kill, quite literally, but I got the job done. Exhausted, I staggered over to the partially collapsed wooden palisade, resting myself against it and letting my mace hang limp as I clutched my still-bleeding side through my armour.

It hurt like hell, especially now that the adrenaline was leaving me, but I wasn’t in too much immediate danger. As soon as I got back to Clearvein I’d likely have to undergo some serious treatment to get the crystal shrapnel removed, but nothing vital was damaged as far as I could tell.

Thankfully, the fighting close to me seemed to be mostly over and I hadn’t noticed any more rubble falling from the sides of the canyon in a while. I was tempted to venture back into the camp so I could find Cyrus, but if I ran into more creatures or outlaws at this point I wasn’t sure I would be so lucky. Killing a trio of spiders had really taken it out of me, and they were some of the easiest creatures to deal with.

If there had been scorpions or something worse guarding the palisade, I would likely have been turned into a crystal statue within seconds of trying to take them on alone.

So, instead of bravely venturing into the camp once more I waited and watched, the starsand slowly but surely clearing. Cyrus had told me to get out of the camp if he wasn’t at the entrance in five minutes but that time had passed and then some and I still waited.

It maybe wasn’t my brightest idea, especially considering that if neither of us returned then Clearvein would remain totally in the dark about what was happening, but I couldn’t just leave him.

When I finally did see a human figure stumbling forward from the camp, I rushed forward excitedly to try and help them. I quickly realised it wasn’t Cyrus but a young red-haired woman, wearing a heavily scorched set of clothing totally unlike that of the outlaws.

When she saw me she froze, so I held my hands up.

“Don’t worry, I’m a rook. Are you Kate?”

I had my suspicions from her outfit alone, and her appearance matched that which Cyrus had given me before we headed out. She seemed to immediately relax somewhat as soon as I identified myself and feebly nodded in response.

“Y-yeah, that’s me…”

She seemed to be having trouble walking so I offered her an arm and gave her a brief inspection for injuries. She didn’t seem to be physically hurt anywhere immediately apparent, but something definitely seemed wrong with her. After a moment the young woman let out a pained cough and gladly accepted my arm. I helped her hobble over to the palisade, sparing multiple hopeful looks back over my shoulder as we went.

“Where’s Cyrus? Did he send you this way?”

“He… didn’t make it…”

My heart sank and I felt tears well up in my eyes almost instantly. I wanted to run straight back into the camp and find him, but I hardened my resolve the best I could. We weren’t safe yet. If I lost focus now Kate and I could both die and this would all be for nothing.

“What happened?”

“H-he helped me escape, but their leader… Magnus… shot him.” Kate was taking panicked breaths and I knew I wouldn’t get much more out of her. “I barely made it out, they were right behind me…”

“Alright, I’m going to get you out of here Kate. Save your breath for now.”

Kate coughed heavily but nodded, and I helped her through the palisade and started our journey down the long, crystal covered canyon.

I spared one final glance back at the camp before we left, smoke billowing upwards and things becoming eerily silent.

The fighting was over for now and Ryan, Cyrus, was apparently dead. It felt like a cruel twist of fate beyond belief. I had briefly reunited with a childhood friend I had thought dead only for him to be taken from me again within the same day.

I didn’t know what had happened in the camp, what Cyrus’ last moments were like, but he had done his part and rescued Kate. Now, I was going to do mine and get her to safety.

Then, as soon as I had recovered, I was going to call in the cavalry and wipe out every last one of the outlaws. This Magnus had a reckoning coming for him.