From his [Temporal Thinking Space], Laryn took in the scene outside.

  Krupp, the goblin, was crawling across the ground on all fours, just above the entrance to the cave. The creature’s nose was nearly pressed to the ground, nostrils flared wide. He had barely started reacting to Laryn’s sudden appearance, his bug eyes wide with shock. Laryn had no doubt that the goblin was moments away from discovering the cave entrance.

  Two Ondwin scouts stood above Krupp on the hill. One of them held a long stick, about two meters in length. The other end had a loop of rope on it, tied around Krupp’s neck.

  The other man folded his arms, looking disgusted.

  A short distance away, resting among the trees, sat five other Ondwin soldiers. They paid no attention to the searching going on, seeming happy to lounge and rest.

  “What’s going on?” Adi asked. “Run into some trouble?”

  “Nothing I can’t handle,” Laryn said.

  He had been ready to reset time, and reconceal himself inside the cave after gathering this intelligence, but… He probably didn’t even have to do that. He had the advantage of surprise on his side. He could take on two Ondwins at once. Then he’d turn to the other soldiers. Five on one would be more challenging, but as long as they didn’t have a mage among them, he could probably do it.

  Laryn let the temporal bubble collapse, and charged up the hill, drawing his sword.

  The Ondwins sprang back, surprised, and scrambled for their weapons.

  The first man fell beneath Laryn’s blade, his own sword only half way out of the scabbard. The second managed to get his sword up and contend with Laryn for a few moments.

  Shouts from the nearby soldiers warned Laryn to hurry. They picked up spears and pikes and started running.

  Laryn spared a moment of attention to cast an elemental [Bomb] in amongst the soldiers. They scattered like dandelion seeds, but he didn’t think that he’d killed any of them. His opponent managed to land a glancing blow on Laryn’s leg.

  Snapping his attention fully back to his enemy, Laryn drove the man back up against a rocky outcropping. With nowhere left to retreat, the man stumbled, and Laryn’s sword darted inside his guard. He rammed the blade up through the man’s leather armor, pushing it into his stomach and up through his ribcage.

  The Ondwin gaped, coughed, and slumped against the rock. Laryn ripped his sword free and spun, slapping a pike aside with the flat of his blade.

  Seeing that he’d missed his opportunity, the Ondwin pike man dropped back, keeping his pike pointed at Laryn. He would wait for his fellows to fall in with him, multiplying their strength.

  Laryn took two nimble steps and kicked off the rocky face nearby. The soldier tried to swing his pike up to intercept Laryn’s jump, but Laryn grabbed the head of the pike and used it to pull himself down toward the soldier.

  His sword punctured through the man’s eye socket, killing him instantly. Laryn yanked the pike from the dead man’s hands and threw it at the next soldier.

  The throw was bad; the pike twisted in the air and would have hit the soldier sideways if he hadn’t batted it aside with his own weapon. But the distraction was adequate, and Laryn’s follow up strike caught the soldier on the chin.

  The remaining three soldiers threw their weapons to the ground and ran down the hill. Laryn sighed. He didn’t want word of this getting back to Harrat, but there was no way he was going to catch all three of them. They were just going to have to get a move on.

  Kenna’s scream echoed faintly from the cave.

  Laryn looked around; had he missed a soldier?

  Then he saw the stick which had been holding Krupp prisoner. Krupp was no longer tied to one end of it.

  “By Ishtoran,” Laryn muttered, and he was back on his hands and knees, crawling through the opening to the cave.

  It was dark. Very dark. He didn’t have a torch.

  He felt around, and found the Spell Module crate where he’d left it. He listened, and heard another call from Kenna. It echoed faintly in the cavern, and he couldn’t tell what direction it came from. He knew she had her knife, and she also was a mage and could use [Dart] and [Shield]. But if she’d used those things and missed…

  Laryn pushed on through the darkness of the cave, heading toward where he thought sounds might be coming from. As he moved, his sense of direction abandoned him.

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  He heard murmured voices, Kenna’s and Krupps. He heard the scraping of boots against stone. He heard the sound of his own breathing. They seemed to be coming from straight ahead, but as he felt around in the darkness, he only found stone blocking his path.

  Light. He needed light.

  Not all of the elemental attacks produced light, and he wasn’t able to create a fire [Dart]. But the life [Dart] crackled and glowed with yellow energy when he fired it. Perhaps it would be enough to help him figure out where to go.

  He aimed in the direction he thought that Kenna and Krupp might have gone.

  The dart flew through the air like a bolt of lightning, momentarily blinding Laryn. He blinked furiously, trying to see the cave around him.

  The light vanished as quickly as it had appeared. An afterimage of the shape of the cave was burned into his eyes, and he saw it floating clearly in front of him in the darkness.

  He’d managed to climb too high. A jagged gap below him provided a way forward. Feeling his way along, he pushed through. The sounds of struggle grew louder, and Laryn moved toward them.

  The goblin would have an advantage against them here. He had a superior ability to see in the dark, and to smell his enemies. The caves were his domain.

  Grunts and hisses. The impact of flesh on flesh. Kenna gasped.

  “Kenna!” Laryn shouted in the cave. “I’m coming!”

  “Laryn!” she screamed back. “Look out!”

  Laryn caught the wet slapping of goblin feet on stone, but didn’t move quickly enough. A jagged blade scraped across his chest. Laryn lashed out, but missed his enemy. He cracked a knuckle on a stalagmite in the darkness.

  Holding very still, Laryn listened for sign of another attack.

  Raspy goblin breathing filled his ears, echoing around from every direction. “Mmmm, tasty,” Krupp said. “Laryn blood. So… hot. So… frothy. Filled with passion fora fem.”

  “Where are you!” Laryn shouted.

  The goblin laughed. “Come play with Krupp! Krupp see you, quivering like a stuck chicken.”

  Footsteps in the darkness. Laryn pushed his back against the stone wall of the cave, pivoting his sword in the direction of the sound.

  Krupp laughed again, the sound coming from Laryn’s other side. He slashed the sword through the air.

  “Which to eat first? Krupp knows. Easy choice. Eata nasty man, then enjoya fem.”

  Something scraped nearby. Laryn pointed his sword at it.

  Another scrape, and a shower of sparks sprayed from Kenna’s flint and steel, cascading onto her torch.

  In the flash of light, the ugly goblin face of Krupp appeared, surrounded by darkness.

  Laryn lunged forward, skewering the place where Krupp had been. The goblin laughed and cursed, pattering away in the darkness.

  Kenna’s torch came alive, throwing light through the cavern, just in time for Laryn to raise an arm and deflect Krupp. The goblin hurled through the air, teeth bared, claws extended.

  Laryn batted the goblin aside with his arm, taking a painful laceration along his forearm. The goblin hit the ground and bounced. Laryn sprang atop the creature.

  It took Laryn three powerful punches to collapse the back of Krupp’s skull, slamming the monster’s face into the stone. Dark fluid leaked from the smashed corpse of the goblin.

  “Are you okay?” Laryn asked, turning to Kenna. She stared blankly past Laryn, and nodded slowly. Her dress was torn in several places, but she didn’t appear to be wounded. She held her knife in one hand, torch in the other.

  “Let’s get you out of here and into the daylight,” Laryn said.

  Laryn helped Kenna out of the cave. She sat on the ground, out of view of the four Ondwin corpses lying on the ground above the entrance.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, wiping her brow and pushing hair back behind her eyes. “I’m sorry.”

  “Sorry for what?” Laryn asked. “You did great. You were very brave.”

  “I should be able to defend myself better than that,” she said. “It was just one goblin, but I… I…”

  “Hush,” Laryn said. “You did what you needed to.”

  “You killed the Ondwins,” Kenna said. “I should have been able to handle that goblin.”

  “It was dark. You were in his territory. A goblin in a cave is a formidable foe. I don’t know if I would have been able to kill him without the light from your torch.”

  Kenna leaned against Laryn. She took a deep breath.

  “We work together pretty well, don’t we?”

  They caught their breath and sat together there for a while. But the sun was dropping, and they needed to get back to their horses before it got too dark to navigate in the woods. So Laryn reluctantly left Kenna and returned for the spell module.

  He pushed the heavy chest through the entrance to the cave. It didn’t seem like it would fit at first, but after a bit of finagling Laryn managed to heave the bulky thing through.

  Hefting the crate up onto his back, he then helped Kenna to her feet. Together they walked back the way they had come through the woods.

  “Do you think they were hunting for us?” Kenna asked him as they walked.

  “I think they were looking for you,” Laryn said. “I think that Krupp figured out that you were important to them, and he’d caught your scent while we held him prisoner. They were probably using him to sniff out where you’d hidden the spell module.”

  “I don’t think my scent would have stuck around in this area for that long,” Kenna said. “It’s been months since I was here last.”

  “Then he must have picked up your scent from this visit,” Laryn said. “And that lead them right to us.”

  Kenna let out a shuddering sigh. “I’m glad that goblin is dead,” she said. “I wish I’d killed him myself. He was a foul beast.”

  Laryn clenched his jaw. “I hope he was the worst of them,” he said. “I hope that Zaremba’s presence in Vallor can keep the low goblins in line.”

  “Me too.”

  They made their way cautiously through the woods, but didn’t encounter any other signs of Ondwin scouts. Laryn’s shoulders, back, and legs ached from the weight of carting the spell module around.

  The horses were waiting where they’d left them, thought they’d grazed on every clump of grass that they could reach.

  The sun was just dipping below the horizon now, but Laryn thought it would be better to continue their progress. Navigating back to Vallor from here wasn’t as challenging; just cross the Lewin and follow it south to the Ebil.

  He used some prepared straps to secure the spell module atop his horse. The weight of Laryn plus the module would have likely been too much for the poor beast, so he walked alongside it while Kenna rode.

  Pushing on through the night, travel was slow, but there was less chance of an encounter with Ondwin soldiers.

  They made it back to Vallor as the eastern sky grew brighter. A strong sensation of accomplishment washed over Laryn. He might have had fewer resources than Harrat, but so far, he was winning.

  Now they just had to find out if Kenna would be able to attach the spell module to the core.