The Cursed Extra

Chapter 154: [3.27] Making Them Work For It

"When you can’t run and you can’t hide, the only thing left is to make the other side regret finding you."

***

The chittering started low. Like insects in summer grass. But it carried an intelligence that made Rhys’s skin crawl.

Multiple voices. Overlapping in a language of clicks and guttural barks that echoed off the tunnel walls. The sounds bounced and distorted until they seemed to come from everywhere at once. From ahead. From behind. From cracks in the stone that shouldn’t have been large enough to hide anything.

Getting closer with each passing moment.

Rhys had grown up on the border. Had spent his childhood listening to goblin raids probe the village palisade for weaknesses. He knew the difference between mindless aggression and coordinated hunting.

This was the latter.

These things were talking to each other. Planning. Spreading out to cover escape routes that didn’t exist.

"How many?" Petra whispered. Flames still danced around her fingertips. The fire cast eerie shadows across her face that shifted with each slight movement of her hands. Blood from her forehead wound had dried into a dark crust that traced a jagged line from temple to eyebrow. She looked like she’d already been through a war and come out the other side.

Her shoulders were tense. Pulled tight with the effort of maintaining her spell despite her depleted reserves. Rhys could see the strain in the set of her jaw. The way her fingers trembled slightly even as the flames remained steady.

She was running on fumes and willpower.

They both knew it.

Rhys pressed his ear to the stone floor. Felt the vibrations through the rock. The cold seeped into his cheek as he closed his eyes.

His father had taught him this trick when he was barely old enough to hold a spear properly. A borderlands method of reading movement through solid ground when your eyes and ears could be deceived by echoes and darkness and fear.

Stone didn’t lie. Stone remembered every footstep. Every shift in weight. Every creature that passed over or through it.

You just had to learn how to listen.

Multiple sets of feet reached his awareness. Irregular gait patterns. Some heavier than others. The distinctive three-beat rhythm of creatures that didn’t move quite like humans set his teeth on edge.

Goblins walked wrong. Their joints bent at angles that looked painful to human eyes. That wrongness translated into a pattern that was impossible to mistake for anything else once you’d learned to recognize it.

"Eight, maybe ten," he murmured. Pushed himself back up from the cold stone. Dust clung to his cheek and he brushed it away with the back of his hand. "Moving careful. Spread out in formation. They know we’re trapped and they’re taking their time about it."

He didn’t add what else he’d felt through the stone.

The dragging of something heavy. Something that left a continuous scrape against the tunnel floor. Something being carried or pulled by multiple goblins working together.

Which meant either a valuable prize or a weapon they intended to use.

Jorik tried to shift under the stone slab and immediately went rigid. His massive frame tensed as pain lanced through him. He bit down hard on whatever sound wanted to escape. His jaw clenched so tight that tendons stood out on his neck like cords of rope. Sweat beaded across his forehead despite the cool air of the tunnel.

"Can’t exactly run for it," he managed through gritted teeth. Attempted a grim smile that looked more like a grimace. "Suppose I’ll just have to trust you two to handle the heroics while I lie here looking pathetic."

The chittering grew louder.

It was accompanied by the scrape of claws on stone and the wet sound of something being dragged across the rough tunnel floor. Rhys caught a whiff of decay and unwashed bodies carried on the stale air. The unmistakable stench of carrion eaters that lived in darkness. That fed on the dead and the dying and anything else they could get their clawed hands on.

His grip tightened on his father’s spear. The worn leather bindings felt familiar against his palm. The weight of the weapon was an extension of his arm after years on the village palisade. Years of fighting off raids and hunting beasts and doing whatever it took to keep his family alive.

"Petra, how much mana do you have left?" he asked. Never took his eyes off the darkness beyond their small circle of torchlight. The shadows seemed to press closer with each passing moment. Hungry. Patient. Waiting for the light to fail.

She closed her eyes. Reached inward to assess her reserves. The flames around her fingers flickered, dimming slightly as she concentrated. When she opened her eyes again, her expression told him the answer before she spoke.

"Maybe a quarter capacity. The collapse took most of it when I tried to shield us from the falling debris." She paused. Glanced at the burns on her palms where she’d pushed her fire magic too hard and too fast. "Enough for one good spell. Two small ones if I’m careful. Three if I don’t mind passing out immediately after."

"Can you fuse stone? Make a barrier around Jorik?"

Rhys was already measuring the width of the tunnel with eyes that had spent years assessing defensive positions. The tunnel was too wide here. Too open. Multiple attackers could come at him from different angles, and he only had one spear and two arms and a body that was already carrying too many small injuries to count.

Her dark eyes snapped open wider. Understanding dawned as she read his intentions in the set of his shoulders and the way he gripped his weapon.

"You’re thinking of making a stand."

It wasn’t a question.

"I’m thinking of staying alive," Rhys replied. His voice was flat. Matter-of-fact. The kind of tone you used when discussing the weather or the price of grain.

He pointed with the butt of his spear toward the passage ahead. Where ancient miners had followed a vein of ore through the mountain. The tunnel narrowed there. Created a natural chokepoint barely wide enough for one person to pass through at a time.

"They come through there one at a time, I can handle them. Funnel them into my reach where their numbers don’t mean anything."

"And if there’s more than you can handle?" Petra challenged. Her voice was sharp, but her hands were already moving to Jorik’s side. Preparing to work what magic she could.

She knew the answer as well as he did. She just wanted him to say it out loud.

Rhys met her gaze. His own expression was level and calm. The quiet acceptance in his eyes served as answer enough.

He’d made this kind of choice before. On the palisade when the raids got too heavy and the defenders got too few. Sometimes the numbers didn’t work out in your favor. Sometimes the best you could hope for was making the other side pay for every inch they took.

"Then we die fighting instead of lying here waiting," he said simply. As if stating that water was wet or stone was hard. "At least we make them work for it. At least we take some of them with us."

Petra stared at him for a long moment.

Then she nodded.

"Alright, borderland boy." She turned to Jorik and knelt beside him. Her hands began to glow with the orange light of her remaining magic. "Let’s make them regret finding us."