The Cursed Extra

Chapter 157: [3.30] When the Boss Monster Shows Up

"You know it’s bad when the goblins stop attacking and something else walks out of the dark."

***

The chanting grew louder. Each syllable seemed to leach warmth from the air around them.

Rhys watched his breath mist in the suddenly frigid tunnel as the torch flame shrank to barely more than a candle’s glow. The orange light that had been their lifeline now cast weak shadows that made the goblin corpses seem to writhe on the blood-slicked stone.

His grip on his father’s spear remained steady despite the cold that seeped into his bones.

But his mind raced through possibilities that all ended badly.

"Gorth-ek-mal... sha-gorth-ek... mal-sha-gorth-ek-nal..."

The words hurt to hear. Like nails scraping against the inside of his skull. Each syllable carried weight. Substance. As if the very air was being corrupted by the sounds.

His ears rang with a high-pitched whine that seemed to originate from somewhere behind his eyes. Behind him, Jorik’s breathing grew more labored. Each exhale came out as a visible puff of vapor that hung in the air far longer than natural.

Even Petra had gone quiet.

Her usual confident chatter replaced by the kind of silence that meant real fear. The sort of fear the girl had never shown in all the months they’d trained together.

Rhys had grown up on the border. He knew what real fear looked like.

He’d seen it in his mother’s eyes when the warning horns sounded at night. In his father’s voice when he’d handed him a spear and told him to guard Elara’s door.

This was that kind of fear.

Then the darkness at the edge of their light began to move.

It didn’t advance like the goblins had, with their chittering rage and crude weapons. This was a creeping thing. A gradual intrusion of shadow into the failing circle of torchlight.

The temperature dropped another few degrees. Enough to make his fingers ache where they wrapped around the spear shaft. Frost crystals were forming on the stone walls near the edge of the light. Tiny white patterns that spread like disease across the dark rock.

The figure that emerged from the tunnel’s depths made Rhys’s grip tighten until his knuckles went white.

Where the goblins had been crude and savage, this thing carried itself with deliberate movements. Something that understood power. Something that had wielded power for a very long time and had grown comfortable with its weight.

Its spine curved in an unnatural hunch. Bent at angles that should have left it crippled but instead gave it a terrible, predatory grace.

Robes made from what looked like stitched-together scalps hung from its twisted frame.

Rhys could make out individual faces preserved in the leather.

Human faces. Elven faces. Faces frozen in expressions of terror that would never fade.

The staff it carried clicked and rattled with each step. Bones and small skulls tied to its length with sinew. And what might have been tiny hands that still twitched and grasped at nothing.

Those hands moved with purpose, Rhys realized with a sick lurch in his stomach. They weren’t just decoration. They were still alive somehow. Or at least some mockery of life animated them. Their fingers opened and closed as if trying to grab the empty air. As if searching for something warm to hold.

But it was the eyes that made his stomach turn.

They glowed with a sick green light that had nothing to do with any magic he’d ever seen. Like looking into pools of infected wound-water. The light pulsed with a rhythm that didn’t match any heartbeat. Didn’t follow any pattern he could identify.

When that gaze fixed on him, every instinct from his borderland upbringing screamed at him to run.

He’d felt that urge before.

When the dire wolves had circled his village’s walls during the worst winter of his childhood. When the goblin horde had pushed through the northern palisade and he’d watched his father fight with a broken spear.

He knew how to ignore it.

The creature wasn’t alone.

Two massive forms flanked it. Each easily a head taller than Rhys. Built like siege engines given flesh. Their shoulders were so broad they nearly scraped the tunnel walls on either side. Forced them to walk slightly hunched.

Their skin was the mottled green-black of old bruises. Stretched tight over muscles that looked carved from granite. Not the wiry, rat-like build of their smaller cousins.

These were warriors.

These were weapons.

The axes they carried were easily twice the size of anything a normal goblin could lift. Their edges stained with rust that might have been dried blood. The shafts were made from some dark wood Rhys didn’t recognize. Wrapped in leather that had the same unsettling texture as the shaman’s robes.

He tried not to think about what that leather might have come from.

Hobgoblins.

Rhys had heard stories from the older guards. Tales told around watch fires about the creatures that led goblin war parties. How they were born from goblins that survived long enough and killed enough to undergo some terrible transformation. How they commanded their smaller kin through sheer brutality. How they were fast despite their size. Cunning despite their rage.

He’d always hoped never to see one.

Now he was seeing two.

The shaman raised its staff. The bone fetishes hanging from it began to glow with that same nauseating green light. The chanting stopped.

The silence was worse than the noise had been.

At least the noise had told him what was coming.

"Human-spawn." The voice that emerged from the creature’s throat sounded like grinding stone mixed with the death rattle of something that should have stayed buried. The words seeped into his brain like oil through water. "You kill-slay our hunt-pack. Now you feed-nourish the earth-stone with your blood-life."

The creature’s lipless mouth didn’t move quite right as it spoke. The words seemed to come from somewhere else. Somewhere deeper than its throat.

The tiny hands on its staff clenched and unclenched faster now. As if excited by the prospect of what was to come.

Behind him, Petra whispered something that might have been a prayer. Or a curse. Rhys couldn’t tell which. Wasn’t sure it mattered anymore.

The shaman gestured.

The two hobgoblins stepped forward in perfect unison. Their heavy axes scraped against the stone floor with sounds like grinding teeth. They moved with the kind of coordination that spoke of countless battles fought side by side. Each knowing exactly where the other would be at any given moment.

Not the chaotic, swarming attacks of the lesser goblins.

This was discipline.

This was training.

Rhys had fought trained opponents before. The guards his father brought in to help him practice. The other academy students during sparring sessions. He’d beaten most of them.

None of them had been seven feet tall with muscles like iron cable.