The Cursed Extra

Chapter 163: [3.36] Get Out of My Head

"The mind is the last fortress. When it falls, everything else follows."

***

Rhys had almost forgotten about the third creature.

The one that had been hanging back while its warriors did the fighting. The one that had been chanting quietly throughout the entire battle. Its voice a constant drone beneath the clash of steel and the roar of combat.

But now that drone rose to a shriek.

Now that quiet chanting became something that made his skull ache just from hearing it.

The creature raised its bone-festooned staff.

The fetishes hanging from the gnarled wood began to glow. Yellowed teeth. Desiccated fingers that still had scraps of flesh clinging to them. What looked distressingly like human ear bones, strung on sinew that had dried to the consistency of old leather.

They all began to glow with that sickly green light. The color of rot and decay. The color of things that grew in places where sunlight never reached.

The fetishes spun faster and faster around the staff.

They became a nauseating blur of white and yellow. Trailing wisps of putrid magic that hung in the air like cemetery fog.

The smell hit Rhys a moment later.

The stench of open graves. Of bodies left to rot in summer heat. Of things that should have been buried deep and forgotten.

He felt something cold and oily brush against his mind.

It wasn’t a physical sensation. There was nothing touching his skin. Nothing in the air around him that he could see or hear.

But something was there nonetheless.

Something was reaching for him from across the distance. Reaching with fingers made of grave dirt and whispered curses. Trying to worm its way inside his thoughts. Probing for weaknesses. Seeking entry points into his consciousness.

The same foul spell that had been killing Jorik.

Rhys had watched the burly hunter collapse earlier. Had watched a man who’d killed dozens of monsters reduced to a whimpering husk in seconds. Jorik had clawed at his own face as if trying to rip something out of his skull. Had screamed in a voice that didn’t sound human anymore.

That same spell was now aimed directly at Rhys.

He gritted his teeth until his jaw ached.

Pushed back against the mental intrusion with every fiber of his being. Drew on every ounce of borderland stubbornness his father had bred into him. The same iron will that had kept their village alive through countless winters and goblin raids.

"Get out of my head," he snarled.

No sound passed his lips. The words were internal. A silent battle cry that echoed only in his own skull.

But he felt them resonate. Felt them push back against the oily presence trying to slip past his defenses.

The spell pressed harder.

A weight that crushed down on his thoughts like a boot on an ant. His vision blurred at the edges. Colors started to run together. The greys of the tunnel walls bleeding into the blacks of the shadows.

His knees started to buckle.

The shaman’s magic clawed deeper into his mind. He could feel it reaching for something. Searching for the core of him. The part that made him who he was.

If it found that...

If it got its hooks into that...

The remaining hobgoblin saw his weakness.

It charged.

The creature’s roar echoed off the tunnel walls. A triumphant bellow that spoke of certain victory. Its massive feet pounded against the stone floor. Each step sending vibrations through the earth that Rhys could feel even through the haze of the shaman’s spell.

The axe rose high.

Ready to split him from crown to crotch.

Rhys tried to raise his spear.

His arms felt like they were moving through thick mud. The shaman’s magic was sapping his strength. Making his muscles feel heavy and unresponsive. Making every movement take three times as long as it should.

He managed to get the spear up just in time.

Caught the hobgoblin’s axe on the shaft. Felt the impact shudder through his arms. Through his shoulders. Through his entire body.

The force of it nearly knocked the weapon from his hands.

But he held on.

Barely.

His fingers screaming in protest. His wrists feeling like they might snap from the strain.

He didn’t have the strength to hold it.

The axe blade slid down the wooden handle. He could hear it carving a deep groove in the ashwood as it went. Could see the pale shavings falling away like snow.

His father’s spear.

The weapon his father had made for him when he turned fourteen.

The blade slammed into his shoulder with bone-crushing force.

Rhys cried out.

The sound that escaped his lips was more animal than human. A raw scream of pain that echoed through the tunnel and came back to mock him.

His left arm went numb.

Then it went dead. Hanging useless at his side like a wet rope.

He could feel something grinding inside his shoulder. Something that shouldn’t be grinding. Something that meant bad things for his future if he somehow survived the next few minutes.

He stumbled backward.

The hobgoblin pressed its attack. Swinging its axe in wide, brutal arcs that forced him to give ground step by step. He couldn’t block anymore. Could barely move fast enough to dodge. His spear felt like it weighed a hundred pounds in his one good hand.

The shaman’s spell was still clawing at his mind.

Still trying to crack open his skull and feast on what was inside.

He was out of room.

The cold stone of the tunnel wall pressed hard against his back. Nowhere left to run. Nowhere left to retreat.

The hobgoblin loomed before him. Its massive frame blocked out what little light reached this deep into the tunnel. Its axe gleamed. Its teeth gleamed.

Its eyes gleamed brightest of all.

The creature had him pinned against the wall.

Its superior strength slowly forced the spear from his grasp. Rhys could feel his fingers slipping. Could feel the ashwood shaft sliding through his palm despite every effort to hold on.

The hobgoblin leaned in close.

Close enough that he could smell its breath again. Close enough that he could see the individual hairs bristling from its snout.

Behind it, the shaman continued its chanting.

The green light from its staff grew brighter with each passing second. The fetishes spun so fast now that they were just a blur. A nauseating wheel of bone and sinew that made his stomach churn just from looking at it.

The smell of graves grew stronger.

The cold touch on his mind pressed deeper.

And for a moment, Rhys wasn’t in the tunnel anymore.

He was eight years old again.