"Wounded animals are always the most dangerous."
***
The shaman’s confidence cracked like ice in spring.
Fractures spread across its composure faster than it could repair them. Its towering form, which had seed so imposing monts before, now appeared hunched and uncertain. The burning light in its eyes dimd. Flickered like torches in a wind.
"What are you?" it whispered.
"Disappointed," the figure replied without missing a beat.
"My turn."
He moved.
Rhys’s eyes couldn’t track the motion.
One mont the figure stood several feet away. Hands empty and posture relaxed as if he were waiting for tea to be served.
The next, he was beside the shaman.
Close enough to touch. Close enough that Rhys could see individual stitches on his grey robes.
There had been no blur of movent. No sound of footsteps. No displacent of air that should have accompanied such speed.
He had simply ceased to be in one place and begun to be in another. As if the space between had been an inconvenient suggestion rather than a physical reality.
The shaman spun toward him. Claws extended and mouth gaping in a roar of rage.
But the figure was already in motion. His right fist drew back, the movent so unhurried it looked almost lazy, the sa lack of urgency he had shown from the mont he stepped into the tunnel.
His knuckles connected with the shaman’s left knee.
The sound was wrong.
Not the aty thud of flesh striking flesh. Not even the crack of breaking bone that Rhys had heard too many tis on the border, crouching behind the village palisade while the watch dealt with whatever had co out of the Whisperwood that night.
This was sothing else entirely.
A sharp, crystalline snap. The sound of sothing fundantal giving way all at once, like the mont a dam finally surrenders to the weight behind it. Like the crack of a frozen lake in early thaw, that single splintering note right before the ice swallows soone whole.
The shaman’s roar cut off mid-note.
Replaced by a shriek that made Rhys’s teeth ache down to their roots.
The creature’s leg folded at an impossible angle. Bent backward from the knee in a direction that no limb, no matter how transford by dark ritual or goblin sorcery, was ever ant to bend. Its massive fra crashed to the tunnel floor with enough force to shake loose a fresh cascade of grit and dust from the ceiling, raining down through the torchlight like grey snow.
The impact shook the entire passage.
Rhys braced himself against the wall without thinking, his palm pressed flat against the cold stone, [Stone Shod] bleeding mana into his feet as the shockwave rolled through the floor.
The shaman writhed where it had fallen. Its remaining claws scrabbled against the stone, frantic and purposeless, still trying to process what its body already knew. Its left leg was a ruin. The joint had collapsed entirely, bent at an angle that made Rhys’s stomach turn, leaking black ichor that spread across the tunnel floor in a slow, dark halo.
"See?"
The figure straightened his grey robes at the lapel. He wasn’t breathing hard. Not even close.
He looked down at the writhing creature below him with the mild, unhurried interest of soone examining a crack in a wall they weren’t sure was worth patching.
"Anatomy. Far more useful than brute force. All that muscle, all that supernatural power, and you still have joints. Still have pressure points. Still have vulnerabilities that even a child could exploit with the right knowledge and the right angle of application."
The shaman’s shriek died away by degrees, dissolving into sothing quieter and sohow worse. A low, keening sound that rose and fell with each laboured breath. The sound of pain that had moved beyond anything the creature could process or articulate.
Rhys watched it writhe. Its massive fra, the sa fra that had seed to fill the entire tunnel when it first stepped into the torchlight, was now a broken thing clawing at stone it could no longer push itself off of.
The sight should have brought relief.
After everything. After what had happened to Jorik, after the ntal assault that had reached into Rhys’s skull and squeezed until his vision went white at the edges. He should have felt sothing clean and simple at watching the creature brought this low.
Instead, a creeping dread settled into his gut, cold and heavy.
His father had taught him that lesson when Rhys was barely old enough to hold the practice spear, standing in the yard behind their small house at the edge of Blackwood Glade. They’d been talking about a wounded direwolf that had been circling the village’s eastern fence line for two days. Cornered beasts stop thinking about escape, his father had said, crouching down to look Rhys in the eye. They start thinking about how much it’ll cost you to finish it.
The shaman’s claws had stopped scrabbling. Its eyes, those burning coals that had once threatened to swallow Rhys’s mind whole, were fixed on the grey-robed figure above it. Still calculating. Still aware.
Still, on so base and hateful level, present.
"Anatomy lessons aside," the figure said, his voice carrying the sa untroubled calm it had held from the beginning, as if they were discussing sothing over a al in the academy hall rather than standing over a crippled shaman in a goblin warren, "I believe we were discussing your tendency toward unnecessary cruelty. Sothing about making people scream?" He tilted his head slightly, as if genuinely curious. "I’d like to revisit that topic, if you don’t mind."
The shaman’s response ca without warning.
Its good arm swept across the tunnel floor in a wild arc. Claws extended like scythes ant for harvesting flesh rather than grain.
The motion was desperate. Uncontrolled. The thrashing of a beast caught in a trap that understood, on so primal level, that escape was no longer possible—like those border wolves that sotis got snagged in the village’s defensive pits back ho. Rhys had seen it before, that terrible clarity in a dying creature’s eyes when it realizes there’s no path out. The way their movents beco less about survival and more about making the hunter pay.
But desperation didn’t make it weak. If anything, it made the shaman more dangerous. Rhys knew this truth in his bones, had it carved into his mory from years of border patrols. A cornered predator was deadlier than a confident one, channeling all its remaining strength into one final, devastating attempt to inflict as much harm as possible before the darkness took it. The creature’s movents might look wild and uncoordinated, but there was terrible purpose behind each twitch and lunge.
If anything, the creature’s panic had stripped away its careful positioning. Left nothing but raw, primal force. The kind of force that didn’t care about consequences because consequences no longer mattered.
The grey-robed figure moved to avoid the strike.
He threw himself backward. Feet scrambled for purchase on the uneven stone that was slick with goblin blood and scattered debris. His grey robes whipped around his legs as he fought to maintain balance. The hem caught on a piece of broken bone.
The shaman’s claws missed his throat by inches.
Rhys felt his breath catch.
The figure’s perfect composure had cracked. Revealed sothing underneath. Sothing younger and more human than the ancient knowledge in his voice suggested.
For the first ti since entering the tunnel, the mysterious newcor looked like what he claid to be.
A student.
A student who could be hurt.
A student who could die.
The shaman sensed the shift imdiately.
Its burning eyes fixed on the figure’s face. Read the sa vulnerability Rhys had spotted. A terrible grin spread across its elongated features. Needle teeth glead in the torchlight.
"Not so confident now, little godling," it hissed. Dragged itself forward with its good arm. The motion left a trail of black blood across the stone.
"The mask slips when death cos calling. I see you now. I see the child hiding behind the words."
The figure regained his footing.
But the shaman was already moving.
It pulled itself across the tunnel floor like so monstrous spider. Used its remaining limbs to propel its bulk forward with terrible speed despite its injuries. Each movent sent fresh waves of pain through its shattered leg.
But it no longer cared.
Pain was familiar. Pain was honest. Pain was sothing it had lived with for centuries. Sothing it had inflicted on countless victims who had scread and begged and died in these tunnels.
Pain was sothing it could work with.
Another wild swipe forced the figure to dodge again.
This ti he stumbled.
One knee hit the stone as he rolled away from the creature’s reach. The impact sent a visible jolt through his fra.
Rhys saw him wince.
Human.
Mortal.
Vulnerable.
The shaman followed. Relentless despite its injuries. Its movents driven by hatred so pure it had beco sothing almost beautiful in its intensity.
Its claws gouged furrows in the tunnel wall where the figure’s head had been monts before. Sparks flew. Stone chips scattered.
Rhys pressed himself against the wall.
His injured shoulder sent spikes of agony through his chest with every breath. The broken shaft of his father’s spear lay forgotten at his feet. Just another piece of debris in a tunnel that had beco a charnel house.
But as he watched the grey-robed figure scramble backward, barely staying ahead of those terrible claws, sothing stirred in his mory.
His father’s voice.
Clear as the day he’d first heard it.
Think, Rhys.
What would Father do?
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