The ridge was bare, windswept, and sharp-edged. It offered no comfort, only visibility — and that's what Vera needed. She crouched just behind the rocky edge, scarf pulled up over the lower half of her face, eyes narrowed as they tracked the flickering orange below.
The goblin warcamp stretched like a bruise across the valley floor. Tents stitched from hide, cooking fires, latrine pits. A crude command post stood in the center where hobgoblins barked orders and lesser goblins scrambled to obey. The whole thing stank of blood, smoke, and the kind of momentum that didn't stop on its own.
Vera didn't blink.
"They've added more," Maggs muttered, low beside her. Her bow rested across her knees, string slack for now. "Two more squads, maybe more."
"They're massing for the push," Dorrin added from behind a twisted pine. "Five hours out. If they move fast, four."
"We'll be lucky if we even slow 'em at this point," Tresh said, adjusting the short sword strapped to his thigh. "Lucky if they don't just charge through the trap and keep marching."
"They won't," Vera said flatly. "Not if we do this right."
Lyn flopped down on the ridge beside her with exaggerated exhaustion, bow clattering beside her. "That's what you said about the spike pit, and the log swing, and the rotten meat trap."
"They worked," Vera muttered.
"Sure," Lyn grinned. "Worked great. I've still got bruises from hauling that log uphill. And I stillsmell like fermented boar guts."
Maggs gave her a dry glance. "You volunteered to stir it."
"Yeah, and I regret that decision deeply."
Tresh snorted, and even Dorrin cracked a smile.
But Vera didn't join in. She stayed focused, watching. Thinking.
They had been in this instance for almost a week now. The mission had been simple: Defend a border village from a goblin invasion until reinforcements arrived. Seven days, one town, five people. The army was marching — slowly — and their job had been to buy every hour they could.
So they had marched out 2.5 days from the town, looting every piece of equipment, oil jar, rope, broken cart axle, and sack of flour they could carry. And then they had gotten to work.
They built traps. Fire channels lined with pitch and pine resin. Tripwires and swinging spikes. They stole goblin rations and replaced them with tainted meat. Poisoned their water barrels. Picked off hobgoblin leaders at night from long range, just to scatter command structure.
They found monsters and lured them. Set trails of blood and bait to steer them into goblin scouts. Vera's scarf still smelled faintly of rot from the last time.
It had worked. The goblin army had been forced to slow, regroup, even divert forces for recovery.
But now it was five hours from the village. The army was regrouped. Focused. They were done with feints and slowing down. Now it was warpath time — and Vera's team was out of time, out of tricks, and nearly out of energy.
Vera finally turned from the camp and sat back on her heels.
"We light the firetrap early," she said. "While they're mustering. Cut their numbers before they start moving. If they panic, it'll scatter the push."
"We only have the one fuse line," Dorrin pointed out. "If it doesn't work we have no redundancy."
"Doesn't need to," Vera said. "We just need the lead elements to hesitate. Delay them at the start — then we strike the command again. Or the lead elements take off without the command team and we hit the center, pick off another hob commander. Maybe two."
Maggs looked down at her hands. "If we do that, we'll have goblins chasing us all the way back."
Tresh grinned, tightening the leather straps on his forearms. "Sounds like fun."
Lyn reached into her satchel and pulled out a bundle of rags soaked in oil. "So fire first. Then confusion. Then we run like hell and fight when we have to?"
"Pretty much," Vera said tiredly. She was exhausted. They all were. After almost 4 days of fighting and running nonstop they were almost on fumes.
Dorrin ran a hand down the length of his cleaver. He had used it to great effect against the goblins they had fought. "And if they still reach the village?"
"They'll be moving in pieces," Vera replied. "Broken groups. Low morale. They'll hit the town walls uncoordinated. And the army will be waiting."
"Sure," Lyn said. "Lets count on the army being there on time, that sounds like a great plan. Like this dungeon has no other curve ball to throw at us."
Maggs gave a short and slow nod. She still didn't speak much but she was more open around the team.
There was silence for a long moment.
The five of them crouched on the ridge, weapons ready, clothes singed, eyes heavy with fatigue. They had bled for this mission.
Vera pulled the scarf tighter across her face, eyes cold as ice.
"We burn it in ten minutes," she said. "Easy mission"
Maggs and Lyn both turned to stare at her.
Lyn leaned in with wide eyes and mock horror. "Was that a joke?" she gasped in a loud whisper. "Vera! You do have emotions! The beautiful ice queen is cracking!"
Vera didn't look away from the warcamp below. "One joke every campaign. That was it."
Maggs snorted. "Hope it was worth it."
Lyn grinned. "Oh, it was. I feel spiritually healed."
Dorrin and Tresh exchanged a glance.
It was hard being the only guys on a team like this. Despite Lyn's "ice queen" joke, they were allice queens when it came down to it. The moment anyone tried to get close, the women closed ranks like a fortress wall — silent, immovable, and vaguely terrifying.
Dorrin leaned in toward his cousin. "I still don't know if they like us."
Tresh shrugged. "We hunt. We shoot. Sometimes we don't talk stupid. That's probably the only reason we're still here."
Dorrin grunted. "Fair."
Vera swept her eyes over the group. "Everyone clear on the fallback point? We hold at the rock choke — make our stand there. Hit them hard, kill as many as we can, then we fall back to the town walls. No heroics. This isn't worth dying for."
Lyn just looked thoughtful for a moment while Maggs, true to form, had the emotional response of a rock.
Dorrin slowly raised his hand.
Vera arched an eyebrow. "Yes?"
"Just curious," he said, keeping his voice low. "A question or query, if you will. Why'd we go for double rewards? Gave up our respawn protection to do it."
Vera stared at him flatly. "Do you want two perks from a goblin dungeon when this is done? You think we're only worth an Uncommon quest?"
She shifted her grip on her spear. "If you don't believe you're better than that, maybe I should rethink your place on this team."
Tresh leaned over to whisper something to his cousin — but Vera didn't even look away.
"Do you also believe that, Tresh?"
Tresh froze, then shot a sharp salute, nearly losing his balance in the brush. "No ma'am!" he whisper-shouted.
Vera rolled her eyes. Lyn giggled behind her scarf. Even Maggs looked slightly amused — which, for her, was practically a belly laugh.
"Let's go, we are wasting time."
The fire trap went up like thunder.
Dry brush, tar-soaked logs, and pitch-soaked furs caught all at once in a roar of heat and smoke. Goblins shrieked as the front line stumbled into the wall of flame, the army behind them slowing in a chaotic ripple as the inferno bloomed.
Tresh and Dorrin were already firing — bows raised, arrows thudding into green skin and leather armor. Vera was gone.
Maggs loosed shot after shot from her perch, expression locked in her usual stone focus. Lyn was grinning beside her, firing with the casual precision of someone who genuinely enjoyed the work.
Down in the haze and smoke, Vera moved like a shadow. This was where she thrived.
The chaos had blown the goblin line wide open. Hobgoblins at the rear shouted orders, trying to reorganize the staggered warbands of goblins. Vera didn't give them the time.
Her first javelin flew clean — catching a hobgoblin commander in the side of the neck as he was pointing a curved sword toward the flanks. He went down hard.
The second javelin hit the next officer center-mass — a hard blow that blew straight threw his armour and punched out his back.
That was when the horn blew and was repeated by every other horn.
"Time to go!" Lyn called down the slope.
Vera was already moving, vaulting low walls of rock and ducking past burning brush as the goblin formation began to recover. Arrows zipped around her — wild, panicked fire from goblin archers — but none found their mark.
She scrambled up the ridge to her team just as the first wave began to break through the smoke.
"Fall back to the rocks!" Vera shouted.
They moved together, tight and fast. The chokepoint was a natural cut — two large boulders narrowing the approach. They'd reinforced it with braced cover and narrow firing angles.
The team turned and opened fire.
Arrows rained into the press of goblins — slowing them, staggering the charge, even breaking the front ranks in a few places. But there were too many. Always too many.
When the first wave hit the gap, Tresh and Dorrin dropped their bows and drew steel.
Tresh's twin short swords flashed in tight arcs — fast, brutal cuts that danced through goblin armor like paper. Dorrin wielded his reclaimed berserker cleaver in heavy, deliberate sweeps, breaking bones and staggering enemies with every blow. Mere goblins couldn't stand up to the brutality of each swing.
They held the line — barely — but it was working.
Until the hobgoblins arrived.
They had heavy shields and stayed in formation.
They advanced in a line, shields locked, pushing through the goblin bodies like battering rams.
"Left!" Dorrin shouted, trying to peel off to flank them — but the formation was tight, and it didn't break.
Maggs and Lyn rained arrows down from above, but the hobgoblins lifted their shields and barely slowed. Vera moved to launch one of her remaining javelins and it punched through one of the heavy shields but it didn't injure the Hob behind it.
Tresh tried to move wide on the right — hoping to force them to split or turn — but a volley of black-fletched arrows whistled past him. One grazed his leg. He hissed in pain, stumbled.
"They're not breaking!" Vera growled. "Fall back!"
Dorrin and Tresh broke off just as the hobgoblins reached the rocks. The chokepoint wouldn't hold. They'd bought time — but not enough.
The team broke into a run, bounding from stone to brush to slope, covering each other in staggered retreat. Arrows snapped around them as the goblin army surged forward again.
The town walls waited ahead — still far — but closer than they'd been that morning.
"Don't stop!" Vera barked. "Keep moving!"
Behind them, the forest echoed with the roar of war drums.
The last half-mile was a blur of breath and motion.
Brush tore at their legs. Tresh was limping slightly. Dorrin had a shallow slice across his arm. Lyn and Maggs had gone quiet, saving their breath as they ran. Vera was already thinking past the pain — calculating angles, estimating time.
Then the trees thinned—and the town walls came into view.
And with them… banners.
They lined the wall, each one denoting a different unit.
Rows of spears. Archers on makeshift platforms. A command tent that you could see over the walls.
It was a fancy proper army.
Vera slowed first, breathing hard. Her sharp eyes swept the formation. They looked professional, had clean gear and looked well rested. She spotted the crest on one of the flags — an unfamiliar black-and-green design. Not the Landing. Someone else.
"Uh…" Lyn panted beside her. "That doesn't look like 'just arrived.'"
Maggs muttered, "That massive tent has been up for at least a day."
Dorrin stopped beside her, leaning on his axe. "So the mission wasn't about holding them off long enough to save the town…"
Tresh spit into the dirt. "The town already got saved."
Vera's jaw tightened. She walked forward, wary, her eyes locked on the line of soldiers, probably a picket line, now turning toward them as they emerged from the tree line.
One of them — a tall woman with a short cloak and a badge marked with the symbol of a mailed fist — stepped forward.
"You five the adventurers from the ridge?"
Vera gave a short nod. "Thornwalkers. Delay the goblin army for one week."
The officer raised an eyebrow. "Well, consider it a rousing success. Our scouts tracked the army's slowed advance. By the time they were close enough to see the smoke from your fire traps, we'd already marched double-time from the north. Took the town from behind late yesterday and fortified it through the night. We weren't sure when they were going to arrive. You pulled most of the goblins off the road and cut their speed by days."
"Casualties?" Vera asked.
"To them? Hundreds thanks to you. You hurt their leadership. Saw the mess you made back there. That'll matter more than you think, goblins rely on their hobgoblin leadership to tell them what to do. They won't be able to control that horde for long."
Lyn gave a wheezing laugh and collapsed to sit in the dirt. "So we win?"
The officer gave a thin smile. "Looks like."
Dorrin looked around at the well-supplied camp, then muttered to Vera, "Kind of anti-climactic, isn't it?"
"No," Vera said softly, eyes still scanning the horizon. "It's just the ending we didn't plan for."
Tresh dropped his gear and flopped onto the grass beside his cousin. "So... do we get the extra loot for doubling the difficulty now, or do we have to fill out a form or something?"
Maggs let out the faintest snort.
The officer tilted her head. "Command'll want a full report. But after that report to the quartermaster for your reward."
Vera just nodded, but her eyes were still scanning the horizon, war instincts too deeply honed to settle down just yet.
Something told her this wasn't over, until a flash of light took her and the team once again.