Chapter 4 Blood in the snow

It was at the very edge of his range and drew closer with every step. One goblin, it moved carefully, searching the bushes, sniffing the cold air and tracking his footprints in the snow. 

Soon enough the goblin reached the tree he climbed and that's where his tracks ended.

Obviously frustrated the goblin continued its search till it stood right beside the bush Ezra hid in. It stared at the bush a moment before turning its back to leave.

That's when Ezra slowly left the hole, reached through the foliage and using both hands, snatched the goblin by the throat, without making a sound.

It tried to scream but in less than a second Ezra buried its face in the snow and continued choking the creature as it thrashed around and he only stopped when it went still.

Ezra breathed a heavy sigh before taking the goblin's weapon; a rusted haggard kitchen knife. He stared at the thing and said:

"It'll have to do."

He held the knife in a reverse grip, the edge facing outward as he headed for his next target.

During the wait for the first goblin to reach his bush, more than ten goblins had entered his range and the only thing stopping them from seeing him were the surrounding trees.

He slowly stalked closer to his next target, one of a three goblin group. It walked slower than the rest, Ezra could tell it had a wounded and infected leg. It was dying, making it the obvious pick of the three.

Ezra stalked slowly behind it, matching its footsteps but closing the distance with every one till he was right behind it. 

The sun was now covered by snow clouds so he casted no noticeable shadow. 

He grabbed its head with his left hand and in the same breath severed its head with one stroke of the knife in his right.

The sound the act made alerted the second goblin but before it turned, Ezra had already thrown the knife towards the third and delivered a deadly kick to the back of its head, cracking its skull and launching it face first into the snow. Death in an instant.

The third goblin had more time to react but it could do nothing to stop the knife from embedding itself in its head as it turned around.

"Four" he sighed as he went on to kill the rest.

One by one they fell, seventeen total, till a hobgoblin entered his range. This prey was larger than the goblins, than even himself. 

He created a trail this time to another tree which he climbed to the top and waited.

Other goblins were around but he made sure the trail would be on the hobs path and sure enough it tracked him to the tree.

And when it looked upward, Ezra fell towards him with two knives drawn, looted from the other goblin corpses and he buried their rusted haggard blades into the hobgoblins eyes.

The plan was to blind it and immediately cut its throat, severing its vocal cords preventing it from calling for help. But when Ezra pulled the third knife and reached for his throat barely a millisecond later the hob grabbed his arm with a roar and flung him aside.

He crashed into the snow and immediately rushed back to the hob as it continued roaring in pain, hoping to kill it and leave before the others found them.

The hob stood at eight feet and with two swift motions, Ezra took large cuts of its thighs and brought it to its knees.

It swung its hands around, trying to catch him but Ezra was already behind it, plunging the rusted knife into its throat.

But the hob did not die, it tried to roar but only blood flowed from its mouth. Ezra decided to leave it there.

Goblins used rusted blades so the wounds of their prey would quickly get infected in case it got away and they had to track it down.

The same way Ezra was going to leave it to die from its wounds. Also because its reinforcements had closed in and he couldn't allow them to corner him.

Over twenty goblins and three hobs now chased him through the forest. He had several hiding spots scattered around to launch more ambushes but first he had to lose his pursuers, but try as he might, Ezra couldn't.

He ran for nearly an hour, using most of the lumen he regained during his ambushes by enhancing his physical abilities.

The goblins were relentless, the hobs most of all, keeping him in their sights at all times and roaring commands to the goblins around and apparently the goblins ahead of him as well because Ezra soon found himself dodging attacks from goblins laying ahead of him in ambush.

Soon he started seeing the buildings of the village again and that's when he realized the creatures had used the ambushes to herd him back to the village where the Troll still battled and where the rest of the swarm waited for him.

He stopped in a small clearing behind the bakers shop, breathing heavily as he stared at the goblins gathered ahead of him, fifty at least, some on the ground, others on the roofs just waiting for him.

"What a fucked up day"

He was surrounded now and readied himself for the inevitable pain.

His mind raced also. How would he get out of this? How many could he kill? What could he have done better? Would a weapon change anything?

Within his range he knew the location of every blade and anything he could use as a weapon but there was a swarm of goblins between him and every single one of them.

He sighed, his breath visible from the cold.

The villagers called his mother the Lion of Greyholm, she was a tall broad woman with long wild dark flowing hair that they said moved like a lion's mane when she fought. It was a nickname but one she took to heart so she called her twin war cleavers her fangs. 

Ezra had never seen a lion but when he imagined one, all he saw was her.

Often when he was little and Ezra couldn't take the scorn of the villagers she would find him in the forest, sit beside him and call him her cub.

"You are my son, Ezra. And the child of a lion, though a cub is a lion nonetheless."

Then Ezra heard her voice in his head like she was standing right beside him again:

"What do we lions do, Ezra?"

"We roar, we rule, we kill and we are relentless!"

And Ezra roared as he launched himself at the swarm and his mother spoke once more:

"If you don't have weapons, then use your fists. If your arms are broken and thorn, use your legs. If your legs fail you then use their teeth. Never stop, never relent, show those beasts whose son you are!"

Not even he knew how long he spent in that swarm, punching, kicking, biting, killing, they just kept coming, throwing bodies at him. 

The hobs stayed back watching as he butchered their minions, he knew they were waiting for him to tire and he was tired, oh he was so tired now but his mother's voice kept ringing in his ear and he couldn't let himself stop.

During the fighting he lost count of how many times he passed out and his body kept fighting. 

He heard sound: 

<< Congratulations you have awak...>> 

But he shook it off.

He had sunk into the primal techniques of his people, the Kor'alan; the art of dodging and attacking immediately and simultaneously. And that was what was keeping him alive now.

At one point he regained consciousness to see he now held twin war cleavers that he knew were on a guards corpse one hundred and fifteen metres away from him.

He didn't bother questioning it and returned to the fight. Besides his obvious fatigue and dwindling lumen reserves, he had another problem.

He wasn't killing all the goblins that attacked him, he couldn't spend time ensuring each blow he gave was fatal, even with the cleavers now, so the number of goblins attacking him barely dwindled. In fact he thought they multiplied.

He felt like he had only too many options now, lose his mind to the fighting and die eventually or stop fighting and die now. The latter wasn't an option so he was about to give himself everything he had to this conflict.

That's when something silver white blurred through his peripheral vision.

Something fast had blitzed into his range, burst a hole through the swarm of goblins and planted itself right beside him while barely making a sound and his mind was just catching up.

He tilted his head low to the right to see this intruder as his ability failed to send him the details fast enough.

A snow leopard beastwoman had landed between him and the horde, fur trimmed cloak billowing and dual her daggers already slick with goblin blood.

Her silver white braid whipped as she moved, cat ears stood upright as she glanced back at him.

"Who are..?"

"Shut your eyes!" 

Her voice was soft but her tone had a sharpness to it and what followed was a great blinding light that enveloped everything.