---[ POV: Gwenvar ]---

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Gwenvar and her Ward had been running since dawn.

They had long abandoned all their luggage behind, even getting rid of their cloaks and some layer of cloth. Gwenvar, despite her reticence, had to discard her entire armor. Everything that had even the slightest chance of slowing them down was thrown away. The only thing Gwenvar had kept with her was her greatsword and the golden eye patch the princess had offered her as a gift shortly after they had met.

Every breath the woman took was burning her lungs and it had been some time since she had been able to feel anything else than pain in her legs.

The young girl that accompanied her - her Ward - had been unable to move for some time and Gwenvar was forced to tuck her on her shoulder and continue to run. The recently healed wounds on the poor girl’s face had reopened because of the frenetic escape and Gwenvar could hear her painful and feverish groans.

“Please hold on my Lady. I’ll find a place where we can hide or fend off the horde. Just hang on.”

Gwenvar knew this was useless. Her Ward - Princess Amaryllis Annestrahd - had lost consciousness and was adrift in a feverish nightmare.

The goblins had not halted their pursuit for a minute since they had discovered them this morning and the distance that separated the two women from them was getting smaller, slowly but surely.

Gwenvar and her ward had half a mile of advance on the goblins at dawn but, two hours ago, the horde had been joined by a pack of warg riders which had tailed the fleeing duo closely and launched some harassing attack from time to time.

Gwenvar had killed some of them, dampening their eagerness, but after retreating to a safe distance, they had continued to follow her. The growls and howls of the wargs resonated behind her, on both sides and even ahead. They were surrounded. The horde was catching up. It was the end.

I am sorry my queen, I could not fulfill my promise. I am sorry Amy, this is as far as I can go, it seems. A failure until the end…

A silent tear of rage and despair rolled down the scarred cheek of the woman.

Going up the mountains was not such a good idea after all. We should have tried our chance with Brenuach and through the pass of the Middle Hills in the end.

She tried to find a spot where she could make her final stand.

She found a rocky hill not so far away with one of its sides cut into a small escarpment. Getting her back to it would at least prevent the goblins from completely surrounding her.

Gwenvar arduously limped her way toward the cliff and crouched to lay the sick princess against the wall. The clothes of Lady Annestrahd were sticky with blood from the various scratches and cuts she received by repeatedly falling on the ground and tripping on sharp rocks since the morning. The infection that had settled in the flesh around and in the gaping wound that crossed her face vertically seemed even worse than this morning and Gwenvar had run out of medicinal salve.

Even if they were to somehow escape the goblins, the poor girl would probably die of the infection. At this point, there was not much left to do. And if she miraculously survived, she would be disfigured for life. Gwenvar was herself mutilated by a multitude of scars, not just on her face, but on her entire body, and she did not wished that to any other woman.

Tears of frustration ran down Gwenvar’s grime-covered face from the only eye she had left - the left one. She got up and screamed all her rage and desperation towards the heavens but the gods remained silent. Of course, they would. When had they ever paid attention to her? She could only see a distant bird glide silently beneath the clouds.

"Orvellas! May you be damned forever! I swear by all the gods, on my name and all of my vows, that I will wait for you in the deep trenches of the afterworld where you will inevitably end, and enact such merciless vengeance upon your eternal soul that even the demons of hell will beg me to stop!"

It was all his fault but there was nothing she could do now. He won, in the end.

Gwenvar could hear the horde of goblins finally catching up and approaching so she turned to face them. They were at least a hundred, and it was without even counting the two dozens warg riders and the occasional hobgoblin that acted as chiefs and leaders.

In her current condition, she would be lucky if she was able to bring ten of them with her in the grave.

She spat on the ground and raised her two-handed sword nonetheless. Her vows would not allow her to lay her weapon down before her heart had beat its last.

The first one to charge was one of the riders. Its mount tried to snap at the woman’s face but she jumped out of the way and turned around to strike in a downward motion. Her sword severed the goblin's arm holding the reins then cut deeply into the warg neck. It was not enough to sever the head but it was enough to put it out of combat.

The beast fell on the ground, wailing and twitching. Its rider was ejected from its seat and his head hit the ground with force, killing him on the spot.

Gwenvar had no time to savor this small victory as a trio of goblins tried to skewer her with their spears.

She stepped aside just in time, brushing the three spears with a sweep of her sword in one fluid motion, but an arrow loosed from behind the goblin front line pierced her leg and made her fall on one knee with a scream of pain.

If she had still worn all of her armor, she would have been fine, but she had to abandon most of it during their escape from the horde to alleviate her burden.

The woman’s vision got blurry. The smell of the goblins’ and her own blood was making her head turn and giving her a headache. She felt something build up inside of her; something she normally locked deep in the untouched and unseen abyss of her being. It was a place she herself did not want to visit because what crawled there in the dark, constantly calling for her, was a creeping hunger, a rage howling to be let loose, a thirst for blood and violence that she had to constantly fight. But now was a life-threatening fight; she was dead anyway. Surely she would have a better chance to kill the goblins, to break their bodies, eviscerate them, crush their bones and rip them apart if she just embraced the ravenous beast of hate and spite that extended its tendrils in every corner of her mind? Her hands started to shake. She lost focus of her senses and her perception turned inward for a moment. She could hear her own heartbeat, her ragged breath, feel every cuts and bruises on her body. She was about to fall over the edge; to plunge in the abyss...

Then, her eyes glanced over the unconscious Amaryllis.

“No, not now! Fuck! Now’s not the time, please!”

She had to bit her tongue to the blood to snap out of the numbing torpor that menaced to send her in a frenzied state. The three spear goblins saw her apparent confusion as an opportunity to attack her again but with a feral groan, Gwenvar rolled beneath their attacks and got back up too close for them to use their long weapons efficiently.

The woman’s sword now seemed to weigh a ton or two but she still proceeded to dispatch the goblin as fast as she could

After that, four other goblins risked an assault but two were killed and two others gravely wounded. Unsatisfied with the performance of his minions, the large and imposing hobgoblin chief started to walk toward Gwenvar. The little goblins started to chant his name and jump around in excitement.

"Krazz! Krazz! Krazz! Krazz!"

He was enormous for a hobgoblin; the same size as a normal man, which was still smaller than Gwenvar, but impressive nonetheless. What was even more ominous was that he boasted larges and powerful muscles. If it was not for his face, the woman could have thought he was an orc.

Once in front of her, the mean-looking mountain of muscles simply scoffed and raised its giant cleaver. Gwenvar tried to parry but her weakened leg gave up and she fell to the ground under the force of the blow. Her sword was thrown away, out of her reach.

Krazz raised his cleaver once again and struck without mercy.

Gwenvar instinctively raised her right hand in front of her to defend but it got promptly chopped off. The severed arm sailed off in an arc. The woman screamed, which seemed to amuse the hobgoblin chief. He picked up the severed arm, sniffed it, then threw it in his mouth while laughing. While chewing on Gwenvar’s hand, he turned his attention back to the woman and prepared to strike the final blow.

So this is it? My final moment?

Gwenvar was clutching the bloody stump of her right arm, trying to ignore the pain. As the hobgoblin was about to strike, she closed her eyes and made her prayers.

The blow never came.

Instead, the ground shook beneath her and the sound of thunder exploded in her ears.

She opened her eyes, confused. The hobgoblin chief had been flattened on the ground. What had been his head was now a smear of blood, broken teeth, and splattered brain matter.

In the air in front of Gwenvar flowed the scarlet fabric of a billowy cloak that, after settling down, revealed the form of a man crouching in a landing position over the body of the dead goblin.

The upper part of his cloak, adorned with the pale and spiked scales of an ancient death-singer, evoked the mane of a powerful white lion. He wore a jet black armor decorated with some subtle golden trims and had an imposing-looking war hammer in one hand. There was an emblem of a golden sun on his left upper arm and on his chest, with some scriptures below in a language Gwenvar had never seen before; most probably the man’s coat of arms. He looked majestic and dangerous like one of the fabled knights of ages past sang about by bards and minstrels.

The Knight in Black!

The Storm Warrior!

Gwenvar could barely believe it. She and her Ward had come in those mountains in the hope of finding this mysterious black knight but she had never believed he truly existed. She was simply following the orders of Lady Annestrahd.

The knight got back up and approached her. She could not see his face. His helmet was completely closed, without even a hole to breath or see. She had never seen an armor of such design before and wondered where exactly he was from. The armor almost looked like a second skin, without so much as an opening in its dark carapace. Despite the uniform look of the armor and the lack of opening, Gwenvar could still somehow perceive the red and ominous glint of the warrior's left eye through the visor and was left wondering if there was maybe not something else than a man beneath the armor.

She was terrified. The old dwarf in Graffen had not lied. She had no doubt this black knight could take on a death-singer on his own. Now that she was facing him, however, she was not so sure it was a good idea to come searching for him. All they really knew was that he was a good fighter. Nothing else.

She instinctively backed away but he closed the distance and knelt beside her. The warrior was turning his back to the goblins but he did not seem to care, as if saying that their presence was so trivial that he didn't even have to keep an eye on their movements.

The goblin horde was stunned in place. The thunderous sound of the warrior's appearance and the sudden demise of their all-powerful chief had left them numb and confused.

The black knight put the hammer down on its head and stretched his right hand to grab Gwenvar's amputated arm. He observed it for a second, then raised his left hand and with a subtle light, a small metallic cylinder appeared in his hand.

The woman let out a surprised gasp. Not only was he a legendary combatant, but he was also an accomplished mage. The combination of the two was rare, to say the least, as both disciplines required years of practice and dedicated study.

The man then approached the cylinder from Gwenvar’s stump and a white and foaming mist appeared from it. The woman choked in surprise once again and reflexively tried to get her arm away but it did not even budge in the firm grasp of the mysterious man.

The foam that he applied all over her stump quickly solidified in a malleable product that almost reminded her of skin. She observed, astonished, as the bleeding stopped and all of the pain went away.

He was not a simple wizard. He was a healer. That was even rarer. This meant he was probably under the protection and benediction of a deity. Some healers were not divine servants but they were extremely rare.

Looking satisfied with his work, the man then turned toward Princess Amaryllis and was starting to examine her when a warg suddenly howled from a nearby ledge. The goblins behind the knight snapped out of their confusion and started to move again as if forced out of their torpor. Some of them started to chirp and chatters angrily.

Gwenvar could hear the sound of bowstrings cracking and the whisper of incoming arrows. She was about to scream a warning to the knight but he seemed to have picked up on the attack on his own. He outstretched his arms as to make a shield of himself between the two women and the goblins.

The dozens of arrows that were converging on them broke with small sparks of purple lightning against an invisible wall a couple of centimeters behind the warrior's back.

The black knight got back up and turned toward the goblin horde that was now agitating their weapons in his direction and screaming ferociously.

As the horde charged like a tide of hellish and unruly devils, the warrior also started to run to meet them head-on. He raised a hand halfway there and the hammer he had left behind was hurled whirling toward it. The hammer reached his grasp just in time for him to charge his arm and deliver an earth-shattering blow.

The front rank of the goblin army was scattered in a single attack and the sound of thunder sang once again in the mountain.

 

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