11.2 p͏a͏t͏r͏e͏o͏n͏.c͏o͏m͏/S͏t͏r͏a͏t͏o͏t͏h͏r͏a͏x͏A͏f͏t͏e͏r͏D͏a͏r͏k͏

"She's gonna be fine, she can just break out some of her skills and cut them all to ribbons. No biggie," said Flora looking bored.

Ellaria was squinting at the vulpine, an increasingly concerned expression on her face.

"No, somethings wrong, look at how slow she's moving."

Indeed Vivi's reactions were sluggish, and every swing of her sword was as though the sword was made of lead and weighted down with chains. She heaved her sword up and over and brought it down heavily, completely missing all the goblins and sinking it deep into the ground. The vulpine was breathing hard and was covered in sweat, she looked exhausted, exhausted enough that she didn't dodge the goblin knife that slashed up her thigh. She grit her teeth and heaved her longsword from the ground flicking up a shower of earth and swinging it around herself in an arc, spraying the angry goblins with dirt. Unfortunately her attack was telegraphed enough that the goblins were able to dart out of the way and she was left with nothing but frustration as her sword whistled through the empty air.

"We need to save her!" shouted Fey galloping forward.

"Wait! Stop Fey!"

Fey raced across the ground, her hooves drumming against the earth, charging straight toward the crowd of goblins. She was almost there when her entire body turned heavy as lead.

She went wide eyed as her completely shifted center of gravity caused her hooves to go out from under her, the entire centaur flipping end over end into the air, her upper half brutally slamming into the ground and her back hooves going over top. She hit hard and went tumbling and rolling, the crack of broken ribs cut through the air and Fey cried out in pain. She came to a halt slumped on the ground, breathing through her teeth as every breath she took shifted her ribs and caused more daggers of agony.

"Fey!" cried out Ellaria and Flora together.

Ellaria snapped her hands forward even as she ran in and a double pair of twin violet fireballs exploded from her palms spiraling around each other as they flew toward the crowd of goblins. The Fireballs were on track to strike home when they suddenly changed direction and crashed into the ground as though they had been made a hundred times heavier. They exploded on impact sending a bloom of flaring violet into the air and showering the goblins with violet sparks.

The goblins shrieked in fear and backed off of Vivi who was barely holding on by this point. She was on her knees, her longsword stabbed into the ground, holding herself up by the hilt.

Ellaria stared at what had happened to her fireballs, glancing between the missed impact point and her palms.

"What hell is happening…"

"You know I could ask the very same thing about that gnome you have with you," came a voice.

The crowd of goblins parted and a larger hobgoblin appeared from behind a tree. He was tall even for a hobgoblin, and wore a heavy black cloak with a peaked hood from which poked an unusual long white beard. Unusual, as goblins did not normally have beards. Around his neck were various necklaces of bone and small animal skulls and in his hands was a staff topped by an elk's skull, its horns curling over the hobgoblin's head and hung with many bone and feather dreamcatchers.

"Well that explains matters. A shaman. You speak good Common for a goblin, but that won't stop you from burning in screaming agony for what you did to Fey," said Ellaria, barely restrained fury in her voice.

"My my, you are a vicious one. An elf hm? A young one at that. They won't have told you the truth about our kind yet would they, and it seems you will never know. Perhaps for the best, the truth has been known to break many a mind."

"What are you blathering about?"

"Nothing you need to worry about brat."

The shaman lifted his staff up with a cruel triangular toothed smile. Ellaria realised what he was about to do a moment too late and turned in horror to see Vivi go from kneeling and hanging from her sword to hurtling straight up into the sky as though she had been dropped off a cliff while draped in irons. The vulpine's horrified scream became distant as she rocketed away, blowing the canopy apart as she went, straight up and up and up until she was barely a tiny dot in the sky.

"YOU WILL DIE FOR THIS!" roared Ellaria, her hair exploding into flame and roiling with sparks. The forest instantly went from a nice summers day to volcano hot and most of the trees in the surrounding area began to spontaneously burst into flame as the air shimmered with heat haze.

"How childish, your anger controls your mind, you are like a wild animal all bottled up, just waiting for the cork to be pulled. Your ancestors would be proud, you live up to their violent folly."

Ellaria pointed a finger at the hob.

"I do not value your opinion at all. Become ash in the wind."

She spread her hand and small fireballs fired from each finger, zipping and twisting through the air swirling around each other even as more joined them, gatling firing from her finger tips.

The hobgoblin sneered and shook his staff. The fireballs flying toward him slowed and then came to a stop and then began to fall back the way they had come as though gravity had been turned on its side and amplified.

The fireballs zipped backward in straightened fiery lines, Ellaria's head snapped to the side as they rushed around her straight toward the large mass that was Flora. Desperation fueling her reactions she flung out her hands and as the fireballs were about to strike Flora's vulnerable body they wisped away into nothing. The gnome looked down, genuinely disturbed that she had almost been struck by Ellaria's own fire.

She looked back up and her eyes widened.

"Ella look out!"

Too late, the tree that Ellaria had been standing under suddenly shattered as hundreds of pounds of weight was applied at random positions all over it. Ellaria disappeared behind a fallen hill of leaves and branches.

Flora grimaced at the pile then turned on the hobgoblin.

"Who the hell are you!? You aren't like any hobgoblin I've ever heard of."

"I am simply a traveller, I have lived many lives flitting from memory to memory. What of yourself? You have the scent of vast quantities of life about you, like you are constraining a valley's worth of essence within you. How… Peculiar."

"Life? Nah mate, this is all horse cum, loads and loads of horse cum."

The hobgoblin's eyebrow twitched.