The Mimic Becomes a Merchant King

The adventurers quickly scattered as more arrows and bolts tore through the air. Not everyone was lucky enough to get away in time. Two were cut down by the salvo, and were dead before they hit the ground.

Illyana pulled back, slicing a few incoming bolts away with uncanny speed. One of her ear's twitched, hearing the sound of feet scraping on stone, and she looked sharply toward a pair of marksmen emerging from the top of the wall.

Varis moved quickly, drawing a bomb and tinderbox from his belt and igniting the fuse in a fluid motion. His hurled bomb struck the wall as the two goblins took aim from their perch, the ensuing explosion sending a spray of stone and body parts into the air.

"Get to cover!" Illyana shouted. By that point a pair of goblin pikemen were rushing her way, snarling and barking in a language that sounded like gargling gravel. As they drew nearer, she could not help but register something odd.

Goblins, traditionally, adorned themselves in rags. If an adventurer fell against them, their armour would be stripped and repurposed into a crude recreation of plate. More than once she had seen goblins using pauldrons as breastplates, or torn chunks of leather stitched back together into crude cuirasses.

These goblins, however, were wearing soot-stained plate that had been specifically tailored for their stunted frames. Either it was gear stolen from gnomes, or the cannon wasn't the only thing potentially of their own design.

Spearheads whistled toward her, but Illyana dodged and stepped around the incoming flourish. Even their attacks were more disciplined than the usual mad flailing. But Illyana's skill won out, skewering one goblin as she broke past his guard, and booting the other away with an armoured heel before he could close the gap.

A throwing knife caught the goblin in the throat before he could rise, and he died clutching at his bloodied neck. Illyana spun, catching a glimpse of Varis as he drew another dagger from his belt.

By now more of the green tide had emerged from the village, closing the gap while receiving cover fire from the goblins deeper inside the town. "Goblins using tactics?" Illyana breathlessly asked.

Usually, goblins had but two tactics: 'Stick the pointy bit in your enemy' and 'keep sticking the pointy bit in your enemy until they stop moving.'

The exterior of Glain quickly became a miniature battlefield, groups of adventurers cloistering together to fend off angry goblins. Those with ranged weapons made for the treeline, taking up cover and trading shots with their goblin counterparts. Every once in a while Illyana would hear a pained curse from a human, or what was presumably a similar curse in the goblin tongue, and the number of flying bolts gradually shrank.

Illyana cleaved one attacker in twain while Varis, a few paces ahead of her, decapitated another of the marauders. Blood was seeping through the fabric over his right shoulder, yet the elf count not recall when he had received that wound.

A horrid shrieking sound echoed from somewhere within Glain, followed by hoofbeats like distant thunder. Illyana braced, sweat glistening on her pale brow, A dire boar, as large as an ox, raced through the remnants of the town gates, mounted by a goblin who carried a sword longer than his whole body.

The black-furred beast, bristling and snorting, was adorned in armoured plates on his harness. A plate of metal was atop his head, with gaps big enough for his sloping tusks to poke through.

The elf braced herself and took a breath. In an instant, strength and vitality surged through her body with newfound intensity. She spoke a mantra in her mind, the words resonating through every nerve in her body: Be the leaf in the eye of a hurricane.

The rider raced toward a group of adventurers, mowing a few of them down with a sweep of his blade, while others were gored or trampled by the charging boar. The rider hooted and hollered, and whatever he was saying he was clearly doing so in what could only be described as a mocking tone.

Varis downed another goblin, wrenching a billhook from the creature's severed chest. "Might be out of our depth here," he huffed, backing toward Illyana. "And there may be more of those bastards lurking in town. We oughta get out of here, now!"

"Easier said than done," she muttered, glancing to the hill. The wagons had already taken their leave, moving further down hill. "We won't get anywhere while that boar is still around. He'll ride us down before we can get very far."

"Think you can kill it?" Varis grinned playfully. "You know, just to prove you're not all bluster."

Illyana grunted, raising her claymore into a hanging stance. "In theory? I can kill anything that bleeds. But with that big bastard? I'll need a little bit of luck," the elf explained.

"Can't promise you luck. But if you distract it a little bit, I can make things a little easier for you." He pulled a small vial from his belt as he spoke, containing a viscous purple liquid that was undeniable poisonous in some way. Illyana nodded.

The rider rounded his mount toward them, howling and kicking his heels to the boar. The creature charged at Illyana, beady black eyes locked onto her and shining with baleful hate. A few bolts protruded from unarmoured parts of the beast's body, yet he scarcely seemed to notice.

Illyana braced herself for what was to come, the creature charging her way faster than a galloping steed. She sidestepped the incoming rush, only barely avoiding being gored by the protruding tusks. The edge of her blade bit into a hindleg, a ribbon of blood arcing from the fresh wound. The dire boar shrieked, a noise near deafening in volume, but twisted toward her with little issue.

The boar's side slammed into her, shunting Illyana off her feet. Her body crashed into a large stone by the brush, cracking the rock on impact and knocking the air from her lungs. The blonde grit her teeth, squeezing her blade tighter. Blackness swam at the edge of her vision.

An inarticulate sneering sound hit her ear, the boar rider hissing as he aimed his great blade her way. Again the boar charged at her, but the blonde hastily dodged the tusks as they smashed the stone into a fine powder. Her claymore met the goblin's sword mid-swing, the impact releasing a flash of sparks.

The echoing clashes of their swords filled the air. From the corner of her eye, Illyana could glimpse the remaining adventurers dealing with the last stragglers coming from the village. But they were in no hurry to try their luck against the dire boar.

The goblin's sword swept toward her face. Illyana jerked back, the sharpened tip only barely grazing her cheek and eliciting a trickle of rose-hued blood. The goblin cackled, evidently pleased.

A heavy thwacking sound echoed through the woods, the boar shrieking as Varis' billhook bit into the beast's hindlegs. Whatever it was coated with sent the boar into a frothing, shrieking rage. He bucked and thrashed about, so violently that the rider tried to hang onto the reins for dear life. Yet, ultimately, he was flung from his saddle and gifted a broken neck when he met the ground.

The sweeping head of the boar slammed into Illyana, her breastplate absorbing the brunt of the impact. Yet her ribs ached, and the pain tripled in intensity as her body slammed into the trunk of a neighbouring tree. Some of the gnarled roots popped from their moorings.

More snarling snorts filled the air, punctuated by stomping hooves that shook the ground as the boar's bulk barrelled toward her. Illyana took a breath, clenching her teeth tightly. Strength pulsed through her body, dulling the pain in her body, and giving her enough sharpness to jump away from the incoming charge. The boar's head smashed into the tree with such force that it was entirely torn from the earth, the trunk dented inward.

Illyana seized the opportunity and thrust forth, aiming for a gap in the boar's armour. Frankly, the metal felt excessive with how dense his skin and muscles were. Yet she pressed on, muscles ignited with augmented strength born from an iron will. Blood sprayed and gushed through the gaps in the armour.

A sudden and harsh jerk from the beast bucked Illyana off her feet, her armoured heels skidding in the mud and forcing her blade free. The dire boar rounded on her, sluggish. By now he was frothing at the mouth.

Yet, as the creature advanced on her, it suddenly tripped and fell to the ground. It did not rise again, shrieking and snorting for several seconds until it died a shuddering death. Illyana stared at it, waiting to see so much as a twitch from it. But it was like an overturned statue now, motionless. Blood dripped steadily from her claymore.

"What Bleak-cursed substance was on that knife?"

Varis approached her side, his posture stooping. "Manticore venom. Not cheap, I assure you, but worth it. The amount I put on my billhook would've had a man screaming and clawing his eyes out in ten seconds flat from the pain. Took more to kill that slobbering creature."

Illyana nodded, leaning against a tree. The pain in her body returned with greater intensity, where it hurt to even breathe. "My thanks. Won't spurn someone who helped save my life," she huffed.

"Ah, well, it was nice to see how tough you are. Definitely killed a lot of stereotypes I had toward elves." He huffed, carefully wiping his blade clean with a cloth. "For someone without magic, you move pretty damn fast. And soaked up plenty of punishment, even with your armour."

Illyana didn't answer him. She flicked the blood from her sword and advanced toward the entrance of Glain. Everything had fallen silent. She had to assume, or hope, that only a small detachment of the goblins had lingered in town. Either drunkenly celebrating their victory, or waiting to see who would investigate their handiwork so they could claim a few extra victims.

The area was littered with the corpses of goblins, and several fallen adventurers. Mostly the naive youngsters, who had come to a rather abrupt death in the face of reality. Illyana frowned. Poor kids. They hadn't deserved this. Those who remained were milling about, tending to the wounded.

"What even happened here?" she asked in a low murmur, staring to the smoking remnants of Glain. The goblins had gone from a nuisance to a trained and well-armed militia, wiping this entire settlement away in much the same way adventurers had done to goblin hovels in the past. But how in Azsoi's name had they made such a dramatic leap? How had they gotten hold of such refined equipment? Something like this... something like this couldn't just be an isolated incident.

A horrid, retching noise hit her ear. Illyana turned to the source, and soon caught sight of a lone and mangled goblin in the mud. He looked up at her with his one remaining eye, burning with a focused and deliberate hatred she had never seen before in a goblin. And though he was dying, defiance was writ large in her face. It was hard to read the emotions of that angular, misshapen face, but Illyana knew pride when she saw it.

"We..." the goblin hissed, gargling on his own blood. Looking closer, she could see a deep gash in his chest. "We take... we take your homes." A goblin speaking common tongue? What sort of goblin knew how to speak common?

The creature died then and there. Illyana did not move, did not look away, a chill racing down the length of her body. And now she was left with more questions and fears than she'd ever had before in her life.