In a voice like black ice, Gunilla called Ellen and I, along with eight other warriors out by name to the front.

  “Tear down the walls.” She commanded, voice dead.

  I felt a brief flash of hesitation beneath the weight of exhaustion and the grip of the Black Hand. These were people’s homes, innocent people with no stake in this war. Behind us the war cries of the goblins bounced off the narrow streets like a flood, to vibrate my chest and crush all regret at what I was about to do.

  Gunilla’s warriors didn’t share Ellen and I’s hesitance. As soon as they heard the order, the eight of them marched up to one of the houses and hammered at the walls with skill enhanced weapons. Only one of the women, a massive beast with three tails and carapace that looked almost a foot thick, had something other than a maul or hammer. That told me Gunilla singled us out more for our weapons than any kind of skill.

  When Ellen and I joined the effort, we were only a couple seconds behind, but already the stone was a mess of divots and shallow holes. Stone crumbled and dusted with the barest touch. In a moment of imprudent curiosity, I dug the pointed finger of my gauntlet into the face of the wall and felt my finger sink into the stone almost as easily as if it were butter.

  The wall fell a short time later when one of the warriors took out the final brick support beam at the corner. The rest of the shoddy construction followed soon after and crumbled into the living room of the family within.

  The house wasn’t empty and a family of three goblins huddled in the far corner of the single room home. Two hoblites, both with only two or three of the piercings, tried to shelter a small child from view. Their too thin arms didn’t provide enough shelter and the little girl’s bright red eyes shone in the dim lighting.

  As the warriors stormed into the house, I briefly thought they might try to kill the goblins within. Each sent baleful glares at the trembling family before they continued their work on the far side wall. Violence never materialized and when we began work on the next wall, I turned my back to the family. The parents now sent some of the most hate filled glares I’d ever seen at our backs while their child’s soft whimpers and cries echoed barely audible over the sound of steel against stone.

  Goblin chants and shouts grew ever nearer as we worked. Before they could reach us, the wall in front collapsed under our collective efforts. With both walls on either side gone, the wall that held the carriage in place bowed inwards. Stone and brick pillars groaned, and the roof threatened to collapse. The few bone trophies the family proudly displayed from the ceiling swayed and bounced. Once the building settled again, the edge of the curved roof was only inches away from touching the enclosed wagon.

  Ellen and I burst from the house into a scene that was all too familiar. Five brutalized corpses laid haphazard across the street and onto the front of the wagon. Each body was missing at least one limb. Those too were easy to spot, often hanging from the lips of nearby roofs, or less often in pools of blood by the cooling body.

  What waited for us was a force of nineteen goblins in the process of reorganizing. Some of them were injured, the dead didn’t fall without a price. But far too many of them were unharmed. Only their slight panting indicated any previous exertion.

  No matter how tired I was, and even beneath the Touch of the Black Hand I could feel my body trying to give out, only to be forced into movement by Divine will, I still had a job to do. There wasn’t time to control the space like I would’ve wished with the rest of the goblin host so close now.

  Iona Black Hand, Mistress of the Howling Winds, I dedicate these deaths to you.

  I plodded into the mass of goblins, Ellen and the other warriors beside me. Unable to care about my injuries, I traded small cuts and dented armor for broken bones and pierced organs. There was no Grace left in me. I did not hold ground like the mighty willow. I did not sway around strikes and lash back with devastating counters. I was brutality.

  A spear took me in the exposed hip, a skill used to bend the shaft around my shield, but stopped when the blade failed to cut through the top of my hipbone. My shield broke the shaft of their spear and I impaled the spike of my hammer into their neck, blood drenching the gambeson they used as armor.

  With arrogant savagery, I plucked the spear from my hip, so cold and drained of heat that the pain failed to even register, and threw the shortened spear into the arm of a nearby hoblite. I limped up to the goblin who fought injured with the warrior in front of them and drove the spear point further into them with my hammer. The shaft splintered under the blow, but the spear point drove through their arm and into their torso just below their ribs.

  You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

  I moved onto the next before the goblin was even dead. I had a job to do, a purpose to fulfill. I was violence.

  I was disgusting.

  There was no Renewal in this. These people weren’t allowed to fight and die with dignity and grace. In fighting this way, in brutalizing them; I reduced us all to animals. I robbed these people of the deaths they deserved as sapient, enlightened beings.

  ‘To kill is to partake in the natural cycle of Renewal. The Slain returned to nature, their deaths fueling the Growth of others. To partake in slaughter withdraws both yourself and your partner from the natural cycle of Renewal and forces you to bathe in the base aspects of the Enlightened.’

  That was a central tenet of the Cult of Weeping Grace. As I smashed my hammer again and again into the guard of the goblin in front of me, I felt his arms break first and then his windpipe. I insulted that tenet.

  I was a hypocrite.

  How many times was my life saved by that very ideal? How many times did others provide me the grace the enlightened deserved, allowing me to survive? I denied the goblins the aspects of the Grace Mother’s divinity that so often saved my life.

  It was disgusting.

  But I had a job to do.

  It took barely a minute for the ten of us to kill the goblins. The aranae with us cleared the bodies from the road as fast as they could and occasionally threw the bodies against the nearby walls or into the homes we’d demolished. With forced disinterest, I tuned out the cries of the goblin child as two bodies landed with wet slaps on the polished tile floor of their home. With the bodies cleared from the street, the ten of us climbed onto the wagon, and the aranae who took the reins sent pulses of mana down them and into the beasts. I tracked the mana as it passed down the reins and into the harnesses of the two creatures, who were encased within stone by the time we broke through.

  All along the harnesses green runes lit up, concentrated around the top of the bugs. With a shuddering crack, the two beasts shed their protective coating and pulled forward as if there’d never been an interruption in their duties.

  Those of us in the back of the wagon got tossed around as we rolled over the rubble. The wagon slowly picked speed back up as it climbed and moved onto the wider roads ahead of us. Before it reached its full speed, however, Ellen jumped from the wagon bed to race towards Maggie and the others. With a curse and a groan, I stood and went to follow. Rather than run all the way back to the end of the convoy, Ellen and I waited amidst the rubble and the bodies for our wagon to pass by.

  Every once in a while, a goblin who ran ahead of the rapidly closing host tried to charge through the gap between destroyed houses only to be put down by either Ellen or the warriors Gunilla stationed in the rubble opposite us. I kept watch on the family in the house behind us. Both of the adults armed themselves in their time alone and I kept my focus narrowed on them so they didn’t get any bright ideas about helping their kin.

  When our wagon finally passed, it did so with far fewer goblins hanging onto the sides or harassing it. The lack of enemy combatants probably had to do with the very pissed off Maggie, who stood protectively over a seated Mika and Nora. Her hand rested on a short sword that hung from her hip.

  She must’ve taken it from her storage ring while we were away. During the time the wagon required to maneuver over the rubble, Ellen and I quickly killed the few goblins who hounded the wagon and climb on ourselves. I was glad the wagons had to slow because even at the sedate pace, I was so tired I doubted I would’ve been able to keep up with it, let alone climb up the side as it moved. Yet, even with its reduced speed, it took Mika and Nora holding onto me for me to muster the required strength to climb.

  Once past the destroyed homes, the goblins mainly kept behind our wagons. Their presence felt more than seen. The sound of thousands of feet pounded against stone echoed out across the rooftops and their occasional war cry bounced around us like distant bird song. The wagons remained at their top speed for as long as they could. Only slowing when a section of the street became too narrow to pass without care. The street never got so narrow that buildings had to be demolished again, however.

  Goblins burst from the alleyways as we passed and tried to overrun specific wagons, but Gunilla forced all the casters who could stand by this point to focus in and pelt the zealous fools with dozens of spells within seconds of each other.

  After a series of narrow streets, we emerged onto a long abandoned thoroughfare and were greeted by the sight of ten goblins in a skill enhanced shield wall, barriers of mana connecting and enlarging their round shields. As the wagons rumbled towards them, they must have expected Gunilla to call a halt.

  She never did. The elder shouted something in her language that I could only guess meant ‘speed up’. Each wagon driver whipped furiously at the massive centipedes that carried them, and the animals did their best to comply.

  I didn’t see what the first collision looked like, but over the rumble of the wagons, I heard the impact. Wails, and the sound of broken bone filled the air. By the time our wagon passed, corpses littered across the street. But as we rode over them, there was no bump in the road. The fool unfortunate enough to fall into the wagon’s path was cut in twain, mid chest, and through the legs by the weight of the earlier wagons. A gruesome line of purest red flowed from his chest to our blood-soaked wheels. Flecks of blood, like spittle from an angry drunk, flew to paint the undercarriage as they rolled.

  After we passed that group, our ride through the city could have been called peaceful if you ignored the sounds of an army out for blood behind us. Besides those behind us, we saw no other hostile goblins as we passed through wealthier and more populated neighborhoods.

  With each class division we passed, the roads got wider and better maintained, and the houses grew sparser. That new space allowed the [Wagon Drivers] to extract what little speed they hadn’t already pulled from the exhausted creatures.

  The massive mix between a spire and dome at the center of the city felt like a monument to our safety for my fatigue riddled brain. Even though logically I knew I wouldn’t truly be safe until we reached where ever this retreat took us, the massive building still felt like a concrete manifestation of the end of this hellish contract.

  I heard them before we reached the courtyard. The raucous cacophony of shouted orders, marching feet, and the clamor of metal against metal finally revealed why we only heard the sounds of the goblin host behind us until now.

  Our wagon turned onto the main through road to the central courtyard with the screech of sliding wheel to reveal hundreds of goblins rapidly shifting into shield wall formation.