Dragon's Challenge - D. R. Rosier Page 0,2

the goblin’s leg with a low sweep of his bastard sword. The goblin’s death cry as his life blood ran out was followed quickly by the second, as he crushed the second goblin beneath his shield and ran him through the chest. With its arms pinned, the goblin couldn’t even try to parry his strike.

He frowned, as the last four goblins on dire wolf mounts turned and raced back to help their shaman after Tansya had split open the skulls of the shaman’s personal guards.

He channeled his magic again, and four concussive blasts of sound accompanied the lightning bolts he’d sent their way over two seconds and which filled the night explosively.

Two of the goblins had tried to take advantage of his distant focus, but he was aware of them as they came at his back with a pitiful attempt at stealth.

He also didn’t do anything about it, because he also sensed Nysa as she danced by, cutting through the back of one’s neck to sever his spinal cord, while her second dagger slammed into the other’s back and pierced its heart. His water nymph always had his back, and his powerful libido demanded he take her in that moment, but he kept his focus on the field of battle.

The shaman’s death cry followed a moment later, as Shar’s strong magic and stream of fire eventually broke through the protective spells around the shaman. When the fire cleared, there was nothing left of him but ashes, Shar hadn’t held back. It only took a few more moments for him and Nysa to take down the remains of the goblin tribe with steel, as well as water, fire, and earth magic.

He walked over and then sighed as he looked down at the dead man who hadn’t ducked when he said to. The damned arrow had hit the man’s heart. He couldn’t heal the dead.

“My condolences.”

The other two were looking at him in awe, one said, “I thought we were all dead, that was incredible.”

He snorted, “Why did you come then?”

The man flushed, “We thought you’d be taking them in pockets, inside the mine. We had faith in that plan and your ferocity. Not the whole damned tribe at once.”

Oh, right. He decided not to take offense.

The other snorted, “Guess we forgot you took down a whole undead army at once.”

Yeah, that’d been a lot easier actually, but he wasn’t going to say that.

His beautiful Tansya was already gathering up the loot, weapons and good armor, as well as pouches of coin. She’d taken on that responsibility, and he’d allowed it even if it tweaked his instincts more than a little bit. She’d ensure all of it made its way into his treasury and armory for sale. She’d sooner die than steal from him, or see any harm reach him, so he’d sooner die than admit her access to his treasury put his teeth on edge. After six weeks of it, he was mostly used to it now.

He said, “I expect that was all of them, but we’ll check out the mine to be sure, and block the passage you opened up. There might be some guards left, if any more miners are still alive. You’ll need to mine in another direction, obviously. I hope there are more survivors in there, we can heal them up too if they’ve been…” he trailed off. Humans tended to get queasy about torture. Of course, he didn’t like it either and he would never torture someone, but it didn’t impact him all that much either.

It was just what goblins did.

They cautiously moved into the mine to finish up.

It’d been six weeks since the elves had sued for peace. Despite that, he’d continued with his contract of protecting the two western villages as he courted the princess once a week with an all-day date of sorts. It’d been fairly quiet since the elves gave up on raiding them, but that was a good thing and allowed him to focus on his magic, all while he earned a fifty gold a week stipend.

He’d worked hard and begun his mastery of all four of his elemental magics. All that meant was his connections to his bonded, and him being able to cast the cantrips with little thought, and also channel and transform his magic to that element could be done in battle. There was still very little he could do with it in battle, but he could use all four elements in battle with one or two simple