Chapter 18 – Life and Death

Two attacks. One breath.

Jake and Glenn acted at the same moment. Glenn’s target dropped without a sound, shaft finding throat with clean, ugly efficiency.

The heavy weight at the end of Jake’s chain snapped into its forehead with enough force to drop it where it stood, skull caved above the eye socket.

The third sentry turned at the noise and Edwin’s knife crossed the clearing in a flat, spinning line, burying itself to the hilt beneath its ear.

The fourth ran for the entrance.

Chloe was ready.

She covered the ground from behind a bush in four steps and hit it from behind, driving her spear through the creature and into the limestone. It didn’t get back up.

Was she holding back strength?

“Now,” Edwin said. The hastily formed plan was in everyone’s minds.

Lyle stepped forward and cupped both hands. The small, flickering ball of flame from his practice sessions was gone. What replaced it was something wider, something that breathed.

The fireball left his palms in a heavy, rolling burst and hit the vine curtain at the cave entrance. The dry moss caught immediately, spreading up the rock face and across the crude timber frame in a fast, hungry crawl.

Black smoke poured inward.

Sloane planted her feet wide, drew her arm back, and pushed. The wind that left her palm wasn’t the jacket-flapping effort she’d managed on Floor 7. This was focused, narrow, fast, and it hit the fire at the entrance like a bellows. The smoke column bent inward, pouring down the cave throat in a churning black wave.

From inside came coughing. Then screaming. Then the sound of many feet.

“Back,” Edwin barked.

They spread wide on either side of the entrance, pressing flat against the limestone. The first goblins came out blind, eyes streaming, stumbling into open air. Edwin and Susan worked through them methodically. Jake stayed at the edge of the firelight with Gutter-Tooth loose in his grip, watching the entrance.

One way in. One way out.

Then the screaming inside changed pitch.

It went lower.

The ground moved.

A single, deliberate footstep that transmitted up through the rock and into Jake’s spine.

The chieftain filled the cave entrance completely.

Jake had been building a picture of it since they’d spotted the cave. He had assumed large. He had budgeted for twice the size of the horned skulker from the flooded corridor. He had prepared for something Edwin and Arthur would need to hold together.

Arthur took one look at it and stepped backward without seeming to realise he’d moved. Susan went still. Even Edwin, who had not reacted to anything with visible fear since Floor 7, said nothing for a full second.

Jake had underprepared.

It stood nearly nine feet, hunched under its own mass, its shoulders wider than Arthur’s kite shield held horizontal. Three horns—the third jutting straight up from the crown of its skull. Its skin was the grey-green of old bruising, pulled drum-tight over bones that looked wrong, too dense, pressing against the surface like they wanted out. It carried a length of iron pipe with a splitting axe head welded to one end, roughly the length of a man.

It walked through the fire like the fire had no opinion about it.

“Lyle,” Jake said.

Lyle threw everything he had at the chieftain’s face.

The fireball hit it directly in the eyes and the chieftain stopped, one massive hand coming up to claw at its own face. The flash had blinded it. It stood there for two full seconds, swinging the iron pipe in a wide preventative arc that took out a section of burning vine and a chunk of limestone and would have taken Sloane’s head off if she hadn’t dropped flat.

The goblin chief swung its pipe at Arthur. In a panic, he braced for impact. His barrier held for half a second, then gave. Arthur left the ground entirely, hitting the limestone wall six feet up before sliding down it. He didn’t move.

Jake went for the back of its knee with Gutter-Tooth.

The scythe blade landed clean, edge biting into the joint with everything he had behind it.

The blade skimmed off.

A shallow black line opened in the skin and that was all. The chieftain turned and looked down at him like he was some sort of pesky ant.

A cold sweat drenched his back as Jake put distance between them and ran the problem through his head. He needed another approach entirely.

Edwin reappeared on the chieftain’s back, his knife working into the junction between neck and shoulder, finding nerve clusters, soft points. At least he tried to. The chieftain reached back, grabbed him by the ankle, and threw him into the tree line. Edwin hit a trunk and stayed there.

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“Edwin!”

Sloane sent a wind blade into the chieftain’s face. The compressed air split its cheek open. She lunged in with her sword, driving it two inches into the chieftain’s shoulder before the return swing caught her across the forearm. The bone snapped with a sound like green wood. She went down clutching the arm against her chest.

He watched Susan drag her cleaver across the back of the chieftain’s thigh. The wound was shallow. The chieftain barely reacted.

Chloe was there to help a beat later. She drove her spear upwards. Jake noticed a spark of mana trigger as she drove it into the monsters neck. It bit deep.

Annoyed, the chief swung a fist at Chloe. Mana activated again as she pushed against, trying to get away. She was too slow.

The fist caught her, sending her tumbling across the ground.

Something had to change.

Jake threw Gutter-Tooth in a wide lateral arc around the chieftain’s ankle, letting the chain wrap twice before the blade caught and locked. He pulled the free end tight and used Tension to read the load in every link—the exact point where the chain was bearing maximum stress, where the iron was pulling against the joint, where the ankle was weakest.