The chieftain did not rise.
He simply leaned forward, bone still in hand, watching intently as a new wave of warriors surged toward the massacre.
A low, rhythmic chant began to echo through the clearing—deep, guttural syllables that clawed at the air. Three shamans emerged behind the front lines, their staffs pulsing with vile magic. Around them, a hundred armored hobgoblins advanced, shields up, swords drawn, forming a disciplined phalanx of iron and muscle.
They had learned.
This time, they didn't charge recklessly.
They meant to crush her.
Beatriz stood still, surrounded by corpses and blood.
Her prestine white blouse was now crimson. Her arms hung loose, the spear dripping gore, golden veins appear on her skin pulsing faintly—like veins carrying divine wrath.
She took one step forward.
The hobgoblins roared and marched as one, a wall of steel behind which the shamans continued to chant. Chains of green lightning danced across their totems, building toward something ancient and dark.
Beatriz moved.
But not toward them.
She leapt straight up.
Inhumanly high.
The wind screamed as she arced into the air, twisting her body mid-flight, the spear collapsing into a compact rod in her hand.
At the apex, she hovered for the briefest moment—a shadow against the sun.
Then she fell.
A spear of judgment.
She landed at the very center of their formation like a meteor.
The shockwave blew half the front line off their feet.
Steel buckled. Bones shattered. The earth split beneath her.
The moment she touched ground, she expanded.
The spear unfolded to its full length in an instant, and she spun. Once. A blur of silver and blood. A dozen hobgoblins lost limbs in the blink of an eye.
Then she truly began.
She twisted low and tore through ankles, flipping one hobgoblin over her back and hurling him into three others like a thrown boulder. She kicked a shield so hard it folded inward, driving the metal into its wielder's ribs like shrapnel. One swung a war axe at her head—she caught it mid-air, yanked the hobgoblin forward, and shattered his kneecap with a single rising elbow.
The phalanx formation collapsed.
In its place, panic.
A few tried to form a circle around her.
She broke their ankles with a sweep of her leg, then stabbed downward with her spear in a staccato rhythm—six precise thrusts in under a second. Each found a throat, a heart, a skull.
The shamans screamed louder, and the sky above cracked open with foul green light.
Lightning fell.
Dust and blood exploded into the air.
For a heartbeat, everything went still.
Then something moved within the smoke.
Beatriz walked.
Unharmed.
Smoke clung to her like mist. Blood hissed where it touched the golden glow threading through her skin.
She glared at the shamans.
And they faltered.
She dashed forward—no roar, no warning—moving like the shadow of a guillotine. The last few hobgoblins between her and the shamans barely had time to raise their weapons. She weaved through them with supernatural precision, slashing tendons, crushing throats, collapsing lungs.
Then she was upon the first shaman.
He raised his staff in a trembling hand, mouth open to cast.
She seized the staff—and drove it upward, ramming the butt end into his chin with such force that his jaw shattered and his skull snapped backward. Before his body even dropped, she spun the staff in her hand and struck him again—this time across the temple.
His head caved in like wet clay.
She let the stolen staff drop beside his twitching corpse.
The second shaman turned to run, shrieking.
She hurled her spear.
It flashed through the air and sliced him from hip to shoulder, bisecting his body cleanly. The halves of him collapsed several feet apart, twitching in opposite directions.
The third dropped to his knees, weeping, chanting desperatly.
Beatriz walked through the glowing ward he conjured, unfazed.
She drove her spear through his mouth—out the back of his skull—and pinned him to the dirt like an insect on a nail.
Silence returned.
She stood among a hill of corpses.
Nearly a hundred dead hobgoblins lay broken, torn, and twitching around her feet. The ground was black with blood. Smoke curled into the sky in silent tribute.
Only the chieftain remained.