Chapter Thirteen: The Fall and the Flame
The road behind was silence and dust.
Jasper watched as Sarah, cloaked and pale beneath the dying sun, rode off with the coachman. Their horses vanished into the lowlands, into safety, into stories not yet told. He did not wave. He only turned and walked, the barley pouch at his belt shifting softly with each step. Beside him, Flame padded low, her golden shoulders rolling with feline grace, her amber eyes scanning the wind.
They walked until the hills swallowed the road.
At night, they camped in silence. Coals glowed low, casting dancing shadows on Jasper’s long face, the wind stirring his cloak. The vultures came first—drawn by scent or story—but Flame hissed and leapt at them, her growl alone enough to drive them skyward. Then others came: thieves, scavengers, the bold or the foolish. They thought the knight and his beast were sleeping.
They were wrong.
The road narrowed. Stone rose on either side, jagged like broken teeth. The wind tasted colder. And then—they came.
Goblins.
Not scouts. Not whispers. An army.
Dozens of them, hunched and armored in rust, wielding chipped blades and spitting curses in the black tongue. Their leader rode a pale swamp beast with horns like dead trees. His eyes were green flame. His banner bore no name—only the jagged rune of the overseer.
Jasper did not hesitate. A slave knows when to fight. And when to flee.
They ran.
He and Flame vaulted crags, slid down shale, vanished into ravines. But the goblins were bred for this—they hunted as hounds do, in packs, with laughter and steel. The road ended in cliffs.
Nowhere left.
Jasper turned. Behind him, only air—hundreds of feet of howling drop. Before him: a wall of snarling goblins. He raised his sword. Flame growled beside him.
They came.
The first wave died. The second bled. But the third pushed onward, the goblin chief bellowing from his mount, edging them forward.
Jasper stepped back—too far. Stone crumbled beneath his heel.
He fell.
There was no scream. Only wind.
Flame did not follow.
She had known the edge before—known the sound of stone giving way. She did not flee out of fear. She fled to survive. To be there if he ever rose again.
Above, the goblin chief leaned over the cliff, teeth bared in triumph.
“The horse bleeds,” he spat. “The horse falls. He is dust—and I am the death written in his bones.”
They waited. Watched. But there was no sound—no body, no breath, no sign of a survivor.
So they turned. And left.
Triumphant.
Far away, in the tower above the marshes, the goblin lord stood before his crystal boulder. The surface rippled with visions. He had seen the fall. He had heard the silence.
He turned, laughing, already crowing of his victory.
But then—something. A flicker.
A flame.
Small. Golden. Alive.
And beside it, a shape in the dark. Broken. Breathing.
The goblin lord hissed, lips curling.
“Impossible,” he muttered.
Down past the cliffs, through mist and root and stone, Jasper lay crumpled on the rocks. His sword had pierced his leg. His cloak torn. His blood pooled.
But he breathed.
And above him, perched on a ledge of stone, Flame watched—her ears forward, her eyes aflame. She did not weep.
She waited.
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Chapter Fourteen: The Siege of the Ravine
The Lord of the Green Fist— second only to the goblin king, he who wore bone crowns and stitched banners from the skins of his enemies—was not accustomed to the taste of defeat. It soured his black tongue and coiled in his gut like a worm. A soul had slipped his grasp, a thorn had found his gauntlet.
It could not be tolerated.
Orders were given:
"Take twenty warriors. Snuff that flame. Ensure the horse-headed wretch rots in the ravine and rises no more."
The goblins obeyed. Eager for blood. Eager for favor.
They came under cover of darkness, creeping to the cliff's edge, clutching hooks and knives, snarling at one another to be the first to taste glory.
First, they tried the cliffs.
Claw and foot they scrambled down, spitting curses, digging filthy nails into the loose shale and dirt. The walls betrayed them. They crumbled at the lightest touch.
The first goblin slipped with a shriek—falling, falling until he struck a dead tree stump below, his body twisted around it like a broken doll. His death rattle echoed up the ravine.
The second, third, fourth, and fifth fared no better.
Crushed on the rocks. Battered into unrecognizable shapes.
What tumbled at the bottom was no longer goblin, but meat.
The fall—five hundred feet of screaming death—was a mercy few survived. Only a creature bred of fire and sinew and old rage, like Jasper, could have lived through such a thing.
The goblins hissed and changed tactics.
Ropes were lowered—tattered cords of leather and sinew, slick with blood.
One by one, they sent down their own.
One by one, only silence answered.
For waiting below, gleaming in the starlight, was Flame.
Silent. Patient. Unforgiving.
The goblins who touched earth became her prey—slashed, mauled, devoured.
The ravine drank their blood.
Frustrated, the goblins gathered and conspired again.
They lined the cliff top, torches in hand, and hurled fire into the dark.
But the ravine breathed mist and wet stone.
Flame after flame sputtered and died mid-fall, choking on the dampness.
They waited.
Hours passed.
Boredom crept into their ranks—boredom and fear, as it does with goblins when death hovers too long overhead. Whispers grew among them.
"The cliffs are cursed."
"No man lives that fall."
"The horse-head is dead. Let the rocks eat him."
Discipline broke like thin ice.
And so, one by one, the goblins abandoned their posts.
First by excuse.
Then by defiance.
Finally by command.
The last goblin left spat into the ravine and muttered a curse he half-believed himself.
"They'll rot down there. Both of 'em. The rocks'll drink their souls."
And they returned to the tower.
Certain in their hearts that the cliff had won.
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