Instead, a can of burning oil arced over her head.
Then the ambush came.
“No,” she whispered. “There’s more deeper in. A shaman. Maybe a champion.”
Lizard Priest, a hulking saurian with a gentle voice, told her once: “He is not a man who fights goblins. He is a weapon pointed at goblins. Weapons do not ask why. They only aim.” Goblin Slayer 01-12
That was Priestess’s first lesson: Goblins were not the punchline of a tavern joke. They were the punch. Goblin Slayer—for that was all the name he answered to—lived in a barn. Not a stable. A barn. The hay had been cleared for a simple bed, a workbench, and a rack of weapons so varied it looked like an armory’s rejected pile: short swords, torches, nets, a ladder, vials of strange liquids, a hammer meant for breaking locks. Everything was stained. Everything smelled of smoke and iron.
She crumpled. The goblin’s knife cut air. In the next heartbeat, his blade was through the creature’s throat.
Priestess cast Protection . A shimmering wall of divine light held the horde at bay for three breaths. Then the shaman came. Ugly little thing, draped in stolen fetishes, and it disbelieved her miracle. The barrier shattered like spun glass. Instead, a can of burning oil arced over her head
That was his mercy. Measured in bruises and survival. The weeks turned to months. Priestess learned to check ceilings for drop holes. She learned to listen for the wet breathing of a sleeping goblin. She learned that Protection was best cast at the mouth of a tunnel, to split the horde. She learned to carry a second dagger—not for glory, but for the moment her first one got stuck in a rib.
So she did.
Holy water. Not against the undead. Against the floor . “There’s more deeper in
“Tomorrow,” he said, “there will be more goblins.”
He lit a second torch. The corpses caught. The smell followed them for days.
She had wanted to be an adventurer since she was old enough to hold a stick.
Once, she saw him stop. Just for a moment. A goblin had grabbed a captive village girl as a hostage. The creature pressed a rusty knife to her throat, chittering in its crude tongue. Priestess raised her hands to cast Protection .