01-12 | Goblin Slayer
She cast Protection around Goblin Slayer’s body. Not a wall. A cage. The goblins clawed at the divine barrier, shrieking. It would hold for maybe ten seconds.
Priestess saw it happen as if in oil-slow motion: the net, the snare, the goblins piling on. The champion raised a stolen greatsword for a killing stroke.
Priestess had laughed too.
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.
He lit a second torch. The corpses caught. The smell followed them for days. Goblin Slayer 01-12
She crumpled. The goblin’s knife cut air. In the next heartbeat, his blade was through the creature’s throat.
He did not introduce himself. He did not ask if she was hurt. He simply asked, “Are those all of them?” She cast Protection around Goblin Slayer’s body
And she learned about him. Slowly. In fragments.
