Glória was looking through the scope of her DMR, overlooking the entrance to the Goblin hideout while she searched for the group of commandos led by Samantha. Glória was still impressed by the talent the woman showed during the training yesterday. Apparently, she could use her Aura to make herself invisible to the eye and to the senses of everyone in the group except Tomás, who claimed to see the woman clearly through his lost right eye.

  Samantha quickly got to show how she did it to the other Aura users of the platoon, but the only ones who got the technique were the four members under her command. The woman described the technique as 'forgetting that you existed and letting the world know of your opinion', but this description made things hard for the learners. Ignoring the idea from the woman, one of her commandos was able to achieve the same results by 'wanting really hard not to be seen or heard', and so all of the commandos became invisible to the eye.

  At first glance, one could tell that Samantha's technique was more refined, with her being almost without any traces when you looked at her, but the fact that one could turn invisible was an absurd feat. Tomás quickly got to thinking about the fact that only the soldiers who had training on special operations and Samantha were able to learn about the invisibility technique, theorizing that the previous experiences of the five were responsible for their special capabilities, but Glória wanted to know how a simple civilian like Samantha had more experience in infiltration than a spec ops soldier, but that apparently awarded her with command of them.

  Glória caught a glimpse of reflection through her scope, a glint of metal next to a group of Goblins who were in the lookout in one of the adjacent streets of the station. She quickly identified the group of infiltrations with combat knives in hand, ready to pounce at the unsuspecting monsters. Glória watched in awe as the quintette killed, in perfect synchrony, the five Goblin in front of them and hid the bodies with caution in a route that anyone was passing by. The woman wanted some action too, so she started studying some possible targets. She settled on a Goblin Infantry that was shouting orders to the other Goblins around him, so she glued her sights on him.

  "Let's show some work, too, boys.", Glória said to the other marksman over the radio. "Pick a target and watch its routine. Let's synchronize our shots. Wait for the boss' orders."

  Suddenly, Glória heard a sound coming from her radio. Surprised she picked up her radio and put it on her ear.

  "Is someone there? Can you hear me?", came the faint whisper from the radio, a male voice speaking so low that Glória almost couldn't hear it.

  "Yes, I can.", responded Glória. "Who is this?"

  "Oh, thank God, I thought I was dead here.", said the man. "I am a private, I was captured by those things a little while ago."

  'Captured? A little while ago?', thought Glória. 'We didn't have anyone captured in the base that I know of.' The woman was suspicious of the man because there was the possibility that he was a deserter, as that was a serious problem they were facing at the base. Deciding to investigate the suspicious man, Glória put on her best acting voice and began inquiring a little further.

  "All is going to be well, buddy.", said the sniper with a fake worried voice. "I saw some civilians being escorted by the Goblins, are you with them? And your name, can you tell me your name?"

  "Yes, we are eight in total, being kept in one of the ticket booths.", said the man. "My name is Carlos. I got lost from my unit a little while back."

  'Bingo, I got a liar here.', thought Glória. 'The only unit that got separated was the unit Lieutenant Silva was commandeering, and they got a lot of deserters there. Just going to keep in touch with him for the sake of the other civilians.'

  "Thank you, Carlos, keep your head low and the civilians safe.", said Glória. "We are going to attack this Goblin hideout, so just stay down and wait for the rescue. We are on our way. I will inform my superior and I will talk with you later."

  Thanks to a series of layouts of the station that they had on the Police Department back at the base, Glória knew exactly where the ticket booths were, so no need to inquire further. Now, Glória was going to

  "Lieutenant, I got some good news and bad news.", relayed Glória through her channel with Tomás.

  "Speak up.", responded the man, plainly.

  "The good news is that one of the hostages got a radio with him and I can speak with him while he hides. The bad news is that he is most certainly a deserter. He told me his name is Carlos.", said Glória.

  "Oh, Carlos. I know the guy.", said Tomás, distain in his voice. "You are right, he is a deserter. He ran away from my previous unit before we engaged a Drake. I assume you are keeping him in the dark about your suspicion?"

  "Affirmative, sir.", said Glória. "I knew his story didn't add up."

  "Good, keep that up.", said the Lieutenant. "I will meet the enemy in just a second. How is Samantha?"

  "I am pretty sure she killed all of the look outs so far, sir. I am sure you can come without worry.", responded the sniper.

  "Out fucking standing", said the man, joyous. "If you think you are clear of nearby hostiles, you are clear to engage. I will focus here, so feel free to go wild."

  "Affirmative, sir.", said Glória, a big smile in her face as she heard the radio going off.

  She tuned her radio so she could speak with the rest of her team, now divided in two groups of two and three in the nearby buildings with lookouts for their safety.

  "Good news, boys.", she said. "You can start picking them off now. Boss orders."

  Glória trained her sniper rifle and fired on a Goblin in one of the groups of lookouts she was observing. It was a difficult shot, with the target being more than one kilometer away, but with the new Aura tricks, Glória was confident in the shot. The bullet flew freely after leaving the barrel, and, with help of the Aura provided by the sniper, hit the thing precisely on its head. The beast fell face first on the ground, its whole head gone in a cloud of red mist with the shot. Glória smiled.

  ----

  Tomás was holding himself back so his squad could keep up. Since he heard from Glória that one of the hostages were that fucking snake named Carlos, his blood was boiling a little. The man convinced the rest of hist unit to desert and now was pleading for help like nothing had happened.

  Tomás was walking fast, immersed in his thoughts about the possible excuses the man would give him to try and avoid his judgement, he didn’t care, he would drag the distrustful bastard back to base and make him pay for abandoning him, Gustavo, Jonas and Silva to fend off almost alone against a beast such as a Drake. Now, Tomás had a personal reason to retake the metro station and kill all the Goblins in it, besides the obvious reasons he already has.

  “Sir, wait up.”, came a voice from behind Tomás.

  He turned to look and saw Tobias coming at him with a worried look on his face. Tomás stopped and waited for the man to reach him.

  “Sir… please, go a little slower.”, the man said out of breath.

  “I don’t think I will, Corporal.”, said Tomás. “I just learned of an ‘old friend’ of mine is waiting for our rescue, and I am really anxious to meet him.”

  Tobias understood the sarcasm in Tomás voice and quickly asked “But why, sir? Did he do something to you?”

  “He left me and four others alone to fight a Drake while he and fifteen others ran away with their tails between their legs.”, responded Tomás, resuming his walk towards the station. “I think I will want to have a chat with him. Let’ do it like this: I will go ahead and get to the fighting first while you take command here and finish getting close to the station. Got it?”

  “I don’t think that is a good idea, sir.”, responded Tobias, starting to wonder what the man was about to do.

  “The good part of my proposition is that I am the officer here, don’t you agree?”, said Tomás, mockingly. He began to pick up his pace and leave Tobias behind. “When you get there, wait for the other squads and clean up after me. Go in your speed, don’t worry, we got a wide margin ahead of the other squads. And don’t get killed, Tobias. Godspeed.”

  Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site.

  With that, Tomás left a dumbfounded Tobias behind and started running ahead of his Squad. Even with his full kit, he felt no weight restraining him down, being able to run even faster than a human normally would. He crossed the distance like it was nothing and was able to reach the plaza just outside of the station in just a minute. Tossing his backpack behind a trash can an remembering the spot, Tomás looked around the place.

  Being a connection between the metro and the bus lines of the biggest city in Latin America, the Villa S?nia station was thought out as a mean of convenience to the millions of users of the metropole’s transportation system, with the user being able to get out of a bus and embark on a train, and vice versa, to facilitate their dislocation inside the city and at least try to reduce the long curfew time of the everyday worker. Now, it was a den of Goblin filth and waste, with the place being destroyed and soiled beyond recognition.

  Groups of Goblins feasted on dubious piles of meat that almost made Tomás throw up with just the sight. And the smell. The smell was rancid and disgusting, making Tomás remember of fresh cow dung mixed with some unknown chemical product. The man decided to grab one of his emergency bandages that he was now keeping in the empty ammunition holsters and make himself a makeshift mask, also lowering his face shield to try to avoid the horrible smell.

  Tomás mentally congratulated Samantha and her commandos for enduring all of this without exposing themselves, as Tomás was beginning to curse himself for not asking for gas masks before heading out, but there was no way to know that the monsters would smell this bad.

  “Attention all units.”, said Tomás over the radio channel to the other squads, a thing that was now a difficult task due to his improvised mask. “Be advised of extreme nauseous smell near the enemy base. Improvise some sort of facial protection or you will not be able to fight.”

  Tomás got on towards the Goblin base, startling some of the unsuspecting Goblins that feasted on their disgusting food over at the plaza. Almost all of them were Fighters armed with simple weapons such as clubs and knives, but some of them wielded rusty short swords of dubious quality. Tomás, having taken his axe from his backpack when he left it behind, was armed mainly with his halberd, but his trusty axe was waiting for its use while being strapped to his back.

  When Atena told him that he should switch weapons, she demonstrated to him how to use the new pole weapon. From what he could make out from the demonstration, he should use a halberd with either quick and focused thrusts and slashes with the machete blade aimed at long to medium range enemies, never allowing for the enemy to reach close to him, this also being the strategy when he fought single enemies; or he should spin the weapon around himself like and helicopter rotor, always reminding himself of the sharp side of the halberd, and denying the enemy the opportunity to get close while cutting them down like a lawnmower. Now, with the man strengthening the weapon for a better performance, there was only one way to find out which way was the best.

  The Goblins scrambled to pick up their weapons and form some sort of coherent fighting line, but Tomás was already at them. He quickly got on to killing them with the first method, impaling and bisecting Goblins left and right while they didn't even get close to him. With this, the first group, some ten scrawny looking Goblin Fighters that didn't even make Tomás sweat, was dealt with, but more were closing on him from all sides. For this, Tomás gripped his halberd down to the base of the weapon and got ready to spin it around himself, waiting for the enemies to close in so he could deny them.

  After a short standoff, one of the Goblins charged, which encouraged the others around it to do the same, so Tomás began his killing spree. The first Goblin to jump on him got whacked by the weapon's haft but got send flying like it was hit by a truck, and the other who followed the example met the sharp end of the halberd and ended up with deep gashes on their bodies. As Tomás continued the spins, he sometimes turned his body partially with the weapon, keeping an eye out on the enemies around him. While he did it, even when the weapon connected with the Goblins with the blunt side of the machete blade, the Goblins either died outright or became too wounded to stand up. Tomás didn't even bother trying to count all of the defeated enemies, since they were too much for that, but he knew for sure that he had already killed at least twenty.

  He was beginning to scare the Goblins away from him, with the monsters taking anxious steps away from the man and his deadly killing zone. Noticing that this wasn't a good thing for his strategy, with the Goblins not recklessly charging at him anymore, Tomás stopped and lowered his weapon, faking a labored breath for his exertion. In fact, the man felt that he was still a long way from feeling tired, and that he hasn't still seriously used any Aura against the monsters, so he hoped that his acting was at least convincing.

  Apparently, the Goblins bought it and resumed slowly advancing towards Tomás again. Now focusing on trying to not scare the Goblins away too much, the Lieutenant squared up against the monsters in front and around him, who numbered close to twenty or so. Focusing his Aura on enhancing his arms and chest and passively moving some of it to his riot armor, Tomás waited for the Goblins to get within his range to resume his attacks.

  After some seconds of maintaining his fake tired act up, two then three of the Goblins entered his blood circle, as the boy scouts used to say. Tomás dropped his act and, brandishing the halberd like it was a spear, impaled the one right in front of him and dragged its body along with the weapon, turning the makeshift halberd into a makeshift skewer. Sensing the Goblins advancing on him, and turning to face them, Tomás was about to let the vile monsters get some clean hits on him if that meant that they would come at him willingly.

  Tomás waved his weapon and threw the skewered Goblin at the some of the advancing ones, blocking their path and impeding their advance. With a quick motion of his body and spinning on his heels, Tomás moved his weapon in a half-moon around himself, striking and killing three Goblins in a single swoop. Purposefully letting them get close, Tomás took four hits on his back, legs and arms from the Goblins he left behind himself. He felt nothing.

  Using the blunt end of the halberd to crush the skull of one of them, Tomás quickly turned his body and grabbed one of the backstabbing Goblins by the head and hastily crushed the life out of the monster. The other two Goblins pressed their attacks, but without any sort of Aura enhancement, they caused no damage on the armored warrior. Tomás made quick work of them by piercing one in the middle of the chest, right over the heart, and turning the haft to bash the other in the face, caving the monster skull in. The abrupt movement made the pierced Goblin go flying to the side of Tomás, crashing like a sack of rotten fruit over some bystanding Goblins.

  Returning to his tired act, Tomás faced to other Goblins. They were advancing at him in full strength now, too many to count, numbers that didn’t scared Tomás now, with all the training he got from a literal God of War. If this encounter was just days before, Tomás wouldn’t even dream about facing this many monsters, since he struggled to kill even a simple group of four Goblins before he learned to manipulate Aura. Happy with his improvement, Tomás steeled himself and advanced towards the monsters.

  As he took his first step to face the monsters, a volley of fire, both ballistic and magic, rained upon the line of monsters. Tomás recognized Gustavo’s Fire Magic in the middle of the volley, now much more controlled and direct, as well as spears and arrows of ice, probably from Yara and the other Water Mages, and deadly blades of wind that cut the monsters like a hot knife through butter, courtesy of the Wind Mages. More subtle than the pyrotechnic show in front of him, the Earth Magic of coming from the Mages of same name dragged and locked the Goblins in place, making them easy pickings for the Aura enhanced shots of the regular soldiers. Looking more closely, Tomás also noticed the precise shots from Glória and her snipers picking out the fleeing monsters that tried to escape the onslaught.

  After just seconds of sustained and directed fire, more than half of the two hundred Goblin Fighters laid dead on the plaza, all of them either dead or too wounded to be a threat. Satisfied with the sight in front od him, Tomás turned to his soldiers.

  “Nicely fucking done, Platoon.”, Tomás said, smiling broadly. “Now, mages, hold your fire and retreat to the back. Those with assault rifles and machine guns, to the front. Let’s finish the cleaning of this plaza and move inside of the station. Remember, single fire and don’t waste ammunition”

  The squad leaders and soldiers acknowledged the order and reorganized themselves to have free aim towards the now cowering Goblins at the entrance of the station. The monsters hissed at them, and slowly creeped backwards towards the relative safety of the underground metro.

  “Glória, keep an eye out for any reinforcements or returning units for us, would you?”, said Tomás over the radio.

  “Gladly, sir.”, answered the sniper.

  Tomás stepped forward in front of the advancing soldiers, all of them with their rifles raised and trained to shoot, and, with that, the Goblins increased their rate of retreat, now completely on the backfoot in the battle. Just as Tomás was about to give the order to begin the cull of the vile monsters, a Goblin Captain and its retinue of Infantries appeared on the top of the stairs leading to the metro station. The Goblins now exhibited more signs of fear than ever, not from the armed soldiers in front of them, but towards the warrior cadre of their species.

  The Goblin captain, with his plumed helmet, raised his sword and pointed it toward the vastly inferior line of human soldiers. The Goblin Fighters began entering a frenzy, their eyes glowing red with an animalistic fury, and, reading to charge at any moment, they began a slow walk towards the soldiers. Tomás small unit stopped and started taking steps back, but Tomás raised his fist signaling for a halt.

  “Hold your fire, boys.”, he said. “Mages, prepare your Mana and wait for my signal. Don’t waste your spells right now.”

  Tomás had a hunch that there was Casters of this hideout, but neither Samantha or Glória had seen them, but, even so, he wasn’t about to lose his Magic assets in a single swoop from a black shield.

  As the scene unfolded, more and more Goblins began emerging from the underground stairway, swealing the number of Goblins close to four hundred just in the entrance of the station, and there was probably more coming from the underground. Tomás realized that he missed his estimate by five, as the monsters were now outnumbering them almost fifteen to one.

  Just as Tomás was about to authorize the usage of Magic, he felt the sickening Mana characteristic of the Goblin Casters emerging from the station. Two dark robbed Goblins climbed the steps of the stairs in a slow ascension, all the while chanting sickening spells in their guttural language. The Goblin Fighters, already in their frenzy induced state from the Goblin Captain, began turning black with the Dark Magic, their skin and eyes dripping a dark sludge that now covered the ground they stepped on.

  A chill went down Tomás spine. Despite his best preparations, the Goblin Casters were still a huge problem. He had to take them out first, but before that he had to ensure the Platoon safety first, before even his own safety.

  “Retreat!”, screamed Tomás. “Retreat while firing! Gustavo, on me!”

  Things were about to take a turn for the worse for Tomás and his squad.