Suddenly, Claude greatly regretted setting fire to Vantage-Island.
The captured animals howled, squawked and panicked as the flames grew and the goblins descended.
Water-element users worked to put out the flames.
Ursula did the same.
Tai screamed at the students with projectile weaponry to rain hell on the goblins below. They lined up at the edge of the island, taking aim and firing.
As Claude got up from the ground, fighting to find his breath, the island shook.
Another boulder hit, nearly atomizing a whole chunk of the islands edge. It shattered, exploding into stone shrapnel bullets that hit the students as they were knocked backward.
They were all around the bon fire again. Only this time there was no bonfire, and at least ten students were partially impaled by rock shards.
Their cries were horrifying. The scorched grass and dirt steamed from glowing embers.
The wounded weren't fifth-wavers. They were the strong. They were the ones early to awaken and eager to continue achieving. Eager to please as they allied with the even stronger.
Now, they were bleeding out.
"Tai, do something!" Claude yelled from behind the shack as he stood frozen with all the students laying around him.
"NOW!"
"Tai jumped into action. Claude had already been acting, fumbling through the darkness like an idiot before remembering who he was.
What he was.
The feline at his back hissed and slashed at his ankles.
"Help me help you." He used the only two skills he had as a beast-tamer.
The cat purred as their slitted eyes met.
Suddenly his shadowy world illuminated, eyes widening to suck in the light from beyond the shack.
"Tropic-cats. Of course…" Claude thought as he opened the first cage. The bobcat sized feline darted out of the shack and took off. The rest did the same. Sure he was a cat person, but the island was being carpet bombed by boulders.
He worked faster, freeing the birds. All manner of exotic and mundane earthen breeds burst from the open windows, leaving him swatting and spitting out glowing feathers as he approached the walls where much larger cages sat. The smell of foul salty urine and fecal matter hit twice as hard with his enhanced senses. He didn't have time to study the canines inside. He could feel danger approaching like fingers clawing at the back of his neck.
As he fiddled with the locks and pulleys, wet noses bumped his fingers and licked his sharpening nails.
"I'm sorry everyone, but I need you. We can work rehabilitation after if you'd let me. Priorities though. These goblins have to go."
***
Ursula's breaths came in ragged drags. Ice crusted the ends of her cracked nails, making her fingertips numb from the overuse of her magic.
Suddenly, Claude's plan wasn't so funny and spectacular. If he was near her she'd slap him.
After stopping the goblin hunters of course.
The boulders stopped coming. Tai begrudgingly healed the students. Finn adjusted the grip on his coconuts.
"They're coming." Ursula said.
They could hear their ashy hands sliding over the rock to climb into the island. They were fast— inhumanely nimble. Guarded by the rock tosser still on land, stopping them from shooting down the pursuers.
Ursula surveyed the island. The last two times she charged and tried to fill her role the classic way, she got rocked.
Her disdain for Tai was pushed to the wayside as he continued to heal the students.
Or was it?
"Form a defensive wall. Guard Tai and the wounded, get ready to fight." Ursula demanded as she walked around the crowd of students, ripping off their guild-maker bands.
"Hey— what are you doing?!" Tai stood up from the girl with a stone shard in her leg.
Ursula took the guild-maker band off a tanks arm before turning to face Tai, her anger rising as he left the girl to bleed. Before she could knock his jaw off his face, someone else— someone closer, closed in on him.
"Heal her, you dick." He was one of the students that actually looked like he was supposed to hold a bow. Medium height and wiry. Or maybe a dagger instead. He was silent— quick on his feet. There was finesse in the way he pressed a fully charged arrow to the back of Tai's neck, newfound strength rode his limbs following the release of the hexed band.
"Enzo? I didn't take you for an idiot. When this gauntlet is over your time at the University won't be as beneficial as it was going to be." Tai replied without moving.
"Don't care. I'm tired of engaging your spoiled king fantasy. I can't keep my head down, make myself weaker and listen to you blabber all day. We're getting no action or experience, until now. And you're in the wa—"
The tank Ursula just removed the guild-maker band from rushed past her and punched Enzo in the face. His curly black hair ruffled like bedsheets as he hit the ground and rolled.
From somewhere behind her, another recently freed student attacked the tank. The dominoes of war fell and a schoolyard fight unleashed. All while more wild creatures spilled from the shack and goblins ascended to the top of Vantage-Island.
Finn and Ursula shared a glance before she cursed and shoved aside a bundle of wrestling students.
"My name is Ursula Legrand!" She grabbed two charging tanks in front of her, catching the burly boys by the throats right before they collided. Fists and feet stopped inches from faces. Elements fizzled out of existence.
Tai rolled his eyes. "Illegitimate children do not count. You don't get to wear legacy when it fits you."
"Isn't that all you're doing?" Ursula asked with pure white eyes. Her relation to the red knight of rage was never more apparent. That only increased her berserker rage. "We're going to die here if you ass-kissers don't get it together. Form up so Tai can heal the wounded. When this is all over, I'll put in a good word for you all with everyone I'm connected to. At least the ones who help….. EVERYONE not just Tai."
The lack of friction between the students signified Tai's loss. He put the students between a rock and a hard place. Ursula offered a softened retreat.
After the goblins of course.
In seconds they were on land. Just shadows communicating in primal grunts and guttural lexicon.
The healed students stood in a tight line, guarding the wounded and facing the enemy approaching. They had no shields— no close combat weapons and the ones who wore armor, wore little. Their aura's bloomed. The offensive classes turned their limbs into bladed weapons while the defensive made their bodies into shields, stepping closer to the enemy.
"Where's Claude?" Finn whispered from behind Ursula with a coconut raised.
She looked over to the shack. There wasn't a chaotic flow of animals in flight anymore. Just the tarp draped over the top flowing in the wind. She could see the glint of fangs and faintest glow of magic inside.
"He's waiting I think…." Ursula turned away from the shack as the first batch of goblins charged.
Only five. They weren't small. Not really. They were as tall as the students. As varied in skin color, body type and physical stature. Their ears, pointed and curled held the same disgruntled style of their noses. For reasons unknown they stared at them fiendishly with goat eyes gleaming above pelted face masks .
There were still many in the jungle behind.
"Don't move!" Ursula yelled to her fellow students.
The tanks held firm, the archers and students with elemental experience fired.
Finn launched his coconut with everything in him. The shelled fruit raced across the distance between them and crashed into the face of the machete wielder. The creatures nose and eye sockets shattered. It fell behind its attackers covered in blood and fruit guts. The others weren't so lucky as flames, lightning and arrows mowed them down.
All except one.
The goblin flipped and rolled through the volley like a primal martial artist. Its movements were wild, but there was rhythm and practice to the wildness. Then it unsheathed a dagger and threw it at one of the smaller archers. Enzo. What an unlucky day for him.
As he took the dagger to the shoulder, Ursula broke formation and tackled the goblin.
"Fill the gap!" Tai panicked. The students shuffled.
They went down hard. Ursula twisted up the wiry limbed creature into a submission hold from behind. As it squirmed and screamed, she placed a hand over its face. Her ice element came like an infection. The goblins skin took on a frosty black hue. Its eyes went solid in its head.
A head that shattered like glass at the increased pressure of her hand.
She got up just in time to see the real enemy charge.
People always said things about life flashing before your eyes as death approached.
Ursula was in no rush to relive embarrassing noble parties where her father drunkenly socialized and abused in mass. Painful school events where she was ostracized for her build and shyness. She didn't want to see any of it.
But death approached, riding massive dire-rats slicked in seal grease.
The newly approaching goblins were larger. Well fed and touting better quality weapons. Face paint turned their green masked visages to shades of berry purple and blue. The dire-rats wore contraptions around their snouts made of stone and animal tendons, protecting them from broken bones and giving them a deadly external set of earthen fangs.
And Ursula would've been the first to encounter them under the light show of her students attacks.
Then, he left the shack.