Aside from the jubilant James, Lucius was met with an audience of stunned faces. Some of the humans even cowered away from him in fear; it was clear these people had been heavily traumatized.
"It's OK, he's a friend!" James shouted, watching in confusion as his fellow prisoners clambered over each other to get away from Lucius.
Lucius was just as confused as James, but only for a moment. "I don't have time for this!" was the most prominent thought in his mind. Walking into the cage, Lucius took a deep breath and shouted, pointing his sword at his fellow humans, "Get out of the cage, now!" Lucius quickly herded the traumatized prisoners out of the cage. Once they reached the open air, many of them began to understand the situation and followed Lucius' lead.
"This way, move!" Lucius ordered. But as soon as the group started moving, he realized they were just too slow. Many were in very poor physical shape, and they were all exhausted and weary from imprisonment. "These people will never get away on foot if the goblins decide to track us down", Lucius racked his brain for a solution, kicking himself for not planning more thoroughly.
As the group of humans moved toward the northern edge of the goblin village, away from the chaotic battle to the south, two mounted goblin guards returning from patrol noticed them and began moving swiftly in their direction. Knowing that they would never outrun the mounted creatures, Lucius had no choice but to turn and fight.
"Don't panic, keep moving!" He ordered as he broke away from the group and headed toward the attackers. He chose not to activate his aspect, leaving himself exposed to ensure that the creatures focused on him instead of the escaping humans, he shouted provocations as he moved directly toward them. His plan worked and the goblin riders changed their target, from the fleeing humans to Lucius. As the distance between the two parties closed to almost nothing the lead goblin raised its spear at Lucius, attempting to thrust it into his chest, but the goblin's movements appeared slow and clumsy in Lucius' enhanced perception. Easily knocking the goblins spear attack to the side with Jack's shield, Lucius jumped into the air and pierced the goblin with his sword, tackling it off its spider in the process.
You have defeated goblin custodia, Level 4.
Through effort, you have raised Sword Fighter to level 2.
The second goblin did not waste the opportunity, taking full advantage of Lucius' distraction. "Argh!", feeling a sharp pain in his back he quickly rolled forward off the dead goblin; the creature's companion had thrown its spear into his back. Lucius reached behind him and pulled the spear out, he could feel the warm blood running down his back from the wound. Luckily, it was stopped by one of his ribs, so the damage was not nearly as bad as it could have been. Arching his arm back in anger, Lucius wrenched it forward and hurled the spear back at the offending goblin with all his might. He didn't expect much from the attack—reacting out of emotion and without much thinking—but the result left him quite stunned. The goblin raised its wooden shield to block, but the stone-tipped spear broke through the layer of wood and continued on to pierce directly into the creature's neck with great force. Lucius watched as the goblin fell from the spider, writhing on the ground, gurgling blood and grasping at the spear that had pierced clean through its body.
You have defeated goblin custodia, Level 2.
"Damn, I wasted an opportunity to use the Life Leech ability of my sword" Lucius regretfully realized.
With the goblin riders defeated, he turned to face the spiders, sword raised, but soon realized that the creatures had no intention of attacking him. In fact, the spiders hadn't moved at all since he had slain their riders. Discovering how docile the creatures were behaving gave Lucius an idea. He carefully approached the closest beast, slowly reaching out his hand to grasp the reins dangling down its side. Lucius gently pulled the reins and watched in awe as the spider casually followed behind him. "This could work!" he thought excitedly, "But these are too small".
Lucius looked around and saw that some of the goblin huts had spiders large enough for humans to ride tied outside; they must have belonged to the larger hobgoblins. Looking toward the southern edge of the village he observed the state of the battle, one of the turtles had already been slain; time was running out. He spent the next few minutes quickly collecting six of the largest mounts he could find. The humans would have to double up, but it should be enough. The spiders each had lengths of rope attached to their abdomens behind their saddles, so Lucius used those ropes to leash the creatures together creating a convoy and led them toward the fleeing humans. It must have looked like the goblins were chasing them because the humans started running even faster when they saw the spiders approaching, but they could never hope to match the speed of the large spiders, and Lucius quickly overtook them.
It took a bit of firm convincing to get the humans onto the creatures, Lucius had picked out the six humans who seemed the most capable—including James and Paul—to be the riders. The rest would only need to sit behind them and hold on. It wasn't too much to ask, even of people in such bad shape.
Lucius was fast enough to keep up with the spiders even on foot, so he didn't need to ride, making the 6 spiders just enough to carry the 12 humans. With Paul at the front of the pack, pulling the rest of them along in the proper direction, it wasn't as difficult a task as it might have been. "Do you know how to get to 5th Street from here?" he asked Paul.
"I do," the bearded man responded with a bit of hesitation, "You aren't leaving us are you?"
"Good. Keep leading the convoy in that direction; I'll be right behind you." Lucius explained, planning to linger behind the convoy a bit to make sure they weren't followed. With a few strong leaps, Lucius made his way to the top of a building that gave him a good view of the goblin village they had just escaped.
Gazing back toward the southern edge of the settlement, Lucius witnessed the final moments of the unfortunate creatures he had used to distract the goblins. Three large corpses lay over pools of red blood, the bodies of the slain monsters covered in protruding arrows and spears, with the bodies of dead goblins scattered around them. The largest of the four turtles was the last survivor, currently facing off against the village leader and his giant spider. The turtle lunged forward, attempting to grab one of the spider's legs with its sharp teeth, but the spider nimbly skittered out of reach. The large turtle had the thickest armored scales, and the goblins were not able to pierce it deep enough to deliver a killing blow. Lucius watched as the hobgoblin leader reached down to his waist, pulling a shrunken head off his belt and holding it up. He used his ritual dagger to cut into his own palm, and dripped the blood onto the head. A magical green glow began to emit from the item as the hobgoblin whispered something into its shrunken ear. The green glow exploded in radiance as it grew and twisted into the silhouette of a ghostly creature. It became a ghostly translucent hobgoblin, but unlike the living hobgoblins this one was gruesomely transformed, with massive elongated claws and limbs that were long and thing, looking as if they had been stretched out and lengthened. A red glowing mist emitted from its eyes, as it looked up towards its summoner.
After the ghostly monster finished taking form, its master pointed at the remaining turtle beast, and the ghost began to move in a way that would haunt Lucius' dreams. It was like watching a living stop-motion film, the nightmare creature jolted and lurched from place to place with its spindly limbs, flickering in and out of existence. When it reached its target, the ghost launched itself at the turtle's face, and Lucius was alarmed to see that although the ghost could leave deep wounds in the turtle's armored skin, the turtle was unable to harm the incorporeal ghost. The massive turtle swiped, lunged, and snapped at the ghostly figure but all its attacks passed harmlessly through the apparition.
"I've seen enough; I need to avoid fighting that thing at all costs". Lucius thought, his knuckles white from clenching his own weapons. He had been thoroughly frightened by what he had just seen.
Hopping down from the building, he quickly caught up to the group of humans, deciding not to flee directly to their destination in case the creatures tracked them. Even though he knew how dangerous the city was, Lucius had been so scared by the hobgoblin leaders magic that he led the group in a wide arc, circling back on their own position to muddle their tracks, and prevent anything from following their scent trail. Only when he was confident that he had done everything he could to throw off and trackers did he finally guiding them towards the location where his friends were waiting.