Chapter 83
Iris grimaced when her body made contact with hard and wet ground, but the pain was immediately forgotten when she saw a troll in front of her. The creature was twice the size of a normal human with skin that was covered with mud.
The troll in front of Iris was not the only troll that attacked them along with the goblins. There were at least seven of them.
“Hanna!” Iris was shocked when she saw Hanna lunge forward to attack the creature in her beast form.
A troll was not that smart, but they were strong and usually it would need two or three beasts to take one of them down. Since their skin was so thick, a deep cut was necessary to hurt them.
Hanna, in her grey beast, attacked the troll. She bit out a chunk of his flesh, which aggravated the creature and put its sole attention on the beast, leaving Iris alone.
Terrified that something might happen to Hanna, Iris immediately stood up and looked around to get some help. But, everyone was busy fighting, as the number of the goblins increased.
Finding a hiding spot to hide between the rocks, Iris rushed there. She couldn’t fight and it wouldn’t help anyone if she were to be in the middle of that chaos. At the very least, she should not become a burden for them.
With that thought, Iris curled her body between the rocks, while staring at the fierce battle. Carriages were broken, blood splattered on the wet ground, while thunder mixed with ferocious roars from the beasts filled the air.
Iris’ eyes were on the grey wolf, she could breathe a sigh of relief when she saw three beasts helping Hanna and she was completely fine, because the real battle continued at the back of the entourage. This troll just happened to manage and breach the barricade.
The grey wolf saw her hiding spot and agreed that it was best for her to hide, thus she could focus on her skirmish.
From where she was hiding, Iris could see Aria poking her head from her carriage, fear filled her eyes, but there was a little smirk to see Iris’ carriage was broken into pieces. Did she hate her so much until the thought of her death amused her?
Iris didn’t have time to think about that, because something yanked her collar, almost choking her, and soon she was being dragged away from her hiding spot.
She shrieked to feel her back against the wet and cold ground, while rain was pouring down from the gloomy sky. This time, it was not her collar, but her hair. Something grabbed her by the hair and pulled her away from between the rocks, while the others were still fighting the trolls and Hanna didn’t notice her predicament.
The sound of thunder and roars from the battle swallowed her screams.
Iris opened her eyes, determined to see what actually had abducted her and found three goblins were trying to take her away.
Her eyes were filled with horror when the fourth goblin sat on her chest. When her shoulder hit a rock, she wailed in excruciating pain, as all the air got knocked out of her lungs.
In desperation, Iris caught a rock as big as her palm and immediately smashed it against the goblin’s face that sat on her chest. It sent the creature flying from her, as it let out a shrill scream that aggravated the other three.
Iris felt her hair being yanked out of her scalp, the burning pain brought tears to her eyes. She gasped, as she tried to hold her braided hair, which was now rumpled.
After a few attempts, Iris finally managed to stop them from dragging her away and turned around to smash the rock in her hand against their heads.
Her palm was bleeding from the rough surface of the rock, but she couldn’t care less about it.
Breathing heavily, Iris stood up and kicked the goblin that came after her. This creature was small, its head only reached her thigh, but they were surely a handful.
However, another goblin grabbed the hem of her dress, which caused her to fall to the ground again, not to mention how slippery it was because of the rain. Right now, Iris was caked in mud.
Right at that time, when Iris was almost exhausted to fight off these disgusting creatures, a brown wolf came to her and snapped the goblin’s head, as it burst between its jaws.
“Argh!”
The sight was so ghastly and for a moment, Iris didn’t even realize that she had been holding her breath, until the brown wolf killed all the goblins that came after her and shifted back into the young man, who chatted with her earlier.
“Are you okay, Luna Iris?” He asked in concern to see how petrified she was. “Are you hurt somewhere?”
Iris shook her head, and forced herself to snap back to reality. “I- I am fine…”
No, she was not. She just witnessed how a goblin’s head burst, how its eyes bulged terrifyingly. She was not sure if she would recover from that any time soon.
But thanks to the storm, the thick dark blood from the goblins was washed away by the rain in no time.
“We need to go back to the order, it is dangerous to stray from the others.” He helped Iris to stand up and shifted back into his beast once she could find her footing.
Iris wanted to say that she didn’t intend to stray either, but then there was no point in pointing it out, thus she followed the brown wolf that fell behind and let her run ahead, as he protected her from behind, just in case there was another ambush like before.
After all, this rain made it hard for them to use their keen sense of smell.
The young wolf performed so well as a guard, despite his tender age. How old was he? Fifteen? Fourteen?
In the distance, the trolls were successfully decapitated, while the battle was still happening at the middle and the end of the party.