Lark didn't see any Goblins until she heard a shrill cry that changed the course of her mare as she leapt forward into action. Artemis sought the defence and protection of Captain Fallston while Lark clung on, head pivoting like an owl to place the direction of the sound.

The Captain unslung his bow, laughing as he took aim at the tall, waving grass. Lark looked on as he let loose, and another cry filled the air. As if by some signal, the ground erupted in a mass of vegetation, and Lark screamed as a bush with legs reached for her horse. The Goblin scouting party was wearing camouflage, giving the horrifying impression of children dressed as trees at a school play.

There's twenty! Fallston called as he loosed his arrows at the shuddering earth. The ground roiled with screams and red ripples. Lark craned her neck to see the Captain as he plunged through the field, removing his knife and throwing it into a clump of grass that didn't quite fit as it should.

Lark screamed as several goblins rose in front of Artemis, causing the horse to rear, pawing defiantly at the Goblins as sharpened sticks, knives and rusty swords were thrust through the vegetation. A sound of electricity crackling through the air as red blossomed over the mare's left shoulder. The horse screamed in pain and terror, throwing Lark as she reared, again and again, trying to escape the excruciating magical dart that had pierced her.

“Arty!” Lark felt the cry leave her mouth as she slammed into the ground the wind knocked from her chest as she lay gasping and clawing for her staff a few feet from her. She knew she could not stay down, but her vision swam, and the edges were shadowy as she fought to focus and get that first breath in.

A clump of long grass edged towards her, moving faster and faster as she desperately tried to clutch the staff and draw in air as her chest wall spasmed and ached. The Goblin threw off the grass attached to some slipcover like a military ghillie suit and hurled a knife as she grasped the staff. The knife hit her shoulder like the magic that had hit her horse, piercing her and driving her to the ground as she flapped like a tent wedged in place by the earth. She screamed in a choking exhale, nearly convulsing with the pain. Then the Goblin was on her.

The smell hit her as it wrapped its small hands around her neck. Like garbage on a hot day, you just knew when you lifted the bag that the juices would run over the floor. Flies buzzed, landing on her and the Goblin's face as he began choking her.

Lark's brain, starved of oxygen and filled with adrenaline, entered a state devoid of fear. A euphoric sense filled her, oddly exhilarating and free of the pain that had plagued her since entering this crazy world. It seemed like she was about to die; the edges of her vision, already obscured, were becoming perilously dim. She didn’t blame the Gobin, part of her was sure that they had attacked first. As her brain processed its final few moments, Lark wondered how it was statistically possible that the first Goblin that she had ever seen was about to kill her and wondered if it even had a name.

The fingers of her left hand caressed the hilt of the knife as the blade buried in her shoulder kept her pinned into the earth. The cool pommel, marred with gouges and scratches in the metal, was a satisfying texture as she ran the nail of her thumb through a deep scratch and picked at the pommel in her shoulder as if picking up a coin from the ground.

Some reptilian part of her reflexively grasped the pommel and wormed the handle up into her as her hand, slick with blood, created an unstoppable flow as she inched the blade's tip from the ground and then yanked it back through her shoulder in one smooth, painless action.

The Goblin, smirking and snarling, its red eyes flashing, bent down and licked her neck, tasting, sniffing and hissing. A guttural sound emerged, followed by a rasping laugh as fangs tickled her collarbone, tasting the blood spattered from her shoulder. Suddenly, the hold on her neck loosened and for a fraction of a second, Lark gasped, her eyes bulging and blind, struck in a wild arc, hand colliding with immense impact as the blood from her raised shoulder pulsed across her left cheek. A heavy weight slumped onto her chest as the hands that were in a vice grip around her neck fell to the side.

Her vision was still dark, but Lark heard the sounds of battle raging around her as guttural screams filled the air. She stifled a sob, as the crushing weight kept her pinned down, smothering any intentions she might have to get up and continue fighting, but as her vision turned from black to grey, Lark realized her face was being covered from a piece of scratchy grey fabric that the Goblin was wearing.

Lark pushed at the Goblin, her left arm weak and numb, she felt the bleeding increase once again as the body, slick with her blood, was inched off.

As she got to her knees, Lark's clouded vision cleared just in time to see a massive Goblin sailing through the air, heading directly for her. She didn’t have a chance, no regular human could possibly move that fast, Usain Holt couldn't move that fast.

Lark raised the staff, the natural preservation to protect her face and brain overriding all else.

Boom!

The staff vibrated in her hands as the Goblin smashed into its surface, but then it stopped. The staff was not thrown and did not splinter in any way, but the body of the Goblin slowly rose into the air suspended and hovering in front of her, like a grotesque puppet. The jaw of the green Goblin hung open and gawking, hinging like an anaconda, the quagmire a horror show of blood and bone fragments that bubbled and oozed.

Lark vomited, she hadn’t even felt the urge; it had just spewed forth from her as the blood continually dripped from the gash that was the Goblin's mouth. Drip drip, drip. She vomited again, crawling to her hands and knees. Her body heaved with the efforts of evacuating every possible orifice as she dropped the staff as the contents of her stomach continued to heave and roil, and like a spell that was broken, the body of the levitating Goblin dropped to the earth, its skull making a sickening crunch on the exposed rock and one of the eyes bulging and sliding from the socket. Then the screaming started and continued to rise as it filled the air, taking over every sense like that of a banshees wail, and Lark ran, her feet finding pace in the unbroken fields as she ran from the masochistic Centaur, from a fractured staff, from the mutilated Goblin and most of all, from herself.