The first goblin reaches the walkway twelve seconds after Gut screams.

You know this because you count. Counting is a coping mechanism. When everything is going sideways, counting gives you something to hold onto — a structure, a rhythm, a small island of arithmetic in a sea of chaos.

One. Grab the nearest object — a heavy, iron-bound ledger left on a shelf. Swing it double-handed into the first goblin's face. The impact is deeply satisfying.

Two. The ledger's spine breaks on the second swing. Discard. Grab the coil of heavy rope hanging from a hook. The iron hook at the end catches the second goblin's jaw and sends it pinwheeling off the walkway. The thud from below is distant and final.

Three. A wooden support plank, already cracked, tears free from the scaffolding. It makes a terrible club — splintery, unwieldy, likely to give you tetanus. You don't care. You beat the third goblin with it until it stops moving.

Four, five, six. Rancid oil from a jar on the supply shelf — throw at the cluster of goblins on the stairs. They slip, tumble, pile up in a cursing, oil-slicked heap. You kick the ladder away from the walkway for good measure.

Seven through ten: Your magic flickers. A weak shove sends an archer tumbling. Purple sparks crackle from your fingertips, more intimidation than weapon. A kinetic pulse — barely controlled — smashes a support beam that drops a section of scaffolding on three goblins trying to climb up from the east side.

Then your magic dies.

Not fades — dies. The connection between your brain and the impossible severs with a snap you feel in your teeth, and the migraine that follows is not a headache. It's a event. A white-hot, blinding, all-consuming neurological catastrophe that turns your vision into static and your stomach into a war zone.

Below you, Dror Ragzlin rises from his throne. He's even bigger standing — seven feet of hobgoblin muscle and malice, his scarred face split in a grin that has nothing to do with humor.

"You're out of tricks, heretic!" he calls up. His voice echoes through the sanctum like a war drum.

You are out of tricks. Your magic is gone. Your improvised weapons are broken or thrown. The walkway is a mess of splintered wood and goblin blood, and there are more coming — always more, an endless supply of grey-green bodies and rusty weapons and that particular brand of vicious enthusiasm that goblins bring to mob violence.

But you're still fighting. Not because you think you can win. Because stopping isn't something your body knows how to do. You grab a broken plank, swing at the nearest goblin, miss, duck a crossbow bolt, throw a piece of railing —

The migraine crests. Your stomach violently twists.

"Hold on," you gasp. "Time out."

You spin around, lean over the wooden railing, and throw up into the spider pit below.

It's spectacular. Violent. The kind of vomiting that engages muscles you didn't know you had and makes sounds that would be embarrassing if you had any dignity left to protect. Which you don't.

From somewhere below, a voice — male, aristocratic, tinged with genuine surprise: "Did she just...?"

You wipe your mouth. Look down. Thirty-foot drop. Stone floor. In the center of the sanctum, a massive shape is moving — dark fur, mottled feathers, an avian shriek that shakes dust from the ceiling.

Mama.

The heavy, iron-reinforced main doors of the sanctum don't just open. They explode inward — blown off their hinges by a thousand pounds of owlbear hitting them at a dead sprint. Mama Owlbear charges through, reared up on hind legs, blood-curdling avian shriek echoing off every surface.

She barrels through the center hall like a runaway freight train. Goblins scatter like bowling pins — airborne, tumbling, ragdolling across the stone floor. Her massive talons tear furrows in the flagstones. Her beak catches a hobgoblin by the belt and hurls it into a wall.

And behind her, pouring through the destroyed doorway: people. Armed people. Competent-looking people. A tiefling woman built like a siege engine with a great-axe wreathed in infernal heat. A dark-haired woman in chain mail with a shield bearing a symbol you don't recognize. A man in robes whose hands crackle with arcane energy. A green-skinned woman with a greatsword and the expression of someone who considers everything beneath her. And in front — a figure in battered armor, sword drawn, already engaging the nearest goblin with the economical precision of someone who has done this many, many times before.

You look down at Mama. Mama looks up at you. You see the recognition in her amber eyes — the same eyes that watched you kneel in a cave and hold herbs out in open palms.

"Mama!" you shout, and your voice cracks from the vomiting and the migraine and the absurdity of everything. "Eat the one with the ugly feathers first!"

Behind the charging party, a pale-skinned man with silver-white hair pauses in the doorway. His eyes are red — deeply, impossibly red — and they sweep the carnage with an expression of theatrical amusement before landing on you: battered, blood-nosed, vomit on your chin, screaming tactical directions at an owlbear from a collapsing walkway.

He lets out a sharp, surprised laugh. "Well, I don't know who she is, Tav, but she is officially my favorite person in this camp."

---

The battle is chaos, and you are the worst part of it.

Not because you're fighting — you have nothing left to fight with. Because you are in the way. A non-combatant on a disintegrating walkway above a battlefield, shouting unhelpful observations ("He's behind you!" "Watch the one with the crossbow!" "Mama, LEFT! Your other left!") while the actual fighters do actual fighting below.

But you're watching. Even through the migraine, even through the nausea — you're watching. Because that's what you do. You observe. You catalog. You learn.

The pale man — Astarion, someone calls him — moves through the goblins like water through cracks. No wasted motion. No sound. His boots find the one square inch of floor that won't creak, his blade finds the one gap in each goblin's guard. He's beautiful to watch, in the way a well-designed trap is beautiful — every element in its perfect place, every movement serving exactly one purpose.

The tiefling — Karlach — is his opposite. All force, all fire, all momentum. Her great-axe carves arcs through the air that leave heat distortion in their wake, and she fights with a joy that is almost unsettling. She's laughing. Not cruelly — with genuine, full-bodied, I-am-having-the-time-of-my-life delight.

The robed man — Gale — hangs back, fingers tracing precise geometric patterns, and bolts of arcane force lance from his palms with surgical accuracy. He's narrating. To himself, to the room, to nobody in particular. "Three from the east corridor — neutralized. One flanking — ah, Karlach has him. Excellent."

The woman with the shield — Shadowheart — guards Gale's left flank without being asked, her movements clipped and efficient, her expression suggesting she'd rather be literally anywhere else.

The green-skinned woman — Lae'zel — fights like a machine. No flourish, no waste, no expression beyond a cold, focused fury. Every strike is a statement of fact.

And the leader — Tav — holds the center. Not the flashiest fighter, not the strongest. But the one everyone orbits. The anchor.

You're watching all of this. Filing it away. And then the walkway gives a final, terminal groan beneath you.

"Oh, come on," you mutter.

You look down. Thirty-foot drop. Mama is directly below, scattering a knot of goblins with a sweep of her tail.

You don't look for a ladder. You don't look for a rope. You plant your boots on the railing, spread your arms, and walk right off the edge.

"Mama, catch!"

Tav screams. Gale covers his eyes. Karlach shouts something profane and encouraging.

Mama Owlbear whips upward, positions herself with a precision that no creature that size should possess, and fluffs out her dense feathers into a massive, padded landing zone.

You hit her back with a heavy OOF, burying your face into feathers that smell like iron and pine needles and the particular musk of an animal who has recently been in a very intense fight. The impact drives the remaining air from your lungs for the second time in a week.

Mama clicks her beak — the universal motherly tone for sit down and shut up.

"Thanks, big bird," you wheeze, and let the darkness take you.

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End notes for Chapter 5: Content warnings — violence, vomiting, heights. No sexual content.

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