Lightning struck and hit the ground, right in the center of the circle. As it did, all of us stumbled backward except Diaval, whose head was back to a slightly more normal position but who was now bending forward with her palms on the blood-soaked stone of the courtyard. Blue light flickered from her hands. I’d seen her light before, but it was only in sparks. These flickers grew and grew until they threatened to spill outside the circle, but all they did was create a fiery boundary around it instead.

There was a collective sigh of relief as Diaval’s eye color changed back to its normal hue, and she observed her handiwork, blinking in confusion for a second before standing. She stumbled a bit as if she were slightly drunk, but managed to grab her pack and sling it over her shoulder as well as shove the flask back into a holster attached to her pants.

I only noticed then that out of all of us journeying to the lowest realm, only she had no physical weapon. Sure, she had whatever was in her pack, and I noticed some hidden pockets that must’ve been full of something, but she wasn’t carrying any blades as far as I could tell. Compared to my axes and bow and arrows, Soren’s many, many different types of blades, Seppo’s featherstaff, and Rosamund’s double-bladed axes, she was going in completely naked.

No, no, she isn’t, a voice told me. No one with this type of power is ever naked, ever powerless. Diaval’s power did not come in the traditional goblin form. The small she-goblin had given up the right to wield traditional weaponry when she turned to magic and walked down the solitary path of a mage who happened to be a goblin as well. Two things that weren’t supposed to ever mix, but somehow … they had. The part of me more in tune with the Permafrost recoiled at the blatant disregard for the proper laws, but the rest of me had always recognized she was something different, since the day she appeared seemingly out of nowhere to offer her services to Soren and me.

“All right,” Diaval breathed. “I need everyone who is coming to step into the circle. No pushing, no shoving, and for the love of all the gods, don’t speak.” She narrowed her eyes at us, and I winced at the blood still dripping down from them and her nose.

We all nodded with a tinge of terror radiating into the night air, at the blood dripping on her face and her black-red stained lips, the black veins that spread up one side of her face, and the way one of her irises glowed in the darkness. This was the toll on goblins who did magic in the Permafrost. No wonder Tanya hadn’t gone down that path when she came across it.