out, left and right, about the pool.
Pony ducked low and lifted her gemstone, falling into it once more, using the portal to break her spirit free. She flew across the night air to the southern bank of the pool, where a trio of goblins was running. Right for the middle beast she went, charging headlong, with all of her willpower, into its corporeal form.
And there she struggled, both against the spirit of the goblin and against her own revulsion at this horrible act. Of all the powers of the gemstones, none was darker than this.
She had caught the goblin by surprise, obviously, for the creature knew nothing of gemstone magic, knew nothing of disembodied spirits, and knew nothing of such spiritual battles. Still, sheer instinct had the wretched thing fighting back against Pony's intrusion, immediately and desperately, struggling for its very life.
But Pony was still strong with the gemstones, and with the soul stone in particular. In her last weeks in Ursal, she had spent many hours tending the sick and the poor, using this same type of stone.
The goblin's spirit was expelled.
It would be a temporary thing, Pony knew, as she came to see the world through the creature's eyes. She stumbled and nearly toppled, for the balance of the body was very different from that of a human. Goblins were smaller and more wiry, and ran with a loping, low to the ground gait, often using their long arms to tap the ground for balance.
Still, despite that and despite the goblin's spirit trying to fight its way back in, Pony managed to lift the creature's crude spear and jab ahead, drawing a shriek from the goblin in front of her. When that creature pulled up, Pony jabbed it again, harder, right in the back. The goblin turned about, howling and lifting its own crude weapon.
Pony stabbed it again, and then again before it could settle into any kind of defensive posture. The creature spun desperately as it went down to the sand and Pony retracted to stab it yet again.
And then she felt a dull thud and then a burst of pain against her back and she was stumbling forward into the muck.
She managed to half turn as she fell, to see the third of the group bearing down on her, its cudgel lifted to smash her again.
At that moment, Pony relinquished her hold on the goblin's body, her spirit flying free and the goblin's disembodied spirit rushing back to reclaim its corporeal form.
It got there and blinked through its own physical eyes again, just in time to see the descending cudgel, just in time to feel the explosion as the crude club crushed in its forehead.
Pony didn't see it, her spirit flying back fast across the lake, past her body and to the far bank, where another pair of creatures was moving swiftly.
She went at the trailing one, thinking to possess it similarly. She got the upper hand almost immediately, as she had with the first creature, and managed to wrestle some control of the beast.
But possession was the most difficult and taxing of the gemstone magics, and in her already weakened state, Pony could not maintain the hold. She did wrest control enough to launch the goblin at its leading partner, diving onto its ankles and tripping it down to the clay. As it turned to respond, and with the spirit of the possessed goblin frantically assailing her in an effort to regain its body, Pony managed to punch out with the possessed fist, smacking the confused creature before her right in the face.
It responded with a snarl, its arms flailing, its face coming forward to bite at her - at the goblin, rather, for Pony let go as that horrid sight approached, her spirit bursting free and rushing back to her waiting body with all the urgency of a surfacing man who has been under the water for too long.
The woman charged the rest of the way across the bog, abandoning all attempts at carefully feeling her way. She pitched forward onto the muddy bank and tumbled down to the clay. She scrambled to her feet, balling her blanket about one arm and digging her free hand into the clay to scoop up a ball.
Two of the goblins from the south were almost upon her; the third, the one she had possessed, lay screaming in agony along that southern bank.
The two came in side by side, one leading with its crude spear, the other with