by Sean Oswald
Emily thought back to what she knew about nobility, which was really limited to a tv movie she had watched about Princess Diana and maybe some news stories she had seen about recent royal weddings in the UK. To her, nobility was part of the facade of a broken class system which kept the poor downtrodden. With that backdrop, she really had little interest in meeting this Duke Holstein and was actually angry enough about how afraid all the villagers were about his visit to forget her own personal grief for a moment.
She quickly rushed back to the mayor’s house with Mira in tow and insisted that they both change out of the dresses they wore to better fit into the elven leathers. The shifting effect of the armor was certainly far more disconcerting and would make the two of them stand out, and she didn’t plan to just roll over for this noble. He might be their duke, but he wasn’t anyone to her. Once they were both fully decked out, including Emily’s new cloak and Mira’s mage staff, they both walked out to the town square. Much of the remains of the burnt town hall had been cleared away, but all around, there were still clear signs of battle that had so recently been fought here. Most telling of all was the assortment of rigged tents around the outer edges of the town square. Those tents were providing at least some limited shelter for the villagers who had lost their homes to fire. The weather was still warm as a late summer early autumn season, but it was clear that there was a crisis in that crops had to be brought in and homes had to be built before the weather got too bad. From what she had been told, the weather here would be cold with lots of snow. Many of the villagers had wanted to leave and return to their old lives as serfs where at least they would have shelter from the elements and would have done so but for the motivational force which Emily had become as a Daughter of Shanelle. For that reason more than any other, she couldn’t spend every day looking for Sara like Dave did. Her presence was a calming influence in Eris’ Rise, and she meant it to stay that way even with the Duke coming.
Over the course of the next hour, all of the villagers gathered in the town square. Emily didn’t think she had ever seen all of them together at one time, but here they were. Clearly, none of them willing to disregard the duke’s order to present themselves. Up front was Talvenicus and the surviving council members with most of the rest assembled in no particular order of small family unit clusters. Emily took a place up front next to the council members and kept Mira and Jackson by her side. Of course, no one said anything to her.
Emily was roughly brought back from her memories by a harsh voice, “Wake the heretic, we have rested long enough.” Then a boot nudged her leg a little too roughly.
A moment later, she heard two more voices chiming in at the exact same time. “Leave her alone.” “You will show proper respect for a Daughter of Shanelle.” The first voice belonged to her daughter, and she was strangely moved by how angry Mira sounded. The second voice belonged to her ever present guardian or jailor, depending on how you thought of him, Jaselm Von Marek. Jaselm was a holy paladin of the order of Shanelle and had apparently been sent by some bishop she had never met to protect her and hopefully escort her back to the home church in the Albian capital. When it had become necessary for Emily to travel north to meet with the king and queen of the moon elves, he had wanted to bring his entire company of church soldiers and knights to protect her.
Emily chuckled at how naive she had been standing and waiting for Duke Holstein to arrive. She had been so sure that the politics and powers of this world didn’t have anything to do with her or her family. How wrong she had been. Here she was less than a week later trekking deep into the forest to meet with a king and queen to yet another power trying to lay claim on her life. If these powers had their way, she would have little freedom left torn between the human kingdom, the moon elves, and the church, and worse, Dave had jumped into the fire with both feet dragging her and the kids with him. She could curse the man. Oh, Emily knew why he had made the decisions that he had. The decisions that had resulted in her now being known, at least to the humans, as Baroness Murkwood and had resulted in a second child being taken from her and sent to some school for the children of nobles. If she had been inclined to, she could have seen that Dave might not have had any choice, but that was gracious Emily. She wasn’t feeling that Emily very much these past few days. She was grieving Emily or vengeful Emily but not her gracious self. That thought made her chuckle. When had she started to think of herself in the third person and with bad Barbie doll names to boot?
Dave had screwed up, or even if he hadn’t, he hadn’t given her a chance to have any say in this. They were already bereft of Sara, and while Dave had procured some help to find her, he had also added on a ton of responsibility to both of them. What mattered was that her daughter was God only knew where suffering at the mercy of a monster, and her son was now on his way to the capital in the care of a squad of church soldiers. Jaselm had assured her that Jackson would be safe, but no matter how many times she ordered, he has refused to escort the boy himself, insisting that his orders from the bishop were not to leave her side.
Lord Itsu, the leader of the moon elves who had come to Eris’ Rise was urging everyone to get moving again. He had a dozen elven soldiers with him who all seemed to jump at his orders with a great deal of diligence. There was one elf whose place in this party she could not sort out. Eisuke Myoji didn’t seem to answer to Lord Itsu but was still very respectful in his dealings with the noble. She had heard the other elves calling Eisuke by the title of Shinrin Hogo-Sha. Emily was fluent in the moon elf tongue, but while that mastery allowed her to understand that the title meant forest warden, it didn’t clue her into the nuances of moon elf hierarchy. Eisuke, often seemed to go out in front of the others and scout the path, and while all the elves moved with a certain grace, the forest warden moved like a shadow. Thinking about that movement caused her to look at Jaselm and the other 4 church soldiers who were with him as her honor guard. She noticed that none of them moved with near the grace of any of the elves and all seemed to struggle to maintain the pace that was set despite clearly being well conditioned.
Those thoughts came to an abrupt end though as two of the elven guards gave out short cries of warning. One of the two then was flung backwards as the very ground under his feet seemed to rise up. The tree branches, dirt, and detritus which comprised the forest floor did in fact surge forward and up at the same time. The force being sufficient to send the hapless elven guard twenty feet through the air to strike a tree with a sickening crack. Meanwhile, that same combination of earth and vegetation rose up to a height of what must have been 15 feet. Emily had never been very good at gauging measurements, something Dave had delighted in teasing her about, but she knew it was well beyond the height of a basketball hoop. Further, it was at least as wide as a man was tall and had two arms like appendages reaching out from it towards the other elven warrior who was closeby. Supporting it beneath the coat of twisted vines, leaves, and slimy muck were two legs as thick as small tree trunks, and wafting out from it in waves was the pungent odor of freshly tilled compost which made Emily’s stomach turn.
Beside her, Jaselm called out, “Shambling mound!” even as the elven warriors were saying the same in their own tongue. In the flurry of combat which followed, she felt that her perception of time slowed down; everyone seemed to move at the same time. Her first instinct was to protect Mira, but she didn’t need to worry for two of the human guards had already taken places in front of her as Jaselm had stepped in between Emily and the monster. Eisuke was barking orders for the elven warriors to form a circle around the salad become monster while Lord Itsu was calling for the same warriors to form a shield in front of him. Normally, all of the elves including Eisuke deferred to the nobleman. Now, they all ignored him as he cowered back and followed the forest warden’s instructions.
“Priestess, please heal any of the fallen and have your men stay back. This is a tier 3 shambler and won’t be easily contained without a full-fledged druid here.” The quickly shouted order ca
me amidst the instructions he was relaying to the other elves and was issued with such authority that it never occurred to Emily to challenge it. Instead, she went immediately to try to heal the elven warrior who had hit the tree, kneeling beside him as she cast first her regeneration spell and then a heal spell in rapid succession. All the while, she kept an ear open for what was happening with the beast.
“Lotus positions, wait and only attack if it moves in your direction. Your swords will do little to it but try to make it think there is an easier path. I will try to keep it focused on me.” With those words, the forest warden lunged forward at the lumbering monstrosity. Compared to the way he moved, lashing out with first one scimitar and then the other, the beast seemed to be barely moving. It's almost comically, slow blows never coming close to hitting the agile elven warrior as he dances around and under it. Yet, for all the blows he was landing, they seemed to be doing very little harm. Then one of his blades ignited, in flames. Not bright flames completely encasing the blade but rather a smoldering of flames upon its edge. Each blow with that blade caused more damage, and soon, the shambling mound was smoking in several different locations, but it was as though it was too wet to actually catch on fire.
While that fight was going on, Jaselm had pulled his sword and shield to the ready and chanted a prayer to Shanelle which caused a golden shimmering to fill the air between the mound and their position. The shield, if that's what she should call it, Dave or Jackson would have known, was about 8 feet wide and just as tall and clearly had the star symbol of her new Goddess floating on the air covered by the shield. She tried to push past the man to be able to add her blessing spell to the elves fighting the mound, but the paladin politely, if roughly, held her back, “No Daughter this is their fight, the elves are the best at this.”
It was almost as though he had forgotten that she was an elf, but then again, was she really? It was simply a decision she had made because she liked the way they looked. She looked like them and moved like them, but clearly didn’t think like them. She watched in fascination as they all coordinated their movements, ebbing and flowing like the tide trying to inexorably wear down the beast like waves do the shore.
Whatever limited intelligence the beast had came to the conclusion that it would not be able to lay a hand or branch on Eisuke, so it changed tactics. A large amount of the vines wrapping around it moved like snakes along its coat with shocking speed and swelled the mass of the beast’s left arm. The arm then became a club which battered one of the elven warriors forming its prison. The elf reacted with the expected speed and grace necessary to block the blow, but he hadn’t accounted for the increased mass. Instead of deflecting the blow, he was driven into the ground like a hammer drives a nail, his body disappearing to waist depth in the relatively soft soil of the forest floor. By the way the elf’s head hung limply, and due to the absence of any cry of pain, Emily drew the conclusion that the man had been killed in that single blow.
This opening was exactly what the shambling mound had wanted. It surged forward into that space, and Emily instinctively found herself stepping forward to block its progress, but she was unable to take more than a step before the steely grasp of her guardian paladin brought her to heel. The beast was making a break and none of the other elves were able to shift their positions quickly enough to trap it again. Emily didn’t know what this would mean or what sort of problems the shambler could cause if it were to leave the relatively clear path and reach the actual trees.
Fortunately, while Jaselm had been able to keep Emily well in check, the church soldiers guarding Mira were not nearly so vigilant. She was able to use her heightened Agility and Balance to slip under one’s arm and around another’s before standing and thrusting out her open right hand and her left hand with the drake bone staff extended outward. A single word and a thought to focus her will allowed her to simultaneously trigger a quickened casting of Flame Fan, but in its more narrowed form which she had cast before, and release the same spell stored in one of the crystals on the staff. Both spells struck the shambling mound full in its chest and her channeled spell scored a critical strike which resulted in (162) and (81) damage respectively.
As the mound shrieked in pain or rage spraying mulch like spittle into the air, the flames opened a gaping hole in the coat of vines and leaves which formed its outer skin. Inside, encased in a skeleton of tangled tree branches, was a brilliantly glowing green sphere. The flames, having burned it to its core, continued to spread across the coat. With no regard for the expanding fire, Eisuke ran up and over the now hunched back of the creature to flip over it and land facing it. He immediately noted the sphere within and began to attack with a new vigor. His one sword dimly burning and now his other scimitar flung spinning through the air to cut deeply into the tangle of branches which comprised the beast’s skeleton as it were and held the green sphere in place. With his now empty hand extended, the Shinrin Hogo-Sha shouted some quick words of magic, and as if of their own volition, the tangle of branches loosened and the green sphere shifted. Not done yet, Eisuke accepted a battering blow from a vine wrapped arm. A similar blow drove another of the elves into the ground, and he bore it with a grunt in order to be able to lunge forward, driving his remaining scimitar in an awkward thrust at the green sphere.
That final blow broke the sphere, and with an eerily wicked giggle, a small green glowing mist escaped from the sphere. “Stay away from it, don’t let it touch you!” Eisuke shouted while diving out of the way of the small glowing mist. The mist seemed to have a bright glowing core which flitted back and forth with the speed of a hummingbird before finally streaking off into the forest.
One of the elven warriors croaked, “Was that what I think it was?”
Eisuke grimly answered, “Yes, it was a will-o-wisp.”
All of the elves cringed, and the humans looked at one another. Emily asked, “What is a wisp?”
Eisuke stared at her for a moment as if uncertain if her question was serious before saying, “A will-o-wisp is a spirit of chaos. It is the embodiment of capricious whim and uncertainty in the forest.” When that answer didn’t seem to please Emily, he continued, “It is an elemental creature, but instead of being comprised of earth or fire or air, it is comprised of the essence of chaos. This might not seem like a bad thing, but while evil may or may not be destructive, chaos always is, even when it doesn’t mean to be. Chaos by its very nature is the antithesis of all sentient life and the wisp embodies that chaos. This one had animated that mass of vegetation and based upon its size had done so for quite a while. It turned the natural life cycle of the forest, the fallen becoming food for the new, into a mockery. It turned what was meant to fertilize and cause growth into an engine of destruction. Again, he paused, allowing the weight of his words to sink in. “Will-o-wisps rank higher on our threat list than even full-grown forest drakes due to their capricious nature. Only the tree sappers rank as a higher threat to the forest, and were it not your quest to destroy them, I would have to leave you now to gather other Shinrin Hogo-Sha and druids to hunt it down.”
“Please pardon my ignorance.” Emily said with a shallow bow of her head towards Eisuke. Her years of experience traveling all over the earth for her short term mission trips had trained her to pick up local customs very quickly and she had noticed how bows of all different depths played a great part in the moon elves non-verbal communication. She didn’t know the specifics of each bow but chose what seemed appropriate. The stern elf seemed both taken aback and pleased with her gesture, so she continued, “But that beast hardly seemed to be the challenge that some of the beasts I have seen my husband fight in the Murkwood.”
“In some ways you are correct. In that form, the wisp was neither quick nor agile, but it was very powerful and difficult to kill. Were it not for the intervention of your daughter, we might not have been able to stop it. As you undoubtedly saw, my blades were having little effect upon it.” With that, he turned and gave a short bow to Mira saying softly, “
Imoto.” Emily didn’t quite catch the full meaning but knew that the word was meant as an honorific given to a younger female as a sign of respect.
The discussion was cut short by Lord Itsu who had apparently recovered from his fear. “All of this is moot. What is important is that I appear before the lunar throne and present this … woman and her mongrel offspring to their majesties for their judgment.” As he spoke, his disdain for Emily oozed out of his words.
Before either Eisuke, Jaselm, or even Emily could say anything, teenage sarcasm beat them all and Mira responded, “Yes, yes we wouldn’t want you to dirty yourself with our presence any longer than you have to.” After speaking directly to Lord Itsu, Mira began walking along their path, but if you listened closely, elven hearing might have picked up her voice trailing off, “Jack a…”
Chapter Three
“A coward dies a thousand times before his death, but the valiant taste of death but once. It seems to me most strange that men should fear, seeing that death, a necessary end, will come when it will come.” — Shakespeare
The tensions in the group moving north through the Chenhou forest were palpable after the attack by the wisp. Watchfulness certainly accounted for a part of it, but another part could be attributed to the anger vented by Lord Itsu when no one could tell him what Mira has called him. He kept insisting that Mira or the “half-breed brat” as he called her, owed him the respect of his rank. None of the guards seemed very interested in listening to him at this point though. While it couldn’t be said that any of them went out of their way to disobey him, neither did they pay much attention to what he said unless he specifically ordered them by name. His obvious cowardice when fighting the shambling mound had clearly affected how the soldiers were responding to him. Instead, all of them were looking to Eisuke for their guidance.
