by Sean Oswald
“Are you okay, Consort?” asked Fumihiro as he came to a stop standing over where Dave had fallen.
Rubbing his bruised knee Dave replied, “I’m just fine. I simply lost my footing when we left the Murkwood. I wasn’t prepared for the stat loss.”
The druid offered a hand to help him up, which he took while saying, “And for like the tenth time, can you stop calling me Consort?”
“Why would I do that? It is your proper title.”
“My title is Baron Murkwood.”
“Bah, that is a human title, Consort.”
“Well I am a human in case you haven’t noticed,” His annoyance really started to show through in his tone.
“You aren’t here because you are a human. You are here because you are Consort to Lady Emiri.” The druid’s voice came out as though he were speaking to a child.
“There is no reason for hostility. Whether you like it or not, my wife and I rule the Murkwood together. It is as much a human land as it is an elven land. There is true potential here for a new kind of unity, but all you see is a human clinging onto the robes of your Lady.” Dave was no longer speaking with annoyance. Now his voice had taken on a hard edge.
Bowing his head, Fumihiro said, “Forgive me Baron Murkwood. I meant no disrespect, the title Consort is not one of shame, and it doesn’t imply anything other than that you are the right hand of Lady Emiri, her most trusted aid and boon companion.”
“It may be as you say, but I still want to be here as myself, as the ambassador of Albia, not as a second to anyone.”
“Again, as you wish, Baron Murkwood. Lest you be too angry with me, know that I volunteered to serve in Lady Emiri’s district. I saw something in her, and I now see in you, why you, a human, are a match for her. Just remember that we are in elven lands now, and if you are offended to be called Consort, they will take that as a slight to our ways.”
“Well, that is a good point. Why didn’t you lead with that? I don’t want to argue. I only want to finish this quest and then return home. I enjoy adventures, but I also want to build something which will last, something to pass onto my children,” Dave’s passion flowed out with his words.
Three days later, they had made it nearly one hundred and twenty miles north. Weaving around the villages and avoiding the traders traveling from community to community. The few times that a forest warden discovered them, Fumihiro would give them a signal, and they would be allowed to pass, unmolested and unreported. Each evening as they would sleep, it was necessary for them to take shifts. Despite the fact that this land was well populated by the elves because they were off the well-traveled paths, the beasts of the forest would roam freely.
This morning was different though. Dave had the second watch of the night and was up thinking through what it would take to build up Eris’ Rise. One of the great aspects of rulership here was that he was able to open the interface even this far away. Through that interface, he was able to keep track of what was going on. The continued growth that he noted each day, the increased number of homes, and the jump in food production, all of those gave him pride in his wife and in those who were becoming his people.
He heard movement in the brush close by their camp and instantly closed the interface leaping to his feet while his hand went to his sword, and he delivered a swift none too soft kick to the sleeping druid. Disciplined to his core, the druid didn’t so much as mutter a complaint but instead looked around. He saw Dave place one finger to his mouth in a sign for silence. Keen senses trained over nearly two centuries of service as a druid picked up the same sounds that Dave had heard. Snapping twigs and the faint rustle of the underbrush being pushed aside. The two men looked at each other and even though they didn’t really know each other and had never fought together, they both knew the other agreed that this wasn’t the noise of some animal. This was something else.
For his part, Dave felt good with his sword in hand but was somewhat surprised when he realized that his first instinct had been to reach for the sword before calling up a spell. Maybe it was because the sword made less noise than casting a spell, or maybe it was because he had conditioned himself over several weeks of life and death fighting since he arrived in Eloria to be a swordsman. Either way, it was only a passing thought. When push came to shove, Dave would use all the resources he had.
Then he saw it. Green skin covering gangly arms and legs which almost looked deformed, a head which was too big for its body. Nothing but a goblin was quite that ugly, quite that unnatural. This goblin though was definitely of the warrior type, its mismatched leather armor still better than the ones he had fought in the battle for Eris’ Rise, and it wasn’t alone. Now that he was aware of them, Dave saw more goblins moving two by two. There had to be at least twenty of them. Yet, they hadn’t been discovered yet, so it would probably have been wisest to remain still and avoid notice. Dave was sure that the nearest elven community wasn’t more than half a dozen miles away and surely their leadership would want to know about this, but then the decision was taken out of his hands.
Fumihiro had made it from prone to a crouched position. The mace he carried as a weapon was laid across his legs. Dave had marveled when he first saw the druid’s using metal weapons and wearing very finely crafted chainmail armor and wondered how it was that they did so. In many games, it was a convention that druids could only use leather or sometimes purely natural wooden or bark armors, and most of the games he had played wouldn’t let them use metal weapons. When he had made a passing comment about not knowing that they did such things, Aoi had scoffed. She asked why ever he had thought such a silly thing. Telling her that it was because he had always heard they only used natural things, she pointed out that the metal of their armor and weapons was as much of the earth a dirt or rock, so why wouldn’t they be allowed to shape it. He had had no argument and just considered it another way in which Eloria was more practical than any game he had ever played.
In that moment of stray thoughts, the druid had cast a spell and now was holding a pulsing mass of green and brown in his hands. Well not exactly holding, rather it was floating between his hands as he seemed to focus on it. The roughly spherical mass would pulse unevenly, growing larger and then compressing down again ranging in size from a tennis ball to a basketball. Yet steadily growing as Fumihiro intensely focused on it, small shudders shaking his body almost as if he were having a seizure.
Without warning, he released the sphere which began to gain speed and altitude as the druid stood grasping his mace while assuming a fighting stance and shouting, “Die goblin scum!”
Giving warning to an enemy before the carefully crafted surprise attack seemed foolhardy and not the sort of thing Dave would expect from supposedly wise and seasoned druid even if elves truly detested goblins. Yet an instant later, Dave revised his assessment. The sphere had flown high enough to be over even his six feet and was passing over the goblin’s heads. Yet not one of them had noticed it or at least paid any heed to it. They were all focused on the druid who had called out to them. None of the goblins raised shields or even arms overhead to protect themselves. So when the sphere pulsed one last time and began to spit forth a stream of eight inch long thorns, the goblins were caught completely unprepared and began dropping in agony, deep wounds where the thorns had burrowed into their bodies leaving trails of blood. The thorns burst force with explosive power, and the sphere continued to spit for a stream of them until all twenty of the goblins were either dead or laying on the ground moaning.
It was an impressive display of power, made even greater because Dave had never seen a tier 2 spell do so much damage. The stream of thorns had been machine gun like and no less impressive than the M249 SAW, Dave had carried sometimes in the corps. It wasn’t so much that the damage from each thorn (31) was overwhelming but rather the constant stream of fire.
“How did you do all that with one spell?” he asked the druid.
Now it was Fumihiro’s turn to signal for quiet before he whispered ba
ck, “Finish these quickly before their moaning alerts others.” His voice carried no more inflection than if he had said, “Pull the weeds before they spread.”
Then as Dave watched, the elf teed up with his mace and began smashing the heads of any goblin who so much as twitched. Dave joined in. His enchanted blade made short work of the impaled goblins, most of whom weren’t even moving but only writhing in pain.
When the grisly work was done, he turned and raised an eyebrow at the druid.
“I can still hear others in the woods. I know your senses are not quite as keen as an elf.” Then he raised his hand as if to forestall any argument from Dave, who hadn’t even meant to make one. Fair was fair after all, and elves certainly had keener senses than humans from what he had seen so far in Eloria.
A sudden thought struck Dave, and he began to climb up one of the trees. His Strength even without the rulership bonus was far beyond any earth human and made climbing the old growth pine tree relatively easy. The pine was also a good choice because even with many of the trees surrendering their foliage in the late autumn the pine was still a deep green and would hide him as he climbed from any goblin eyes below. Fumihiro must have agreed it was a good idea because he was soon scaling the tree after Dave, moving with characteristic elven grace although when applied to climbing a tree, it made him look more like a spider than a cat.
Once they were around a hundred feet up into the air, they paused and found a good spot in the branches where they could both rest and get a view of the forest. The druid cast a spell, dragging out the syllables of the words, and then Dave felt the spell form settle on him like a buff. Instead of adding health like Emily’s blessing or making him run faster like the movement buffs, he had experienced this one brought the world into focus with a crystal clarity. His vision became exponentially better, such that he could see a mouse scurrying along the forest floor from all the way up here. The keen detail was sharper than he ever remembered seeing in his life, enough so that it prompted him to check his character sheet.
Active Buffs: Eye of the Hawk. 7x magnification, your vision is exceptionally attuned to movement. Remaining duration: 4:48
That explained it then. All Dave could think was, ‘Cool spell.’ Enjoying the enhancement before it expired, he began scanning the forest below. Ah, there they were. He saw clusters of movement in various spots all to the west of their position. There had to be at least half a dozen more groups of goblins and that was only accounting for what he could see from here. The keen vision only went so far. The remaining foliage and brush still limited what he could see.
“I need to let Emily know about this. If goblins are here, they could be coming at Eris’ Rise in force.”
“Agreed.”
Dave didn’t know much about Fumihiro, but he did like that he was a man of few words most of the time. He prepared and cast the Minor Messenger Bird spell. Giving Emily a short message that would explain the situation enough so that she and the other leaders would take precautions but vague enough so as not to worry her. He had to take care to make sure the message didn’t sound like a farewell because he wanted to believe he would make it out of this. Besides in the end, how would it really change their lives for him to say goodbye?
After the message was sent, the two of them had a brief discussion. Their options were somewhat limited. They could wait and hope that the goblins all went past and that eventually it would be safe to come down. The problem with that was obvious. They would be abdicating their responsibility not to mention basic common decency towards the elves in the nearby communities. Sure, the elves had forest wardens and druids, but they were meant to tend nature not stop an invading army.
The next option was to come down and fight the goblins. Dave was confident in his ability to deal with a fairly large number of goblins, especially if they didn’t have any spell casters with them and if that spell Fumihiro had cast before was any indication, he was very potent. When Dave brought that up, the druid explained that it was a technique that he called channeling, but he said it wasn’t something that could be easily explained and that it would take weeks to learn for most people and years to master. So the obvious problem with that plan would be that if they failed then there might still be a sizable goblin force left and their deaths would be for nothing.
The final option as he saw it was for them to get down and race for the nearest community to warn them. He couldn’t use his messenger spell because he had to know the specific target that he was sending it to. With this plan, they might have to fight some, but only as much as they had to in order to be able to escape. Fumihiro continually wanted to defer to Dave. It was like the man couldn’t help himself, like it was ingrained into his culture. Yet with enough pushing by Dave, he eventually started to act like a partner in the matter. They went through each other’s abilities in an effort to come up with the best options and eventually felt like they had a plan.
Dave had to admit to being nervous as he began climbing down the tree. He really did believe this was the best option, but still he couldn’t help but be fearful. Maybe it was the way in which he had finally begun to step out into his own path, finding out what he really wanted out of this life. Maybe it was that for the first time in a long time he felt truly at peace with himself and his family. You never have as much to lose as when you are happy.
Yet, it’s funny how the best laid plans hardly ever work out for they can never account for all the variables. Just as Dave reached the ground, his eyes were drawn to a sudden flurry of movement to his left. A man burst forth from the brush not more than two hundred feet from the tree he had just climbed down from. A quick glance showed the man had high quality gear, but his leather armor was torn, his quiver was devoid of arrows, the knife sheath on his belt was empty, and his trousers were torn. He had a sword in his bloody hand and his gait showed a bit of a limp. Behind him, there were half a dozen goblins. These goblins didn’t wear any armor, but they carried long spears and appeared to be trying to herd the running man.
Dave searched his mind for a spell to stop all six of the goblins. He started cursing himself for not having obtained a proper AoE spell. If only he had managed to learn Mira’s Frostwave spell or something like it. He started running after them. The goblins were surprisingly fast for their size and were catching up with the running man, but Dave was still under the effects of a motion buff and was able to quickly close with them. As he ran, he began to cast lightning bolt eventually releasing it when he was within fifty feet of his targets.
The surge of casting a Tier 3 Evocation spell was a rush. The mana coursed through him and released in pure destructive potential. There was no finesse just raw power. At this range, he was able to make the bolt fork once, twice, and then he failed to make the final fork. Dave felt the spell form slipping away from him, so he salvaged it as much as he could, forcing the mana into the four-way forked bolt. Each streak of lightning blasted into the back of one of the chasing goblins, slamming into them with so much energy that their bodies were lifted off the ground. (362) The electrical current caused their muscles to seize up while the heat caused the rags they called clothing to burst into flame. The skin on their backs and then chests blackened or in some cases burst open like overripe pea pods. As Dave continued moving forward, he couldn’t help but smell the barbeque scent of charred flesh.
Reacting with stunning speed for a man so wounded, the runner turned and executed a pair of slashing attacks. The first cut the spear of the goblin closest to him and the second strike was meant to behead that same goblin, but the man’s wounded leg betrayed him as he tried to pivot on it. So instead of being a killing stroke, the blade sunk into the goblin’s shoulder and the force of the follow through sent it to the ground. The final goblin turned to thrust its spear but was struck in the head by a small, glowing stone sent rocketing out from a sling in Fumihiro’s hand. The impact caved in the goblin’s ugly face, shattering its eye in a hot spray of blood before it fell to the ground as a corpse.
The three men looked all around and saw no immediate threat and then turned uneasily to look at one another. After an awkward moment, the running man said, “Thank you. I am Captain Raddick of the western Albian army. Who are you?”
Somewhat shocked to find an officer from the king’s army, Dave said, “David Nelson, Baron of Murkwood and General of the Northern Albian Army.”
“Murkwood? Northern Army? What are you talking about, and why are you with an elf?” Raddick’s exhaustion showed through in his questions which were clearly tinged with anger.
Trying to be matter of fact in his response Dave said, “I might as well ask what you are doing in elven lands, but the simple fact is I’m going to assume you don’t know everything that happens in the capital. It has only been a little bit over a month ago, but King Borstein created the Murkwood Barony and named me to that position as reward for my defense of the northern border from an invasion by a force of goblins and undead.”
“You were made a nobility for winning a battle?” the scout’s incredulity showing.
“Look, I don’t appreciate the tone. Yes, I am sure that there are a number of political considerations and ways in which I am being used, but everything I am telling you is the truth. Either believe it or don’t. If it means anything to you, I was also vouched for by Captain Maxwell Smart of the Purple and Gold.” Dave’s irritation was beginning to show through at not being believed by a man whose life he had just saved.
Fumihiro cut in, “We don’t have time for this, there are dozens if not hundreds of more goblins out here, and this man is in no condition for a prolonged fight.”
“Fumi,” Dave began as he cut short the druid’s name. It was a bad habit which Emily had told him was very offensive to the elves, and Dave did his best not to let it happen, but in this moment of stress it slipped out. “Please heal him some, but we can’t get moving until we come to an understanding. I won’t have someone at my back who I can’t trust.”
