“Meaning I won’t be injured anymore?” Dick asked. His two wounds were still there, but hadn’t stopped him from helping dig the grave with Tom and Harry.
“I think so,” Tom nodded. “That’s also when you get your magic energy back.”
“What if we’re underground?” Harry asked, trying to get a grip on how this world worked.
“It was something about the renewal of energy. It rushed over and through the world following the first light of day. It’s not the rays of the sun, just the position of the planet in relationship to the sun.”
“Daybreak renews,” Dick nodded. “Okay, got it. I’ll make sure to be a little more conservative with the magic.”
“Is it done?” John asked as they neared the doors to the barn. A flicker of light came from inside, as well as soft voices and sniffling.
“He’s buried next to the big tree,” Harry replied. “I take it the woman and kid are awake now?”
“He’s a crying mess and she’s in shock, but yes,” John sighed. “Marie is being her usual self. What you said earlier about going out to find the magic to bring him back... you still set on that?”
“Yes, and Tom and Dick are with me. What about you and Marie?”
“I can’t,” John said sadly. “If it was just me, I’d go, but I won’t put Marie in that kind of danger. It’ll mean adventuring and risking our lives. Marie is too soft for that, and you know it. That’s why she always plays the healer.”
“It’s also why everyone likes her,” Harry added. “We’ll manage on our own. If anything, you two staying alive will keep Kevin’s memory alive. Write him a song, John. Make sure he's remembered.”
“That I can do,” John nodded. “There are a few apples in here. Not much in the way of food, but you three should eat.”
“You know you saved me from another stabbing, right, John?” Dick said as they followed him into the barn.
“Me?”
“You made the one goblin hesitate to attack me,” Dick told him. “Your innate magic caused him to pause.”
“It was one of the things an entertainer can do, at least when it was a game,” Tom added. “We all seem to have bits of those talents, abilities... whatever the fuck they’re called now.”
“I see,” John murmured, leading them over to the corner where Marie sat with the woman and boy. “They’re in and the door is shut,” John said, taking a seat. “Has she come around enough to speak?”
“No, and the boy has cried himself to sleep,” Marie said softly. “We found some horse blankets we can use if it gets cold and a handful of apples. Eat and rest. You’ve done good things today. Thank you for helping them.” Her smile was strained, her red-rimmed eyes not able to hide her pain.
“It’s not your fault, Marie,” Tom tried to console her. “Kevin was true to himself, a paladin to the end. Besides, we’ll get him back.”
Marie looked at him with questioning eyes. “How?”
“When we were setting up to play at Carl’s, I looked ahead and found that there is a way to bring the dead back to life, but it’s top tier magic,” Harry said. “We’re going to find a way to do it ourselves, or make enough money to have someone else do it for us.”
“How can I help?” Marie asked.
“Marie—” John began.
“By staying alive,” Dick said bluntly. “We don’t want the most loved person from our group ending up in the same place. John has a plan to earn money and a name for himself. He’ll be covering that road while we do the dirty work.”
Marie looked to John, who just managed to mask his own surprise at what Dick was saying. “I’m going to spread the song of Kevin,” John said quickly. “These three are going to bring me back tales that I can craft into stories and songs. We’ll be their refuge when they get back to civilization.”
“Find a place for us to use, a safe haven to return to,” Harry said. “We’ll need it.”
“You’re going to go looking for things to kill and put yourselves in danger every day, aren’t you?” Marie asked, her wise eyes looking out of place on her young face.
“Yeah,” Tom nodded. “I’ll be their protector when we’re out. Harry will be handling the sneak, and Dick the damage. No healing magic, so three is the right party for this.”
Looking at the sleeping child in her lap, Marie sighed. “If there had been healing, I could have saved him. I’m sorry, Harry.”
“No, Marie, it’s not your fault,” Harry said. “Kevin did what he always did. Now we’ll do what we’ve done a number of times: bail him out when it all goes wrong.”
“You guys really should eat and sleep,” John said, handing each of them an apple. “I’ll stay up as long as I can.”
“Wake me first,” Tom said, stretching out and eating the apple ravenously. “I didn’t get wounded.”
“Neither did I,” Harry said.
“You’re wounded, just not physically,” Tom replied. “Try to sleep, Harry. We’ll talk more in the morning. We’ll need to understand what each of us can do to coordinate as a team.”
“I really hope you’re right about the sun,” Dick said, wincing as his wounds twinged. He tried to get comfortable while he munched on his apple.
“Fine,” Harry said, taking a bite from his own apple. “I’ll try to sleep after this.”
Chapter Three
No one slept well, and as the first rays of the sun crossed over the barn, Marie and Dick each sat bolt upright, their eyes wide. Tom chuckled under his breath as he watched them.
“What the fuck time is this?” Dick said, rubbing at his face.
“Daybreak,” Tom replied. “Check your chest. You both jolted awake... did the magic restoring do that?”
“It felt like someone just poured coffee right into my veins,” Dick replied. Pulling his shirt up, he touched unblemished skin. “Looks like it’s true. Healing exists, but it’s a once-per-day thing.”
“William, come back to bed, love,” the woman a few feet away mumbled.
“William can’t come back to bed,” Marie said softly, scooting over to sit next to the unnamed woman.
Eyes snapping open, the woman sat up, looking around wildly. “What happened? Who are you? Why are we in the bar—” Her rapid-fire questions faded as memory struck her like a sledgehammer. “No… Will…” Tears began to trickle down her cheeks and she covered her face with her hands.
“We don’t know your burial practices,” John said, squatting down next to Marie. “We had to bury a friend on your property. He was the first of us to come to your aid.”
“Darren... where is he?” Dropping her hands, her wet eyes darted around and caught sight of the boy curled up a foot away from her. “He lives... thank the light.” Reaching out, she gently brushed the hair from the boy’s face. Sniffling, she looked back to the group, “You slew the goblins?”
“Yeah,” Harry said, sitting up. “My brother died saving you and your son.”
Swallowing hard, the woman nodded, “I’m sorry for your loss, but thank you for saving us.”
“What’s your name?” Marie asked gently.
“Laurel Rand,” she replied. “Did the cabin survive?”
“The roof is gone and the interior is probably toasted, but we can check,” Tom said. “I’ll be right back.”
Dick got to his feet and followed Tom, “I’ll go with, just in case.”
“Works,” Tom shrugged.
Cracking the barn door, Tom looked out into the early dawn light. Nothing moved in the yard between the barn and the cabin. Slipping out with Dick behind him, they crossed to the cabin.
The walls were scorched, but had not gone up with the roof. Stepping over the shattered door, Tom entered the blackened interior. It wasn’t a big place: one big main room, a bedroom to one side, and a small alcove room on the other.
“This place is going to need tons of love to clean up,” Dick said.
“Yeah, but a lot of their stuff is intact, just covered in ash and debris,” Tom
said, uncovering a small table and setting it upright. “There’s a wood stove over there. Maybe there’s some food near it.”
The two of them searched the area near the wood stove and ended up with some salted meat, a dozen apples, a wheel of cheese, and a knife to cut it all up with. Carrying the items back to the barn, they could feel their stomachs rumbling loudly.
“How was it?” John asked as the two men entered the barn.
“The walls survived. The interior is coated in ash and it’ll need a good cleaning,” Tom said. “We brought back the food we could find.”
“Laurel thinks the village elder will be sending a couple of men out to check on them,” Marie said as she took the slice of salted meat Tom offered to her.
“I don’t know what we’ll do with Will… gone,” Laurel’s voice hitched on the last word.
“Couldn’t you hire someone to help you run the farm?” Harry asked.
“No, we’re too small a village to have extra people about. We only just manage to get everything done that we need to.” She broke off some cheese and handed part of it to Darren. The small boy was watching them all with wide, uncertain eyes. “You need to eat,” she said softly, stroking her five-year-old son’s hair.
“I take it you guys don’t normally have trouble with goblins, then?” Tom asked as he finished cutting up and distributing the salted meat.
“No, we’ve been a peaceful village. The outsiders we normally see are the small traders who want to avoid the taxes for using main roads. Occasionally, we see a group like yourselves, adventurers who travel the lesser ways looking for ruins to plunder.”
“We’re automatically adventurers. Why?” John asked curiously.
Laurel looked at him like the brightly dressed man was an idiot. “A dwarf, half-elf, trow, and two humans walk into a barn… it’s either a joke or an adventuring group.”
“Add a gnome and elf to that,” Tom mumbled around his food. “They went on to the village last night.”
“Which makes us adventurers, which we were going to be anyway,” Harry said.
“Laurel, did you want us to bury William?” Marie asked gently.
Laurel winced, closing her eyes. Tears ran down her cheeks as she nodded. “Please. Did he take any of them with him?”
“Two,” Harry said. “Got ‘em with a pitchfork, but fourteen was too much for him alone.”
“Only those who are willing to risk death can grow to face such numbers,” Laurel replied. “William was a good man. He cared for us and did everything he could to make our lives easier. I don’t know what I’ll do, but I’ll do my best to make our son’s life what William would want it to be, since he sacrificed himself for us.”
“Dad is gone?” Darren asked, his voice breaking as he sniffled.
“He’s gone off to be with grandpa and grandma,” Laurel replied, wiping the tears off Darren’s face.
“Daddy,” Darren cried, sobs wracking his small body.
Laurel pulled him onto her lap and rocked him, stroking his hair and trying to soothe him. Marie sat there looking sad, with John doing his best to comfort her.
“We’ll go get started,” Tom said, getting to his feet. Grabbing the shovel, he left the barn.
“Didn’t expect you to be the first one to want to bury another body,” Dick said, following him out of the barn.
“I wanted away from the kid,” Tom said. “I hate the sound of kids crying.”
“Still didn’t expect you to want to bury the guy,” Dick said.
“Marie offered us up like she always does,” Tom sighed. “I find it hard to tell her no. She’s the same as my mom, and just as caring as mom was.”
“I wondered why you never argued with her or told her no,” Harry said, catching up to them just outside of the barn. “After all these years, it finally comes out. Not that I can talk... it’s pretty much the same for me.”
“Better than my mom,” Dick snorted. “That’s why I can’t tell her no.”
“You really think John will be able to provide for both of them with his singing?” Harry asked.
“He couldn’t back on Earth,” Tom said. “He has natural talent, but never got a shot. Here, with his abilities from being an entertainer, he might be able to.”
“We can always help them if we make a real dent at adventuring,” Dick added. “Fuck Kattie and Carl, though. I’m not helping them.”
“I’ll start digging here,” Tom said, standing on the far side of the big tree from where they had buried Kevin. “You two want to bring the stiff over?”
“You didn’t get sore last night, did you?” Dick asked.
“No. My brawn and body stats are high, but it cost me face and sense. Thank goodness my mind stat is okay, and my react stat is good.”
“We can’t see those, though, can we?” Harry asked as he squinted hard.
“Dude, you look like you’re trying to take a shit,” Dick snickered.
“Fuck off,” Harry sighed. “I was hoping it would be like those books, where we could see our character info.”
“That would have been way too easy,” Tom grumbled. “I tried last night.”
“You didn’t tell us, why?” Harry asked.
“Because I wanted to see you try. It might have worked for you,” Tom shrugged. “Go grab the body already. Might as well get him ready to dump. We can talk about what each of us can do while we work.”
“I’ll go get him,” Dick said. “Short and ugly here isn’t going to be useful. You let your brawn be lowest or next to lowest, didn’t you?”
“Yeah,” Harry grumbled. “It was supposed to be a game, not life. My stats are specced like they would be for any other rogue type in a tabletop game.”
“Don’t feel bad, I know,” Dick said. “My body and sense stats are my lowest two. Be right back.”
Once Dick returned with William’s body, the three friends fell into discussing what they could do in this world. Harry started them off while Tom kept digging the grave.
“Not much in the way of active abilities for me. I’m stealth and sneak attack centered. I was building to get in, stab, and get out. I should have three abilities I can trigger. Trickster lets me change how I look for ten minutes, but it’s not all that great in combat. Vanish makes me invisible for a few seconds. It’s supposed to get me out of combat or into position for my next attack. The last is shift blame, which I get for being a trow. It lets me convince the person I target that another person is to blame for what just happened.”
“Wait, so you stab the mob, then tell it I did it?” Tom asked, pausing in his digging.
“In the game, it would be a contested sense roll against my face stat,” Harry said. “How it’ll work here, I have no idea.”
“What about passive stuff?” Dick asked.
“I’m certain my damage goes up when I attack unseen or from behind. I don’t have the strength normally to push a spear through somebody, but I managed it against the goblin. There’s also having the chance to detect traps, helping me see past others trying to disguise themselves, and another one which increases both those chances. The last one helps my group move through my preferred setting, which is subterranean.”
“So, if we go dungeon diving, we’ll have some help,” Dick nodded. “Nice.”
“Your turn,” Tom said as he kept digging. He was glad that the ground was soft, and not the hard dirt and clay that was at home.
“I’m the spellcaster,” Dick shrugged. “Not much to say about it. I have a set number of spells I can use with my energy, which depletes based on the spells I use. If we take an hour to rest, I can get some of it back. My race gives me better hearing and eyesight, and makes me only need four hours of sleep.”
“What spells?” Harry asked, giving Dick a put-upon look.
“Oh, heh, right. Barrier, unerring orbs, and slip for my normal spells, but I also have a number of jinxes. They don’t do a lot, but I can use them all the time: ghost hand, jinx ray, fix, and occultism.”
>
A long silence followed Dick’s words. Tom growled under his breath, “What do they do, asshole?”
“Heh, and give away the secrets of my magic?”
“Or I could grab you, string you up, and hoist you into this tree,” Tom said. “I’m the strongest of us now.”
“Fine,” Dick snickered, “not that you’d be able to, but I’ll tell you. Barrier gives me a second of protection from physical attacks. Unerring orbs conjures three spheres that attack my targets, singular or multiple, as I direct them when I cast. Slip... well, it makes people slip by coating the patch of ground in a slippery, flammable substance for one minute. Ghost hand lets me manipulate objects up to a few pounds as if I was using my hand. Jinx ray shoots a thin beam of energy at my target up to fifty yards away. Fix does what its name says: it fixes items as long as I can join the broken pieces together with my hands and they don’t weigh over a pound. Occultism is a big one; it can light a fire or snuff one out up to a candle flame; clean or dirty up to a cubic foot of material; or chill, warm, or flavor food.”
Greenways Goblins (Resurrection Quest Book 1) Page 3
