Watcher's Test

by Sean Oswald

  “Big scary Bugs,” squeaked Sara. “I don’t wanna stay in this tree.”

  “I agree. I think we should get to the ground, Dave. I have a bad feeling about this.” Then as if Emily’s words were prophetic, there was a cracking sound and a split in the trunk started to work its way down from the top as the weight of the numerous branches up above started to pull apart the lower parts of the tree where the core had been entirely consumed.

  Seeing that, Dave ordered Emily to start climbing to the ground while Mira flew Sara down and then came back for Jackson. As he was speaking, Dave started throwing their backpacks over the side without even looking to see exactly where they landed and then moved on to scooping up blankets and other supplies they had out of their bags for the night. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Mira had made it back for Jackson. The problem was that by this time the split had reached the platform and started to pull it apart. The floor was literally pulled out from underneath his feet and Dave stumbled off, starting to fall to the ground. Dave frantically scrambled, trying to grab anything to hold onto as a massive section of the trunk was falling to the ground. If he had had the presence of mind to cast his Minor Binding spell, he would have been able to maintain a grip on the wood as he fell, but no good. Every branch or possible handhold that he tried to grab while falling slipped through his fingers, and because of the way in which the platform had extended away from the tree as it split away and dumped Dave off, he was now free-falling in open-air twenty feet away from the side of the tree and unable to reach any of the branches to try and slow himself.

  As always in a situation such as this, time seemed to slow down. The actual fall took all of 2.15 seconds for Dave to impact the ground, but to him, it felt like an eternity. He felt helpless and his mind raced, trying to figure out how to survive the fall. His years of martial arts had at least taught him that he didn’t want to land flat and he equally knew that he didn’t want to shatter his legs by trying to land on his feet. It’s amazing the sort of trivia that the mind can recall in instances like this. He recalled reading an article about how people who jumped off a four-story building had about a 50/50 chance of surviving. In the end, he figured the best that he could do was to try to angle himself so he could tuck and roll trying to distribute some of the force of the impact. He didn’t know if the physics of that actually made sense, but it was the best he could come up with in the time available.

  Then all theory was over, and as he attempted to judo roll his way out of the fall, he found out that being flipped over someone’s shoulder and surviving a fifty-foot fall were two very different things. The first moment of realization hit him as his shoulder was shattered, not just driven out of socket but completely broken, and as he continued the attempted roll, he felt ribs shatter as he continued onto his back. He saw in his mind’s eye that his health had just dropped by 80% and that he had numerous status conditions: Exhausted, Pained, Partially Paralyzed, Stunned, Broken (Multiple), or at least a part of him saw all those notifications pop up. The reality was that the majority of his mind couldn’t care less about notifications or health pools, because his very existence was a blaze of agony. A broken rib had pierced a lung and he felt blood on his lips, but that sensation didn’t bother him, what did was the complete lack of sensation of anything below his waist.

  The bridge across the Seinna River from Eris’ Rise to the Merkwood wasn’t any great marvel of engineering. It was a simple wooden bridge with sharply rising arches under each section that rested upon ironwood poles which had been harvested with magical tools, painstakingly shaped by other magical tools, and then finally sunk into the riverbed by the engineer/earth mage who had originally come with the settlers for that express purpose. It had no guard rails and was only wide enough for a single wagon at a time with about two feet of space on each side left over. This portion of the Seinna was relatively narrow but still a good quarter-mile wide, and so as simple as this bridge was, it had represented a significant undertaking. The village would be paying rent on the bridge to Duke Holstein for the next eighty years in order to pay it off.

  Aloysia looked back over her shoulder and saw the bridge behind them as well as the two other wagons loaded with loggers. Loggers who she had manipulated and flirted into returning to work despite the serious danger posed by the various beasts living in the area in an unusually high density. Despite that, she wasn’t worried. She was instead grinning ear to ear that her plan had worked so well. She looked on as Jarvis and Malcolm, one of the young unmarried loggers vying for her attention set up and organized the men into groups of loggers and those who would carry bows for protection. The plan was to have five groups of six men each group working well within sight of each other. Each group would have four men swinging axes and two men carrying bows for protection. The final logger was going to stay with Jarvis and the other two teamsters to provide protection for the wagons and Aloysia. She found that part of the plan amusing but didn’t point out that, besides Jarvis, she was the only leveled individual present. It would undercut her play as the helpless young woman that needed the strong men of the village to save her.

  While watching the teams of men each walking the fifty feet from the wagons to the tree line and then spread out, she took a mental inventory of her gear and skills, thinking again about how she could help if anything went wrong. She was wearing the normal cotton blouse and long, loose skirt that any proper young woman of Albia would wear, but that was where her “proper” attire ended. Underneath she had tight leather breeches in the event that she would need to run or fight. Under her dull cotton blouse was a leather chest piece meant to provide protection, but yet be worn under the sort of attire a woman might wear in proper society. It was a common piece of gear used by the thieves guild for its female members. It clearly didn’t provide the best protection, because it acted as a brassier, lifting her girls and showing a fair amount of cleavage. It provided no protection to her shoulders or upper chest, but at least provided protection for her abdomen. This type of gear had been designed as a compromise of protection and appeal. Often the best armor that a female operative could have was her feminine charms, and while Aloysia was not an official member of the Albian thieves guild, she had associated with many of their members before her father had decided to accept the duke’s offer.

  Besides her leather pants and top, she also had two magical rings and a magical dagger. Her father’s income as a crafter had been well above average and combined with his contacts from the military had enabled him to purchase his daughter some extra protection. None of the items were beyond excellent in quality, but they combined to provide her with a good amount of protection. The dagger was enhanced by electrical damage and had a chance to stun an opponent, while the ring on her right hand added 60 extra health. The real treasure of her items was the ring on her left hand. It was a crude iron set with a small sapphire and to the untrained eye would appear to be of very low quality. What pushed it up to the excellent rating was the masterful rune engraving in the metal of the band and the associate enchantment. Three times per sunrise, the ring would allow its wearer to raise a small shield of translucent purple energy around the hand wearing the ring. The shield would be approximately two feet in diameter and could absorb up to 40 points of physical damage before being dispelled. That in and of itself was a very solid defensive measure, but the best thing about the shield was that it reflected back at its attacker 50% of any damage that it absorbed.

  The first couple of hours passed without any issue at all, but by midway through the first sun’s trip across the sky, the group working thirty feet from the centermost group was attacked. The first warning they got was a burst of motion out of the undergrowth. None of them had even seen the flame lynx moving toward them until it had already pounced upon one of the loggers. Aloysia couldn’t tell which of the men it was, but she heard his scream even muffled as it was by being driven to the ground with the weight of the beast on him. She watched in horror as the lynx’s searing hot
claws were driven into the back of his shoulder blades on each side. The heat must have been cooking him alive. While the initial attack from the beast wasn’t enough to kill him, he wouldn’t have lasted very much longer if the two bow-wielding loggers hadn’t each sunk an arrow into the flame lynx.

  The arrows scored deep hits on both sides against the beast who had been stationary on the man’s back, but with those hits, it let out a feral call and then dashed at the archer to its left. This lynx was a whirlwind of claws and teeth, cutting up not only the archer but warding off the other loggers as they tried to position themselves around the large cat with axes held threateningly in front of them. Even though the lynx was more than a match for any two of the loggers, the six of them were managing to hold their own. They were being cut but were landing glancing blows with their axes to cut long shallow cuts in the cat. In seconds all of them were bleeding, both man and beast. Aloysia suddenly sprang in between an opening left by the maneuvering of two of the men in response to the cat’s latest lunge. Even though the flame lynx hadn’t noticed her because it was occupied with its six targets, her stealth skills were easily more than enough to become invisible for all intents and purposes to the country loggers. Her blade thrust out before her as she dropped her stealth and landed a sneak attack. While the electric power of the blade didn’t stun the flame lynx, its added damage further enhanced by the sneak attack sent crackling blue sparks all over the beast’s body and opened a deep piercing wound into its side. This, of course, made her priority number one to the flame lynx, which turned as agilely as the deep wound permitted and lunged forward at Aloysia with both sets of front claws extended and its mouth open wide ready to bite down on what appeared to be a little human thing smaller than all the rest. The beast didn’t know how she had hurt it so badly and, in that moment, wasn’t thinking of anything but how to sink its teeth into her flesh. Aloysia, however, had not attacked it blindly or unprepared. As soon as she had retracted her dagger, she lifted her left hand and the weightless magical shield extended out from the ring on her index finger. A split second later, the snarling bundle of fur, claws, and muscle was upon her, lashing out with its multi-attack ability and landing two claw strikes in an instant. The two claw blows were powerful and intended to be the opening to a finishing bite, but unlike the other humans who had been trying to avoid its attacks, this little one had just stood there taking it. While one direct claw strike was not enough to deplete the entire 40 health of the shield, the two combined strikes shattered it, leaving Aloysia wide open and vulnerable to those ruthless teeth. The damage-reflecting component of the shield sent enough power back into the already damaged body of the flame lynx to drop it to the ground unable to carry through with the intended attack. There, it was easy prey for one of the loggers to land a practiced chopping stroke of the ax into the back of its skull, ending this threat.

  Breathing heavily and just happy to be alive, Aloysia and the six loggers in this group looked up to see why none of the other loggers had come to aid them only to be greeted by the sight of each group desperately fighting off attackers of their own. Some were fighting horned drey hounds, others were fighting flame lynxes or massive boars, but most terrifying were the four-foot-tall trees that were shaped like men. Each group of six loggers had at least one man down and she saw the far group was mostly all down with Jarvis fighting off some type of large bear while his men were carrying the fallen loggers to a wagon. Aloysia was overwhelmed with fear for the men of her village. Looking to see who needed her help the most, she couldn’t help but be plagued by the thought, “This wasn’t supposed to happen.”

  Emily had watched helplessly as Dave started to fall, catching her breath and hoping against hope that somehow Dave would manage to grab a handhold on anything to catch himself or even to slow his fall. Eloria was hard on her, watching Jackson be attacked, then Mira be skewered and later seeing Dave torn to shreds by a pack of hounds had each been difficult for her. She was, by nature, an empathetic person, so much so that she had stopped watching the evening news because the stories of crime victims and assorted tragedies had nearly brought her to tears repeatedly and deprived her of sleep worrying for the families of those affected. That feeling was exponentially multiplied when it was her children or husband who were in pain or danger, and here she was watching helplessly as it happened again. The Watcher’s message may have said that Eloria is conflict, but to her, it was an enormous bundle of twisted up, tightly knotted emotions.

  The thing is, and Emily knew this at some level, mom Emily was nowhere near as valuable here as nurse Emily. When thinking like a nurse, she was used to dealing with crises and this certainly qualified as such. Her mind raced over all of the data she knew about falls and likely injuries and how to treat them. The human or elven brain is an amazing computer, for in the few seconds it took Dave to first lose his footing, then slide down the collapsing platform, struggle for a handhold and eventually make his 2.15-second fall, Emily was able to worry, then shift to nurse mode. Dave probably had at least a chance of surviving this sort of fall, but he would likely suffer multiple fractures and possibly internal injuries. Eloria was challenging her again, and she would rise to face it. She was not helpless. She now had abilities she could have only dreamed of before on Earth. Abilities that every nurse or doctor she had ever worked with would give their left foot to be able to use. So it was that even as Dave fell into open-air, she began the three-second cast time of her Minor Healing spell all the while wordlessly saying a quick prayer that Dave would know to try to land on his feet rather than his back.

  Of course, as often the case, Dave did the exact opposite of the thing that his wife knew he needed to do and sustained massive injuries from his failed plan to try to disperse the force of the fall with his poorly conceived roll. He survived but only barely, with 230 of his health gone in one instant. Shock set in instantly and threatened to finish off what the fall hadn’t until his body was suffused with the life-giving energy of Emily’s Essence magic. The rush of the restored 60 health saved Dave from death but still left him grievously injured.

  While Dave lay there senseless to his surroundings, Emily ran to his side, mentally willing the cooldown timer on her spell to count down faster. At the same time, each of the three children, seeing their father fall to the forest floor, ran toward him only to be silently warned to stay back by their mother. Dave’s condition was readily apparent even to little Sara with a right lower leg bent the wrong direction, a bone jutting out of his left upper arm, and blood bubbling forth with his ragged breaths. Mira and Jackson stared on in silent horror while Emily was assessing Dave’s condition to see if there was anything that she could do to help him other than casting her healing magic and trying to block out Sara’s screaming.

  All of them hung in a state of suspended disbelief about what had happened until Jackson called out to his mother. “Ummm… Mom, look.”

  Emily ignored his call for her to look at something. She could only focus on one thing, and, in this moment, that was healing Dave. As the cooldown timer ran out and she recast her healing spell, feeling the mana swell out of her center, traveling down her arm and through her hand into Dave, she was once again shocked at the incredible effectiveness of the magic. The bone in his leg twisted back eliciting a groan from him even as it was healed. Apparently, the magic could restore a broken bone to its proper shape but did nothing to prevent the pain such a twisting of shattered bone would cause, or maybe it did but just not enough.

  His voice filled with urgency, Jackson shook his mother by the shoulder and said, “Mom, you have to see this.”

  Annoyed but pulled by the strength of his shaking, Emily turned to look back toward the tree and saw what had caught her son’s attention. Before her eyes, swarms of chittering foot-long bugs or rats or some Elorian hybrid of the two were pouring out of the remains of the tree that had been their home for the last two nights. It was staggering to think about. The tree had been hundreds of feet tall, nearly fift
y feet in diameter with impossibly hard wood. None of that had saved it from being hollowed out by an infestation of what seemed like thousands of what she could only think of as termites. As terrifying at the swarms of small creatures swarming out were, the real issue that had drawn Jackson’s attention was the couple hundred of the creatures headed in their direction. The only fortunate thing is that for every one of the foot-long critters heading their way, there were likely one hundred headed deeper into the woods.

  Since his leg was apparently healed, Emily placed her hand on Dave’s face and asked, “Can you get up? We need to move.” The nurse in her knew that there was no way that Dave should be moving, but she didn’t know what else to do against the hundreds of tiny mouths headed their way. Just as soon as she felt she had adapted, Eloria threw more at her.

  Despite her attempt to rouse Dave, he didn’t budge at all other than to groan. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw that Jackson had pulled his mace off his back and was standing in his baseball batter stance ready to hit the incoming creatures who were about to reach them. Unable to get Dave up, but also unwilling to risk her children, and most importantly, knowing exactly what Dave would want her to do, Emily called for the children to come with her as she caught Sara up in her arms and turned to run. It was the hardest thing she had ever had to do in her life, and her heart sank as she felt like she was abandoning Dave, but then hope sprung up in her as Mira stepped in front of Jackson and held out her hand. A burst of flames rushing off her hand in a wide fan burning the little creatures as they swarmed forward into the blistering heat.

  The little pests seemed to have a thick covering of armor much like an armadillo in appearance but seemed highly susceptible to flame. The fan of flame shot off of Mira’s hand out to a range of twenty-five feet in a one hundred and twenty-degree arc. At least fifty of the creatures were killed and the flame seemed to scare the others enough to divert them around the family which became a little island in the brief but turbulent stream of creatures rushing by. Unfortunately, shooting out waves of flame in a forest, even one with as little underbrush as there was here was bound to cause some collateral damage. At least three smaller trees that the family had been able to identify as being similar to pine trees and one that was like an oak tree had all caught on fire.