by Sean Oswald
Her Cure Poison spell was on her tongue, but Emily knew that she had to touch Mira in order to be able to cast it. “Release me now! I have to save her. Can’t you see she is dying?” She pleaded as she beat against the mail covered arms of the paladin holding her.
Jaselm said, “Just a few more seconds till the spores are settled. The first law of the healer is ‘physician heal thyself.’ It isn’t about healing yourself, but the reminder that you can’t heal others if you aren’t healthy yourself.”
One more swing of his arm caused the remaining particles to float away down the tunnel and finally Daichi said, “All clear.”
Emily didn’t need him to say it a second time but burst forth as quickly as Jaselm released her. Her high Agility kept her from stumbling as she went to a knee next to her daughter. Concern filled her heart as she saw the terror in Mira’s bulging eyes. Then she placed a hand on her and said a silent prayer as she cast her spell. The spell form settled over Mira. For a moment, to Emily’s sight, it looked like the golden lines of the spell fought with the green specks inside her daughter’s body. The spell wasn’t taking hold. Emily wanted to will more power into it, but she was no meta-mage to manipulate mana, it just wasn’t something she could do. That didn’t stop her intention, didn’t dull her need. Out of that need a flashing notification appeared before Emily’s eyes.
Imbue Spell with Faith Power? Yes or No
There was no need to ponder the question. Emily immediately selected Yes and felt a drain as her Faith Points started to flow from her. It was very different than the feeling of mana coming out. This felt like liquid metal searing through her veins and then out her fingertips into the spell form which was threatening to crumble. The only other time she had used her Faith points was when activating the Tabernacle and this time she had no artifact to channel them through. By the time that she had channeled three faith points into it, the spell form solidified and pushed all of the green particles up and out of Mira. This resulted in her vomiting them out and having to be helped to turn onto her side so as not to choke on her own green vomit.
A notification popped up for Emily as she held Mira rocking her trembling body.
Congratulations! You have successfully used faith points to upgrade the effective level of a spell. Your Minor Cure Poison spell reached the effectiveness of a Lesser Cure Poison. You have also achieved one of the requirements to reach Tier 2 as a Daughter of Redemption. The number of requirements will remain unknown to you until they are achieved.
The path of faith is not well lit. You must stumble and find your way amidst mistakes.
Realizing that Mira may have been saved but that Dave was still suffering, Emily looked over at him. His gasping had turned to wheezing. She would have said it was more akin to an asthma attack, and not a severe one, rather than being poisoned. The cool down was a full minute on her cure spell so she would have to wait, but she could still perform a nursing assessment on his condition. She leaned in and placed her head against his chest, since she didn’t have a stethoscope to use. Emily was relieved to hear breathing sounds even if they were labored. She pulled back and looked at his face and saw that the red of exertion was fading, and his breathing seemed to be coming easier bit by bit. Clearly Dave was still having trouble breathing, but it was getting better. Checking his status in the party screen, she saw that he had lost just over a third of his health and that it was continuing to fall slowly.
She cast Lesser Regeneration on him first and then a Minor Heal. The combined effects restored a good chunk of his health and resulted in him neither gaining nor losing more health. The party spent the next few minutes watching as Dave sputtered until finally he was able to sit up on his own as the debuff faded.
The first words out of his mouth were, “Well that sucked.”
Emily leaned in and hugged him tight. “I’m so glad you are okay, but do you have to talk like that?”
Mira ignored her mother’s rhetorical question and asked her own, “So why did I get poisoned to the point of death and you only got some rough breathing?”
“Simple enough. My Constitution is twenty-five and yours is what, ten, maybe?” Dave continued on without waiting for an answer. “I passed a Constitution save which I assume means that I was able to resist the more dire effects of the spores. The notification told me that they didn’t take root.”
“Hmmm.” Was all that he got from Mira but she was clearly lost in thought.
“Well whatever the reason, you are both okay now, and we need to find a way to destroy that fungus or whatever it is,” Emily said.
“Not quite so fast. Mostly, I agree we need to destroy it. It won’t be safe for us to walk down the tunnel if we are going to keep getting attacked by it. Just give me a second to cast Assess Enemy on it to see what else we can learn about it.”
A few minutes later, Dave had cast the spell not once but four times and was talking to himself like some kind of crazy professor. Finally, after multiple throat clearings by various party members he turned towards them and said, “Well my research skill gave me an idea. I was wondering if there would be a way that we would be able to utilize these growths to create things. Weapons certainly, but also antibiotics etc … like we had back home.” He ignored the confused looks from the native Elorians since he was mostly speaking to an audience of one. He was wondering if Emily thought it would be a good idea.
“Okay, maybe that is something, but it isn’t worth anyone here dying to try to collect more samples.”
“That’s where Mira comes in. I was thinking that maybe we could let her burn most of it up and then collect samples of the three different types.”
“Different types?” Emily asked.
“Yes, the green, red, and blue ones. They are all called Violent Fungus but each of them has a unique type of spore. The green ones are called pneuma-spores and obviously have some sort of impact on breathing. The blue ones are called technasma-spores and from the limited description available sounds like they give hallucinations. The worst are the red ones. They are called necrotic-spores and apparently eat living flesh.”
Everyone paid close attention to Dave’s descriptions and then a debate ensued about the practicality of collecting small samples. Eventually, it was agreed that they would try one more time but that if that didn’t work then they would have to find a way to destroy or bypass all of the violent fungus. Mira prepared to cast her flame wave spell and Dave said, “There is one other thing. When I cast my spell on the black sections of the wall, it failed. So I don’t know if that is because it is just a different part of the wall or if it’s another type of creature which is too strong for the spell.”
“We will keep watch, while Mira burns the foul things,” Jaselm said in his typical overly confident tone.
Mira released her spell and narrowed it from a wide fan into a flame-thrower like stream and began pouring extra mana into the spell to keep it going. As the flames licked up against the stone wall, the violent fungus would spew forth the spores but no one was close enough to be affected. She finally ran out of mana after clearing a section of the wall which was about fifty foot long on both sides and the ceiling overhead just for good measure. Now everyone would have to wait for her to regenerate her mana before continuing on. Dave couldn’t help but think that the look on Kraden’s face was priceless. He was obviously in awe of the power that Mira possessed and Dave who had never really enjoyed watching his daughter perform at piano recitals or gymnastic meets was such a proud papa about her magical prowess.
They were able to collect small patches of each of the three colors once the stone cooled enough. The fungus seemed to have drawn in on itself and so didn’t even shoot out its spores, either that or had already expended them when the area around them was being scorched. Dave could only hope that it would be worth the trouble. While waiting, they all got a notification that they had gained 8 XP each from the destruction of the fungus. Apparently fungus didn’t have a lot of life force to be converted to
XP, either that or with a tier 3 and 4 party member they weren’t able to get much from lower level monsters.
Even temporarily trading her health ring for Emily’s mana regeneration ring was still going to require a little over two hours for Mira to be fully recharged. If they had to do that every fifty feet, this could be a significant bottleneck to their progress since they didn’t know how far down the fungus went. So they decided while Mira was regenerating mana that they would go back and explore the left tunnel and the room it ended in. It was either that or test out the black surfaces which they hadn’t reached yet in the fifty feet that Mira was able to scorch off in her first pass. Suddenly, the time dilation which had seemed before to provide them with all the time in the world, wasn’t perhaps going to be enough.
Chapter Nineteen
“Left or right! Orc or elf! Today or Tomorrow! Death comes for all but the lucky!” — Goblin chant
Captain Raddick lay as still as he could, hardly daring to breathe. He was covered by leaves and fallen branches and had to trust that it would be enough to keep him hidden. The past two weeks had been rough. Already exhausted from months on the front, he and the five scouts who accompanied him were only allowed eight hours of sleep and then they had to be on the road. General Eikhorn had commanded them to discover where the goblins were retreating to when they abandoned the western front. If possible, they were to track and find the leaders and learn as much information as they could.
For the first few days, it had gone well as they traveled up the Egret River towards the goblin lands. Even seasoned scouts had taken a full week to make it one hundred and fifty miles through the mountainous terrain all while keeping watch for goblin activity. The odd thing was that no matter how far north they went, all of the goblin nests and caves seemed to be empty. All the signs were that they were moving northeast. Even more bizarre was that the further north they went, the more the gobli’s migrated for there could be no other word for such a vast movement of women and children alongside the warriors, turned eastward.
By the time that they reached the merging of the Egret and Seinna rivers, they were starting to see entire tribes of goblins moving together. Raddick was tempted to try and take some captives to gain information, but ultimately decided against it for two reasons. First, goblins were notoriously stupid and even if torture was applied would say anything to make it stop. Second, the risk of discovery was not worth the limited intel they might gain that way.
Staying back didn’t ultimately make any difference. On day eight, one of his scouts didn’t report at night to the designated rendezvous spot. They all feared the worst and tried to take extra precautions the next day, but once again, at night another scout didn’t show up. On the tenth day of tracking the goblins, they were starting to come upon a massive grouping of goblins unlike anything they had ever seen. They were in western most portion of the Murkwood, just to the north of the Seinna River. There must have been fifty or more tribes camping together. Each tribe with its own camp spread throughout the woods all around a central cave which had dozens of hobgoblins, a few ogres and a couple of ettins patrolling around.
Worst of all was that Raddick’s two missing scouts were hanging from poles in front of the cave. He couldn’t get close enough to get them down. It would have been suicide, but his Eagle Eye spell allowed him to see their lifeless faces. They were no longer alive, but it was clear that their passage into death had not been easy. He raged and wanted to kill every goblin, but an attack would have meant all their deaths and so he was patient.
That night in a cold camp, not daring to set a fire, they discussed what to do. Ultimately, Raddick ordered two of the remaining scouts to return and report to the general. Meanwhile, he and the last scout would continue to track the goblins and see what they could learn. The next couple of days, they stalked around the goblin camp, and they didn’t have to move on because the goblins seemed to be staying put. Each day they were almost discovered half a dozen times, each time more harrowing than the last.
What became really disturbing was the peacefulness of the camp. Each evening before second sundown the most massive goblin that Raddick had ever seen came out surrounded by hobgoblin mages and ogre guards. Each time he walked out wearing breeches and a bear skin pelt. Zooming in with his Eagle Eye, Raddick was able to see that his green skin was covered in golden tattoos. While not an expert, he would swear that they were orc tattoos. That of course made no sense though. The secret of making those tattoos was closely guarded, and there was no world in which he could imagine goblins being in league with orcs. Orcs might be brutal, but they were more hostile to goblins than even humans.
This goblin chieftain or warlord or whatever he was would make a speech. His voice carried but not clearly enough for Raddick to make out what he was saying. The goblins would cheer and then they would have a party of sorts each night. On the third day after his speech, they began building things. It was far from clear what they were building at first, but after a couple of days, it became clear that they were building ballista and large mounted crossbows.
On the fifth day after splitting up, things went from bad to worse. Their location was discovered and a goblin surrounded by a half dozen goblins stumbled upon them. The fight was brutal and quick. Raddick had to go all out and barely managed to kill the ogre and escape. It was too late for his scout. Six goblins were enough to bury him, yet he had taken most of them out and opened the window for Raddick to escape. The foes were all dead and yet more came. He laid there buried underneath the leaves and dead branches counting on goblin stupidity to save him.
For the first time since that fateful day when he met Seimion, Thelan the Basher, now called the Goblin King had travelled outside of the goblin lands. He had only recently taken up residence in a cave dug near the middle of the assembled goblin clans. It was a powerful feeling to know that he was claiming a part of the Murkwood as his own. This cave didn’t have the well-worn paths or the sheer size of his former home but it was in land taken from the elves and humans, and that made it sweet.
Even sweeter was the stench let off by the rotting corpses of the two human scouts who had been caught by his hobgoblins. Soon the entire world would rot at his feet. No, no. He had to force himself to be patient. Seimion was constantly reminding him that this plan would take time, but time was something that he now had. His counselor had estimated that after breaking into the third tier that his lifespan would expand from the normal goblin decade to be closer to forty or fifty years. It was a veritable eternity laid out before a mind such as his.
No, he could be patient. Breeding was easy. That came naturally to goblins. His offspring showed much more promise than the generic offspring. What was harder was getting the various tribes to stay in such proximity without fighting. For other races, the hard work he set them to of harvesting wood and turning it into ballista would have been cause enough to unify other races. Not so for goblins. If goblins despised anything more than the other races it was physical labor. It was a testament to Thelan’s leadership or perhaps his brutality that he was able to get even the pathetically slow pace of work that the goblins put forth.
His people would normally have lacked the skills to build anything this complex, but they had been given simplified plans from Seimion along with fully crafted metal fittings to make it easier. If Thelan didn’t miss his guess, those parts were the work of dwarven smiths. How the dark advisor could deliver those was a mystery as great as how he had gained the secret of the orc tattoos.
That thought brought a dark cloud to the goblin king’s face. Balayria, had ruined all of that. She was supposed to have worked the skin art onto all of his best warriors with more being trained every day. No, she had betrayed them. Without one with the requisite skills, knowledge of the tattoos was of no more value than the blueprints for a rocket would have been to monkeys. She had only completed his tattoos and done a few for a handful of his warriors. No, he would find her and bring her back, kicking and screaming if n
ecessary. She needed to fulfill their contract.
Besides the building of siege weapons, he had squads of young hobgoblins training. It was another new idea, the practice of actually working out tactics ahead of time. For the first time in goblin history they were forming actual military units. The better the units performed the more food and females would be provided to them. The weakest teams would become the objects of torture by the strongest. Thus motivation was achieved.
The squads were comprised of a pair of goblin scouts, a dozen warriors, and then anchored by a caster and an ogre. The hobgoblins were inherently smarter and stronger than their lesser kin. The plan was that over the winter, Thelan would send the squads to raid the isolated farms and small villages of northern Albia. For the most part, they were so spread out that during the winter, no one would realize that their neighbors had been wiped out until it was too late. If they could be wiped out by spring, the goblin army could be staged miles into Albia and ready to swarm over the larger cities as soon as the thaw hit.
The only remaining obstacle was the remaining logging village. Thelan really didn’t understand how any tiny village without soldiers could have survived the assault by the death knight. Even Thelan had been terrified of the hellish fiend, although he would never admit it even to himself. It made that little town of Eris’ Rise an uncertainty, but he didn’t worry about it too much. Seimion had promised him that it would be softened up and ready for his squads to hit it before the first snows fell.