by Sean Oswald
“Now you’re gonna be in trouble with Smokey.” Jackson laughed as a release of the stress still showing in the white knuckles gripped around the handle of his mace.
Even Sara chimed in with her best eight-year-old’s imitation of the commercials they saw so often over the summer. “Only you can prevent forest fires.”
Whipping around toward her younger siblings, Mira snapped back, “Not helping.” Then looked toward her mom for any suggestions only to find her mom back kneeling over dad apparently casting her heal spell for a third time. Since the fires hadn’t spread too far, Mira took the initiative and ordered Jackson to help her gather up the packs and supplies into a pile next to where Sara stood behind their mother. As they were collecting the packs, Jackson couldn’t help himself and looked at the corpses of the tiny creatures to see if there were any loot drops. Interestingly enough, in at least half the cases, the heat had cooked the little bodies until they split wide open like an overcooked baked potato. In several of those was what looked like a smooth oval of orangish material. When Jackson bent down to pick up the first one, it felt squishy in his hand. A moment later they all simultaneously got the same notification.
New Quest Gained: Stop the Tree Sapper Blight!
You have had your first encounter with one of Eloria’s most prodigious pests. They are hated and feared the world over. They feed upon trees, but their favorite food is the ironwood tree. Nearly indestructible otherwise, ironwood trees are the traditional homes of the elves. Tree Sappers were created as part of a magical experiment gone badly. In the over two hundred years since they were first created, the combined might of the Moon Elves and Sun Elves has not been able to eradicate these creatures. Since then, bounties have been offered for the destruction of a swarm anytime one has arisen.
You have borne witness to the birthing of a new swarm.
Success Condition: Bring proof of the destruction of this swarm to the royal court of either the Moon Elves or Sun Elves. Quest must be completed within ninety days for maximum reward.
Reward: Gold x400, Epic Magic Item x 1, Excellent Magic Items x2, High Magic Items x 4, Increased favor with all elves, significantly increased favor with whichever royal court the proof is delivered to, Title: Blight Slayer.
Mira and Emily looked at Jackson questioningly after viewing the notification, and even Dave partially propped himself up on his elbows. Emily simply told the kids that they would worry about this later and turned back to focus on Dave to ask if he could feel his legs yet. He strained to keep a stressed look off of his face as he told her that he still couldn’t feel anything.
Mira looked back and noticed that the flames on the oak tree had sputtered out but the flames on the pine trees were slowly spreading. She wasn’t sure how they were supposed to move her dad away from the slowly spreading flames if he couldn’t walk, or for that matter, now they were going to carry all of the bags away. None of them were strong enough to lift Dave or to carry more than one of the bags. Then it dawned on her.
She quickly explained her plan and while Emily continued applying another healing spell as often as her cooldown ran out, all three of the kids did their part moving quickly and motivated by the seriousness of the situation very quietly. Fifteen minutes later, the flames were getting dangerously close to where they were but they now had a horse with two poles tied to its sides and a blanket secured between them to act as a crude stretcher. They had managed to move Dave very slowly bit by bit onto the stretcher. His weight was already heavy for them but with his splint mail and sword on they couldn’t manage to move him more than a few inches at a time. Emily knew it was a bad idea to move him at all with an obvious spinal injury, but the expanding flames didn’t give them any options. Once Dave was in position on the quickly put together stretcher and the packs were hanging over the horses’ backs, they started to move forward with Sara on the back of the horse and the rest of them walking either beside the horse or in Emily’s case, next to her prone husband.
Chapter Eighteen
“Pain and terror were all around, then the mists of war parted and our savior stepped forth, covered in blood and shining with glory, at least that is how we remember it. Looking at him in the light of a new day, he doesn’t look like that much.” —Excerpt from the private journal of an unnamed soldier in the Salmacian army, circa 417 BE
Draznei’kai cursed himself for being a fool. He should have known that the goblins would find a way to screw up his very simple commands. After all, that was inherently what goblins were, a screw up of nature or some mage’s experiment gone wrong. No one knew for sure. He had made the assumption that by allowing them to play as they wanted to with the human survivors of the village they had raided, that they would be able to keep themselves occupied for a few days. Now, he was paying the price for making an assumption. It appears that, given free rein, the goblins lusts for violence, pain, and such made gluttons of them, unable to spread out their enjoyment but instead rushing to consume all the village in less than two days rather than the seven he had intended for them. He would have been angry with the goblins, but he already detested them. After all, one might hate a mosquito but blaming it for doing what it was born to do doesn’t make sense.
No, the truth was bitter, but he was strong enough of mind and will to admit it. He had been foolish to not stay with the goblins. The temptation of meditating in his sanctum had been too great. That far into the Chenhou Forest, the ambient mana was just so much denser than back in the fallen human village. The humans of Albia had not had millennia to stabilize their land and cultivate the mana as the Moon Elves had. So, in his desire to maximize his absorption of mana, he had risked letting his carefully laid plans fall to ruin. Fortunately, it seemed that things were not so far gone as to be lost. Draznei’kai had set a soul link to the goblin shaman and so knew when the stupid little creature had moved out of the area of the village where he had left them. The goblin shaman probably wasn’t even aware that he had created the link and yet the fool thought he was a caster. What Draznei’kai had seen of magic would have made the foolish little goblin lose his mind.
The soul link was a valuable tool and only cost a very small amount of mana, but it wasn’t a skill that he had invested many character points into. So while it provided him with a notification that the shaman had moved, it didn’t provide him with enough information to know exactly where he was and that meant that Draznei’kai would have to find the shaman and his goblin cohort the old-fashioned way. He absentmindedly ran his skeletal hand over his muted gray breastplate. Its powerful magic allowed him to shadow step to any location that he knew three times per moon rise. He weighed whether it would be closer to simply step to the edge of the forest or if he should step back to the village recently abandoned by the goblins. In the end, he decided to travel first to the village and then track the goblins from there. If the goblins were as frenzied as he thought, then they would be very easy to track.
His mind made up, there was no reason for delay. Draznei’kai was not one to spend much time second-guessing or berating himself. What happened, happened and he must accept it and move on. As his corporeal form turned to incorporeal shadow and entered the shadow realm to step across the few hundred miles back to the village, an arrow passed right through the space that he had been standing in, but his awareness was already pulled into the shadow realm, and he was oblivious to the failed attack on his person.
The arrow made a thunk sound as it slammed into the tree immediately behind where the foul undead beast had been standing an instant before. The magically driven arrow entirely split the small tree with explosive force, sending foot long splinters of wood flying out twenty feet in every direction. Eisuke Myoji stepped from behind the tree where he had been hiding prior to launching his attack. In his magically crafted leather armor, which was common to the forest guardians, he had been practically invisible. The armor itself was a stomach-churning constant blend of all shades of green and brown intended to assist a guardian with blen
ding into the forest. A low growl rumbled in his throat, but that was the only indication of his frustration at the missed shot and his fury at the presence of such an affront to nature within his forest. The dusky skin of his face showed no emotion but only the traditional moon elf stoicism.
For over one hundred and seventy years, Eisuke had been a Shinrin Hogo-Sha, a forest guardian serving the moon elf throne by protecting the forests from intruders and monster aberrations. During that time, he had seen many problems, from tree sapper swarms to even dragons. He had returned to Agani-Shi, one of the smaller elven cities which served as a border around the capital, after leading a training patrol with half a dozen new Hogo-Sha. While still on his way to his home, he had been stopped in the middle of the path by the local lord.
“Eisuke, a message has been received from the capital. Apparently, Archdruid Hidenori detected a disturbance of some sort in this sector of the forest. Something about the use of soul stones.” Lord Itsu stood before Eisuke on the tree branch trail, which served as the pathways in any elven city, some forty feet above the ground. These woven pathways were wide, more than fifteen feet, and even allowed for the use of handcarts, far above the forest floor. All of the elven cities were grown from groves of ironwood trees, using magic and patience to coax the trees to grow in patterns convenient to the elves. They never forced, only guided.
Eisuke bowed his head slightly in respect to Lord Itsu’s position if not for the man himself. “How certain is he of this? No elf would use a soul stone.” Both elves were too disciplined to allow their distaste for the very term, soul stone, to show upon their faces but it was mutually understood.
Soul stones were an item created with a type of magic which had been forbidden by the elves for as long as any of the long-lived race could remember. It involved using Conjuration, Essence, Charm, and Enchantment magics to trap a living being inside of a gem. The creature so trapped would be compelled to obey whoever controlled the gem and could be summoned out with only a very small expenditure of mana even though the creation process of those gems was very complicated and mana intensive. Only creatures without eternal spirits could be kept in the gems. Elves, dwarves, dragos, even newer races like humans could not be trapped. Even with that restriction, it was felt to be a vile process, for the stones were most often used to trap creatures of sufficient intelligence to make it a torturous experience. Elves were not opposed to killing living beings but did so only for pragmatic reasons. It was the natural order for prey to be eaten by predators, and no matter how calm and reserved elves might seem to humans, they were at their core alpha predators.
“It is not for us to question the Archdruid. I didn’t sense anything nor did any of the druids here that I have spoken too, but none of us is the equal of Hidenori.”
“Very well, I will personally see to checking into this matter as chief of the Shinrin Hogo-Sha in Agani-Shi. This is my duty.”
That was now why Eisuke found himself a mere twenty miles from Agani-Shi, staring at the space where an undead monstrosity had just disappeared from. He had not found any evidence of soul stones, but such a creature could not be allowed to travel in the Chenhou Forest. The elders would have to be advised as such a creature must be assumed to be a forerunner of an attack or even invasion. He knew his people had become complacent, confident of their place in the world and each intent upon pursuing their own interests. As a people, they were very insular and self-absorbed. They had even been willing to cede an outer strip of the forest to the humans fifty years ago rather than enter into conflict with the newcomers. Now, it appears that conflict is coming to them. Such is the way of Eloria.
Aloysia didn’t know how it had gone so wrong. It was as if the beasts of the forest had laid in wait for them, and the level of organization was terrifying. The implications were more than she could handle at this time and perhaps it didn’t even matter. They were busy fighting their way back toward the bridge on the wagons. There were twenty-eight loggers with them but more than twenty of them were lying in various states of injury, unable to even pull a bowstring and assist in their defense. She had run out of throwing knives and, while not a good bow shot, was doing her best to aim and shoot at the various boars, drey hounds, and flame lynxes that were still chasing them. The zone line was less than a minute away. They just had to hold them off a bit longer.
It was eating at her that they had left three of the loggers behind. She didn’t know if they were alive or dead and had kept trying to push the others to fight back the beasts until finally Jarvis had taken command and made the decision to leave, which Aloysia had been unable to make. They couldn’t let the rest of them die in a vain attempt to save those three who more than likely were already dead. If it had just been the animals, perhaps they would have stood a chance. She and Jarvis were able to take out even the strongest of the flame lynxes, but the little wooden men were too much. None of the three of them had been more than four feet tall, but they were sturdy and wider than a man of the same height. Each was clearly a tree, but the roots acted as legs of a sort carrying them across the ground and their leafless branches acted as arms, whipping around causing devastating wounds.
As the last of the three wagons crossed the zone border, instead of feeling relief, Aloysia felt despair. How could she face the village? How could she face her father? Worst of all, how could she be worrying about things like that when three men had already died and many of those who had made it back had terrible wounds? In Eloria, most wounds will heal given time. A lingering death from wounds is not a thing that soldiers worry about. They worry about dying before they can get healing, but there are some types of wounds that can be more problematic. The first of two types of wounds that had her the most worried were the claw wounds from the largest of the cats they had fought. Those wounds had ripped out huge chunks of flesh, but the claws of that mature flame lynx had been so hot as to almost instantly cauterize the wounds. Cauterized wounds couldn’t be healed through natural regeneration. If those weren’t bad enough, the wounds that the immature treants had caused were even worse. They had mostly attacked using their branches as whips, cutting furrow like wounds in anyone unlucky enough to be hit. Sometimes, however, they would attack with a thrusting motion and those same branches would pierce into the softer portions of their human victims. After piercing, the branches would break off and almost seem to burrow into the flesh, attaching themselves to the unlucky men. The scariest part was that she wasn’t really sure why they had been able to escape. More of the tree men had appeared, and she was sure that they were going to be overwhelmed when all of a sudden, all the treants had stopped moving as if listening to a song only they could hear. Then without any further attacks, they had rushed back into the woods. With the treants gone, the coordination between the beasts had completely broken down, such that some of the predatory animals had even attacked some of the creatures like the boars. Aloysia didn’t know for sure what had happened to draw away the treants, but she knew that they owed their lives to whatever had distracted them away. She had however noticed, just before they crossed the zone border, a thick plume of black smoke rising up over the forest to the southeast.
She leapt off the wagon as soon as she had made sure that all three wagons had safely crossed the zone line and was running ahead to the village, shouting for help. It was midday by now and the children playing out in the fields were the first ones to hear her, and so by the time she reached the village, her breast heaving from the exertion as she strained for more air, there was a group of people with her father in front of them asking what exactly was the matter. Her explanation was short on details but emphasized the dire state of many of the men, and so no one pushed her too hard at that time. Most started to prepare to receive the wounded and one of the children was dispatched to bring Gertrude to the town square where they were setting up for triage. This didn’t mean that a reckoning for her actions wasn’t coming, only that the people of Eris’ Rise were pragmatic and knew how to focus on the task at
hand.
Dave felt every jarring sensation of being dragged along the ground only partially suspended by the improvised stretcher his family had created for him. At first, the ground they were going over was covered with the stumps of fallen trees and, try as she might, Mira couldn’t navigate around each of them. Both she and Emily kept asking him if he was okay, and he would only nod and say he was fine. He felt bursts of pain every time a tree stump was a little too high and it hit his back, but what concerned him more than anything was the lack of sensation in his legs. He couldn’t seem to move or feel anything below the waist. The fear of what was happening to him was threatening to overwhelm him. He could feel it rising in his chest and making his throat feel constricted, while at the same time sinking into his stomach, making it churn so that he felt he was going to throw up. Dave just couldn’t wrap his mind around what was happening to him. This was a lifelong nightmare of his, and here it was happening to him. He kept checking his notifications and rereading the recent notifications to try and understand what was happening as well as double-checking his health level.