Chapter 15: Over Correction
Jenkins grabbed Robby from behind as the boy stood poleaxed before whatever was happening with the wall. He had been the only one to keep running toward the boy once the wall exuded those tendrils. Jenkins had been taught from long experience that farmers don’t need to understand what was going on to act with decisiveness. Sure, sometimes that got your foot nibbled on by monsters, but more often, it would save somebody from a terrible fate when a wheat thresher got hungry for the idiot who didn’t know they were in danger.
As the creepy tendrils of light extruding from the wall sharpened into points aimed at the boy, he threw Robby over his shoulder with an indignant squawk from the boy and started running again.
That man Bart had been moving with a purpose toward the wagon with the Scorpion-tailed thing, so Jenkins decided that the man knew how to deal with this, or maybe he had something hidden away in the wagon to help solve this. Within a few steps, he suspected if the man didn’t, his efforts to save Robby might get him killed.
The other men watching the monster work detail had retreated to the remainder of Jenkins’s party and were ushering them cautiously away from the wall. The tendrils seemed focused on Robby for now, so Jenkins supposed that was good for them.
As he carried the surprisingly hefty boy toward the hope of nebulous safety, he felt several somethings slam into the ground behind him in a series of unexpectedly quiet hisses. The boy on his shoulder cried out again in alarm at what was happening behind them. He wasn’t about to slow his mad dash to peek at what he suspected was those tendril spears stabbing into the ground on his heels.
The boy gasped out in a panic,
“Faster. Must go faster.”
Jenkins saved his breath for running faster.
Ahead of them, Bart had reached the wagon and was rummaging in a compartment mounted underneath. The monsters around the wagon were surprisingly calm about strange spears trying to stab into the humans rushing toward them.
Bart let out a cry of victory as he struggled to his feet, holding a…mining helmet.
The man slapped the helmet onto his head, and a translucent pearl-colored dome of energy sprang up centered on him. It sheared off a portion of the wagon and one side of the cage containing one of those nasty badger creatures that had attacked the village. The creature calmly stared at the wall of energy an inch from its nose and snorted softly at it. The sleeping scorpion thing, thankfully, didn’t wake up as the roof of its cage was cut off and disintegrated as it fell onto the barrier.
Jenkins kept running but angled to curve around the outside of whatever nonsense this was. He didn’t think that dome would be kind to him or his unwilling charge, who was wriggling to get off his shoulder,
“Hold still, boy! It’s not over yet.”
Bart struggled back up from the compartment with a handle of something sticking out from under his arm. He had also retrieved a metallic disk that looked similar to the one used by the adventurers in the village and snapped it in half over his knee. Tossing the pieces to either edge of the dome, he stepped forward to the edge nearest Jenkins and his burden. A familiar pillar of lightning rose from the pieces of the disk Bart had tossed. A bolt lept between the two pillars and formed into another of those cursed messages.
LOADING…PLEASE WAIT.
In Bart’s hand was a long-handled piece of wood with a circular frame bolted to the end. Inside the circular piece was a woven net with a large letter W stenciled across the center. He called out to Jenkins,
“Get in front of me! I can ward them off!”
Jenkins corrected course and skidded to a stop in front of the dome, Bart just on the other side, holding the tool he had retrieved with the disc. The man inside the dome bounced from side to side and took short, quick breaths. Jenkins didn’t know what to think of the man behind the barrier wearing a mining helmet and bouncing around like an idiot.
Jenkins dropped the boy unceremoniously to the ground beside him. Robby let out an,
“Oooof!”
Jenkins wasn’t paying attention to him anymore. He had turned around to see a mass of tentacles writhing in the air. Thousands of them weaved back and forth as they extruded from the wall towering above them. They seemed to be searching for a target, pointing one moment at Robby, then the dome, and back.
Bart seemed finished with his preparations as he screamed,
“Game on!”
Over a hundred tendrils joined into one mass as the man behind the barrier waved his tool threateningly. They sharpened into a massive pointed spear and drilled down toward the barrier.
Bart let out an almost erotically aggressive yelp as he swung the tool at the descending spear. Jenkins wondered if he should be embarrassed as he died. Did the man have to moan like that as he swung? With a sharp,
“BAMF,”
the spear was rebuffed away from the dome.
On second thought, Jensen started moaning along with Bart as he swung at the spears that started to descend. He had decided that if it looked stupid, but it worked, it wasn’t that stupid. Until about a minute later, when Bart screamed in between swings,
“Shut the fuck up!”
Bart and Jenkins moan.
“Bamf!”
“You’re throwing me off!”
Bart and Jenkins moan.
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“Bamf!”
“Sorry. I thought it was helping.”
Just Bart moaning.”
“Bamf”
“Well, it’s not, so stop!”
Frustrated, Bart moan.
Jenkins stopped trying to help but did snag Robby as he tried to sidle away from the grown men moaning just behind him.
If the boy dies, Prisca will have my head.
He clamped his hands onto the boy’s shoulders to hold him in place as they waited for whatever reinforcements Bart had summoned with the disk portal. The man had good stamina. Jenkins had to give him that.
A few minutes later, Bart was slightly flagging when the coruscating beam of lightning behind him flashed, and the words resolved into a portal. Out walked that asshat Beckle, the elf Ragweed, and four or five other men carrying implements of an unknown design.
Beckle looked up at the spears Bart was fending off and sighed in disgust.
“Can we go two days without something else getting in the way?”
Spotting Jenkins and Robby at the front of the barrier, his mouth twisted in further distaste as if the turd he was chewing on was particularly unpleasant. He gestured to the men carrying the unknown devices, and they rushed to set them up at different points around the circle. Ragweed started to chant ominously in a low, unintelligible tongue from next to the portal.
The devices sputtered to life with sparkles of the same pearlescent-colored light glinting off parts that started moving in time with the chanting elf. A globe of the same colored light, centered on the elf’s chest, expanded to fill the dome, then expanded beyond it.
Jenkins eyed the expanding light with panic as it swiftly approached him and Robby, but as it passed them, no harm was done. Beckle slapped Bart on the back of the head as he moaned and swung one more time, knocking the mining helmet off the man’s head,
“Enough of that, we’re here.”
Bart looked relieved despite the rude handling and said,
“Yes, Grandmaster. Thank you for arriving so swiftly.”
Beckle snorted and turned back to observe the effect of the expanding dome. One side toward the humans had flattened into a wall. It grew in height, stretching out of sight above them as the bubbled outside began pressing the tendrils of light exuding from the wall back. They struggled against the dome pressing on them, attempting to rally and bulge through, but were pushed back like so many fish caught in a trolling net.
Jenkins heard a faint keening sound from the tendrils as they were pushed closer to the city walls. Robby covered his ears with both hands and looked ready to cry. Ragweed had started to sweat heavily but did not stumble in his low chant. It sounded familiar to him.
Is that…? Piglatin?
He leaned slightly toward the chanting mage, who had grown pale during his recitation. Jenkins thought he could almost hear the words. Beckle cleared his throat and gave the farmer a significant look.
He dismissed the thought as nonsense and focused on the boy beside him. He had better things to think about than how this elf was taming a possessed wall that had tried to eat the young boy next to him.
Robby was extremely upset about all of this. The boy had tears in his eyes as he gazed at the light being forced back into the city walls. Jenkins decided to offer him some comfort,
“There, there, boy. It’s not your fault that Jombe fellow started all of this.”
The boy glared at the farmer with such rage. Jenkins stood back up and took a step back. He tried again, thinking he should. Little boys shouldn’t be able to get that angry.
“What I mean to say is no one could have predicted this was going to happen. Gods, I don’t even know what happened.”
Robby opened his mouth to reply but was cut off by Beckle.
“What happened here is I find two recruits for our exemplary training program at the site of a nearly disastrous breach of the city wards. You have some explaining to do, Novice Jenkins, Novice Robby.”
The tendrils had been forced back into the wall’s glyphs, and the light had faded to a whiter color. Jenkins inexpertly estimated even that glow would be gone in another minute or so, and the glyphs would disappear once that had faded.
Jenkins took his temper in hand as he fully faced the large man Beckle. He wouldn’t let the man rile him up like last time. Lord Tom had warned him in clear terms how much of a threat the man could be if he were antagonized.
Bart stood close by, wringing his hands in anxiety. Jenkins supposed he had reason to be anxious if he was in charge of the work detail that had caused this. Jenkins suspected that his actions following everything devolving stemmed from being in charge as a new hire would be just as lost in the sauce about all this as Jenkins was.
“Well, sir, this is what happened.”
Beckle listened to the man in front of him spin a yarn about an ogre, ending with two men moaning to defend themselves from unknown tendrils. He waited for the farmer to finish with surprising patience, then looked to Bart. He ignored the boy, slinking away from the conversation. Someone that young was useless to him if he couldn’t use him right now anyway.
“Well, Bart, is that accurate?”
“He doesn’t have the context of why everything went to shit, sir, but that is the gist of it.”
“He doesn’t need context. The gist? You know the guild will demand an after-action report with far more detail about how “Shit” happened: witness statements, site maps of the incident, and paperwork justifying the use of magical items. We detected no less than five magical item activations, Bart. You know what happens if we find that those were unnecessary.”
Bart paled at the tone of voice Beckle was using. Jenkins felt bad for the man who had just been trying his best in a shitty situation. He did not envy this man the mountain of paperwork Beckle was hinting at.
Bart nodded with a pale face. He grabbed Jenkins by the arm and started towing him back toward the party from Red Adder County. He snagged Robby by the ear on his way and ignored the yowling of the boy as he called back over his shoulder,
“Not to worry, sir, it’ll all be turned in before the end of the next shift.”
Beckle didn’t raise his voice, but Jenkins could still hear a threatening tone in his voice as the man corrected,
“The end of this shift, Bart. Or I’ll have you executed for negligence.”
Bart started hurrying his captives away from the man.
“Yes, sir!”
Jenkins looked over his shoulder as the five men, the elf, and Beckle walked back through the portal hanging behind them without any other drama occurring. The men had seemed almost bored by all the excitement.
All of the monsters surrounding the wagon or in it hadn’t moved out of the spot they were standing during the entire incident. Pixies were still flying about spreading that dust.
Jenkins supposed that must have something to do with it. However, the collars around all of them appeared to be better fitting. He wondered when that had happened. He had another thought and voiced it to Bart.
“Wait, does this mean I have to do paperwork too?”
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