Chapter 7: Blood Popcorn Part 3

Choch was less happy than she had been. The adventurers had gained significant speed and gotten far ahead of them. Lester and Mina also wore expressions of serious worry as the trio hurried through the woods.

Part of the issue had been they didn’t want to rush blindly forward into an ambush. This was incredibly frustrating as they could not catch up and further slow the adventurers due to this cautious advance, but it couldn’t be avoided. Three dead or captured would-be rescuers wouldn’t help their families.

The other half had been that the rest of the Goom hadn’t responded to further far-speak spells. So no news was good Nnews, except when you didn’t know what was happening and needed to know.

The trio was also running low on gold to replenish their source. Choch only had a few gold pieces left and her more dangerous contingencies. The three small diamonds she held onto for the emergency of overflowing their mana in an emergency.

The rarity of the small, precious stones she had procured in this region would continue to ramp up their recovery rate to a dangerous level…mana surges like that could be deadly.

Mana produced in such large quantities was dangerous if your capacity couldn’t handle it. Their bodies would pop like overripe melons if costly spells were not used continuously.

These precautions were forgotten as they entered a clearing to find Gomm on the ground next to a large bad-gir with a purple fur crown. Both bodies had a silver chain wrapped tightly around their necks.

Lester and Mina hissed in distress and started toward their nephew, but Choch quickly put a restraining hand on her children’s shoulders. She had been watching the bodies and noticed shallow breathing. Seeing the question in their eyes, she explained quickly,

“They are unconscious. The chain is a capture necklace. I don’t know who the bad-gir is, but it could be an ally if the adventurers captured them.

“I can remove the chains with time, but if you touch the bodies without knowing how to circumvent the guarding spells, it will knock you out or kill you.”

“The chains are keyed to the guild member who used it. So we need to disable the adventurers long enough for me to remove the chains.”

Lester spoke with anger in his voice,

“Kill. Not disable. If Gomm has been captured, the rest of our clan is in serious trouble.”

Mina nodded angrily in agreement. Choch didn’t waste time with a reply as she withdrew her diamonds and gave one to each of them. Their small, furry faces were set with determination and growing rage. All three tossed the shiny gems into their mouths and swallowed.

All three Goom elders shuddered slightly as a faint glow built in their eyes. Then, each started a low chant of sibilant hissing and chittering. The words they used differed for each of them but became visible as the slow chant sped up in tempo.

Small green orbs of light flowed from their eyes as the glow built behind the windows to souls of furry fury. The orbs floated smoothly to vital areas already protected on their tiny bodies, reinforcing the material. Further lights flowed across their fur and sank into their pelts.

As the energy flowed into their fur, the muscles underneath hardened. The spell continued, and the fur across their bodies where the orbs passed into gained an almost metallic stiffness. It lent each of them a more formidable natural defense against an edge.

Lastly, the orbs glided down to the claws of each Goom and latched on to the base of each digit. Where they rested at the base of each digit, green lightning flowed down their claws, sparking and spitting from the tips.

Choch surveyed her children before starting forward, following the trail broken into the brush at the edge of the clearing. Moving quickly to follow, Lester and Mina passed almost simultaneously.

They passed through the forest brush. Traveling through it, the well-spaced trees allowed the three to spot their quarry in the next clearing. Four upright bodies were in the area.

The closest figure, the very tall blond-haired woman, was in front of a more diminutive redhead. There was a creature of vines with branches coming out of it vaguely shaped like a human hunched near the pair.

Bits of small bodies were scattered around the clearing. Choch saw the transformed and killed members of her settlement.

Her family…the adventurers had k—

Choch’s babies…Choch’s vision tinted red.

A juvenile owl shrieked from the nearby trees. A dark-haired man in leathers smeared with blood and dirt lay on top of one of the bad-girs with his knives sunk into its back, frantically stabbing. One plated in armor and almost as short as themselves stood far from the Goom at the opposite side of the clearing.

It wielded an axe that hung loosely from one fist as the dwarf panted. Bodies surrounded the armored one, who looked exasperated at the man in leathers. The look on the bearded face changed to surprise at seeing the Goom emerge from the trees.

No, they were looking at something near the Goom. Choch didn’t follow the look. She had killing to do.

With little warning other than a loud snarl and knocking the more petite redhead to the ground in their rush, Mina and Lester leaped. They landed upon the tall blond female waving her arms at the pile of vines and branches in front of her. The creature was slowly settling to the forest floor.

As the redhead fell and saw her companion’s soon-to-be dire plight, she started scrambling backward, crab-walking away. Then, she started tugging at a large sack tied to her belt.

The married couple’s claws sparking lightning carved into the amazon's flesh as she shrieked in pain. The owl hidden in the nearby trees shrieked again. Then, the goom latched onto her much taller form.

Slashing claws, small but powerful jaws, and a pissed-off nature lent them a significant advantage over the tall woman. The woman was thunderstruck when lightning from their claws cracked as it arced into her.

The slowly writhing form of vines, thorns, and thick branches in front of the woman exploded into movement. It grasped Mina with many of its tendrils and ripped the smaller Goom away from the woman.

Choch thought to herself distantly through the red haze,

Well, that’s a new one.

As the Goom was ripped away, she left ragged gashes partly burned by lightning. There was a fist-sized gaping wound where her fangs had been torn away.

Lester abandoned his perch on the woman as she collapsed and rushed to Mina’s aid. His tiny form only reached the knee of the writhing creature, but his claws left large gashes in the limbs he could reach.

He severed any tendrils trying to grasp him as he began to scale the creature. It didn’t seem to be affected too much by the lightning.

At the woman’s scream of pain and collapse, the dark-haired man on top of the transformed Goom’s corpse stopped stabbing the dead beast and looked up at the unfolding fight. Then, with dawning realization in his eyes, he left one of the daggers in the body and started to scramble at his belt for something Choch couldn’t see with that newly empty hand.

It wasn’t crucial as she advanced past her remaining children toward the dwarf. Choch could tell he was too confused to be much of a threat.

Her thoughts flowed in a red surge to match the pace of the battle,

Lester and Mina can handle that thing and then deal with him. The tall woman is down. We can finish her after.

The man is a noob. Any equipment he could reach quickly won’t matter if we are fast enough.

Rushing past the trio, Choch let out a passing swipe of her sparking claws at the red-haired woman in robes. The small woman cried out and fell as Choch hurried towards the dwarf.

Gotta deal with the senior,

She stampeded, as much as something her size could, towards the armored figure.

Her claws flashed forward at the dwarf’s face. The armored arm of her foe was almost too late to intercept. The startled and pained grunt of the dwarf attested to the lightning of her claws coursing through the metal armor of the vambraces.

Leaning back slightly with the blow, the dwarf wasn’t caught utterly flatfooted as they kicked out. Connecting with Choch’s stomach, the booted foot of the dwarf flung her small body closer to the dark-haired man Choch had ignored.

The kick hadn’t hurt her much as the running spells she had cast before the fight reinforced her body at a great expense to her constantly replenishing source. Her tiny body, however, didn’t lend any more mass to her.

She stood back up from where she had been flung and took a single step. Snarling, she said,

“You murdered my family!”

The metal chain whipping around her neck from behind caught her by surprise, and she received a jolt of lightning as the end wrapped around her neck and snapped into place with a loud click and surge of blue lightning.

Panicking at the turn of events that generally only haunted her nightmares, she staggered drunkenly away from the now grinning, leather-clad newbie she had dismissed. But, unfortunately for the adventurers, the first lightning surge hadn’t put her down.

It had only blinded her with pain for a second. Then, with a scream of furious agony issuing from her lips, another jolt of power flowed through the chain around her neck into her body.

Her enhancement spell increased her endurance and strength, so she didn’t pass out from the jolts, but this wasn’t good. Panicking further, she took a few more quick steps away from the man who had placed the chain on her.

Halfway up the creature he had been scaling, Lester saw her capture and cried out at his mother's danger. Then, as he tried to decide who needed his help more, Mina or his mother, a group of red, round objects rolled into view at Choch’s feet.

Confusion cut through his battle rage as he thought,

‘Apples?’

His body seized, and he fell off the vine creature from his perch. Lester’s body was not under his control and was causing panic to rise in his mind. His small furry limbs scrambled him towards the fruit. He started picking them up one by one and smashing them against his skull.

His mind blanked with the overwhelming need to find water as his out-of-control body finished with the last apple. He needed to wash off the bits of smashed fruit.

Lester forgot everything around him and thought of a stream near their home with obsessive, manic need. Then, abandoning everything else, he rushed back the way the Goom had come, with all other thoughts driven from his head.

Choch saw Lester flee into the woods covered with bits of smashed apple. However, she was occupied with this unexpected threat of capture.

She reached for the caplace at her throat and started to course a complex flow of magical energy into the metal. This caused it to emit a shriek of an alarm, assaulting her ears and concentration. It was a warning that an escape from the chain was being attempted.

Trying to ignore the shriek of alarm and pain from the lightning, she focused on the task at paw. It would take a lot of the Mana she could produce with the gemstone she had consumed, almost all of it, but she would have to risk being depleted, or this fight was over.

Unfortunately, the dwarf seemed aware of how preoccupied the eldest Goom had become. They rushed forward, striking hard with the flat of their axe against the side of Choch’s head.

Her world tilted sharply as the complex magic she was attempting to use ran out of her control and surged from her paws at her throat to her head as it attempted to escape her control. Magic would fight her for control normally, but not like this.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

Her panic allowed her only to let all her ongoing spells fail. She needed the focus to control her attempt at escaping the capture necklace. She needed to redirect the flow of all that excess Mana before her head exploded from the pressure. An outlet…she needed an outlet.

A blast of magical energy poured forth from her eyes in a green beam of destruction. Narrowly missing the dwarf’s position, the beam slashed past the armored form and through the trees behind them. The crashing of trees echoed as the beam slashed for half a mile beyond the clearing.

Nixen looked at the tunnel of destruction carved through the forest. They had been lucky to avoid obliteration. The paladin whispered a curse to themselves,

“What are mobs capable of that doing in this small of a county? What do you have me mixed up in now, Jeph?”

Before the mob could do anything else, the dwarf advanced in a blur on the distracted Goom and lashed out with another kick aimed at her head. As the armored foot connected with her face, she had time for a last thought,

Fuck.

The tiny creature that had issued forth such an incredible blast being captured and rendered unconscious, Nixen turned to help his other junior party members. The dwarf was in time to see Winnie’s out-of-control simulacrum gripping the last creature with several tendrils on either end of the small body.

Several were wrapped around the creature’s legs and more around the head, all of the vines straining. The poor creature was screaming in pain as the vines pulled harder. Coruscating waves of magical green energy flowed from its eyes as it screamed.

Nixen cried out to Winnie,

“Winnie! Calm it!”

The druid apprentice looked in bad shape with burned slashes and a weeping wound from the gaping bite that had taken a sizeable chunk of her flesh. She struggled to sit up and reached out a hand to her creation. She was gritting her teeth at the pain and beginning to chant through them again.

The simulacrum didn’t seem interested in peaceable mediation as it let forth a loud, creaking groan of wood as it wrenched harder. Finally, the small furry body let out one last muffled shriek as it was ripped in half with a burst of magical energy, blood, and viscera spraying over itself and the blond woman hunched in front of it.

The spray of magic and blood now covering the woman attracted the simulacrum’s attention. It rushed its former mistress and slammed into her form with a burst of leaves still clutching the halves of its foe. The magic washing over Winnie pulled the mass of vines closer, wrapping around the woman in a bloody cocoon.

Nixen rushed forward to end the now out-of-control minion, or at least pull it off her. But, instead, the two halves of the Goom exploded in a flash of energy in the simulacrum’s grip. This ignited the concentrated magic that had been infused throughout the cocoon.

Instead of rushing to save their novice, the heavy form of the dwarf was blasted backward from the explosion. Cato and Omara were sent tumbling. Cato groaned at the magical backlash that had flung him away from the pair at the center of the explosion.

Omara was not far from him and not moving after bouncing off a tree. The body of the captured Goom had been blown into the mess of corpses of the bad-gir. The mobs on that side of the clearing had become a messy pile of bloody bodies.

Only laying on his back for a moment, Nixen kipped up to a standing position with a clank of their armor, though coughing and unsteady. The dwarf looked to where the explosion of magic had occurred.

In a ring of blown back and blackened vegetation, Winnie lay. Pellet was nuzzling at her prone form frantically. The previously bleeding slashes and bites were closed over with rough bark and buds of leaves slowly sprouting from her now primarily bald head.

Nixen whispered in bewilderment,

“What the fuck just happened?”

The clearing had fallen silent save for Cato’s pitiful moaning. Winnie seemed unconscious but breathing, as did their captured foe. The tiny creature was covered in blood from the pile of bodies it had landed in but not struggling. So, shaking their bearded head Nixen moved their armored form toward the novices.

Cato was awake, though moaning and giving small pained movements of his body. He also seemed without visible injury, so Nixen moved over to Omara’s now alarmingly still form.

Seeing that she was not breathing, Nixen swore and hurried to the mage. The dwarf knelt by her side, gently turning the woman onto her back. Seeing no visible wounds on the mage’s body, Nixen gently cupped the back of the woman’s head and supported her neck.

With their other hand, opening her mouth and clearing it of any possible obstruction, then pinching her nose Nixen sealed his mouth over hers and blew hard.

Repeating the breath, the dwarf sat up and placed their hands over each other just below the mage’s breastbone. The paladin gave the still form five sharply measured shoves.

Then, moving back to breathe into her again, Nixen was caught off guard as she sat up, coughing, and smacked the brow of her face right into the dwarf’s helm.

As the woman’s head clanged off the dwarf’s helm, there was a sorrowful hoot. Pellet flapped from the overhead branches.

She landed next to her downed friend. Then, butting his head gently against her cheek, he hooted again and clacked his beak softly at her.

Collapsing back to the ground, Omara continued coughing, swearing between breaths as she rubbed her forehead. Nixen sighed in relief at the sight of the mage breathing on her own again. Starting to help her to her feet, Nixen said,

“Easy now, Omara. Easy, lass.”

Cato stumbled over to the pair and mumbled while holding his head with one hand,

“That went well…What the hell happened to Winnie? Is she starting a terrarium the hard way?”

Omara looked a little unsteady but stood and gazed at the last of their party worriedly. She stepped closer to Winnie’s prone form before Nixen’s hand at her waist stopped her forward progress.

She looked down at the dwarf with a questioning expression and asked,

“Why aren’t you helping her?”

Nixen had a worried expression as the dwarf replied while moving toward the downed woman cautiously,

“I’m not sure if I can, lass. But I’ll do what I can until we can get her the help she needs. This will probably need the Knowets and Mages branch of the guild to sort out.

“I’ve heard rumors about strange magic causing transformations, that’s supposedly how Master Ian became a cave bear, but nobody has had the nerve to ask him directly.”

Reaching the tall druid, the dwarf gently moved the owlet to one side. The bird tried to move back to her friend. Nixen gently moved her back again and murmured some words to reassure her. Seeing that the bird would not move back to interfere, Nixen extended their hands over the prone form and began to pray,

“Oh, Jeph, purveyor of sustaining confectioneries, lend succor to this kitchen staff member. Her baking is not done, and I ask for time to prepare her needed aid,”

Pausing to listen to something only the dwarf seemed to hear, they uttered the following words with a power that shook the air around them,

“Deep freeze.”

As the dwarf prayed, a soft glow enveloped the druid at the dwarf’s feet and moved up their body. Extending from their hands was a calming yellow light tinged with blue at the edges.

At the final words of the paladin’s prayer, a barely seen flash emanated from the prone form of the druid, and her entire body was tinted a faint blue. Pellet waddled into her friend’s side. Nixen let her.

Omara and Cato observed from slightly farther away before Cato spoke up,

“As terrifying as that is that you can do whatever that was to someone, I have a different question besides why your prayers are phrased so oddly.

“Why didn’t you heal Omara? That breathing thing you did seemed to work well enough, even with the creep factor of kissing her like that, but wouldn’t your magic have worked better?”

The dwarf, carefully observing Winnie’s downed form, responded absently,

“It’s not everyday magic. It’s divine favor, also called threshold magic.

“Omara’s malady was easily treatable without it. Had that not worked, I would have asked Jeph to step in, but divine favor needs to be used sparingly.”

Cato scoffed at this and said,

“Your god demands baked goods in return for acting…do you know how stupid that sounds?”

The paladin eyed the glimpses of sky through the canopy with a thankful thought,

‘No bread loaf-shaped thunderclouds, good. One less crisis to deal with right now.’

“You didn’t complain when Jeph healed your busted-up legs earlier. Quit questioning my God before he or I smite you.”

“Even without the cost of the one healed being a factor, since Winnie obtained her injury in battle, Jeph would impose a very light cost, maybe just a few giant pretzels, or even just a loaf of bread, I think.

“He grants me only so much divine favor every day. Anything beyond that allotment he gives must be repaid through service. When I ask that someone repay his favor with it, I can use that credit toward more serious injury being healed.

“My original plan was to heal her injuries before whatever was done to her in that explosion. I am unsure of what he would charge to undo this. I am not sure the county has enough flour to cover it, though.”

Gazing at the druid, the dwarf noted that the long gashes and bite wounds covered with bark appeared longer than when he had first seen them on the girl. Before the blessing, the dwarf had also noticed more buds sprouting on the druid’s head. However, after Jeph had blessed her, careful viewing of her form showed no further growth of bark or leaves.

An afterthought struck the paladin, and they looked at the surrounding trees. They noted a spot near where they had thought the scribe had been with depressions in the ground where a desk and chair might have rested.

Ignoring that for now, the dwarf continued,

“As it is, had I waited to ask for that blessing, I think Winnie would be much worse off than she is now, and I’m taking the cost of this one on my shoulders anyway with that prayer.

“In any case, we need to round the captured mobs up and harvest trophies from the dead for proof of the quest’s completion. Both ears where you can, tongues or what’s left of the head where you can’t. Let’s get to work. I’ll handle the captives.”

The dwarf issued the orders and once again unslung their axe. They walked to several small saplings where they had spotted the out-of-place scribe. Nixen began cutting them down and trimming their limbs.

As the paladin worked, a subtle scouring of the ground nearby showed six circular impressions. Signs of a desk and chair. They hadn’t imagined it.

Omara hadn’t moved from her spot. Instead, she was staring at the dwarf blankly, not comprehending the gruesome orders.

Cato stated rudely,

“Omara, trophies.”

Omara had gone pale. She turned to Cato,

“Wait…trophies?”

Cato grinned at her words as he replied,

“This one I paid attention to. We don't get paid if we don’t have proof that the mobs hired to be cleared are dead. Grisly, I know, but Papa needs that gold, so let’s get to work.”

Finished with his explanation, he retrieved his other dagger from the corpse he had left it in after a few grunts of moving the others out of the way to reach it. Having acquired his dagger once more, he casually started sawing at the ears of one of the bodies muttering,

“Tough little bastards, aren’t they?

Omara’s mouth turned up in distaste, but she slowly withdrew her belt knife and approached the piles of dead bodies.

She thought to herself,

‘Where do I even start? Ew, ew, ew!’

While Omara and Cato bent to their grisly task, Cato’s mood with gusto and Omara with gagging noises, Nixen laid out the saplings they had trimmed down. Then, using some rope from Cato’s pack and an extra cloak from Omara’s, the dwarf quickly fashioned a drag litter.

Then, fetching the bad-gir and younger captive from the first clearing, the dwarf dragged them to the litter and snagged the last white-furred creature that had led the ill-fated ambush against them.

Judging the litter undersized for the burden, the dwarf took their cloak and some more rope and reinforced the work. The paladin nodded at the now-reinforced litter.

Nixen thought constructive thoughts,

‘It’s not pretty, but I’m not a paladin of Zach, the builder, either. I’ll need to make another for Winnie, though.’

Getting to work on another litter, they pulled another cloak from Cato’s pack and used the last of Omara’s rope to fashion it. Then, tightening the last knot, the dwarf stepped back to admire their work.

Satisfied that his makeshift affronts to the crafting art would hold long enough to get them back to town where they could commandeer a cart, Nixen loaded the unconscious monster bodies onto the ‘Reinforced’ litter and Winnie gently onto the other. Pellet allowed Nixen to settle her softly onto one of the litter poles and then perched upon Winnie’s chest after Nixen covered the tall woman with a blanket.

As the dwarf finished, Cato came trotting up, loaded with decapitated heads and some sets of messily chopped-off ears. Omara stumbled over behind him with her couple of sets of ears, pinched tightly between two fingers on either hand, and held as far away from her body as she could reach.

Fetching the dwarf’s pack from the clearing where the two original captures had been, Nixen dug out two burlap sacks and held one open. Cato filled one with some of the trophies and placed the remainder in the other. As Cato took Omara’s pairs of ears, he wiggled them at her and then said,

“Listen, you’ve got to get used to this.”

Omara, with a look of disgust, replied,

“I hate you. Not in a fun jesting way, either. You are a horrible person.”

Cato grinned, then jiggled the sack with the heads in it,

“Don’t get ahead of yourself. We’ve barely known each other a few months.”

Omara’s face blanched, and she quickly rushed to a bush nearby and was noisily sick.

Nixen shook their bearded head at Cato with a disapproving look and said,

“Classy, as always, Cato.”

Looking around at the leftover remains, Nixen spoke up again,

“Alright, we’re done here. Let’s get back to town and inform that local lord the job’s complete. Cato, you’re carrying Winnie’s litter. We’ll do a last sweep through the original site of the complaint on the way back. We won’t dawdle, though. Winnie doesn’t have the time.”

Pellet hooted forlornly at the statement, standing vigil on her friend’s chest.