Force and Intimidation

The Golem didn't know what to do and the Spirit didn't know either, there was no possible way they could dodge three at once.

“What can I do?” Wanderer panicked, “What do I usually do?”

Usually they got Emio to do the work for them, but that was out of the picture.

They asked their Spirit for solutions, as they had never led them astray before, yet they had as little idea as the Golem.

What could be done, even one of the lizards was enough to crush Wanderer’s leg entirely, a feat that even falling from a cliff could not accomplish.

Attacking the lizards wouldn't do anything, even without the Vessel's oath, the tumblers were moving too fast and Wanderer was doubtless that their shells were unbreakable.

In the end, there was only one thing they could do, give up.

Wanderer sat down to embrace their fate, hearing the screams get closer by the moment, yet something at the back of their mind resisted.

That small part of their mind grew from a whimper to a roar, they refused to die here, they had so much more to see and so much more to do.

They thought back to how Emio had driven away their pursuers, the force they had imparted, how violence had fixed the problem.

Yet, Wanderer’s mind in that moment wasn't fixated on the pain or trouble Emio’s violence had caused, instead they focused on its physical effect.

When the verdestry hit the commander, their forward momentum had been redirected, sending them flying in the wrong direction.

The Vessel was under no impression that they could stop the tumblers entirely, but in a stroke of genius they realised they didn't need to, they only needed to redirect the momentum, and they only needed to do it once.

With a kind of immediacy only found in a moment of life or death, Wanderer rolled to one side such that they faced one of the living boulders head on and avoided the rest and as death approached, they dove toward it with all their might.

This was not, however, blind recklessness, as the Golem shifted their entire weight and strength into one of their shoulders which met the lizard and hit it in the side.

The tumbler did not stop, yet, if only by a fraction of a step, its direction shifted, crushing only the Golem’s arm instead of their torso.

The pain hardly even registered to Wanderer, the elation of their successful plan far greater than the same tired experience that they had felt so many times before.

Even in the desperation of their situation, a resounding thought echoed out through Wanderer’s mind.

“I have done it, I have used force without violence!” they declared.

In their life, they had seen time and time again that violence was the answer, that breaking something to your pleasure could make it do what you want.

Yet Wanderer deplored that, hated to rob something else to get their own way, yet so many times they had been forced to do or allow violence for lack of any other option.

Yet could Wanderer have the benefits of violence without the pain, could they have the force without the fighting.

Their successful gambit just proved that they could.

The lizards smashed into the wall behind Wanderer with a heavy thud, orientating themselves while the Golem scrambled out as fast as they could, which was not particularly fast with both a leg and arm disabled.

It was fast enough, however, as Wanderer escaped out the door and into the much larger corridor, where the steam lessened and their vision returned.

Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site.

They had hardly made it five steps when bushy tendrils shot out from the haze and dragged Wanderer away, far into safety.

Before the Vessel even had time to realise what happened, Emio was fussing over them with a concern they had never seen from the monster before, the companion's lack of power apparently causing great anxiety.

The Golem explained what happened as best they could, and as they did so they saw a change in Emio’s emotions.

When Wanderer first exited the fog, the verdestry had been jittering and shifting in concern and nervousness, yet now, as they heard the Golem’s tale, that concern morphed into rage at the monsters who had hurt their friend.

As if called by the verdestry’s anger, a tumbler waddled out from the fog at the doorway, staring down the group with a single yellow eye.

Emio whipped around with a speed that reflected their emotions and immediately charged toward the lizard, tendrils bared.

At the last moment, Wanderer managed to snag one of their tendrils and pull them back, eager to stop more bloodshed and curious as to the reaction of the tumbler.

Because at Emio's threat, instead of curling and preparing to attack, the monster let out a pitiful yelp and waddled a few steps back on their long legs, seemingly more afraid than defensive.

Perhaps because of their previous concern, Emio respected Wanderers wish and stopped where they were, instead raising themself high on their tendrils in such a way that even their small body looked large and imposing.

The discomfort of the lizard amplified as they shuffled back even more, soon retreating back into the steam in fear.

In an instant, a revelation came upon Wanderer, unlike their previous enemies, the tumblers did not attack them out of anger or gluttony, they attacked them out of fear.

It made so much sense now, charging at a foe is not the attack of a hunter, you can not eat something that has been crushed and splattered and there were no animals otherwise for the lizards to eat if they were carnivores.

The tumblers ate plants, in all likelihood, the very moss Wanderer had taken right in front of them.

No wonder they had attacked, the Vessel was a foreign threat that was stealing their only source of food.

Seeing that the danger had retreated, Emio let down their guard a little, coming back down to Wanderer’s level with their eye trained on the doorway.

With a little difficulty, the Vessel managed to explain that there was moss just inside the doorway, and that Emio ought to grab it.

The verdestry was initially reluctant, the steam and heat far too much for their current body to endure in anything but small bouts, but at Wanderer’s insistence and with the push of some remaining guilt, they dashed into the steam, snatched the moss and dashed out again.

While Emio set to work changing, Wanderer began to slowly fix their damaged limbs, reforming them as best they could and trying to ignore the new scars.

Once they were in a usable form, they set to work flexing their magic channels, trying to straighten and reconnect the ones that had been led astray.

While the Golem went through this process, their Spirit awkwardly began to make conversation.

They sent images of previous experiences and memories with very little importance, a far cry from the Spirit’s usual immediate practicality.

Wanderer questioned the behaviour and their Spirit folded, resolving to stop obscuring their intention.

The Spirit wished to apologise, a fact they found difficult, because unlike their previous shortcomings, this issue was not a lack of knowledge, but of intelligence.

Spirit, for all the time they had spent wandering the spirit realm and gaining knowledge, had not considered that the tumblers were herbivores or that they could be intimidated instead of confronted.

Their foolishness had nearly cost Wanderer their life and deprived Emio of their friend.

It was a mark not only against their integrity, but their pride.

Wanderer, who was wholly unprepared for this, immediately made to console their mentor, insisting that they had done well and without their help in avoiding the oncoming attacks, they would have surely died.

Yet the Spirit was unsatisfied, dodging the attacks would have never have been necessary, none of what had happened would have happened if they had just realised sooner.

For all their reluctance to apologise in the beginning, there was very little now, as images and emotions of remorse came with such frequency that they overwhelmed Wanderer, hurting their mind in an attempt to comprehend them all.

Perhaps they were just out of the mood after their most recent near death experience, perhaps they were still riding on the high of escaping an enemy on their own merit, but no matter what, Wanderer had had enough, the flurry of memories irritating them.

“Stop!”, they commanded with intensity, and out of shock, their Spirit did.

“I accept your apology, now leave this alone”, the Golem insisted, thoroughly tired of the whole affair despite the fact it had only been going on for a short amount of time.

The guide fell silent for a short while, before timidly speaking up once again.

The true source of their disappointment was not the fact that they had not thought of the solution, but that Wanderer had found it before them, in the course of only a handful of days the Golem had outdone their mentor, who was thousands of years old.

The Spirit wasn't just guilty, they were conflicted.