The fourth horn was a long, drawn-out tune. It almost sounded sad.

All I wanted to do was lie in the dirt and take a long nap. I felt battered, beaten, and terminally exhausted. Twenty hours of sleep would hit the spot right now.

Instead, I counted how many of us were left. There were only eight raiders remaining, just one of whom was a lieutenant. Altogether, that made twelve defenders, with Max in the rear guarding the chasm, it would have been way too much for us if they had had another sixty goblins.

We didn’t have to wait long to find out. A single large swiftscale trudged forward with a large goblin on top. He held a ragged white cloth in a hand held over his head. They wanted to talk.

My first suspicion was that when they saw how few of us remained, they’d turn around and lead a final assault. Slade didn’t give the lone goblin a chance to do that. He marched right down to meet him. I hurried down through our line to catch up.

Slade didn’t seem phased by the state of our remaining forces and shouted, “Have you come to surrender?”

The goblin eyed us from his mount just yards below us on the hill slope. Then, it looked past us at our meager numbers. It snarled as it spoke, “I’ve come to offer an audience with King Malworth.”

“And why would he want to talk to us now?” Slade replied.

“Your small band has destroyed three troops of our best warriors.”

Slade interrupted, “And we have many more men to the north.”

The goblin bared its rows of hideous fangs, “Yes. We are at an impasse. If we remain in the south, our homeland, we will be destroyed. And if we rush headlong into more like you, we will also be destroyed. You told Sqintnose of coming to an understanding. We would like to pursue this.”

I grabbed Slade by the shoulder and whispered, “They tried to trick us with a trap the last time we negotiated…”

Slade nodded to me, then called out to the goblin, “And why should we trust you? We wanted to talk, and you tried to fight us. How do we know he won’t do that again?”

“You have King Malworth’s word that no harm will come to you.”

Slade hesitated to reply, so I leaned forward and whispered, “Tell him to come to us then… Not here. This is a terrible spot.”

“If your king means that, then he can come see us. Now, he plays by our rules. We will be riding back to our castle… Where more men wait for us. Have him meet us there. And if he thinks to fight us again, we will ride with an army to put you down… As we have done many times before.”

“Like we’ve done before?” I whispered. Slade waved me off with a hand.

The goblin considered this, then asked, “And what assurances do we have that King Malworth will go unharmed?”

Slade looked to me for help. I whispered back, “He’s gathered all the tribes together. We’d rather deal with one leader than many.”

“Good call,” he whispered back to me. Then he called down, “Your king has gotten all the goblins to work together. We respect his strength. We’d rather deal with him than a bunch of wimps.”

“I will tell him this,” the goblin said. “If he agrees, his warband will come to your castle.”

“He has two days,” Slade announced. “We have shit to do.”

“Pushing it much?” I whispered.

“You gotta show these types who’s boss,” Slade whispered back.

“What types?” I asked, “You’ve dealt with goblins before?”

“No, but I know bullies. And these dicks tried to bully us.”

As lowbrow as it sounded, the goblin seemed to have accepted Slade’s terms. It turned and rode its lizard mount away. I couldn’t even express how grateful I was to see that lizard's tale as the goblin rode off on it.

Slade smacked me on the shoulder painfully hard and said, “Nicely done.”

“Umm… thanks?”

He strode back up the slope. More like sauntered. Then announced, “We are going back to the castle, boys! Goblin asses kicked. Victory is ours!”

The raiders cheered. Emma looked relieved. She waited for everyone to rush to Slade. They pretty much all smacked him and said a lot of rah crap. Then she cast what was probably her last big heal. Fireflies whooshed up from the ground around us, and I could see everyone's health bars increase.

There was a chime, and I was bathed in light.

Gained: Experience

Stolen story; please report.

Achievement: Level 6

The raiders didn’t seem all that interested in looting. Slade ran around checking all the cubes while Emma went to check on Max. It was left to me to track down the mounts that had fled. Luckily, Princess remained close so that I could do this task mounted on horseback.

Slade was being a lot pickier about looting now.

Party Gained:

Potion, Healing (Identified, Wizard in party)

Amulet, Protection +1 (Identified, Wizard in party)

Sword, Goblin, Vicious (procs piercing, negates armor) (Identified, Wizard in party)

Arrows Goblin, Bleeder (procs bleeding, bonus damage) (Identified, Wizard in party)

Armor, Banded, Mighty (bonus strength) (Identified, Wizard in party)

Magic arrows? Oh, I wanted. A bleed effect had nearly finished me. I was eager to try it on someone else. Well, something else.

It didn’t take long to gather up what little we had and move out. I was glad to be off the broken hill. I’d expected it to collapse at any moment with us on top. This was probably the overcautious thinking of folks in my major. An accident when designing a bridge or road could lead to dozens of deaths.

Slade took the lead position with William at his side. Behind them was Emma, then Max and I. The last few raiders traveled behind us. As we rode off the hill, Max asked, “Take my reins for a bit? I’m going to level up.”

Max was done in just a few minutes. I commented, “Well, that didn’t take long.”

“Yeah, I already got my whole path planned out,” he said. “Been working on it whenever we have some downtime. And I have to tell you, I think we were thinking about this incorrectly at the start.”

“About leveling up?” I asked.

“That, and the game in general. My first skill choices were all about being a badass in combat. Now, though, I think we may want to start focusing on interaction skills.”

“You mean conversational type skills? I don’t even know that I’ve been offered any.” I said

“I could understand that. Rangers won’t have a lot of opportunities to talk to others. Although, you did pick Speak with Animals.”

I laughed, “Right, because I had long-term goals in mind with that. Not at all the excitement of talking to ponies. Did you have conversational choices?”

Max nodded, “Yup. As a scout, I had choices of Intimidate and Coerce. Now, as a Wizard, I’ve got things like Advise and Sage Advice. One of my class paths even excels at counseling royalty.”

“And you think those choices are subtle hints at how the end game finishes?”

“Exactly,” Max said. “I think even Slade will follow his ego and pick some sort of King or head of State skill.”

“Woe be the kingdom that Slade runs. A beer in every fridge.” I said, and even got a chuckle out of Max.

“Regardless, I still think he’ll end up there,” Max said. “Do you know what Emma chose?”

“No,” I said. I hadn’t really thought about it. I'm just happy she was still delivering the heals.

“She picked Priestess.” He said, letting it hang there.

“Priestess…” I said. “Yeah, she told me one of her skills was Divine Inspiration.”

“How do you suppose that works?” Max asked.

“She mentioned something about dreams. I’m not sure how that would work.”

“I suspect the game is giving her inside information. She was the first one to realize the Enneaxi were important.” Max said.

“Important? She obsessed about them almost instantly,” I said. “I thought she was cracking because of stress.”

“Possibly not,” Max said. “If she’s getting messages in dreams, maybe she’s not interpreting or reading them right and just acting on instinct.”

“I wouldn’t be surprised. Her major had something to do with religion.”

“Anthropology,” Max corrected. “But yeah, right, with a focus on mythology and religions.”

“So, in the game, she’s getting mythological messages from the divine?”

“Possibly,” Max said. “I think we need to listen and compare notes on her very closely. She may accidentally give us insight into the problem we are supposed to solve.”

“Alright,” I said. “Pinky swear.”

Max laughed. “You want me to hold your reins while you level up?”

“Not needed, Princess will take care of me.”

I opened my menu and went to the level screen.

Victoria – Level 6 Ranger

* Animal Influence +1

* Archery +1

* Critical Hits/Damage +1

Skills:

* Crippling Shot

* Fighting Style: Archery

* Hunter’s Mark

* Speak with Animals

Boon:

* World Knowledge

Choose next skill:

* Pathfinding

* Snare

* Herbalism

Choose a Boon

I first noticed that I was gaining bonuses with Animal Influence. I wasn’t just able to talk to animals, but I could influence them as well. Maybe Max was right about how we came into the game thinking we were going to kick ass and kill monsters, but it was really about something else.

Taking that into consideration, I checked the new skills I could pick. Pathfinding sounded pretty good, especially with how often I had to chase our mounts after a battle. But if battles started becoming rare, it may be needed less frequently. Snare was too combat-oriented and required forethought, which I seemed to be lacking once fights started.

I had no idea what Herbalism was, so I had to look it up. There were two parts to it. First, I could find rare herbs out in the wild, food, and other things. Second, I could make potions with the herbs I found. These potions were all over the place. Some healed, some added armor or made a player stronger. Most interesting, however, some potions could make a player more charismatic or charm someone. That was my pick mainly because it would never hurt to have more options for healing.

Finally, I had to choose a Boon. This took a while. I was tempted to follow Max’s advice and pick something like Influential Speaker, but once I saw Pet, I reacted instinctively. I missed my doggo. Maybe I could find one to make a pet here in the game. The thought of having a pet I could talk to made me giddy. I really hoped Max was right and we were heading toward a more social game in the end because I’d end up with an army of animals.

I was happy with my choices, even if one of them was impulsive, so I dropped out of the menu and back into the game. Max was waiting and asked what I’d chosen. I explained my choices and the whys of choosing them, except for Pet, which I padded a little, talking about the utility of having a dedicated animal companion that I could speak with.

We marched through the rest of the night, arriving at Fort Stonewatch as dawn was breaking. After getting Princess into the stables, I went up the roof of the keep to watch the stars and drift off to sleep. I didn’t watch for long; exhaustion pulled me into slumber in moments.

Max shook me awake. Groggy, I looked around. It looked like dawn was still breaking.

“I just got to sleep,” I said.

“No,” Max replied. “The sun is setting now. You slept through the whole day.”

Then I heard the horns. This new one was low, like a foghorn. It was answered by dozens of the horns we’d heard on the broken hilltop. Dozens of them.

Crap, I thought, we were supposed to be done with these stupid horns.