Michael
“Is everyone clear on the plan,” Michael asked while pulling his cloak closer. It had started raining a little while ago and it was trickling through the foliage. The rain would cover their attack a little bit but Michael could have done without it.
The adventurers and knights nodded, most of the guardsmen had fanned out around the camp already so there were only a few left with them.
“Are you sure, you don’t need help,” Michael asked Clara as she rose from her spot with a huge grin.
“Just wait and see, little man.” The adventurer took a deep breath and braced her hands against a tall tree that Michael had chosen. The bark instantly began to crack as the woman with half-giant blood began to push.
The air around them began to reek of mana and Clara’s skin began to crack. Michael stared at her skin with a confused expression until he noticed that it wasn’t that her skin was cracking, it was more like dust and dirt covering it slowly.
“You have an earth affinity,” he whispered but she ignored him and kept pushing.
Her feet began to press down into the soft earth, with a turn of them the earth shot up and engulfed her feet giving her a strong stance. The wood groaned as the tree began to tilt slowly and the first roots started to emerge from the earth, Michael and his men tensed up, ready to strike.
With a last effort, Clara grabbed one of the larger roots that had broken the surface with one hand and pushed the tree over its tipping point. It fell, comically slow at first but picked up speed until it crashed down with a loud boom into the bramble bushes, building a bridge into the goblin camp.
Eydis was on the trunk before it had even fully collapsed and sprinted over it into the goblin camp, closely followed by the knights, then Michael, and at the end the adventurers.
Eydis was in the middle of the surprised goblins before they had even gotten up and turned a few of them into bloody mist in an instant. Screams began to echo from the startled green creatures, but they rallied rather quickly to their credit. Most of them were nearly naked with just some scraps of fur or what looked to be ragged cloth covering them and primitive weapons of stone and wood.
The knights were next to arrive, but they didn’t care for the goblins and began moving toward the lone tent with Michael behind them.
Magic was flowing through the air when a light ball hovered above their heads and exploded, blinding the nocturnal creatures even more while the knight carved a bloody trail toward the tent.
Last were the adventurers and Clara, they immediately joined Eydis in her slaughter and began tearing the goblins limb from limb. Michael saw a goblin fly ten meters with a gruesome hole in its chest and got a short glance at the now completely grey-skinned Clara.
The goblins were no match for the attack and nearly half of them laid dead in a matter of seconds. That was when the reinforcements arrived from the tent.
First was a group of faster goblins, armored in wood and occasionally even pieces of metal armor that were probably looted from unlucky adventurers. They were armed with better weapons too, from daggers to metal tools, and even some proper swords. These were the warriors of the tribe, though still much weaker than a human augmenter they would at least stand a chance, no matter how slim.
Following them came a single old-looking goblin, he was adorned with a skull on his head and wielded a bone staff. The moment he emerged he said something incomprehensible and slammed his staff on the ground which caused the earth to shake in a cone in front of him.
The goblin warriors didn’t seem to mind that much, but the attacking force lost their balance for a moment, not enough to put them in danger though.
“He is an earth mage,” Sir Tomp yelled for everyone to hear and swiped at one of the warriors who jumped back with a cackle.
Michael noticed three more figures slipping out of the tent and into the shadows thrown by the bramble bushes and yelled, “Three stalkers in the shadows to the left.”
The arrows came flying the moment he had started talking though and Michael heard a pained groan from Sir Silas to his left. An arrow wouldn’t stop an augmenter for long though and they couldn’t stop, they had to finish this now.
Michael began constructing a sigil in his free left hand and a light javelin began to materialize. The shaman’s eyes locked onto him, he was already casting his next spell as well and was faster than Michael with his phrase casting.
A head-sized boulder came flying at him with the speed of an arrow. Lance moved in front of it and braced his shield against the impact. The shield cracked and splintered but managed to hold the projectile.
Michael stepped to the side in a flowing motion and threw the hard light javelin at the shaman. He tried to raise a mount of dirt to protect himself, but the attack pierced right through the hastily constructed defense and impaled the small caster. The mount collapsed without the mana to supply it, the javelin would exist for a few moments more until it flickered out of existence once it ran out of energy and the lifeless body of the shaman fell to the ground.
“The shaman is down, focus on the special ones, rout the rest,” Michael yelled and took a look around the battlefield.
Though nimbler than normal goblins, the warriors were no match for the stronger enemies and multiple of them had already fallen. Just as Michael spotted Clara, an arrow bounced off her skin as if shot against a stone wall. She leaped over the battlefield, a good ten meters, and landed right in front of the offending goblin stalker. The creature tried to flee but its head turned into red mist only a moment later.
The goblins were losing heart now and began to split up and run for their lives. Many were slaughtered on the way to their paths through the bramble and the rest would find their end once they ran to the spears of the guardsmen positioned outside.
The whole fight had not even taken five minutes when the last goblin found his timely end and the guardsmen began filing into the clearing. Michael stood there looking at the shaman that he had killed and inspected the staff.
“Good stuff, little lord,” Clara said and slapped him on the back which nearly made him fall into the remains of the shaman. “Oh, sorry.”
She was covered in crumbling dirt mixed with blood and her hammer was virtually dripping with it.
“You didn’t tell me that you had an earth affinity,” he said after rebalancing himself.
She simply shrugged and began dusting herself off, “You never asked. A leader should always make an effort to understand his teammate’s abilities.”
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“Okay, I will remember for next time,” he answered and nodded.
“I didn’t expect you to come up with something so creative. I would have expected a more straightforward approach from a noble or even for you to ask the goblins to come out and fight honorably.”
Michael scoffed and said, “Do you think I am stupid?”
She shrugged again with a smile and turned to the shaman. “That magic attack was quite neat, packs quite the punch.”
“Yeah, if thrown hard enough it goes through shields and armor, quite well.”
One of the adventurers came out of the tent and shouted over to them, “We found their breeding pond.”
“Ah gonna have to burn that,” Clara said and started walking over with Michael on her heel. “You sure you wanna see that? It is a little bit disturbing.”
“What do you mean,” Michael asked as they entered the tent. The adventurer showed them a hole in the tent that led into an especially thick patch of bramble.
“Well, you know, we are burning their, ehm, offspring.”
Michael blinked as they reached a small chamber, he nearly had to puke from the rancid air but pulled himself together to see a green putrid-looking pool in the ground. Three dead goblins were lying in the dirt in front of it.
“I will be fine,” Michael said more to himself than the others and stepped closer, taking a look into the pool. Inside was a thick green liquid that emanated a large amount of mana, one of the adventurers was currently filling some vials with the fluid.
“What are you doing,” Michael asked him with a confused expression.
The man looked up and explained, “It is mana rich, and you can get good money for this shit if you know who to sell it to.”
Michael frowned but nodded, it was not his place to tell them how to make money and they would destroy it anyway so there was little harm in them taking a little bit. He could imagine that it would be helpful in alchemy or rituals, but Michael was glad that he didn’t have to work with something so disgusting yet.
He then looked at Clara and said, “It doesn’t seem too bad, let's just burn it and be done with it.”
She looked at him surprised and he turned his head back. That was when he saw the little goblins floating in the pool. They weren’t conscious and still very small.
Michael’s eyes widened, he took a step back and vomited into a corner.
“There we go,” Clara said and gently patted his back. “Get it all out.”
“Dammit,” Michael said while panting.
“It’s alright, let’s get out of here.” Clara guided Michael outside, once there he sat down and breathed slowly while Clara left him with his knights and went back in to finish the job.
“Are you alright, milord,” Sir Silas asked and knelt down next to him. He had a clean bandage around his left upper arm where the arrow had hit him.
“We are waltzing in here into their home, killing their people and murdering their children for riches,” Michael mumbled.
The veteran knight nodded understandingly and said, “It is the first time that you are on the offensive, right? This is the burden of conquest, these goblins had to die either way to secure our borders, but I understand how you feel.”
“Ah, it is just some idle thoughts,” Michael quickly said trying to play it off but with little success. “I am just wondering if we couldn’t have chased them away or reasoned with them like with the vargr-släkt. I am not used to this kind of violence that is all,” he tried to smile but what came out was a warped expression.
“You can’t compare this to the animal kin. Goblins have no sense of diplomacy, they are animals in humanoid form,” he halted for a moment and then resolved himself to continue talking, “You haven't seen what goblins can do to a caravan or a village, if you had you would think differently. Not all the bones around here are from animals or monsters, after all.”
Michael looked around, his thoughts were still clinging to the goblins floating in the pond and the fire that would engulf them.
“Do you want us to pull back from the mountains,” Silas asked with a neutral tone and Michael could hear the uncomfortable shuffle of the rest of his guard.
Michael shook his head with a dry smirk, throwing water from the rain everywhere like a dog, “Of course not. I am just having difficulty with the reality of my choices. The goblins are in the way of prosperity for my people, and I won’t let them stop me.”
Rain continued to fall as Michael watched the blood being washed away. The guardsmen had started to pile up the corpses and clean out the camp. This would make a good forward base, with its natural defensiveness once it was strengthened by fortifications.
Clara emerged from the tent a few minutes later. “The rain is quite nice. The gestation pools burn like hell, and I am not sure if he could have safely burned it without the rain.” She looked at Michael for a moment and then asked, “You good?”
“Yeah, I am fine.”
“Alright, you know that it needed to be done.”
He nodded, “Doesn’t mean that I have to like it.”
The knights and adventurers made ready to leave the clearing behind and return to camp, while the guardsmen would stay and start preparations to make this a forward outpost.
The way back to the camp was much more tedious now with the rain making everything muddy and cold but they pulled through without any real problems. The rain stopped after half the journey and the mood improved substantially.
Clara and Michael went straight to the command tent while their men returned to their tents to wash up and get a warm meal. Not even Eydis was allowed to stay at Michael’s side on his orders. The barbarian girl looked gruesome, even though the rain had washed a lot of the blood away already and really needed a break.
“You are back,” Geron said as they entered. The tent was rather empty with only Geron and two other men inside, tending to the map and a couple of reports.
“We cleared out the camp without any complications. I think we got all of them if there weren’t any patrols out that we missed,” Michael reported and stepped toward the map.
Multiple of the markers that had shown goblin tribes had been marked as destroyed and one of the men did the same with Michael’s target. There were also a whole lot of new markers distributed all over the map.
“The position is very defendable, and we left the guardsmen behind to start fortifying it,” Clara added.
The knight commander nodded and said, “Alright. Clara, you and your unit will take a supply unit in once you have rested a little bit and use that position as your forward base for your hunt. Lord Rowan, your unit will be on standby for now, if something comes up.”
They placed a small ‘fort’ marker on where the tribe had been and one of the men scribbled something on a piece of paper before handing it to Clara.
The tall woman turned to Michael, “You have done well, little lord. I will sing your praises and hope that we see each other again. Stay safe.” She turned around with these words and left the tent without waiting for a reply.
“Strange woman,” Geron noted and turned back to the table.
“You have nothing for my unit to do right now,” Michael asked the knight after she had left.
“You should rest for now,” he answered in a dodgy manner.
“Geron, don’t give me special treatment. Spit it out, what can we do?” He stared at him until he relented.
“Fine, I sent out a group of lower-level adventurers, woods and coppers, to clear out a nearby cave but they haven’t reported back. I sent a scout to check half an hour ago but don’t have a unit right now that I can afford to take a look.”
“We are gonna take care of it after a quick meal,” Michael said and looked at the map. Geron pointed at a small marker maybe two hours southwest from their position.
“Our reports say that a small tribe of goblins is holed up there, but the adventurers should have been enough to clear them out. So, your assignment will be to go there, find the party, and finish off the goblins if there are any remaining. Take a sketch of the map, the scout should be able to lead you there if you find him.” One of the men made a quick drawing of the way and handed it to Michael after a short wait.
“Okay,” Michael said and continued inspecting the map. “How is everything going?”
“We haven’t met any kind of real resistance yet, so far all of the bigger strikes have been a success those that have reported back already at least, and we don’t have any missing bigger parties. Once we establish forward camps, we will be able to conduct our work more easily.”
“Alright, keep up the good work.” They exchanged nods, Michael left the tent after and made his way to his tent where his guards were also situated.
They were currently getting comfortable and preparing a meal. Sola had joined them and inspected Silas’s wound.
“Hey, Sola. How are you doing?”
“Oh, Michael, there you are. Fine for now. We only had smaller injuries, those units with dead or heavier injuries will take longer to come back, I presume.” The priestess looked happy to see him unharmed and he sat down on a stool next to her.
“Did we get new orders, milord,” Sir Tomp asked while cleaning his sword.
“Yes, we are going to look for a missing group of low-level adventurers. They were supposed to clear out a tribe of cave goblins but are overdue.” Michael handed the sketch map to Sir Tomp, gratefully took a piece of dried meat from Lance, and began to chow on it. “But we are gonna rest for a moment first and get some food but make it fast.”
“Since when are you so sensible,” Sola joked and finished up the bandage on Silas’s arm.
Michael simply smiled at that. They talked a bit more until everyone had eaten and then they ventured forth again, this time in a much smaller group.