Soon enough, all 6 brothers were zooming through the air carrying bundles of rice. They reached an altitude where they felt safe avoiding detection. Grant’s chickadee stayed perched on his shoulder, unable to fly as fast as they were. They zoomed over many miles of rice patties, stopping several times to replenish their supply. It got colder and windier the higher they went, but the cloud cover was reassuring in hiding them from any unwanted eyes. This was much better than running. They were all hungry, but at least they didn’t have to run on an empty stomach. Bryce had to do all the work and he seemed to enjoy zooming everybody through the air. This would probably be good experience for when he became a pilot. This did seem to require a good bit less technical knowledge. Magic did most of the work for him. He merely had to focus and guide the energy and it did all the work.
“Do you guys see that? Chase asked. “See what? Said Aden. “Over there, there’s a ton of smoke.” Sure enough, there was a pillar of smoke rising to their right.
Bryce gradually steered over that way, careful to stay high enough to observe without being seen. What he saw was somewhat concerning. A village was burning. Bryce observed as he saw a large group of goblins gathered in the center of the town. “What are you doing?” Devin questioned. “We don’t want to get close to that, there’s too much going on. We’re in no shape to put out a burning village.” Joshua chimed in. “We might be able to contain the damage if we do it correctly. Aden, how many sweet peas do you have left? If we can get enough water on these, we might be able to salvage some of these buildings.” “20, but will that be enough to do anything?” Aden replied, “We could still use this for so much more, like swords or armor.” “I don’t like leaving people to burn, we have to do something.” The brothers landed on the edge of the village.
Not all of the buildings were completely flammable, thankfully, as some had been put together with mud and concrete like substances. It was apparent that over half of the buildings there had been scorched. What was more surprising though, was that the ground was broken up in other places, and a few buildings were completely torn apart, while some of the mud huts were collapsing from what seemed to be blasts of water. “What happened here?” Grant asked. His senses had stayed sharp since the swamp. He was fairly confident now that it was from the chickadee that followed the everywhere. He noticed that his senses would fade the farther away that if got from him. The chickadee was right by him now, and he couldn’t make sense of what he was sensing. It was as if a fire came through, along with a flood, an earthquake, and a windstorm. He extended his senses towards the center of the town and heard goblins talking. “You have all been chosen to serve the Wizard King, the Glorious Bartok” Grant heard a goblin say. “I am Ik, leader of the Udirk goblins. We have need for mine workers in our iron mines. You will all be coming with us back to Grumet. Your lives will serve as kindling for the rise of our new nation. Cruk here will oversee your transportation.”
Grant turned to his brothers, who were focusing on putting out the fires. “Aden, don’t use up all those yet.” Aden had been turning the peas into water, which was easy to do, since it was such a common resource. The more complex a Minecraft substance was, the more concentration it took for Aden to generate it. “We have a problem. There are military goblins here.” Devin groaned. “I knew we shouldn’t have stopped by. There’s nothing we can do here. We’ve barely affected the fires, and now we’re about to run into more goblins.” Grant responded, “It seems like they’re here to hurt the villagers, we can’t just leave them.” “Sure we can. We’re not military, we can’t do anything against them anyway.” “Speak for yourself, we’re twice their size, we can beat up a few goblins, there’s not that many of them here. Some are the villagers.” Joshua retorted. “That’s right, it sounded like there were only four we needed to worry about. The Udirks.” Grant reported. “See? We can take them, easy.” Joshua said and smiled. “Then the villagers will help us out. We need to find someplace safe, and we need food.” “Suit yourself, I’m not charging in there until I know what I’m dealing with.” “Me too. You guys go on ahead. I’ll stay behind and be ready to get you guys out if we need to.” Bryce said. “Everything’ll be fine.” Joshua said confidently. “Let’s get some goblins. Aden, can you make some swords?” “Sure” Aden said. “But that’ll be the last of the peas.” “That’s alright.” Aden made four diamond swords for them. Joshua, Chase, Grant and Aden made their way towards the center.
They saw a huddle of terrified-looking goblin villagers, about 15 or so, surrounded by a group of 4 goblins with staffs that had different colored crystals put on top of them. The goblins turned as the four brothers got close. There went their chance for surprise. Thought Joshua. “How nice of you to join us, we could use a few humans in the mines.” The goblin Grant recognized as Ik said. “Wug, stop them.” The four of them suddenly had dirt come up and grab them up to their knees. That is, except for Grant, who somehow knew that the earth was coming and dodge out of the way. Another mound of earth started to come up from the ground, but Grant was already gone. He knew, somehow, where the dirt was coming from. It just seemed obvious what the lumbering goblin in front of him would do. Grant quickly realized that if they wanted to escape, he’d need to lure this goblin away so the other brothers could free themselves from the dirt holding their legs at the moment. He dashed away as quickly as he could, and sure enough, the earth goblin followed him.
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Bryce and Devin ran away as quick as they could. There was no use trying to save their brothers if they got caught themselves. Bryce lifted Devin and they started to fly away. To their surprise, one of the goblins took to the air to follow them. “Crap!” Devin exclaimed. “This is not good. Bryce, is there anything you can do to fight him?”
“If we make it to the rice fields, we’ll see what I can do.” Bryce responded.
The goblin was rapidly accelerating towards them. Even with their head start, the goblin was closing the distance, carried apparently by giant gusts of wind, causing the buildings and grass around him to shake violently. The goblin didn’t appear to have as fine-tuned control as Bryce did, but he made up for it in terms of raw strength.
Joshua, Chase, and Aden were left facing the remaining two goblins with their diamond swords still. Ik smiled. “None of your friends will escape. All humans will submit to goblins very soon. You happen to have the good fortune of seeing our might first hand.”
“Shut up.” Joshua replied.
Joshua’s experience with weapons was mostly with guns, but he knew enough hand-to-hand combat to be useful in a melee fight. If he could land a strike on these goblins half his size, they might be able to escape. They would need to act quickly though, judging by the village, these goblins were no joke. This just increased Joshua’s desperation. He wouldn’t let his younger brothers be taken by some thugs. Joshua moved as fast as his long legs could carry him and swung his sword towards the smug goblin’s neck. Just before it would’ve connected, a fireball erupted from the goblin’s staff. Joshua was knocked back by the force of the eruption. He fell to the ground writhing in pain and covered in burns. To Joshua’s surprise, he was still alive. A blow like that should’ve been enough to kill him. The goblin looked somewhat confused as well. Joshua then began to notice that the burn marks that had blackened his body were becoming pink and were fading away in some places. All the hair had already burned off his body, but to Joshua’s astonishment, he felt fine. Joshua and Joshua got back up and faced the smug goblin again.
The goblin left off any banter about his superiority and launched another fireball at Joshua. Joshua had no time to dodge, but the fireball, though still stinging, seemed to be largely absorbed by his body. The goblin looked outraged. “How? What is this? Who are you human?” This time the other goblin launched an attack, no longer seeming amused by the situation. A wave of water exploded towards Joshua. Chase stepped in front of him, taking the brunt of the attack, and was slammed into the next building, breaking the thin wall and landing in what appeared to be a pile of berries. Chase immediately sprung out of the building, moving supernaturally fast, and rushed towards the goblin that had attacked him. The goblin summoned a wall of water in the nick of time that Chase rebounded off of. Chase then ran away, causing the water goblin to follow. Not stopping to process what just happened, Joshua focused on the fire goblin that had been attacking him. The goblin glared at him at summoned another fireball. This time, Joshua was ready, nimbly sidestepping and continuing his advance. The goblin moved to the defensive, summoning a large wall of fire between him and Joshua. Joshua stopped, instinctually not running into flames, though he was getting a nagging suspicion that he had developed some sort of immunity to fire. Testing this, Joshua extended his hand towards the flame. The effect was even more reduced than it had been the last time, there was still a vague sense of tingling, but he felt very little pain. He extended his arm to the same effect. He then felt a sharp pain in his hand and realized the mistake he had made. Ik, the goblin he had been fighting, had cut him with the short sword he had been carrying. Joshua cursed his stupidity. When he drew his hand back, he saw fingers repairing themselves. Joshua charged through the flames, slamming into the goblin, knocking it back through sheer force. The goblin fell over, unconscious, it’s tiny body not able to withstand the impact. “Don’t mess with my family.” Joshua said, flames disappearing from behind him.