Anthony hated goblins.
As it turned out, there were such things as zombie goblins.
They found that halfway through their trek the next day. As they were all of a sudden nearby a pack of about eighty feral goblins. Their first idea was to stay and fight. That didn't prove to be the best idea for them.
As many of those, the goblins did not fall easily to their magic. What Anthony found out was that it was easier to hit them with maul or magic like his Magic Bolt than many of the wide area affecting magic powers that his friends favored.
Hitting the goblins with magic missiles was easier as well. It was one of the only spells that they could reliably use to put them down. He was so grateful that they had picked up that card.
Unfortunately, Bob had it and the zombies all of a sudden really loved him.
Bob was riding a horse ahead of the Caravan. The goblins were flanking them from the right. In a flash, Anthony and Bob both realized that they had to change course for the army of small bodies that would crash into them.
"Turn left!" Anthony yelled, trying to get the attention of the two closest wagons.
They adjusted course almost immediately
"Finley! Get the horses to turn!"
The Caravan began to wheel around, as the herd of horses that surrounded it turned left. The horses attached to the wagons started to follow the rest of the her, just a little slower.
Anthony was grateful that most of the plains were flat land. Even though they were getting off the road a little bit they were still going to be able to go. They continued on as the goblins closed in.
"Stella! Ice magic!" Bob yelled getting closer to the Caravan.
He was firing bolt after bolt reloading as fast as he could. One of Anthony's magic bolts blew past him as well. It stopped a zombie Goblin dead in its tracks right before it reached him.
"On it boss!" Stella said.
Every person in the Caravan was guaranteed to have at least a half functioning brain. This might be the thing that the zombie goblins were coming for. Anthony was pretty sure that he didn't care what they did as long as they didn't get his brain.
He poured mana into his holy bolt spell trying to mow down a bunch of zombies that were threatening Bob. He was so grateful that Bob had decided to take one of the war horses today instead of his bay mares. He loved his mares and he knew that Bob did but they weren't right for this kind of activity. They were gentle souls.
They were so gentle in fact that they were pulling Anthony's wagon as if it was weightless. He didn't want the horses to be running the wagon. There's only so long that he could run them for, but Sonya couldn't create an earthen wall fast enough to deter their goblins. Finley too had gone to the back of the wagon rotating with Sonya to passed spells.
Stella's Ice Magic made a square of ice where most of the goblins were going to be tromping through. The small disco floor, an effect that she was going to have to explain later to Anthony, maybe the goblins slip and slide. The first time they had used this kind of trick, it was on dwarves.
Zombie dwarves were thick, stout and small. They had trouble getting back up after being knocked over.
Zombie goblins on the other hand, were thin, reedy and small. They had no problems whatsoever getting back up. But this was a different Caravan than the one that had taken out that initial batch of zombies.
The first time that they had come together as a team? It was escaping the town that had trapped most of them.
Now? They were a well-oiled machine.
Anthony could even hear the two orc bards singing a song about disco dancing. At least that's what he thought he heard. He wasn't going to be the one to correct them. If someone had started teaching them ABBA songs, then they were going to be having words. A lot of words. He wasn't going to have a Martian experience.
He did not want a man after midnight. He did not want to be given more.
All he wanted was to deal with this right in front of him. It took them five minutes to get the zombies under control. By the end, Anthony was spent. Any impetus they had to keep going was gone. The time was still there. But everyone agreed that it was going to be a recovery day. Or at least they threatened Anthony with his life.
He simply agreed that he would like to keep his life and that all of them needed to just find a spot with some water for them to relax for the day. After all, when searching for death knights, wanted to take time to enjoy the sites.
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Sonya had realized that her lessons with Finley about coming up as a druid had only gone so far. It was when he came to bother her about finding a location for the rest of their day that she just found out that she didn't know what you didn't know.
And what she didn't know was that druids had a sense of where a nearby source of freshwater was. She had Elemental powers that did not specifically refer to finding water but something that saw if it could attune to.
After Bob had rifled through all the goblin cards and passed them back to Finley, it was all too easy to find a small lake in the plains. Finley showed Sophie how to tap into the ambient water around her in the air.
It was there, if slight.
That she could feel where the water was in greater concentration. And she was immediately drawn to The nearest body of water.
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It wasn't that far. It took them fifteen minutes but felt like hours. At one point, they stopped to change the horses out. It was something that didn't really happen often, but Finley insisted.
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This time Sonya made the walls extra slick. Sophie helped with the design. It wasn't that she had time. She just really didn't want to deal with goblins again. Zombies were one thing. Fast tiny zombies, the size of toddlers? That would probably haunt her dreams for at least a week. Sophie was so relieved to see the lake that she was brought to tears. Finishing the walls made her drop to her knees and SOB.
It was such a relief just to be behind safe walls again. They set up the watch, They began to cook dinner, and everyone took a collective sigh of relief.
"I never thought that they would get to the goblins. Does this mean that everything is going to be affected?" Valerie said.
Sophie's prophecy approved companion sat a bit away from Sonya as they chatted about the days events. It was the first time that they had talked so freely next to her. She was reveling in it.
"I think that anything that can be affected by the zombies will be. I doubt that some magical beings- I hear that there are golems and elementals here- will be affected," Sophie said.
"I couldn't imagine a zombie air elemental. What would happen?"
"Would it just be a fart?" Sophie said.
Stella and Sonya were working on the stew though Sonya was mostly there for moral support. She had taken a seat next to one of the wagons, using it to obscure herself. She was thinking of a way to get them all to safety. Either they all moved slowly across the kingdom via horse, or they totally lost the horses and traveled solely by gate.
If they traveled by gate they were severely limited by how much they could move in a day. They would probably ask her to take and level a monk card so she could jog a mile, open a gate and then let them through. That might be interesting for the rest of them, but for her it sounded exactly like what she was trying to avoid.
So she listened to Sophie try to make good with the dwarf girl as she accepted the third bowl of stew. She wanted to eavesdrop on the pair. Stella just needed them to keep talking and one day she would break through to the girl.
Then her gorgeous bearded himbo showed up to darken her view of the cook fire.
"Hey," Anthony said, "Want to go for a swim? I can get a refresh for you?"
"Actually that sounds great. Finley is doing alright I take it?"
"He is taking a shine to the goblin cards. Apparently they were all common except for one," Anthony said. "He got a gleam in his eye when he saw it then asked me about my deck before I decided to see if you wanted a skinny dip."
She finished her bowl.
"Always down to get this dust off of me," She said, handing him the scrubs that she had acquired from him. It wasn't exactly the same as stealing his hoodie, but he hadn't been summoned wearing a hoodie. It would have to do.
As they got closer, she crafted a little diving board for them. She could feel how deep it was and she knew that she was going to be able to jump in and not break her neck. She jumped in fully cannonball into the water, allowing the water to splash all over her. Right behind her. Anthony jumped up doing the same thing as she got out of his way.
Then they splashed around for a bit as they cooled down. With winter coming in she hadn't thought that I was going to be so warm. But she was constantly surprised by what was going on around her. Perhaps Sophie had heated it up for her. It was unlikely if possible.
"Anthony, are you able to summon flames or fire or do something to heat up the lake around us?" She asked.
"Not so much. It would be fun if I could but that's not really in my wheelhouse. I can summon a light source if you want but that would just show us off and I don't really think like we need to do that."
"Are you Americans with your Puritan upbringing? Maybe it's just that I'm used to being naked. Maybe I needed that attention as a girl."
"You did not," Anthony said, splashing.
"Who's to say? I might have been a dancer in my old life if social work didn't work out for me."
"We all could have been a dancer. I thought about that all through nursing school. The idea of quick money is always seductive; it takes time to build an empire."
"Oh are we building empires now? I thought we were just trying to save the world," she said, smiling.
"All I'm trying to do," Anthony said. "Is to get into your good graces, and maybe do that thing that we did the other night."
"No promises," Sonya said. "My knees still hurt from that stunt you pulled but it was fun."
"Well that's why I got the rug this time," he said, drawing in closer.
"Oh Anthony, you know exactly the way to a girl's heart."
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"So do you think they're going to do the thing? Valerie said.
"I think they are both adults and they are allowed to do whatever they want to in their free time and as long as they're taking care of their business," Sophie said. "It is none of mine."
"I mean yes but like..." Valerie trailed off.
"Can you tell me about dwarven customs relating to courtship? Like how would you get married. Would you like a love match or?"
Valerie held out for a spoon as if she was going to stab the woman.
"I wasn't asking you to sleep with me. I was just asking about dwarfish customs. Were there arranged marriages then?"
"Only for powerful nobles. My parents were in love. But they met through their jobs. And no one was going to deny two working-class dwarves a marriage."
"So you could kind of choose your own destiny?" Sophie said, finishing off her own bowl. "Come let's clean up, it's our turn."
The two began to gather up any remaining bowls and brought them to be washed. Stella stepped aside.
"You could marry who you wanted, but you're supposed to ask one of the relatives to begin courtship. This is the way to make sure that everything is only up and up. And there are all these little elaborate rules that you're supposed to follow. Honestly, it's just the class itself and the women of my generation... We wanted to change things. It was a lot of work just to do courtship and I feel like it was expensive just to be a woman."
"Oh man, we have something like that back at home. We call it the pink tax."
"The pink tax?"
"Pink is the color that humans and associate with femininity. Or really just women and womanhood."
Sophie inspected a plate and upon seeing it was bereft of food, passed it to Valerie.
"Not blue? And in dwarvish culture, the women are all associated with blue colors. It's the calm sea right?"
"What color are men associated with?" Sophie said leaning in. The suds were up to her elbows, but it couldn't be helped.
"Well green of course. Because the man is the tree who grows and shelters the family right?" Valerie said, accepting the last two bowls.
"That's quite an interesting tale. I feel like there's something behind that. Did anyone tell you about my situation before?" Sophie said.
Valerie's blank expression turned horrified, she paused her drying efforts.
"What was your situation before?" She whispered. "Was there some sort of violence done against you? Because I-I'm not ready for that kind of thing."
"Well I mean like honestly I used to be in a children's theater, I used to work at a hospital but you know that and when I was born, I was born and assigned male at birth," Sophie said, accepting another bowl to wash.
"Assigned male at birth?"
"I wasn't always female."