Goblin Haze, Druid Rage

Chapter 3: Renegade

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The labyrinth beyond the locked doors teemed with abnormal greenery. Patches of moss carpeted the ground and walls, with bioluminescent pieces hanging upon the ceiling and creating a mystical shimmer to the place. Vines and bark-skinned roots grew everywhere, blanketing the area, and even little shrubs bizarrely grew out of the heartwood.

A few spots boiled with purplish-red splotches. Emrys inched away from them, his free hand settling against his chest.

Seldom had he seen the maze that surrounded the Dryad’s resting place. Only once to bind himself to the Dryad’s blessings, to be precise, and that had been in his childhood. It did look a little like how he remembered it as a kid, minus Aodh’s tampering, though he certainly would be hard-pressed to figure out the route to the Dryad from just those fuzzy memories.

Grandma Birog, however, knew it like the back of her hand. The moment Golmac had squeezed through the broken doors, she began quietly moving through the branching paths with absolute confidence, like a master weaver working on the loom. “We may have time yet,” she muttered. “Aodh has his head start, but between his unfamiliarity with the Dryad’s little maze and whatever blockades she would’ve left, we will likely catch up to him before he can find his way down to the center.”

Her staff pointed toward a makeshift wall of roots blocking off one passage — or had been blocking it off, until purplish-red haze had burnt a hole straight into its center. “Not even the right way,” Gran said with a tinge of mirth. “Yes, such distractions will slow him down finely.”

Emrys allowed himself a little smile of his own, if only for a brief moment. Something about the monotonous beauty of the maze ate at him, its seemingly never-ending walls of firm heartwood mixed with expanses of greenery and pretty moss lights lending a liminal feel to the place. Like he had gotten trapped in some subspace world with no real escape.

He prayed Aodh felt the same way.

“What will we do?” Emrys blurted, adjusting his grip on his staff. His eyes shifted this and that way, wondering from what corner the warrior goblin druid would emerge from. “When we find Aodh, what do we do with him?”

“Knock his teeth out. What, boy, you think we’re to happily escort him back out and dance in the flower fields together like we’re all good friends?” Gran clicked her tongue, muttering something Emrys thought was meant to be an insult of some sort. “Any past loyalty Aodh has shown means little now. I will have him restrained, and the rest of you will see to it that he’s rendered unconscious before he can retaliate—”

“I mean after all that, Gran. If—” Emrys frowned at his word choice “—when we take down Aodh, what do we do afterward?”

Gran held her tongue for a long moment. She pivoted to a side path, covered in roots damaged in purplish-red haze, and cast her own set of roots to hack away the rest of the barrier. “Gotten further than I’d have liked,” she muttered. “I don’t know.”

“Y-you don’t know?”

“Boy, there’s humans burning down our home outside, what makes you think I have the luxury to think about whether we’ll execute Aodh or banish him or whatever?” Gran hissed, taking annoyance at her quiet outburst, before continuing. “What I do know is that he’s got much to fess up about. What’s gotten into that young fellow, doing something like this? Is this Kindlefury getting the last laugh by making him into a turncoat, or did humans secretly put him up to this? How long has this been planned? I swear, I’ve never been more flummoxed about anything in my life, even compared to all the dumb things you did to make my head spin, boy.”

Golmac held back a snort, Emrys rolling his eyes at the jab. Gran poking fun at him — strange how that could keep at bay the dread pooling in his stomach.

The ground had been sloping downward for a while now, Emrys had realized. It was sloping down a lot right now, in fact, wood transitioning to mud and packed dirt. He vaguely remembered that from his childhood days.

The Dryad’s abode, it was said, was like the seed from which the entire base of the Blessed Tree had grown. Them having gone down meant something, didn’t it? And so did the increased number of acidic splotches, having burnt through conjured walls of roots and greenery alike.

They were surely getting closer. To the Dryad, and Aodh too.

I can’t stand all this anticipation. Again Emrys’s eyes searched, waiting, wondering, worrying. The earth seemed to shake under his feet, making him sway. How much longer until Seekit returns? How much further need we go? Any more of this and I think I’ll be leaping at shadows, expecting someone to show up—

A giant plant maw burst out of the dirt, Gran yanking a startled Emrys away as it snapped up empty air. The eyeless head bared its grassy teeth, purplish-red haze leaking out in between the gaps and streaming around its head.

Oh.

Gran spent a precious half-second pinching her nose, before her staff came up. “Fool Dryad!” she snapped, conjuring a flurry of thick roots that snaked out to clamp down on the plant head. “Why would she send one of her maneater tunnelers toward Aodh? Boy!”

Emrys jolted, coming back to his senses. Golmac had already formed rocks out of thin air, the maneater snarling as he hurled them at its face. A distraction, which the enraged creature all too easily fell for.

It bit at the roots strangling its head, unable to pull it back down into the dirt, while a series of its thorny vines burst out to slice up Golmac. Emrys acted faster, his staff glowing with jade green mist, and the maneater tunneler hissed out as it grappled with the haze. Pure serenity warred with toxic fury, the monster redirecting its vines to stop Emrys’s work, but Golmac’s stones and Gran’s roots kept him protected.

Filtering out Aodh’s corruption proved easier than expected, in the end. Either the maneater tunneler’s mind hadn’t been as intoxicated as Gran’s had been, or Emrys had already picked up on how to more efficiently root out the taint, but soon enough he had washed away the gunk clogging its mind. The maneater tunneler shook itself one last time, before regaining a sense of clarity. Its vines retracted back into the ground.

Slowly did its head turn toward Gran — as much as it could despite the roots trapping it. A rumbling noise left its mouth, expressing discomfort and shame. “Oh, none of that, you old beast,” Gran responded. A quick wave of her staff and the roots unwound themselves, retreating into the earth and leaving the maneater tunneler free. “Warn the Dryad and stay low for now, you won’t be able to fight Aodh alone.”

The spawn of the Dryad were monsters in nature, not particularly intelligent — but they were loyal to their master, and her Communer by extension, and could understand commands well enough. The maneater tunneler obediently dipped its head, before burrowing itself back into the upturned earth. The little tremor it produced made Emrys shift his feet.

Golmac coughed. “Dryad Communer Birog—”

“Just Birog,” snapped Gran.

“—that fight we had with your Fluxus’s defender, it made a ruckus, no? I fear we’ve lost our element of surprise.”

The very air may as well have shifted, Emrys feeling like eyes were upon his back. At once his ears picked up on a not-too-distant rumbling noise, Gran scowling to herself.

“He’s walling us off.”

She was right. A few twists and turns and they found themselves a barricade of sickly purplish-red roots blocking their way, a curse leaving Gran’s lips. At once she summoned her own set of roots, thick and heavy, Gran bashing them against the wall until they ripped a hole through.

She moved through at once, her agility defying her age. Emrys hurried after, Golmac taking a moment to squeeze through. “He can’t do those quick enough without a staff to aid him,” she muttered. “We’re upon him now, and there’s only so much he can do to delay us. Bah, Seekit, must you tarry still? I need your aid—”

“Is she coming?” asked Emrys. “How much longer?”

Gran squinted, as if deep in thought. Or rather in mental communication. “She argues too long with her kindred,” she said, before blinking several times. “Sadhbh? Sadhbh, you fool girl! What made you think sending your spawn against Kindlefury-like magic would help you? Hush, little Dryad, I know Aodh’s right upon your doorstep!”

Sadhbh. Emrys’s heart leapt — the maneater tunneler turned out to be a blessing in disguise. The Dryad had realized Gran was safe to commune with again.

Golmac tilted his head. “Your tribe gave your Fluxus a druid name?” he whispered to Emrys. “We never gave the Rock Giant one. Nor spoke so informally with him either.”

“Gran’s like that,” stated Emrys. “Their dynamic—”

He cut himself off as another rumble sounded. A hiss went through Emrys’s clenched teeth, irritation building up at all this trouble. Yet a part of him felt peace too, oddly enough. The sound was nearby — they really were right upon Aodh.

He must be desperate.

Gran hummed. “Stall a little more, our dear Dryad,” she spoke aloud. “I’ll have Aodh handled soon.”

And so it was. Gran moved, and Emrys and Golmac followed all the way to the end, turning around a bend to find themselves face to face with a still-growing pile of roots that sought to implant themselves in the ceiling. Thinner than the last barrier too, with holes and slits left in between. And who stood behind those roots?

Aodh. A goblin of a bright green color in dark verdant robes, encased in transparent purplish-red armor. Tendrils extended from the armor, burrowing themselves into a wall of dense roots and brambles blocking his way. They sizzled as the tendrils left behind acidic ooze, burning through them.

It left Emrys at a loss, if only for a single moment. The fact that even without his staff, he could still conjure barrier roots, control the tendrils, and somehow make himself a layer of magic armor — was that some mimicry of the Armorbark’s own powers, or a twisted, defensive manifestation of the Kindlefury’s empowering rage? — it was undeniably impressive. Frightening too.

Then the warrior goblin hastily sidestepped as thorny roots sprouted out of the ground, his tendrils burning them away at once, and Emrys realized his newfound magic wouldn’t be enough still. “Oh, dear Dryad, must you fight me so?” Aodh said, a somber expression on his face as he glanced at Gran. “Communer Birog, please, don’t make this harder for me too.”

Honeyed words. From someone actively infiltrating the sanctuary of the Dryad, it made Emrys want to gag out. He and Gran raised their staffs.

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

At once Aodh’s tendrils snapped toward them, both groups and Golmac backing up as they poked through the gaps in the barrier roots between them. “I’d rather you didn’t,” said Aodh, before dodging another set of spiked roots, a tendril removing them at once. “Call off the Dryad’s attacks, please.”

It was ridiculous, Emrys couldn’t help but think. Here he’d been, worrying himself sick about the danger Aodh posed — and he was certainly a danger, what with his rage-inducing poisons. But at the end of the day, he was a single aggressor fighting against the Dryad herself, fighting on a battlefield suitable for her. The Tanglesooth were trappers, and in such tight corridors, Aodh was as good as trapped. Even his own barrier, in a way, served to work against him.

He was in a bind. Metaphorically so, at the moment, and soon to be literal. “Dispel your magic and turn yourself in, Aodh,” snapped Gran.

Aodh sighed. “I regret striking you earlier, if it means anything.”

“I said to stand down, traitor! There’s a pyromancer army out there—”

“Precisely, Birog, why I need to do this! Curse it all, running into you made everything so much worse—”

“Down, Aodh! Before I—”

“One minute!” insisted Aodh. Yet another group of roots lashed out from beneath the earth, sweat glistening on Aodh’s forehead as he shredded them a half-second before they snagged his legs. “One minute to explain myself, Birog. At least let me do one thing right tonight.”

For Aodh to have the gall to ask for such mercy, cornered as he was, it made Emrys bristle. Yet Grandma Birog, strangely enough, took a moment to actually consider it. “Dispel your magic,” she said.

“Make the Dryad stop,” countered Aodh.

“You first, traitor.”

Aodh ruminated on that for a full second, eyes twitching toward the thick barrier separating him from the Dryad. Impenetrable in his current state. He sighed.

“It doesn’t matter anyway. Honesty’s the only way forward now.”

The tendrils retreated back into Aodh’s armor, which flickered before vanishing. The thin root wall separating both sides remained, but considering that just ensured that he wouldn’t escape, it didn’t really matter. Gran went quiet for a moment, before motioning to him with her hand.

“The Dryad hears. Speak.”

The warrior’s haggard eyes flickered between a leery Gran, a frowning Golmac, and Emrys, who shot him an unpleasant, just-get-on-with-it look. “I feigned sickness when word of the pyromancer humans came out,” he said. “To avoid being called for combat, and so I could quietly slip in here when the battle came to our doorstep. It was dishonorable, I know.”

“You took the tricks of the Kindlefury,” said Gran. “Then twisted them into something more awful—”

“Can we defeat them?”

The sudden question made Gran grimace, an action Emrys shared. Not quite the question he expected Aodh to give out, what with his treachery.

“Your faunimal spirit, Birog, she isn’t here. Calling for backup, isn’t she? She must’ve seen — ask her. Or the Dryad herself. She would’ve surely sensed the changes in her domain.”

Gran did, squinting with lidded eyes. The hand holding her staff shook.

“Our druids are losing ground at the second of our three rings,” she said. “They’ll likely have to retreat soon.”

Golmac made a face. “Too soon.”

Definitely too soon. The druids can’t keep up defenses at the second ring? thought Emrys with a start. It was holding perfectly fine not too long ago! It shouldn’t have—

And yet it had. Even with the trolls and their stone magic assisting them, even with the faunimals fighting out of distaste against the firebending marauders, even with the Dryad’s power, it wasn’t enough. If this kept going, the Blessed Tree would be swarmed within a few hours at most.

It’s not enough.

“Your forces aren’t enough.” Aodh let himself slump against the earthen wall behind him, like a prisoner waiting for his execution. Either by his own people’s hands, or the hands of humans. “I knew that. I feared that.”

Gran cocked an eye at him. “What are you doing?”

“What am I doing?” Aodh crossed his arms. “Birog, the Dryad is the weakest amongst the Fluxi in this area. She is a pure creature, meant to heal, not to fight. Every skirmish with the Kindlefury we’ve had made me all the more aware of how much she must rely on traps and cunning that cannot protect us forever. Every skirmish with them, I’ve made a point of studying the way the Kindlefury conduct their magic, so that I could learn to use a variation of it without needing the Berserker to channel it like they do.”

The warrior straightened himself, just a little. A quiet fire sparked in his eyes.

“We have little time. To save our people, Communer Birog, I will teach the Dryad how to utilize my magic for herself. I will make my abilities become the Tanglesooth’s to command.”

A short, strange silence held in the crisp air of the nature-filled maze at the center of the Blessed Tree. Golmac furrowed his brows, Emrys found himself pursing his lips, and Gran was balking at the statement Aodh meant.

“You want to teach the Dryad your magic,” she said.

“Correct,” said Aodh.

“Knowing full well it will take time for her to do such a thing.”

“She can absorb it—”

“A Fluxus may be magical by nature, you oaf, but they cannot just learn a new form of magic! The only way you could possibly do that—”

“Is through my poisons.” Aodh raised a finger. “Listen to me, Birog. You gained rage-related abilities when I tampered with your mind, did you not? Weren’t you still somewhat yourself, despite your madness? You were overdosed.”

The implications reached Emrys at once, realization dawning upon him. It had been strange that Gran wielded her own abilities from the taint she’d been infected by. And that she still had enough of an ability to speak. Much of her speech had been addled rancor, yes, but the more he thought of it—

It was still her. Only she let loose the most extreme and unhinged side of her thoughts. The poison had brought out the darkest parts of her.

Gran seemed to understand too, though her scowl only deepened all the more for it. “I mean to give the Dryad a far smaller dose, which she can absorb and take full control of,” stated Aodh. “Let me tell you a little something: the Kindlefury train themselves to resist the temptation of mindless rage when channeling the power of their Berserker. It is a guarded secret of theirs. I myself had to learn to resist my impulses, learning how to appropriately direct my angry feelings in order when wielding my abilities. And I can show the Dryad how to do so! I can! I must!”

His hands clasped themselves, a desperate part of Aodh digging itself out. “I beg you, Birog. And I beg you, Dryad — you hear me, don’t you? The poison will inflame your rage, but anger is a tool that can be controlled for a greater good, if one only knows how to! I will help you take control of it, and you’ll be able to save our druid order! Please, you must!”

He was earnest. Somehow, Aodh really believed this was the solution to their problems: offering a power with dangerous ramifications if improperly used, yet could be enough to turn the tide. Emrys glanced at Golmac, the troll ruminating deeply over the warrior goblin’s plan.

“It could work, couldn’t it?” he considered.

It could. And against the bleakness of their situation, Emrys too found himself debating the necessity of such a last resort. The Kindlefury’s magic was a powerful asset to their druid order, and if what little he’d seen of Aodh’s skills were to transfer over to the Dryad—

She would be a force to be reckoned with.

And by extension, so would the Tanglesooth, for they drew from her well of magic. Her maneater tunnelers too would be affected, what with their link with the Dryad.

And yet.

Gran slowly shook her head. “The Dryad wishes not to harm her own people.”

“She will not,” insisted Aodh. “I will make sure of it.”

“Your poison will taint not just her, but all of us Tanglesooth Druids.”

“Not as long as she remains stable! The Berserker was an anchor point to the Kindlefury, and with the Dryad’s natural purification magic, she will be even better at keeping our people in check! Please, she’s too weak as she currently is—”

“Too many variables, too many risks. Our druids aren’t prepared for a sudden shift in their magic — you’ll kill us before the humans do! You’ve had more than a minute, Aodh.”

Gran raised her staff. It began to glow.

And then Golmac cried out. “Behind!”

Too late. Emrys’s head shifted just in time to find a purplish-red root right behind Gran, latching onto her staff. The old goblin yelped as it yanked it out of her grasp, flinging it immediately toward the half-built wall of roots separating their trio from Aodh.

The warrior had already stretched his hand out, clasping the staff. And then the pandemonium began.

It took a second for Emrys to process himself encased in a cocoon of purplish-red roots, his staff stolen out of his grasp as well. He struggled and writhed, but too tight were the roots, his cloak pressed against his form. With a little difficulty, he could move his head just enough to find Golmac yelling out, the troll throwing himself against his own cocoon of roots. His staff was missing too.

Gran too was trapped in her own prison, her feeble might unable to do her any good in freeing herself. “Aodh!” she shouted.

Aodh’s tendrils and armor had instantly reformed, their staffs claimed by three of the tendrils. A flurry of roots burst out of the earth, clearly the Dryad’s panicked retaliation, but Aodh destroyed them all too easily with his many tendrils, which began ripping apart the barrier between him and her. Veins in his forehead bulged, determination written on his face.

And a quiet, shimmering anger. The first time he’d shown such emotion in their interaction thus far, Emrys realized, a veiled fury that almost reminded him of the Kindlefury. “Our order is dying, and our allies too,” he said. “Hate me if you will, but this must be done.”

His tendrils struck the Dryad’s barrier all at once, and Emrys felt his soul drop into a deep crevasse as splinters scattered, the roots cracking apart. Aodh ran off to meet their Fluxus.

“Aodh!” Emrys struggled harder still, all the more lost for what the warrior goblin had done. For how he’d taken the most roguish, treacherous, ill-planned course of action in his wish to save the Tanglesooth. “Aodh, you can’t!”

No response. He was too far gone.

He’s going to make everything worse!

Aodh had their staffs. Nothing would stop him from tainting the Dryad. Forcefully so.

He’ll mess up her mind!

That abject fear made Emrys scream inside, the goblin doing everything he could to break out of his prison. He kicked with what little space he could, wriggled as much as possible, ignoring the utter futility of such an action.

He knew not how long he did so, only that he had scraped his throat in the process, his voice gone dry. But his body kept up the fight his voice couldn’t manage, trying to wrest back his freedom, inch by inch. He pushed himself, fighting out of a single-minded will—

Look at them! Ha!

Tanglesooth meat sacks and a smelly troll, all tangled up!

Ooh! Were their funny magic sticks not enough to take down a itty bitty goblin?

Emrys twitched, a trio of faunimals swirling over his face with large mischievous eyes, their forms being that of a chipmunk, a badger, and a rabbit. Behind them, Seekit glared with disdain, the fox spirit carrying with her a staff of light brown decorated with small bits of leafage.

Aodh’s staff. Emrys’s despair reversed course, turning into a rising glimmer of hope.

I thought to bring a spare. Seekit handed the staff to Gran, her hands clumsily grasping its handle as best as she could despite the confines of her prison. It appears I was wise to.

“Very wise.” Grandma Birog channeled through the staff, and roots sprouted out of the ground to break apart the purplish-red ones trapping their group, Emrys breathing a great sigh of relief as his hands and legs found their freedom. “Well done, Seekit.”

Seekit preened a little, before taking annoyance at the giggles and snickers of the other faunimals. Aw, look at the pampered old maid! said the chipmunk.

Servant girl! Servant girl! taunted the badger.

She can’t live without chaining herself by the neck to coots even older than her! said the rabbit. Such a busy slave! So boring!

If faunimals had teeth, Emrys knew Seekit would be grinding them together right now. “Fae creatures,” Gran grumbled, before conjuring roots to destroy the thin barrier Aodh had left behind, hastening onward. “We’ve no time for this.”

Emrys, Golmac, and Seekit hurried along. The faunimals jeered, making a mockery of Gran’s cranky voice, but otherwise followed right behind them. Even with their childish natures, they too had enough of a mind to understand the gravity of the situation.

“He’s got our staffs.” Emrys looked to Gran for solace. “Do we even have a chance against him?”

“Against a skilled warrior, with only one staff of our own and a few faunimals? I fear we’re as good as lost, boy. But—”

Gran snapped in Seekit’s direction, the fae spirit darting over to rest her paws upon her head. Her eyes squeezed in concentration, her form shimmering, and Emrys had a double-take as the green light emanating from the staff Gran held briefly turned a shade of magical blue, similar to the color of the faunimals.

Her brethren reacted similarly, Seekit quietly drinking in their collective surprise with a tinge of smugness. “That doesn’t mean we’ll make it easy for him,” finished Gran.