Goblin Haze, Druid Rage
Chapter 4: Recompense
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Roots burst out everywhere. Aodh’s tendrils crushed them mercilessly.
His armored feet padded against dirt and moss, Communer Birog’s staff in hand and glowing with sickly green energy mixed with wisps of purplish-red. Behind him, he cast a barricade of roots, one after another, their tangled mess a backup defense in case the Communer escaped her bindings. She had enough skill to do so without a staff — but hardly enough to get through so many blockades without her staff at hand.
Aodh wistfully eyed said staff, then the ones he had pilfered from her grandson and the troll accompanying them, held in two of his tendrils. A part of him tsked, considering he should’ve scrambled their minds while he was at it. Just in case.
The other part of him refused. No. He’d done enough harm. And for better or worse, there was still one more wrong to do, in order to right everything.
Just you and me, dear Dryad.
A few of her own hastily built barricades stood in the way. He ripped them apart, the way he ripped apart the Dryad’s clumsy attempts to strike him down with her root magic. Pitiable. She knew her craft well enough, but she couldn’t handle the force of nature he had become.
Her maze had run its course too. In little time, he had left behind its many dead ends, the path in front opening up to her innermost sanctum — an underground garden of beauty and grace. Little blades of grass sprouted like hair, covering the earth. Small pools of water touched the sides of the garden, and trimmed shrubs and pink flowers scattered themselves in elegant patterns around the area. Giant wooden roots of the Blessed Tree snaked out of the ceiling and draped down the walls, complete with curled vines and draping leafage.
Resplendent glowing moss completed the scenery. Attached to the tree roots and green-laden walls, their light filtered through the area from every side — and brought attention to the depression in the center of the room, a slightly shaded patch of upturned earth.
The Dryad rested there, a goblin-sized figure with vine-woven hands clasped in front of her. The spirit that gave the Tanglesooth their innate magic wore an elaborate robe woven with dark green leaves that covered her body in full, complete with hoods shrouding her three toothy, maw-like heads that heavily resembled her maneater tunnelers. Or rather, it was better to say the tunnelers resembled her.
Vines hung from her robe, extensions of herself that were buried into the earth. Eyeless as she was, Aodh knew she could see him as clear as day. She naturally could sense all things in her domain, from the Blessed Tree to the village and forest encircling, but she saw him especially. No, specifically. Her heads turned as one, the Dryad frowning at his unwelcome intrusion.
“Sadhbh.” Restless and stressed as he was, Aodh wasn’t one to ignore courtesy. He placed a hand over his heart, in affirmation of his loyalty. “My Dryad.”
“You name me in vain.” Only the middle head spoke, the Dryad’s smooth voice strained and sullen. “You come to infect me, warrior.”
“I come to offer salvation.”
“By intoxicating me with the rage of the Berserker?” The Dryad’s vines writhed, and she let out a hum, heads tilting downward. “Hold yourself, tunneler. We cannot hope to best this goblin.”
Aodh could almost hear the hostile rasp of the maneater tunneler surely beneath him, clearly agitated at the truth in the Dryad’s words. “The pyromancers are overrunning us,” said Aodh, striding forward. “This is necessary, my Dryad. Risky, yes, but risks are all we have left.”
“Risks without rewards are worthless. Do you really mean your loyalty? Surely you would not waste your time then, forcibly pumping your cursed magic into me.” The Dryad leaned forward, her side-heads hissing in muted startlement. “You wield a piece of the Berserker.”
Aodh froze up, tendrils rearing back. “What?”
“I know what the essence of a Fluxus feels like!” snarled the Dryad. “You have experience breaking into their resting places, have you not? I have felt Kindlefury magic before, but you wield something more than mere magic. It was during your last skirmish at their village, wasn’t it?”
She could see. Oh goodness, she could see.
It hadn’t occurred to Aodh that she’d notice such a thing. Was that a part of her Fluxus nature? Could she innately sense the power woven into the Berserker’s literal being, a power that he’d stolen right under the Kindlefury’s noses? “I-I—”
“Defiler! You tore into his heart!” The Dryad’s hands elongated into whip-like vines. “All this for your concocted plan to warp my own?”
“He was a thorn in our backs anyway! I neutered him and his druids! What would be wrong in—?”
“In turning an enemy into a war-maddened nemesis? If the pyromancers had not wiped them out, they would be the ones coming here, tearing the Tanglesooth out of furious vengeance!”
“And I would give you their magic, and we’d repel them for good!” Aodh’s tendrils wriggled with indignation, the goblin barely managing to contain his bubbling anger. Darn it all, this was why he hadn’t wanted anyone to know the full truth about his newfound magic — there wasn’t a soul who would take it well. “It was an opportunity, my Dryad! I was struggling greatly in my attempts to mimic their powers, and taking from the Berserker’s essence—”
“—wiped out the Kindlefury.”
The dark, brooding tone in the Dryad’s voice put a dampener on Aodh’s inner rage, replaced by hollowness. A tinge of dark, vicious satisfaction too, but he pushed that way. “Effectively, yes. I did.”
He had studied this during his search for a way to integrate the Kindlefury’s magic into himself. A Fluxus’s body was not the Fluxus itself, but rather their spherical hearts. They were core-shaped entities grafted with magic, their true essence lying within those cores. One could learn general magic abilities on their own, given lots of time and effort, but the Fluxi could shape magic into specific forms and make it far more accessible.
With all the roadblocks in creating the Kindlefury’s rage powers from scratch, he had decided to take a shortcut: using a skirmish in their village as cover so that he could sneak into the Berserker’s hidden sanctum, then absorb his essence for himself. Stealing a portion of his core didn’t kill him, of course — while he had planned to end the insufferable threat to his home himself, Fluxi were horrifically resilient even with their very lifeforce damaged, and the Berserker’s wrath had forced him to count his blessings and escape while he could.
But it had crippled the Berserker and the Kindlefury, at least temporarily. And with their weakened magic, the sudden appearance of pyromancer soldiers from an invasive human kingdom proved too much for them to handle.
The Dryad shook her heads. “I wondered how they could have lost,” she said. “Their rage spells would have ruined the human forces. Now they are nothing but slaves and corpses, like the Armorbark. And here we are, paying the price for their defeat.”
Chills. Aodh dispelled the thought of it at once, but the Dryad’s sinister implication messed with him. Had you not tampered with the Kindlefury, the pyromancers would’ve been crushed by them, a traitorous voice whispered. You doomed us in your zeal for power.
“N-no.” Aodh stiffened, hating himself for the stutter in his voice. Hating the Dryad’s casual condemnation. His tendrils slithered toward her, burning up the greenery in her underground patch of paradise, and with a start he smothered that hate down. “No, my Dryad, we haven’t yet.”
“I feel their lives lost, warrior. I feel the scorched earth above, the flames that strip away buildings and clothes and flesh. The breaking of links between my druids and I.” The Dryad’s voice quavered, tearing up at the thought. “The broken links hurt the worst.”
“Let me fix this then! If I’ve sinned, then let me atone for it!” Resolution kicked in, Aodh moving forward once more. “You are angry, I know you are! You rage within at how useless you feel!”
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The Dryad’s side-heads spat dryly. “My spawn have fought. My roots have fought. I have lost count of whom we have killed, and it will never be enough.”
“It will be! Turn that fury into resolution, and you will be unstoppable! We will be unstoppable! Take the poison, Sadhbh—”
“Do not call me that.”
“—and through it, a sliver of the essence of the Berserker that I hold! You can absorb it for yourself, can you not? I stole it so that I could give it to you! So that you’d never feel weak again, my Dryad! Just a drop of my poison, please!”
“You never lied about being sick.”
Aodh grimaced. “I-I—”
Yet again the Dryad seemed to see through him, knowing things she shouldn’t know. “His essence was too much for you, yes? Even now, rage muddles your mind. It grips you. You spent your sick days learning to control it.” The Dryad raised her whiplike vine arms toward him. “Please leave. I do not have days.”
Curse it all. He wished he had days. The pyromancers had forced him to rush things.
“Even a drop of poison can ruin a well. What you wield is worse than poison, conniving warrior. It is assured destruction.”
No. This needed to be done. Aodh kept moving forward.
The Dryad watched him come. Not with anger, but with sadness. “A Fluxus gone mad is a heinous thing,” she said. “Would you really unleash such a monster upon the world?”
Hesitation. He hated the hesitation. The tendrils hissed—
Focus! He snapped at himself. Don’t lose yourself here, Aodh!
“Would you force me to take the Berserker’s essence, knowing I will surely lose myself in the process? Just as my druids will?”
Aodh gritted his teeth. Anger into resolve. Anger into resolve! He had to—
“Would you make me suffer?” The Dryad’s voice was but a royal whimper. “Make me a voiceless being in a monster wearing my flesh? Make me scream in silence as it commands a legion of rage, destroying everything I hold dear?”
“Shut up! SHUT UP!” Aodh snapped, his tendrils flaying the earth. They would’ve snapped at her, if not for his will — his burning need — to right everything. “You’re a spirit of purity! Your powers can cleanse anger’s taint! Take my poison and save our people—”
At once his tendrils snapped around, striking down balls of light. Instinct made him dodge as thorned roots exploded out of the ground beneath, Aodh baring his teeth as he found Communer Birog striding out of the entrance to the Dryad’s chambers. With his staff.
His staff. His staff! The one her faunimal fox Seekit stole from him, the sly cur!
Said faunimal hovered over her shoulder with impassive eyes, a trait shared by Communer Birog. As it was with her grandson and the troll helper, who came into view behind her. So fixated was Aodh on them—
Oopsie!
Mine!
Nice staff you have!
—that the other three faunimals blindsided him, Aodh raging as he found Birog’s helper’s staffs stolen away by the chipmunk and badger faunimals, with the rabbit prying Communer Birog’s staff out of his hands. “No!” he yelled, tendrils yanking both the staff and the startled spirit back.
Purplish-red ooze secreted out of the tendrils and pierced the rabbit. She screeched, shaking her head like mad, to the horror of the chipmunk and badger.
Hey!
He hurt her!
Haze coated the rabbit’s head like a toxic flame. She wildly dove at the twosome, and they scattered. “Hey, give us our staffs first!” yelled her grandson Emrys.
Seekit huffed, before placing her paws upon Communer Birog’s head, eyes shut. The green glow of her pilfered staff transitioned toward a shimmering blue, and Aodh raised his brows in trepidation.
“Hold me in case I collapse, Emrys,” the Communer told her grandson.
Rage armor, it turned out, was enough to cushion him against a literal blast of blue vine-like beams. Aodh crashed to the ground, the goblin wincing at the burning sensation rubbing against his chest and summoning a pile of roots in front of him for cover — before raging inwardly as the laser beams burned through his makeshift shield. The spirit could empower the Communer to alter Tanglesooth magic into something more akin to a faunimal’s light-based magic?
Judging from the other faunimals’ floored expressions — even the rabbit was gawking, her madness briefly spurned at the unexpected sight — they hadn’t known of such a thing either. A result of the magical bond between Birog and her spirit? Why hadn’t he ever seen this before? Darn it, why hadn’t anyone else known about this?
Because the Communer would obviously hold secrets in case the Dryad’s home was breached! a weary, rational side of him snapped back. And how could anyone else hope to do the same thing? The hatred most faunimals have for binding themselves to another soul—
Another beam struck. Aodh howled and repaired his root wall, before spinning about with a mindless cry as he found the Dryad fleeing, her vines pulled out of the earth and hanging like tentacles around her. The Fluxus had moved to the walls of her sanctum, a maneater tunneler by her side and burrowing a hole through the earth.
She was doing the unthinkable — leaving her very own sanctum. Just to escape him.
No! NO! SHE CAN’T!
Rage boiled over, complemented by desperation. Aodh leapt to his feet and bolted forward, purplish-red haze gathering around the staff he held. Roots burst out of the earth, and stones floated overhead, positioned to strike—
Blighted faunimals, giving Birog’s helpers their staffs back! he hissed to himself.
—but he wasn’t having any of it. At once his tendrils burnt and snapped apart approaching roots, while striking rocks with enough ferocity to break them into pebbles. Light beams flew, and he brought up his own roots to cover him.
Which Birog’s grandson Emrys countered by summoning roots to destroy his own, because of course. A laser crashed into Aodh’s back, and the goblin tumbled into a roll. He spun around, glaring daggers at the boy, her grandmother, and their troll. At the faunimals.
“ENOUGH!” He swung his staff, and the group scattered as his purplish-red roots swarmed them. Then he turned back, and the maneater tunneler screeched as he slammed a thick root against its head. Other roots locked it in position, to keep it from burrowing.
The Dryad’s side-heads eyed the tunneler and hissed, her own roots conjuring forth to free her spawn. Aodh scoffed, a tendril greedily stretching out.
It pierced the tunneler. It went mad too, thrashing in its binds.
“You can’t escape our fates!” Aodh growled, berating himself many times over for the crack in his voice, for the weakness within him. “Take the Berserker’s power if you care for us, stubborn Dryad!”
The Dryad stared with eyeless, soulless gazes. With her tunneler gone wild, she could hardly hope to escape now. She was but a cornered rat.
A rat that fought in insolence, instead of accepting what needed to be done. The vines hanging around her robe pierced the earth.
The flurry of vines and roots that sprouted forth were but a futile protection. Aodh ripped them to shreds, a few tendrils snapping backward to deflect the chipmunk and badger faunimal’s light spheres. Haze ominously spewed out of his staff, roots bursting out to strike at the duo along with Communer Birog and her allies, their group too busy with his assault to properly retaliate. His eyes saw red, Aodh sparing no expense to take out every trifling nuisance trying to delay him. To delay the humans’ defeat.
“Every second you take will kill another of our people!” he yelled at the Druid, tendrils all but converging on her. “Take my power! TAKE IT OR ELSE!”
The Dryad feared him. She should.
“I’M HELPING YOU, COWARD! DON’T MAKE ME FORCE IT DOWN YOUR SOUL!”
Fungus-blighted Dryad. He was doing the right thing! Why could nobody see that? Why couldn’t she? It was their only chance at survival!
“TAKE IT!”
The Dryad huffed. Her vine-arm snaked out like lightning, reaching for his staff.
Aodh’s tendrils grasped it just as quickly. They nearly sliced through — but the desire within him was beyond anger. For a greater cause, he restrained himself from repeating the sin he’d done upon Communer Birog.
Anger into resolve. He stabbed a droplet of ooze through.
Oh, so bittersweet was her haunted cry. The eerie silence that followed. Finally! The deed was done! Half the war, finished at last, and no meddlers could do anything to stop it. The Berserker’s power, given to a soul far more deserving of it! A drop of his essence was more than tolerable, and it was all she needed—
Aodh buckled, the haze within him half-fading. His armor lost much of its cohesion, both it and his tendrils growing translucent. The anger felt distant, like a mere buzz in his ear.
Something deep within him felt broken, like he’d been ripped apart from the inside out. His heart? No, something more profound. His soul, perhaps, and the magic infused with it.
He reached for the Berserker’s essence locked within him. He only found scraps.
What?
The Dryad snarled and gnashed her teeth, and Aodh paled. Haze leaked out of her mouth and body like a plague. His eyes darted toward Communer Birog, rasping as haze addled her, then Emrys, his raised staff glowing with purity directed at himself. The troll and faunimals, unaffected by their lack of a tether to the Dryad, wore a myriad of troubled expressions.
The Berserker’s essence was ripped out of him. Just a drop of poison, and yet she had somehow drunk more than that.
She sapped the essence? On her own volition? Or—
Aodh felt his breath being constricted. It took a moment to realize that was the Dryad’s vine arm, pulsing with purplish-red veins and tightened around his armorless neck.
“Fine.” The Dryad’s voice came out guttural, its usual softness lost in her furious hostility. “Have it your way, scum.”
Something was wrong. This shouldn’t be happening! His rage had addled him, yes, but he’d still been careful at the end! It was just a drop! “My Dryad—” cried Aodh.
Purplish-red roots ripped out of her arm and pierced through his armor, flesh, and life.