Chp. 6 A Dangerous Encounter

A few weeks later we swung by Enzo’s, to picked up some tools, food, spices, I could not believe all the spices Enzo had, and other supplies Ava at one point reminded me that they had to carry all of the stuff he bought with them. I remaindered her I had the advantage of my storage space, from that point on it was Jensen and Ava’s storage space. I found that Enzo had a variety of potions that would restore both HP and MP, so I picked up a few of each. Enzo for his part was a different person when you were a paying customer, he practically purred with excitement trying to help you find everything you need.

And that started our daily routine for the next few months they would stop at Enzo’s pickup supplies and go out and do the jobs they had picked up the day before. I was introduced not only to a bigger breed of thrafsi kounelis that were the size of a cow, but also several other types of dangerous creatures, such as an aichmira arkouda. An aichmira arkouda was like a grizzly back at home except for it had quills like a porcupine that he could shoot out of his body in any direction, it was 3 times the size of the largest grizzly bears I had ever seen. In books of course I had never actually seen a grizzly bear. And it had this tail that was like a scorpion tail only fuzzy and with quills at the end and a long stinger at the tip. The arkouda had caused me to use all the potions I had bought, and we barely made it out alive… See what I did there. Ava insisted that every creature we hunted was a danger to society and would destroy farmland and or beings trying to live peaceful lives.

We had just finished taking down a small group, of oxy arouraious basically a large dog sized rat with large sharp teeth and green almost acid like saliva, and we were collecting our things and getting ready to make the long trip back from the Sylveria forest that was several miles south back to the city when a humanoid creature came out of nowhere and started to attack us. “You look like a great snack”. the Orc said. As he took a swing at us with a club that looked like a telephone pole with spikes on it. Ava was able to dodge the club easily, on the other hand, I was a little slower and ducked to the inside. While the spikes didn’t hit part of the handle did in a glancing blow, causing me to lose my balance. The orc quickly brought the club down mashing rocks and tree limbs where I had been only a second before.

“Hurry we have to get away, he is too strong for us to take on, at our current level” Ava yelled.

“You go no were…I eat” the Orc said in a thickly accented growl.

Ava let loose two arrows in quick succession both finding purchase in the thick orc’s arm, he growled in anger and pulled out the arrows. If it was it was supposed to be a distraction, it wasn’t much of one the orc didn’t stop but for a second in its pursuit of me or should I say lunch in the current situation. But these months of training and running jobs every day were not for nothing. I was a level 3 now and much faster and stronger than I was when I started this whole mess. And now I had my guard up and ready. The orc swung his club again, this time I dodged with little effort. Thanks to that great ASU education I’m going to be paying on, for the rest of my life. I had a good knowledge of human body anatomy 101, I just hoped an orc’s anatomy is close to a human. I took my sword and tried to sweep the blade across where his hamstring should be. That did little more than leave a scratch. Orc skin is a lot tougher than human skin. That can be lesson 1 of Orc Anatomy 101. He swung his club again this time the spikes got hung up in a tree, at the same time Ava let loose another arrow that found its way into the orc’s back shoulder blade. I ducked under the club this time instead of sweeping the blade I swung the sword like it was an ax and I was down a tree. And it did something, the orc yelled out in pain dropping to one knee. Ava at that point dropped from a tree she had been shooting from running her dagger into the nape of this neck.

“Ahhhhhhh, I’ll grill you after I’m done”, the orc yelled in pain.

Before he had time to move, I swung my sword at the orc again, but this time I missed. The orc grabbed Ava throwing her off his back and into a tree, she hit it with a loud thud. Dropping his club, the orc grabbed me, man this thing was fast, trying to squeeze the life out of me, he Yelled “You will be nice and Tender, I’ll break all of your bones”. Unable to move and with my arms pend down I didn’t have many options quickly thinking quickly I had only one thing I could do. I dropped my sword, which left me without any kind of weapon. Then I heard a slicing sound as the tip hit the ground, the orc let go instantly. My sword tip and fell right through his foot and into the ground. Someone really was watching out for me. As I fell from his arms I grabbed my sword, the orc yelled in pain as I ripped it from his foot. At about that time an arrow flew by and landed in the chest of the orc. The orc went from yelling in pain to silent shock. Before he could do anything else I shoved the tip of my dirty bloody sword into its neck as hard as I could, and it went all the way through. I twisted the sword as I pulled it free from the orc. The orc fell to the ground lifeless.

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As I fell to the ground, I set there catching my breath and went through the message screens.

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image [https://i.imgur.com/q52Fsy8.png]

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“Well, that was a rough one”, Ava said as she walked next to me.

She started healing both of us, I was out of healing potions, but I still had a few mana potions, so I gave her one after she was done.

“There I think we are good now”, she said. “We should probably head back to the city before we run into anything else that might be out here”, she continued.

“What if,” I began, “we stayed out here and continued through the forest a little longer? I have plenty of manta potions so you could just heal us, and we could level up a little more.”

I could sense hesitation in Ava, there was something about these woods she didn’t like, I had noticed it a little as we had come in to do our current jobs that were here, but as I suggested going further in there was real fear on her face. As Ava started to protest, she stopped, “too late, I didn’t realize in the fight with the orc that we went this far into the woods, they are already here” she said with a sigh.

At that moment three elves appeared in front of us. They were tall and had a fair complexion and that glow I had come to realize was something all elves had.

“Thank you for ridding us of that Orc it was getting far too close to our village”, one of the male elves said with a bow.

“No problem, anytime”, Ava said turning to walk away quickly, “we will be on our way now bye, come on Jensen”.

As I started to walk away with her, not knowing why she was acting odd. I heard the female elf say her name “Ava”.

Ava stopped dead in her tracks, “Mom” she said quietly.

“Ava is that really you?”, the elf lady asked. “Oh, how I missed you, I thought I would never see you again.”

Then I realized why Ava didn’t want to go further into the forest, this was the forest where the elven village she is from was.

“Please will you come back to the village for just a little bit and talk with me?” the elf asked.

Ava turned to her mom and slowly nodded. “I can’t stay long, and my friend has to be able to come as well”, Ava replied.

“Of course, my dear,” the elf said, “please follow me”.

We walked through the deepest part of the Sylveria forest, where the trees were so big, they reminded me of those redwood trees in California that you could drive through. We finally came to a village tucked deep in the woods, some of the houses and buildings were made on the ground, but as I looked up, I noticed other houses and buildings, like tree houses going up the trees, there were bridges and what looked like vine elevators going to the different levels. We took a vine elevator to the third level to one of the biggest trees houses I had ever seen. She turned to me and said, “Welcome to my home, as you know by now, I am Ava’s mom, Eleandora. Please make yourself at home”. As I looked around Eleandora’s home was the largest, and I could tell she must have been the leader of this elf village. I sat down beside Ava.

Eleandora began talking, “I’m glad to see your doing well Ava, oh how I have missed you. We looked for weeks throughout the forest for you. I had was afraid an orc or some other beast had gotten you. Where my dear did you run away to?”

Ava explained that she had overheard the elders talking about her mother, and how they said that Ava being here was causing her to be sick, so she left. She then explained what she was doing there now, she explained that Enzo had found her and had raised her and took care of her for all those years. How she had worked all those years to become a hunter and to be strong. And then she introduced Jensen. Eleandora looked at Jensen for a long minute with a strange look in her eye, then she went back to listening to Ava.

Ava continued telling the story of everything that had happened and what brought her back to the forest today.

“Ava my dear” Eleandora started, “I have something to tell you, you did not cause me to be sick”.

Ava looked at her mom shocked, “but I heard what the elder’s said”, Ava said quietly.

“You heard what the elder’s wanted you to hear” her mom continued, “they were trying to get you to run away, it took me many years to find out the truth.”

Ava’s mom started explaining, the elders had come up with a plain to push Ava to run away from the village and go far away. She told us of how one of the elder’s had a vision, that a half-elf, half-human would find someone from far away, to bring the elves out of the woods and into a fight they might not win but would be the only way to save the world. The elders thought if they sent Ava away, she would not be the one to do this. She would maybe die or disappear, but the vision would never come true since she was the only half elf to exist in over a thousand years.

She then looked at me with the same puzzled look she gave me before. “Jensen it is nice to meet you” she said.

“Nice to meet you too, Ma’am” I said.

“So how did you two meet” she asked. I looked at Ava, “you could tell her everything, if she wanted to, she has the ability to read your mind so you might as well,” Ava said.

Really, I looked at Eleandora she shook her head yes.

“Let’s do that, I want to see if it’s like the movies” “if it’s not too much trouble” if it’s not too much trouble I added.

“None at all” she said. She touched her hand to my forehead, shut her eyes, and began to concentrate. After a few odd expressions she gasp and opened her eyes. “Wow Jensen, you’re an interesting guy aren’t you” she said, “how much of have you told Ava”, She asked?

Pretty much all of it, she knows I’m not from here, but she doesn’t really understand where I’m from I don’t think.

“Would you like for me to share that information with her?” she asked.