Slipping from building to building Yierie moved without making the slightest sound, even with me on her back. As we neared the buildings that made up the human settlement, she spun around a wall and grabbed a filthily-clad man by his throat, stopping him from shouting with her other hand.
His stench rose up and made my eyes water as Yierie pressed herself close to him. “If you scream, I will snap your neck. Understand me?” The man blinked and nodded. “Good, when I remove my hand, tell me where my companions are.”
Yierie let her hand slip an inch away from his mouth and the man took a deep breath. With a movement as subtle as breathing, she bent his neck and covered his mouth again. “You have been warned twice. Scream and I will kill you painfully.”
This time when she pulled her hand away, the man struggled to speak. “They’re in the feed hall, except maybe that pretty lass you sent back to us. ‘Spect Walt’s having a merry ol time with her himself.”
“How did they subdue them?” I could see Yierie’s grip tightening.
“Gobbos… they gave us an herb what knocks out folks who breathe it, sposed to work on dragons, but it made ‘em dozy and both flew off into the night.”
Yierie swore in Elven. “Where is the feed hall and where does Walt sleep?” The man gave directions from our current position. And Yierie said, “What were you planning on doing to them?”
“We was just funnin’…”
Again, Yierie squeezed. “We was gonna give ‘em to the gobbos for protection and maybe a spot of the leftovers…”
Whatever else the man was going to say died in his throat as Yierie snapped it. I jumped on her back, but couldn’t speak over the incredibly strong stench of the man soiling himself in death. She dropped his twitching body to the floor of the ruins and spat on him. “Three or my father first?”
Either of them could have been dead by then. I wanted to find Tia, but couldn’t imagine Three’s fate at the hands of Walt and the rest of his people. “Three.”
Yierie grunted and spun toward the direction the dead guard had indicated. I tried to be upset with his death, but if what he’d said was true, I could only feel relief that he wasn’t among those behind us anymore.
A silent thing crept between houses and I rode upon her back. Yierie moved like a serpent with the taste of prey on her tongue. Voices lit the night with the awareness that they still lived and enjoyed themselves. Every one of the shouted exultations sounded like an admission of darkest guilt in my ears. We came to these people with our aprons held out, offering help in exchange for information. I’d healed them and we’d offered to purge the goblins who’d threatened them.
And they had betrayed us.
“This one is a fine piece of ass, too bad she’s bald.” My stomach lurched and I felt sickened at the words as we neared Walt’s bunk. “Be a damn shame to waste her though. Maybe we should tell Hurk and Gnaryl this one died and fell into a blender.”
Someone slapped bare skin and Yierie roared as she barreled through the door, one foot extended before her.
A trio of filthy men scrambled in the room, hiding behind Three’s nude body. One of them, Walt, produced a dagger from his back as Yierie thundered into the room. She’d taken two impossible steps before Walt laid the dagger on Three’s neck. “One fucking twitch, elf, and I slit her fucking throat!”
He nodded to the others, who moved to flank us. I thought they might try to grab me or Yierie, but instead they grabbed a small basket nearby. It smelled of camphor, blood, and a woodsy scent I’d never encountered before. Rather than let the two men complete their work, Yierie charged Walt.
I dropped into the void in time to see him draw the blade across Three’s neck. At the same time, Yierie’s hand flung two darts into either man flanking her. While I watched Three’s neck part in the void, Roo snaked forward and laid its fringes across her.
Walt screamed as Yierie’s blade removed the fingers holding his knife and her backswing removed the lone eye he’d revealed behind Three.
She tilted and let me slide off of her back. I dropped to all fours and placed my hands on Three’s choking body. The blade had severed her windpipe, vocal chords and the major arteries leading to her brain. I re-stitched all of them with my power. As I moved in the void, her skin reformed almost as quickly as Walt had parted it. In my periphery, Yierie stabbed at Walt again, cutting him where I could not quite see as I focused on Three and ignored his wailing.
Once her neck was repaired, I found a sickening brown stain in the center of her body. I reached insubstantial hands through her void form and pulled the brown wrongness out of her. It had its tendrils in various parts of her body, like cobwebs in a long forgotten box. Once the main body was removed, I extracted the rest of the strands until her void form shone clear and bright.
I fell out of the void to another of Walt’s screams. His toes were missing on both feet and his naked groin was a mass of blood and torn parts. His two companions, the ones with the baskets on the wings, had already turned grey, black veins popping out of their bodies like rivers on a textural map.
Three blinked her eyes and screamed herself as she came to. “You’re okay, everything’s okay.” I couldn’t be completely sure of my words, but I hoped they were true. I rocked her in my arms as her gaze spun wildly about the room. We still hadn’t found the rest of our friends yet.
They’d left her amor in a heap near the end of Walt’s bed. Over tears and Walt’s whimpering, Yierie explained what had happened. When Three regained her sword and equipment, she knelt down next to Walt, who continued his mewling. “You thought to take me, did you, to worm yourself inside of me while I slept.” She produced a long, slender dagger from her side. “And yet it will be I who enters you.” She dug her fingers into his jaw, forcing his mouth open as she angled her dagger into his throat. “It’s time to silence your pathetic voice.”
My skin shivered as Three snipped his vocal chords, silencing him forever.
“You’re not going to kill him?”
Yierie pointed to her bloody handiwork. “No. His body shall be a living monument for those who wrong the elves.” She turned back to the door. “We need to find my father,” She reconsidered and pointed to the baskets. “We should find out what those are first.”
Dark blue mushrooms lay beneath the covers on the baskets. Upon sight of them, Yierie and Three covered their mouths. “Evernight. Fuck!” Three hissed as she checked her body.
“I found something… inside of you when I healed you. It’s gone now.”
Three’s eyes were wide with fear as she met my gaze. “Thank you, Harriet. I owe you… more than I can say. We need to find your sister and your brother soon.”
A light neared the opening to Walt’s home. “Walt, is there something wrong with your door, bud?’
Yierie clasped her sword, tightening her grip and sprang from the room with a whirling fury. The light shook and fell a-kilter as her blade rang through the night. Three and I stepped out of the room to find a gutted, armless man staring up into the sky and gasping. She turned to us. “Everyone involved in this loses a limb.”
She nodded to us and said, “Carry her. We need to move to the feed hut.”
The name of the building made bile and discomfort rise in my gut as I considered what we might find there. Three hoisted me onto her back and patted my calf. “Where is One and Two?”
“They are moving around the camp. They know about… what’s happened.”
Three nodded and darted forward after Yierie. Ahead of us, Yierie slithered between buildings, moving with the same serpentine motion she’d taken on our original approach when I was on her back.
As I scanned the area around us, I caught a flash of blue as a figure sprang from building to building. They’d paused, taking a stutter-step as they moved between the ruins as if making sure I saw her. “Was that One?”
Three grunted at me and crouched low. The raucous sounds of the ruins had settled and dropped away. “We are converging on the feed hut now. Be ready to jump free. One will take the exit and guard our retreat.”
As we moved, fewer and fewer voices called out from the town. Only when Three laid her hand against a wall did I connect our advance with the lack of sound in the settlement. Yierie paused at a long building with the last strands of human speech echoing from within. She swallowed, ducked her head and smashed into the building. Seconds later, I hopped off of Three’s back and watched as Two appeared from a corner and poured into the building after the first three elves. One followed Two, motioning to me to enter.
I hesitated at the doorway. The last thing I wanted to see tonight was my sensei, cousin and kid sister dead and spread out before a group of my fellow humans. But I wasn’t waiting out here in ignorance, that would have been worse.
One laid her hand on my back as if to reassure me as I stepped over the ruined door. Within the room a group of people shouted, too slow for the three rage-filled elves. Yierie’s sword cut arcs through the air, dismembering people as they tried to flee.
A mass of canned food, dried meat, and baskets full of vegetables lay in the back of the hut. I didn’t see Garaghan, Alaric, or Tia anywhere. Seven people lay in various states on the floor, all of them missing limbs.
Yierie sniffed the air, which smelled like food and unwashed bodied to me and plunged into the food stores in the back. Behind a stack of baskets we found our missing friends. All three of them still lived, breathing shallowly as if something inhibited their lung function.
Knowing this was my domain, I dropped into the void and looked over them. Everyone had a brown spiderweb tangled in the center of their chests. It had spread far more in their bodies than it had in Three. It took me several minutes to pull out the various strands of brown corruption within my fellows.
Behind me, Yierie bound the injuries of her victims, speaking low to them with furious tones. The severed body parts were tossed out of the hut. I had a feeling Yierie intended something especially dark for those.
When I ripped the last shreds of brown corruption out of Garaghan, his eyes fluttered open and he rose with a start, “It’s Evernight, run!” My sensei blinked and looked around him with a frown. “Shit. Is everyone safe?” He glanced down at the humans with their missing body parts and nodded, his frown easing as he did. “I guess this was a trap?”
Yierie wiped her blade off on one of the sobbing people’s shirts. “Yes. They alerted the goblins to our presence, somehow, and drugged the rest of us with Evernight.”
“Olerandera and Balminazer?”
“They flew off drunkenly, according to the boy…” Yierie looked around and swore. “Where in the fuck did he go?”
We hadn’t seen him since we moved through the camp like vengeful spirits enacting our deadly patterns. I shrugged. “Back with the first guard, maybe?”
Yierie spat and nodded to the others. This time I wasn’t carried anywhere. “We need to help the dragons, the Evernight won’t kill them or even take over their minds, but it could make them ill and put them in poor moods.”
I shivered. Whether this was a form of Yierie understating the case or something else was happening, I could not say. But I couldn’t imagine anything but terror at an ill and sour tempered dragon.
Two grabbed my left hand as Tia grabbed my shawl. “Are you okay, Harriet?”
Though she’d been drugged and lethally poisoned, my little sister was worried about me. I scooped her up and held her to me. “I’m fine little bug. How are you?”
“I’m glad you healed me, the mushrooms gave me bad dreams.”
Alaric walked up and clapped me on the shoulder. “Thanks for the save. The rest of us never saw the poisoning coming.”
Garaghan passed us and said, “Evernight is a foul substance. Unless you are inoculated against it or avoid inhaling the spores, it can take you right away.”
“How have we avoided it so far?” I recalled the covered baskets back in the room where we’d found Three.
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“You have to agitate the fruit body to make it emit spores. It’s the only saving grace of the disgusting fungus.” Garaghan wiped his mouth and rooted about in the food hut for his armor and weapons. “What it does to the victim’s mind is… unforgivable.”
“What do we do…” I was going to say about the dragons, but Yierie cut me off before I finished.
“We are going to eliminate the goblins, find their stash of Evernight and burn it.”
Garaghan put his hand on her shoulder. “First we need to find the dragons or we could suffer some ill effects from the temporal anomaly here.”
Again, something tickled the back of my brain, like a word I’d forgotten sitting just out of reach. I shook it off as Yierie wove a rune casting. “I don’t think they’ll be too hard to find.” A soft ball of light rose from her hand and floated near eye-level. She pointed between Two and me. “The two of you should remain…”
This time I cut her off. “If you’re gonna suggest we split up again, you’re insane. I’m sticking next to the group. Splitting up cost us.”
Yierie opened her mouth to argue, but snapped her jaw shut and nodded. “You’re the leader here.”
My mouth guppied at her as I shook my head. I didn’t want to be the leader of anyone. I was barely qualified to lead Tia. But rather than argue, I shut up and accepted Yierie’s appointment. When she could see me concede her point, Yierie winked at me and grinned. “Glad you agree, lover. Now let’s find our wayward dragons.”
We didn’t have to walk far out of camp to find them. With the aid of Yierie’s glowing light, which hovered into the sky, we could spot the dragons circling up above. Having seen them circle before, I could tell something was wrong with their flight. Rather than even, regular circles, they wobbled as they made their way through the air like drunken drivers.
Yierie whistled, shrill and loud enough for Tia to release my neck and cover her ears. The two dragons shook in air and plummeted out of the sky like Yierie had successfully attacked them. Balminazer landed first, driving stones and a small debris cloud up with his crash and sending the shock through my chest as he did.
His head lulled off to the side and he growled at us with an extended vocalization. Garaghan sighed and walked up to him with his hands held high, growling in response. I opened my void sight and found various spots of brown strewn throughout the dragon’s body. Unlike the humans, Balminazer’s body appeared to be fighting the fungal infection off.
When I reached for him through the void, a glowing purple dragon head interceded. It looked nothing like Balminazer’s normal aspect. It roared at me in the void and sent a gout of purple and red fire through the air toward me.
My barrier rose automatically, protecting me from the direct wash of magical fire. I didn’t close my eyes this time, so I caught sight of the dragon’s head piercing though my barrier and the jaws closing in on me. Tia screamed through the void and I staggered back as something massive struck me right in the chest.
Roo shook over me and stiffened as I fell back onto the street. Two bent over me as I fell onto my backside and out of the void. My head pounded in an instant and I saw double as Two bent over me. “Are you okay?” The Elven words echoed through my mind as people around me started to shout.
I blinked and locked my fingers around the last vestiges of my consciousness as I struggled to stay awake. Tia’s shouting helped me stay awake. If the dragons had hurt her, we were going to have a discussion about that later. For now, I let her roll out of my grip and tried to steady my head. A second roar made me cover my ears to keep my brains from leaking out, and to keep the sound from crushing my thoughts.
“What the shit was that?” Slurred words floated out of my mouth and I could see them dance and cavort in my vision.
With a flash, Garaghan and Yierie crouched over me. Garaghan’s gaze lost its focus as he stared at me. “You tried to touch the dragons with your power, didn’t you?” I couldn’t shake my head or do anything else to deny it. If I’d moved, it would only have made my head ache worse. Clicking his tongue, Garaghan said, “Indeed. She’s been hit by the Dragongeist.” He pointed to Two. “If you have any White Bark Tea, give it to her and try to keep her from using her magic again for a while.” He walked off and I heard him grumble. “I will try to convince our dragons to take something to counteract the Evernight.”
Yierie stroked my head as Two rummaged through a bag she’d produced. When Garaghan said “tea” I didn’t know what to expect. A tall metal flask shaped like a human thermos was definitely not what I’d been expecting.
Before she handed it to me, Two pulled a small white leather pouch out of her bag and dropped a few finger fuls of herbs into the thermos. In the background, Garaghan and a pair of drunk dragons argued in a language I couldn’t speak. The tea was bitter enough to make me wish I didn’t need it, but it helped banish the pain and disorientation from the dragon’s backlash from my brain.
By the time my head cleared enough for me to stand, both of the dragons had flown away. Garaghan sat on a crumbled stoop and watched me rise on jelly legs. “Good.” He clapped his hands and walked toward me. “We’re going into the caverns to look for the last of the goblins and I want you with us.”
My head was clear enough now. “What about Tia?”
“I’m coming too!” She shouted from her spot in Alaric’s arms. He shrugged at me as if to say, “it’s up to you.”
Great.
After the position I’d taken on not splitting up, I couldn’t very well tell Tia to stay behind. Besides, almost every time we’d split up so far, something bad had happened. “Alaric’s carrying you and One and I will stay with him.” I raised my voice at the end and looked between Garaghan and Yierie, both of whom nodded at me as if to confirm my suggestion.
“Good.” Garaghan hopped up from his stoop, knocking a few loose stones away. “Let’s find the caves before the time-dilation activates.”
I wanted to ask about that further, but Yierie jogged up to me and interlaced her fingers in mine/ “Are you feeling better now?”
“Yeah, that tea really helped.”
“Don’t try to use your magic for a little while, the dragon spirit is really powerful.” Yierie tapped my head. “You could hurt yourself if you’re not careful.”
“Good to know.” It was good to know, but at the same time, I didn’t have a great deal of control over entering the void. I would have to monitor my own thoughts and make sure I didn’t accidentally slip in. Of course, we were hunting goblins and who knew what else? With that kind of danger before us, I didn’t want to leave the void off the table. If anyone was injured, I would still heal them as best as I could.
Between Garaghan and Yierie we tracked the goblins back to their caverns. When I thought of caves, I always imagined the typical open mouth in the side of a mountain cave from fantasy. This particular opening defied my expectations. A circular opening dropped down almost fifteen feet into the darkness.
Most of us, Tia and Alaric excepted, could see into the cavern. I knew the elves could, and my own eyes pierced the darkness with ease. Yierie looked between me and Tia and sighed. She pointed to Alaric and said, “You stay up with Three and lower them down into the cave after us. Then join us after.”
Alaric nodded and Three removed a coil of rope from a small pouch on her side. The pouch was easily a quarter of the size needed to accommodate that rope. I assumed she stored it using magic, but had no idea otherwise. Three used an intricate series of knots to tie me to the end of the rope and then hoist me over the side.
Tia wiggled as they tied her up and lowered her down next to me. We held onto each other as Three and Alaric lowered us down. The instant I hung over the mouth of the cave, the stench of goblins and death threatened to choke me out. In terms of severity, the stench approached being psychically punched by a dragon spirit. Yierie caught me and noticed my olfactory distress. She handed me a small sachet of aromatic herbs. “Breathe through this. It will help prevent the Evernight from affecting you.”
I might have argued with her, except I’d already demonstrated how effective I was at counteracting the Evernight. As the only one who could do it with any certainty, the rest of my hunting party’s safety was in my hands. I shivered with fear at the weight of responsibility on my shoulders then.
Tia sprang up into my arms and hugged me as if to reassure me with the force of her grip. At the same time, Alaric and Three jumped down into the pit with us. They recovered like ninjas, though perhaps the drop wasn’t high enough to warrant the comparison. Brushing themselves off like superheroes in a film, they both strode forward with their heads held high. I had to stifle a laugh at the image as they moved in concert.
“What?” Alaric narrowed his eyes at me and I realized he couldn’t see much, if anything, in this darkness. With that realization, I understood how brave and badass he really was.
I tapped Three on the shoulder. “Is there any way to let Alaric and Tia see in here?”
She blinked at me and her faced darkened, as if she were embarrassed not to have thought of that already. “Yes, One knows the magic.”
One walked back and cast a surprisingly long rune phrase over Alaric and Tia. I kept myself from trying to find the strands of magic with an act of will. A few seconds after the magic ended, Alaric’s head perked up and he said, “oh, pretty.”
Stalactites hung above us, dripping water into a little pools. Only a few sparse, thin stalagmites rose up from the floor. Someone had cleared this as a walkway. Nothing about the dark, smelly cave looked pretty to me, but I wasn’t going to argue with Alaric. There was no point to it anyway.
He took up a position in front of me and One fell in behind me. Three walked in front of Alaric and Two walked right behind Yierie and Garaghan. Compared to the elves, Alaric and I stomped through the caves like clumsy giants. Our footsteps echoed through the caves and made the backs of my teeth itch with every clomping sound. I wanted to ask the others if we were causing problems, but that would only have made more noise.
No one complained or hushed us, so I just continued through the caves and hoped to avoid bringing attention to us. We’d walked for a few dozen yards when Garaghan raised his hand and the whole troupe stopped. Yierie cast something short and quick and shadows shaped themselves around her as she crept forward. The rest of us remained still and as quiet as we could manage. My breathing was still loud as a dragon’s growl in my ears, but again, no one tried to silence me.
When Yierie appeared out of the shadows, I gasped. One moment the area around Garaghan was empty and black, the next minute Yierie’s red hair bobbed next to him. She raised three fingers and pointed around the bend. Then she motioned to Garaghan, herself and Two. They seemed to understand the gestures and looked back at the rest of us, pointing to our group of five, then to the floor and then to their mouths.
Three waved me back to the side of the cave wall, into the slick section of stone while she and One took up flanking positions. Alaric stood directly in front of Tia and me, the shield which would protect us both.
The only sound that alerted me to something changing up ahead was a soft whump as a body fell. I could not help but imagine the body belonging to Yierie. I tried to force the image out of mind until Yierie appeared at the wall with a grin. She made a circle at us and the two elves kicked away from their positions at my sides. Alaric held out a hand to me as I broke away from the walls.
Around the bend, three decapitated goblins lay in a heap. The elves had moved them so they would not impede foot traffic in the hall. I couldn’t imagine the other goblins missing their three dead, but then again, the stench and darkness might have concealed them enough. Or Yierie simply wanted our own escape path cleared if we needed to run.
I completely understood that as well. Stumbling over the bodies we killed in the darkness could end one of us.
All three of the fallen goblins wore little surcoats over their torsos. They looked to be made from chainmail and held together by bailing wire and hope. I prayed the rest of the goblins were similarly attired.
As we crept forward, the sounds of voices and squawking rose in the distance. It began as a low buzzing that reached back in the caves and mocked our progress. Grackles made a similar sound in the early fall, a kind of proud announcement of their aerial supremacy. My skin crawled and my stomach clenched the further in we moved.
Above ground, we’d slain dozens, possibly hundreds of goblins. But the sounds of those down here were denser even than the army which had gathered against us. Garaghan looked back over the group and waved for us to stop. With a simple pair of runes, he cast another magic into us. It swirled in the air with tiny streaming nebula arms. Each of them flew into us and as mine touched me, I stood up a little straighter. The force that had been chipping away at my bravado was suddenly gone.
“Magical fear?” I whispered the question and Garaghan nodded.
“Goblins have very little magic individually, but a sufficiently large group of them exudes their own powers.” He looked up and down the tunnels and back toward One and Three. “Once the battle starts, we should expect a contingent of them to circle around us and approach from the rear. Be vigilant.”
Three nodded her head and One let out a steady breath. I had the feeling she’d been ceaselessly vigilant since we’d discovered the humans above working with the goblins. Maybe before even.
After both of them acknowledged his words, he motioned to Yierie and they consulted for a short time. I walked up to join them and listen in.
“…Evernight strewn about the caverns. Be ready with wind magic and look for their shaman.”
“Shaman?”
Yierie nodded. “Goblin leaders are either like the ogre we fought before, large and dumb, or they are clever and magically gifted. Shamans. With the mass of voices up ahead, I assume they’ll have at least two more strong goblins and as many Shamans.”
“How are there so many goblins in here?” I asked the question, but my own intuition supplied the answer at the same time as Yierie.
“Timeslips or portals. Perhaps both.” Yierie looked at Garaghan who nodded. “Goblins could have bred themselves to such a high population in a few years, even with a group dedicated to winnowing their numbers. With support, goblins could overrun an entire human city in a few months. They breed incredibly quickly and have no natural predators except for other subterranean humanoids or monsters.”
I briefly wondered if Yierie and Garaghan had attended some sort of monster hunting school in their youths. We’d left the Crystal Orchid before Tia and I could have learned about such a thing. It made me smile, despite our surroundings.
“We have to keep any of the stragglers from escaping.” Garaghan ran his gauntleted fingers over the walls and frowned. “Or I would say so if I thought we had any serious chance of it.”
“What do you mean?”
He looked back at me. “One goblin alone is enough to repopulate, given enough time. And I suspect they’ve carved minor tunnels through this entire area. With enough such tunnels, it will be trivial for them to hide their young or for a handful of goblins to escape our attack.”
“Then why bother?” I frowned at myself as I gave my question voice.
Garaghan smiled and held his hand out toward me as if he though the question a natural one. “Because we have appointed ourselves this task. And because if we do not do this, the goblins could overwhelm the entire city in a few years. Goblin cities are a cancer, a foul thing of abuse, perversion, and corruption.”
“Oh.” I nodded with him.
Yierie ran her had down my shoulder and over my arm. “Also because it is the right thing for a hunter party to do. The experience will be helpful for you and Alaric, perhaps even Tia.”
“You make it sound like this is a field trip.” I’d meant to sound wry, but both Garaghan and Yierie nodded.
Garaghan said, “Exactly. This is a trip into the field where we shall assess your readiness and the strength of your fellow hunters.”
“I kinda feel like maybe we should try for something a little easier our first time out.”
“But this is not your first time out,” Garaghan pointed to Yieirie and back to my chest. “Your ‘first time out’ was against a Bedrock Wyrm and you saved the lives of adventurers a good deal more skilled than you. Besides, this also affords me an opportunity to observe the Maidens Three in combat. So far, I have been pleased. Their skills have already improved over what they were when they entered your service.”
I nodded. “They’re all pretty amazing, huh?”
Yierie covered her mouth and shook her head to keep herself from laughing. “Do not let them hear you say such things or they will never respect you.”
I could tell she was teasing me, but a part of me wanted to march back to the others and tell them right now how in awe I was of their battle prowess.
Garaghan made a motion with his hand. “We’ve conferred enough. Just know that the chance of clearing out these tunnels is essentially zero. Nonetheless we are planning to clear out the whole system today, even if we know it is impossible.” He pointed to Yierie and me, “if you are able, try to prevent the Shaman from using their powers, but do not hurt yourself, Harriet. The dragon strike is fresh still and you do not want to exacerbate your injuries.”
Yierie and I nodded in unison and she favored me with a pleasant smile. “Let us be vigilant and swift, may we all climb out of this cavern on our own power this day.”