I follow Katherine to her house. I had actually already seen it when I came into the village. It’s the third house on the left from the front gate. Its outer walls are painted green while the window shutters and the roof are brown. Thin vines droop down wildly from the roof for decoration. Also the dirt around the base of the house is mulched and laden with flowers. A botanist living in a nature-themed house. How shocking.

Katherine invites me inside. Without being told, I take off my shoes and leave them by the door. I notice that there is a coat rack, but I don’t use it. I prefer to keep my favorite purple cutaway coat on my shoulders. I follow Katherine deeper into the house. The kitchen is on the left just past the front door and the salon is straight ahead. Well I say salon, but clearly for them the space doubles as the living room and dining room. Katherine’s mother is sitting at the dining room table creating indigo dye out of the dried roots of mana plants. A good indigo dye is quite rare and can sell for a great deal of âmes. Seeing that she knows how to make the most out of every part of her plants encourages me. She’s as skilled of a botanist as I had hoped.

She rises from the table to greet me. I nod and say hello. She holds up her blue hands to explain why she’s not offering me a handshake. Of course I saw what she was doing and hadn’t expected one anyway. “My name is Margaret Hamilton.”

“Souladonis. Nice to meet you.”

Margaret has peach colored skin, shoulder length puffy gray hair, overly large round glasses, a white wool sweater rolled up to her elbows, and brown pants tied entirely too high up on her waist, strangled to death by her belt. She looks like the cliché school nerd who grew old without ever grasping the concept of fashion. I only halfway listen to what she’s saying while I concentrate on summing her up. But from hearing her accent and the big words that she strings together fluidly, I can tell that she is a well-educated, bookworm scientist. The only questions are what is she doing in this town and why does her daughter look so different from her?

Nevertheless, I avoid asking the obvious questions. I hate it when people ask me questions about my past. I’d be a hypocrite to try digging into Margaret’s history. If she says that Katherine is her daughter, then Katherine is her daughter. That’s good enough for me.

“So how can I help you Lord Souladonis?”

“I’m looking for a special remedy; one that I haven’t been able to find anywhere. I’m hoping that you might have something.”

Margaret invites me to sit at the table. I sit in the nearest available seat while Katherine circles the table to the other side to find a seat. Then Margaret moves to a nearby dresser and grabs a small box off of the top shelf. She comes to the table and sets down the box facing towards me. She opens it to reveal potions of varying shapes and colors.

“I have all kinds of potions and remedies. Whatever you need.”

“I’m looking for a remedy for the petrification curse. I’ve tried all sorts of cures and remedies but nothing has worked.”

Margaret turns the box towards herself and sifts through the contents. She then pulls out a vial of light blue liquid and gives it a little shake. “Have you tried an organic/magic hybrid potion combined with acid? It’s made of wild bergamot, crushed mana plant leaves, hydrochloric acid, and sugar for flavoring.”

“I’ll try anything. How much for the potion?” I ask eagerly.

To my surprise she places the vial back into the box and closes it. “Money won’t do us any good. Not when the goblins keep attacking our villagers and stealing everything we have. We rarely see traveling mages and the inquisitors don’t come out this far. We need someone to find their hideout and get back our stolen goods.”

“So in other words, if I solve your goblin problem, then you’ll give me the potion?”

Just as soon as Margaret can nod her head, I’m already on my way to the front door. Katherine follows behind me as I exit the house. I didn’t bother asking for any suggestions on where the goblins might be hiding or how I could find them. I figure I’ll just charge into the woods and start blasting spells until I find what I’m looking for.

While on the way to the nearby woods, Katherine tries to get my attention. I don’t stop walking. I have no time for the nonsense of a village girl right now. “I have an idea,” she pleads.

“I have an idea too,” I tell her. “Find the goblins, blast them with fire, get the potion, done.”

“Yes, but you’d have to find the goblins in the forest first. That could take forever. Instead, we should fill a cart with empty boxes and pretend that we’re transporting valuables to Magali. The goblins will come out to rob us, then you can use just enough magic to chase them away. Follow them back to their hideout in the forest and destroy their home. That should force them to move away from the village.”

Hold on a minute... That actually makes sense! I stop walking and turn to Katherine with one eyebrow raised. “That’s actually a good idea. We’ll go with your plan.”

She swats me on the arm. “See,” she says giggling.

Yeah I do see. I thought that Katherine was the presumptive one, but really it was me. I assumed that she was just a foolish and uneducated village girl, but she’s actually quite clever. Furthermore, her mother is a scientist. Margaret probably home schooled her too. A lot of rural villagers don’t even know how to read and write, but I’m willing to bet that Katherine is not one of them.

I follow Katherine. She leads me behind the village’s general store, where there is a cart and empty wooden crates. The two of us take about ten minutes or so to load up the cart with some empty crates. We then cover the boxes with a blanket to make it seem like we don’t want the goblins to know what we’re doing. Call it reverse psychology. Goblins are relatively smart for monsters, but they’re far from geniuses.

Yet just in case something does go terribly wrong, I take the precaution of marking our current location with my portal stone.

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

“What’s that?” Katherine asks.

I show her the diamond-shaped stone in my hand. It’s a stone that records its current position. That position is then marked in the user’s portal record book. By tearing a page out of the book, one can return to any spot previously recorded by the stone. If I ever get into serious danger, then I can escape using the Portal spell like I did the one time when I was severely wounded on the Molten Islands. However, I never carry more than one page in my book. A lot of mages become over-reliant on the Portal spell. It makes them weak. Moreover, you can only visit places where you’ve already been, and I won’t find a cure for petrification by revisiting towns that I’ve already searched.

Katherine finishes examining the stone. I put it back into my coat pocket. Then I roll the cart out of the village’s rear entrance. Out of the backside of the village, there is a dirt path that extends from Belle Forest all the way to the king’s city of Magali. I intend to go to Magali as soon as I finish my business here. When I do, I’ll let this path guide me there. But for now I’m only pretending to walk it to get the attention of the goblins.

As Katherine and I walk along the path, I check the edges of the forest out of the corners of my eyes. I hope that I don’t look too suspicious. If they realize that it’s a trap, they won’t attack. Maybe I’m giving them too much credit though. I should just think about something else and not worry about it.

I gaze up at the fluffy white clouds in the clear blue sky. When I was a kid, my girlfriend and I used to compete to find the most interesting shaped cloud in the sky. I only won once when I spotted a dragon-shaped cloud. I guess back then I was carefree and naïve. Life in a peaceful magic academy, with a prosperous family, and a pretty girlfriend made me believe in fairy tales and I was the invincible hero. Yet I had to discover the hard way that real life is ugly, harsh, and unforgiving. People are sick, people are hungry, people die in the street with no one to mourn them, kings start wars, the weak suffer, and mistakes can’t be taken back. Gazing at clouds is useless. Power alone solves problems in this world.

Suddenly, a howling wind rushes through the forest and sends a chill down my spine. On cue, eight little green men wielding knives emerge from the forest. They charge full speed directly towards our cart. Half of them are on our left side and the other half on our right. Apparently, goblins know how to coordinate an ambush. Quaint.

I order Katherine to stand behind me. The goblins are only about three feet tall. Even charging at their full speed, they’re not that fast. I have more than enough time to figure out which spells I should use. Like before, I could just blast them with the Comet spell, but comets explode on impact. With the goblins huddled so close together, it will be hard not to accidentally kill all of them at once. At least one or two will need to survive if I’m to follow them to their hideout.

As the goblins draw near, I decide to completely exterminate the half on the right side. I cast the Water Shark spell at the goblin in the center of the group. A shark-shaped water missile strikes the goblin with enough impact to kill it instantly and splash water over the other three goblins near it. I take advantage of the other goblins being drenched from my water spell and finish them all off at once with the Chain Lightning spell.

Next, I turn my attention to the four on the opposite side. They’re starting to get dangerously close. Nonetheless, I can’t use an area-of-effect spell this time. Maybe I should try some Illusion Magic to really test their intelligence. Just before they can reach me, I cast the Stunt Double spell. It’s a spell that creates an illusion of its caster. I position the copy of myself to the right side of the goblin group. When they see the other image of me standing nearby, they stop in their tracks. Then they hold a little group discussion. I watch them amused at how they discuss a little, then point at me, discuss a little more, point at my copy, and then huddle together even closer to discuss some more. For as ugly as goblins are, they can still be quite charming. Finally, they come to a consensus. Two attack me, and two attack my copy. Perfect.

I wait until the two approaching goblins get into range. As soon as they’re close enough, I leap forward and slam my heavy stone staff down on the head of the goblin to the left. I feel its skull give under the weight of my staff and I know that one blow is enough. The other goblin on the right pokes at me with his knife, but his little goblin arms don’t reach me. With a slight twist of the hips, I rotate enough to swipe my staff into the side of its head. Like the other goblin, it goes down from one blow. I almost feel sorry for them. For all of their planning, they forgot to take into account the fact that I’m twice their size and my weapon is much longer than theirs. Oh well. It was a good effort.

I check in on the last two goblins. They stab at my illusion until it disappears. The moment it fades away, I can see in their eyes that they realize they’ve been tricked. Looking over at me, they see that the other two goblins are down and that they’re the only ones left. Right away, they give each other a quick glance, and then book it for the woods. I immediately start to chase after them, yet Katherine foolishly tries to follow me. Incidentally, I lose a second off of the chase because I have to stop her. “Don’t follow me! It’s too dangerous!” I order.

“But!” she protests.

“Just stay here!”

“But…”

I run double time to catch back up to the goblins. It’s a little harder to follow them through the trees, but I adroitly remain on their trail. Everything is going according to plan. Now I just have to reach their hideout, drive them out, and reclaim the villagers’ stuff. Then I’ll get the potion, use it on my staff, and if it works, I’ll finally be able to go home for the first time in six years.