“Did you just blow the horn?” Sailhin’s voice sounded like a whisper, and yet it was so easy to hear from the piece in my ear.

“How else would we get them to come in the right direction?” Dodger asked, shrugging.

Paeris sighed, “alright, it seems that they split into two groups three knights and about ten regular ones per group.”

“It’ll be fine even if they all came at once, much more fun.”

She tied the broken strap to her waist and walked to one of the trees.

Paeris sighed even more aggressively “it wouldn’t be fine, the smaller amount makes it so you can kill them quickly, more makes there be some that can run away and-”

“Let’s climb up and hop down when they show up.”

Dodger seemed to be ignoring him completely. If Sailhin was the one talking, would she have done the same?

“-obviously if one runs away then they’ll just send for more reinforcements-“

“It’ll be fine, the grunts are hardly worth any effort.”

She grinned at me, motioned up at the branches with her head and started climbing. I looked around for Mezu and saw that he was playing with one of the orcs. I went over to him and picked him up, heading to a tree a few yards away from hers.

I moved him till he was sitting on my back and started climbing. She only went up about four branches, so I matched her height.

She wasn’t wrong. Even if she was fighting lazily before, it still took one cut per orc. If the knights were slightly better, then it would take maybe a few more for each of them. I put Mezu down on the branch next to me.

“If you sit here, you’ll get to watch from a cool place.”

He nodded and we waited.

It wasn’t long before a group of orcs came into the clearing. The ones that looked the same as we had been seeing went straight for the corpses, while three that were much larger, and more equipped looked around the area. They sniff the air loudly and two of them walked around a bit searching. They each came close to our trees and once mine was under me and he started to look up I pulled my blade out and jumped down.

I only added my aura to coat my blade, assuming the force of my fall would be more than enough force. I wasn’t expecting it to go cleanly through, but it did.

The other orcs were startled, and the other knight roared coming after me.

I met it halfway, our blades connecting. I saw a swell of mana within its body and with it I felt the weight pushed back on my blade start to grow.

I stepped to the side and pulled my blade down to my side.

Without my blade’s resistance, he fell forwards slightly. I slashed up at his unguarded neck.

It didn’t go all the way through, but I had cut enough that it dropped its blade to clutch at its gushing wound.

I finished the job, putting more force behind it this time, and sliced through his hands and neck.

I turned my head to see if there were any left, but Dodger was wiping her axe off.

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“Nicely done. Just a shame they keep going for you first. Also, you said you don’t know your other half, right?”

“Yeah… why?”

“I think you might be half goliath.”

I don’t think I’d be able to feign shock about the goliath thing since Alcoroth already thought that was the most likely candidate. I was hopefully surprised enough that she was able to guess that, then again, did my face even show my emotions accurately for it to matter?

“Why do you think that?”

“You see my markings?”

I nodded.

“I was born with them, but until I started learning my aura, they never glowed. You’ve got markings on your neck and face that glow when you use your aura.”

“What?”

“Yeah, I didn’t notice it sooner since we haven’t fought together, and earlier I wasn’t too sure since I couldn’t tell the difference between the glow I thought I saw, and the glow of your pathways. But now I can clearly see them.”

She got a bit closer to me and grinned slightly.

“You gotta show me your back later, I’ve only ever met one other goliath before. But you’re half so I wonder what’s going to happen to your markings when you clear all your pathways.”

Do I have yet another extremely identifiable physical feature?

“That’s so awesome though! I never thought I’d meet another one.”

“Are you serious?”

“Yeah, that old lady told me that all goliaths have markings. I didn’t even think to ask her about what would happen if there was a half goliath. So cool that you’re one though.”

She blew the horn again.

“Let’s get the rest of them.”

She went back into her tree, and I went to mine.

“I was right.”

Alcoroth grinned and moved to the back of my neck.

“Your hair was always covering these parts, so I didn’t notice before but she’s right there are glowing marks going down your neck and up the back of your head. We should check later where the rest of them go.”

I covered the back of my neck with my hand a bit uncomfortable.

“Stop staring at it.”

“You’ve been quite lucky now that I think about it.”

He floated away from my neck so he could look at me.

“What? Lucky how?”

“If anyone else found out you were a half high elf, you most likely would have been sold into slavery. If you were made to fight or in a life or death situation and your aura woke up and your healing was noticed, they’d be even more interested in keeping you as a slave. Working hard to hide your ears all these years, and never awakening your aura kept you safe.”

It wasn’t a great thought. How had I survived all that time on my own? After leaving Naredur… I was on my own and went to Azmar then met Lukon and Surge…. Right? But if my uncle knew what I was, would he have really just let me go to Azmar on my own?

“Why did you bring up such complicated things now?”

Dodger blew the horn yet again.

I looked over at her and she had a frown on her face. The last time the group had come rather quickly, but now it was taking a bit.

“Don’t be so impatient Dodger, they were on the other side of the forest, they should be heading for you now just wait a bit longer. And if you didn’t deal with them as easily as you had, we would’ve had a long discussion about going off plan.”

This was Sailhin, no longer whispering.

“Once you’re done, come to the encampment quickly.”

“They could hurry it up a bit more” she complained but put the horn down, “it’s not like they’re even hard to fight, I want to get to the captains they’ve gotta be more fun.”

We sat there a bit longer before we heard them coming. This time they were more wary. They slowed as they got nearer, and their weapons were drawn. Two knights were at the front of the group, and one was at the back. There were less normal orcs this time. About three, I think.

I looked over to Dodger and signed, “where? Three.”

She shrugged and pointed at me and then the knights in front. I nodded and once they were near me, I leapt down. The first wasn’t as easy to cleave in half as the last one. I still got through its head completely, but my blade got stuck about halfway in.

The other knight pulled me off of it, throwing me against a tree and holding me there.

It grinned and licked its lips, before saying something I couldn’t understand.

I had let go of my sword. My hands grabbed at his, which were wrapped around my throat. I couldn’t get my fingers under his so I grabbed onto its forearm and gripped as tightly as I could with both hands.

I didn’t break anything, and felt my fingers only dig into his skin and felt some skin tear. It seemed that I could hold a decent amount of weight on his arm so I held on and lifted my feet planting both of them into its torso throwing as much aura as I could into him.

I felt him shudder and the grip on my throat loosened completely. I let go of his arm too and fell to the ground. I didn’t think I had killed him, so I tackled him, throwing my shoulder into his stomach and wrapping my arms around him.

I got him back two steps before he stabbed my back with a small blade. I kept pushing though and we stumbled together over the other knight I had killed.