Willow
Forest, Feather-branch Forest, Savriâ
“It’s thu, pupil of the feline, the excite of the bite. Playin’ it cool, avoidin’ our riiival. Hmmm hm hm…” Willow belted out on-the-spot, legally distinct, parody lyrics as she followed Naomi. I guess now that I’m not on Earth I could just sing the actual song and I won’t have lawyers coming after me… Nah, this is more fun. Their leader turned to look at Willow with a raised eyebrow before turning to watch where she was going and avoid trees, “Uh Willow… Why are you singing, exactly?”
“Eh? Just bored.”
“Right, but you might attract predators.”
“Good Lord Jesus, I hope so. I’m so bored.”
Kent broke in from behind and a bit to Willow’s right side, “Weren’t you the one that was super excited to ‘go explore the forest’?”
She turned and walked backwards so she could look at him as she answered, “Yeah! But I figured after an hour or so of walking something would change, maybe we’d roll a random encounter and BOOM - fight against pack of warewolves! You know?”
Willow stepped left to avoid running into the tree whose shadow she felt expanding around her. The terrain was so samey she felt like walking backwards in the forest was completely natural. Actually, it was a good way to distract herself!
“You’re going to run into a tree.” Kent said, while looking somewhat amused.
“Nuh hu!”
“Careful Willow, you wouldn’t want to hurt the innocent trees.” Naomi’s voice came floating faintly from in front.
“She’s sticking out her tongue at me. I think it’s meant for you.” Kent ratted on Willow.
Before Willow could defend her honor and, more importantly, continue enjoying the impromptu bantering session, something finally happened. They’d been walking for almost eight hours and nothing had changed at all. If the UICI mapping function didn’t show a very certain straightish path, Willow would have sworn they were just walking in circles.
After hours of quiet walking with little scattered chats here and there, Willow spun eagerly upon hearing the unexpected CRACK from the party’s right. She almost cheered as she saw another one of the little pop-hoppers. She threw up her arms and shouted excitedly, “Pop-hopper! I call it!” Then she took off after it.
“Willow -”
“Wait don’t just -”
She ignored both cries as she dashed off excitedly. She didn’t even necessarily want to fight it. If the thing decided to talk she’d be more than happy to oblige with some good old fashion conversation. The excitement came entirely from something finally happening.
The pop-hopper turned and leapt impressively. It somehow spun itself mid-air to position itself so that its feet struck into a tree’s trunk at an angle and it pushed off hard, exploding away far faster than Willow could hope to match as it bounced from tree to tree. She wound down her run, disappointed. She sighed, wondering if she should keep chasing or just give it up, then froze. She heard another shout from behind that she was fairly sure must be Kent.
Spinning on her heel she sprinted back toward her friends, scolding herself for rushing off without them and leaving them vulnerable as she did. Just because I thought they would definitely be safe, I shouldn’t have left them! What’s wrong with me? Was I really that bored? If those stupid pop-hoppers actually managed to trick me… Wow I’ll never live that down.
Sliding to a halt as she found Naomi and Kent back to back, surrounded by unfamiliar figures with only two arms each, she sighed in relief, “Oh thank God, I didn’t get played by a pop-hopper-plotter.”
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Naomi
Forest, Feather-branch Forest, Savriâ
It wasn’t entirely shocking when Willow rushed off as soon as she saw a little monster. She said it was a pop-hopper, though Naomi didn’t get a very good look at it before it and the overly excited woman were both gone. She only gave a token shout of, “Willow!” to try and remind her that they weren’t exactly in a safe place. It was no surprise when Willow entirely ignored her and Jonah’s shouts.
Honestly, it shouldn’t have been an issue. Willow could definitely handle herself. She and Jonah had both armed themselves with some branches whittled roughly down to resemble short staves, so they weren’t quite helpless either. The problem came moments after Willow rushed off, in the form of a veritable swarm of short monster bodies. These things weren’t nearly as exotic as the pop-hoppers. These were almost staples of any given fantasy world.
Kobolds. They didn’t look exactly like the artistic versions she was used to from her MMOs, but she was pretty certain they were the same creature. Short, but a bit taller than the pop-hoppers at around 1.6 meters, they were a kind of humanoid crocodile. The ones quickly surrounding her and Jonah all wielded rough weapons. Spears tipped with stone points, short swords made of rusted iron which were clearly too large, daggers, bread knives.
Naomi let out a scream on instinct and stumbled backwards, barely maintaining her hold onto her stave.
“Heeey… Friends…” Jonah’s voice came, much closer to her than he’d been before and sounding slightly less scared than her scream had. Feeling a bit comforted by that fact, Naomi backed toward his voice, keeping her eyes on the little monsters. Were Kobolds monsters in this world, or sentient? Both? In her experience they were a coin-toss race.
“Friiiends. Yessss.” One of them answered. She flicked her eyes to her left to see which one was talking. A kobold with dappled grey and black scales had stepped forward. He held a large cleaver which looked almost like a claymore in his small hands. “You friiendss, helpss us friiendsss.”
Naomi carefully shuffled around so that Jonah would be able to look at and talk to the dappled kobold, while she watched his back. She stood with her back nearly brushing his, brandishing her makeshift pole-arm with all the skill she could muster. She held it like a broom. A broom with a particularly dirty brush which made its wielder avoid letting it touch them or anything currently clean.
“Uhm, maybe… What did you want our help with?” Jonah’s voice was understandably tense, it might have cracked just a bit, but Naomi was impressed it wasn’t worse.
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She could almost hear the grin in its voice, “Withsss youss thingss. Youss giives us.”
“You’re… Robbing us?” Instead of scared, Jonah’s voice now sounded somewhat confused.
“Yeeess!” The kobold’s voice was excited, happy, almost child-like.
“But ah… We don’t have anything really. Just our clothes and these sticks…” his voice was marginally calmer now.
“Ohss…” A moment of hesitation, “Thensss we cansss killsss and eatss yous.”
“Whoa whoa WHOA! BACK OFF!” Naomi felt Jonah moving behind her and heard a SWISH as he yelled. She thought he was swinging his stave. She tried to firm her stance and hold the pole in her hand more like Willow had shown them. The kobolds in front of her looked at each other, then past her, then slowly took a couple tentative steps toward her.
She squeaked and stabbed forward with all her might. The blow somehow managed to connect directly with one of the kobold’s snout. It yelped and hopped backwards, rubbing its nose and muttering, “Ow. Gunass bruise.”
Then every eye turned toward the crashing noise and voice following it, “Oh thank God, I didn’t get played by a pop-hopper-plotter.”
Naomi wanted to shout and curse at the girl. Why was she talking nonsense when she and Jonah were clearly about to be murdered! Willow started walking forward, apparently unconcerned with the obviously tense scene. Naomi looked around and realized her attackers were warily backing away from Willow’s approach, which was breaking their formation.
“So! You guys are kinda cool looking. Kobolds?” She casually approached a green one that looked a bit smaller than the others.
It stammered up at her, eyes wide, “Y-Yesss. Koboldsss.”
“Cool! So why you guys got my friends all surrounded?” She continued to act like she was talking to a new acquaintance about the weather. Naomi wasn’t sure if she should be impressed at her ability to play cool, or concerned that she wasn’t taking the weapon bearing kobolds as real threats.
The black and grey one which had confronted Jonah answered with an angry tone, “Yousss givess us stuffss, or we kills and eatss yous!”
Willow frowned, “Well that’s not very friendly of you. How would you like it if I did that to you?” She reached down and casually took the rusted blade the green Kobold she had inspected was holding. It seemed surprised to find itself disarmed.
“Doesn’t feel too good, right?” Willow was looking down at the green scaled would-be attacker; who shook his head. “Right. So do you still want to do that to me?” The green one shook his head again. The black one spat, “Gressssh iss weaklingss! Wess iss stronggers thans hers!”
Nodding, Willow closed the distance between herself and the black Kobold in a couple steps and took his cleaver just as easily. She then proceeded to flick its snout, “Bad Kobold. Highway robbery is bad.”
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Jonah
Following Kobolts, Feather-branch Forest, Savriâ
The situation had gone from surprising, to terrifying, to confusing, to bizarre. The attack was shocking, then Jonah had felt sure they were going to be swarmed by the little kobolds and murdered, then Willow had swept in to save the day. Jonah briefly wondered if he should try to make her a cape out of woven feather-branch fronds. Or maybe a dashing prince’s tunic?
After quite literally berating the little monsters into submission, Willow had demanded that they be lead to “their mothers.” Which had seen an odd procession of strangely cowed crocodile monsters leading three humans, heads mostly down except when they lifted them to shoot quick looks in Willow’s direction.
Naomi and Jonah had both been quiet, but Willow had been chatting with the kobolds as they walked. For some reason she’d taken to the little green one in particular and it seemed pleased. The black and grey scaled kobold, meanwhile, was looking sullen and angry. Like a child who had their favorite toy taken away by a “big mean adult.”
After a while a suspicion began to grow within Jonah’s mind, then the suspicion became all but a certainty and he wondered whether he should feel ashamed or rueful. These “vicious” kobolds were just children. He wondered if an orc would have mistaken human children for actual threats in a similar situation, but quickly decided that nope, this was a uniquely them problem.
Willow didn’t seem at all afraid of the large group of Kobolds. She also hadn’t seemed interested in fighting, or more likely absolutely demolishing, them. It was more like she’d run into a group of young cousins who were acting out. She was, figuratively, dragging them to their parents by their ears.
It didn’t take long for the group to reach an odd tree. Unlike every other tree, this one wasn’t one of the ones they’d named “feather-branch” trees. This one was squat and absolutely massive. The tree appeared to be somewhere between seven and eight meters in diameter. At its base stood two distant specks, which Jonah assumed by their movement and positioning were kobolds keeping watch.
As soon as the presumed guard kobolds saw the group approaching, one of them turned and ran toward the base of the tree and disappeared from view after a few steps. Apparently there was a slope at its base. They continued forward and a couple minutes later Jonah confirmed that the remaining speck resolved into a kobold holding a spear that looked well made. It had a blackened wooden haft, with a metal tip. The kobold also looked significantly more competent holding it than their “attackers” had.
Once they were within a handful of meters, Willow came to a halt and called to the guard, “Sorry for the intrusion, but I think you lost some children here.” She waved at the group she was surrounded by.
The guard looked uncertain, then called out, “That is a youth hunting partys… What business do you have withs them?”
Jonah immediately noticed how much better the kobold’s speech was. Then he remembered that the UICI was likely translating and wondered why it would be translating extraneous sounds and incorrect grammar. He cursed under his breath when the UICI provided a prompt answer to his unspoken query.
METADATA QUERY RESPONSE
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The feature requested is available in another module. Would you like to purchase the “Customized Linguistic Translation Pack” module for R1-EB 650?
Of course there were built in annoyances to “encourage” people to buy better modules. Then did that mean the children were just generally much less well spoken than the adults? That seemed possible. The “children” were also just about the same size as the guard, though, so he would have to assume that they weren’t actual kids. More like teenagers, then.
While he had been pondering the particulars of the translation module, three kobolds had emerged from the base of the tree. Jonah could just see what looked like the start of a ramp downward from where he stood. He realized belatedly that he missed how Willow had replied to the guard about what business they had.
One of the approaching kobolds was the guard, who signaled to his fellow who joined the procession on the other side, the guards flanking the other two. The remaining kobolds were: a black and grey scaled kobold that greatly resembled the “leader” of the children group, and a kobold with lilac colored scales and bright blue gem-like eyes.
The group stopped and Willow smiled, showing teeth. The black kobold’s eyes narrowed, but the others all remained expressionless as far as Jonah could tell. She explained succinctly, “Your brats tried to rob us, then attacked us and said they’d eat us when we told them we didn’t have anything to rob.”
All four eyes went to the carbon-copy black-grey kobold, who was busily studying his own feet.
“We thank yous for not slaying them in defense of yourselfs.” the lilac kobold spoke with a deep bow. She continued, “I am Skeetha, this is our clan chief Halshath,” she indicated the older black and grey scaled kobold. Halshath had several scars across his snout that spoke either to a warrior’s life or a clumsy personality. Jonah would put his money on the former.
The smile on Willow’s face softened, not showing her teeth anymore. For some reason, the less radiant smile seemed to put the kobolds more at ease than the full one. Odd, he thought Willow’s “full charm” smile was quite spectacular.
She answered by pointing to herself, Naomi, and then him while giving their names. Except, of course, she almost called him “Kent.” At this point, he was about ninety percent sure she actually did know his name, and just always started with “Ke-” to mess with him. He narrowed his eyes suspiciously at her, maybe eighty percent.
“Would you be willing to talk for a bit?” Willow asked. “We’re new to this world and have SO many questions. Like, what’s up with that crazy dead spot in the middle of the feather-branch forest?”
Skeetha and Halshath looked at each other in that way people did that said a thousand times more than words ever could, given the same amount of time. Halshath nodded firmly and gestured as he turned back toward the tree, “Yes, we woulds like to talk. We woulds like to explain. Maybe yous will likes to help.”
As they headed toward the tree, a ramp which appeared to lead down under the tree’s trunk was revealed. The kobolds headed down the ramp without hesitation. Willow followed and Jonah heard her excited mutter, “Finally, our first quest!”