36: Bottle Feeding
The goblin fell to my strike with almost laughable ease, and I moved on to my next foe like a bored checkout-chick in the times before robots had taken over most of the jobs like that. My next victim tried to block my swing, but I hopped into the air and twisted, activating my Scatter Dash in the process.
Flickering after images of me went in all directions for a second, while only proved to arrive at my ultimate destination. My sword, already in mid-swing, drew a bloody line down the goblin’s back. It cried out in pain, but the sound was cut off by a Pinprick Thrust straight through its neck.
Its death gave me a moment to look up and get a good look at the battlefield. The goblin redoubt was a mess of screaming green fiends and terrifying magic. I could already see twenty or so of their bodies lying lifeless on the ground. It was a good haul, even if it was a little grisly. If our tree was going to eat anything, though, it may as well be goblins.
“Oi, tiny!” Elena yelled, materialising beside me in a swirl of dark smoke to catch a goblin’s club with her swordbreaker. “Pay attention.”
She twirled the stiletto in her main hand and stabbed down into the goblin’s neck. She removed the blade just as quickly, and gave me a cocky little smile.
I smiled my usual small, demure smile and batted my lashes at her. “My hero.”
“You got it,” she winked, and rushed off to find another goblin to kill.
The swordbreaker in her off-hand was an interesting weapon. I’d never heard of them before she got one, but apparently they were a real thing. It looked like a large dagger with a thick blade, except all down one side, hooks had been cut into it, looking like exaggerated serrations. Those hooks were meant for catching an opponent’s blade, or as the name implied, breaking their strike. It could, of course, also just be used to stab people.
A crossbow bolt streaking through the air caught my attention, and I glanced up to see a goblin up in a makeshift guard tower. The redoubt was exactly what you’d expect from the name, an earthwork fort with minimal actual structure besides three rickety towers atop a pile of dirt.
The bolt had been aimed at Noah, who hadn’t even noticed it ping harmlessly off one of his reactive shields as he went toe to toe with the goblin warboss. The massive greataxe his foe wielded came whistling in towards him, and he narrowed his eyes in concentration. With a graceful flourish, he dragged his left foot back in an arc and flicked up a hand that gestured rapidly. The movement caused his lance to swing down, side on, and produce a shield of silver and lavender light. It flashed into place with an audible, singing click, and the blow was stopped cold. God, his casting forms looked so good.
Still, he’d get thrown off his game if that little shit in the tower didn’t stop taking shots at him, so I burst into a Ribbon Roll and came out of it with wings flared and sword flying. The goblin crossbowman barely had time to widen its eyes in surprise before I ran it through. The thrust took us both out the other side of the tower, and I used his dying body to cushion my fall.
One of the other guard towers had two of the crossbow boys in it, and I was preparing to leap back into the air to take care of them when a piercing whistle reverberated over the battlefield. A beam of crackling dark red energy lanced out from behind me and scythed through the tower, the crossbowmen, and then the hill behind the redoubt. Everything burned for a second with a red, almost acidic flame, then another beam slashed through the last remaining guard tower. In the space of two seconds, any chance the goblins had of a lucky crossbow bolt taking one of us out had been severed.
Looking back, I saw Paisley lower her hand and look for another target. She had such an intense look of concentration on her face that it made me smile. So fucking cute. Also terrifying, like, holy shit she was blasting red lasers across the battlefield with nothing but her mind, subtle hand movements, and her tongue pursed just so between her lips. To whistle, I mean… not, you know, other stuff.
Next to her, Ethan was muttering prayers with his staff casually raised in front of him, healing away on the tiny boy tank. He was basically rapping under his breath, and it was funny and impressive in equal measure.
A battle cry from multiple goblin throats drew my attention back towards the enemy, and I saw a group of the smelly little assholes rushing in through the opposite gate. Ah. It looked like the patrol we’d been expecting had returned. With a flourish, I sheathed my sword, crouched down and shifted my grip to take aim. Time to bring in some reinforcements of my own, however briefly.
Dragging the bodies back to our tree was a gruesome task made slightly easier by a new batch of Dryad Ghouls that the tree had created a day or so ago. They didn't seem to be aggressive anymore, and were content to drag food to their mother. Before their arrival, we’d had to stick to small targets close to the tree to feed it. Five days of that and I was really damn tired. Still, the tree had grown by at least a metre so we were making progress.
I threw the last of the goblins into the gaping maw of the tree with a grunt, then flew down to stand with my friends. Before my feet had even touched the ground, Noah held something out to me.
“Look at this,” he said, offering the object. My eyebrows shot up. It was a piece of shining black obsidian, the same as we’d found during that first dungeon together.
Rubbing my thumb over the strange material, I held it up to the light. It was a small knife, little more than a shard that had been knapped to hold an edge. Something about it made me uneasy, and I quickly placed it on the ground. It felt like all the nerves that controlled pressure, heat, and pain were vibrating painfully in my hand.
“It doesn’t feel right,” I said, staring at it. “It’s like… mentally unpleasant to hold.”
Noah, who wore fine silk gloves most of the time, took one off and knelt to touch the strange weapon. He jerked his hand back with a curse, “Shit, wow. That feels fucking weird.”
“Well now I want to touch it,” Elena grinned, following Noah’s lead. Her finger pressed to the glossy black surface of the obsidian, but she didn’t draw away like Noah had. She looked up at us. “I don’t feel anything?”
One by one, the rest of the party touched the object, and it became very clear that it was only myself and the other fae who could feel how nasty it was.
“This has to be something to do with the rumoured expansion,” Ethan mused, still crouched low to get a better look at the object.
“Yeah,” Noah agreed from beside him. Then, with an almost casual tone of voice, said, “We should feed it to the tree.”
“That is a terrible idea,” I said, at the same time that Elena blurted, “Hell yes.”
Facepalming, I turned to look up at her with an arched eyebrow. She grinned. “What?”
“Why would that be a good idea?” I asked, expecting her to say something about it being cool or whatever. Elena could be a bit of a himbo sometimes. Wait, what was the female equivalent of a himbo? Bimbo didn’t make sense because that was something different. Shimbo? I’d have to think on it.
“Because the tree is undead, and whatever that thing is, it’s bad for cute little angelic fairies like you, but after your dungeon story I think we can assume it’s good for unseelie,” she explained, crouching slightly to bring our faces level. “I figure the energies are at least similar, so the tree might be able to make use of it.”
Her theory made sense, but the whole crouching down to talk to me thing made me grumpy, so I glared at her. “Fine… good point. Go and toss it into the big hungry tree.”
“What, me?” she blinked, surprised. “You and Noah are the ones that can fly.”
“Yeah, but it makes us feel uncomfortable, and you just knelt down to talk to a short person, so I’m nominating you to climb up there,” I said, my frown turning sly and teasing.
Laughing, she bent and picked up the small obsidian knife. “Okay, okay. Only because you’re cute, though.”
A flash of warmth sparked in my chest, and I quickly reached out to squeeze her forearm. She did that a lot, affirming my new self, my new name, and my new gender. She understood me more than I did myself, really, even with how short our friendship had been til this point. I hoped it went on for the rest of my now potentially infinite life.
“Flirt,” I accused, rolling my eyes.
Obsidian in hand, she winked and turned towards the tree. “Try not to watch my ass too closely while I’m climbing, cutie.”
I sighed with false exhaustion. “I think I can manage.”
Everyone else was watching us with a mixture of amusement and awkwardness. Paisley in particular was very pointedly watching the tree, rather than me. I couldn’t get a read on what she was thinking, so I shrugged and headed for my forge, taking off my hakamashita in preparation for the heat of my new forge. It left me topless save for a chest wrap of cloth, but that was fine. I didn’t mind Paisley and Elena looking, and the boys wouldn’t be interested.
