An Afternoon of Familiar Faces

The scene around you is unchanged when Gromgol returns, looking rather worn down. The first thing he does is inspect his apprentice. He’s evidently satisfied, since he glances around your fire and chuckles.

“I take it you’ve been having fun.”

“You did tell me this was a festival,” you say, “but you don’t look like you’ve been celebrating.”

Gromgol grabs a piece from the boar roasting over the fire. “Adventurers. I was at the south entrance with a few warriors.” He takes a small bite. “They took it into their heads to focus on the spellcaster, but that left them open to the others.”

“It sounds like they got what they deserved.” You take another bite of fish.

Gromgol barks out a laugh. “Well, they will respawn, but I doubt they enjoyed the experience.

You each enjoy your lunch in a companionable silence, relatively speaking—neither of you spoke, but the carousing goblins around you were plenty loud. Still, all things must end. You gather the rest of your payment, say your farewells, and set off into the forest again.

While you had been eating, something had occurred to you. You had yet to build a space to house your… what was the term, “mooks?” Regardless, you hadn’t yet built a place where they could sleep. However, not every creature has the same needs. While it is true that most creatures need something which at least approximates a bed, others do not. As an example, you happen to know someone who lives inside a holly tree.

But as you draw closer to Holly’s clearing, it’s far noisier than it should be. Straining your ears, you hear shouting, from multiple voices that aren’t Holly’s. You hear… the splintering of wood, the twang of a bow, the crack of a whip, the rush of magic.

You draw your sword.

Dropping into a crouch, you finally see what’s going on through the trees. You recognize Holly straight away. She’s holding a vine like a whip, covered in thorns, lashing out against…

Wylahael Manblood, Level 3 Paladin

Hero, Half-Elf, Active, Explicit

Longstrider Guild

It’s the same three heroes you bought your Claimant Crystal from, all part of the same guild, now. Only Wylahael has risen a level, and she’s got a hold of a new shield—a great big wooden thing. She uses it well, but Holly’s whip is able to bend and flex around it, striking her hand. Holly forces Wylahael back, and with an outstretched hand she raises a mass of plants to wrap around the paladin, who lashes out wildly with her sword.

It isn’t a hard choice. You profited greatly from your deal with the heroes, but Holly is far more than someone you bargain with.

You are not idle while watching this. The nearest hero to you is Ievos, the ranger. With as focused as he is aiming his shot, he doesn’t notice you approach from behind. You could slip your blade between the leather plates he’s wearing, but you’re not sure if that will kill him. You need to draw heat from Holly, and if you don’t kill him right away they might focus her down before turning to you.

Instead, you swing your blade around him from behind, striking at his hand. He pulls away—backwards, into you. You wrap your arms around him in a grapple, and he can’t break out; you’re not the strongest creature in the forest, but you’re stronger than some scrawny wood elf. Your knee to the back of both of his sends him to the ground. He lets out an inarticulate shout. You draw your sword across his neck, and he vanishes, leaving behind a small bag.

Ievos’ shout dew the attention of the other three combatants. All three clearly recognize you.

“Squire!”

Wylahael, half tied up in roots and weeds, turns to her remaining companion. “Ladri, burn me loose!”

Ladrieth points her staff at Wylahael, with a hand gesture and a murmured word sparks fly from the tip. When they land on the paladin, they race through the last of her bindings—and scorch her gambeson.

The loss of Ievos changed things considerably, but you weren’t out of the woods yet. Holly was in rough shape, and the pair of third level Heroes could be a match for you. You need to stay on the offensive.

You advance on the paladin with a flourish of your blade, and swing. She blocks easily enough, but she’ll be tied down for as long as you’re on her.

Behind her, you can see Ladrieth dodging another surge of plant life, keeping it back with another shower of sparks.

With the enemy party split, you settle into your duel. It quickly becomes apparent that Wylahael is stronger than you, but you have the edge in speed and skill. She over-extends often, putting too much of her strength into her swings. You take advantage, of course, slipping past her guard to hit her, but they are all small hits; her shield is always there to block your blade, or knock it aside, whenever you might deal a serious blow. You either parry her swings, or let them glance off the thick layers of your gambeson.

You’re working on outplaying her with footwork when she does something new. You’re slipping into her guard, and she moves her shield, like she’d done before. But this time it pushes forward, and down. Your sword, no, your whole arm is pinned against your body. You try to pull back and free your arm, but she’s moving with you. She takes a swing–

It burns.

Time slows to a crawl.

It burns.

Everything is burning, radiating out from your side.

Iron. Of course, her sword is iron.

And it burns.

You push through the pain, through the burning. Her sword had cut through your gambeson, and bit into your side. She’d overcommitted to the swing, again.

“You’re not holding a fucking warhammer! Your weapon has an edge—it’s made to cut! Stop swinging so hard and let the sword do the work.”

She hadn’t let the sword do the work. It may have cut deeper for her strength, but she has no guard, and her balance is not secure. Maybe she thought you couldn’t exploit her weakness because your sword arm is still pinned. And it is certainly still pinned.

But your other arm is free.

With that other arm you reach over and grab her shield. You pull, back and down. She’s probably strong enough for this not to do anything most of the time, but strength only means anything when you can leverage it. With Wylahael leaning so far into her swing, she can’t leverage it.

Your maneuver sends her reeling, liberating you from the burning touch of iron. She starts to pull herself up to her knees. You introduce the pommel of your sword to the back of her head, and send her sprawling out on the ground.

That last blow knocked her sword a few inches from her hand. She raises that hand, shakily, trying to grab it.

Instead, you plunge your sword through her hand, into the earth, pinning her in place.

“Wyla!”

You turn to find the sorcerer, Ladrieth, facing you, staff raised. But with her back to Holly. Before Ladrieth can cast anything, Holly has a whip wrapped around her wrist, pulling her back to meet a rush of roots and vines and weeds. The plants overwhelm her, pinning her arms to her sides, and tying her legs together. Her staff gets caught up in the whole mess.

Holly is over to you in a flash. She wraps her arms around you tightly, and presses her face into the crook of your neck. You hold her back, as the rush of battle starts to fade. After a few moments, her arm brushes over where Wyla struck you, and you wince.

“You’re hurt,” she says, her voice trembling slightly.

You look down,, and pull the layers of gambeson aside. It looks like a gash in your side, but it is charred, and breaths wisps of green smoke.

“Iron,” you say.

Holly’s hand passes over it, and light starts to dance between her fingers. You can feel the magic of her spell passing into your body, curing and mending, and the last of the pain passes into nothing.

You reach up to hold her chin lightly, and tilt her head up into a kiss. You linger like that for a while, eyes closed. When you pull apart, she looks up at you.

“You have a name, now,” she says.

“I do,” you say, “but you can still call me Squire.”

She pulls you back into a hug, burying her face in your neck again. After a few moments, she grows more tense.

“They were going to burn my tree.”

…What?

“They talked about it before you got here.” She’s starting to shake. “Someone gave them a quest to kill my tree. To get rid of me.” She looks up at you, and there are tears welling up in her eyes. “There’ll be more, Squire. I wasn’t going to beat them. There’ll be more. Gods, Squire, they’ll kill me, and kill the tree before I come back, and I, I won’t…”

Your insides are burning and roiling. You’d died before. Many times. But you had always come back. The thought of fading away, of vanishing into nothing, was terrifying. And some sick bastard in that fucking town had given the order to do that to Holly.

By all the Shining Courts, you’ll kill them. If they so delight in Final ****, you will give it to them.

But right now, Holly doesn’t need your anger.

You cupped her face with you hand, and she looked up at you.

“Come with me,” you say, “there’s a holly tree above my barrow. You can bond with it, and stay with me, far away from here.”

Her face turns pensive. “I don’t know, Squire. You’ve told me about that tree, and it’s old. Really old. Trees are stubborn. Old trees…”

“The land is mine,” you say, stroking her hair, “if I bid the tree accept you, it will.” It will. You can feel it in your bones.

“If I leave my old tree,” she says, “it’ll be ****.”

“It’s too far to cut down,” you say, “the reason they’re coming here is for you.” She winces at that. You press your forehead to hers, your eyes closed. “It’ll miss you, but be safer if you come with me.” You never quite understood trees having feelings, but it was something Holly had insisted on in the past.

“Okay,” she says, “I’ll come with you. But… it’ll hurt to leave. If I go now, I’m not sure…”

You cut her off with a kiss to her forehead. “You rest up tonight. I’ll come tomorrow.” She pulls you down for a proper kiss.

“What do we do about these ones?”

You look down at Wylahael, and over to Ladrieth.

“They die.”

You pull away from Holly, and placing your boot on Wylahael’s wrist, pull your sword from the ground, from her hand. She gasps at the pain, and struggles under your boot. The silvery metal of your blade glints in the light of the setting sun.

“Wait.”

You look up at Holly, visibly confused. You place the tip of your sword at the back of Wylahael’s neck, to keep her still.

“I want to thank you for helping me, but I don’t,” she pauses, “I can’t do that right now. But you can take these girls.”

It takes you a second, but you catch her meaning. She’s talking about sex.

“I already came three times today, but I can find other uses for prisoners. Can you bind this one like the other?”

She shakes her head. “The duel with the fire bitch nearly drained me.”

You give her a reassuring smile. “One prisoner is greater profit than I expected today. Don’t worry yourself over it.” With a flick of your wrist, the paladin is gone, leaving behind a small bag.

While you gather the loot from your kills—coins, and two little white jewels—while Holly goes over to kneel beside your captive. Once you’ve gathered your sparse loot, you go to see what she’s up to, and find that Ladrieth’s eyes are covered by softly-glowing plants.

“I had a little bit of juice left in me,” says Holly, smiling up at you. “We can’t have her leading anyone back to your home, now can we?”

You laugh, and pull her into another kiss. “My Holly is very clever,” you say when you part.

“Your Holly?” She quirks an eyebrow.

“You will be, when I come for you tomorrow.” Another peck on the lips.

She giggles. “Sounds like fun.”

As you haul Ladrieth up onto your shoulders, Holly walks back to her tree. You bid each other a farewell that's only a little flirtatious, and you set out through the forest.