Mercenary wizard 3 a pro.., p.19
Mercenary Wizard 3: A Progression Fantasy Saga, page 19
I mean, that was never an ideal circumstance. But Avril was down there with who knew what sorts of creatures advancing on her from the rear, and a massive, red-eyed bird staring her down across the clearing.
But the sight of those rocks gave me pause. If I mistimed my jump and died on impact, instead of merely getting outrageously wounded, then I wouldn't be able to help her at all. A dead man can't heal himself.
Then a wild idea leapt into my brain. I was a dimensional master. What did it matter if the thing I was clutched to was so far above the ground?
I could just shrink it.
A wild grin crossed my face, as I closed my eyes and visualized the tree that we clung to shrinking down and down and down.
As I did so, even through my meditative focus I could hear Balek yelp, and felt the thick branch narrowing in my grasp, as the tree itself scaled down to a miniature size.
For a moment, I opened my eyes and saw us swiftly descending to the forest floor. Then I felt something unexpected. Since I was actively shrinking the entire tree rather than simply lowering its trunk, the limb to which I clung thinned as well.
As it did so, it became less and less able to bear my weight. Not to mention my own weight and Balek’s.
At twenty feet above the ground, a sharp resounding crack rang out from where the branch met the trunk. At fifteen, it snapped and we plummeted, landing in a heap on the forest floor.
I sprang up immediately, relieved to see a sharp, flat-sided rock lying not six inches from my head. “That would have wasted the whole effort,” I said with a chuckle as I nodded to the rock.
Then I sent up a brief prayer of thanks to Galifini, assuming it was the goddess who was responsible for my turn of unexpected luck.
I sprinted off back towards the clearing with soft smacks ringing out behind me whenever Balek leapt from rock to rock. “We need to retrieve my chest,” Balek called out to me.
As we burst back into the clearing, I saw it was now covered with tall flames from Avril’s fire. The licking flames prevented me from seeing the opposite side, and I grunted and looked up in time to see the large wooden box come plummeting right towards my head.
I leapt backwards just as the box sank edge first into the soft soil and let out a sharp laugh. “Ask and you shall receive, Balek!” I shouted. Then I chuckled and said, “Thanks, Galifini! Step one accomplished. Retrieve the box. Step two ongoing. Deal with the giant bird, and somehow get around these flames to save my wife from unknown monsters. Zeke too, if we can manage it.
Balek leapt forward immediately, wrapped both arms around the box, and gave a sharp tug to wrest it free from the damp soil that clung to it like a greedy child’s fingers to the last cookie in the jar. The small pygmy held the box tightly to his chest as he glanced at me with fearful eyes.
“Don't kill the bird,” he pleaded. “Trap it if you can. But don't kill it. I've got a crazy idea that it will lead us to the one who's behind all of these giants. “
I was just about to race off through the very flames themselves when I paused and raised an eyebrow at Balek. “What makes you think that?” I asked, swirling wind in my fingers and readying my leap.
The pygmy gave me a serious look, then snatched a vial from inside the chest. “I've only seen one bird like that before in my life,” he said as he cocked the vial behind his head and readied to throw it into the flames. “That bird was the pet of a wandering wizard. He must have experimented on it, turned it into a creature of madness by trying to make it grow larger and larger. If we can trap it, I think I can make it grow smaller, and I think I can make it lead us directly to him.”
I blinked in surprise at this turn of events. Then my eyes darted upwards as a shrill shriek sounded above me. Webbed bird feet burst overhead, obscuring my vision, before they turned to fly off towards the northeast.
The ibis was fleeing. But I had no time to go after it. I had a woman to save.
Once more, I swirled wind in my fingers and readied to leap. Only, I soon found that I didn't need it.
Balek threw the vial. There was the sound of a soft whoosh, then a green smoke slipped out, covering the flames and snuffing them out in an instant. Smoke, not fire, rose from the wet vegetation and through it I could see the forest beyond.
Behind that smoky wall, my wife grappled hand-to-hand with a massive black creature that I'd never seen before.
Chapter 20
Wizard
Torag Forest -- Protect Avril
Day 199 of the Crane’s Year
The thick green fog spread rapidly over the fiery clearing. Purple flowers with tall stalks popped, crackled, and hissed as their fires were extinguished. Red petals floated in the air, mixing with the green fog, then falling swiftly to give me a view of Avril and Zeke.
My wife’s brilliant red hair whipped around her face like the whip whipped around in her hands. Red whip lashed out, stuck, and red hair spun around her pretty face.
She and Zeke were surrounded, I swiftly saw, by tall furry creatures that looked remarkably like Balek, only scaled up several times in size. Long arms extended from furry torsos, while wide, broad teeth showed them for the giants that they were.
Balek grunted sharply, and the leaves crackling underfoot as I ran to help them fight off these new threats drew the attention of one. Red eyes turned to face me, and I gasped as I realized the massive beast stood one-and-a-half times my own height. Not only that, but each of its arms was also nearly as long as I was tall.
Two study rows of eyeball-sized teeth gleamed in the clearing’s new sunlight and when the pygmy giant roared, its blunted teeth clacked together like an offbeat drum circle.
“Come on then, you bastard,” I challenged the giant thing with a grin on my face. I could take it. I’d beaten larger foes, and only recently, too.
It charged immediately, long arms helping to push it along the smoldering ground at an easy, loping pace. It was fast enough that it could have easily outstripped a warhorse on the charge.
I reached into my shirt pocket, feeling for one of my readymade boulders. But before I could even wrap my fingers around one, the giant gave a groan, then toppled as the center its furry head was replaced with a hiss. The red of Avril’s flame whip leapt out of where its forehead should have been.
All nine feet of the giant slumped forward, while bits of gray brain matter tumbled from its seared skull. When it toppled onto the burned plants, its momentum carried it sliding forward right at me.
Avril’s whip leapt back to her with a snap, and I jumped, using a bit of wind to propel me high over the downed monster. Careful not to expend needed magic in a fight too much, I used just enough to propel me over its furry head, and I felt the bristly fur on its face scrape the soles of my boots.
I landed with a soft thump on the other side of the enlarged pygmy, ducking into a quick roll that would have been impossible in my old wizarding robes, but which I managed to pull off with something approximating panache in my hiking attire.
Black soot and ash dusted my hair, while the frantic scurrying of a million bugs who were stuck in between fleeing for their lives and getting the best spots in the new, slightly-burned order of the clearing skittered across my skin.
For a moment Avril's eyes met mine. Then two red flashes were all that I saw of her, as she spun around and her hair whipped even more furiously than did her flame whip.
Her molten weapon leapt out and seared a giant pygmy at an angle across its neck. The heat of her whip cauterized the wound immediately, so the creature didn't bleed out or suffocate on its own blood, as would have happened if I had dispatched it using one of my knives. Avril must have not hit anything vital, too, because I heard a great sucking sound come from the large, red-eyed beast.
Desperately, it tried to draw air through its open neck instead of through its mouth or nose. Clean air gurgled and slurped as it crept into the creature's lungs, completely bypassing its mouth. For a moment I saw shock register on its face, though whether it was from having been struck, or at the strike not swiftly dispatching it, I couldn't tell.
“Nice shot, Avril!” I cheered for my battling wife.
Avril shot me a smirk as her whip leapt around to lash another foe. My hand darted forward, the barb of a boulder leaping away from me, like an eagle diving after its prey as I sought to finish the job that my wife had started.
My boulder cracked the air as it slammed forward, then cracked the creature’s body even worse.
The creature's face moved from confusion to the blank stare of death, as my barb punched through its rising and falling chest, pulverizing both lungs in an instant. It looked down at the gaping hole that ran through its body, chest still heaving as it tried to draw breath through inoperable lungs.
Its eyes grew dazed, and it opened its mouth in an attempt to roar, which was significantly hampered by its inability to force air from its lungs or up its neck. The creature collapsed, falling straight down in a heap, arms splayed at the side.
“Wind, Argo!” Balek shouted. “We need to daze the brutes.”
Our pygmy guide was practically cackling with the thrill of battle, and as I charged out of the clearing and into the woods to stand beside my gorgeous wife, I realized exactly why he'd said what he did.
The air just past the clearing's perimeter was still and heavy, tinted a deep green from the naturally-occurring spores, while the clearing itself was so thickly velveted in the green mist that it looked like the very air itself had turned to moss.
I lifted two fingers on my left hand forward and upward, and then pointed out before me. A wind leapt up around my neck, tugging the hem of my shirt as it blew my hair into my eyes. It surrounded us with a thick green mat of Balek's brain-addling concoction. My eyes were already having difficulty adjusting to the gloom of the forest after the brightness of the clearing, and the inclusion of the thick green fog only made things that much more difficult.
Mist swirled around me, tugging forward on the breeze in thick sinuous tendrils, like a kraken's tentacles closing around a doomed vessel. A part of my mind told me not to breathe, replaying the warning that Balek had given me when he'd used it in the mine.
Unfortunately, my body was unable to listen, using so much magic, not to mention charging across a clearing and leaping free of an ironically-massive pygmy, which left me with a deficit of air that needed to be overcome only one way.
A roar ahead of me and to my left made my hand jerk in that direction instinctively. In two seconds flat, I had a throwing knife clutched between my ring and middle fingers. In two-and-a-half seconds, the sharp, thin blade glinted and whistled as it whizzed through the air, then found its mark with a soft squelch.
The giant pygmy gurgled. But my weapon wasn't one that could let it survive an attack at such a weak place. There was no cauterization provided by a throwing knife, no matter how quickly it's thrown.
“Tough luck,” I grunted to the giant.
The creature flung up its hands as it attempted to remove the thin barb from its neck. It was then that I realized this creature wasn't exactly like the others. It was bigger, for one thing, standing twice my height instead of merely one-and-a-half times.
I decided that it was better to play it safe, than run the risk that the giant’s size was so much larger that my knife to the neck wouldn't bring it down. My hand leapt into my other boot, and I brought up an identical blade. Then I paused, as the creature’s fingers found the hilt of the knife lodged in its throat.
The monster gave a great roar, grabbed the knife hilt, and pulled it free at an angle. I could barely believe my luck. Instead of cleanly removing the thorn in its neck, the giant pygmy had only succeeded in opening the wound more. Thick red blood pooled from the widened slice, showing the deeper red of the beast’s neck muscles.
“Bad move,” I said with a grin.
It grunted as the reality of that situation finally made it through the many folds of its neck. Then its eyes went blank as the green mist covered it. The breeze sent snaking tendrils of the soporific drug pouring through and down the hole in its throat, its mouth, and its nose.
A light grin twitched at the corners of its mouth while blood spilled down its dark, hairy chest. Then it gave a final grunt, attempted to take a step forward, lost its footing, and fell face-first into the ground with a soft, wet thump.
It didn't move again. Deep red blood leaked out from its slaughtered neck, spreading across the thickly-matted leaves, like an ink stain on an unfulfilled contract.
Zeke gave a final roar as he pointed his sword tip into the belly of a one-armed pygmy giant, driving the blade home with such ferocity that it poked out the massive creature's back, shining wetly.
The creature raised its one remaining arm in an attempt to squash Zeke where he stood. But the youthful mercenary still had resistance to the green mist from Balek’s potion, for as it swirled around him, he gave another cry, pushed his sword hilt to the side, opening the cut a little wider in the giant pygmy's stomach, and then yanked it free.
As he did so, he applied some sideways pressure to the blade to finish slicing the giant pygmy almost in half. The jerking motion made the creature’s sole remaining arm spasm. Zeke then leapt backwards as it came down, splitting the creature at its middle section and forcing organs from the opening as its body compressed, finally dead like the rest.
I quickly scanned the area but found I couldn't see any other giant pygmies lurking in the shadows, not that these creatures necessarily lurked. Zeke was breathing heavily, his longsword resting in the soil before him, and dripping proof of his victory into its own small pool at his feet.
“Is that all of them?” Avril asked, uncertainty in her voice.
I grinned and nodded, walking forward to lay my hand on my wife's shoulder. I felt her tense posture relax ever so slightly at my touch. With the battle over, her flame whip crackled out of existence, and I leaned her back into my chest, as she breathed heavily in an attempt to catch her breath. I patted her chest for proof that I was here, that I would always have her, and then sent a breeze to blow the thick green fog away.
The small forest cleared as much as was possible, and the dense greenery was replaced with dappled shadows.
My wife sighed as she leaned into me, both hands coming up to rub at my wrist tenderly. Zeke laughed, put his sword tip against a nearby root, and leaned against the hilt like it were a walking stick.
“Well,” he said, grinning around at us all. “This hasn't been a terrible fight, all things considered. The one thing we didn't square up before we left, though...”
He paused and waggled his eyebrows at us. I chuckled myself and said, “The one thing we didn't square up before we left was how we'd split the loot. Right now, that loot includes a good number of gems—of decent size, too. As to how we should split it, I’m not entirely sure. Normally, I'd say that since Avril and I do most of the work—no offense to you, Zeke, but we are wizards—that we should get an outsized portion of the haul.” Zeke’s face soured, and I raised a hand to stall his complaint. “But, given the circumstances, I think you're proving yourself more than useful as a companion. What do you say to everyone keeping their own kills, Avril? That sounds most fair to me”
I glanced down at my wife and she laughed. Judging from the burned flesh smell that lay so thick about us, I figured Avril was responsible for a good bit of the kills.
“That sounds just fine by me,” she said, before her eyes went immediately wide and she pointed at the two gems which lay in the eye sockets of the giant pygmy that Zeke had divided in two.
Zeke tilted his head at her, his eyes traveling around to where she pointed. When he saw what lay there, he gasped. “Is that what I think it is?” he asked, turning back to me.
I nodded, my chin bumping lightly against Avril's tangled mat of red hair. “It is indeed,” I said, a smile curling onto the corners of my mouth as I regarded the golden gem in the giant pygmy's left eye socket. “I suppose we should have taken some more thought before we both agreed to it. That gem’s yours, Zeke.”
Normally, I’d fight a bit harder for the golden gem. Such things were incredibly rare, and fetched more than a high price.
But something told me that if we wanted to stop whoever this mysterious benefactor was, not to mention mark the contract as completed and finally get the house that my wife had always wanted, we would need as much help as we could get.
“How would you like to pull your own weight as a wizard, Zeke?”
The young mercenary grinned, stooped to pick up the golden gem, and then vanished as soon as his fingers touched it. I wondered if something similar had happened to me when I first touched my gem. Probably, Galifini wouldn’t give me a straight answer if I asked her, though.
Balek eyed the spot where Zeke had been standing a moment before, then tilted his head towards us before asking, “If we get a move on, will the gods know where to put him so he can find us again? Or do we have to hang around until he's done with whatever happens up there?”
I grinned at the pygmy and said, “No, no. We can get moving. The process might take a while, but his gods should be able to put him wherever we are.”
With that, Avril and I set about collecting the rest of the gems. Then, after absorbing one to refill my magic reserves, we returned to the clearing and set off in the direction that the giant bird had flown.
Though not before Balek mumbled under his breath, “It's heading for the village. I just know it. Calm, Balek. Calm. They're well-guarded. They can take care of themselves.”
Chapter 21
Damp
Torag Forest -- Just Another Day on the Path
Day 200 of the Crane’s Year
Balek was right in that we were still a good ways from the village. For the next three days and three nights, we made our way carefully down thinly-plotted game trails with the sounds of the forest as a sort of music accompaniment.
