Dialysis Book: Chapter 22: A simple farming village

The traffic in the city was terrible, that seemed to be a constant that never changed no matter what district we went to.  Gloria did not care, she drove like a linebacker with his scholarship on the line the entire time.  I counted no fewer than twelve impacts with another buggy as we tore out of town.

Or as I would later call it, the pleasant part of the trip.

“We’re in overland travel mode,” said Gloria as we pulled out of the city gate and traffic finally diminished on our side of the bridge.  The gate north of Dominus lead to a massive bridge that spanned a large river, the Tear as Gloria called it.  I think.  We were moving pretty fast.  Our side of the bridge was easy, pretty much a straight shot out, but the small castle on the other side of the river had a line coming into the city.

“Can they spot the thing,” I asked Spivy.

“Not with that wire on it,” she replied.  “It will look magical, but you are an adventurer and are allowed to carry that sort of thing.  It wouldn’t hold up if they did a physical examination of it, but you are on contract from the town.  They won’t be searching you for any items, on the way out at least.”

I shrugged, Spivy had been right so far and what was the worst that could happen?  They confiscated the thing.  It was probably worth less than my current contract.  Who wanted a relic anyway?  I considered discarding the thing, after all it was something that complicate my vacation.  Then I thought about all the work I’d put into getting it.

Grumbling, I tucked the relic into the loop in the back of my armor and waited.

The long, flat roads of the city gave way to a long cobblestone highway that seemed to travel right through the middle of the nearby forest.  While there was traffic, it was not the kind that required Gloria’s special skills.

That was actually a relief.  Once you got used to the fully contact traffic in town, it was annoying rather than terrifying.  I mean, who didn’t want to sideswipe that jerk that cut you off?  Of course, more often than not Gloria was the one doing the cutting off, but that was neither here nor there.  Right now, it looked like a solid, safe, easy trip out.

We slowed briefly, and Shade climbed up letting his head fall out of a window so he could look around as opposed to his usual huddle in the floorboard.  Gloria had an apple that she was coring.  She pulled out the core, but had cut it so that the top of the apple was still intact.  That basically turned the apple into a little cup.

Then she pulled out a pill.

“Oh, one of those, wake me when it's over,” said Spivy as she cuddled down in my hood.

“One of those,” I said, a hint of fear in my voice.

Shade looked me dead in the eyes.  “Nothing good has ever come from hiding pills in food.”

The pill was thumb sized and glowed a vibrant pink.  The kind of vibrant color that not even Barbie could love.  It hurt to look at, and given my lack of light sensitivity, I quickly realized that the color must be hurting my soul.  My tired, broken soul.

“What do you think that is for?” whimpered Shade.

“I love you, my oldest friend,” I said, grabbing the armrest.

Shade leapt down into the floorboards right as Gloria tossed the apple up front.  Her ostrich caught it in mid flight, scarfing the whole thing down in two bites while Gloria pulled her goggles down to cover her eyes.

“Our father, who art in heaven,” was all I managed before we were traveling far too fast for God to hear us.  An ostrich could get up to 40 miles an hour, and while I didn’t know what speed this buggy was traveling it was way faster than forty.

Forty in a car is nothing.  It's a pleasant drive down a not too busy road, but this was a buggy.  It has spring suspension, just not very good springs.  It had rubber on the tires, just made an inch of it around the rim and it was hard enough you could drive a nail with it.  Gloria wasn’t even sitting down anymore.  She moved into a skier's stance because no degree of padding could manage what she was asking of that buggy.

It was like the Enterprise moving into warp drive.  Light seemed to bend then we were traveling at least eighty miles per hour, heavy emphasis on at least.  We could have been going much faster, but who could tell?  That required you to be able to look around and we were in a forest where the trees were whipping by so fast they were just a green blur.  The reason for some of the metal in the buggy became obvious. I was in a roll cage with my dog who was so scared he did all his business on the grated floor.

Of course, that might not have just been him.

We hit a jump at one point three minutes in and the ostrich started flapping its wings. We were airborne for so long I didn’t remember what the ground even was.  As Shade hovered before me, our souls merged in the question of what the hell we were doing here.  Then we impacted and there was no more room for questions, only the unbridled terror.

By the five minute mark I have forsworn my religion for no god could subject his followers to such an ordeal.  We took a curve with such speed that we were still on one wheel a good half mile later, but that was in preparation for the next turn.  The sharp turn, and Gloria didn’t waste any time slowing down at all.  She blurred past the reindeer pulled cart so quickly I think she sucked the hair off the animals.

At the ten minute mark we leapt over another ridge and as we decided something amazing happened.  Shade stood behind the seat, looking forward and howled.

“This is amazing,” yelled my dog.

“What?” I screamed.

“It is like a roller coaster!  You never let me get on one of those,” said Shade.

It really was.  And I was on vacation.

Raising my arms to the heavens, I laughed as we continued for another fifteen minutes until the ride finally stopped next to a village.  Gloria opened the door and we both stepped out, legs unsure.  Shade wobbled and fell over, laughing.

“Is there a way to signal you,” I asked.

“I’ll stay till evening,” said Gloria.  “I have family here, but you probably want to get back when it is still light out.”

That cut the rapture of getting out of the buggy short.

“It could be cooler in the dark,” said Shade.

He had a point.

I glanced down at him, then looked back at the small town that had literally been cut into the massive forest.  The Gnarley woods featured a kind of ugly, thick tree that shot out smaller sub-trees underneath it extending the canopy.  It was thick to the point of being oppressive, with the patch of leaves over the road being only thin enough that light was able to get through in significant amounts.

“Probably not,” said Shade and we walked into Qualus.  “Do you know what we are doing, chum?”

I did not.  I pulled up the quest marker.  There were dozens of fields and unlike video games no one had a handy exclamation mark over their head telling you where the guests were.  I didn't even know who to talk to.  After I stared at it for several seconds Spivy chuckled.

“Who requested the quest,” she asked.

“The mayor,” I said reading the quest.

“So who should you find?”

“Grouchy fairy,” I muttered as I started  looking for the mayor.  The town was a small halfling farming community that didn’t really see many outsiders.  I could tell, because everything was child sized.

I would have had to crawl on my hands and knees to get into any of the buildings.

Each building, despite its small size, looked neat and tidy like an adult was very particular about nearly everything involved.  Each home had a small, tidy yard built out with a single row of flowers on either side of a short walkway into the door with a wreath made of local flowers on it.

They were not built into hills though.  Each small house had an identical front, but that was about all that was the same on them.  Some were taller, some were wider, some ran back much further but all of them were made with cut pieces of local wood with the same kind of shingles.  It was extremely picturesque, except of course for the two burned down homes at the edge of town.

I walked over there and looked around.  There were a number of halflings working, each wearing some sort of overalls and a broad brimmed hat.  The clothing was strictly utilitarian, with the most colorful blouse belonging to a younger halfling woman who was making doe eyes towards one the strapping halfling young men.

Who might have reached my waist.

He looked like a perfect, miniature human, who was ripped.  At some point he removed his shirt and was even now busily moving large amounts of heavy debris with nothing but sweat, gumption and a wheelbarrow.  Pre essence, I doubted I could have moved that much and this was obviously just one more load for the young man.

They noticed me then and a halfling trundled over towards me.  Given how easily Misel moved, I wondered why until I got a really close look at him using my magnification ability.  He looked like a middle aged man, but there were a spiderweb series of creases around his eyes and he had an experience to him that was palpable.

“Halflings live to be over a hundred years old on average, he’s pushing 120, give or take,” said Spivy.

“Surprised he’s still walking,” I said.

“Don’t be, he’s a hero,” said Spivy and I could sense the core.  “Heroic cores add considerably to your lifespan and vigor, but there are limits.”

I glanced down at Shade, “So what about companions?”

“Vastly extended,” said Spivy.  “Plus he has a core, which will further extend his lifespan.  He’s probably looking at at least three times longer than he would have lived otherwise.”

Shade was six.  I’d been told he was going to last until he was about 12.  So either his new lifespan was 36, and he still had three decades left or it was 18.  Either way was a vast improvement.  I didn’t know what I’d do without my puppo.

“If we get a heroic core, how long for a human and a dog,” I asked just before the halfling reached us.

“About 100 years of perfect health for you, probably something like sixty or so years for Shade,” said Spivy.

“Dude,” I said, impressed.

The mayor looked at me strangely, “Dude to you as well.  I do not recognize that greeting.”

“It is an all purpose word where I come from,” I said.

“And where might that be?”

“Ohio,” I replied.

“Sounds exotic, we seldom hear such exotic words.  I shall attempt to speak in your exotic way.  Dude, I am the Mayor Grekor of Qualus,” he said, sticking out his hand for a very firm handshake.  “I was a member of the adventurer’s guild in good standing for many years before I retired out here.  I was the local hero for a time, but I’m not up to the current task unfortunately.”

“What happened,” I asked as he walked us past the burnt out houses.

“Goblin raiders, this far into the forest,” said Grekor, shaking his head.  “The king should have sent his agents out to deal with this but they are all occupied for some dang burn reason.”

“Agents are adventurers who work for the king,” whispered Spivy.

“Well, that’s what the guild does,” I replied.

“No it is not, you deal with monsters.  Any goblins in the king's land should be dealt with by him,” spat Grekor, glaring at the burned down houses.

“Okay, so the quest I have is for killing war doats?” I said.

“That is the quest,” said Grekor.  “A pack of stray goblin war doats has cut off access to several of our groves.  I’ll need you to clear all of them out.”

“Where are they,” I asked.

He gestured towards a clearly marked spot in the forest.  Normally the trees were so tightly packed that actually moving through them would have been a challenge, here an obvious passage led further into the forest.  “You’ll find several clearings through here.”

“And if I find any goblins?” I asked.

“Well, I can't request you kill goblins, but if they were to die I would have to give you a bonus for killing them, which I certainly did not order you to do, dude,” said Grekor.

“How many doats are in a pack?”

Grekor looked around and shrugged, “At least four, possibly as many as eight.  I can’t see many more being out this way.  You will be paid based on the number killed, so more doats is more gold though this is supposed to be a two person quest.”

“There are two people,” said Shade.

“Dude, did the mutant doat just talk,” asked Grekor.

“He’s my excellent companion, so there are two of us.  He’s also like totally a most excellent monster killer,” I said.  “Has more than a dozen kills by himself, and I’m of course also here.”

“I eat them for lunch, literally, he has not fed me,” said Shade.

“You just had breakfast,” I replied.

“You have not fed me lunch, and I threw up a lot on the trip over,” said Shade.

I blinked twice as the mayor glared at me, then I smiled and said, “Don’t worry, we are a good team of monster killing adventurers.  I’ve raided a goblin lair, this will be a piece of cake!”

“If you say so, dude,” replied Grekor.

“Ja man, your cause is righteous, Shade and I will go and crash the weasel on them,” I said.

“I don't understand what you just said, but if you mean that you are going to kill the doats, the entire forest will thank you,” said Grekor.

“Gnarly,” I replied.

“That is the name of the forest,” said Grekor.

We walked over to the outer edge of the village, where the burnt out buildings were closest to the forest.  The halflings kept a tidy rear yard, but that didn’t extend very far and I quickly found the spot where the fires started.

“Alchemical fire,” said Spivy from my hood.  “You can smell it from here.”

She could, I couldn’t.  I didn't have a good enough nose for that, but I knew someone who might.  “Shade, can you smell that?”

“Yes,” said Shade, wrinkling his nose.  “There is more in the woods.”

“The goblins are playing a dangerous game, setting fires in these woods,” said Spivy.

“Of course they are,” I said, walking into the gnarly woods.  “So what should we expect out here?

Spivy flew out of my hood and hovered near my shoulder.  She was already inhaling to go into lecture mode, but the forest was so oppressive that I was willing to let her.  I was willing to let anyone do anything to not think about where I was.

Spivy began, “The gnarly trees are colnal colony trees, meaning that the trees share roots with a parent tree, and those trees likewise share roots.  To a large extent that means the whole gnarly forest is one big organism.”

“And these passages are like its veins,” I said walking down the path.  It was large enough that I could easily walk through, more than large enough.  You could have pulled a pretty big cart through this passage and I saw the tracks to prove it.

“Hardly, more a bronchial tube in your lungs.  You will see such passages throughout the woods.  The trees need fresh air and these passages allow the wind to carry fresh air through the entire forest more efficiently,” said Spivy.  She was right, of course, it wasn’t that you couldn’t push your way through the regular forest but the gnarly woods were thick enough that it would take you forever to make any progress.  In a way, they were more like bushes than a conventional tree, though instead of leavy branches if you stuck your hand through the passage you’d find wood.

I jerked my hand back from the wall of the passage, a large ant was trying to bite into my flesh.  I flicked him off.  The entire forest was thick with life, to a disturbing degree.  However, it seemed to be in balance at least in the sense that if you left it alone the forest left you alone.

Shade dipped out of the passage once, sniffing after the local rodent equivalent before squirming back onto the path after only getting his head and shoulders into the woods proper.  I didn’t even ponder trying that.  I didn’t see how I’d get my shoulders between the tightly woven branches.

“I’m surprised they don’t resperate essence,” I said.

“How would you do that?  Your body generates essence,” said Spivy, shaking her head.  “And no, there are things called molecules in the air.  There is carbon dioxide there that the plant requires for survival,” said Spivy, realizing she spoke in English.  “Actually kind of surprised your world has enough magic to figure that out.”

“We did that with science,” I said.  “It's like magic without the mana or essence.”

“Sounds terrible,” replied Spivy.

“Science stopped being useful once humans invented dog treats,” said Shade as he sniffed a tree.  “So this whole place is one big tree?”

“Basically,” said Spivy.

“Mine,” yelled Shade, making it his.

“Do you have to do that everywhere,” said Spivy.

“Do not disrespect my dog in his forest,” I curtly replied.

Spivy groaned as we entered into a pod where multiple channels in the woods came together.  You couldn’t quite see the sun from here, but it was much brighter than the passages.  The pod was larger than I thought it would be, and you could have played a decent game of football here, arena football at least.  There was a small creek running back and forth everywhere, starting at one side of the woods and into another with large numbers of mushrooms, and other exotic plant life growing.

I reached down and plucked a purple mushroom with blue squares on it instead of polka dots.  It was just over palm sized and looked cultivated with small batches of them positioned the entire way down the stream.  Even the stream looked odd, as if someone had spent the time to stretch out its passage in this pod to the maximum possible length.

“That’s not natural,” I said, realizing that the creek’s path was carefully controlled.

“In the path of farmland,” said Spivy.  She didn’t add the duh, she didn’t need to.

“So they grow these?” I asked, smelling the mushroom.

“The whole economy of the town is based on farming like this,” said Spivy.

“They are all ready to harvest,” said Shade, sniffing around with his herbalism skill shard.  “They can be boiled to make a weak healing potion, or combined with other herbs to make various stronger healing potions.”

“Are the doats here,” I asked.

“I don’t see any monsters,” said Shade as he sniffed several times, “Wait, I smell goblin.”

“They never hide right next to the passages,” said Spivy and I started scanning hard, looking close but not at the passages.  I spotted a lone goblin hidden on top of a branch about ten feet up.  He was peering over at us, unmoving.

I considered that for a moment, “Shade, go splash in the water on the far side.”

To his credit, Shade never asked me to explain the plan.  He just rushed over and started frolicking, which was good because it let me move up a few more steps until I was ready.  When I was confident the goblin was distracted, I summoned up a javelin and activated laser thrust.

The tip of my javelin glowed white and I flung it straight at the goblin.  My core still gave me near perfect control over any spear, be it used as a melee weapon or in this case a projectile.  Unfortunately, laser thrust was an ability and not a spell.

The instant I threw the spear, the essence flowing into the tip ceased and the laser pointer on the end of it began to revert into a regular spearhead.  It didn’t matter, it retained enough of the charge that when it struck the goblin it went straight through and into the branch.

The goblin just died.  I expected a scream, or a cry or something.  Instead there was just a muffled thump as the spear dug into the tree.  I walked over and tore my weapon free, causing the goblin’s body to collapse to the floor.

Spivy hopped down and started investigating the body, but she didn’t loot it.  She was checking on the goblin’s hands and lifting up its lip.

“What are you doing,” I said as I looked down at the corpse.

“What am I doing,” said Spivy.  “What do you see?”

“A dead goblin,” I said, looking at the corpse.  “He’s been here a while.”

“How do you know that,” asked Spivy.

“He ate all the mushrooms closest to him,” I said.

“Which is how I spotted him,” said Spivy.  I glanced back over the pod and realized instantly what she meant.  The purple mushrooms were everywhere except right here and they should have been.  The goblin had obviously been eating them.

“You can eat those,” I asked.

“Goblins can,” said Spivy, “Shade, loot him.”

Shade touched his nose to the corpse and then caused a pile of stuff to appear next to the goblin.  Spivy promptly ignored the corpse and went for the pile.

“No coins,” I said.

“I keep those,” said Shade.  “So we buy treats, and bacon.”

“Good call,” I said, suddenly wanting bacon.

“The coins are from unimportant things,” said Spivy.  “What we care about is here.  Notice no alchemical fire.”

“So he’s just a scout?” I said.

“Possibly, no rations but he’s been eating the local mushrooms,” said Spivy.  “He might just be a stray goblin, they are a common monster type and exist pretty much the world over.”

“Is that a map,” I asked, reaching for the item.  Spivy glanced at it and winced.

“Be careful with that, it is a protected map, if you put it in your mapper it will corrupt the other maps,” said Spivy.

“That’s a thing?” I asked.

“Yes, otherwise anyone could find a map and you’d suddenly have the locations of all of your enemy camps,” said Spivy, shaking her head.  “Most maps are personalized to some extent, lots of them are protected.”

I was about to mention Heywood didn’t protect his map, but Heywood wasn’t a sterling example of what anyone should do at any time.  I checked the mapper and discovered that it was an easy thing to cause all of my maps to go into a protected mode.  They could be copied if I showed them to someone, but not if my mapper was stolen.

Unless there was a skill to hack them, which there almost certainly was if one was a criminal.  I glanced over at Spivy.

“Fine, I’ll get started but this is going to take a while,” said Spivy, grabbing the map and drawing it into her storage.

Shade returned from sniffing around, “This goblin was not going through the passages, he was crawling through the woods.”

Spivy snorted at that, “That’s not smart, do not do that Shade.”

“Why,” I asked.  I couldn’t have crawled through the forest if I wanted to, so Spivy didn’t need to warn me.  That’s what I told myself at any rate.

“Things hide in the woods, they only stir if the forest commands them to and it would be best if they stayed asleep,” said Spivy.

“That doesn’t sound too bad,” I said.

“Walking right next to them would wake them up outside the forest’s control,” said Spivy.  “That would be incredibly bad.”

“Great,” I said looking at the impassable woods which I was now sure were filled with terrible, sleeping, monsters.  Or just a monster.  I wasn’t sure which was worse.

Still, there was sort of an impression in the wall of branches where a clever goblin might be able to squeeze through, unfortunately I lost track of however he was passing almost immediately.

The branches here were not so thick I couldn’t shove my arm into them, but a being of my size didn’t have any room to move inside those branches.  There were small gaps that Shade might have managed, but after Spivy’s warning he looked disinclined to put it mildly.

“Did you find any tracks of larger creatures in the passages,” I asked.

“I searched them down and I am smelling some sort of creature that is not native to this area,” said Shade.

“Those are probably the war doats,” said Spivy.

“They smell feral,” said Shade, sounding worried for the first time.  I scratched him behind the ears.

“We can just leave,” I said.  I didn’t really want to, but I didn’t want Shade to be unhappy either.  It was his vacation too, after all.  We were a team, and we would do this together.

“No, people are counting on us,” said Shade.  “I am a good boy, good boys help people.”

I patted him on the head.  I wasn’t as concerned because we were talking about doats and not mystery monsters, I followed Shade to a passage where we continued deeper into the forest.  This time we were much more careful when we advanced, and we spent more time looking not just at the walls but at places where the forest was damaged.  The goblins didn’t care for the trees like the native creatures.

“Why don’t the native creatures damage the forest,” I asked as we continued.

“The trees tell them not to, with as much essence as the tree has monsters will listen,” said Spivy.

“Meaning the forest manipulates their cores,” I asked.

“Basically,” said Spivy.  “The forest will warp anyone who spends too much time here to be its servant.  This doesn’t work on humanoids, you guys have actual free will.”

“But not you?” I asked.

“Fairies have a mission, though if we stay too long in a forest it will eventually start to mutate us into sprites,” said Spivy.  “But that’s not normally a concern, as such mutations take decades of proximity to a single forest.”

“So you could quit being a system fairy if you stayed in a large forest,” I asked as Shade huffed then turned shadowy.  He ran down the passage for a bit then reappeared, so I followed.  Spivy looked up from her map for a moment, then looked back down at it.

“That is just trading one master for another,” she said finally.  “And a forest is a far more demanding master.”

“But it has happened?” I asked.

“Yes, I know a few fairies who gave up and joined the forest,” said Spivy.  “Their minds are gone, all that remains is the forest.  Your fairy core eventually mutates into a sprite core, and all the commands of a sprite core don’t leave any room for your own personality.  They become like… a’s?”

“Bees,” I said, trying to imagine someone like Spivy’s personality being wiped away.  It was not a pleasant thought.  “But you are safe.”

“Yes, first off I don’t want to be part of the forest which makes the effect take much longer, and second I’m bonded to both of you so I doubt we will be here long enough to matter,” said Spivy.

“I am on vacation after all,” I replied looking around.  We continued walking for a dozen minutes or so through the winding passage.  Most of the trip was at ground level, but there were occasions where the passage lifted into the air over gullies or streams.  In those cases a pair of heavy branches formed a natural bridge that was broad enough to easily walk over.

I could see wheel ruts on a few of the branches.

“Are those natural,” I asked, feeling one.

“Yes, just because the halflings aren’t one with the forest doesn’t mean they aren’t part of the ecosystem.  Several have arborist class cores and those possess spells that will allow them to open passages or create bridges like this.  They must help the forest or the forest wouldn’t allow them to remain,” said Spivy.

When she said that a powerful breeze blew through the tunnel and despite the depth of which we were in the forest, I could still feel it chilling my bones.  I was walking around the guts of some massive creature, one that cared very little if I lived or died.

“So we shouldn’t cause any more damage than necessary,” I said.

“Preferably you won’t cause any damage at all,” said Spivy.  “The forest will defend itself if it is pressed, but generally prefers to let humanoids resolve their own problems.”

“I smell something,” said Shade.  I examined the passage on either side and there was nothing, so I advanced up to his position and knelt.

Shade found another pod, this one broader than the previous one.  It was nearly the size of the halfling village, though further back from the road, I supposed, and there was no ready supply of water here.  Instead of mushrooms, the halflings had been growing some sort of thick green grass in neatly organized fields.

I say it had been because several of the fields were entirely torn up and several poorly built huts had been created from bundles of the grass.  They tore down enough of the stuff in all directions to make their hovels that sneaking up to them was going to be tricky.

“You have three guesses,” I began.

“Mailmen,” said Shade.  “Those bastards.”

“No, I mean,” I said.

“The Amazon Driver, he leaves all those boxes and not enough of them are full of dog food,” said Shade.

“And The first two don’t count,” I finished.  .

“Good, I got those two wrong,” said Shade as he considered while a goblin walked out of the hut.  “Goblins!”  Shade wagged his tail.

“Good boy,” I said, Shade beamed.  I reached into my inventory and tossed him a treat.  He was a good boy.

“We don’t need the goblins,” said Spivy as she peered over my shoulder.  “There.”

I saw it as soon as she pointed.  There were three huts, two of them were ramshackle affairs, the kind kids threw up in the woods.  Pretend forts to deal with pretend monsters.  Except the monsters were in the forts now.

The third hut was bigger, larger, and built to hold something inside.  Several things, if I had to guess.  There were wooden ribs made from thick tree branches lashed to the outside of the cage, and that meant that the doats were inside.

“I assume the doats are vicious,” I said.

“Very, especially if they can’t have meat,” said Spivy.  “Which the goblins do not need otherwise.  They would have brought some, but see how brown those huts are.  They’ve been here about a week, and I doubt they planned that well unless there is a bugbear.”

“How smart are they,” I asked.

“They are heroes.  Not quite monsters, not quite adventures,” said Spivy.

“How is that?” I asked.

“Their system lord, Lord Gol’Nik, completed a ritual of ascension using a partial array of relics.  He was able to convert a small number of his species from low tier monsters to something worse,” said Spivy.  “That’s how we got bugbears, those didn’t exist one hundred years ago and the world is still reeling.”

“The goblin after you,” I asked.

“Was a servant of Gol’Nik’s,” said Spivy.  “The system lord of the goblins is not a fan of fairies at all, I’m just his latest target.”

“Why,” I asked.

“Fairies are the reason he became a System Lord, and for that he hates us,” said Spivy.