Chapter 8: Digging In Part 2

  Gramma Choch was pleased with what they had accomplished in the brief time they had been given, and the time the adventurers had taken to travel to their home had been a boon.

  The traps they had been able to place were simple and not deadly, but there hadn’t been time to try for lethality. The time gained was more critical and would aid their purposes. The adventurers’ guild would send someone more potent and far deadlier should this party be wiped out.

  The rest of the Goom had left earlier in the day with provisions and supplies for the trip, though they were still determining where they would end up. The new settlement would need to be close enough to humans for them to scavenge supplies and food.

  The rest of the settlement had left earlier in the day. As soon as the adventurers had shown up at the farm, the Goom started moving east around the town. It was a shame they needed to evacuate, but sticking around after Jerry’s injuring of the farmer and the adventurers being called in would be fruitless.

  As Choch was thinking about this, she spotted the adventurers approaching under her scouting position in the trees. One looked particularly bad, limping along and cursing as the party moved closer toward the Goom’s now abandoned home.

  From the smell of the wind, the stinker-tons had done good work. She would have to thank Lester for keeping them around.

  She took a shallow breath and, with an effort of will, silently cast the long speak spell to reach Lester and Mina. Such a mana-intensive spell needed to be kept short.

  Good job on those traps, you two. The party is almost to the burrow. Move into position on their flank. We’ll see how much we can draw them away with direct attacks. Remember, non-lethal if you can manage it. Try to draw them away from home towards the stream. We need to delay as much as we can.

  There were several moments of no response. Choch waited patiently for the other two Goom to get into position. Her patience was rewarded as their voices sounded in her head.

  Lester, in position.

  Mina, in position.

  Choch nodded in satisfaction before replying,

  I’ll start. You two come in on a count of three after I make contact. I’m going to target the limping one, I won’t cripple him, but I will get their attention. Watch out for that magic user.

  Her instructions were given. Choch silently descended from her scouting position. She moved to the brush along the west side of the forest trail the adventures were moving down. She paused once in position, unlimbering her small, wicked club, careful not to disturb the greenery around her, and waited. Jer patience was rewarded with the sight of the limping, cursing, and leather-clad stinky man leading the party down the trail

  With a high-pitched, chittering war cry, she burst from the concealment. The cursing wretch stumbled back from her advance in startlement. As he took a hobbling step back instead of drawing the weapons sheathed at his sides the larger female behind him was more aware.

  She made wild gestures and started to chant at the sound of Choch’s war cry. Then, with the girl’s mystical arm flailing, vines began to spring from the path, attempting to snare Choch as she advanced.

  She twirled, dodging around the vines, and quickly closed with her intended victim. Arcing her swing in a chopping motion toward his shins, she connected and heard a very satisfying, if unoriginal,

  “Son of a bitch!”

  Her club wasn’t dangerously heavy or being swung with all the force she could muster. However, few would be happy about being cracked across the shin on a Tuesday with a two-inch thick, wooden rod with strips of metal inlaid down its length.

  Continuing her attack, she used the rebounding force from her strike to whirl around in a tight circle and strike his other shin as he started hopping in place on his less injured leg.

  He howled in a loud, angry voice as he fell to the path, rolling back and forth, holding his shins.

  “Always the legs!”

  Choch knew that staying still would quickly end her assault. So she moved on to the more prominent blond woman behind her first victim—the one who had summoned the vines with a now squawking, panicking owl on her shoulder.

  She reached into her deep pocket and sub-vocalized a brief spell during her charge. Her weight lessened as she leaped into the air far higher than she should have been able.

  Reaching the height of her much larger opponent’s head, she withdrew a pawful of sand and threw it hard into the wide-open, surprised eyes of the large, blond woman. The offended owl on her shoulder screeched and took to the air as the large woman uttered a cry that interrupted her chant.

  The vines withdrew back into the ground. Clutching at her now sandy-textured eyes, the woman staggered, screaming at the pain.

  As Choch was disabling the second of the adventurers, she heard another angry squawk that came from behind her opponent. She looked over the woman’s shoulder as she descended to see Lester. He was occupying the dwarf coated in heavy armor.

  With light, quick blows about the dwarf’s head and shoulders, Lester was berating them. It was a chittering stream of invectives the dwarf probably couldn’t understand.

  The dwarf was fending off the quick blows with an absurdly large axe being wielded, if with some difficulty. Choch could tell the armored figure was more accustomed to dealing with larger opponents. But the armor was doing its job as clangs rose into the air.

  Lester’s lighter weapon bypassed the dwarf’s guard sometimes, and every gong was a sound of victory in Choch’s ears. Meanwhile, Mina was riding the shoulders of the magic user while pulling at the distraught woman’s red hair. Choch thought,

  How had she managed that? Well, it works.

  The first part of getting the attention of the adventures was going well, but they needed to draw them further away from the fleeing settlement. So Choch called out to her son and his wife,

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  “To the west! Protect the younglings!”

  It wasn’t likely that any of the adventures spoke Goomish, but a little deception couldn’t hurt. Lester broke off from the dwarf, blasting a flashy but mostly harmless shower of frost and snow out of his paws with a quick spell. Lester then retreated into the brush as the ice frosted around the dwarf’s head thickly.

  Mina summoned a small caustic blob of slime into her hands. She released the screeching magic user’s hair and slapped her in the face with it, where it clung and started to eat at the flesh of her face.

  Choch nodded to Mina as she ran. That was a creative use of a simple cleaning spell and probably painful, judging from the angered screams from the redhead scraping at her face.

  The three Goom scurried away as the adventurers dealt with their minor but inconvenient injuries.

  ***********

  Cato rolled on the ground, holding his shins, and continued his monologuing example of the sailor’s language in a dialect of teamster mixed with soldier’s invective. Winnie was sitting and clutching at her eyes, trying to summon a small water Nyad to help wash out her eyes. This was partially successful, as a malformed water sprite did form. But it started slapping her in the face everywhere but her eyes. Winnie’s exasperated expression went unnoticed as she held still. The water sprite demonstrated her diminutive dominatrix skills ineffectively.

  Omara was screeching as the cleaning slime continued to burn at her face with the caustic juices. Nixen was calmly bashing the flat of the axe they carried into the helmet’s faceplate coated with ice, clearing their vision.

  Nixencleared most of the ice from obstructing the helmet’s vision and surveyed the scene calmly. Not seeing any present threat remaining, they moved to start helping Omara. Through a joint effort and Omara’s panicked whimpers, they started removing the caustic slime from her face using some cloth drawn from the dwarf’s pack and a water canteen.

  Winnie had managed to get her sprite of water to focus on clearing her eyes. She dismissed the sprite then helped a still cursing Cato to his feet. Looking at the rogue, Nixen commented with a straight face,

  “Concentrating on your footwork today, I see. I’m glad you don’t skip leg day.”

  Winnie started to chuckle a bit as she steadied the hobbling rogue, and Omara followed her example with an uncontrollable giggle through her tears as Cato scowled back briefly.

  He let a slight, pained grin appear and replied,

  “At least you can keep a cool head.”

  Omara winced at the skin of her face tightening with her laughter. She held either side of her face with both hands, trying to soothe her skin as Nixen finished working to clear the slime from her.

  Nixen worked around Omara’s fumbling hands. Finally, the dwarf tossed crumbling remains of the cloth into the bushes at the side of the road. Omara nodded to the dwarf in thanks.

  Nixen continued,

  “Now, we have confirmation of what we are facing. I haven’t seen these mobs before, but that will give us a bit of a bonus reporting them. We have a choice to make-”

  “Shouldn’t we be more worried about them coming back?”

  Cato interrupted with a nervous look at the greenery of the forest path around them. Nixen recognized the teaching moment and explained.

  “I understand their language, the largest one who started the ambush said to the others to head west. Evidently, their cubs are in that direction. I doubt that. Information that is to my benefit freely given by an enemy is suspect.”

  “I thought you said you hadn’t seen these mobs before. How did you understand them?”

  The three novices shared a glance. Cato did have a point.

  Nixen replied stoically,

  “Journeyman is when you can start taking lessons on mob language. A few of the languages are common enough among mobs to make it occasionally useful. However, barring a few specific positions in the guild before journeyman, it’s a waste of time as you may not survive long enough to talk to them.”

  Cato looked at the dwarf’s grim pronouncement with an offended expression. The dwarf ignored him and continued nodding towards the forest path leading towards the mobs’ home,

  “The most dangerous mobs are more intelligent than people realize. They use strategy, tactics, and communication to accomplish their goals. Their focus is almost entirely on survival and growth instead of which curtains will make their home the talk of the town. Think territory and food.”

  Nixen raised a hand and started counting off options,

  “What we have here is three options. One, the leader was scared or excited enough to reveal where the rest of this group’s most precious members were.

  “Two, we follow them. That one’s unlikely to help us. Since all the traps and even the ambush were about delaying rather than stopping us entirely. I think it’s an effort for them to distract us from the others.

  “Three, the home is empty, and the rest are fleeing in a different direction from the ambush party.”

  Cato had been trying to contain his anger during the end of Nixen’s short lecture. Instead, he spat at the dwarf in disbelief.

  “That’s ridiculous! A distraction? I won’t be walking right for days! Winnie was damn near blinded, and Omara’s face is-”

  Cato broke off as Omara’s hands became enveloped in flame with a quick muttering of an incantation. A dangerous glint entered her eye as she interrupted in a cranky voice as her now two-toned face scrunched with anger,

  “Omara’s face is…?”

  Cato bit back a reply that might get him fricasseed and said in a reasonably respectful and questioning tone,

  “Well, er, ex-foliated?”

  The mage thought about this response a moment before dismissing her fiery vengeance. She nodded to Nixen for the dwarf to continue. Nixen did, with a smile at the brief interplay,

  “You might find it ridiculous, Cato, but they weren’t trying to kill us. Some of you would be dead if they were.

  “Remember that true monsters have the strength and natural skills to wipe out parties of adventurers. They fight for survival, not glory or gold.”

  Nixen’s head shook slightly before continuing,

  “No, it simply isn’t possible for all of you to be alive against mobs demonstrating this level of intelligence that were seriously trying to kill you. So I think our third choice is most likely to finish this quest.

  “Even if we could keep up with that ambush party on their home turf and eliminate them, the quest is the removal of ten mobs. We need to find the majority and take them out.

  “Better would be to capture at least three of those and kill the rest—ten total, with proof of removal for the quest to be completed.

  “I doubt the lair still has any of them with the delay tactics we’ve seen so far. Forethought like this from them is a dangerous thing. I keep harping about how smart mobs are, but they are usually much more territorial, too.”

  Nixen paused in thought.

  “Winnie, send out Pellet to the east and see if she can spot a group of mobs moving in that direction. The opposite direction of those three is obvious, but the most likely.”

  Winnie nodded and started whispering to her owl that had settled back onto her shoulder after the brief skirmish had finished. After receiving her instructions, the owl flew off to the east, winging quickly and silently between trees.