Chapter Fifty-Five - Bridge Too Far

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“High. High. Low. Stab,” Rosario said. She waited a beat between each word. Honestly, most of her attention was on her current latest project. She was fixing that jerkin that Lucky had taken from the bandits. It was a decently-well made piece of clothing, but some of the stitches could be better and there was a panel on the inside, near the scruff, that had worn out, so she was replacing it. It also gave her an excuse to enchant the item. Maybe with a toughness enchantment? 

A jerkin covered the torso rather well, and this one was padded. Not quite a gambeson, but not too far from it. It would maybe stop a blade, and the padding could serve to soften a blow. It wasn’t much, but some was better than none.

“Low. Low. Low. High. Stab.”

Lucky panted. She was keeping up with Cricket and Rosario with a series of fast lunges, each one ending in another attack.

Her ‘high’ attacks were a basic side-to-side swipe, designed to take a neck out. Stabs were just that, a mid-level stab, blade held so that it was horizontal, with the full weight of Lucky’s momentum behind it. Rosario had been correcting her posture with those all day. Lucky was having a hard time remaining consistent with that strike. She kept moving her elbow a little in a way that would hurt her if she wasn’t careful.

Low attacks were a quick sort of sweeping stab, one that basically drew a small circle in the air with the very tip of her blade. The idea was to stab then retract in a smooth motion. It was the kind of move that she’d want to have ingrained if she ever attacked someone from horseback with a saber. Or, Rosario supposed, if someone was as fast as a horse already. It was a move designed to prevent her from breaking her wrists if she moved past her opponent by ensuring that the blade didn’t remain stuck.

Today’s training was all about ingraining some of the simple motions that Rosario had been teaching Lucky. She didn’t know if this was proper and good training for a future swordsman, but she imagined that it couldn’t hurt for Lucky to have the right muscle memory locked in.

She wanted to have Lucky spar some more when lunch time came around, but the girl’s arm muscles were over strained. A sword was only a few pounds, but swinging that weight around for hours on end was somewhat harmful. Rosario ordered Lucky to rest instead. 

Then she turned her attention to Cricket and pulled out the spoon (she had purchased it from a befuddled innkeeper that morning) and Cricket’s already pale face paled further.

“The only type of spooning I want from you is naked and post-coital!” Cricket snapped.

“Very well, then,” Rosario said. “In that case, it’s dodge training for you.”

They continued on their way an hour or so later. Cricket was covered in small red marks on her skin where she’d failed to dodge in time, even though Rosario was holding way back. 

Unseen were the many strikes on her rear. Rosario would never admit it aloud, but there was a perverse pleasure in hearing Cricket’s squeaks and in chasing her down.

Maybe... maybe she should have another conversation with Cricket.

Or, perhaps more wisely, she could seek therapy. There had to be a [Therapist] somewhere in this world.

It was only a few hours past lunch when the route they travelled on became more complex.

The road dipped, slowly moving downhill into the lee of a valley. As they moved down, the fog thickened. She had noted it earlier, of course, but it had always just been a small wispy fog that clung to the shadows. Now the fog was thicker, more oppressive, and the sun wasn’t enough to burn it away.

The air grew more still, and the now-familiar sound of insects and forest critters and birds grew more faint and distant.

“This place is terrifying!” Cricket declared with a wide grin.

“You don’t seem afraid,” Rosario said.

“I’m more afraid of your silverware than I am of anything lurking in the fog,” Cricket said. “Besides, clowns aren’t afraid of nothing.”

"You're not afraid of nothing?” Lucky asked. “Like... the idea of nothing?”

“Yeah. Nothing is scary. Have you ever thought about it, really? Just a whole lot of nothing. Or maybe a whole little? It’s not like you can weigh nothing, is it?” She shivered theatrically. “Spooky stuff. And utterly antithetical to clowning around. Other than that, nothing scares a clown... except taxes.”

“You’re a strange little woman,” Rosario said as her eyes scanned the growing mist. 

“Ah, but you like me!~” Cricket sing-songed. “You too, Lucky! Don’t think I haven’t noticed you staring whenever my skirts flounce a little too flouncily!”

“W-what?” Lucky stuttered.

“Don’t bully Lucky,” Rosario said. “And keep close. I don’t like the lack of visibility.”

It wasn’t long before they walked into an ambush. 

It happened on a bridge. It ran over a small stream that Rosario imagined was quite a bit stronger in wetter seasons. Just a simple stone bridge with a copse of trees on either side and few sightlines.

She had noticed that there were things in the trees, but she failed to register them as a threat until they were almost in the centre of the bridge and one of them shifted around a tree and fired a bow with a deadly twang.

Three more did the same, one to the left, and another two from the rear, basically firing at them from every angle. 

Rosario snapped the arrows out of the air, and in that moment, it felt like the world slowed to a crawl for her.

Two things stood out.

First, the arrows were crudely made. Wooden shafts with feathers, but not great fletching, and their heads were knapped stone. 

Second, the things attacking them were... fish?

No, fish-like. Scaly skin that had a wet sheen, and liquidy eyes that didn’t belong above water. They wore clothes, of a sort, but it was mostly made of vines and strips of moss. It allowed them to blend in nearly perfectly with their surroundings.

Six more of the creatures ran out from the underbrush, three ahead, three behind.

Rosario hummed, then fired a quick Magic Missile. Four bolts flicked out, underpowered, but still strong enough, and all four bowmen were smacked out of their hiding spots above.

“Lucky, take the three behind us, they’re weaker,” Rosario said calmly. “Cricket, the three ahead.”

She [Inspected] them all, but mostly focused on a seventh, the strongest of the whole lot, and the only one in the third tier.

[Moss Dryad of the Swamps] - level 4

The remainder were a mix of mis second tier and upper first tier, mostly [Swampman] or [Swampan Warriors]. A tough fight for her companions, she was sure, but she also expected them to at least try.

Cricket immediately broke into a sprint, jumped onto the stone railing on the edge of the bridge, and continued to run even as she pulled knives out of her inventory, already halfway through the motion of throwing them. That was a newer trick that Rosario had noticed her picking up recently.

It was interesting how stats were so very important to people, and for good reason; they made a person faster, stronger, and overall more capable, but at the same time, there were a lot of things that experience taught that trumped brute strength and speed. Things like drawing from one’s inventory with speed.

One of the [Swampman] monsters... monster-like people, went down with a gurgle as a lucky knife-strike planted itself in his neck. 

Then Cricket was jumping over a swing of a long wooden club covered in knapped stone held by the warrior.

Lucky, meanwhile, had charged across the bridge and ended her charge with a deep, long lunge. The point of her sword and the next few inches behind it easily parted skin just below the ribs of one of the weaker enemies at the rear.

It screamed even as Lucky backed up and out of her lunge, only for her to execute another long stab, holding her sword like a fencer would a rapier to stab another in the clavicle. Not a lethal injury, that, but it drew blood and it likely hurt, which was enough of a start. 

Rosario stepped aside, splitting her attention on both of her friends. The only time she moved after that was to appear before the third-tier [Moss Dryad of the Swamps] and give him a hard but non-lethal shove that sent him flying down the road ahead of them. He landed in a tumble of limbs, but was soon back on his feet. 

She suspected that Cricket and Lucky could take him, working together, but on their own and with chaff around? The chances weren’t as great for her friends. But given some time...

Cricket leapt over the warrior, flipping over him in midair with a clinking from her many bells. She spun, caught the other [Swampman] around the head with her legs, and rode him to the ground and disconnected with a roll that saw her back on her feet. The one she’d landed on had one of her knives firmly planted in his eye. The warrior spun, swinging, but Cricket went low and swiped a knife through his calf, rose, and planted that same knife in the warrior’s stomach.

From there the fight became a quick exchange where the warrior tried to make space and where Cricket stayed close, planting more and more small knives into his body. 

On the other side of the bridge, Lucky was being backed away, but for once she had a great range advantage, and when she made enough space, she took off running at an angle, stabbed one of the monsters in the gut, and ran past while unhooking her sword from the [Swampman]’s insides. She spun, and then shifted into a high guard to block one attack, then another, and finally she parried a strike well enough to give herself an opening which she used to cut her foe across the bicep. 

Another three quick exchanges like that and her enemy was too weak to keep up which is where Lucky became a little more bold with her attacks, putting more force into them and eventually knocking her enemy’s club away. A hard head-to-hip cut later and they were down.

“One left,” Rosario said with a gesture to the [Moss Dryad of the Swamps] ahead. 

The manting [Swampman] grunted, then raised a staff, one covered in mossy wraps and little tchotchkes. He screamed something in a guttural tongue that grated on Rosario’s ears until she folded them down. There was magic in his words, and more in the air around him as he cast a complex spell that involved scattering bone dust in the air and lighting a small effigy on fire in his free hand.

The air spun, and from nothing came a host of ghostly figures, wailing, screaming forms that rushed ahead.

“Tsk,” Rosario said.

She flashed forwards and resheathed her sword. The third-tier’s head fell behind her. “Sorry. I haven’t trained either of you on how to fight intangible enemies yet. You’d be hurt if you tried. But at least we have an idea of the next thing to train, don’t we?”

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