Izzy Chapter 3: I Would Rather Not, But Thank You (Patreon)

What Izzy remembered about magic was that it was both something that she did with effort and something that just happened when she wanted it to.

When she tried, casting Healing Roots fell somewhere in between. It didn’t just happen. She didn’t just decide that roots should come up and somehow heal her. But it also came naturally. She had a sense that she’d cast this spell before, many times, and that there had been a lot of chanting and waving involved. She didn’t need any of that now. Instead all she did was to focus, focus really hard on using the magic to heal herself, and she felt something stir inside her. One part of her mind that was hungry for mana, excited to use it, latched onto another part of her where the mana came from somewhere beyond her flesh, and the mana flowed from that mysterious place through the staff that she held lying on her lap, and into the earth around her.

The effect was immediate and momentarily terrifying. She suddenly understood what the description of the spell had meant by “a multitude of roots pierce the target,” and why her dress had all those tiny holes in it. Small, questing roots shot up from the soil and out from the willow, binding her legs to the ground and the rest of her to the trunk. It happened slowly enough not to startle her, yet quickly enough that she couldn’t react, and as the roots wrapped around her and thickened she yelped with fear and surprise.

Then thin tendrils pierced her from her toes to her throat, all at once, and all she managed was a startled gurgle.

It wasn’t painful, though. Not at all. In fact, the pain in her arm and gut and everywhere else that had been strained and abused since her flight from the slaughter of her tribe lessened almost immediately, then faded into nothing, replaced by a mild euphoria. The tendrils that she could feel growing into her flesh tickled something fierce. It was a decidedly wrong and uncomfortable feeling, yet she knew that she’d been through it before, that she’d done it to many others, and that it was perfectly safe.

She didn’t mind the discomfort. Her head was too light and floaty for that. For a moment she remembered truly floating, flying, dancing on the wind in absolute freedom. Then her head lolled back against the trunk, the roots holding her safely in place, and she drifted off to a peaceful sleep.

  *

When Izzy woke, the sun had moved many fingers. It was maybe halfway to midday, and though the laughing water kept the air cool, it was still heating up. Her arm wasn’t bleeding anymore. Faint, pale lines marked where the forest cat had scratched her, and the pain in her gut was only a faint, distant tenderness.

She felt for that place beyond herself where the mana came from, and found it practically empty. Looking at the gourd in her Summary showed the same thing; there was only a bit of water at the bottom. She must have used everything, like the spell said, and it hadn’t been quite enough.

Wait, she thought as the fog in her mind cleared. Laughing water?

And it was laughter. Not burbling water that sounded like laughter, but laughter that sounded like burbling water!

She shifted carefully to look around, and the laughter mostly stopped, replaced with three amused voices that spoke in a language like rushing rapids and roaring waterfalls, trickling snowmelt and lazy brooks.

“Look, look, sisters! It’s awake!” said the first voice.

“I told you it wasn’t dead! You owe me a joke!” said the second.

“No fair! The willow was eating it!” the third pouted, though it soon turned into a giggle. “What is it?”

“A goblin,” stated the first with certainty.

“I drowned a goblin once.” The third sounded thoughtful, as though this might be a very important consideration. “Should we drown it? Let’s drown it!”

“It’s not a goblin,” said the second voice, as though this was the most foolish thing she’d ever heard. “Well, it is, but it’s not. Look closer! It’s clearly an aura, just… stuck. Yoo-hoo! Cousin?”

The last was said much louder and was clearly directed to Izzy, as a shape swam into view followed by two others. They were shaped like big women of some kind, somewhere between Izzy and the giants in size, but made of ever shifting water. The water of the river barely stirred around them as they moved or when it flowed past, as though it passed right through them.

“Hello, cousin!” Said the first and greenest of the three, her voice full of concern. “What happened to you?”

“She’s been bound! Bound in a mortal shell!” said the bluer of the three, in the first voice Izzy had heard. “Oh, poor dear! How did that happen?”

“Oooh, bound a spirit in a thinking mortal? That's a terrible idea!” said Green. “Whoever did that really shouldn't have.”

“We should drown her and set her free!” said the last of the three. She was a pale, frothy white, and sounded far, far too excited about the prospect of drowning Izzy.

“H- hello,” Izzy said, scooching up a little further into the ferns, away from the three. She spoke their language fluently, but her voice felt scratchy as she spoke, as though it wasn’t used to the sounds she was making. “No drowning, please! I don’t mind this body. Ah, who— what are you?”

“Oh, so polite, isn’t she, to answer in our tongue?” said Blue happily.

“Are you sure about the drowning? It’s no trouble, really!” said White.

“Oh, no, it went bad, didn’t it?” said Green, her voice full of sympathy. “Whoever bound you mucked it up. Mortals!”

“Maybe?” Izzy said, keeping her eyes mostly on White who was looking at her with a kind of hopefulness that Izzy didn’t like at all. “So… who?”

Blue laughed. “We’re naiads, of course! What else would we be?”

The word conjured up memories of stern warnings to never listen to voices near springs, streams or rivers, and of the sight of fellow spirits at play beneath her, calling and waving as she flew over the waters of the forest.

“Naiads? Oh, yes! I remember you!”

“Why are you in a goblin?” White asked.

“I don’t know.” Izzy relaxed a little, seeing that the water spirits were friendly, and stretched her legs out to sit more comfortably. She was pretty sure that the naiads couldn’t leave the water anyway. “I woke up like this. Um, there were giants killing all the other goblins, so I ran. Maybe something got messed up when the giants came?”

“Giants? There are no giants in this forest,” Blue declared confidently.

“Probably humans,” Green said. “Always killing each other, humans and goblins. Though it could have been elves, I suppose, though goblins usually stay away from them, so they don’t fight much.”

“A goblin tried to lure me out of the water once,” White said, looking at Izzy suspiciously. “He had an otter in a basket.”

Blue gasped. “You never told us that! Was he trying to bind you?”

“Maybe?” White shrugged, her whole form sloshing about from the movement. “I got my hands on him and almost drowned him, but he got away.”

A memory surfaced in Izzy’s mind, of the old shaman, her teacher, returning to the camp one evening soaked to the bone and refusing to talk about what had happened. She wisely stayed quiet.

“So you don’t remember much at all, do you?” Green asked Izzy.

“Not really, no. But things keep coming back.”

“And you’re sure you’re happy in that shell?” White asked, reaching for Izzy’s ankle hopefully.

Izzy bent her knees, pulling her legs out of White’s reach. “Pretty sure, yeah!” To be entirely honest with herself, Izzy could admit that it was more that she didn’t want to go through the drowning part. Besides, she didn’t know if dying would free her from the goblin body she was in, and she’d rather not find out any sooner than necessary.

“Well, be careful,” Green said. “Our elder sisters told me that bound spirits can lose themselves. That they start to think that they’re whatever creature they’re bound into, and that’s why you should never let yourself be bound.”

Izzy thought about that. She had felt a lot more like a ground-dwelling goblin than a spirit of the air and wind. And she had the goblin’s Class and Skills and all…

“I’ll be careful,” she promised both Green and herself. “I’ll remember who I am, just as soon as I figure that out!”

“We believe in you, cousin!” Blue cheered.

“And if it doesn’t work, you can always come down to the water and I’ll help you,” White said, a predatory gleam in the area where her eyes should be.

“Oh, stop your burbling!” Green said, bopping White on the head with a splash. “See you, cousin!”

Then they were off, splashing and laughing and leaving barely a ripple in the water as they went.

Izzy wasn’t quite sure what to make of the whole thing. The naiads hadn’t asked for anything, nor had they made any offers — not counting White. Her best guess was that they’d simply been curious and, curiosity sated, were now off to some other amusement.

She did know that she was going to be very careful to make sure that they, or at least White, was nowhere near if she had to go in the water.

Now that she was alone again, she took a look around. She’d chosen a pretty nice place for her healing. The water nearby was much calmer than either up- or downstream, thanks to a widening of the river here. The nearest ferns had gone brown and wilted, and a few leaves at the very tips of the willow’s branches looked dead, but otherwise her spell hadn’t done much damage. The levee sloped gently instead of being a wall of roots and dirt, and a trickle of water ran down it just downstream from her, cutting a shallow channel where a tiny brook joined the river. The sun shone. Leaves rustled and birds sang. Giants moved on the other shore—

Izzy choked off a yelp as she scrambled behind the trunk. Giants! She both didn’t carry any ill will against them, and also hated them, wanted to kill them, all of them, and was absolutely terrified of what they might do if they got their hands on her. It was all very confusing.

She didn’t think that they’d seen her, hidden as she was by the tree’s foliage. She didn’t think that they could easily get across the river, especially not with White around — that one was way too interested in drowning people. But whatever she felt about them, she was pretty sure that if those giants — who were most likely humans, according to the naiads — saw her, they wouldn’t hesitate to finish what they’d started the previous night. The forest cat had been bad enough. She needed to be able to properly defend herself before she’d risk being spotted by any humans.

And before she even thought about that, she needed to really figure things out. Find her place in the world. Maybe she should try to find any survivors from her tribe? She was pretty sure that she’d been one of their leaders. But that would have to wait. They’d probably be on the other side of the wide, fast, and White-infested river anyway. For now she needed food and shelter. She had memories of being cold and wet and hungry and generally miserable, and a sucking feeling in her belly told her that one of those was more pressing than the others.

She also had another spell to try. Thinking about it brought her happy feelings and memories of being very pleased with it, so the sooner she could try that out, the better.

With a final peek across the water — the humans seemed to be doing some fishing while enjoying the sun — she quickly grabbed her staff and arrowhead, and scuttled off into the shelter of the trees. When she couldn’t see the giants anymore she took a long, refreshing drink from the brook, and then put her trust in Survival and her body’s memories, continuing deeper into the forest. She had food to find, a shelter to build, and vinelings to create!