Izzy Chapter 6: One Does Not Simply Get Levels! (Patreon)

The spider slowly scurried across the dead leaves. It passed Caj the fairy, ignoring him — her? Izzy still couldn’t tell — completely.

Izzy liked spiders. She could remember sitting and watching them in their webs, so elegant with their shiny bodies and long, spindly legs. This spider was nothing like that. It was squat and hairy, and its legs were short and thick. It was a brute of a thing, not pretty at all. Also, it had dropped on her head earlier. She didn't like it.

Izzy tried to sit completely still, hoping that the leaves would hide her. When the horrid creature reached the tree and started climbing, knocking Izzy’s staff over in the process, a cold sweat broke out all along her back. When it reached the base of the branch on which she was currently perched, she slowly put the arrow between her teeth, took a firm grip on the branch with both hands, and lowered herself down so that she was dangling.

She was a few lengths above the ground. Higher than she’d been before, but not upside down, so that might cancel out. She might be able to deal with the fall and run.

It looked like it should have been impossible, but the spider walked out onto the branch, its legs each folding daintily beneath it so that they formed a line as it somehow balanced there. As it move it would sometimes reach out to stabilize itself on another nearby branch, or one of the cords of webbing that stretched every which way, but the fact that the branch it walked on was no thicker than one of its legs didn’t bother it at all.

Then it stopped. The branch swayed lightly as the spider turned, making hanging on that little bit harder. Izzy was wiry, but her forearms and shoulders were starting to burn. The spider, though, didn’t come any closer. It stroked one of the thick cords of silk, pondering it enigmatically. Then, each leg in turn lifting and setting back down on the branch, it turned and returned to the trunk. It repeated the process on a few other branches from which silent cocoons hung. At one point it moved to a cocoon, cutting it loose and letting it fall to the ground.

Then it left. It scurried down the trunk of the tree, across the leaves, and out of the clearing.

“Oh, bugger Sylvana for creating those horrors, and bless her for giving them shite eyes!” Caj exclaimed once the spider was gone. “I thought I was about to be hung back up then!”

“Yeah, sure, Sylvana. Yeah. Is it really gone?” Izzy groaned around the arrow in her mouth. Her shoulders ached, and her forearms were made of fire.

“Sure is, my brilliant and fetching friend!”

“Okay.”

Izzy dropped. She bent her knees and rolled backwards to not break her everything, and promptly got stuck in the webbing covering the leaves.

After cursing her luck for a while, she got to work on cutting herself loose. The silk on the ground was ridiculously sticky, and she gave up on the idea of getting it off her skin or dress. Thus, she ended up wearing a full-body cutout of herself on her back, made of spider silk and whatever leaves and sticks were stuck to the webbing.

Grumbling, she collected her stick-proof socks and mitts, then her staff from where it lay by the tree, and finally Caj.

“Oh, you beautiful gobbo!” the fairy simpered as she came close. “Hurry now! Cut me out of this thing!”

Izzy, still grumbling, just picked the fairy up and set off in the direction of the brook, where she’d come from many fingers earlier. She was hungry, and thirsty, and she was not going to stick around to see if the spider forgot something and turned back halfway to wherever. And there was no amount of shrieking abuse Caj could pile on her that would change that.

As they passed some invisible threshold, the squiggles came for Izzy once more, and her spirits lifted immediately. 

[Task in Quest ‘Reclaiming Mother Oak’ complete: Free yourself! Partial experience awarded.]

[Optional sub-task complete: Free your fellow captives! Bonus experience awarded.]

[Congratulations! You have reached level 5! Visit your Summary to allocate your level.]

[New Task in Quest ‘Reclaiming Mother Oak’: Defeat the spider!]

She may be sore all over and covered in spiderwebs and leaves, but she got another level out of the ordeal! She still wasn't sure what that did. In fact, try as she might she couldn't remember ever getting a level before waking up, only having them. But she knew for sure that more levels was better. Stronger. It meant more food and loot, and less likely to be bullied or killed, and so she cheered and did a happy little skip as she walked.

“Ah, the bastard gods piss on you!” Caj hollered. Her happy skipping had made the fairy swing wildly in her grip. “What the feck’re you so happy about, gobbo? Let me down and I’ll give you something to cheer about!”

Temporarily impervious to Caj’s rudeness, Izzy did a little spin, making the vile little creature swing straight out. “Got a level!”

“Like hell you did! No such thing as ‘getting’ levels. You have them or you don't, fact of life!”

“Well, I got one.” Izzy happily swung Caj's cocoon in a big circle, drawing a shrill scream by tossing it high in the air running a few steps to catch it. “Got one this morning, too!”

“Yeah, sure, yeah! If I say I believe you, will you get me out of this fecking spider egg?”

“Will it shut you up?”

The fairy thought about that long and hard, finally concluding: “Maybe?”

“Fine. Don’t squirm or I’ll cut you.”

“Is that a warning or a threat?”

“Whatever keeps you still.“

“You talk pretty good for a gobbo,” Caj said as Izzy worked. It went even slower than cutting herself free, since she couldn't feel if the arrowhead was touching skin, and despite Caj’s many faults she didn't actually want to cut the fairy. “Most goblins are total idiots that can’t barely put five words in a straight line. And what are you doing here, anyway? I thought the elves wiped out all the gobbos on their side of the river.”

“Humans attacked our camp, and I jumped in the river,” Izzy said as she carefully chipped away at the spider silk, one nail’s width at a time. “And I’m not all goblin, anyway. I’m an aura stuck in a goblin.”

“A whatnow?”

“An aura! Wind spirit!”

“In a gobbo? What absolute fool did that?” The pixie ballooned its cheeks and blew out a long, long sigh. When it spoke again there was a shocking amount of sympathy in its voice. Any at all, that is. “Damn, Visva really bent you over a stump, didn't she?”

That… Izzy wasn't sure what that meant, but Caj’s tone was pretty clear. “It’s not so bad,” she said, stopping her cutting to carefully pull away the silk trapping Caj’s arms. “Having things hurt isn't great, but I like the eating. And making things grow is fun!”

To demonstrate, she put her finger on the ground and used Plant Magic, and when she lifted it a tiny fern followed, unrolling as it went.

“Oh, that’s neat, aye.” Caj slowly stretched his arms, groaning with pain and satisfaction. Izzy decided that he was probably a he, anyway. Or maybe fairy women didn't have anything on their chests? “Sylvana’s bountiful tits that feels good! Gods, gobbo, I know I’ve been giving you grief, but thank you! Do my wings next! Gently, now. Ach! Gently, you shite! Oh, oooh, that’s good!”

Caj groaned as two pairs of gossamer wings, which hung limp along their back, inflated. Soon they stood out, wider than Caj was tall. They fluttered a few times, lifting the fairy briefly, then stilled.

“You can’t know how cramped I’ve been tied up like that. I almost flew off then! Gods, I’ve missed flying these three days!”

“Yeah,” Izzy said wistfully, then started cutting Caj’s legs loose. “How did you end up in that tree anyway?”

“Ah! Feck, careful around the middle, would you? I was scouting Mother Oak to see if I could get inside. Turns out, nope! Fecking creepy crawly sealed the entrance with these tiny strands. Couldn't see them in the light, neither.”

“Inside? Is there something there?”

“Oh, aye! We used to live there, ‘til the spider showed up about two tenday ago. Most of ‘er’s hollow! Lots of cozy little chambers and nooks all over. Had to leave a lot of good stuff behind, too, but at least we all got away. Until I came back, I guess.”

“We? You have a family somewhere?”

The fairy’s legs finally came loose, and he fell back, slowly kicking his legs to work the stiffness out. The idea that he was indeed a “he” gained some significant support; all he was wearing was a loincloth. It left little to the imagination, and less as he flailed his legs around.

“Ah, thanks! Oh, that’s good! ‘course I have a family! A whole clan! What do you take me for, some clanless wanker who got kicked out for pissing off the wrong elder too many times? Is that what you think?”

Izzy rolled her eyes. “I wasn't, but I am now,” she said, then started cutting her dress loose from the chunk of leaves and webs that covered her back from head to toe. She really needed to try and wash it off, or something. “So I guess you all would want your oak back?”

“What’s it matter to you? We’re fine! We don't need some gobbo’s help. We’ll just… wait it out.“

“Well, I have a Task in this Quest to defeat the spider.” Izzy finished with the hem, letting it fall free, then started on the collar. She was really annoyed with not being able to bend her neck forward. “I’ll get a reward if I do, so I’ll help you if you’ll help me. How many of you are there?”

“Ey, I’m not fecking telling you that,” Caj said, glaring suspiciously. “They may have kicked me out — Temporarily! — but they're still family.”

Izzy blew a raspberry at the fairy. With the gunk between her skin and hair and the dress cut she could finally move freely again, and she stepped into the brook. She’d just have to hope that scrubbing with cold water would work, and wouldn't ruin the hide too badly. “Whatever. I want that reward, and you want your home back. Between me, a vineling, and some of you all, couldn't we kill the thing?”

“Eh, fairies aren't exactly fighters, most of us. We’re more, you know, light and shadow, sounds in odd places, things like that. Maybe charm an animal here and there. Works wonders to keep the bigjobs away, but the fecking spider’s too damn stupid for our magics to do much.”

“Stupid’s good, though! We just need to be strong enough to kill it. You have a chief, or something?”

“Well, there's Gram. She's not a Chieftess or a Queen, but, you know. She is.”

“Okay? She'd want the spider dead, right? Can I talk to her?”

“I'm not letting you eat my Gram!” Caj said, popping into the air with impressive speed and fluttering around angrily.

“Don’t wanna, wouldn't if I could,” Izzy said, crossing her arms. 

“You’ve got a pixie skull on your necklace!”

“Not a fairy, though, right? Besides, you lot can fly! I can’t. Yet.”

That slowed Caj down a little in his angry flitting. “Oh. Right. I don't know, though…”

“Just let me talk to her, would you? Bet she’d be really happy if you helped get the oak back, wouldn't she?”

They went back and forth a few times, until Caj finally relented. They agreed to meet there by the brook at midday.

As he was turning to leave, Caj said, “Say, you got a name, gobbo?”

“Of course I have a name! Dunno what my body was called, but I’m Izzy!”

“Izzy, eh?” Caj said as though that was the dumbest thing he’d ever heard. “All right… see you tomorrow, Izzy. Don’t get et!”

“Yeah, same to you, you rude bug,” Izzy muttered after him as he flitted off.

She got most of the leaves off her dress, skin, and hair. Now both she and her dress were all wet, but the air was warm and there were still some sun dapples hitting the forest floor. She hung the dress on her staff, threw the staff over her shoulder, and made her way back to the tree she’d picked out to sleep in, eating some mushrooms and other stuff she’d missed earlier as she went.

It had been a weird day, but rewarding. She’d met a rude weirdo, her vineling spell was pretty fun, and she’d gained another level! And something told her that level five was more important than four, and not only because the number was bigger.

A few fingers later, as it was getting dark, Izzy curled up in the little nest she’d made in the hollow tree. She’d gathered a bunch of pine branches and covered them with a thick layer of ferns and leaves, and it was nice and comfy. She had her dress, now dry, back on, so she shouldn’t get too cold. There was only one thing left to do before sleep. It was time to level.