Izzy Chapter 12: …And Gnolling is Half the Battle (Patreon)

When the naiads had described how to find what must be a bridge, Izzy had gotten all excited. She wanted to get across and start searching, so that she could get the rewards for her Quest. But then they walked, and walked, and walked. They were heading towards the distant mountains. Pine and spruce mixed with the beeches and birches and other leafy trees, and sometimes, when the river turned in the right way, Izzy could see the lower forest stretch out towards the horizon.

They foraged as they went, and suddenly they’d walked all day, and nothing. It got dark, and the fairies started whining about being tired. Izzy was tired, too, and her feet hurt, but she didn't whine about it. Much.

You can all just sleep, Mash said as Izzy and the fairies argued about who should keep watch. I don't sleep anyway, and I see just fine in the dark. I’ll wake you if anything happens.

“Oh, right! Why didn't I think of that? I never had to sleep before, either. Thanks!”

The fairies were a little leery at first, but quickly agreed when Izzy pointed out that none of them would have to stay up.

The next day was more of the same. Walking, eating, keeping an eye out for anything scary — they saw another of those big forest cats, but Izzy scared it off with a blast of air — and hoping that the bridge would turn up around the next bend. After a finger or two the fairies started getting restless, and small groups of them split off to cross the river and start looking. Why were they moving farther and farther away from where the goblins were likely to be, they reasoned, when they didn’t even need any help to cross the water?

It wasn’t as though they were wrong. On her ghostly passenger’s advice, Izzy made sure that all the fairies knew enough goblin-tongue to tell anyone they found that Mash the Shaman was looking for them, and to bring them to where an old alder had fallen into the river. That should be an easy place for everyone to meet up. Then she let them go. By midday it was only Caj, Sparrow, and somewhere between five and seven others left; they really were very hard to keep track of.

Then, shortly after midday, there it was: A long, gray construction of regular stone blocks, rising from each bank to arch across the river in two spans, the central support resting in the middle of the rushing water.

It was the most magnificent thing that Izzy had ever seen. She had a vague idea about other peoples building things, and she could remember seeing human houses of wood, with reed roofs. But this? She’d never imagined that anyone could create anything on this scale. It spanned the entire river! At the middle it must be six or seven lengths above the water, and never mind how deep it went into the water!

“Mash, have we ever seen anything like this?” she asked the air.

No, the spirit said, her voice full of wonder. Nothing like this.

Caj, entirely unimpressed, blew a raspberry. “Humans and their fecking stacked stones. They’re worse than elves! Come on, mudfoot. Let’s get you across so we can find these gobbos of yours.”

Walking along the riverbank, Izzy and Viny had to climb a small embankment to get to the level of the bridge’s surface. There was a hint of a road there, leading off into the forest, just a flatter area covered by ground creepers where no trees grew, and there was a similar break in the trees on the other side. As she got up to said road, though, Izzy saw something else.

“Hey, look,” she said. “It’s all torn up. All the plants are trampled. And there’s mud on the bridge.”

“Think someone came through here, then?” Caj asked. “Crossing from here to the other side?”

“Maybe.” Izzy looked at her own feet, then at the state of the road and the amount of mud and uprooted plants on the bridge. She shrugged, and amended her statement to, “Probably. Lots of someones. Does it matter? I need to get across.”

“Eh, likely not,” Caj said, and they set out across the bridge.

Izzy couldn’t help but stop halfway to clamber onto the side and look over the edge. She’d never walked on top of something that someone had built before! And she could see all kinds of swirls and other patterns in the water as it rushed past beneath her. She could remember looking down on rivers before of course, when she was flying, but she didn’t think that she’d ever stopped and looked at one before. For that matter, she was pretty sure that she’d never actually stood still in her life until she woke up as a goblin. Taking a moment to just look at things was nice!

Of course, Caj had to go and ruin the moment. “Come on, then!” he complained. “Yer tribe could be dying, or some such. Let’s be moving!”

“Yeah, yeah.” Izzy tore herself away from the rushing water — she’d have to come back sometime later — and got back to walking, staying up on the edge of the bridge. She didn’t know anything about stonework, but she was pretty sure that this bridge was well built. The edge was wider than her, and the stones were smooth and even, making walking, running, even skipping and dancing along it easy.

The fairies didn’t like it, though. There was something about stacked stones that made them uneasy. “Sylvana’s nut-brown thighs, am I glad to leave that thing behind,” Sparrow grumbled when they reached the other side. “What do bigjobs have to go tear things up and stack them for? Fecking weird!”

There was a chorus of Ayes and Yeahs and Fecking bigjobs from the others, including Caj.

Izzy waved her hand dismissively, hopping down from the edge and facing the fairies. “I like it!” she declared.

“You would, crazy gobbo!” one of the uncertain number of fairies quipped, to the laughter and agreement of the others.

Then Mash’s voice screamed Look out! in Izzy’s head. There was a whoosh and a pair of loud Yips, and a net swept through the small swarm, bringing several of them to the ground. At the same time something whirled through the air towards Izzy, but she saw it coming, and with a yelp and a burst of wind she sent it off course and into the river. It looked like two lumps connected by a piece of rope.

Out of the bushes beside the road, close behind the net and the whirling thing, came two creatures. They loped on wolf or cat-like legs, tongues lolling out of short snouts that sat on equally wolf or cat-like faces, with leaf-shaped ears high on the sides of their heads. They wore suits of leather on their torsos, but the parts of them that weren’t clad in anything were covered in grayish-brown fur with dark spots.

 They were both giants, but one was a head taller than the other. The bigger one held another of the whirly things. The other had a nasty-looking axe, thick and jagged. They were close, they were coming, and they were fast.

Izzy yelped. She screamed, “Defend me!” to Viny, turned, and ran. The wolf-cats gave off a pair of weird laughing sounds that she didn’t like at all.

Her first thought was that she didn’t want to see what getting hit by that axe would feel like. Her second, seeing the squirming pile of fairies under the net, was Oh no! My experience!

When Gram had put the fairies in her care, Izzy had received a new message:

[New optional sub-task in Quest ‘A Lone Goblin is a Dead Goblin’: Keep your allies safe!]

If she ran and left the captured fairies to these wolf-cat people, she was pretty sure that she’d fail that optional sub-task. That meant no extra rewards, and that just wouldn’t do. She had to save them. She needed that experience! Levels had already given her a whole new type of magic, and a new spell for Plant Magic. She needed to—

Hey, those gnolls are lower Level than we are, Mash said. We could probably take them!

Oh. Right. She wasn’t just a little goblin, was she? She was a Level 7 goblin, with fancy magic and a great staff and a poison knife and a spirit in her head. She’d killed a spider bigger than herself! She could deal with these two gnolls, as Mash called them.

Izzy turned to look back. Only the smaller gnoll with the axe was following her. The other was tying up the net with the fairies in it. The other fairies, cowards that they were, had split and were nowhere to be seen. Viny lay in a broken heap, having bought her a tiny bit of time before being smashed into so many dead bones and green, clingy bits. Well, fine. Izzy would just have to do everything herself.

She pirouetted mid-step, blasting the gnoll’s legs with the strongest gust of wind she could muster, sending Viny’s remains scattering behind it. It might not have been enough to knock the gnoll down normally, but it was running after her at full tilt and the powerful blast made it stumble and fall, going down with a growling yip that Izzy actually understood as, “Oh, you little shit!” It quickly scrambled to its feet again, but Izzy used the opportunity to turn and run past it, going right back towards its partner and the netted fairies.

The gnoll looked up, utterly baffled as the little creature it had expected its partner to deal with came running right back. The bafflement turned to outrage when Izzy pointed her staff at its feet and screeched, “Grabby Brambles!” She couldn’t use it against the gnoll chasing her on the stone bridge, but the other one was standing on good old dirt.

“What in all the hells is this?” the gnoll yowled, as Bramble Growth began to block off that half of the bridge and quickly wrapped its legs in a multitude of questing vines. It threw the net of fairies to the side and quickly got its axe out and hacked, but the vines thickened and sprouted thorns faster than the gnoll could clear them, cursing and yipping as it struggled. “Grapshum, you useless bastard! Help me!”

As Izzy passed the bramble, ducking under a wild swing from the struggling gnoll, she cast the same spell right under her own feet. In moments the bridge was almost entirely closed off with thick, grabbing vines. A glance over her shoulder showed the second gnoll trying to pick its way through the thorny plants, while at the same time hacking at the vines holding its companion. Izzy waited until it was right in the middle of the mess, then hit it with wind blast after wind blast until it lost its footing and fell, a loud, pained Yip escaping it as it crashed among the thorns, followed by a furious, “I’ll eat your face! I’ll eat your face, you goblin shit!”

“Haha! Get brambled!” Izzy yip-growl-cackled, casting the spell under the two gnolls again for good measure.

Shank ‘em! Shank the fuzzy stinkbreaths!

“Not happening!” Izzy shouted back. She was not crawling through a full length of thorns for the sake of being vicious. Instead she ran to the squirming net, which lay discarded by the road, and cut it open with her Spiderfang. Izzy to the rescue!

“Caj!” she shouted as the fairies fought their way out of the cut net. “Coward fairies! We’re leaving! Follow me!”

Izzy sprinted into the forest, fairies emerging from trees and bushes to join her while cheering and throwing jeers back at the furious gnolls. As she ran, precious, beautiful squiggles appeared, floating in the air before her.

[Feat accomplished. Survived an ambush: Gnoll Trappers. Experience awarded.]

“I am Izzy!” she shouted gleefully as she ran. “Queen of the forest! Slayer of spiders and trapper of trappers! Praise me!”

There was a chorus of cheers from the fairies.

“Izzy!”

“Crazy queen Izzy!”

“Best gobbo ever!”

It wasn’t exactly what she’d been aiming for, but it would do.