Izzy Chapter 19: Who’s Dumb Enough To Just Jump In The River, Anyway? (Patreon)

I made an oopsie and posted the wrong chapter yesterday. Pretend you didn't see that. I'm not used to having a backlog for Izzy, okay!? Here's chapter 19, which is what should have gone up.

Also, big thanks to Kriss for letting me know!

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The first ambush came two days after the goblins set up camp.

Caj had been futzing about, doing Sylvana knows what, when he spotted a party of three gnolls moving upstream along the river. He immediately returned to the tree to fetch the goblins, who armed themselves and followed.

They watched the gnolls from the bushes as they took a break, the female lounging in the sun as the males fought over some kind of furry scrap of meat. One was clearly winning, but the other wasn’t giving up easily.

The female’s Level 8, the dark tan male is Level 5, and the grayish one with the patches is Level 3.

“Thanks,” Izzy muttered, then told the others, “We can take them. Easy. Just need a good place.”

“High bank up ahead,” Squirrel said. “Taller than the big bitch’s head. Put some bushes around ‘em and bash ‘em?”

Mash approved. Not a bad idea, she said, hoping that Izzy would listen. Squirrel had always been a better ambush hunter than stalker, and the plan, simple though it was, was sound. But Izzy also liked to make her own plans, to be the one giving the orders, the one in control.

“Mmm… all three at once?” Izzy asked. “Risky.”

“Drop a rock on ‘em!” Crack suggested excitedly. “Or a log! Big and heavy!”

Izzy still looked skeptical, but the others joined in enthusiastically to the point where the noise might alert the gnolls, so she said, “All right, all right, let’s head up there and see what we can find.”

The location was indeed good. The bank was high, with nowhere convenient to climb it, but there was a strip of dry, stony ground between it and the water where the gnolls could easily pass in single file, with no reason for them to look for a way to avoid it.

“Dunno if Bramble Growth will work there,” Izzy mused, “I’ll try. But I could maybe knock one into the water with a wind blast?”

“Could get away, though,” Twitch objected. “Swim downriver, tell the others.”

Better than one of us getting killed.

“Right,” Izzy said. “I’ll only do it if someone’s about to get an axe to the head. Any luck with something to dump on ‘em?”

Crack gestured with his axe. “There’s a big log just a bit down the hill. Think we can move it.”

The log they'd found was about three goblins long, and not very thick, but it was wet and heavy, covered in mushrooms but only half rotten. It would do nicely.

It took all six goblins to move the thing, but move it they did. They were halfway up the bank when Caj came flying to tell them that the gnolls had stopped lazing around, and were on their way.

Gnolls were noisy. They yipped, growled, and cackled constantly, frequently fought, and were just generally brutal nuisances. But they could also be frighteningly silent when they wanted to, and these three did. From how they acted, walking carefully, the lead male stopping every so often to sniff the ground or look closely at some track or pile of droppings, they were hunting. That was probably why they were sticking close to the water, too; Mash knew that her tribe’s hunters did the same thing, looking for places where deer or other game had recently come down to the water for a drink.

When the gnolls spotted a lone goblin cooling her weary feet, her back toward them and completely unaware of the danger she was in, they must have thought it was their lucky day. They still moved silently as they rushed toward her, but in their excitement they didn’t look too closely at the back they’d have to pass to get to her.

Not that there was anything to see. Mash hung above them, relaying everything they did to Izzy, but all the goblins except Squirrel were hiding behind the log. And when the gnolls passed under the bank, and Izzy relayed Mash’s signal, they all gave an almighty heave.

The lead male avoided the log by simply being too far ahead. The second male and the female were not so lucky, the half-rotten log cracking and splintering on their heads and bearing them to the ground.

Most sapients were bigger than goblins, but it didn’t matter much how tall a gnoll was when they lay dazed on the rocks, in the shallow water. The goblins leapt down from the bank, and hacked and stabbed them to bits. The ambush would have been perfect, if not for the lead male, who was still on his feet.

As she had in the first ambush, Squirrel went straight for the closest fuzzbut, dagger at the ready. This one, though, decided that discretion was the better part of valor. Or at least that disappearing was better than getting stabbed. He threw himself in the river, swimming out and letting the current take him downstream, back toward the camp.

Twitch had been worried about Izzy blasting one of the gnolls into the water. They hadn’t considered that one might leap in willingly, because who in their right mind would do that? And now the gnoll was fast floating away, ready to alert his kin that there was a scrum of vengeful goblins upstream.

This was a problem.

“After him!” Izzy barked, and set off without even looking at her scrum. “Mash,” she said under her breath, and Mash moved in as close as she could to hear. “What do we do?”

Not sure! We have those bolas. Could we tangle him so he can’t swim?

“Don’t think we can throw them that far, but worth a try. More?”

Javelins?

“Gnolls’ spears? No way! Too big to throw. Have to be the bola things.”

They’d caught up, and then passed the gnoll. The river wasn’t that fast, and he was having enough trouble staying afloat without going any faster. But he was, Mash saw, getting farther from them.

He’s trying to get to the other side!

“Ah, damn, damn, damn!” Izzy cursed, as Caj zipped out with a rock half his own size that he dropped at the floundering gnoll to no effect. “Crack, Howl, throw the bolas! The rock-rope things!”

The goblins looked doubtfully at the bolas they’d been given to carry, but they tried. They gave it their best. Howl threw both weighted ends overhand to splash in the water a few lengths ahead of her. Crack held on to the middle of the rope and spun himself around, making everyone else dive for cover as the two fairly weighty rocks whirred through the air. When he released, the whole thing flew off over the river, but in the wrong direction and only halfway to the gnoll.

“Well, shit,” Izzy huffed, and sat down to watch the gnoll splash away. “Now what?”

As those goblins currently in the possession of bodies chattered among themselves, Mash tried to think fast. They needed to stop that gnoll from getting back to camp. Could they go around, cross the bridge, and get him that way? It might work.

We could— she started, but then she thought she saw something. Something moving in the water, against the current.

Izzy perked up. “What? An idea?”

Look! Mash almost laughed. Look at the fuzzy bastard!

Izzy looked, and cackled with a mix of relief and undisguised malice. The gnoll was thrashing and giving off sputtering, terrified yips, the water around him splashing furiously as he struggled to keep his head above water. “Idiot’s drowning!” Twitch exclaimed, the other goblins having seen most of what Mash and Izzy had.

“Serves ‘im right!” Howl cheered, and the other goblins joined her before Izzy half-heartedly shushed them. “Kinda idiot jumps in the river, anyway?”

They kept pace as the gnoll floated along downstream. When his struggles stopped, so did they, watching as the current took him away, limp and silent. The squiggles confirmed that he was dead, though the way they appeared, slow and dull, they seemed almost reluctant. Mash didn’t care. She cheered loudly, and Izzy joined her, getting a betrayed look from the scrum she’d just told to be quiet.

[Feat accomplished. Successful ambush: Gnoll Hunters. Experience awarded.]

[Congratulations! You have reached Level 9! Visit your Summary to allocate your Level.]

Oh, this is gonna be fun! Mash told Izzy. Doesn’t matter much what I pick, but you! We need to talk about you!

“Oh, yeah,” Izzy agreed. Mash could feel her excitement pulsing through Soul Bond, and it was impossible not to get swept along. New Class Skills! Maybe a new Spell? Maybe all-new magic? Oh yes, they definitely needed to talk about this!

The others didn’t share in their excitement at all. With the gnoll dead, the scrum got bored almost immediately and wanted to move on, to go hunt or return to the tree. Izzy told them to sit down, promised that they’d be moving on in just a bit, then waved out across the water.

“Cousin! Oh! Cousin! Hello!” Unseen by the scrum, White surged toward them through the water, waving back. She was in a fine mood, an already bright, sunny day clearly made even brighter by drowning some hapless gnoll, and her voice burbled like a brook after a summer rain. “Did you see me?” she asked eagerly as she got closer. “He was all, ‘Aaaa-blrrb-blrrb!’ and I—” She rose up and mimed pushing something under the water.

“You sure did!” Izzy burbled back at her, the scrum paying attention when they heard the strange language. “Thanks and well done! We were worried he’d get away.”

“No chance of that with me around!” White beamed, her swirling, translucent face splitting from side to side. “Oh, do you know, I was looking for you!”

“Really?” Izzy couldn’t hide the slight edge of nervousness that slipped into her voice.

Just stay on land and you’ll be fine, Mash reassured her.

White either didn’t notice or didn’t care. “Oh, yeah,” she said. “I was bored. I’ve been so bored for so long! And then you showed up, and that was new and interesting, and then you went upstream, so I talked to my sisters and they told me not to get bound in an otter or something but of course I could go see what you were up to, and here I am! And I knew it was a good idea! I haven’t drowned anyone for…” The naiad got a blank look on her face. “Dunno. Days? Weeks? Doesn’t matter, I came looking for you and I barely got here before I got to drown that furry fellow! Hooray!” She finished by bobbing up from the water, high enough that Mash could see her hips and a pair of legs that fused into something more like a fish’s tail. When she came down she made enough of a splash that even the scrum noticed, some of them scrambling back a little farther from the water.

“You sure did a good job of it,” Izzy said, wiping her face where the splash had caught her.

“Right! So when can you get me more?”

“More?

“Yes, more! You’re so much more interesting than stupid old fisherfolk, and me and my sisters are all out of jokes anyway. And, and, there’s a whole camp of them downstream! I’m staying right here!”

Great, Mash thought. The murderous water spirit has taken an interest in us. That’s just great.

“That’s great!” Izzy exclaimed, and Mash couldn’t even pretend that she wasn’t entirely serious.