1.4 Arrival (Patreon)

1.4 Arrival

Taylor 

We rushed as quickly as we could to try and catch up, or perhaps intercept the group I’d detected. 

The pace Durge set left me panting for breath, making me thankful that I'd taken up jogging weeks ago. Astarion and Gale weren't faring any better than me, so far as I could tell.

Sophia, on the other hand, barely looked winded. That galled me, though I couldn't be too frustrated, seeing as Emma and Madison had been left in the dust.' 

I had more insects subtly converging on the group as we moved and the noise, though still indecipherable, was providing enough for me to get a rough echo-location based ‘map’ of what was going on. 

Three people were running from a mob. There were at least three dozen with a larger one and a wolf, or massive dog with them. 

“Goblins,” Shadowheart said as I explained what I was seeing. “Must be.”

“Ready yourselves, we’ll have a fight on our hands.” Durge demanded, lightning already dancing along his fingertips. 

Meanwhile I was quietly having a moment of complete stupefaction.

Goblins. Wizards. Elves. Half elves. 

It was like we’d jumped into a storybook…

Stupefaction or not, it wasn’t much longer before I saw the three people that were being pursued veer towards the cliff face. Judging by the noises the insects were picking up, they were raising absolute bedlam, shouting, hollering, and banging on the cliff face with their hands. 

That had to be the door to the druids that the Tieflings had mentioned. 

As we drew closer, my own human senses intermingled with the bugs, the words becoming more and more comprehensible 

‘Op-n the b– ate!”

“No- ets- in. Ze- Orders!

“Th-t pack of Goblins will be on us any sec-nd!”

The shouts grew more and more frantic, the people outside of the gate scrambling to be let in and those inside hesitating for a long moment before beginning to haul the gate up.

And then the pursuers arrived.

The mob of small creatures charged with a howling, gibbering mess of screams and hollers, swords, axes, spears and clubs raised high.

I didn’t have a clear enough picture, but I heard someone scream, The gate, a rising slab of heavy wood, there hadn’t been any insects on it and the rough echo-location didn’t clue me in either. 

Regardless, it was beginning to slide back down again before it had even gotten halfway up, locking the three just outside of promised safety. 

“Shit! Form a Line!” The guy that had been shouting to be let in commanded the other two.

It wasn’t bravery, it was a lack of options.

I sensed others coming, rushing towards the gates. Gathering weapons, more shouted words I couldn’t make sense of at this distance. 

That was the state of things when we finally crested the top of the last hill.

I looked down, my breathing ragged now, and saw the ‘Goblins’ with my own eyes for the first time.

Small and green and angry, just like the storybooks. They were covered in fleas and ticks, which at least made it easy to keep track of them all. 

Atop the gate, a half-dozen Tieflings and what I could only assume were Druids were gathering, crossbows and bows in hand, nocking arrows to let loose as the mob rushed the three humans on the ground.

The three were quivering, quite literally shaking in their boots.

Durge stared, red eyes surveying the scene for just a moment. 

I didn’t need that long.

The swarm I’d been quietly gathering along the periphery began to surge out of the surrounding forests and underbrush, the deafening buzz of millions of insect wings drowning out the Goblin war cries as a million tiny bodies began encroaching on the mob of enemies.

The three humans with their backs to the gate swung and hacked away at the Goblins that reached them. Arrows were shot from above the gate, while I saw Goblins towards the back blasting away at the Tiefling archers with bolts of fire and sprays of bubbling acid, confirming that yes, they could use magic.

The fight or battle or whatever one would call this, was barely getting started when the swarm fell on them. 

Black chitinous bodies enveloped everyone. I heard Tieflings screaming, the Goblins reeling, confused and panicking, then screaming in pain as the bees stung and the spiders bit. 

Astarion and Gale came up behind us. The pale Elf wasbreathing raggedly, leaning forward with hands on his knees, and Gale was similarly out of breath, but Durge didn’t give them a chance to rest.

“Gale, Astarion, target the Booyaghs!” He demanded of both of them. “Lae’Zel, with me on the Worg. Shadowheart, keep any stragglers away from our guests.”

I didn’t know what half of his orders meant, but he hadn’t given me any so I didn’t bother worrying about it. As Durge rushed forward I focused on making the swarm ‘part’ for him and Lae’zel,  ensuring that they had clear lines of sight as they moved and a living wall of moving cover as they rushed forward into the fray.

Gale fired off a shard of pure cold at one of the Goblin magic users. It hit with a burst of icy shards, I saw blood burst, a shock of red as frost coated the floor, some of my insects dying, flash frozen in the sudden cold. 

“‘Target the Booyaghs’, he says, as though I can fucking see anything!” Astarion complained, loosely holding an arrow to the bowstring as he squinted into the chitinous mass. 

Goblins were flailing amidst the swarm, hands and weapons swiping at insects, screaming, trying to get them off.

Lae’zel and Durge fell on them like an executioner’s axe. The Gith’s blade carving through them, Durge slinging fire and lightning.

Beside me Sophia hissed. “Fuck, wish I had my fucking crossbow!”

I gave her something of a side eye, '...remembering how she'd relished violence in one of the clearer memories I'd experienced.'  

But before I could think too much of it I saw a blast of something come crashing down from above the Gate, lancing straight through my swarm and killing every insect in its way before skewering a Goblin clean through the chest. 

I looked up and spotted… a human? Aside from Gale, I'd spent the last few days finding everything but normal humans. So this felt... novel?' 

The human atop the gate was black, with braided hair, and that was all I noticed before he made gestures with his hands, thrusting them forward to blast away at the Goblins below.

My mind, or more specifically, my Tadpole, clenched. I saw him flinch. In all the commotion, I hadn’t realized he was Tadpoled too.

He shook his head, shrugging off the momentary daze before he went back to blasting away with his magic. I did the same, Lae’zel and Durge had apparently reached their target. The ‘Worg’ was a massive wolf-like monster, practically as tall as they were even on all fours, hulking with muscle.

Lae’zel hacked and slashed at the monster tried to bite Durge, nearly catching his arm, and disrupting his spell in the process.

That was when I decided to get a bit more proactive.

I sent as many bees as I could onto the Worg, stinging its eyes, nose and ears. It yelped and howled in pain, the bees stinging and stinging, its hide was thick, so thick I knew the stingers were barely managing to penetrate even the barest surface area of skin. 

So I didn’t target the skin. 

My attacks diverted, no longer going for the flesh around the eye but the eyeball itself, not around the nose but inside its nostrils, I had bees crawl down its throat to sting along the inside of its mouth and wind pipe.

The beast was mewling, scratching, clawing, hacking and coughing.

Blind, in pain, and helpless, Lae’zel’s sword crunched into its skull just as Durge’s claws ripped open a jagged tear across the side of its throat letting loose a fountain of blood. 

Between the arrows, the magic, the swarm, and our group hitting them from the side, the Goblins quickly faltered, losing any cohesion they might have had to begin with. Several of them turned to run.

I saw Durge turn, and between my insects and my own human ears I could hear that he was laughing. He picked up a fallen Goblin’s sword, rushing after them and hacking the fleeing stragglers apart with an almost manic, crazed joy. 

The others couldn’t hear. They were too far away. 

Astarion fired his bow far more accurately now into the fleeing Goblins’ backs, and Gale sent streaking red bolts of magic out of his staff to finish off the last of them. 

That was when Madison and Emma finally caught up. Looking for all the world like they were ready to keel over. 

In front of us, the only Goblins still fighting sounded like they were in a zealous frenzy, screaming ‘For the Absolute!’ even as I stuffed bugs down their throats, seconds before they were slaughtered. Pierced by arrows, bludgeoned to death by the three humans in front of the gate with their maces and clubs, or in the case of the really really big one that didn’t look like a Goblin, decapitated by Lae’zel.

I let the swarm dissipate as the last of the Goblins were cut down, revealing a charnel pit of blood and bodies. 

I heard a gasp of horror, which might have come from Madison or Emma. I didn’t care enough to find out which. 

Below, Lae’zel and Durge were speckled with blood. It stood out most on Durge’s scales, spots of ruby red amidst the chalk white. 

As he turned around and looked across the corpse strewn field, I saw a very large, very savage grin bloom across his features.

Then he mastered it, the smile falling away, his expression returning to plain neutrality as he examined at his blood soaked hand.

“INSIDE,” One of the Tieflings shouted from atop the gate. “MORE MIGHT FOLLOW! OPEN THE GATE!”

Two other Tieflings moved, beginning to winch the gate open using a wheel and pulley system. They strained against the massive counterweight.

Durge seemed to snap out of his daze then, dropping the Goblin… I hesitated to call it a sword. It looked more like a lump of jagged metal, almost like a saw. It fell to the bloodied ground with a clatter.

The Dragonborn marched over to Lae’zel, and with a flick of his fingers the blood coating the both of them just evaporated, flakes of red vanishing into little more than dust on the wind as the gate ground open. 

“Come on,” Shadowheart urged. “That’s about as open an invitation as we might hope for.”

We descended from the hilltop. Sophia followed Gale and Astarion straight through the carnage, towards the gate, while Emma, Madison and I skirted around it. I wasn’t used to seeing so many dead things, never mind the blood. 

I could hear shouting already beginning inside; the humans that had been locked out were angry, and so was the guy that had let them in. 

“THERE ARE CHILDREN HERE YOU FOOL!”

We stepped inside. The gate led to a sort of tunnel, or maybe archway if the gate wasn’t blocking one side. I saw the humans, I saw the tieflings, and I saw others that, by process of elimination, must’ve been the druids. Everyone was gathering, the commotion at the gate no doubt having drawn them out.

We drew closer, close enough that I could hear the argument as everyone began shouting over each other.

“WE WAS RUNNIN’ FOR OUR LIVES YOU DUMB CUNT!”

“Where is Master Halsin!?” One of the druids, a short… man? Honestly I didn’t know anymore, the guy was shorter than Madison. Maybe he had Dwarfism? Or was he a Dwarf? Goblins and Elves existed, so why not Dwarves?

“Lost him back at the ruins-”

“But the insect swarm, we saw it! Only an Archdruid could command so many.”

“We have our own capabilities.” Durge cut into the conversation.”I’m sorry to say, but I see no Archdruid here.”

“You let them take Halsin!?” The Tiefling that I was ‘loosely’ identifying as ‘in charge’, or at least the one shouting the most, sneered. “My gods you’re a coward!”

I could hear the druids muttering amongst themselves, harried whispers that I only caught snippets of; ‘Kahga,’ which seemed like a name, and words like ‘rite’ and ‘search’. Nowhere near enough to understand what was being said.

Durge walked past the still arguing group, making a beeline for the line of Druids. “We’ve come here in search of a healer, Nettie.”

Down below, in the prime cave,” someone answered. She was here. That was a relief..

Just then, the Human that had been in front of the gate took a swing at the Tiefling, socking him dead in the jaw before the horned man answered back with a vicious right hook that knocked the guy clean out, a wrathful snarl revealing his very sharp fangs. 

And so we arrived at the Druid grove.

Somehow, I wasn’t particularly optimistic about our circumstances getting better....