Emberscale Alchemist

While the destination had changed, nothing else about the trip south towards Emberscale Caverns was much different than it was for the trip towards the town. They trudged along beside the plodding oxen until the early fall sun was most of the way to the horizon before stopping for the evening at the same clearing they'd spent their last night on the road at on the prior trip, though rather than prepare the camp right away, they tucked in to the parcel of flaky pastries that Kori had procured first.

The baked goods may not have been quite as good as they were earlier in the morning when Kori had eaten them fresh, but after a long day of walking they tasted better than they should have. As could have been expected, Har helped himself to as many of the scones as he could get his claws on, each spread generously with butter. Though his disappointment at the lack of other condiments was made clear when he lamented, "What, no jam?"

Kori spent most of the break between arrival and the arduous task of caring for the disgruntled beasts of burden chatting with the now much more relaxed animist.

With the town hours behind them and no settlement for kilometers in any direction, as far as Kori could tell that just the smattering of nature spirits, similar to the tiny motes she'd encountered during her trial within the Circle though far fewer in concentration, were all that were to be found in the vicinity. The woman practically lounged as she munched on a sweet berry tart and bread slathered in the whipped honey that Mirabel had provided. There were even a few sounds that could only have been ones of enjoyment and appreciation for the foodstuffs.

Still not quite believing what she was seeing, she asked the question that had been bugging her since Har had given his brief explanation of the sudden shift in the woman's attitude. "Was it really that bad in town?" Trying to gauge what it was like for her.

With a grin, an actual grin, the shaman replied, "Take whatever you're thinking and I can promise it's worse." She briefly paused, then smirked and continued in a teasing tone, "Imagine a whole clutch of hatchlings just like you, all asking a dozen questions at a time, all trying to literally climb inside your skin…" The Animist shivered unconsciously before shoving the last morsel of tart into her mouth.

Kori wasn't sure if she should be insulted or not, she didn't think she was so bad as to be a benchmark for annoyance, but even she couldn't deny that her likeness surrounding her dozens of times over, all asking questions ranging from inane to insightful, would get old quickly.

It was the last part of what Zln had said that really stuck out to Kori, she hadn't thought such a thing was even a possibility. "What do you mean, 'climb inside your skin'?" She asked with wide eyes.

"Oh yeah, no boundaries… the lot of em can just scale right off." A little heat entering her tone. "That's what an Animist does, we embody the spirits within ourselves. Some of them are a bit pushier than others and just see me as a way to interact with the material directly."

"You can do that?" Kori exclaimed with both surprise and awe.

"Exactly, I can." She nodded in response. "Rest of the Circle, well it'd be a good way to get themselves possessed. That's a real mess when it happens." She grinned ruefully as she looked at the youngling before falling back into her teasing tone of voice, "Not that you'd have to worry about that at least, miss 'not sure if the spirit even noticed me'."

The look of incredulity that came over Kori's face as she listened to the shaman poke fun at her was enough to send Zln into a fit of laughter that had her rolling off the log that she'd been sitting on. If she hadn't still been wearing the same scarred and battered leather, Kori would have questioned if it was even the same kobold sitting covered in dirt alongside her.

Their dinner thoroughly ruined by sweets and the waning sun nearing the horizon, the group took to their chores with renewed vigor, though without empty bellies compelling them to finish their work so they could have a proper meal, that vigor faded rather quickly and it took longer than usual to finish. With the delay the oxen were even less cordial than they usually were, or at least Kori thought so, it was hard to tell with the moody beasts of burden. One even tried to take a bite out of one of her horns, thankfully it gave up after the startled youngling screamed bloody murder. Or maybe it just wasn't keen on trying to chomp through the boney protrusion and lost interest.

When they finished setting camp and sat down to put some proper food in themselves, Kori realized that she'd been spoiled on her outward trip. Dinner that evening was probably the worst thing she'd eaten since they left the caverns, dried meat that had been added to a thin and overly salty broth with a few root vegetables that were still kind of crunchy. The wagon driver that did the cooking, Mlg, certainly lacked the skill, or Skill, that Nkt possessed.

The youngling pinned her hopes for the next few day's meals being more appetizing on the team of hunters that left no sooner than their bowls had been emptied and returned to be cleaned, a chore she found herself saddled with. Those hopes unfortunately went unfulfilled. They had encountered a few creatures that required culling, but none were particularly appetizing in nature. The closest they came to even edible was a plant monster known as a constrictor vine, but considering they'd found it wrapped around the half-decayed corpse of a deer, no one was keen on including it in their meals.

Kori was a little curious whether it could be used in her herbal creations, but the combatants hadn't brought it back to camp, or rather couldn't bring it back, since both it and its own meal had been fervently reduced to ash by their accompanying mage, so it was a bit of a moot point. Apparently, the vine didn't so much consume its prey as it used them like fertile ground where it would temporarily plant itself and spread runners throughout the corpse that would later break off as new vines as a means of reproducing.

The vines apparently fell into that third category of creatures that Snq had briefly mentioned on their earlier trek along the same road, monsters that may have been natural creatures once and even retained their ability to procreate in this instance.

The remainder of the night passed quietly and without anything disturbing the rote expectation of the group that had been making this trip back and forth for years now. There was one thing that Kori found wholly shocking, though the others didn't seem to think anything was out of place. Har wasn't the only one who spent the night beneath the rattling boards of his typically private wagon.

When asked the next morning how the scale she had managed to get anything remotely close to a good night's sleep, Zln proudly proclaimed that it didn't bother her in the least. She liked the extra space it afforded her, and she could sleep soundly just about anywhere, except the moving bed of a wagon, apparently that was a step too far.

With morning, came breakfast. More of the dried meat again, this time paired with cold potatoes that had been roasted in the coals of the evenings fire. Kori was beginning to regret letting Har pack her supply of chili oil wherever he had placed it; the flavourful substance inaccessible in whichever of the crates or sacks that it had ended up in with the various other sundries that had been procured. She even went so far as to scrape a little of the leftover whipped honey that had been meant for the bread onto the potatoes to add at least a bit of flavour, but the combination wasn't quite right.

The morning routine passed in reverse of the evening prior's, the same as it had every other day on the road before, and before long they were beginning the days march back towards their home.

Kori was torn, she was looking forward to getting home, seeing her siblings and, most importantly, being able to set up her very own work space, but at the same time she already missed the lively town of Whatzakt. She missed her new friends and its bustle of streets and shops filled with its unpredictable peoples, whom she found to be mostly pleasant and welcoming save for the odd few. Well, the odd one really.

She especially missed the near obsession with food that the surface folk seemed to have. There was enough variety that they could have eaten somewhere or something new each day they were in town and still not had to repeat a single meal. Though they had taken the vast majority of their dinners at Gnomish Delights, but that wasn't something Kori had any complaints about.

She spent the majority of the days trek daydreaming; her time spent oscillating between fantasies about the many meals that she'd seen or smelled in passing but not partaken of and how she would set up her new workspace just the way she wanted. She had many thoughts about how she would differ her space from both Bolst's and Imelda's preferred arrangements, aside from just the sizing of things on the latter.

She liked Bolst's precision and orderly arrangement, but felt he was a little too focused on everything being perfect that it took too much of his time away from the actual doing. Imelda was more like how Aldr was as a brewmaster, everything was arranged for convenience of a few common processes that she did a lot of. Kori knew that she was going to be making a lot of the same thing, probably one or two of the suspensions that the warriors or mages decided they liked best and then large quantities of her ointment, but she didn't want her space to be laid out to facilitate what she had to make over what she could make.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

It took Kori several moments to realize that something had changed and break her from her musing, the wagons had all pulled to a halt and raised voices were shouting orders; she must have been truly lost in her thoughts if the entire morning had disappeared without her even noticing. She was certain it could have only been a few hours at most; a glance skyward even confirmed it as the early autumn sun hadn't even reached its pinnacle yet.

It was then that she realized the error in her assumptions, it was neither Har nor any of the other traders yelling directions, it was one of the warriors. Battlemaster Ceg was nominally in charge of their combatants and was presently exercising that command fully.

"Get those beasts moving!" He shouted, "Bring them alongside each other, tight as ya can and anyone who isn't swinging a weapon or throwing a spell, climb in one of the scale blasted carts and take cover!" He directed the carts to close ranks, trying to get the drivers to pack them in tightly all three abreast on a road that barely had room for two to pass each other comfortably, "And where's that damned youngling? I will not be the one to explain why some green shite gob stuck her with a rusty spear!"

The last sentence was enough for the reality of the situation to finally dawn on that self-same 'damned youngling', they were in trouble.

Several of the other combatants, as well as a couple of the more menacing traders, were facing off a much larger group of the ugliest things that she had ever laid eye on. They looked like someone had taken a gnome, squished their heads until it was a wider than it was tall, horizontal oval shape, enlarged their grey eyes until they bulged from their sockets, stretched and inflated their noses until they were like a pocked crab-apple stuck to the middle of their faces, and tugged on their ears until they looked like flaps of stiff leather jutting from the sides of their heads. Then, justifiably so, tried to drown the wretched thing in a vat of green dye, and not a pleasant foresty green, no, the ugliest 'what the hell did I eat last night', mystery vomit green that they could possibly find.

There were at least a dozen of the mangy things arrayed across the road, trying to look menacing as they jostled about draped in hides that looked to be half rotted and prodding their spears, which were in fact as pocked with rust as their skin seemed to be with scars and sores, towards the defenders. Even though the groups were well out of each others reach, separated by several meters. The goblins had numbers, but it was fairly clear that the kobolds had advantage in gear.

That was about all of the observing that Kori got to do, as she found herself bodily lifted, to which she began screaming bloody murder until she recognized that it was Zln who had grabbed her, and hefted into the closest wagon bed. "Get your scaley tail in there, find someplace to hide, and don't move until one of us tells you to!" The shaman ordered her, wisps of spiritual energy already evaporating off of her skin.

She wasn't sure how strong Zln was, but given that she'd just been hauled up by the back of her tunic with a single hand and no sign of exertion, Kori suddenly felt sorry for the goblins. Just a little. Not enough to outweigh her outrage at their caravan being accosted, but still a tiny bit. Then she recalled the story of Korb; it's amazing how fast even the slightest of sympathies can vanish when you remembered a bit of context.

She found herself a nook between several crates and sacks of grains to worm her way into that left her enough of a gap to see some of what was happening, though she didn't really understand it. The goblins didn't appear to be attacking, just barring their path and acting threateningly while they screeched about in the incomprehensible noises that passed for language amongst them, and her own group weren't pressing the matter either, standing stoically with their weapons drawn, shields in hand, and the occasional dart of mana kicking up dust from the hard packed dirt of the road between them.

It wasn't even all of their fighters confronting them. The battlemaster himself was at the rear and Zln seemed to be roving around the carts, like a hatchling on the lookout for an elusive beetle. She wished that she was with Har, or maybe that he were with her since he was presently trying to manage the unruly oxen alongside Mlg, so she could ask him what was happening.

It didn't take long for the explanation to present itself, the signal for all hell to break loose came not from the front of the caravan but the rear as Ceq bashed a spear from the air with his shield, a loud crack ringing out as the steel reinforced barrier struck the poorly hewn tree limb that passed for a goblin spear, only to have to duck a second and block a third with a sweep of his own much sturdier spear. Another half dozen goblins made themselves known with half of those loosing their weapons, their only weapons which seemed like a less-than-ideal manoeuvre, while they rushed the lone warrior guarding the tail of the wagons.

The warrior proved worthy of his lofty sounding Class as he blocked, dodged, spun and struck back in fluid motions, his spear a blur as he slowly backpedaled and gave ground. He may have been the superior warrior, but he was still outnumbered six to one. Try as he might to keep the three unarmed gobs from retrieving their spears, first one, then another, and finally the last managed to do just that, though one's spear was near useless, having snapped in half when Ceq had bashed it out of the air. There were simply too many of them able to harass him from various sides and force him away from the discarded weapons.

Of course, the kobold wasn't fighting a losing battle. He was stalling. Waiting for the only other combatant that wasn't tied up in the melee that Kori could hear ringing out at the front of the caravan to join in. When the shaman finally arrived it felt like it had been ages, but couldn't have been more than a few dozen seconds, Kori could barely see Zln through the spiritual haze that encompassed the woman. Far from the wisps of energy that she had seen before, the animist now seemed to be fully engulfed in a spiritual flame.

As much as Ceq fought with skill and grace, directing the fight like the entire affair was under his command, Zln was the opposite. She had neither weapon nor shield, nothing but her bare hands and the scarred leather she always wore. And it was more than enough. Coming from behind the group, Ceq had deftly turned their focus away from the direction she would be arriving from, the rearmost goblin, the one with the broken spear, didn't see her until it was far too late. It turned out the reason that she didn't carry a weapon was that she'd take one, specifically the rearmost goblin itself, as she barrelled into it, wrapping a clawed hand around its spindly neck before lifting it much the same, though far less gently, she had Kori a few minutes earlier.

The screams that came from the unfortunate goblin as it was swung bodily into its companions would probably haunt Kori's dreams for weeks to come. Thankfully they at least didn't last for very long. Eventually Zln swung and both the goblin she wielded and the one she struck both went tumbling through the group of them, disrupting their already shoddy formation. Unfortunately for the makeshift weapon, a large portion of its neck remained within the animist's grasp as her claws had torn what must have been something vital from it.

It was too much. Seeing the indescribable lump of flesh and green skin falling from the recently affable shaman's grasp was enough to turn Kori's stomach and she had to look away.

Turning to the side wasn't much better she realized. While less gruesome it was equally gut wrenching as she saw the last thing she wanted to see. A third group of goblins, another full half dozen, slinking through the brush getting ready to assault the caravan's now unprotected flank.

She tried to holler out, to alert anyone to the new threat, but her shouts of "There's more on the side…" Reorienting herself slightly to pick out the direction, "To the left?" Hoping that if anyone heard her, they'd know she meant when facing the front of the wagons.

She wasn't sure if anyone actually heard her over the din of combat, though if anyone did, it probably wasn't anyone actually involved in either front of the melee who were all rather preoccupied focusing on not getting perforated. She looked for anything in the vicinity that she could use to make noise or throw to dissuade the assailants enough to hopefully buy a moment for help to arrive and came up empty.

Her satchel was likewise bereft of options, naught but some ointment she would probably be needing very soon, a basic suspension of inspiration, something she felt she sorely needed at the moment, and the usual odds and ends she carried. Though that wasn't entirely true, her hand grasped the newest addition to her satchel. She'd figured it would get used as a prank, but if there was one thing that particular concoction was good for, it was being obnoxious. And a little bit noxious too, she supposed.

Hefting the basic stinging cloud flask, she watched as the group of goblins crept closer to the cart she hid in. When they'd tested the flask, it had created a brief flash and more of a puff than a cloud of smoke that encompassed maybe a little more than a meter radius, so she would need to get it right in the goblin's midst to have any hope of waylaying them for more than a brief startled moment. Plus, she wasn't that great a thrower either, so they needed to be just a little closer for her to have any hope of getting it where she wanted it.

As they neared, closing in to just under five meters from her hiding place, Kori's palms felt clammy against the clay jar that was slowly warming in her grasp and her hand shook to the point she feared she would drop the object she was placing her hopes on, and if she did, the only victim of its distraction would be herself. When they were closer still, just a few meters out, almost close enough to begin climbing into the wagons, she finally lobbed the jar high, wanting to ensure it would crack open and ignite properly. The last thing she wanted was for it to land softly amongst the brush and fail to ignite.

All eyes, both Kori's and goblin alike, stared at the little jar as it flew through the air, watching as it spun flashing from the brown clay to the red beeswax they'd dipped the top in to keep it sealed and back over and over again. For all her fears of not wanting to fail to reach the would-be assailants, she managed the opposite and overshot them. Her heart sank as she realized her error and would have to hope that it at least pulled the defenders attention to her plight.

As the little clay pot crashed to the ground and broke open, Kori realized two things. First, that she had made a serious miscalculation, they'd only tested the inferior version of this particular creation, not the uncommon ones like what she'd just thrown. And second, there was little chance that anyone would fail to notice the loud echoing crack or the eruption of light that originated from the point of impact. There were probably other observations to be made, but those were the only ones she managed to before she was enveloped in a miasma of her own making, her eyes feeling like she'd rubbed her chilli oil into them.