Ryn of Avonside

“And just where do you plan on finding a cooperative deity?” Esra asked, with enough sincerity that I could tell she wasn't sure if Grace was joking or not.

“I'm a warlock of Ollinfer… so, her?” My girlfriend said tentatively. “Is that a thing? Can I contact her?”

Esra considered the idea, but she shook her head too. “My knowledge of warlocks extends almost purely into the realm of how to defeat them, so I don’t know.”

Otho, who until now had been quietly and respectfully listening to the conversation, cleared his throat. “I've heard… things. There's stories of warlocks speaking through their links to their benefactors. Often, the entity on the other end doesn't answer, but it is known to happen.”

Grace nodded as she listened intently. “Okay, and how do I do that?”

Beside Cat, Mer shifted uneasily. “Are we sure it is wise to disturb a god, just to ask her why a herd of deer died?”

“Yeah?” Grace said, then she frowned and took my hand. Immediately she began to play with my thumb — wiggling it around randomly. “She seemed chill enough when we met her.”

“Historically, she has not always been ‘chill’,” Mer replied. “Otho… can you tell them about the Kingdom of Cherrin?”

Her brother winced and looked out the window. The sunset was still filtering through the shield of foliage from the tree, casting dappled rays of orange sunlight over our conversation.

“The Kingdom of Cherrin was the name of a unified northern obrec nation. The clan Cherrinbrook was the royal clan, under them were the clans of Mossbed, Stonechaser, Timberwild, and several others that no longer exist. Now, the Cherrins have always looked down on piety as a virtue, but during their kingdom days, it was especially bad.”

We were all listening with rapt attention as Otho got into his storytelling stride. The obrec were such fascinating people. Almost, but not quite familiar, like how niche cola brands tasted like coke and very much not like coke at the same time.

“The Cherrins were attempting to subjugate the Ironbranch clan, who were the last of those considered to be ‘northern’ clans. Their war required more wood than the natural cycle could give… and they began to fell trees in their sacred forests.”

“Oh, bad plan,” muttered Cat.@@novelbin@@

Otho chuckled darkly. “Indeed. Jarrig, the father of the old forest, flew into a rage. He called on his good friend Ullen, the raging one, and together they began to hunt any obrec of the stone who dared set foot in the old forests. The Cherrin were banished from their ancestral forests for decades, and so they turned to the new growth — the woodlands and such. Ollinfer's domain.”

“When their greed was discovered by the green-shoot nymph, she was incensed. Anger boiled the sap that runs in her veins, and she began to plot. As she did so, Ullen found her, called by the red rage that is their domain, and together with Ollinfer, they plotted. Jarrig had been content to drive them from his forests, but Ollinfer was not so restrained. She opened herself to the depths of Ullen’s whispering and brought ruin onto the kingdom. The slaughter she brought down on the northern clans would be felt for generations — worse, because Ollinfer is a spirit of trickery, the Cherrins did not know from where their doom had arrived.” 

“A thousand unfortunate accidents befell the kingdom every day for a year, until finally Clan Mossbed realised that the twisting of coincidence into a weapon was the forte of the spirit that they had angered. They begged for forgiveness on behalf of their kingdom, and it was granted under the condition that they leave the kingdom. The same offer was extended to each clan in turn. There has not been a unified north since that war, all those centuries ago.”

“Wow,” said Grace. She'd summoned her bark skin onto her hand and she was staring at it. “Ollinfer is a goddess of trickery, huh?”

“Her traditional domains are green growth, the season of blooming, and deep, subtle trickery. Most of the time, her deceit is whimsical and harmless,” Otho explained, steepling his hands on the table. “Anger her, and it becomes deadly.”

“I wonder how she tricked me,” my girlfriend mused.

That little detail was beginning to worry me, but my girlfriend didn't seem to be too alarmed. Maybe she had a better understanding of her goddess than I did. Esra and the other Ring natives looked worried when Grace added that little thought to the discussion, and my mage mother looked like she was going to add something.

“Anyway,” Grace said abruptly, cutting her off. “Why don't Ryn and I pop out to the Ring and see if she'll talk — assuming she can hear me from wherever she hangs out.”

“Sounds risky,” Troy murmured, but he didn't put his, ‘I'm speaking as a leader,’ tone into the words so he was probably just trying to get us to be a bit cautious.

“At the very least, it's never dull to have a conversation with a goddess,” Esra said, shrugging. “Do what you will, but I must warn you to examine everything she says with caution. Specifically, more caution than was shown when you initially made your pact with the green-shoot nymph, because it is very likely that she did twist the deal somehow.”

I snorted and shot my girlfriend a vindicated little smile. I’d definitely been a little frustrated about how fast Grace had agreed to the pact, and it was nice to hear someone else voice that criticism. She rolled her eyes back at me and bapped lightly at my hand. “Of course,” said Grace.

“Okay, but should we wait until tomorrow? I'm pretty tired,” I said, as Grace tried to capture my thumb again. This time, I wiggled and dodged it around, making it way more difficult for her to catch. I grinned when she glared amusement at me.

“Ollinfer likes darkness though,” she disagreed. “Hopefully it's a short conversation, anyway. We’re only asking about a weird monster.”

With a sigh, I gave up and let her win the thumb war and the mini debate. “Okay. Let's go. Grab your gear, just in case though.”

Grunting affirmative, she stood and headed for the door. I was right behind her, since I’d also changed out of my armour when we had our bath.

Once more in our gear, we held hands in our room.

“Ready?” I asked.

Smiling, Grace said, “No, actually.”

I blinked. “Huh? What else do we—”

Taking me by surprise, she pulled me close and kissed me. It was short, passionate, and her long tongue darted out to flick my upper lip. I swayed forward, having expected the kiss to last longer.

“So cute,” she grinned, and to my surprise, she pulled us out of my grove. Right! She had that ring!

We landed inside the room we'd rented in the inn, and after a second to get our bearings, we stepped for the door.

The room exploded.

Wooden shrapnel, dust, and plaster flew everywhere. My eyes closed instinctively, and so I didn't see the chunk of wood that hit my face. Gasping in pain, I began to fall, but then the fall lasted one gut-churning second too long, and I hit the ground with a thump and a pained gasp.

Something made a wet chuckling sound, and there was a rush of warm foetid air that swept towards me. That's when Esra's training kicked in, and I threw up a shield with as much force as I could muster. Power coursed into the plants of my grove in a barely restrained torrent, and the magical barrier of energy began to swirl and coalesce.

I opened my eyes, fear and adrenaline urging me to act — to defend myself. There was a whisper of deep, dark red in my vision, but that was all I saw in that single instant — right before the twisted, multicoloured trees of my shield spell gave way. Back in my grove, every single shield-tree detonated as though it'd been struck by lightning — overloaded.

The shield itself ruptured as it formed, becoming an explosion of glass shards that flew in every direction… including inward. My armour caught most of the damage, and I got my arm up to shield my face just in time. My hands received several deep cuts for their heroics, but I was okay.

Grace's gun went off, and I scrambled to my feet, alarmed and ready to fight. Still on her back amongst the rubble, she had her huge hand cannon up and pointed up at… nothing. There was nothing there!

“The fucker phased out before the bullet—” she started to say, but a blur of wet red flesh flickered into existence behind her, and in one vicious swipe of a limb, she flew forward, dropping her gun.

In desperation, I turned to my dome shield, slamming it down like a boulder hitting the surface of a calm lake. Dust and debris puffed away, and mercifully, I kept my power in check and this shield didn't explode.

Around us, the taberna was a nightmare of flame, destruction, and blood. Our room had been directly above the taproom, but now we knelt, battered and bleeding in the middle of the wreckage of that room. Groans and screams could be heard amongst the rubble, and my heart cringed with empathy for the wounded and the dead.

A hole in the roof allowed the light from the daylight side of the Ring to shine inwards, and combined with the flickering fires, I was able to watch as red limbs twisted into existence, grabbed a wounded woman, and then vanished with her. Nothing but a surprised squeak of fear remained.

“Shit,” I muttered, and much more carefully, I extended the reach of my dome shield as far as I could get it. Then, I called in stuttering Ghraial, “People of Nagani, get inside my shield! Grace, help these people.”

Grace, stumbling to her feet, nodded and to my surprise, flicked her gun’s chamber open, grabbed a bright white canister, then vanished. She was done for two, maybe three seconds, then she reappeared with her gun’s chamber now empty. “Sent off a flare in the grove using light magic. Hopefully one of the many smart people we hang out with will realise what it means.”

Ah. That was a good move. From what I could see through the small windows of the Taberna, this wasn’t isolated to the building.

My girlfriend moved towards a barmaid who was desperately trying to get a heavy wooden beam off her leg. Grace, rather than trying to heave it off, shot the thing with some sort of decay magic, and it began to turn to dust. The girl she’d just freed scrambled back a foot, staring up wide eyed.

“Safe in circle!” Grace said with what little Graial she knew, motioning towards the dome. The girl, seeing now that a mage and a warlock were trying to help her, nodded shakily and scrambled under the safety of my shield as fast as her leg would let her.

Behind them both, red limbs wriggled out of a single point in reality, reaching for Grace. On the end of each limb were long, spindly hands, and the fingers were tipped with awful, hooked claws. The inner edge of the claws were serrated like a saw. I watched in horror — my mind processing the scene while my body failed to act. 

“Grace, watch out,” I called, finally getting a hand moving. It rose with vain hope in a desperate attempt to blast the monster’s spindly red limbs before they could grab my girlfriend.

I was too slow, and in the blink of an eye, one hand got close enough to wrap around her forearm. It pulled, and she staggered back… but then, instead of dragging her into whatever hole it had crawled out of, it let out a horrific, inhuman scream. It writhed, frantically trying to pull away from her, but it was stuck — glued to her. Fragments of the monstrous arm began to flake off and vanish. For the first second, it was slow, but then the destruction picked up speed and soon the monster was screeching and flailing. One of its other hands tried to push against her, but that one too got stuck. Whatever it was, it was getting sucked into grace— no, it wasn’t, it was getting sucked into her maginetic aura and ripped to shreds.

With a final despairing call, it raised two more of its many limbs and using its claws, severed its own limbs at the elbows. As soon as it was free, it retreated, dark red magic spilling out in a gravity-less spray that vanished a heartbeat later.

Grace and I shared a confused, horrified look. What the fuck was that thing, and how was Grace’s aura acting like a blender-field towards it?