Tim finished his explanation and was crying by the end of it. He mourned the loss of his closest friend in this new world. The alchemy Master nodded along while he was talking, but a more and more annoyed face kept twisting itself onto her face. The moment the boy finished, the woman let loose her words.
"How dare ye." She said coldly. Tim looked shocked at her words thinking that she was going to chastise him for having left Todd alone to deal with the monster. He bowed his head in shame. "How dare ye underestimate mah student." Tims head, and the others in our party snapped back to her face. "Are ye not his friends? Do ye not know how talented he is?" The others were surprised to hear this sharp woman say such things about Todd, seeing as he had told them about how prickly she could be.
"Don count 'im as dead till ye've seen the body." She finished. The other, more experienced adventurers from Jake's group, agreed with her.
"That's true." The female cleric spoke to us. "Every one of us was thought to be dead at one time. Especially Lilliana here." She pointed to the alchemy master, who scowled at having her name said to these young adventurers. "We've always scraped by, either by luck, skill, or a mixture of both. You can't know for sure what has happened. So don't count your friend as dead before you've confirmed it."
Jake cleared his throat and spoke to his party. "Come on. There's a young adventurer out there waiting for us to come to get him" He looked at Todd's master. "He's your student, would you like to join us? Like old times." He smiled a the woman who rolled her eyes in response.
"Fine, he is mah responsibility, I guess." That settled it; the adventurers would go out with our party to retrieve Todd either as a whole man or a brave fallen adventurer.
*****
I had been out for hours and was extremely lucky that no one had come down this path. I woke up only to feel the shooting pain running down my leg. I decided to try to grow a splint for myself out of vines but found myself unable to talk. The swelling in my throat was so bad that I could barely make a sound. I looked at the tattoos on my hands and found that the symbols at least hadn't been broken when I tore up my hands. 'That's good; at least I won't have to get these redone.'
I was still exhausted. I wanted to go back to sleep; I wanted to go home. But neither one of those seemed like an option just yet. My leg prevented me from moving until the swelling in my throat went down so I could do something about it. So I laid there looking up at the sky. The sun looked like it was at its apex, so I thought that it was probably around noon. 'I wonder if they made it back safely?'
I was hoping that my friends were all safe at home already, just waiting for me to get back. I didn't know that they were already on their way back with help. The monster under me was starting to expel gas, and god knows what else from his body, making the air around me stink. I gagged a little when I smelled it, but that hurt my throat, so I had to hold it back.
I heard a rustling sound come from the woods, and I pressed my body as flat as I could to the monster trying to hide my form. 'I'm in no shape to fight.' I thought, even still, I clutched the knife to me as if it were my only lifeline. Instead of the goblin that I was expecting, a woman stepped out. She was unlike any woman I'd ever seen; she had deep green skin and what looked like patches of bark coming from parts of her body. Her hair came down in a cascade of leaves. She was stunning.
I didn't know who or what she was, though, so I stayed still and quiet, hoping for her to go away. She didn't, though. Instead, the woman drew closer and nimbly leaped atop the body I was hiding on.
"Hello, adventurer." She had an otherworldly voice and a kind face. "I am a dryad of the area. I saw what you did to this creature." I still hadn't said anything back to her at this point but decided it was best to try and communicate.
"What do you want from me?" I was able to mouth the words with the tiniest whisper coming out. She giggled in a cute, almost childish way.
"I don't want anything from you! I'm here to help." I let out a sigh of relief now that I felt I wasn't in immediate danger. "I am Shina. My tree is a Daysprinkle farther into the forest."
"How far is a Daysprinkle?" It hurt to speak even like this, but I was too curious. She giggled again.
"No, silly little human, that's the kind of tree I am!" I understood. "You have done a great service to this forest. The goblins have been growing restless lately, expanding their territories. They seem to be preparing for something, and they're cutting down all of the trees to do it." She frowned sadly, thinking about all of her sisters that had been murdered up until this point.
"You are an alchemist, yes?" I nodded to her, and she squealed. "Oh, I thought so! I love alchemists, they do pluck flowers and use parts of us for their benefit, but they always replace what they have taken, spreading seeds helping us grow. Like you did with these thorns!" 'Were alchemists really that well respected by spirits of nature?'
"So, what is a Daysprinkle?" The dryad lifted her hands into her leafy hair and started to shake it. Her leaves clinked together, sounding like wind chimes, then suddenly it looked like there was light refracting through them, casting small rainbows and yellow lights everywhere. It was beautiful.
"We help spread light through the forest so that plants that aren't tall can get the light they need to grow!" I looked at her in wonder.
"That's so cool!" I got too excited and wound up regretting speaking up too loudly. My outburst made me break into a coughing fit, which hurt my throat even more. I wasn't sure, but it looked like my words had made her blush. The dryad leaned over and touched my leg, making me wince.
"It's ok I'm just going to help keep it steady." I looked at her, not sure yet whether I could fully trust her. She closed her eyes and kept her hand on me. Moments later, my leg was covered in leaves. "To make it more comfortable." She explained before covering my leg in a thick bark layer. There wasn't anything that she could do for my neck, unfortunately, but she did wrap my hands in leaves.
I tried to use my eyes to thank her because it was still too difficult to talk. Shina understood though and scrunched up her face as if to say "No Problem."
"I'm going to give you one more gift, and I think you'll be able to make use of. Hold out your hand." I did as the ethereal tree lady asked me to. She dropped two seeds into my hand. "One of them is for Lilliana. I owe her one from a long time ago." 'Who is Lilliana?' I wondered. We sat together for a few hours, with Shina doing all of the talking and me listening intently. After a while, we heard some voices coming from the forest.
"Well, it looks like it's time for me to go! Your friends are here." She gave my arm a light squeeze and hopped away, disappearing seamlessly into the forest. The voices were growing louder now. I wish I could call out to these people. The dryad had said they were my friends, but they could be anyone. Grace was the first person to walk on the scene as she knew what path we had taken to get out here. Everyone present was shocked when they saw the body of the Great Goblin laying strapped to the ground by vines.
I still couldn't get up to show them that I was ok; I doubted they could even see my body laying on top of the giant corpse. I had to do something, though, or else they might leave trying to search for me. So I started rolling, it hurt like crazy, but I moved all the way over to the edge of the stinking carcass till I fell off. I landed on the ground with a thud, which really hurt.
"There he is!" Sarah shouted, but was quickly told to quiet down because we were still in enemy territory. Tim and another Cleric ran over to me and began to heal me. I could feel my swelling rapidly going down, the cuts on my hands closing over. There was a small popping sound when my bone remanded, but it only hurt for a second.
After they were done, my entire party basically dog-piled hugs on top of me. Grace was apologizing and crying. But I was just so happy to see that they were all alive and safe. That's when I saw my master. Her face was red as a beet; she stormed over to me and gave me a swift smack across my cheeks.
"Never do anything like that again, do ye understand meh? Ye've got te much talent te be wastin it on dyin, do ye understand meh boy?" I nodded my head in response while still rubbing my cheek, which was stinging now. 'At least she waited until after I had been healed, I guess.'
"What happened?" It was Jake this time staring in disbelief at the corpse of the monster. When he'd given the pep talk earlier, he thought that the boy might have escaped or something not killed a Great Goblin by himself!
"I'll tell ye what happened mah student gave the beasty a right thrashing," Master said with barely veiled pride in her voice. "I told ye, ye shouldn't underestimate mah, students." She spoke to the members of my party this time, who were all still crying tears of joy for me being alive. Jake wanted to hear the story still though, so he asked his party to start collecting the parts of all of the monsters on this path for us.
They did as they were asked, and I told my tale. From the moment that the party had made it into the woods to the part about Shina the Dryad coming to help patch me up.
"She gave me a seed for someone named Lilliana, but I don't know who that is," I said while holding up the two seeds in my hand. Master rolled her eyes and snatched one of the seeds from my hand.
"Dear lord, does everyone have te start callin meh by mah name?" I looked up at her.
"Your name is Lilliana? You know, Shina?" She nodded.
"Ye from a long time ago it's about time she got meh mah seed. Yer lucky ya got one yerself, she must like ye. And by the way aahm still Master te ye don't ye be forgetting it just cause ye know mah name." I agreed; it felt weird to call her by her first name anyway. Jake's group was very experienced in the gathering of monster parts, so by the time my story was over, they had bagged all of the parts and handed them to Derek and Sarah.
"Make sure ye save all those leaves and bark the dryad gave ye. They're good ingredients fer alchemy."
"Yes, Master." After that, we hit the road home. It had been a long day, and I was tired.