He waved his hand into the air, a mud golem, in particular, its blazed lavender eye was swept by his hand, and its colors trailed and were sucked to his pores — completing his soul.
Such a great team, to battle: a partial of his soul as her fuel, an endless energy source that kept her golems in motion, and by the soul on its eyes, his Soul Disruption could traverse.
But his luck was not as many as the trees in the rainforest, and his astral projection could not be used without thought.
Similar to when they were against the Dead Raiser who could sense souls. If the captured party had a member who could sense soul. When the golem entered within a critical range of their vicinity, the golem could be sensed: by a human-soul-sensor with their soul sensitivity.
"AMAZING! How can you command your own soul with ease? As simple as your legs and arms," Kerleun said. "And-and-and, Melantha can command a stray soul, like she was shepherd amongst the flock of sheep!"
"If only our Little Missy can grow quick, so as she can bless more of us with the blessing of the earth," she pinched Kerleun's cicada wings and stopped her pesky hoverings.
"Hey! Putmedown!" She flapped her arms and legs as she tried to escape her clutch. "Just wait! My appearance just changed, prettier, remember? My powers will gradually follow, and I could never-never-never be bullied again by the likes of you!"
"Fine," she said, released Kerleun, and snapped her head to him. "M'Love, we can't take all eight of them, we need to reduce their numbers, if not, they had to weaken."
He scanned the moldy and misty rainforest and dug out his thoughts for an answer. Slowly, fish fins poked out of the crawling fog once more, and his goblin mind whispered: 'Eat, eat the flesh of those humans and feed their bones to the fishes,'— such barbaric intrusive thoughts, he snickered them out, never to be disturbed.
"Any amusing ideas, M'Love?"
"Just some nasty passing thoughts Darling," he pulled a man's head by his red hair, and showed the man to her, "I can implant fake memories and tamper them, by breaking a piece of his soul, the result is still undefined."
He fingered the man's ear canal, ignited, lavender flames covered his visage and his head convulsed. In and out, of the bundled unconscious members of the group, his feet trod, as he repeated what he had done on the first man.
"Tsk-tsk-tsk, so much playing with souls eh? One day the Giftor that governs the soul will knock on ya door," Kerleun said.
His heart stopped for a moment, he turned to Melantha, and he could easily smell, her concern, in her perspired brows. But he was more concerned, that she would start to feel afraid to use their powers henceforth.
"Come on Darling, look our Giftor here, she wasn't that mighty as she dictates to be." He rubbed her back and tried to resummon, her smile of confidence.
He would not let that happen, for he knew that a rattled creature, living in fear, was short-lived.
"Hey! Who is not mighty? I am MIGHTIER, MIGHTIER than all of the Giftors in the plains combined!" She stood on Clux's scalp, the newcomer. "Even this savage goblin can only be my sole comforter, heh." She arrogantly stomped her feet, on the scalp of the unseeing and unhearing goblin.
Clux remained silent, it seemed that he had judged, that the couple had gone mad again as they talked to an invisible entity. So he took his own space and parted the fogs with his bow's limb, playfully.
"See that Darling, is that some creature that can invoke fear? She can only act cutesy."
"C-cutesy? HEY!" She flew at him and gave him multiple jabs of softness.
When her eyes were washed by the display of the incompetent fairy, in relief, his Darling finally giggled freely.
"Is the Giftor that governs the souls, a sentient being?"
"Hmmm, it's an odd one: It can communicate yet unfeeling; it chose its Giftee not by choice but by a condition; and it was not scary yet can strike fear."
"Our Little Missy and her impeccable explanations."
"Of course! As I expected of the pretty meh," she pointed her face to the sky, too high for her to see her sarcasm.
Further, as he, his Darling, and the fairy had further conversed about the Giftor, he understood the harmlessness of the Giftor. With calmed and relieved faces, he and her summons: they dragged the members of the unconscious group, like sacks of potatoes, unto their underground farm.
------
In his blurred memories.
He and his party had a little misunderstanding, with the two long-eared boy and girl, and it had resulted in a small clash of words. Fortunately, it was resolved, and together with the two's summons and goblin lackey. Their new group fought their old serpent enemy.
Thanks to their new party members, they had slayed the Night Lightning Serpent with little effort. But there was no face of joy from the victory, rather, their old party members were swallowed by the silence of sadness, for they had lost two lives: Ken, a swordsman covered in the fearlessness of his night armor; and Roem, a shieldman who had protected them in big armor, as big as his heart.
Battered and exhausted, he as the leader, accepted the sincere proposal of the long-eared boy, to tend their wounds with their powers. He was weirded out, by why it had to be done at the long-eared's abode, but as if his mind was clouded by their wounds and sorrows, he and his group tacitly agreed.
Although the home of the two long-eared was sunken in darkness, the two long-eared's hospitality was unbelievably bright. To him, who had a fair share of experience interacting with others long-eared, this was the first time.
He had recalled from the lumps of his memory, that although the long-eared people were beautiful beyond compliments, their personalities were ugly above insults. They were arrogant, more than arrogant, and treated other races like lumps of dirt on the road.
The long-eared people always mouthed eloquence, as they preached about the balance of the world and kindness to all creatures, yet those only applied to their own people. They spoiled their young people rotten, to the point that the elders, would side and believe, their youngster's voice rather than the obvious other who had been mistreated by the former's act.
A people tied up in hypocrisy and selfishness, he had not considered himself a man with strait-laced morals, but the long-eared people's hypocrisy and selfishness were, twisted differently.
"Mauldrhul, why did you help us?" He asked.
The long-eared turned, gazed at the goblins, returned to him, and he met his eyes— there were gentle green fields with calm winds on the boy's beads. They were enchanting.
"Would you not do the same? When you meet strangers in dire need?" The boy answered. "There was a lady named Tuilën, one of our kind. I could not understand. Why was she filled with viciousness when she saw our goblin friends?"
The boy's innocence struck his chest, he was stumped for words. He closed his prejudiced sight and reopened them to get a better view. Hour by hour, the two long-eared has filled his group with sincerity, as the two, fed and nursed them without a grumble.
'Perhaps there were few long-ea—, no, elves, true elves, who are truthfully compassionate towards all the livings, just like in the old books,' He thought.
As an aged man, he knew that nobody was without flaws. The two long-eared had a bizarre hobby: they treated goblins like faithful pets, and they sometimes spoke, to something he could not see. Well, he just shrugged it off, for he himself had a bizarre pastime of his own.
Another oddity was their sharp, quite scary, saw-like teeth and snake-like vertical eyes. But his mind was too cloudy, too cloudy that he had not compared them to the goblins on the side.
The evening came, without notice due to the blackness of the underground, next, the morning came, still without notice. He awoke, from his recuperation and nudged his team to return to the town.
Above the underground, his group stood between the fresh morning air, winded by the magenta fields. They had bidden, their friendly goodbyes, to the long-eared couple, Mauldrhul and Melanthel. From the chattered from yestereve, he and his team were cultured to know that two very young-looking, Mauldrhul and Melanthel, were husband and wife.
No one was surprised, elves were long-lived. They may look young, yet they could be older than all their age combined.
The couple was so affable to his group, that they even offered to escort them back to town. Who was he to deny? So they journeyed together with the couple.
Anguish, he had never felt such anguish in his heart, throughout his life. The town he grew up in, Irontal, was engulfed in a hurricane, reaching the clouds, as rubbles of irons and stones spiraled.
The sun was eclipsed, by a bird: feathered in ashen clouds and lightning storms. Ghost Bird of Tempest, a bird from the legends, a monster that enjoyed storming more than anything else, of any kind of manmade home or any creature's abode it had found. Within the mangled castles and houses, there, it laid its eggs afterward.
Their whole group could only watch in horrors, retreat was their only choice. Even the couple, stood no chance against that monster.
"FATHER! MOTHER! OUR HOME! PLEASE." The youngsters of their party, the sisters, Faith and Fey cried.
"Shit, come're you two." Claudio, the one-eyed man, pulled their petite bodies, by his arms and prevented their lunges to the storm.
Then, then, THEN. What happened?
The images in his memories shattered, snapping him awake. He woke up before the familiar soil mosaic of the ceiling, with flickering shadows, there was little to no light. He bent his upper body, away from the softness of the dried leaves on his shabby bed.
As he expected, the familiar elves, Mauldrhul and Melanthel were within his view, beside the fireplace: there were primitive tools and appliances, of stones and woods.
"Mauldrhul, did we escape from the Ghost Bird of Tempest?" He seized Mauldrhul 's hand and asked.
"Get off your filthy hands of M'Love," Melanthel slapped his grip away.
His lungs tightened, and his good impressions of the couple fell down, and so was his mouth.
"It's fine Darling, he seems just a little muddle-headed," he said. "Tell us your name," he added, not an ounce of warmth he had remembered.
"Have you forgotten? My name is..."
Pain tingled in his temples, and his face was crunched from the dull ache pulsing to his veins, unto his brain.
"M-my name, what was my name?" He slapped his forehead rapidly, a few more times, desperately as he tried to recall the symbol of his identity, not until he ended with a rounded mouth.
He held both Mauldrhul's shoulders and shook him. "MY NAME, WHAT WAS MY NAME?"
Thug!
A hand smacked him down to his bed, briefly, his breathing was thumped off from the strike, and he had ended up stiffed on the hardness of the bed.
"What is happening? Why can't I remember my name?" He muttered. "My companions, were are they?"
When he thought of his team, he scanned his sides and was relieved, the familiar figures of his team had their own beds of leaves.
"M'Love, you might have broken the man's mind, he can't even remember his name." She then stared at the ceiling, "Little Missy, stop with your questions, we're in the middle of something here, later okay?"
When he caught the words 'broken mind' and 'remember', a strength he did not know that he had sat him up.
"Caecus lux" He chanted, and a white sun illuminated the whole cave.
"Ugh, such light!"
"Melantha! Mordred!" The goblin pets shouted as they covered their face, another of their hands surveyed the ground to reach their bows.
With the little energy that remained on his feet, he broke through between the screams and ran to the only exit hole he could see.
'Where is the exit,' with his hand on the cave walls, he ran limpingly in the dark, as the pain bore into his temples.
"Look at this pathetic worm, wriggling in the cave walls," a girl's voice echoed, chilly as the cave walls. "Why didn't you just directly disrupt his soul out M'Love? It'll take just a flick of your finger."
"Kerleun said emotions can evolve the soul into a spirit, such as the evil spirit banshee, maybe, if both his soul and emotion were tampered he can show us something amazing?"
The more the two conversed, the more his visions faded. When his cheek planted on the ground, coldness and fear crawled to his skin, and within the blurred darkness, the full sharp teeth of the two figures were up above, they smiled and talked like he was nothing but an animal to be toyed.