Diana then began digging a hole in the box I made based on our positions, then pointed at the tree.
She's a little fucking genius!
I nodded.
She grinned.
I began channeling mana through my body, softening the dirt around us and trying to snap the root layer underneath the ground from all the trees and foliage out here until I made a space leading about six feet below. I hopped down and used my focus orb to dimly light the way as I began to excavate a tunnel directly towards the tree. When I found the main root base of the tree, I began to dig in a close circle around it until I had completed the loop. Diana was with me and kept putting her ear to the walls of dirt and pointed up at times. Was she giving me their positions?
I had thought about making a spike rise up, but without a proper line of sight, it wouldn't be effective. Diana, now free to talk, spoke quietly, wanting me to collapse the ground out from underneath them, and she would kill them as they hit the ground.
I was worried, because these Black-claws or whatever were huge fuckin' wolves.
But, my daughter killed a bear bigger than them. She was a daughter recognized by Prima whom I knew was a capable hunter, and her mother, and she wanted… to prove herself. To the rest of her tribe, her sisters, and probably even… to me, who made a big scene and paraded her around for being a bear-killer.
I made a small inverted column-like kill chamber, thinning out as much of the dirt above our heads as I could, and then created a small series of sharp stone spikes which rose up out of the ground where the wolf in question would presumably land. I pointed at the spikes and she nodded her understanding. The reason I didn't make large spikes was because packed dirt would be falling down and would potentially break them. Having many small spikes allowed time for the mass of dirt to displace itself and still stick upward enough to injure but not kill the wolves. Diana would have to deal the finishing blow.
Magic isn't omnipotent, it can bend physics locally but doesn't remove them entirely.
She had her ear against the wall and her long knife out.
She flashed me a signal for when I was to drop the ground above us and cut off the light from the orb. She gave the signal and I used gravity magic to pull the thin layer of land above us downward into the kill column. I heard the first large wolf howl as it fell, landing on the ground with a thud, yelping in pain as it was stabbed in about eight or nine places on its body successfully, but still far from dead.
Diana moved quickly, to which a high pitched wine echoed for again, but for only a second or two. Then my daughter quickly returned to my side.
I closed off the wall passage quickly.
We had done this about five more times in different places before Diana began shaking her head after putting her ears against the dirt. The wolves had figured out not to get too close to the tree now, but they hadn't left. Prima's spear, which was now being held by my daughter in her other hand, must have accidentally fallen into one of the kill chambers and recovered.
"Husband. Go up."
At the base of the tree, where the roots began to spread laterally, I cut through some of them with magic and opened up another rectangular hole above us. Nothing fell, so I drew a wide rectangle on the ground belowus and told Diana not to hold on to me and not move a step outside of it. I would use land magic to raise us upward from this spot very quickly to the tree's branches. Diana hooked one arm around my leg, and slung her bloody long knife into her loin cloth to rest against her small leg, while barely being able to clutch Prima's spear in her other hand.
"Ready, Diana?" I whispered.
She nodded.
"Okay, here goes…"
I used a significant chunk of mana to force the ground to rise quickly and a little unsteadily. We shot up from the ground faster than the large wolves could react, target, and pounce at us before we were already too high for them to reach.
Prima and Jewel were both up in the tree but there was no sign of Doll anywhere.
"Husband! Why here…?" It wasn't a question Jewel asked in surprise. Both Prima and Jewel had seen me and Diana from their position in the tree, and also saw that I had my quartz focus orb in hand.
"Diana Artemis bring Husband. Beast-talker not live. Four black-claw left hunt. Rest, kill."
Diana handed over the spear to Prima.
"Prima, where's Doll?" I asked her quickly.
"Run. Black-claw split, three hunt Doll, rest hunt us. Jewel not have arrow, Prima need drop spear, climb tree."
I nodded, getting the gist of it.
"What should we do now?" I asked, since I was an adventurer and not a naked hunter by trade.
"Easy have more arrow." Jewel said, gesturing to her empty quiver and lightly plucking her bow's string.
"Do they have to be wood arrows?" I asked.
"Arrow not wood?"
"Diana, can you hop off onto the tree branch? I want to see if Jewel can use an arrow made from my land magic."
Diana easily leapt over to it and freed up some space for me to get to work. I made a somewhat shoddy etching into the dirt elevator I was standing on with force magic, and began to make dirt compacted stone arrows from it one by one. I forgot to include a notch, but Jewel wasn't complaining. She began firing arrows as quickly as I could create them and hand them over to her, and she had already managed to kill one wolf. The remaining three howled and began to move erratically to dodge, but a crazy launch of the spear from Prima had skewered one right though the spine and stuck it firmly in place to the ground where the spearhead pierced deep into the soil.
I leaned back a little against the tree's trunk. If I had been using the topaz stone instead of my quartz focus orb, I would have had mana exhaustion back when I dug the first hole before this whole operation started.
"Husband, are you okay?" Prima asked me.
"I'll manage. Just give me a few moments to rest. Any ideas where you think Doll headed to?"
Jewel and Prima looked at each other and nodded.
"Stream. Black-claw not hunt Doll water easy. Doll have axe." Prima said.
"Husband, why have shiny white stone?" Jewel asked, not taking her eyes off of it for a second.
"I'll give it back when this is over," I promised, "for now, can you let me keep it long enough to help you rescue Doll? Without it, I'm dead weight in our hunting party."
Jewel didn't put up a fight, and Prima said nothing. Jewel and Prima climbed down the tree, while Diana and I took the dirt elevator down to the ground. We had to dodge the holes I made earlier all around the tree, but as soon as we cleared the pitfall area, Diana was ready to climb on my back once more. Prima retrieved her spear from the large wolf's corpse she had killed, and Jewel collected a few of the stone arrows for good measure.
"Alright you two. Lead on. Diana and I will be right behind you."
I wasn't going to use any haste magic. I had to conserve what little mana I had left to be of any use if there were going to be more of these wolves. It was tough to keep up with those two. They moved fast even while barefoot and my feet weren't exactly comfortable in stone shoes. We had run for many more minutes until Prima and Jewel had finally come to a stop.
There was one wolf already dead in the water, Doll was in the middle of the stream with a large bloody scratch on her arm, and brandishing her bloody axe, ready to swing at the next wolf to come close.
There were four wolves on the edge of the water, all waiting for the right moment.
"Not tree near water. Attack one, all leap goblins. Kill one… two before die." Prima was making an attack assessment.
"What… if they were thrown into the water?" I asked Prima.
"Black-claw move slow water. Kill easy."
"Okay."
I had Diana climb down off my back.
"Can either of you signal Doll to let her know we're here?"
"Doll know here." Jewel answered me.
"Then, can you signal her to go underwater for a short moment when I tell you to?"
"Husband use magic?" Prima asked.
"My strongest wind magic. I'm going to blow those four wolves into the water. After that… it'll be up to you four to kill them. I'll probably pass out from mana exhaustion."
Diana put her hand on my shoulder. "Husband say when. Goblins attack after stone magic."
I began to close my eyes and draw on pretty much the last of my mana reserves. I channeled the intent through my high quality focus orb and opened my eyes.
"Now!" I said.
"DOLL, GET UNDER WATER OR DIE!" Jewel yelled as loud as goblin-ly possible.
I should have told her to do it silently with their hunting signals, but that's my fault here. It was already too late to change anything, as the spell was manifesting and a huge vortex of air manifested from my palm as the origin point and I swept it from left to right with a single motion of my arm, causing all the wolves to be blown forwards off their feet with great intensity and land right in the middle of the stream.
"GO!" Prima yelled, and all three of the girls dashed forward, weapons drawn.
I would have liked to see what happened, but I was teetering. I fell backwards on my ass and just did what I could to hold on to my consciousness for as long as I could while I felt my mana get sufficiently low enough to affect me. I definitely heard goblin battle cries and whimpering yelps from the large wolves. Then, silence. It was a bit shameful for me to have ended up immobilized. I was brought back to the cave by Prima, Jewel, and Doll who were taking turns dragging my barely conscious body through the forest. I didn't even see Diana anywhere after the battle. I figured she was trying to be a brave goblin and was keeping a vanguard or scouting position since I would have been too heavy for her to move.
When we arrived back at the cave, it was to find that thing there, waiting.
I was deposited near the corpse of the beast-talker goblin. Looking up, I saw the horned head of the being with supremely powerful magic looking down at me. It reached out with a claw and put it on my head.
"Rest." It said, and I felt like that… was a very good idea.