Friends in a Foreign Land

Within moments the three of them were surrounded by goblins swinging swords, clubs, and even claws at them. Arden was swinging his mace while using his shield to try and keep them off of Willow, who in turn kept trying to get out from between her dad and uncle so that she could hit the goblins. Nolan had started the fight unarmed but soon pulled a short sword from his inventory and started trying to counter attack the goblins that Arden blocked with his shield.

The blows from Willow’s quarterstaff and Arden’s mace, coupled with the cuts from Nolan’s sword, and the fire bolts that continued to rain down from Hazel were whittling down the goblins. But the three in melee combat were all bleeding from multiple wounds.

“This isn’t like the movies!” yelled Arden as he shoved two goblins away, setting them up for Nolan and Willow to attack.

A few moments later Hazel calmly strolled into the fight, surrounded by spectral blades that were spinning around her like a small tornado. She laughed as a couple of goblins were taken by surprise and cut to shreds. But she screamed in pain when one goblin was able to dart in and stab her before her blades could cut him.

Unfortunately for that goblin, when he darted out, he was too close to Willow, who promptly slammed her staff into his head as if she was chopping wood. "No stabbing my sister!" yelled Willow. The goblin’s skull cracked, and its body fell to the ground, lifeless.

Though it felt like an hour, the fight was over in less than five minutes. The party were all breathing heavy and covered in blood and gore. Hazel and Willow just looked at one another in disbelief. Nolan immediately started searching the pockets and pouches of the goblins.

Arden cast [Healing Touch] on himself and then followed it up with [Clean]. Instantly he and his armor were clean again. Walking over to where the girls and did the same for them. "Now, please go check on my grandson," Arden said before walking to Nolan and offering to heal and clean him as well.

Nolan shook his head. "Let me finish first; then you can do it."

Arden walked to the edge of the hill and waited. Once Nolan finished his search, he came over and Arden cast the spells on him as well while asking, "You finding anything worth keeping?"

"Maybe. Everything seems to be pretty low quality. And no coins whatsoever. But the man they were carving up to eat still had a pouch on his belt. In it was this piece of paper." Nolan passed Arden the paper before continuing, "Care to explain why someone here is carrying a note with your favorite Wheel of Time quote on it?"

"Shit. Our local contact was supposed to say, ‘It’s time to toss the dice’ when we met up to identify himself. Looks like the goblins killed our guide." Arden responded with a hint of sadness. After a moment he reached out and touched Nolan, healing and cleaning him before turning and walking back to where the girls were. Arden announced as he topped the rise, "Let's go wide so Ewan doesn’t see what happened. I’d rather he stay innocent for a bit longer." He turned to see Nolan lifting the body of the guide. “What are you doing?”

“We can’t just leave him out here.”

“And we have no idea where we’re going or how far it is. You’re just going to carry him all the way there?”

“If it was you?”

“Then I’d be pissed that I’m dead not that my body is just laying out in the woods.”

“Hey!” Hazel interrupted. “The backpacks are magical, have you tried putting him in one?”

Both of the men looked like they were ready to face palm as Arden sat his pack on the ground and opened the flap. Nolan walked up and lowered the body into the pack. As soon as it entered the pack it vanished. Arden closed the pack and put it back on. “Yep, says I have body in my pack now.”

“Hazel,” Nolan called out, “You are a genius. Now, let’s get moving. The fresh blood may draw more beasts.”

The party walked in relative silence for a while, everyone processing the fight. For most of them it was the first time they’d ever been cut by a sword. The first time they’d ever killed anything more than an insect or a mouse.

After about an hour, Nolan said, "We need to plan our fights better. And those of you without armor need to stay away from the fighting."

"I’m sorry. I didn’t think they’d be able to get to me with the blades spinning around." Hazel said while looking down.

"How’d that work out for you?" said Willow

"Like you have room to talk," Arden exclaimed! "If I hadn’t been blocking for you, there’s no way you would have survived that fight!"

"Would too. Didn’t you see me kill that goblin that stabbed Hazel? With ONE HIT! Besides, my leather armor looks the same as yours Uncle Nolan. If you can jump into combat, why can't I?"

"Because he has over two decades of fighting experience!" Arden snapped. “He ran his own martial arts school for Christ’s sake!”

Arden stared at his youngest, looking like he was about to lose his cool, when Nolan started chuckling. "Dude, she’s just like you at that age. Stubborn and thinks she’s invincible."

Arden glared at Nolan for a moment before grinning. "Yeah, you’re right. But that scares me even more. You realize you’re going to have to train us, right?"

“Let’s see what we’re working with. We need to get an idea of what spells and abilities we each have now. Then we can plan around that.”

“The status menu has a page with our spells listed.” Hazel said excitedly. “I’m a sorceress so I probably have a lot of spells.”

"Do tell?" Nolan asked.

"Elemental Orb, Fire Bolt," Hazel started.

"Hold up, please," Arden interrupted. "Hazel, pull up the screen that shows your spells and then think [Share with party]. That should be quicker."

"We can do that? Cool!" Hazel replied.

A moment later, they were all looking at Hazel’s spell list

"Looking at your spells, you have a mix of close-range and long-range spells as well as a crowd control spell. For now, when we get into a fight, use the long-range spells while keeping your distance." Nolan advised. "Willow, can you share your screen next?"

"Yes, sir."

"Mostly just utility spells right now and a crowd control. I see why you joined the battle with your dad and me. Continue to cast Shillelagh on your staff and join us. We will work on formations so that Arden can take the hits while leaving you room to attack."

Arden looked to Nolan, "Are you sure that’s best?"

"I get that you’re worried about your baby girl, but she literally killed a goblin with one hit. She’ll be fine if we plan our attacks better." Nolan said reassuringly. "Now, show me what spells you have."

Arden shared his spell list with the party only to hear complaints from Hazel. "How do you have more spells than me? I’m a sorceress; I should have more!"

Ignoring Hazel’s complaint, Nolan continued, "Mostly utility, only one attack spell. Some of those utility spells are nice, but I wonder if you shouldn’t have more offensive spells. Anyway, here’s my list."

"You too? That’s not fair, I should have more spells that y’all!" fussed Hazel

"You’re only one behind! Hold your horses, you’ll get more spells as you level." Arden replied to his daughter. Looking back to Nolan, "Looks pretty well rounded Nolan. But since you’re part of a party, it may be better to focus on certain things and let the rest of us focus on others rather than you trying to do everything."

“You both talk as if we chose our spells. We were just given these and it’s my understanding that as we level we’ll be given more,” Willow interjected.

“You may have been just given yours, but I specifically asked for a few of my spells,” Arden stated. “Particularly, [Clean] and [Message].”

“Yeah, I just asked for a light spell, a healing spell, and to be well rounded,” Nolan said. “Hazel, did you ask for anything in particular?”

Hazel smiled a sheepish grin as a flame manifested above her hand, “I just asked for fire.”

Arden chuckled, “I should have known that one.”

“I believe Willow is correct about us being given new spells as we level. However, we can learn additional spells on our own as well, though it might not be easy from what I was told.”

"Maybe so. Let’s find more things to attack and see where everyone’s strengths lay." Nolan suggested. “No sense worry about possible futures right now. Let’s learn to use what we have.”

“Woah, did y’all see the [Skills] page?” cut in Willow. “They have skills for everything. Evidently I have a level 5 in walking.”

Again everyone pulled up their status menu, this time going to their skill list.

“I can see this getting really unwieldy over time. Like how often is ‘eating’ going to level up?” Nolan commented.

“Is that a challenge? Because once Liam and Miguel are back with us, we could work on getting a high score on eating,” Arden said with a grin.

“Looks like there’s a description column you can turn on and off. In case you need it to tell you what running is.” Hazel said with a chuckle.

“I have a question,” Willow said. “Check out my skills page, first though.

Continuing, Willow explained, “Like, I have a number of skills here. But I’m sure I knew more than just what’s listed. Why did the gods only choose these to give me to start with? And why are so many of them at 5?”

“Maybe these are the only skills you had that were higher than level 1 and that would be useful?” Arden suggested.

“I’m more concerned with how do I hide the mundane ones. I failed to notice that skill in mental resistance until I saw it on Willow’s list and then double checked mine. I also have that skill at level 10.”

“Me too,” Hazel said. “And I just looked at Ewan’s list, he has it as well.”

“Yep, me too.” Arden added. “Did someone in our group request that one, perhaps?”

“Possibly. Lets be sure to ask about it when we talk to them later,” Nolan advised.

“Alright, that’s skills and spells covered. Shall we check out abilities?” Arden asked.

“Mine is pretty empty,” Nolan said as he shared his abilities page with the group.

“You might only have two, but they’re nice,” Arden said. “And it looks like they both level so you may eventually be killing dragons with your bare hands.”

“Why would you want to kill dragons? Dragons are awesome. We should go make some dragon friends,” Willow suggested.

“In time. So what abilities do the rest of you have?” Nolan asked.

“I have two. One lets me speak a language called Celestial and another casts a protective shield around me.” Answered Arden. “And, no I didn’t use that during the fight because I forgot all about it at the time.”

Nolan just shook his head. “We’re going to have to do some training so that these spells, skills, and abilities become second nature as well as developing how we fight as a team. But that’s for later.” Looking at Hazel and Willow, “What class abilities did you girls get?”

“I only have one. It lets me created a small burst of wild magic, though.” Hazel answered.

“I have two. One is a language called Drueidan. The second is my bond with Arlo which lets me talk with him telepathically,” responded Willow, clearly happy about her abilities.

“Question,” said Hazel. “If we have a boon that lets us learn languages, why are some of y’all getting languages as part of your class?”

“Good question, I don’t know,” answered Arden.

Willow, with the blank stare that Arden was coming to associate with someone looking at a status screen, spoke up, “It looks like the boon is only for tier one languages. Drueidan is considered a tier three language.”

“Ahh, that makes sense,” Hazel answered.