Chapter 6: Chapter Six: Good Guys Are Gorgeous

            Leo plowed into the small woman running at him, accidentally slamming her down to the ground in an explosion of silver hair. Leo yelped as he careened off the lady and hit a tree.

            He rolled over, figuring whatever was coming was close behind. He grabbed an old square stone from between the roots—it looked almost like a brick—and raised it.

            The shouts were almost on top of them.

            Leo stared at the girl, who was lying on the ground moaning and dazedly grasping the back of her head. Crimson tinted her silver hair.

            The girl—or woman, he couldn’t tell her age, but she was on the cusp of full adulthood either way—was a mere five-foot-three, and thin as a rail. He doubted she weighed even a hundred pounds. She had extremely pale skin and soft blue eyes, and she wore a golden tiara and flowing, intricate white silk clothing, which was now smeared with dirt and torn. Somehow, the tiara had remained on her head.

            And she had extra-long ears, like his own. Elf ears.

            She was quite cute, almost beautiful, and for a brief moment, Leo couldn’t take his eyes from her even as she awkwardly lay on the ground.

            Then three goblins crashed into the clearing, running from where the girl had come, and Hugh exploded from the vegetation on the other side, trailing ripped vines like kite ribbons.

            “I’m coming, Leo!” Hugh roared as he ran full-tilt into the tiny clearing and rushed at the goblins.

            As always in moments of stress, Leo coped by joking.

“That’s what she said,” he huffed as he got to his feet and placed himself between the girl and the goblins.

Each goblin was about four-foot-six, with thick, wrinkly, green skin and sparse, white hair on its head and body. They also wore poorly made fur armor but carried well-crafted spears with steel heads. One wore a battered and oversized iron helm that looked like it might have started life as some cooking pot.

He expected the goblins to run—charging dragon and all—but the three rushed forward brandishing their spears. Leo managed to barely dodge a vicious thrust by slapping the spear to the side with his superior arm reach and then slammed his stone down on the goblin’s noggin—a perfect hit right to the crown of the goblin’s head.

Leo hits goblin trainee for 5(5.4) damage (1.8 damage(2 base damage -10%(strength) x3(base +1 +.5 predator perk +.5 Agility) for critical hit.) Blunt Critical Hit to head doing less than target health damage. Goblin trainee succeeds on Toughness check against brain damage. Goblin trainee fails Toughness check against knockout and is rendered unconscious.

 

            “Get out of my face!” Leo yelled, panicking as the other two goblins tried to spear him, one missing by a hair’s breadth as he nimbly danced between them.

            The notification box obliged, disappearing.

The other two goblins struck again as he tried to dodge and recover enough to strike back. One missed, and the other scored a thin line down his exposed ribs. Leo hissed.

Then Hugh ran by like an enraged freight train, and the goblin with the helm disappeared with a squawk, its spear somehow flying up and then landing in the grass of the clearing where the goblin had been a second before.

Alright, score one for removing a thorn from the dragon’s paw, Leo thought gleefully as the last goblin paused, its eyes open wide, for the half-second it took Leo to recover.

The goblin tried to spear Leo, but he caught the spear behind the head and knocked the wind out of the goblin by shoving the butt-end of the spear back into its stomach.

The goblin doubled over, and then tried to turn and run.

Leo slung his rock swing into the back of its head. The goblin pitched forward from the smack, and hit the ground hard. He didn’t move afterward.

The elf woman rolled to her knees, took the knife in both hands, hesitated briefly, then viciously ended the unconscious goblin’s life with a downward stab to the throat. Blood briefly sprayed out, a Jackson Pollock painting across her intricate white silk dress.

She turned her head to the side, dropped the knife, and fluttered her hands. She spit a few times on the ground.

Allied unknown elf kills trainee goblin. 12 experience gained.

 

Leo irritably dismissed the notification and glanced over at Hugh.

Hugh raised his head from where he had finished his opponent by ripping what looked like the goblin’s entire digestive tract from its belly. Some of the entrails were still in Hugh’s mouth. The goblin shuddered once and lay still.

Allied Hugh killed trainee goblin. 12 experience gained. Level gained!

 

Level gained? What does that mean, exactly?

Then Leo stared at the disemboweled goblin.

We look like serial killers, Leo’s mind gibbered at him before he turned sideways and puked into the grass of the clearing.

He glanced up as Hugh spoke.

“You alright, buddy?” Tiny flecks of blood spattered from the dragon’s mouth as he talked. “Did one of those goblins get you with a disease or pollution effect?”

Leo spat the acrid taste from his mouth and wiped his hand across it. Get it together, man. You were an amateur MMA fighter! You’ve seen blood.

Leo’s legs were wobbly as he tried not to collapse. You’ve never seen someone damn near eat someone else before this, however.

“Fine,” Leo managed to gasp out. “No long-term debuffs.”

“Alright,” Hugh said. “Great.”

            “Whoa!” Leo said, reaching out and grabbing the woman’s hand as she prepared to ginsu the other goblin. “What are you doing?”

            The lady answered him in High Averian. Once again, as with the elf in the portal cave, it gave far more information than just the words—prefixes and suffixes gave information about tone and position and even the relationship between the speaker and the listener. “In the common tone, position of superior addressing, graciously, an inferior, least formal: We are threatened, regrettably, by our enemy: ancestral, deservedly hated, victorious who still bears down on us. I must eliminate their soldiers, no matter how disgusting this duty is: This last statement is obvious and clearly rightful.”

            And once again, Leo’s mind translated both the words and tones to an understanding of what the equivalent would have been in English: “The rest of the goblins are coming,” the elf girl had said. “Don’t leave this one alive, even if its icky.”

            “Just speak Middle Averian, like the dragon,” Leo said. “And the goblin’s knocked out. Let’s go!”

            He yanked her by the arm, and despite his new, weaker body, he managed to pull the elf to her feet. She jerked away, however, toward the clearing.

            “What are you doing?” Leo asked, his eyes wide. “You just told me that the goblins were coming.”

            “Our people are back there!” she cried out. “Are you a coward? Help me rescue them!”

            Oh, for frik’s sake!

“Listen!” Leo said. “Be still and listen for a moment!”

The girl stilled and listened to the high-pitched shouts, which sounded like they were moving closer.

“No clash of metal. No screams or yells except those goblin war cries. Your people are dead or fled. We need to leave now!”

“We have a dragon!” the girl snapped.

“The dragon goes where Leo does,” Hugh quipped, but he was edging back the way they had come, toward the river.

The sounds of the goblin yells were now obviously getting closer.

            “Curse those hideous creatures!” the girl said, her face twisted with loss. “Fine!”

            Leo ran back the way he had come, and the girl and the dragon followed, goblin yells hot on their heels.

***

            It had taken a hard thirty minutes to finally outrun and evade the goblins, and they’d made it back to the bank of the Blue River.

Gasping for breath and shaky with exhaustion, Leo sat on a rock, trying to will life back into his limbs and clear his lungs. He’d collapsed amid the smooth rocks and the ruined foundations of old buildings, hopefully screened from view. His spittle was pink-tinged. The late afternoon sun was warm against him.

            If he hadn’t run himself near to death, Leo would have been quite at peace with the scene.

            And that was barely hyperbole—the notifications box had helpfully informed him that he had depleted his stamina, done damage to himself through overstrain, and depleted even his stamina recovery rate temporarily.

            I haven’t run that hard since I was training for my bouts back in college. And I don’t think I ran till I tasted blood then, either.

            He had seen a few extraordinarily dedicated fighters reach that point once or twice, but still, he’d never done it.

            The girl looked even worse for the wear, still dry-heaving as she tried to relax, her limbs occasionally shaking. She’d puked multiple times, and he was pretty sure she was on the edge of shock from sheer effort. Her beautiful silk clothing was ripped to pieces, and her pale skin was visible through the rents in her attire—although she had worn sturdy boots, at least.

            Even as he watched, she pulled herself to her feet, trembling, and went over to the river. She washed her hands, getting the blood off. Then she tried to arrange her hair and smooth down her dress. Given the blood all over her, her beautification process was a partial success at best. After a few minutes, she returned, and gingerly sat on a large, flat rock, facing Leo.

            She carefully crossed one leg over the other, adjusted her clothing, and then put her trembling hands in her lap. She lowered her head, but otherwise, maintained a proper pose. Leo couldn’t help but admire the dignified poise she projected, even in her ripped, dirty, and blood-stained clothing.

            Damn these weak-ass elf bodies! How do they even survive as a species?

            Hugh crawled down the side of the riverbank to the place Leo and the girl were sitting. “I think we finally lost the goblins. I can’t see or hear them, anyway.”

            Leo nodded his thanks, still too winded to respond.

            Hugh looked at Leo with his brow furrowed for a moment, then smiled, baring his fangs. “So, um, I have some good news.”

            Leo wasn’t sure he wanted to deal with any news, even the good kind. Dealing with things would hurt too much right now.

            Hugh pointed south with one large claw. “I think our flight from the goblins brought us closer to our destination.”

            Leo looked where Hugh pointed and could make out a single spire of a fantastical castle, beautifully designed with white marble, over the treetops.

            The elf girl managed to raise her head. “Your…” She coughed, dry-heaved, and then tried again. “Your destination?”

            “Yup,” Hugh said. “My destination. And Leo’s. We’re going to get my sire’s hoard!”

            The elf girl’s eyes narrowed, and her trembling hand strayed to the filigreed dagger at her belt.

            You were so set to kill me, Hugh, and now you just announced your goal to this elf?

Although this tiny little hundred-pound escaped beauty queen has moxie, for sure. No grasp on reality, but moxie. What does she think she’s going to do against the two of us when she can’t even keep her hand still?

            Leo took a deep breath as his body recovered a touch more. “So, um, I’m Leo—never Leonard, that’s my dad—Evans, and this is Hugh of Storm Vale. Might I ask your name?”

            She spoke in High Averian, her face expressionless as she talked. “In the noble tone, High Superior addressing a disappointing inferior: I am Lilianae Kuvella ap Willowynd, second child of Duke Iloran Lazael ap Willowynd: Sorrow at his passing. Why are you here with this dragon: enemy, ancient, victorious?”

            “Pleased to meet you,” Leo said. “I’m helping him to get his dad’s hoard so he can gain prestige within the dragon community, in return for his assistance. Also, I can understand those little inflections in High Averian, for whatever reason. I, again, recommend that you stick to Middle Averian so that we can all have a little ambiguity as to our apparently negative opinions of each other.”

            Hugh snorted laughter, but he had moved into a less relaxed pose and was eyeing Lilianae.

            The girl stared at them for a moment, breathing heavily. Her face was hard and her blue eyes narrowed as she stared at them, but then she suddenly relaxed, a miniscule release of muscle tension that Leo recognized from his time fighting.

            “Very well,” she said. She took her hand off her dagger hilt and laced her fingers together in her lap. “I will speak Middle Averian with you, since you seem unusually educated and touchy both. Please call me ‘Lily’ if we are to speak in this vulgar tongue—it’s how the humans address me.”

            Leo smiled. “It’s a pretty name. I like it. So, Lily, why are you here? And glaring daggers at me?”

            “I’m here to rebuild the Kingdom of Averia, and be its queen!” Lily said, her pronouncement ringing out over the rocks of the riverbed.

            Hugh laughed, a mocking sound. “You? How will you pull that off? You couldn’t even beat a few goblin trainees. The Blood Elite would eat you for breakfast. For a breakfast appetizer. Maybe even a dawn snack, or…”

            “We get it, Hugh,” Leo said, trying not to laugh.

            Lily flushed, uncrossed her legs, and started to rise before coughing and sinking back to the rock.

            “Or even get up,” Hugh helpfully quipped.

            “May your magic abandon you, dragon!” Lily said venomously.

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            Hugh’s eyes narrowed and he bared his fangs as he stepped forward, his huge, eight-foot-long frame dwarfing Lily while she sat.

            She hit harder than she thought she would there, Leo thought. Better defuse this.

            “Whoa, guys, whoa!” Leo said. “Everyone, take a chill pill! We just barely escaped the goblins. Let’s not kill ourselves now! C’mon, can you guys try to be the one ray of sanity in this kooky world?”

            Hugh relaxed and settled back down on the rocks. “Fine. But don’t think to break our deal, okay, Leo? Not even if you want to breed with this elf.”

            Leo facepalmed, then dragged his hand down, distorting his face briefly. Nope, no sanity. I swear I should just swim the river and leave these two behind.

            At the same time, Lily spoke in a shocked voice, her cheeks pink. “Why would you suggest that, dragon? I’ve barely met this man, and I would not engage in, in… carnal relations so casually. Or risk bearing a bastard heir to the throne. It wouldn’t be proper for a noble lady of Averia.”

            “Huh,” Hugh mocked, his eyes wide and at odd angles again.

            Lily’s blush moved toward a deeper red, and her eyes narrowed.

            Leo desperately tried to stave off disaster. “So, Lily, why don’t we go back to the basic question. Why do you think that you can become the Queen of Averia?”

            It worked, and both Lily and Hugh were distracted. But Lily didn’t immediately answer. Instead, she stared at them for a long time, shifting a bit and breathing deeply. It started to get awkward.

            Finally, her face firmed, and she spoke as calmly as her breathing allowed. “I’ll not reveal the reasons at this time, I’m sorry. Despite you saving me, I have absolutely no reason to trust you two. Hugh, you are going to go steal the treasures of my oppressed people, and you, Leo, are going to help him.”

            “Okay,” Leo said. “Good luck, then.”

            Leo pushed himself to his feet, his legs feeling like Jell-O but now working. The worst seemed to have passed.

“What did you say?” Lily asked. “And where are you going?”

            “I said ‘good luck.’ You’ll need it. Between the dragons, the elves, the goblins, and a bunch of other people Hugh named, apparently everyone is after that hoard, or will be once they figure out Hugh’s dad is dead.”

“Merely missing,” Hugh said.

Leo ignored him as he continued. “You already encountered some of them. As to where I’m going, I’m going to go help Hugh here complete his quest. I genuinely hope you re-establish your elf kingdom, but I have things to do.”

            Lily fidgeted with her hands, and with heroic effort, managed to stand, swaying slightly as she did. “You can’t leave! I’m the last heir to the Averian throne, all alone out here. My retainers, um, they died for me…”

            Her lip quavered for a moment, but her face firmed again.

            “I can leave you,” Leo said. “In fact, I intend to. We’re not your retainers. We helped you because you were in danger, and it’s the decent thing to do. But we have our own goals to accomplish.”

            Hugh stood back up and stretched. “And Leo needed to punch his good-deeds card.”

            “Nice,” Leo said, turning to Hugh and giving him a thumbs-up as he started to climb back up the riverbank. “I’m surprised you remembered that.”

            Lily’s hands were making little grasping motions. “Wait! Please, wait.”

            Leo stopped and waited.

            “Look, I, um… Is this because I didn’t tell you my plans? Because that seems like a very shallow reason to abandon me out here.”

            “Among other things,” Leo said, sighing. “I really do have things to do. And I don’t want to travel with someone who distrusts me.”

            “But how could I not?” Lily asked. “You’re allied with the son of our kingdom’s killer, from his own mouth.”

            “I had no idea of any of this history when I allied with him,” Leo said, exasperated. “I’m not from around here, to put it mildly. I have no vested interest in whatever prior drama you guys have going on.”

            “Then why are you here?”

            “He’s from another dimension and arrived by accident,” Hugh said.

            Lily’s eyes widened at his comment, and she tensed where she stood.

            Hugh continued. “It’s some sad dimension without magic, where everyone grubs in the dirt all the time. Everyone there is kinda pathetic.”

            I swear on all that is holy to me…

            Leo watched as Lily relaxed. He decided not to push the explanation of his home world, despite feeling a bit maligned. Personally, and as a society.

            “Fine,” Lily said, twirling her finger in her hair. “Fine. You win, since you have me at a disadvantage. I’ll tell you. I’m the legal, and magical, heir to the throne of Averia. By the time the king died, there were no blood descendants to the king left. But my family is a cadet branch of the royal line—I am third cousin to the previous king. My father died defending the kingdom against the Blood Tribes, and my older sister—well, we received notification that she was dead two days ago.”

            “Okay,” Leo said. “And I’m sorry to hear about your sister. But why does it matter that you’re related to the old king? I mean, the kingdom was defeated, right?”

            “Yes. It’s true the kingdom was defeated. The majority of the elves who survived are enslaved in the camps of the tribes now. Or the kingdoms they were sold to. But a few of us escaped—including my sister and me.”

            She sat back down on the rock. Leo went back and took a seat on another rock.

            Leo waited, assuming she would reach the relevant information soon. There was a brief pause, and Leo stretched.

            “I was still an infant when all this happened, you understand,” Lily finally said. “But my sister was an extremely talented research mage—like I am now, I add. The combination of her position as the duchess, and her natural talent, meant she was close to the king. When the dragon attacked, she and the king hatched a plan to hide the greatest artifacts of the kingdom, the ones that had been built before the Blood Tribes and Chaoliocecatheka came.”

            “Wait, the elves hid even more treasure away?” Hugh asked, licking his lips.

            “This is why I didn’t want to trust you,” Lily said. “Dragons are always led by greed, just like my instructors in magical fauna told me.”

            Leo held up a finger. “My question is, who is this Chowlio guy and how does he fit in the story?”

            “That’s my sire,” Hugh said. “We call him ‘Chao.’”

            “Not sure how that never came up, but alright.”

            Lily leaned back on the rock she was sitting on. “To answer you, shiny little thief—yes, the king, before he died, hid away some of the kingdom’s most powerful artifacts in a vault. A vault protected so that only the true heir to the king may open it, sealed by ancient magic, deep below ground.”

            “And you’re sure my sire didn’t get this treasure?” Hugh asked.

            “No, he didn’t,” Lily replied heatedly. “My sister had ways to know, and the wards were never broken.”

            “Huh,” Hugh said, this time without accompanying kooky facial expressions.

It weirded Leo out that the dragon was instantly adopting the ‘huh’ mannerism.

            “And you can use this treasure to rebuild the kingdom? It’s that powerful?” Leo asked.

            “Well… no.” Lily sighed and turning her gaze to Leo. “But I could get a start. With that and the remains of Calasti that, um, Chao seized, anyway. Here in the ruins of the capital, Calasti, I could rebuild. I could make the perfect home for the elves, even grander than before.”

            “And you can get this treasure? Or to the vault?”

            Lily slumped where she sat on the rock, then straightened, still trembling, her head held proudly. Pride was the only thing sustaining her at this point, Leo figured.

            “I doubt that I can, but I will try regardless. But I had a party before. Ranger Lowali Whitecloak and his son, my betrothed, Ilothulin. And Jeralt, a mercenary under our employ. We were ready, I thought. And we had a wagon to haul out the best of the treasure, so we could return to Lakusi and gather the resources and personnel to come back and claim the city for real.”

            “They’re dead?” Leo asked. “For sure?”

            Lily nodded once. “Almost certainly. Ranger Whitecloak told me that they would die if necessary to give me a chance to escape. They all pulled blades and faced the Blood Tribes raiding party. I wanted to stay with them, but they made the case that I was the only one left…”

            Lily gazed at Leo, her blue eyes red-rimmed, her stare distant.

            Then she whispered, bereft and hopeless, “And I was a coward who didn’t want to die.”

            “You’re one of the most agress—bravest women I’ve met,” Leo said. “I wouldn’t worry about that. But why are you the last one? The last what?”

            “I just told you. I’m the last member of the royal line, which is otherwise extinct. Our sub-branch is all that’s left with any blood at all. Sis died a couple of days ago. We had a falling out, over her plan and mine, but she would have been able to enter the vault, I think.”

            Leo was pretty sure she hadn’t actually said there was no one else, only that she was next in line, but he let it go.

Lily heaved a sigh before continuing. “Now I’m all that’s left with any connection to the royal line. Since Sis is dead.” Then she paused. “Sorry, I’m repeating myself. It’s been a day, obviously. The point is, I’m all that’s left to recover the greatest treasures of the kingdom and save our people.”

Leo nodded along.

Lily played with her hair again, her eyes downcast. “I’m not sure I’m cut out for it, frankly, but I have to try. I’m better at getting people to do what I want than personally going into danger. I was at university, learning about magic and the flora and fauna of the world.”

“All right.”

Lily glanced up and stared at Leo through her lashes. “I don’t think I can do it alone. But I will try.”

Leo met her gaze. She was obviously—very obviously—trying to manipulate him to help. But beyond that, she was exhausted and probably in shock to some degree. He saw the perfection with which she still tried to hold herself, and the willpower within her.

But she was young. Maybe not even eighteen—or whatever the elf equivalent was. Her face was almost without blemish, and she had no laugh or worry lines. The face of someone who wasn’t who they would become yet.

She should be going to prom, in his mind. Not shouldering the cares of an entire people. But she was.

Leo’s heart went out to her. I can afford a tiny bit more time, and she said she’s a researcher. So helping her is helping myself, most likely.

            “Well, how about this?” Leo said. “We’ll all go together. Hugh can have his sire’s hoard and we’ll get you the vault and its crazy magical things. Then you can rebuild your kingdom. Or at least get a decent start on it.”

            “You won’t stay and help me re-establish the greatest elven kingdom in the thirteen continents?” she asked, looking at Leo with a smile as she twirled her hair.

            “And how come I don’t get that treasure from the vault as well?” Hugh asked.

            Leo ignored Hugh. “You guys have thirteen continents on this world, huh?”

            Lily tilted her head at him, and all of her artifice fell away. “Thirteen? We have, by popular count, a thousand continents on Toth. Most of the learned scholars put the number closer to eight hundred, however. Thirteen are simply clustered here, with tens of thousands of miles of oceans to cross to reach the next continent in every direction.”

            For a brief moment, Leo’s head spun.

            “A thousand continents? Like islands?”

            “No, continents. Everyone agrees a continent has to be at least a thousand-mile landmass in one direction, absolute minimum.”

            That’s not possible, Leo thought. The size that implies… the gravity would crush us. Even if these bodies were stronger, well, substances would behave differently! The surface area would be about a hundred and ten times larger than Earth. Jupiter has a surface area about a hundred and twenty times larger, but Jupiter is mostly gas and still has gravity two point four times higher, and this seems like a rocky world, so—

            “Leo, buddy?” Hugh smacked his tail on the rock next to Leo. “Snap out of it.”

Almost by sheer force of will, Leo brought himself back to the present.

            “Okay, sorry. That one caught me by surprise.”

            “You’ll agree to this, dragon?” Lily asked. “You’ll help me, and in return, I help you get your sire’s hoard?”

            Hugh sighed. “It doesn’t seem fair.”

            Everyone waited, saying nothing.

            Finally, he nodded. “Okay, fine. It’ll still be an amazing hoard, and I’ll finally get respect. And Polly.”

“So, a team?” Leo asked. “All of us together?”

Hugh and Lily eyed each other, but after a moment, everyone nodded. Lily held her hand out, and Leo took it. Hugh covered it with his huge claw. They all shook.

“Excellent. To our own tiny fellowship—let’s do this.”

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