Chapter 31: Chapter: 31 Spriggantastic

If a forest could loom then that's exactly what the Everdale Woods did. Dark and ancient tree trunks with branches that looked like twisted skeletal hands reached out to us as we passed under them. Gnarled roots, that tripped us up, were bent and twisted covering mossy rocks. Wild hunters padded in the shadows of the trees and deer peeked at us behind hedges and mounds of decaying leaves.

It had been a week since we’d left Marshhaven on our journey back to Alhaven. It had rained every day so our progress had been painfully slow. We’d been forced to sleep in log cabins, caves and under broad trees but the sun was finally out.

After a while of silent marching the air began to get hot and stuffy. I took off my coat and slung it over my shoulder and Ahri transformed her clothes into a mini skirt and a short top that revealed smooth calves and sweat glistening off of her lower back. 

The view gave me a much needed distraction and with each step she took her ass moved, painting a picture in my mind of what she would look like naked. 

Since the night when we’d almost had sex, every time I looked at her, I pictured her wearing her silky lingerie and biting her lip as she crawled along the table towards me. The last thing I needed was trying to hide an erection whilst tromping through a forest but I was enjoying the distraction far too much to care about that. 

We passed through Everdale Woods in silence, neither of us having the heart to speak in those dark lands and soon even the thought of Ahri naked wasn't enough to keep the oppressive forest at bay. 

With each step we took the trees seemed to draw in closer. So silent was it that the fall of our feet, rustling on dead leaves and occasionally stumbling on hidden roots, seemed to thud in our ears.

I looked at Ahri and said in a voice barely above a whisper,“You sure this is the right way?” 

She looked over her shoulder and smiled at me and said playfully, “Are you enjoying the view?”

“If you like trees,” I said.

Ahri looked down at my crotch and smiled again.

“That's not the wood I was talking about.”

I wished I was one of those charming assholes that knew the right words to say at that moment. Instead I laughed nervously, stared at my feet, wiped the sweat from my brow and finally said, “Do you like wood?”

Ahri looked up from the map in her hands and frowned at me.

“Did you say something?” she asked.

“Just wondering where we are.”

“This must be the Everdale Woods,” she said. “If we continue heading east we should come out near the town of Bramble Hollow.” 

“And that's where we catch the ferry?”

She followed the route on the map with her finger and then said, “The ferry takes us down the Bresa River to Swindon. We can spend the night there and in the morning we’ll catch a wagon to Alhaven and then onto the mages guild.”

She had mentioned the mages guild before but I didn't see the point in joining them. I imagined we would have to perform a bunch of simple kill quests for them and they would reward us in binding cards or money which we didn't really need.

“Why join the mages guild?” I asked. 

Ahri folded up the map and tucked it into her backpack then said, “They have a wide network of informers that track the location of all the rarest spell cards. If we joined them all you would have to worry about it leveling up and theory crafting a deck.”

It sounded good, maybe too good to not have a catch though. 

“What do they get out of it?” I asked.

Ahri shrugged and said, “A lifetime of loyalty, your first born child, fuck me if I know.”

“I wish you did know,” I said with a grin.

“What?”

I laughed awkwardly and said, “Nothing.”

---

Later that day we found a stream which we hoped would join up to the Bresa river and followed it all the way to the edge of the forest. The trees became sparser but taller the further we traveled and soon the oppressiveness subsided and we felt a lightness in our hearts.

We stopped beside a crystal pool under an oak tree whose leaves, though fast turning yellow, were still thick and the ground at its feet was fairly dry and sheltered. 

I found an acorn the size of a baseball which I tossed in the air and caught as vague memories of playing catch with my father trickled through my mind. 

We sat beside the crystal pool and soaked our sore feet in the cool water as dragon flies buzzed around luminous rocks on the far edge of the pool. 

I put the acorn in my spellbag with the rest of the seeds I had been collecting on my journey in Umbra. I had decided that if I survived whatever was to come I was going to build a house for Ahri and I and plant the seeds and maybe raise a few chickens. 

Ahri rummaged in her backpack and pulled out two sticks of fish jerky. She peered at them and a look of intense concentration spread across her face as she mentally measured them. She began to hand me the smaller stick of jerky and then she paused and reconsidered and then handed me the larger piece.

“I had a dream about us,” I said.

Ahri took a bite of fish jerky and said, “Were they wet dreams?”

“No, nothing like that. I don't fully understand them but in the dream you and I were watching the world burn.” 

Ahri’s eyes narrowed but she said nothing. It had been over a month since I’d had my first hallucinogenic vision under the psychedelic willow tree but the memories of that moment still remained. There was also the dream I’d had my last night in the Mesmers camp. I knew the two were linked and I felt that they were true. Someone or something was warning me and I needed to tell Ahri.

“Something is coming,” I said. “Something evil and when it arrives it is going to destroy this world and maybe my own world with it.”

Ahri tore off a piece of jerky and chewed it as she processed my words. Finally she swallowed the jerky and said, “Dreams are strange things. I once had a dream that my teeth were falling out and when I shouted for help I swallowed them.”

“You’re saying that I imagined it all?”

She shook her head and then looked away. Something in the way she avoided eye contact, in how her shoulders pointed away from me, told me that she was hiding something.

“Ahri, do you know why Pale harvested the demon's heart?” 

She kicked her feet in the pool and at first I thought she hadn't heard me and then just as I was about to repeat my question she spoke, “Talasin, there's something I’ve been wanting to tell you.”

“You're married?” 

She laughed and immediately the mood was lighter once again.

“No, not that. When I brought you to this world I asked you to kill a god.”

It felt like a lifetime ago.

“It's all linked isn't it,” I said. “The harbingers, my dream, you bringing me here. What are you after?”

Ahri’s smile faltered for a second.

“I'm trying to save something precious.”

We lapsed into silence, each of us tangled in our own thoughts. I’d spent a lifetime alone and observing other people. I liked to think that I knew people and Ahri was definitely keeping secrets from me. She had done some messed up stuff to get her way but when it came right down to it I think I trusted her. I was sure that when the time came she would tell me everything. So I decided to hold my peace and not push her for answers.

A dragonfly flew overhead and landed on a moss covered rock and even as I watched the moss began to grow. 

“This place looks familiar,” I said.

“You’ve been here before?” she asked.

“No, I think it's a spell card from Hero Seeker. I played against a beast deck in the semi finals that used a Pool of Rapid Growth. The picture on the card looked just like this place.”

“That explains why the trees are so large in this area. Do you think it's in the water?” 

I nodded as I looked around seeking the source of power.

“You should bind it,” said Ahri. “We have plenty of binding cards to spare.”

“Do I bind the whole thing?”

Ahri shook her head and said, “You have to find the essense of the magic.”

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Nothing stood out as being the source of power. I tasted the water and frowned when it tasted just like normal water. I tapped the rocks and they sounded the way tapped rocks would sound. The only thing that seemed out of place was the direction the algae on the sides of the pool were facing. 

“The water is moving clockwise,” I said. “It looks like everything is gradually spinning around a central point.” 

An idea came to mind and I plunged my head under the pool. There it was a hole on the bottom of the pool with bubbles coming out of it.

I rose out of the water, shook my hair and Ahri squealed as the water splashed all over her.

I ran a hand through my wet hair as I tried to recall the flavor text on the Rapid Growth card. 

“The massive rule with might,” I said. “The tiny rule with cunning, beware when spriggans make the tiny ones massive.”

“You’re such a nerd, Talasin.”

“I spent the last three years of my life playing Hero Seeker. If that makes me a nerd then I guess I am.”

“You definitely are,” said Ahri and she smiled. “But I like that about you.” She ran her hands through the water. “Why do you even want Rapid Growth?” 

“I have my reasons,” I said.

She looked down at my crotch area and laughed. 

“I shouldn't have asked.”

“Not for that you pervert. You think more about my penis than I do.”

“Well,” said Ahri, “You think about my ass more than I do.”

I laughed and said, “Fair point.”

“So don't make me guess,” said Ahri. “What do you want the spell card for?”

I paused and scratched my head and tried to explain the idea that had been growing in my mind for the last couple of weeks. 

“I was thinking of collecting spells that I could use to set up a business.”

“Why? We don't need money. I hate to say it but with these binding cards I'm basically a cash cow.”

“We can't keep selling cards Ahri, eventually the wrong people are going to find out about them and we’ll be in deep shit.”

“So what’s the plan?”

“Well, with Rapid Growth we could start a farm, grow plants and sell food, herbs and potions. I could use Poison Mist as a pesticide. With these spells we could transform villages giving them the tools to earn an income.” 

“You’ve been thinking about this for sometime,” said Ahri.

“I have. We could become traveling merchants and sleep in a wagon instead of dirty ditches on the side of the road. Plus it gives us a good cover while traveling around and we don't have to sell your binding cards to pay our way.” 

“It sounds like a fairy tale,” said Ahri. “Except, instead of happily ever after in a palace it's pig farming and sleeping in a wagon. Every girl’s dream come true.”

Ahri jabbed her elbow playfully into my side and said, “I like the sound of it, palaces are overrated in anycase - too damn drafty - and those hallways are so echoey, everyone in the palace can hear you fart.”

---

“So if there's a spriggan living in this hole,” said Ahri. “How do we catch it?”

“I don't want to catch the spriggan,” I said. “That would ruin the whole ecosystem. I just want to bind the spell. What do you know about spriggans?”

“Tiny teeth and they eat dead things.”

I gestured at the piece of jerky Ahro was still sucking on and said, “I need that.”

She pulled the piece out of her mouth and glared at me.

“That's my last piece.”

“You said spriggans eat dead things.”

“Yeah, so do I.”

Ahri hesitated then handed me the wet piece of floppy meat. 

I stuck the stick of jerky into the hole and waited. A few minutes passed and there was nothing. A few  more minutes passed and I felt a tug. It was a light tug at first and then all of a sudden something grabbed it and yanked it deeper into the hole. 

I held on tight and pulled the jerky as hard as I could and out came a tiny humanoid creature made of sticks and leaves. It hung from the meat by its sharp teeth.

I pried open its mouth and snatched back the jerky and the spriggan fumbled around for it and then stared at me with its mouth wide and a drop of drool hanging out of it.

“You want more?” I asked.

The tiny creature nodded.

I gave the wet jerky back to Ahri.

“I don't want this slimy--” she began to say.

“Just play along with me.”

“We don't have much left,” I said to the spriggan. “But if you made it bigger then we’d have enough to share.”

I didn't know if my plan would work but I figured if I was going to bind Rapid Growth then I needed to force the spriggan to cast it.

The creature nodded again and extended its hands towards the dried up piece of meat. Tiny green lights floated towards the stick of jerky. 

Just before the lights reached the wet meat I pulled out the binding card that I had hidden up my sleeve. 

The green light collided with the card and for a moment nothing happened and then the card began to shimmer and hover in mid air. It rose up, spinning and tiny sparks of light flew off of it in all directions. 

* Congratulations you have bound: Rapid Growth

Increases the size of objects and speeds up growth. Cannot be used on humans.

The spriggan let out a piercing screech and green light swirled around the creature. It doubled then tripled in size eventually towering over us. Its face turned from childlike innocence to serial killing monster in an instant.

“Give it the jerky,” I shouted.

Ahri tossed the meat at the spriggan and it hit it on the head and bounced into the water.

She looked at me and then back at the monster and said, “This would be a good time to run.”

We ran. 

I had done a lot of running recently and I thought I was getting the hang of it but the damn spriggan was fast. It glided under branches and leapt over gnarled roots as it plowed after us like a crazy house wife on black friday. 

I grabbed Ahri’s hand and we slid down a mossy bank and landed in shallow water. We kept sprinting until our lungs had enough and then we slowed down and looked back.

“That dickhole,” said Ahri. “He’s not even chasing us anymore.”

“At this point,” I said, “Running in terror is my default setting.”

Ahri’s eyes widened in a mixture of surprise and panic. She pointed at my feet and said, “Oh shit, you’re standing in a fairy ring.”

---

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