At a giant cliffside, with a burnt bridge, a goblin riot at a funeral broke out. Under the willow o wisp light towers, they’d dragged away Nettle to sacrifice in the gorge. Bodi did an impression of Gulliver’s Travels inside a neon green shield. Spoon babbled Babblllle introduction goblin words. Laural, Day, and Kriti still held hands being dragged by the goblins forward.

  The mass of goblin mourners lifted Nettle overhead, about waist height, chanting the song form earlier.

  Spoon yelled out, “By flood and fire!” then goblinese gobbledygook.

  Everyone was fighting. Buoyed by the mob, the goblin woman commanded and the goblins tossed Nettle over into the gorge. Nettled flew forward into empty space and crashed into a green glow. Even he looked started by it, sitting in a tiny glowing green square, his nose bleeding and slowly his skin lighting up neon green.

  Fae magic fairly exploding out of him. Lines ran across his hands, and his face and his fingers, he stood with the light off him overpowering the multiple floodlights and creating pure silence in the goblins as they stared. Then pure terror fear, confusing sorrow, one goblin screaming in new higher pitches.

  The gobbies holding Spoon released him and he darted back to huddle with the women and explain. “They’re saying it’s the unnatural order that it’s Fae magic from the earth come to condemn them.

  Nettle whipped the blood of his nose and still with the shield around Bodi, finally began to build a spell.

  From his feet into the middle of the ground from around him even the smoke and the wind and the fire and using a tiny potion in a flash under his shirt which he drank, he built a bridge.

  A beautiful flat neon green construction, sharp corned as anything could be. Green lines. The eggs shield around Bodi shattered. A bridge as a wide flat path across the space.

  The goblins were chattering now still in fear and confusion while Nettle finally shouted. “I can’t hold this forever. Tell them to go across.

  The chieftain was speaking while the woman who insisted on the tossing sacrifice chattered too. Spoon spoke in clear terms, but nobody moved. They did not trust a bridge built by someone who’d they’d just tried to kill. Understandably.

  “Oh, hang it all! I hate goblins,” muttered Bodi. He marched over and stepped with only a second of hesitation onto the bridge. He walked around the whole thing, even poking the back of his spear into various places, and then he waved.

  The woman who’d thrown Nettle in grabbed up one of a tiny bundled body. She ignored the shouts of her Chieftain, only making one last small statement to the group which Spoon shrugged at in translation. She stepped onto the bridge and walked across.

  Suddenly chaos ensued. The bodies being picked up helped the goblins flood across the flat bridge. Bodi guarded the middle proving it wouldn’t fall to nothing. Nettle was turned a few other colors and sweating but none of them spoke to him. The focus on his spell should be unbroken. These ones shall pass.

  Day notices how even the smoke began to swirl less and less. Pulling energy from many places, she assumed and using everything he could. It still took incredibly long of the huge part of a party to pass across. The goblin intention might also be critical to a spell of this magnitude. Day long suspected the Fae used kinetic energy to enhance his spells. Most Fae used one or another format of it. Sheilds weren’t common, but not unheard of.

  Nettle for once appeared entirely out of sorts doing his magic. His eyes were slightly glazed over, the blood from his nose crushed into a scab that smeared across his face. Sweat poured down him, getting worse as time went on. Bodi took to hurrying everyone along and orchestrating that the bodies all made it across first, but in the end the untidy mess of goblins that had been trying to kill them not long ago managed across in only fourteen minutes.

  The humans had been entirely abandoned in the rush to get across and other than Bodi staying on the bridge to prove that Nettle would not let him drop into the abyss below, they’d done all they could. If anyone stopped to chatter in their tongue or approached Nettle, Spoon shouted at them in his half language and they were all cowed enough to hurry onwards.

  The humans went across last, considering if they might stay on the safer side away from the burial party, but it was Bodi who disagreed. “We just built them a bloody miracle. If we leave them on that side, they might figure that maybe they should find a way back over to us and slaughter us in our sleep for our supplies.

  “They woke us up,” pointed out Laural. They, per the squirrel inaccuracy incident, chose to ignore her.

  The guards met the humans straggling over last with a sort of guilty expression. Perhaps they figured they should have protected their charges instead of letting them almost get killed. In any case, embarrassment radiated off them and the younger ones appeared to have been sent along to be elsewhere in the group. The remaining ten appeared to be more of honor guards, but they still took up positions around them.

  Bodi finally stepped off the bridge and despite whatever was going on, nothing exactly happened. Nettle remained locked in the spell. The bridge remained firm. It was awkward. A few of the goblins waved at them pointing at the bridge then away forward to indicate they should be going. But still Nettle stood.

  Each human tried shouting at him. Nothing happened. Nettle was rapidly deteriorating outwardly, clearly locked into the spell to the point where he couldn’t even respond to the outside world.

  This greatly concerned the goblins that had been trying to kill him. Both the chieftain and the woman as well as what appeared to be a family member in the mourning party all returned to ask in broken English.

  “Why aren’t we moving?”

  “Get your magician?”

  “Didn’t you think about this?”

  To which the humans all muttered various rude things which Spoon refused to translate back, although clearly the chieftain and shaman woman understood the insults.

  Spoon explained in his broken response. “I told them we don’t know why this is. We haven’t seen it.”

  Bodi spoke from his place with his chin on the bridge edge, not leaning on it just touching it. “Did you also tell him Nettles total going to die from doing this?”

  If you find this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the infringement.

  “What do you mean?” asked Kriti with renewed attention.

  “Look at him. He’s turning the wrong color, all grayish like during the lifting, and clearly expending too much energy. We need to get him out of there.”

  “And how exactly do you intend to do that?” Day squinted at the neon lined bridge.

  Bodi flexed his shoulders. “Maybe if I go really fast, I can grab him and run across the fading bridge?”

  They got rope from the goblins and Spoon managed to translate the possible need of a horse. Which a runner got sent for.

  “I’ve a better idea.” Laural brought out the harness rope. “Go tie this on him. We’ll pull him over to this side, if he falls, he’ll only drop to the rope. Then, we can haul him in.”

  Laural gave very specific instructions about the knots to Bodi who scoffed. “I know plenty enough about tying people up, thanks. You should know that.”

  “I could have gotten out of those, and anyway, Nettle could be damaged in a fall. Do as I say.”

  Bodi tromped over and set up her rope ties looping it outside the glowing green bridge guardrails. Once he was back on his side, they waved away the goblins with the only horse that would be agreeable to most, Arkle. Laural tied him down to the pulling rope gave a Hya.

  And Nettle still weaving his spell still unmoving as he had been since he stood up, gently floated along over to them, bobbing like a ship at anchor.

  Bodi scowled then thought, “I could have just pulled him this whole time.”

  Nettle floated until they reeled him onto the land section. There he stopped, the spell lines clearly reaching the end of the land and all of them tried getting Arkle to pull.

  The rope itself grew tighter the horses scrambled for purchase, but Nettle sat there muttering his spell. His hands moving slowly his body turning into such a pale shade of white that she wondered if the green fluorescence color would permeant his veins forever.

  “He’s by the side of the zone now what?” Bodi poked at Nettle with the spear butt.

  Spoon rubbed his head. “This is immortal spell work. We need to think about Fae magic.”

  “Forget that. We’re holding up an entire burial service.”

  Bodi reached across the empty space, grabbed a fist full of Nettle’s shirt and tried to drag him onto the ground again. Just like the rope, the clothing grew tight in his hand, but Nettle himself did not move from his floating green platform. Bodi glowered at him.

  “What on earth is going on?”

  “The spell has literally captured him and the longer we wait to do something the worse it will be for him in the end.” Day glowered at the goblins. “If I had my books, I could check to see what kind.”

  This wasn’t in much of a debate with anyone. Spoon was shaking his head thinking as hard as he could but it was Day who came up with the idea.

  She’d muttered to herself about various school of magic and their counters. “Do any of you have any silver or iron?”

  “Of course we do. It’s in the … caravan,” finished the Kriti lamely.

  “That stuff is toxic to Fae.” Laural unhelpfully pointed out.

  “Right to Fae magic and we need to break Fae magic,” explained Day.

  “Break Fae magic?” asked the chieftain.

  “Yes, whatever is holding him. Even if it might hurt him.”

  “What’s currently happening is already hurting him. No reason to assume it won’t be doing more so. Better to get him to us and let him have a chance of recovery than watch him die. And take any semblance of Fae credit with him.”

  Spoon roughly translated to the chieftain even though they’d been speaking with them in Adville’s practiced language.

  The goblins ran off but didn’t seem to be getting either iron ore or silver ore.

  The goblins instead had jewelry and berries. None of it appeared to be useful for their needs.

  As items got dropped off, Day, Laural, and Spoon grouped the things into various categories. Kriti carefully measuring things out together while testing each wipe on the bridge before trying it on the now visibly thinning slightly and covered in sweat Nettle. The bridge had shrunk slightly on each side before they tested anything to so perhaps Nettle was trying this best to conserve energy by shrinking the margins.

  The various piles of jewelry did nothing even when they lumped the whole things together with both types. They objects cause no change on the bridge. The berries fared better, making the glow diminish but not to the level any of them would have liked.

  Kriti hand smooshed Rowman berries to put the juice and pulp onto the bridge. It leaked through slowly. They smushed holly berries into the bridge, but it did nothing. Red berries alone were not enough.

  Once the goblins saw they retrieved the jewelry and sent off for foraging. This took what felt like forever. The berry pile eventually mushroomed into piles and piles of berries. At her insistence, Kriti went about making a big vat of it from a proffered goblin helmet and Bodi’s spear end. The results of which she took over, and this time with Bodi gripping the ropes and the horses reappeared and the berry helmet, she dumped it all over Nettle shoes.

  He didn’t break away immediately, but Bodi pulled up and Laural pulled to the side and very much like peeling off gum from a boot, they tried to peel off Nettle from the spell. It worked until they tried to pull him across the chasm when they found a new glowing light upon his shoulder, against inside the chasm.

  Laural called the others. “Grab berries and smear them on him. Hurry! He doesn’t look very good.”

  Spoon grabbed up Rowan berries running over to crush it into him, but the Goblins were given short order from the using their slingshots, they began pelting Nettle with reasonable accuracy. Bodi took his share of hits but after one annoyed expression, set his jaw on the matter. It took the sling shotters nearly four minutes to get him enough that Nettle slowly fell across the side slowly. But despite the inundation his shoes remained stubbornly clung to the spell pattern.

  They couldn’t shoot his feet and boots from their angle, but Laural dropped the horses and ran over to yank off Nettles shoes, which they fell into the darkness below just as the sling shotters got more Rowan berry covering. The goblins angled from the side better running up bravely to the gapping maw in the ground and grabbing each other to keep the edge shooters from falling off. They spun off the sling shotters to reload replacing them with a line behind.

  The maneuver clearly having been tried before, was not ad hoc but well executed. Perhaps even a battle strategy perfectly arranged. Nettle fell to the ground, the green slowly going out of his skin and revealing how horribly thin his face looked.

  His entire body lost all muscle tone, leading him straight into a dead slump on the ground. Only his faint chest movement reassured him that he wasn’t dead, all the way yet.

  Laural had already pounced and placed him in recovery position, one knee up on his side, with an arm tucked under his head to improve breathing, but the sounds did not sound right like breathing.

  “We need to get the stuff off now!” Laural looked for a canteen. Nettle’s breath turned into a shallow unhealthy rattle.

  “Water!”

  She shouted at the chieftain he looked horrified for a second before issuing out new orders to the now prepared line of goblins. They brought back a chain of small containers to Laural.

  They brought back skins of ceremonial burial wine. Bodi borrowed a jacket to act as a scrubber. And so it was that Nettle got a combination of scarved and extra shirts as well as wine to try and get all the Rowan bathed off him. His breathing evened out and he slowly stopped sweating and went to shivering. His lips turned yellow. His fingers curled inwards and for forty-eight seconds nobody knew what to do.

  It was Spoon who suggested, “Make a fire dry him off? Try to do an energy transfer?”

  “No.” Day shook her head. “I know what I can do. Drain out magic, it’s gotta be Anti-Fae, but I don’t think I can do it here. Not with others watching.”

  She spoke low to the rest of the group, they sometimes forgot about her dark arts and the magic of human chiroquackery. Steeped in stench as it was in the mystery and filth of its kind.

  Chiropractic arts in front of a hostile audience wouldn’t due to do. Ah, doobie do. So like any practical hiding of the most reviled skill in the world, they needed to split up and search for ways to hide Day’s healing.

  “Why did we go on this side of the bridge again?” Laural asked.

  Bodi without lowering his voice boomed out. “We didn’t want goblins to kill us.”

  At least most of the party had moved on to the official burial, this guard party clearly stuck around to help them out more than anything else. If only they had a subtle way to ask their opinion on necromancy. Considering how many other things they cared about at the burial rites, probably not the best time to ask.