She couldn’t do much but watch as the human toppled down into the portal only to keep wrestling with the furnar that went in with him. For a terrifying few moments, Crystal was certain the stupid human had failed and would be dragged out by the ears.
But then the furnars threw out his bag and started chucking boulders in. In that moment she acted, before they could get a chance to completely seal the well. She ran out from where she’d hidden between Kyala and Karilna’s twin communal homes, picked up a rock, and threw it as hard as she could at a furnar’s head.
And missed.
She picked up a second, ran a few more steps forward, and threw again. This time, she caught Kyala herself right in the eye and the furnar staggered under the blow.
“The gnark invasion is at hand, stupid furnar,” Crystal screamed at the top of he lungs. “Prepare for the horde!”
Plenty of heads turned her way this time. Kyala raised a finger and pointed straight at her. Crystal had never particularly liked that village elderling, but it brought her no pleasure to see the furnar in such a state.
When the mob turned its attention fully on her ponderously began shuffling her way, Crystal turned tail and took off down the rocky path that ran along the entire ring of homes.
As if summoned by some silent call, more furnars emerged from the homes, silent as ghosts, slow as snails. Crystal recognized Palla, the blacksmith, Bia, the bread maker, and the sisters Kless and Malia, the weavers. Nobody showed any sign of recognising Crystal. That, more than the blank stares and the quiet chase, stabbed her deep through the gut.
She should never have accepted to help. When they’d wrestled Jiek to the ground and forced her to eat the spoiled food, Crystal should have just run out of Harriet’s Heap as fast and as far as she could, and never looked back. She shouldn’t have sicced Tusk on the attackers, then help Jiek back to her feet.
And she definitely shouldn’t have accepted the key. She’d promised her friend she’d bring help. She’d promised she’d find a Protector and lead them here.
She’d only found Klaus, and that by happenstance no less. Maybe the great Maker did watch over such things and arranged circumstances. Maybe Crystal shouldn’t have buried her shrine beneath the mounds of fungus feeder.
Or maybe Crystal had just brought a poor bastard to his death. At least she’d get his pack, once she got Tusk and they shook the pursuers off their butts.
Crystal had kept her word and brought help. Nothing more could be demanded of her, so now she could sleep properly once she got back home. The human had gone into the portal on his own. It wasn’t Crystal’s responsibility to make sure he got back out safely. He’d ate the food she’d cooked, so this service was fair trade.
Crystal didn’t normally trade food away. Jiek would understand the lengths she’d gone to for assuring help came to Harriet’s Heap, if Jiek could still understand anything.
For now, Crystal had to focus on getting to Tusk. Her energy levels were down to their last third so that meant it was about time to meet up and run.
Furnars chased her. Not in the aggressive manner most villages used to get rid of her.
She had been chased out of plenty places by fools with torches and assorted weaponry, but never by such a calm and collected mob of silent ghosts. It was almost terrifying. She much preferred the torches and the angry yelling to this silent march.
At least she knew where the yelling came from. Here, they barely even needed the torches. More of them emerged to bar her way, silent as tree fathers, guiding her path forward.
Tusk roared somewhere in the distance. Crystal skidded to a halt on the gravel, took a quick look around, then darted for Valla’s home. A fox had once dug a crawl space beneath that building, and Crystal always used it when she needed to get out of the village quietly after trades went bad. It wasn’t her fault the furnars had no sense of smell and couldn’t tell fresh kills from old, especially if Crystal spruced them up a little with her magic.
A group of furnars, with Valla herself in front, emerged from the shadows just as she was about to dive for the crawl space. They barred her way.
They knew!
Crystal, for all her many faults, didn’t like to think of herself as stupid. She wasn’t the brightest gnark in the Brightleaf, and she certainly wasn’t the bravest. Those qualities were all hoarded by that slag daughter, Emerald.
If the furnars knew now of her secret passages, then they’d always known, and they’d indulged her. It finally made sense that nobody had covered the many holes she’d used to sneak in and out of the village. Harriet’s Heap had always been kinder to her than most other places.
Now Tusk was in serious danger! Reality slapped her like a wet, cold morning in the Brightleaf.
For the second time in a handful of heartbeats, Crystal had to skid to a halt and scramble away from fresh danger, running as hard as her small legs could carry her. They were herding her towards the main road. The gate would be blocked off, and she, like Tusk, would have to head for the village square.
She already knew who waited there.
In a straight race, the furnars would easily catch her. Crystal didn’t like using that absurd skill the human was fond of. It made her hungry and twitchy. And even then, it would drain her remaining MP too fast for Tusk to get away.
But none of the villagers were really trying to catch her. They just followed and blocked off her routes, as if they had all the time in the world.
As expected, there was a whole mob silently blocking the escape route back to the main gate, and another strolling down the road from the opposite way. Crystal had no escape route but towards the village centre… and the queen. It was hard not to shudder at the thought. The queen was hard to face on any normal day.
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They’d crossed paths once before and Crystal abhorred the memory of that day. She’d rather go up to a sleeping shadow stalker in the forest and kick it in the nether, rather than face Harriet again.
Tusk exploded through a wall two streets farther in. Timber and mud bricks turned to kindling and dust beneath his charge. With a roar of joy, he crossed the street and rammed straight into the house opposite. The house he’d come out of was the butcher’s that had refused to give him a sausage, and the other was the healer that had tried to take out his bad tooth. Seems the big fella never forgot.
“Tusk, no,” she called out as she ran, aware of the groups converging behind. “Tusk, they know!”
Tusk emerged out of the ruin, timber and dust falling off him in great swathes. Through the gaping hole he’d punched into the building, Crystal could see the ruins of very delicate apparatus that she knew would be hard to replace this far out into the Brightleaf. Well, if the human survived and did as he promised, Crystal could trade the lovely healer for replacements.
But now wasn’t the time. Tusk stomped up to her, his large head swivelling between all the furnars gathering. There were only a handful of torches between them, but that was enough to show all the glittering eyes gathered in the dark. Half the village was there.
Fire also reflected off naked blades. Polearms mostly. They may have lost their minds, but not their sense. None would approach Tusk with a sword. But there were plenty other ways to hurt him.
“They know, Tusk,” Crystal hissed as she stepped away from the mob. “They know our way. We can’t go there.”
There being the secret tunnel she had dug beneath the bird coops, to grab eggs when the foraging was lean in the forest. It was right next to the central plaza and she’d been certain they could escape through there. Now, that certainty had slipped away.
Trading wouldn’t work, not now. Neither would threats.
The queen’s home loomed into view, a large, dark, formless shape in the black night. It was the only dwelling in Harriet’s Heap that wasn’t made of brick and lumber, but of padded mud.
Crystal took stock of the last of her energy beginning to drain. The furnars were approaching, their pace steady, their silence overwhelming. Tusk rumbled and growled, but he saw just as well as she did the weapons. He’d been poked often enough to know not to tumble with those.
“Tusk, we run.”
Crystal made up her mind as she threw down her pack. No matter how long Klaus took in the dungeon, she and Tusk couldn’t remain in the village and live. Desperate times needed desperate solutions, and Crystal was well acquainted with desperation. She was loath to use her one tree father verdant heart, but there was no other way.
She channelled the last of her energy into her [IRON BITE], then stuck the thumb-sized piece of crystallised amber in her mouth. It took her three tries before she managed to break it with her teeth, and then chew. Shards cut her tongue and the roof of her mouth, then the back of her throat. But she swallowed, the clean taste of tree father sap tempered with the iron of blood.
Her energy refilled instantly, then doubled, then doubled again. She had enough to keep Tusk in his form for the whole night if need be. But she would need all that for the next part.
“Tusk, we go through. You let me first.”
By now the mob had all but enclosed them, the furnars keeping less than a spear length away. Some of the weapons came down and made prodding gestures at them, pushing the two of them back.
Crystal could hear now the heavy wheeze that signalled Harriet’s nearness. The queen was alive then, and, by the laboured sound of her breathing, she was hungry.
Better sore tomorrow than devoured today. She wrote the spell as she walked backwards towards Harriet’s home. [SCULPT: TITAN] was an uncomfortable spell that ate through her energy five times faster than the lesser version, [SCULPT: JUGGERNAUT] that she cast on Tusk. The titan shape she could only cast on herself.
“Hate this.” Crystal whined and activated the casting.
Later she’d need to find new clothes and new shoes. She always forgot to undress before the casting, but generally she didn’t have the time to consider such things.
The titan shape was always so disorientating. First, her limbs grew too long and were too ungainly, the pain too sharp to allow for any other sensation. Then she became too tall, her eyes saw too far, and all of a sudden she wasn’t certain if she walked or just floated. She staggered, the effect of the spell amplified by the tree father heart. Now she was the one towering over the gathered furnars.
Her clothes, threadbare and poor as they’d been, burst to scraps as Crystal grew to tower over her pursuers. The straps of her pack tightened around her shoulders, then ripped apart.
Crystal had only moments available in this shape. It ate through her energy absurdly fast. She let out a roar of frustration for her destroyed things, scooped up the ruined bag, then charged the mob. They had no idea what struck them and, for the first time that night, Crystal saw hesitation in their movement.
No matter. With a yell, she powered through, running ahead through the mass, swatting aside anyone too slow to get out of the way. She tried not to hit too hard, but in the heat of the moment it was hard to keep track. She just hoped she didn’t hurt any of her friends, though by now it was impossible to distinguish faces in the crowd.
She was a storm cutting through a field of flowers, moving at a run through the crowd, knocking aside everything and everyone. The crowd tried to hold her. They tried to stab her.
Blades cut into her skin, but not deep enough to be dangerous. It hurt. It hurt so bad that she wanted to cry, but if she stopped, the crowd would drag her down, and they’d drag Tusk down. And then they’d be fed to Harriet.
A few cuts and scrapes was not too high a price to pay to avoid that horrid fate.
As she reached the circle of the village where the well lay, she took a hard right down the gravel path and surprised even herself. The human had traded fair and square for this, but she couldn’t just let the furnars seal the portal to trap Klaus inside. She would just clear them from the well, then run straight through to the gate.
She was met by spears. A whole wall of them. The furnars surrounded the well, twenty to thirty strong, and they all carried spears.
Without a sound, they turned on her and they all stabbed.
Pain lanced into her from a ten sides at once. Blood burst out where the spears were pulled back and readied for another thrust.
Tusk leap to her aid, snapping at the nearest shaft. He dragged its wielder off her feet and slammed her down on the gravel, then broke the spear.
Another furnar stabbed him from the side, the tip of her spear slamming into Tusk’s ribs, all the way to the other side. The metal tip punched out from between Tusk’s ribs with a squelch of blood.
“No!” Crystal screamed and tried to shake free of the weapons impaling her, fear for tusk overriding her pain.
She swung a huge fist at the nearest furnar, but it dove out of the way. Another spear stabbed into her back. She felt its point all the way into her belly, poking her from the wrong side.
Red filled her vision as another spear struck Tusk. He howled in pain and tried to pull away, but there were too many enemies around him, all poking and prodding.
Crystal tried to reach him. She forced herself to keep going, but the pain was too great. Blood slicked her skin and a chill crept into her chest, sudden and painful. She’d made a huge mistake trying to help the human. Oh, such a grave mistake indeed!
As if through a dream, she saw two furnars carrying a large boulder to the mouth of the well. They hefted it up with difficulty onto the rim, then dropped it in. The whole outer wall of the well shattered and crumbled to dust as the boulder fell through.
“No!” She wanted to scream and snarl and lash at her assailants, but hadn’t the strength anymore. The night had grown so quiet and so cold and so dark.
Tusk whimpered by her side, a third spear jutting out of his back. Red blood coated the molerat’s pink skin.
Crystal couldn’t see. Tears blinded her. Pain and fear and anger all mixed together as the furnars withdrew their spears and prepared to stab again. She could barely walk and felt herself growing smaller and smaller, all power leaving her.
Tusk whimpered by her side. He’d somehow crawled to try and hide behind her. Or maybe she’d crawled to his side, for the end. It was hard to stay awake. It was hard to reach out to her only companion. The pain was too great.
She blinked. The darkness wouldn’t go away. She blinked again.
The world exploded into blinding light.
“Oh dear,” a voice like birdsong descended from the sky above. It was accompanied by a heavy thud.
Patreon. Finally managed to get back up to date and I even have backlog. So 15 chapters soon is doable. 20 in 2026.