Chương 24: The Currency of Hope

"Do you really think this might actually work?" Elias asked Goggs. The more he'd thought about and discussed the plan, the more his confidence had faded. After all, he was still learning new things about this world by the hour. What made him believe that he had any answers? More importantly, what made him arrogant enough to think no one had ever tried something like this before? He was getting too cocky, he reminded himself.

But wild experimentation had often created rich rewards for Elias in life, or so he seemed to recall. It was no time now to stop trying new things. Even if it meant throwing mud at the wall and seeing what stuck.

"The blightmaw is not a very swift creature as it is. For the most part, it is easy to outmaneuver one in the thick jungle. So there is no danger in trying. If you fail, we will have ample opportunity to simply run away," said Goggs.

"Besides, the blightmaw only cares for riches. It only attacks once it reaches a town, and only then if you refuse to pay its demands. Then it might eat you. And eat the entire town, as well. I have heard stories about entire settlements being consumed."

"Is that what happened to Old Cinderleaf?" Goggs nodded.

"I wasn't present at the time, but that is the story most have come to accept. The people in the town failed to sacrifice their goods, and the blightmaw destroyed them." They were in the thick of it now, and Elias was availing himself of as much plant gathering as he was able without slowing the party down dramatically. He'd vowed never again to miss a good opportunity to snap up ingredients, and was thinking of upgrading his plant identification skill next time he gained a level.

He found quite a bit of electric jasmine growing on the side of one tree and quickly pocketed what he could, along with a few fleetcap mushrooms. But he could not lose himself in the flow of gathering. He was too distracted by the audacity of the idea he'd concocted and the way the blightmaw's roar grew louder and louder as the party progressed.

"Mind filling in the new fellow?" the wizard Napalm asked, catching up to the party from the rear, out of breath and pale. His tall stature proved to be more of an impediment in the thick jungle than an advantage.

"I understand I may be green, but … why exactly are we headed towards the giant roaring monster, again?"

"Elias here has just invested into a new skill called snare," Goggs explained.

"It is a druid specific skill, and I've never come across a druid that survived long enough to try it. But according to the description Elias has given me, it slows creatures down dramatically." Elias hadn't gathered that morose bit of lore about druids before now. How many druids had Goggs watched perish? He cleared his throat and simply pretended he hadn't heard.

"So," Goggs continued.

"Elias came up with the idea to try this snare skill on the blightmaw. Try to slow it down. Delay its approach to Cinderleaf. That way we could buy the town a few more days to prepare. Time for us to complete our quest in the mountains. And for the townsfolk to gather extra resources."

"Fascinating … but, would a simple snare do any good against such a thing?" The wizard asked.

"It sounds enormous." Goggs' eyes narrowed and the muscle around his jaw quivered. He was silent a moment, pushing aside a thick spiderweb hanging over the path so that the rest of them might pass through.

"Probably not. But it could. Hope is a currency of its own," said Goggs.

"And it has been a long time since any came to the town of Cinderleaf. So, I am in favor of trying." They tromped on through thick briars towards the thunderous calls of the beast. None of them were speaking now, and the tension was as thick as the undergrowth. The ground shook as they neared, and they easily tracked the creature by the bending treetops in the distance.

When he saw it, really saw it from up close, Elias realized that Goggs' description of the blightmaw had really not done justice to its monstrous size. The creature towered over even the tallest jungle trees, its eyes peering above the canopy like some reptilian predator's above the waterline. Below was the cavernous mouth. It moved like a natural feature across the forest, like a mountain crater that was sliding across the landscape. A canyon with legs.

A void so deep and dark that one became almost hypnotized looking into it. There were no teeth that Elias could see—it was more like a whale's mouth in that regard. That was a somewhat apt comparison: even without the benefit of chewing, the gaping mouth that moved through the jungle swallowed trees, rocks, and even small animals as if they were nothing more than a cloud of tiny plankton. Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings.

The party stayed back, each of them reacting to the massive thing in their own way. Merlyn whined. The wizard tugged at his beard with a mumbled prayer. Goggs looked on stoically, refusing to wither. Elias, for his part, felt a sort of morose scientific fascination with the beast. What kind of evolution could have shaped such a thing? What flesh of it you could see was a deep green, but more sickly than the hue of the jungle all around.

The flesh was sort of translucent, so that Elias could make out what he assumed were the faint outline of its internal organs. Also, it seemed … wet, glistening with the slime of avarice. Bloated beyond what nature, or whatever dread hand that had shaped it, surely must have intended. It roared, and from this distance, one could smell its rancid breath. It smelled like rot, decay, and death. Merlyn sniffed at the air before letting out an awful sneeze and slinking back between Elias' legs.

"Alright then, brave druid," said Goggs, watching him closely.

"If you are going to do something, now is the time to seize the moment before we are spotted." Elias stepped out of the bushes, having a string of serious second thoughts that he quickly tried to stifle. He crept up, flanking the great beast as it lumbered forward. The smell was even stronger this close, so that Elias had to cover his nose. From here, he could see that the flesh of the creature had somehow assimilated some of the things it had eaten over its existence.

There were rocks, trees, small animals, and other things that floated in its slimy skin. It reminded Elias of the jello molds that his mother would put out for block parties when he was a young child. They never got eaten, and a week later would be growing interesting gray hairs as they lingered forgotten in the back of the fridge, spurring young Elias in his budding scientific interests. The blightmaw lurched forward, but as it moved, the thing really wasn't much faster than a lumbering tortoise.

Elias realized watching it that Goggs had not been joking when he said the beast was slow. It would be child's play to outrun the thing, unless, of course, you had a bunch of stone walls and buildings to carry along with you. It would have been an effective design for keeping development down, as Goggs had suggested. A theory that Elias still couldn't quite get out of his mind. It was both fascinating and horrible to think about. The beast seemed to have spotted him, and it let out a roar of annoyance.

But otherwise it ignored him and only trudged onward towards its goal.

"Alright, here goes," Elias whispered to himself. Elias held out his hands and watched as the green, vaporous vines of magic began to swirl around his open palms. The vines grew bigger, thornier, and started to reach out from his fingers in the direction of the great lumbering beast. The vines shot out and wrapped themselves around the blightmaw's trunk.

These creepers sprouted a thousand tendrils, growing thorns the size of pickup trucks, curling and, for the briefest of moments, completely covering the creature's lower half.

"The skill has scaled to its target," Elias whispered to himself, making a mental note of this. Then, the magical vines faded. All that remained was a small bundle of roots that seemed to drag along what passed for the monster's feet. The blightmaw lurched forward again, but this time its gait was about half of what it had been moments before. It had indeed been slowed down. # You have successfully snared a blightmaw! #"Well done, well done," said the wizard, upon his return.

The bearded fellow clapped him on the back with obvious relief.

"Yes, well done indeed," Goggs repeated, with what was clearly a surprised look on his face.

"I … am sort of stunned that it worked." Even Merlyn let out a congratulatory howl.

"You've definitely bought us a few extra days here. I don't know of anyone who has ever managed to do a thing like that before." But as Elias basked in the praise of his waiting party, he found himself having second, troublesome thoughts. These thoughts robbed him of a bit of the glory he should have rightfully been feeling.

"What's the matter?" Goggs asked.

"Well … I have the sick feeling that I've only delayed the inevitable. If we are about to set out on a quest, which will hopefully result in some rewards, like say, the much needed armor … then, won't we just have to give up an even greater amount of goods when the Blightmaw does eventually make it to town?"

"Don't think that way, brother. Listen, you play the game as hard as you can and when the time comes, you pay what you have to pay," said Goggs.

"I suppose," Elias said, scratching his chin. This all reminded him very much of something in life, but he couldn't quite put his finger on it. There seemed to be a lot of things here like that.

"To the mountains!" Goggs shouted, almost merrily. He took the lead of the party and began to shepherd them southward through the jungle, chanting a battle hymn as they marched. It seemed like, in some small way, a sliver of the healer's hope had returned.