Chương 17: Chapter 16 — Use the Cutty Edge

The robe was gone. The Order had decided to keep it for future appearances. It would need cleaning regardless, and it was considerably easier to store when it was not on a zombie. Nibbles had sent two acolytes to retrieve it the previous evening without ceremony. Fenwick had dinner with his mom. He spent a lot of the time with his ears burning bright red in embarrassment, dodging the daggers in the eyes of his brother, who kept repeating through clenched teeth how happy he was for Fenwick.

All the while, Fenwick had to keep dodging his mom's questions about the hero and making excuses for why the hero couldn't join them. At the end of the night, the hug he got from her had made it worth it, and he had mostly dried his tears before he returned to his bunk. Max was standing looking at the wall all night in the barn in his biker jacket and one boot, doing nothing, which was what he did at night. When Fenwick had returned, today's exhaustion had hit, and he had skipped his notes that night.

In the morning, Fenwick got up a bit before the sun rose and wrote down the events from the day before. Even if he had not been a scholar and detailed notes were part of his life, the new pressure as a hero's companion meant that his notes would be part of the Order's records forever. It was his responsibility to ensure he wrote things down while they were fresh. While he documented his mother's visit, he did omit the tears. Not everything needed to be included.

After breakfast, Fenwick renewed Flower Scent, and he climbed into the harness.

"Book," said Sindy.

"Bok," said Max. Close. Still not right. Fenwick had not commented on it since Sindy started yesterday. As they headed out to hunt, they went a different direction. The cave entrance was not far from the Thornwood's edge, but it felt far. The quality of the path changed before the cave came into view, the undergrowth thicker, the light different. The forest's ambient noise shifted. The wooden signs along this path did not offer cheerful encouragement.

They offered terse, specific information, which was not reassuring. Fenwick read them aloud as they passed. Sindy catalogued each word with quiet delight, adding to the growing map of the written language she was building piece by careful piece. Fenwick was experiencing a different emotion entirely.

"Stay alert," he said, when the last sign was behind them. Sindy ran a scan of the immediate area. The cave entrance was thirty feet ahead, a dark mouth in the hillside, and the scan returned readings that were significantly more interesting than anything the intermediate path had offered. She flagged four signatures and started preparing the butterfly. The goblins came out before she finished. There were four of them.

Training ground goblins, placed here by the Guild, were the same as everything else on the path, but the advanced path was a lot more dangerous. Real weapons: short blades, a crude spear. Creatures with enough intelligence to spread out immediately, surrounding rather than charging, the planned coordination of creatures that had worked together before and knew how to use numbers. They spread without hesitating. Two flanking left, one right, one straight.

"Max," said Fenwick. The head nodded, and the sword came up. It came up wrong. The grip was fine, the body knew how to hold a sword, had always known, but the angle was off, the edge turned away from the target in the manner of someone who had been using a club for several weeks and whose muscle memory was still negotiating the transition. The first swing connected with the flat.

The goblin it connected with stumbled sideways, which was more than a toadstool person would have done, but considerably less than a sword should have achieved. The goblin leered at Max. Max looked at the goblin. The goblin made a decision and lunged. Max was knocked flat. Two goblins hit him simultaneously, one low at the knees, one high at the shoulders. Max went down back-first, straight as a board, no attempt to catch himself, no flailing, just the impact with the ground.

The goblins had not planned for what happened next. The goblins had knocked him flat, expecting that to be the end of it. It was not the end of it. On his back, Max had both hands free and no particular reason to get up before he was ready. The nearest goblin caught a fist in the chest, cracking ribs, and the limp body signalled it wasn't going to get up after that hit. The second took the other fist across the jaw with enough force that it sat down involuntarily and stayed there dazed. The third goblin hesitated.

This was a mistake. Max had noticed it hesitating, in the slow, careful way that his new intelligence made it obvious. He was already commando crawling toward it. The goblin's assessment of the situation changed immediately and dramatically. The bite was not elegant. Just a chomp on the foot, but the zombie toxin went to work and started to kill it. Max pushed himself upright. He found the sword in the grass where it had landed. One goblin was down. A second one was dying from a bite.

A third watched from a few steps away and seemed to be having second thoughts. The fourth had made it to Fenwick's side of the encounter. The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation. The fourth goblin had watched all of this happen and stood in stunned silence a few steps away, apparently reassessing its life choices. The second, still dazed, weakly looked up at Fenwick as Max turned his back to it. The white paw came up.

[Spell Cast] ──────────────────────────── Grayson's Sparkly Hands. Pink smoke. Glitter. Tiny crackling lightning. The fourth goblin abandoned whatever remained of its courage with a squeal and started looking for places to run. [NOTIFICATION] ──────────────────────────── +50 XP +50 XP +50 XP Three down. One was still reconsidering at a distance.

"Max, get it," said Fenwick. The zombie's gaze zeroed in on the last opponent. Max stalked toward it, eliciting soft cries, as the poor cornered goblin's eyes seemed to grow as the monster approached. The sword came up. This time, Max was striking with the edge. The goblin's reconsideration period ended. [NOTIFICATION] ──────────────────────────── +50 XP Current XP: 287 / 5000 The second encounter came an hour later, inside the cave hunting ground that was the advanced trail.

Five goblins this time, and they had clearly either witnessed the first encounter or received some form of communication about it, because they came in higher, targeting the shoulder that held Fenwick specifically, with the tactical intelligence of creatures who had identified the small fragrant thing on the large grey thing's shoulder as a meaningful variable. Fenwick had a level three fire spell ready before they finished fanning out.

Max had the sword up, edge correct this time, and when the first goblin reached him, the swing wasn't fancy, but it was functional and fast enough: the goblin's head went one way, and the body another. He swung twice more. Slicing into goblin flesh both times and bringing down one more foe. The goblins were faster than anything on the intermediate path. Smarter. More willing to disengage and regroup. Three of them tried. Fenwick's spell caught two. The third made it down the tunnel. He did not pursue.

"Max," said Sindy. The head turned toward her voice.

"Good." [NOTIFICATION] ──────────────────────────── +50 XP x4 FENWICK ASSIST x2 Current XP: 487 / 5000 The cave branched three ways ahead. Torches mounted in the wall at each entrance threw uneven light down tunnels that went deeper than Fenwick could see. The sounds coming from at least two of them suggested that occupants were present. Fenwick looked at it.

He looked at Max, sword held at an angle that was approximately correct and improving, covered in things Fenwick was not going to examine, one bare foot in the cave dirt. He looked at his own spell slots. He counted what was left.

"Tomorrow," said Fenwick. Max looked down the center tunnel for a long moment, long enough that Fenwick wondered if he was going to argue about it. Then he turned and walked back the way they had come. They were halfway home when Fenwick saw it. A boulder at the path's edge, covered in moss and casting dark shadows. Nothing remarkable about it. Except that behind it, in the space between the boulder and a thick stand of oak, something small was crouched.

Fenwick registered it, likely due to the weeks of hunting and heightened alertness he had developed, not a conscious observation but a flicker, peripheral, there and gone. Something small. Something that moved. A paw, maybe, working something back and forth with practiced ease. A glint of metal in the afternoon light. Fenwick kept his eyes forward. He didn't draw attention to it. He didn't know what it meant yet.

He had learned, in fifty-three days of moving through territory where things watched from undergrowth and made decisions based on what they saw, that acknowledging something was sometimes worse than not acknowledging it. He ran through what he had seen. Small. Low to the ground. The glint had been brief but specific. Not a Guild creature. The Guild's workers didn't crouch behind boulders, watching people leave. Not a threat, or it would have moved differently. Something else.

Max walked on, sword dragging slightly, bare foot in the path dust, entirely unconcerned. Fenwick looked at the boulder one more time as they rounded the bend. He filed it. [SYSTEM PRIVATE LOG] ──────────────────────────── [Entry 53] Day 53 in the fantasy realm. First day on the advanced path. He still bit a goblin. The sword edge was correct by the fourth attacker. He commando crawled toward a goblin. On the ground, he is terrifying.