“Leader Erzili says that humans are the most dangerous race among all the Alamirians. They’ve got something called sah – say – seiko –”
“Sacrosanct Weapons.” Wunder completed.
“That’s what I said.”
“That is what Erzili says,” Wunder turned to me. “Have you seen them? Supposedly, these weapons are tubes that shoot sacred light faster than one can blink, and a single human wielding them can eliminate a small army of weaker nightmares on their lonesome.”
I remembered the carnage from that failed attempt at an invasion. How goblins, harpies and lamias fell left and right to a barrage of laser beams, the never-ending fire of shots which peppered them all into oblivion. I remembered how the concentrated fire latched onto Zlosta once she was the only one left standing, how her skin melted over and regrew from the infinite, endless assault.
“…I have.”
That was what I would have to face up against if I wanted to infiltrate Alhamis. At the very least, I knew that the lasers could be reflected with mirrors, but that did not comfort me. If the Alhamisians had laser guns, soldiers and infantry, I had to assume that they had artillery, cavalry, and perhaps even aircraft and aerial superiority. I would be going up against an actual military force, only, a military force with ridiculous magical shenanigans that I had no method of anticipating or countering because I was unaware of what they were.
Then, there was their General… Hoplite.
“Your leader, Erzili, seems to know a lot of things.”
The only way a nightmare could know about the Sacrosanct Weapons was if they had faced them – and survived.
“Interested?” Wunder asked, amused. “I must warn you – Erzili bites.”
“Bites?”
“Bites,” Arol added.
I did not have a response to that. Instead, I focused on the scenery of the forest around us. The thick foliage of trees had reduced considerably, become sparser and morphing slightly from forest to plains. I could see clearly in the dark without much difficulty, a trait which both Arol and Wunder seemed to share as they navigated the night darkness without much of an issue. My mind was filled with questions I wanted to ask but was not sure how exactly I would go about asking them.
“So, what are we hunting for exactly?”
“Kobolds,” they said as one, with two different tones. Arol groaned whereas Wunder was resigned.
“Are they common around these parts?”
Arol snorted and Wunder chuckled. “You could say that.”
“They’re annoying!” Arol grumbled. “They just keep rushing in from the lagoon, dozens upon dozens of them, not even caring how many die to that pervy geezer Giggles just so they can try and kill us.”
“Why would the –”
[Sixth Sense – Danger Detected!]
There was a blur of action faster than I could react. A single quill, firing at a rate that was absurd from Wunder’s hand slamming into what seemed to be a random tree in the forest. There was something off about the quill. Something that let it shimmer in the darkness of the night.
The quill spun like a drill through the wooden tree, broke through the tree and struck something. The sound of flesh being torn reached my sensitive hearing. The body dropped to the ground, fur-covered and canine-headed, a quill buried in the center of its head and going all the way through to the back of its skull. It, like Wunder, was naked, covered in thick dark brown fur, possessing clawed humanoid hands and paws for feet, there was no mistaking what it was.
“Hey!” Arol said. “That was supposed to be my kill!”
“Arol, that was a Kobold.”
“I have eyes you know.”
“We’re nowhere near the lagoon. Where do you think this kobold came from?”
There was a moment of silence and I knew immediately that something serious had happened. “Is something wrong?”
“There are three main methods to enter into the Hlahan Forest. The first is the lagoon to the west. The second is approaching from the Pretender’s Forest, north. The third is through Masakh Mountain, south.” Wunder said. “East of the forest is Du Sang Castle, but the Fable Brothers have made it their Domain and going there is suicide. They couldn’t have come from there, they couldn’t have come from Pretender’s Forest, as we’d have run into them, and the lagoon is too far away. That means they came from the Mountain.”
“But…” Arol said, “That’s the memory-thief’s territory. If they came from down there then –”
“Let’s not jump to conclusions. We don’t quite know if the memory-thief has chosen to ally with the kobolds or if they just got lucky and managed to slip beneath notice.”
“It’s just one kobold right? I mean…” I stopped talking. Somehow, I could hear it now. Hear it softly. “World Map,” I whispered.
Red. Red everywhere. Tiny, consecutive dots of red. More than five dozen, moving forward through the darkness, hiding behind trees. I’d seen the red dots before, when I first experimented with opening my map, then I had not known what they were. Now, I did.
Kobolds.
A squadron of them was approaching. The red dots morphed to brown-headed wolves on the map, slowly encircling the icons of skeleton, ghost and porcupine. Surrounded. I realized. We’re surrounded.
I was tempted to bail out using my [Duality]. So far, I had yet to deactivate it since I activated the Monster Link, and a concurrent reality existed where I was safe and unbothered, sitting in front of a campfire alone. It would be easy, to switch to that reality should things go south. Yet, were I to do that, were I to die in this reality, my experiences of meeting Arol and Wunder would be completely undone. Of course, I would remember them, but they would not remember me.
