BrightMoon: Path of a Witch King

Chapter 11

The next two days I focused on clearing the trees and turning them into firewood. I expanded the basement under the house to include a few storage spaces. The sprites loved helping around the house and took the split wood one at a time as cut them, the girls also were a great help. They had suggestions for the storage areas like shelving or alcoves to make it easier to store or grab things.

I was hardly perfect and with everyone's help and suggestions the cave was becoming more of a home each day, I also found out from the girls that we needed a soap from town to wash our clothes.

I hadn't really thought about that but now that they mentioned it I smelled my clothes, to me I only caught the smell of dust and earth,  and after a bath I smelled myself to find that I didn't smell much like the soap we had bought. 

Heck I didn't smell much like anything, I assumed it had something to do with being an earth spirit. I did have to wonder if the other spirits smelled like anything either, still wearing dirty clothes was a no for me, luckily we had enough clothes to make it another three days before a trip into town was necessary.

I postponed my plans for building rooms inside and focused on building a tall stone fence, it was up to my chin so I could peek over it easily, I made a walkway at my shoulders for the sprites to patrol on.

I did go out hunting for large beasts every day and by the fifth day I had five large pelts and plenty of meat in the storeroom, the pelts I would take to town and have them worked on for more bedding.

I had decided to go back out into the woods to get another kill to take into town, I jogged slowly through the trees with my club hung over my shoulder, I had gone a bit deeper into the woods then I usually did. I wanted to see if I could find anything else other than deer out here, I had found tracks of cats and wolves but I hadn't seen any other predators since my run in with the bears.

“Master, there are people ahead!” a sprite called from ahead of me. I had twenty five sprites out here with me acting as scouts. 

“Show me.” I said and followed the tiny sprite. A few minutes of sprinting the forest thinned a bit, I heard shouting and I slowed down, my sprites gathered around me in the bushes.

I peaked around a tree to take a look at the loud voice, “Garrett we should pull back before anymore wild goblins come running.” a feminine voice called, from my vantage point I saw a group of four people fighting a pack of short green bipedal creatures.

They certainly looked like a classic goblin from what I could tell, the group was doing quite well, several goblins lay on the ground in various states of death. The group of humans had three melee fighters and an archer, they worked well together, the archer covered the sides while the three melees  held the line.

Though none of them realized I was here, though with my current position I could see a group of goblins running through the trees and were about to flank the archer. 

I didn't have any reason to help, though I didn't see a reason in letting them get injured or killed either. “Stay hidden, but be prepared to fight if I call for you.”

“Yes master.” my little sprites chittered back.

I took a moment to recraft my club into two smaller one hand versions, they were only three feet long each but the large studs along each side would do plenty of damage.

I slid them into my belt and marched towards the group of humans, as I walked I prepared a few earth arrows, the goblins broke from cover and charged at the archer. 

The archer heard the goblins and turned to face them, “We are being flanked!” he called out to his companions. There were more than a dozen goblins rushing the archer and he started firing at will, I released my stone arrows and kept walking towards them.

Three arrows left the bow, but by then the group of goblins were just a few feet away. Three goblins goblins dropped from the archer while my stone arrows impacted six more, the goblins I hit launched away from the group causing the remaining goblins to stop and look for the hidden threat.

The archer didn't hesitate to launch another round of arrows, I followed up with a few more stone arrows and walked towards the archer, my stone arrows turned most of the remaining goblins into moaning sacks of meat. The archer put an arrow in the last goblin who had turned and tried to run away before turning to look at me.

“Thanks friend, I don't think we would have made it if you hadn't shown up.” the archer turned towards his friends and started taking shots of opportunity.

“No problem. I was passing by when I heard shouting, saw you were about to get hit from the back and thought I would lend a hand.” I said back. I kept an eye on the surroundings while their team cleaned up the straggling goblins.

By the time it was all over there were roughly fifty goblins lying on the ground, the other three humans walked over, two of them were in leather armor like the archer. The third one was in a mix of iron and leather, by far the third one looked the most impressive, they were shorter by comparison but were fully kitted out with various weapons and I couldn't tell if they male or female.

The other two walked up, the one in the middle looked like a young man with some stubble, he had a long sword and a mid sized shield that wasn't too cumbersome.

The female on the right had a spear just a bit longer than she was tall, she was at least six feet tall and had quite the muscular build. 

“Who is the stranger Doma?” the female asked the archer. Which meant the sword wielding man was probably Garrett.

“I don't know him Lillette, but he saved my butt for sure.” the archer pointed at the dozen bodies behind us.

Lillette raised an eyebrow while Garrett whistled at the bodies, the mysterious warrior just gave a curt nod, which I took as approval. 

“Good afternoon. You can call me BrightMoon, I am the witch who moved to town a few weeks ago. Sorry to intrude on your hunting but I heard shouting and wanted to make sure nothing was amiss.” I introduced myself.

“So you are a girl?” Garrett the swordsman stated more than asked.

“Not at all.” I replied.

The mood quickly turned to one of confusion, “Aren't witches all girls?” Doma the archer asked.

I shook my head, “No, though that is a stereotype that is hard to get away from. Witchcraft does not discriminate between men or women, it is a path like any other, if I learned from a wizard or from a spirit cultivator then I would call myself such. But I study witchcraft thus I am a witch, a swordsman is not just a warrior, they are a warrior who studies the way of the sword. It is both a way of life and study of choice.” I explained though there was a bit of confusion on Garretts face and as expected he asked his question.

“I thought male witches were supposed to be called warlocks.” he said and he was close to the truth but not quite there.

“You are not too far off from the truth with that one, a warlock is a witch in a sense, warlocks are both men and women too. The deciding factor of a warlock versus witches is how they increase their power, witches slowly accumulate their own power while warlocks target witches and absorb the power they have collected for themselves.” I was surprised by how much of this knowledge I could recite, I had learned quite a bit in the past week but I guess the grimoire had a boosted effect when it came to my studying.

A collective “Oh.” came from the group before Lillette chimed in, “Guess it was good you are a witch and not a warlock then?” 

I shrugged, “A warlock might have many reasons for being what they are, they could be bad or good, there isn't any real way to know unless you know one.”

“Well I wasn't expecting to get a course on witches but it wasn't the worst lesson I learned, for free no less, alright let's get to looting the bodies.” Lillette said before turning around and heading to their kills.

I followed Doma to the kills near us, I watched him search the body of a goblin with an arrow in it. He found a small purse which he checked the contents there were shiny rocks which he dumped onto the ground. He checked the body again and found a necklace wrapped, it was a simple leather with a horn on it, it was a horned rabbit's horn but it was dyed a yellow green.

“Doma, is that the emblem I am supposed to take from these guys?” I asked, I had never hunted a monster before so I didn't have a clue.

Looking up from the goblin he waved me over, “Yeah, most goblin hordes find a local species like the horned rabbits and take a tooth, claw, horn, or bone and paint it with their blood to be used as an emblem of a warrior. You can turn them at the Hunters Union in town or city and cash in the bounty, each goblin is worth a silver disk. 

Hobgoblins are worth a silver cube each, while I heard bugbears are worth a gold disk each. Though hobgoblins aren't hard to find they are crafty, bugbears are rare though, and are comparable to trolls so best not to think about running into them this close to town.” Doma explained and showed me the emblem.

“Thanks Doma, I don't know anything about hunting monsters, just a few beasts now and then for food.” I thanked the man for the valuable information.

“Dont worry about it, besides you saved my butt and gave me some new information about the magical beings out there. Not a lot is known about witches, wizards, and other such peoples.” Doma went back to his looting which I took as an opportunity to start my own looting.

I kneeled next to the small goblins body, making sure it was one of my kills first, I searched the body and found a poorly made iron dagger, a leather money pouch, and the emblem necklace.

I left the dagger and placed the emblem into my bag. I checked the money pouch last as I had little expectation about the “shiney rocks” that were supposedly inside.

I emptied the contents of the pouch into my hands to find some black shiny shards in my hand, they were almost like glass, but I recognized the mineral right away. Obsidian. Even back on earth obsidian was quite well liked and even used as arrowheads in the past.

“Hey Doma!” I called over to him.

“Yeah what's wrong?” he reached for the dagger on his belt.

“No, nothing is wrong. I was just going to ask if all the goblins use these shiny black rocks as currency.”

“I think so, as long as I have been hunting them it's been like that, even the hunters who give us new hunters advice say that the shiny black rocks are worthless so just dump them and leave them.”

I looked down at the obsidian chunks, with a little push of my mana they lifted off my palm for a moment before rotating and returning to my hand. I smiled to myself as I had the thought of having some of the coolest weapons made from pure obsidian.  On earth it was nearly impossible to have an obsidian weapon or blade, as the material was too brittle to forge or shape, but for me I could reshape them with a bit of spirit magic. “Time to make some arrowheads.” I said while smiling at the irony.