Necrodruid Read online

  NECRODRUID

  Adam Witcher

  Copyright © 2019 by Adam Witcher

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Endnotes

  Chapter One

  I don’t think any of us thought much of it when the tower went up. It was so far away that, at first, we spoke of how huge it must be for us to be able to see it from here. It was a great many miles from Fellrock, our town, beyond the Farro river and the many forests and grasslands that make up the outer lands of Iggoroth. We saw no other changes for some time. Then, whispers began to come to us on the wind. Travelers telling of strange things happening in the north. Some kind of dark power eroding the inner lands. But what could we do? Fellrock is a village of only a few hundred people, and we are all farmers. There comes a time, however, when people need to stand up for themselves, no matter who they are. I tried to express to my fellow townsfolk that we should be prepared for when the darkness comes our way, that we should learn to defend ourselves, but it was far easier to do nothing. And then it was too late.

  The attack came in early autumn, and I’d spent the morning firing my arrows into a hay bale target, then enjoying a late morning tryst with Cynthia, the scintillating milkmaid from a nearby farm. In the afternoon, I was out in the fields preparing the Dunderflax plants for harvest. There came a scream from a few hundred yards away, and at first, I assumed it was the neighbor’s kids playing onion ball. But I heard it again. This time, it carried an element of animal terror that I couldn’t mistake for anything but a cry of danger. I ran to the edge of the field, and when the tall plants no longer obstructed my view, I was met with a terrible scene.

  The fires had only overtaken a few of the houses, but it was clear that the worst of the damage was coming. Our houses are built close together, and the flames were growing by the moment. When I saw a small red leg disappear behind my neighbor’s plants, I ran for my own home. My heart pounded in my chest as I ran up the steps of my back porch and flung open the door.

  “Grandma!” I cried out, scanning the living room in a panic. “Grandpa!”

  “Rahm, come back here!” My grandmother’s voice came from the back bedroom.

  She and my grandfather were huddled on their bed, hand-in-hand.

  “What’s going on? I thought I saw...”

  “Goblins.” My grandfather cut me off with a fierce yet trembling voice. “Lots of them.”

  I stood, frozen in disbelief. We had seen goblins in our town before, but they were never more than a harmless nuisance. They occasionally wandered down from the north, looking for food or booze. Sometimes they wanted to sell us useless junk. They were never violent, though.

  “Are they starting the fires?” I asked them. “Why?”

  “We don’t know anything yet. We were just trying to figure out what to do.”

  “Well we can’t just hide here. We have to get out there and save our town!” My confidence faltered when I saw the fear in my grandmother’s eyes.

  “We need to stay here and defend our farm.” My grandpa stood up and opened the oak chest at the end of his bed. He pulled out a crossbow and ran his fingers across it. Dust came off in a thick bundle. “I haven’t shot these in a while, but I’ll manage. Your grandma can barricade the house while I fend them off.”

  I ran over to the window and looked out. The fires were getting larger, but they were still several blocks away.

  “I won’t just stay here and wait.” I leaned against the bedroom wall to think for a moment. It would be agony to leave my grandparents here alone. They were quite healthy for their age, but who knew what these goblins’ intentions were? It would kill me if anything happened to them. Yet I was one of the best fighters in town. One of the best shots with a bow, anyway. It would also kill me to know something terrible happened to Fellrock when I could have helped stop it.

  “I have to go,” I said.

  They nodded and moved into action. I went into my own room and picked up my longbow. Luckily, I had just restrung it that morning, so it felt taut and powerful in my fingers. I pulled out the small dagger that tucked into the bottom of the bow and twirled it around in my fingers. It was nice and sharp.

  My grandparents followed me onto the porch, ready to defend their land. I nodded back to them.

  “Good luck,” my grandpa said.

  “And be careful!” my grandma added.

  I ran along the dirt path toward the billowing smoke from further in town. As I got closer to the chaos, I could feel the searing heat. My tunic was saturated with sweat. I had my bow in one hand, with the other ready to snatch an arrow at a moment’s notice.

  Soon I could hear more screams, as well as the clink of metal on metal, and I knew the attackers were in the village square. I charged through a smoky alleyway and burst out into the square.

  There were dozens of them. All of them just shorter than the average man, but thicker. I had never noticed just how strong they must be when they were harmless drifters, but I wouldn’t make that mistake again. Turned-over food carts lay blazing. Tankards of wine and mead were spilled in the dirt, glass shattered around them. The goblins tossed heavy objects around like ragdolls. Their skin seemed to be an even deeper shade of red than usual, their eyes a dark, opaque grey. Many of them carried torches too, which they used to light anything that would burn. Most of the townspeople seemed to have escaped the scene, but a few stragglers were still fighting back. I looked over to one side of the square and spotted two little girls on top of a shop awning. They were trying to stay out of reach of two goblins who were swiping daggers up at them furiously. The fiends were getting dangerously close to reaching them.

  I knelt down and pulled an arrow out of my quiver. I drew in a deep breath and took careful aim. Even in the midst of the violence, it was still a little tough to let go of the string. Who knew what was really going on here? It was not easy to end a life. But when I looked up and saw the fear on the girls’ faces, I knew what I had to do. In the instant before I let go, the goblin that I was aiming at turned to look at me. There seemed to be no recognition in his grey eyes. The creature looked insane and bewildered, like no other goblin I’d seen before.

  Then my arrow was lodged in his skull. His companion forgot about the children for a moment and considered the twitching corpse. If any understanding was coming, I cut it short with a shot to the neck.

  I released my breath, celebrating my victory for only a moment. There were so many more of them, so many faces of violent insanity. It would take too long to bring them all down.
Fellrock might fall before they did. Even so, I just had to take out a couple more. I buried an arrow near the spine of one that had collapsed into a pile of jorgenfruit. Another caught one to his chest while he was trying to rush me. Most of the others didn’t even notice my presence.

  I had to think fast, to get them away from town somehow so that the other townspeople could put out these fires. But how could I distract them? They didn’t seem to care about each other at all. In fact, they didn’t seem to care about anything.

  That’s when I noticed one of them to my right side who was crouched beside a wall. He reached into a tattered bag and pulled out a huge sack of some kind of black powder. He pulled out a heaping handful, then snorted it, flaring up his wide nostrils. A couple of the other goblins looked over at him and started approaching. I watched as the goblin started breathing heavily and grunting loudly. His eyes went cloudy, and he began leaping up and down. The bag fell to the ground, and two or three of the others scrambled for it.

  In their frenzy, I was able to rush them and take them by surprise. I started by putting an arrow through the main one who was raging. His macho man act got cut short quickly. The other three huddled around the sack of black powder each tugging at it while trying to dip their hands into it. When I was close behind, I whipped out my dagger, cutting their necks before they began to feel the effects of another dose of whatever that stuff was.

  It seemed that the commotion I’d created was enough to get the attention of the other goblins. They had all either stopped their pillaging and were watching or had begun to run toward me. Soon they all began to charge. I jumped forward, picked up the bag, and stuffed as much of the substance back into it as I could before running toward the edge of town.

  I looked back after a moment to see that my plan was working. All the goblins had followed me. I tried to think of where to take them. To the north was the river, but they could attack me when I tried to cross. To the west and east were open plains, where I could be perhaps swarmed in open combat. That just left the forests to the south. I turned to check and see if any of them still carried torches. A forest fire could do nearly as much damage as one in the town. Luckily, it seemed they were left behind in the fray. I charged into the tree line as fast as I could. These were the woods where I’d been training with my bow and dagger for a long time now. I knew them like the back of my hand.

  Once I was in the forest, I waited until they were nearby. As they reached the tree line, I threw sticks in a few different directions. I correctly suspected that they weren’t paying much attention to each other, so they split up toward the various sounds.

  It was perfect. I crouched silently to sneak around, using my knowledge of the area to out-maneuver them. I took the first two down quickly. One of them picked up the stick I’d thrown and they both looked at it blankly for a moment. While they were gawking, I leaped up behind the first and stabbed him through the neck. The other began to call out to his fellow goblins when I silenced his cry with my dagger.

  A few of the others must have heard that cry, because I heard movement and grunting moving toward me. I looked to my side and saw an easily climbable tree. I dashed up it and strung an arrow into my bow. From up here, it was like shooting squidlings in a barrel. Many of them noticed me, but most didn’t make it much further than that. I took down three more in about fifteen seconds. When I reached for another arrow, though, I started to realize that I was getting low. I had killed a great deal of them, but there were many more coming. I was going to run out of ammunition soon. Still, I did what I could, bringing down a few more with carefully aimed shots.

  A few of the goblins stopped their approach for a moment and started conversing among themselves. At first I tried to listen, but of course I couldn’t understand a word of their language. Still, their throats made strange squishing sounds that I’d always found intriguing.

  Their conversation ended, and most of the attackers stopped for a moment. It seemed they were getting weary of being picked off by my bow. The one who had first stopped opened his ruddy sack and pulled out another torch.

  Oh, no you don’t, I thought to myself. I reached back and pulled out another arrow. By the time I had it loaded, he was already striking rocks together to get the fire going. Just as a spark began to grow, I let loose an arrow that left him bleeding in the dirt. Another stepped in to take his place. When I reached back for another arrow, though, I realized I was out. I pulled out my dagger and began to descend the tree, but by the time I got close enough, it was too late. The tree before him lit up into a blaze. The dry season had left the trees vulnerable.

  “No!” I cried out while the goblins cackled to themselves. A couple of them hungrily eyed the sack that was tied to my waist, but I paid them no attention. All I could think about was what would happen if this forest burned. There was so much fruit we foraged from it and so much lumber that we depended on. And the fire could easily spread to the town again. This was bad. I had no means to stop the blaze, but I could at least take a few more of these goons out. I attacked a nearby one with my dagger, but he put up a better fight than many of his counterparts. He seemed excited by the substance I still carried. His desire increased his strength., but I was still faster. I ended him with a stab to the gut.

  With the forest burning more by the moment and many goblins still in sight, I didn’t know what to do next. Stopping either problem seemed like a fruitless endeavor. As I looked around for a solution, I was caught off guard by a glow that brightly lit the shadowy gloom of the forest. At first, I couldn’t see her shape. There was only a white amorphous form at the source of the light. But as the silhouette materialized before me, I was met with such an eye-dropping sight that I nearly forgot all about the goblins and even the forest itself.

  She was unlike any woman I’d ever seen, yet perhaps the most beautiful. First, I saw her chestnut hair cascading down over her pale face. Her eyes were piercing blue. I was even more in awe when I could see her full lips tensed in concentration. Her clothes, if you could call them that, were flowing green veils that could barely conceal the roundness of her perky breasts and voluptuous ass. Her curves were so perfectly elegant that each time she moved, all of them seemed to rearrange into ways even more pleasing to the eyes than the ones before. Then I noticed that she had a long wooden staff that twisted upward into a green orb, the source of the illumination.

  Even the goblins were dumbstruck. The woman walking out of the forest toward us held all our rapturous attention. She raised her hands, and a powerful wind swept through the forest. Wind tunnels carried leaves with them as they surrounded the fires and sucked the life from them.

  “You!” Her velvety voice boomed and echoed off the trees as she pointed to the goblins. “How dare you sap the life from this land. You perverse and disgusting beings will not harm this, nor any other, forest again!”

  She held her scepter upward, and a yellow and green smoke swirled around it. It moved faster and faster around the orb until streams of it shot out and plunged into spots on the earth all around us.

  The ground trembled. Between my feet, the earth churned. I leapt back when the soil sprung upward and sprayed into the trees. Grubby claws emerged. I looked around and saw that it wasn’t just in the spot before me. All around us, skeletal little arms and paws crawled and pulled grotesque bodies from the ground.

  At first, I couldn’t recognize the beasts. Flesh still clung to bits of dirty bone, but the shapes of their heads and little tufts of remaining fur gave some of them away. Some were rabbits, others rats or squirrels. All of them emitted shrill shrieks.

  “Risen beasts of the forests, cleanse the decimators!” The woman cried out to the undead beasts. Their shrieks grew louder.

  For a moment I thought that I would die there, that I was destined to be sacrificed to this strange goddess. But the creatures rushed past me, their bloody bones and matted fur rubbing against my ankles.

  The goblins didn’t stand a chance. The forest creatures swarmed t
hem, tearing flesh from flesh through gurgling cries. They fell quickly, a dozen in just a few moments. They grunted and writhed in agony. Some of them stumbled into trees, their wounds oozing blood. The massacre was brief and thorough.

  Once they had all fallen, the creatures began to slow their frantic paces. The forest woman raised her staff again.

  “Be again at peace.” Her words were loud but soothing.

  The creatures were nearing a calm. Their cries were over. They began to circle the earth for a moment, and then they buried themselves beneath it. Soon it was just me and the forest goddess.

  “Who, who are you?” I asked her slowly.

  “I am Izmira, nymph of this forest, its spiritual keeper.” Her once booming voice was now gentle, almost sultry. “And tell me, what is your name?”

  “I’m Rahm. I come from the town of Fellrock, just over there.” I gestured toward our town. There were no clouds of smoke visible through the trees.

  “You’re a farmer, aren’t you?” She said. She looked up and down at me and bit her lip lightly. I noticed that my tunic had been partially torn apart by the battle and the tree limbs. Most of the muscles of my torso were exposed. Her fingers grazed her bottom lip as she raised her eyes to meet mine. “I’ve seen you working the fields.”

  “Yes, I am. And things were going pretty well until these damn things showed up.” I kicked at one of the fallen goblin’s legs. “I don’t know why they were acting like that. Bastards. They almost destroyed our town.”

  “If you are just a farmer, how did you learn to fight like that?” Her eyes again roamed my chest.

  “I’ve been training pretty hard.” I handled my bow for a moment. “Something is going on with that tower. I just know it. I thought we had more time, but I guess not.”

  “You fought well.” She bowed low, giving me a full view of her sumptuous cleavage. “From the bottom of my heart, I want to thank you for defending my forest.”

  “Oh, uh, my pleasure.” I said. “Your pals did a lot of the work. What were those things, anyway? They were incredible.”