11 – A Welcome Surprise

Madi followed Andy up the slope, her boots sliding in the mud, her thighs screaming at her to rest. Her shield, small as it was compared to Omar’s, felt like it weighed a hundred pounds, and her right hand ached as she gripped her spear. Her knuckles were cut and bleeding, and she was sure something was wrong with her wrist. Andy, meanwhile, moved like he was out for a morning stroll, gliding up the slope as though it was a flat walking trail. She couldn’t slow down or ask for a break. How could she feel sorry for herself after what had happened to Bree?

Her breath hitched in her throat at the thought, images of Bree’s too-white face and her torn throat flashing through her mind. Omar had tried to cover her quickly, but Madi knew the horrific image was burned into her memory. She’d see it when she tried to sleep, but she hoped it would fade. The things that had happened during the Fall had faded, hadn’t they? She’d stopped expecting her parents to find her, and the things the men from Construction City did seemed more like a bad dream than memories…

“Madi?” Andy asked, grabbing her armored jacket and tugging her up the last, steepest part of the hill. As she found her balance on the damp pavement, he studied her face searchingly. “You good? I should have asked if you were hurt. I mean, other than—”

She shook her head. “I’m okay, Andy.”

He nodded. “I’m pretty sure the goblins are all dead or long gone, but stay close anyway, yeah?”

“Yeah.” Madi pressed her lips together firmly, trying to look resolved as she nodded back to him. She wasn’t too worried about a goblin—not with Andy there. Even so, she shuddered as she pictured the huge, black, red-eyed, twisted creatures that had attacked her and Omar in the sudden rainstorm. As the memory flashed through her mind, her skull throbbed, and the bent rim of her helmet seemed to press into her sore forehead more acutely. She didn’t want to fight any more that night if she could help it.

Andy’s eyes glowed faintly in the dark as he scanned left and right, and Madi frowned, self-conscious about how little help she was. The road wasdark, and only the reflection of the stars on the wet pavement and stalled-out cars provided any light—

She took a sharp breath as the flicker of something white caught her eye. “Something’s there!”

Andy whirled, following her gaze. “It’s Cheechee! I think he’s moving.” He leaped into action—literally—launching himself over a dead two-door sports car, and Madi followed as quickly as she could, running around the rear bumper. When she came around, sure enough, Cheechee was there, his wings flopping listlessly, making pitiful cooing noises—a crude goblin arrow had pierced his left wing.

“He’s not dead!” she said, something warm taking root in her heart.

“Yeah,” Andy said, frowning. “But that arrow…”

“It’s not that bad! If I can get him to let me, I could…” Madi let her words trail off as she knelt beside the big bird. “Come on, Cheechee. It’s okay, little guy.” Tentatively, she reached out to the bird, watching as his big eyes watchedher.Something in her desperately wanted to help him, and deep inside, she knew she was trying to do it for Bree—to compensate somehow for still being alive when she’d died so horribly.

She glanced at Andy nervously, but he just nodded, encouraging. She licked her lips and made reassuring sounds like people do when they talk to scared animals: “Hush, you’re okay, shh, I got you.” As the owl allowed her to gently stroke the back of his head, smoothing his feathers down, she looked up at Andy. “I’ll hold him and keep him calm. You break the arrow so I can pull it out.”

“Okay.” Andy leaned close, and Madi used her other hand to press against Cheechee’s uninjured wing, cooing softly to him as she stroked it, trying to encourage him to fold it up. After a few seconds of her gentle touch, the owl tucked his beak down and seemed to relax—only his wounded wing still held out stiffly.

“Now, Andy.”

One thing about Andy: he wasfast. She felt him move and heard the arrow snap, but she wasn’t sure she would have seen the movement if she’d been looking. She wasn’t, though; she was staring into Cheechee’s big, golden eyes, and, inexplicably, she felt tears pooling in hers. Sniffing, mumbling incoherently, she said, “I’m gonna take that arrow out now, Cheechee. Be brave for me, okay?”

To her amazement, the owl seemed to nod, staring into her eyes. Hesitantly at first, then with deliberate, smooth motions, Madi grasped the arrow and, giving it a gentle twist, tugged it out. Only an inch or so remained sticking through his flesh after Andy had snapped the arrowhead off, so it came out quickly.

Madi tossed the twisted, soot-stained goblin arrow to the side. Then, still cooing softly and stroking the owl’s feathers, she reached her free hand up under her armored coat, into the pocket of the hoodie she wore underneath it. She grasped hold of her little tin of healing ointment and held it out to Andy. “Take the top off, please.”

He grasped the tin, removed the top, and held the contents out to her. Madi scooped some of her healing ointment out and liberally smeared it around the bloody wound in Cheechee’s wing. She wasn’t worried about him reacting poorly; she knew the stuff feltgoodon a wound—no sting whatsoever. Cheechee made a softhoot, then gingerly folded his injured wing to his side, leaning his head into Madi’s hands as she stroked his feathers. More tears sprang into her eyes.

Andy squatted beside her, putting a hand on her shoulder. “Nice, Madi! He definitely likes you!”

***Congratulations, Madi! You’ve healed this creature’s injury and gained its trust. This owl is a bonded companion, but his bond-mate has perished. As a result, he will gradually lose his accumulated experience and revert to a wild state. To prevent that, he is attempting to bond with you. Do you accept the bond?***

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Madi had barely finished reading the System’s message before she nodded and immediately said, “Yes, I do!”

“You do?” Andy looked at her confused, but Madi couldn’t respond; the System was sending more information into her eyes and, more to the point, a great rush of mana was tingling through her skull and up and down her spine.

***Congratulations! You’ve earned the Bonded Companion innate skill!

Bonded Companion –Innate: You have an unusually strong connection to a companion creature. At this basic level, you can sense your companion’s emotions, and it can sense yours. Training is effortless as your companionwantsto cooperate with you. The stronger your bond, the more you’ll share with your companion. At high skill levels, you’ll even be able to share your bonded companion’s senses.***

***Madi, as a result of your new innate ability, Bonded Companion, and your intention to nurture a natural creature, native to your environment, combined with your Herbalist and Gatherer class levels, you have opened a new class morph: Druid. Would you like to accept this morph?***

If Madi had paused to think about it, she might have put off the decision until later, but she was in the moment, flushed with the excitement of her rescue of Cheechee and subsequent bond. It was like a wave of relief and hope was doing battle with the gloom she’d just been burdened with, and she wanted to keep the momentum going. “Yes!” she said, and then dizziness struck her, and she fell back as the world seemed to tilt. “Oh!” she muttered, realizing that she was about to go through a class change, but unable to halt or pause the process. Darkness encroached, and she managed to utter one more word: “Sorry…”

###

As Madi fell back, Andy hastily stretched out a hand to catch her head and keep it from bumping against the pavement. The owl hooted softly and hopped close to her, pushing into the crook of her arm, its feathers rustling against her armor. Madi didn’tseemill or injured, and the way she’d whispered, “Sorry,” told Andy that she might have done something with the System, so he didn’t feel too concerned—not yet.

He summoned a blanket from his storage ring and tucked it under her head. Then he stood, grasping his spear, to look around. Having found the owl, his only remaining objective in the goblin camp was to get the map from the Boss’s corpse. He felt antsy about it, like there was some kind of invisible countdown, but there was no way he’d leave Madi lying helpless. “Just relax,” he muttered. There wasn’t any sort of timer. The only real risk was some kind of scavenger or maybe a returning goblin getting to the body before he did.

The thought didn’t comfort him. What if therewerean ambitious goblin out there, lurking and watching, waiting to claim what it could from the dead Boss? Growling, Andy sent his spear into his storage ring, then bent to scoop Madi up, one arm under her knees, the other behind her back. Cheechee hooted again, an almost inquisitive sound as he hopped back, looking up at Andy.

Andy smiled. The owl still being alive had been a welcome surprise; it shone just a little light through the gloom cast by Bree’s death. “Can you fly yet? That salve is pretty good and the—” His words died on his tongue as the owl flapped his wings and launched himself into the night sky, swooping and gliding in a wide circle around Andy and Madi. “Okay, good. You watch over us!”

With that, he adjusted Madi’s weight in his arms and started trudging further up the road, past quite a few goblin corpses, their dead cook fires, and then to the ruins of the Boss’s encampment. He was going to walk right past the dead hobs and their smoldering ritual fire, but then he saw one of their big skin-covered drums, and the workmanship caught his eye. It didn’t look like something the goblins would have made.

He stepped closer, nodding to himself as he noted the polished wooden sides and the smooth, taught, well-tanned hide. He couldn’t examine closer at the moment, not while carrying Madi, so he squatted beside it, touched it with his outstretched fingers, and sent it into his storage ring. Surely,someoneback at the settlement would want a closer look at it. That done, he stood and followed the charred path of destruction down off the road to where he’d done battle with the Goblin Boss.

As he approached the dark, burned corpse, a dozen large black birds took flight, cawing and warbling in irritation as they flew low to the ground, up the hillside, to an ancient mesquite where they perched on a broad, leafless limb, watching him. Andy stared back at them, eyes narrowed. They were too big for the area, though not monstrously so. As far as thingschangingafter the apocalypse, some overlarge corvids weren’t anywhere near the most troubling.

With a shrug, he looked for a relatively bare space on the ground, one devoid of blood-spatter or char, and laid Madi down, repositioning the blanket behind her head. Then, he walked over to the corpulent corpse of the Goblin Boss and poked around in his singed furs, hoping against hope that the parchment the emissary had given him had survived everything the battle had put him through.

To his relief, he found a leather satchel tucked up under the goblin’s furs, hanging from a strap that looped over his left shoulder. It was, like most of the hide and leather Andy had seen in the goblin camp, poorly cured and moist with the creature’s sweat, but when he gingerly opened the top, he found what he’d been hoping for: a rolled and folded piece of thick paper. He pulled it out, peered into the satchel to ensure there weren’t any other surprising finds, and then hurried back to Madi’s side.

Before he examined the paper, he knelt beside her and gently put his fingers on her neck, feeling her pulse and checking the temperature of her skin. Her heart was beating steadily and strongly, and she didn’t seem feverish, so he left her be for the moment and unfolded the paper. Just as he’d suspected from his earlier spying, it was clearly a map.

Andy drew his finger along it, searching for landmarks, and when he found a line of roughly drawn mountain peaks and a small X with a goblinoid’s squished up face, he knew it represented the goblin camp where he now sat. A dotted line led away from the mountains, toward an area with rectangular depictions of buildings, then it split—one line heading in a direction that had to be east based on the mountains’ position and another leading into the city. Andy traced the line east, and his heart rate picked up when he realized where it was leading: a flat-topped mountain in the middle of the desert.

Scowling, he traced the other dotted line into the city where it stopped at a large square depiction of a building. Both it and the mesa had skulls depicted beside them. Andy was no expert in goblinoid hieroglyphics, but he didn’t think a skull meant something good.

***Congratulations! You’ve made progress on your quest: The Mind Behind the Horde. You’ve discovered the goblins’ war plans and their deadly implications for your settlement. You should find the strange Emissary to discover the origin of this attack plan. Alternatively, you could explore the other destination denoted on the map—more clues might await you there.***

“Mmph, Andy?” Madi yawned and pushed herself into a seated position. “How long was I out? You advanced our quest?”

Andy nodded absently, still thinking about the message as he returned his gaze to the map.

“I have some news.” Madi poked his shoulder, prompting him to look at her. “I got a new class, and it came with a quest. I have to summon my heartseed and ‘give it root’—I’m supposed to do it in mygrove.”

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by lotustale.com