Towering Trouble: A LitRPG Isekai, page 17
The dwarf had been a stoneshaper before she became a necromancer, and she hadn’t lost her old magic. According to Ruhildi, they weren’t actually separate magics, but two aspects of the same power, which dealt with the manipulation of solid, non-living matter. The difference was that a necromancer could also control things that still remembered they were once alive, and harness those lingering echoes to shape her spells.
It didn’t escape Saskia’s notice that this was a very convenient synergy. A necromancer who didn’t also have mastery over soil and stone would have to dig her undead minions out of the ground with a shovel.
Saskia took a moment to examine the gathering dead. Most had the short and wide stature of dwarves, but there were a few taller, leaner ones that might be elves. Ruhildi had spoken of ages long past when dwarves had lived side by side with elves. Maybe these corpses were from that time. More likely though, they’d been on opposite sides of a battle, seeing as some of the skeletons held battered swords and shields.
She wouldn’t have thought such weapons could have survived being buried for so long. Why hadn’t they rusted away? Must have been made of something impervious to rust, or enchanted or something.
While she was contemplating how implausible this situation seemed, one of the unlikely swords was being swung at her legs (which were about all the skeletal dwarf swordsman could reach). Right, thought Saskia. Critique reality later. Fight now.
She took a hurried step back, and brought her hammer smashing awkwardly onto the corpse’s shoulder. Its sword arm and several rib bones fell to the ground, and the skeleton was left with noticeable kink in its spine.
“Should get that looked at, Mr Skellington,” she taunted.
Letting out a clattering groan—a miraculous feat for a heap of bones with no windpipe—the skeleton lunged forward and grabbed her knee with its one good arm. Or as good as mouldy old bones could hope to be.
Saskia prised the tenacious little blighter off and threw it at one of its companions. Both of them fell in a heap, tangled up in each others’ ribs.
“Oh get a room,” she said, watching out of the corner of her eye as the two skeletons flopped around on the grass, their every movement only serving to get them even more entangled.
She turned to face the other deaders, who had gathered in a loose semicircle around her. Ruhildi was clearly holding them back; something she hadn’t been able to do just a few days earlier. Nor had she been able to summon so many of them.
Something hard smacked into her chest, and rolled across the ground. Saskia stared in surprise. It was a skull, thrown by one of the tangled-up pair. This was followed by an arm and a foot, which she dodged, thanks to the trails of light that appeared in the air before her, giving her a moment’s early warning. The most intact of the two skeletons had given up trying to untangle itself, and was pulling apart its companion and hurling body parts at her.
“Hey, that’s cheating!” Saskia glared up at her friend, who was smirking down at her.
A shrivelled zombie came hopping forward on one leg, swinging its other leg at her like a grotesque club.
Saskia sighed. This was gonna be a long day.
Later that morning, Saskia sat against a crumbling wall, nursing a deep gash in her leg, which was gushing copious amounts of blood with every heartbeat. After hours spent tussling with Ruhildi’s minions, one of them had gotten her with a lucky sword thrust. It must have hit an artery.
With one hand pressed against her leg to try and staunch the bleeding, Saskia fumbled for the bladder of blood-booster she kept with her for just such an occasion. Over the weeks, she’d improved her recipe, and it was now more potent than ever. She shouldn’t have to wait long…
If she were still human, she’d have bled out in a few minutes. As it was, she could already feel the flow slacken, as her hyperactive regenerative powers worked their magic.
Having sent her skeletons back into the earth, Ruhildi rushed to Saskia’s side.
“I think I’ll have to bow out of our training session for today,” muttered Saskia through clenched teeth, fighting the urge to tear at the wound with her claws. It itched like a thousand bee stings; a side effect of the accelerated healing.
Seeing the stricken look on Ruhildi’s face, Saskia reassured her, “Not your fault. I got careless. And no harm done. Well…a little harm, but nothing permanent. I heal fast, you know.”
“Aye, I can see that,” said Ruhildi, eyeing her quickly-congealing blood with horrified fascination. “I shouldn’t have sent three of my minions at you all at once though. That were beyond reckless.”
Saskia shook her head. “If anything, you should be pushing me harder. Real enemies won’t hold back. This practice may save my life someday. And yours. I can take a little short-term pain for long-term not being dead.”
“Unless, forefathers forbid, I slay you by mistake,” said Ruhildi.
Saskia laughed. “Not gonna happen. I’ve survived far worse than this. You shoulda seen what the greenhand and his pets did to me.”
Ruhildi gave a shiver and went still and silent, and Saskia immediately regretted opening her big mouth. Whatever tortures and depravities the slavemaster had inflicted upon the dwarf woman must have been far worse than anything Saskia had endured. If the innumerable scars that criss-crossed Ruhildi’s face and body weren’t evidence enough, there were the disturbing sounds she made in her sleep, and the moments like this, when her face went motionless as a corpse.
They sat wordlessly for a time, then Saskia gave a sigh and limped back to the cave, wincing as she moved her punctured leg.
Unable to do much while she waited for her leg to finish healing, Saskia decided it was time to check up on what her elves were doing.
After that brief, confusing chat with Dallim, the Neil Armstrong-quoting elf, she’d spent many an hour spying on her would-be killer, hoping she might have a repeat of that kind of encounter. Dallim had not only understood her English, but spoken it perfectly. And he said he wasn’t from Earth. She could think of only one other explanation. That young elf was an oracle.
To her great disappointment, the druid hadn’t run into him again. Nor had he met any other oracles—at least, none who could speak to her.
But she had gotten a glimpse through his eyes at the strange pool where she’d first awoken on this world. It was the same as she remembered it, but for two things. First, the strange tree in the centre of the clearing had withered noticeably since she’d seen it last. And second, the thing held in its brittle branches was no longer an old computer screen, but a leather-bound book.
She’d known that thing wasn’t really what it appeared to be the moment she touched it. This had just confirmed her suspicions. Different people saw different things when they looked upon the object. To Saskia, who had grown up looking at screens, the old monitor represented the same thing that a native of this world—or indeed, most people throughout Earth’s history—would find in a musty old book: knowledge, guidance, or perhaps just a break from reality.
The book had been written in a strange mishmash of languages; English words around the outer edges, and unfamiliar hieroglyphic symbols in the middle portion—Elvish, perhaps? It had seemed to Saskia as if the two languages were having a war across the pages, and English was winning. She had a horrible feeling this was all her fault, even though all she’d done was poke it lightly with a claw.
That thing was clearly what Ruhildi had called a worldseed, and it was what had made Saskia an oracle. It certainly didn’t look in a healthy state now. Ruhildi hadn’t said what would happen if a worldseed was damaged or destroyed. Nothing good, surely.
When she’d looked through the elf’s eyes the next day, he’d been wading through the swamp with that big friend of his, whom she’d taken to calling Groose, after the character from one of the Legend of Zelda games she’d played a lot as a teen. So running with the Zelda theme, the druid may as well be Link then. From that day on, something had changed between the two elves. Even though she couldn’t see Link’s face, she sometimes felt an anger simmering within him, directed at his companion. She’d watched them sparring, and there was a violence to their movements that had been missing earlier. Groose appeared to take it in his stride, but Link genuinely seemed out for blood.
Today when she touched the staff, she found Link and several other elves stepping through the woods, the undergrowth parting before them just as it had on the day he and his first companion had attacked her.
This magic wasn’t a constant wherever they went. At other times, she’d watched them bashing through the thick undergrowth; having no better time of it than she had. When she’d asked Ruhildi about the discrepancy, the woman had said something about greenways. The greenways were apparently some kind of localised phenomenon; druids couldn’t just magic the undergrowth away everywhere they went, as she’d initially assumed. The magic of the greenways also repelled non-elf sentients—those who weren’t being dragged by elven slavemasters.
At least that was how it was supposed to work. Luckily for Saskia, someone must have crocked up, because she’d been able to cross the greenway on her own. Or rather, with the help of her oracle powers. She’d never have even realised the thing was turning her away if it weren’t for her minimap.
Speaking of which, she’d discovered a few weeks back that her map also worked while she was watching from Link’s eyes, except it was centred on his location instead of hers. The map’s maximum range had expanded to about thirty or forty kilometres—enough to give her plenty of warning if the elves came too close.
Today, they weren’t exactly too close, and they weren’t heading in quite the right direction, but she was getting a little uncomfortable. She recognised the snow-covered slopes at the edge of the map. Somewhere up there was the pass that led to her valley.
Link had two of those monstrous cats at his side, as he usually did when he ventured out of town. She hadn’t seen him riding these ones; though huge compared to just about every species of feline on Earth, they were much smaller than the ones he and his archer companion had ridden when they fought her.
All of a sudden, the cats halted in their tracks, and their noses went low to the ground, picking up a scent. Hers? Saskia felt a prickle of dread, even though there was no reason to suspect any traces of her scent would remain after all this time. She didn’t stink that much.
The elves exchanged silent words for a moment before stepping through the undergrowth after the cats. Silent from her perspective, that is. Apart from that one time with the elven oracle, her link to…uh, Link remained visual only; she still couldn’t hear them speak.
They stalked through the undergrowth, weapons drawn, until they came upon a pair of massive boulders that leaned against each other.
Sitting in a hollow between the boulders was a troll.
Saskia drew in a sharp breath. She’d never seen another one of her kind before. This troll was male, but far from the muscular physique she’d imagined for the other half of her species, he looked…a little underwhelming. Clad in animal furs, he had a pot belly, a mane of moss green hair even more tangled and matted than hers, and a face that not even his mother could call handsome.
She noticed that the claws at the ends of his fingers and toes were much shorter and stubbier than her own. A few weeks back, Saskia had tried trimming her claws down to that size. It hadn’t gone well for her. Unlike human fingernails, her claws had nerves inside them, so she’d felt every slice. And within a couple of days, they’d grown back.
As the elves drew close, the troll leapt to his feet and bared pointed teeth at them. Stretching up to his full height, he was perhaps half a metre shorter than her, but he still towered over the elves.
Link placed his hands on each of the cats, stilling them. He said something to the other elves, who then simply stood to the side, waiting. The druid drew his vicious-looking polearm, and stepped toward the troll.
The brute let out a silent roar and charged, hefting a massive log one-handed like a club. Saskia felt more than a little intimidated, but Link stood his ground.
At the last moment, as the troll brought his club down in a blow that might have squished the elf to paste, Link dodged aside, slashing the back of the creature’s leg as he moved.
Wisps of smoke puffed into the air as the weapon left a dark cut across the troll’s tough hide. The big guy staggered onto his hands and knees, his face contorted in clear agony. Saskia had watched Link cooking food with the edge of that blade of his, but seeing what it could do to living flesh made her queasy. The troll wouldn’t be regenerating his wound any time soon. She shuddered, imagining it slicing into her own flesh.
The troll wasn’t finished yet though. As Link darted in, thrusting the tip of his blade toward the brute’s throat, a great arm lashed out, backhanding him. Saskia’s view tumbled as the elf fell backward, rolling aside just in time to avoid another crushing blow with the log that left a great furrow in the muddy, leaf-strewn soil.
It became a slow battle of attrition; the elf slicing and stabbing the troll’s legs and arms and belly, and narrowly avoiding being crushed several more times.
Saskia found it hard to watch. Despite all the elf had done to her and wanted to do to her, she’d grown strangely attached to him after all these weeks watching through his eyes. It was more like the kind of attachment she had to characters on long-running television shows and games than those she had to close friends and family, but still, the thought of him dying made her shiver in fear. Nor did she want to see the troll die. As far as she knew, the elves had hunted him down for the unforgivable crime of breathing while troll.
But Saskia didn’t have any say in the matter. All she could do was watch as the brutal fight came to its inevitable conclusion. Only after the troll’s movements grew feeble and sluggish did he try to limp away, and by then it was far too late. A deep slash across the backs of his legs cut to the bone, and sent him tumbling down. Another slice across the back of his neck ended his struggles for good. Link began to saw through the creature’s vertebrae, and Saskia released her grip on the staff, sickened.
Looking out of her own eyes once more, she registered the sight of Ruhildi’s face just centimetres away from her own. Saskia jerked her head back in shock. The dwarf did the same, nearly falling off the rock she was standing on.
“What are you…?”
Ruhildi looked abashed. “I didn’t mean to startle you. I were just fascinated, is all. Your eyes shine like lightglobes when you hold the keeper’s staff.”
“What, really?” Ruhildi had never mentioned it before. Maybe this was why the woman had started coming around to the idea that there really was such a thing as a troll oracle.
When Saskia told her companion what she’d witnessed today, Ruhildi said, “That’s the way of it, Sashki. The leaf-ears make a sport of hunting your kind.” After a long pause, she added, “To be true with you, the dwarrows are little different in that regard. Trows are fair tough, but that just makes you targets for any fool wishing to prove himself.”
“Crap,” breathed Saskia. She’d suspected as much.
If Link ran into another elven oracle who could speak to her, she could talk to them from a safe distance; perhaps find a way to convince the druid she wasn’t really his enemy, as she had with Ruhildi. Sadly, there hadn’t been time for that back then, and Dallim hadn’t been the most stable conversationalist.
The only other option would be to try to talk the elves down in person. There was a chance it might work. Of course, to do that, she needed to be fluent in their language.
Dallim had spoken a mix of English and Elvish. He’d understood her English, and she’d understood his Elvish. But as with Dwarvish, understanding Elvish was not the same as speaking it. She needed to hear enough words to build up a complete vocabulary first.
That evening, Saskia asked Ruhildi to speak in ‘the forest tongue,’ as she called it. Her friend was less than enthused about the idea, muttering, “I’d sooner cut out my own tongue than use it to utter the words of those bastards again.” What was up with this woman and self-mutilation? After Saskia explained that she might have need of it in the coming days, for both of their sakes, Ruhildi grudgingly relented.
To her surprise, the dwarf still sounded Scottish to Saskia, even when she was speaking Elvish. There were a few words in common with Dwarvish, but overall they were very different languages.
To her even greater surprise, it quickly became apparent that she didn’t need much help to speak Elvish. Either her magical translator app was getting better, or her earlier conversation with Dallim had kick-started it.
While they were at it, she also got Ruhildi to teach her how to write in Dwarvish, and show her the few fragments of Elvish writing the dwarf had picked up as a slave. Saskia’s translator had no more trouble with written languages than it did with spoken ones. Dwarvish writing used a large alphabet where some of the characters represented an entire syllable. Elvish words were written in what looked a bit like ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs. In both cases, she could effortlessly read the symbols Ruhildi scratched into clay, but writing any of them herself took a bit of practice.
Something intriguing happened over the next few days. Dwarvish symbols began to appear throughout her oracle interface, as she’d come to call it. The act of scratching out these symbols in the clay, it seemed, was all that was needed to convince her interface that words might actually come in handy sometimes.
Why not English? she wondered.
She hadn’t actually written anything more than her name in English since she came to this world, but there had been the English words Link had seen on the worldseed. And so many of the other interface elements had been pulled straight from her mind and memories. Maybe it just needed more external hints to coax it in the right direction?
