Aaaack, I am very sorry for the belated update! With the holidays and all I just kept putting writing this chapter off, until finally school started up again and I became swamped with work! Thank you all for the reviews, I'll keep my hopes up for more! As always, the characters and plot are all attributed to Hilari Bell. Enjoy!
The Hedgewitch:
Makenna crouched low onto the overwhelmingly frigid forest floor. The only sound beyond the beating of her own heart and breath was the sound of thick flakes of snow settling onto the tree branches. Each flake dug her deeper and deeper into a sense of isolation; their gentle landings carrying her away into her own thoughts. The eerily light sky deceived the late time; the night was already half over, making it seem as if fate wished her to fail. The winds had settled, yet the clouds raced past with alarming speed. Ripping her eyes from the ground to the sky a moment, her foot caught a frozen root. Hitting the ground hard, her breath escaped in a cloud of mist. "Ugh," she groaned quietly to herself while sitting up into a crouch once more. After a few more near stumbles she slowed her pace; taking more caution as she neared the sorcerers.
Soon, however, she caught up with her silent goblins friends, whose skills of stealth and efficient travel far surpassed her own. Nevnil, the Stoner she had persuaded to aid her, and Rosto a Flamer, sat calmly, peering over the edges of short ferns into an unnatural clearing of decaying leaves. The hedgewitch moved even slower, afraid her very pulse would be detectable by the sorcerers senses. Nevnil caught her glance and made a ready signal with his hands. Makenna hesitated, but knew they had planned to remain silent. She wanted to investigate their opponents further to ensure their own safety; and so she signaled him to postpone their plans momentarily.
The sorcerer camp was hardly visible, the look-away spell strong, but not strong enough to prevent the Hedgwitch from seeing through. The trees in the camp site were of a different nature; most being completely dead, and the foliage already rotten and decayed. Her guess was the common sorcerers had not been expecting someone to examine them so closely. Tentatively extending her neck up, she scanned the horizon searching for an opening of some sort; failing to find anything. Grumbling she moved closer to the camp, and expanded the distance she was from her goblins.
This time she found a weak spot. Near the tallest tree in the camp she saw the dull flare of a small fire; like stars struggling to twinkle in a shifting reflection of water. If she scanned the sky closely some of the clouds resembled smoke, a sign this particular sorcerer was well aware of how it's presence could be cloaked. There she would cast the first stone. There was where the old barbarian man Tobin had warned her about lay resting. Calmly Makenna retreated into the darkness of the foliage once more, always aware of her surroundings. Soon she found her goblins, and urged them to follow her with a sweep of her hand. Rosto came first with his Flamers. Their fire would distract the sorcerers into a panic that would mar their defenses and allow the Stoners to attack successfully. So, as planned, they focused half of the goblin fire on the camp perimeter, and half at the center; by driving the sorcerers out, stones would reach them easier, and hit harder, and faster.
As soon as the signal was made, Makenna began her own tactic for wearing the enemy down. Drawing runes of Disintegration, which would tear down any field defenses surrounding the camp, she watched as goblin fire slithered onto the decayed trees, drinking them up into bursting belches of fire and charred wood. The sorcerers look-away spell failed, revealing masses of cloaked figures who ran around to flaming tents in a panic. Few turned to face the goblin offenders, canting words of protection and curses of affliction in their own defense. The Flamers scurried behind trees to dodge strange forms of fire the sorcerers cast back at them. The blue lightening flames dissolved on impact of the environment, doing no perceivable damage; but frightening the goblins wits. As more and more sorcerers found their way to the outreaches of their camp to defend while others attempted to subdue the flames, Makenna signaled the Stoners to beginning their assault. From the northern flank of the enemy came a barrage of small stones aimed at debilitating points on the human body; the head, and the legs. Sorcerers crumpled in pain, while some persevered through the attack, making an offensive of their own. Gradually the goblins made two major divisions in the camp, driving the sorcerers into three individual pockets of fighting; opening their defenses even more.
Makenna inched closer to the old man's camp as he fought against the overwhelming flames and stones. From behind Makenna felt the whip of air left in the wake of a passing mass, and from her peripheral vision she watched a massive rock collide with the sorcerer's center tent in camp, sending more angry barbarians running to fight. The old man glanced over his shoulder in alarm, yet to the hedgewitches astonishment, the old man's expression morphed from worry into something far beyond anger. He strode towards the boulder fast enough to make one forget his age, and stopped abruptly to begin casting a spell of his own. She inched closer while he drew runes which Makenna had never seen before, surprised he used the same methods as her. The ground shook around him, tremors finding their way to her own unsteady feet. Goblins dodged chasms created in the ground in that instant.
She stopped gawking, and set aside the matter of examining sorcerers own methods of conjuring magic for later. All around chaos ran wild, breaking free from the panicked states of sorcerers with little knowledge of their enemy, and forming in the hearts of goblins who found their first assault to be less deliberate than they'd hoped for. Flamers pushed into the areas between pockets of sorcerers, Rosto desperately searching for Makenna from a distance. She waved, urging him on, and gazed around for Nevnil to follow Rosto's movement. If they didn't at least drive a single pocket into defeat by sunrise, and prevent the old man or other sorcerers from using their powers on centaur, they would have failed.
Calming herself, Makenna let memories of useful spells surface; runes of protection from curses of agony and paranoia, runes of healing her mother had used, and finally runes she had acquired from Master Lazur's books. Soon enough, she held them in her repertoire for immediate use, visualizing the very sweeps of her hands and feet in the decayed earth below. The old man had continued an offensive attack, sending swarms of invisible creatures to plague the goblins. From the rapid twitching and batting movements the goblins made to escape, she guessed the creatures were much like their Flinchers. Gathering stability in her footing, Makenna drew a large rune into the ground, sweeping a curved stroked of ancient text into earth that was soggy and rotten. Wind gathered behind her back, begging to be let loose into the open and wreak havoc to all in it's path; but she would only let it destroy her enemy. In the last bottom corner of her runes she drew a protection spell aimed at her goblins.
Suddenly, with the final runes drawn, the wind escaped, rolling over the open camp, flinging unanchored tents to the forest edges, knocking tall cloaked sorcerers down like sapling trees in a flood, and diverging from areas where goblins stood in awe struck fear. The result was catastrophe for the enemy, yet Makenna still had not achieved what she'd wished. Now she only had the old man's attention; her aim being to destroy him. He turned to face her squarely, dark eyes penetrating her own honey ones. He uncloaked his head, silver hair unevenly dyed in patches of red, crooked nose warted and boiled because of his constant use of unnatural elements. He was the smiling face of destruction; utter, feckless destruction. While she was aware his death would hardly count as a favor to the entire realm, she knew his arrival marked a start in the corruption of an untainted world.
She urged the wind to knock him down and break away the earth below his feet, but he held steadfast. While browsing her mind for runes of entrapment, or magical reflection, the old man cast a spell of his own; dead roots springing from the ground with life enough to immobilize her. "Do you dare send us strikes?" he bellowed in a crackling, but powerful voice. Inching closer to her he smiled widely, green and misshapen teeth mocking her weakness. After a moment of realization, she was disgusted to find he spoke her language; his barbaric roots suddenly questionable.
"I dare old man, no-- Sorceror. Your own aggression towards he centaur, and foremost the land, has earned me right to attack." she retorted with her intensifying anger. She had thought the attack would be merely for the revenge of the centaur, with no particular emotion woven in it for her, but she was wrong. Her new home was threatened by this nuisance, and she sensed her own animosity towards the Old Realm's corruption materializing once more.
"See it so. Die, then, of your own decision." With that he brought his hand to her face, like a spider ready to suck the life from it's prey. Bringing up her own defense, she recalled the rune of protection she cast on her goblins, and applied it to herself with a sweep of her hand in the air. The sorcerer man threw a black mass at her, the magic rolling into itself over and over like a turbulent cloud. Bolstering up her defense, she revised her rune to a spell of reflection, sending the mass ricocheting back towards the old man, who was unsuspecting. Immediately he collapsed and coiled up, body morphing unnaturally in agonizing pain. Makenna watched him for a moment before turning her attention to the goblins. They had the upper hand; most sorcerers were drained dry of their reserves of strength, and unable to maintain their casting of spells. In the distance Makenna heard the beat of war drums, and the sky held the promise of a late sunrise only delayed by the canopy of clouds. At last she saw the first centaur charge into the camp in an ambush. The remaining sorcerers tried frantically to call upon their curses and familiars to fight for them, but the centaur overpowered them by far. Letting a sigh go, Makenna marked her work as complete. Turning to the centaur completely, she shook off the dead roots now spineless, and scanned the horizon for her friends. First came Commander Marz, and then Tobin. Tobin rode one of the goblins rams equipped in heavy plates in case of combat. He captured her eye smiling.
"Tobin!" the hedgewitch called over the shrieks of battle, goblins now joining the centaur in physical attack. Tobin rode to her, his face slack in relief; until in a moment's time is became taut, and he pointed behind her shouting something incoherently. Turning, Makenna witnessed the old sorcerer stand to one knee, convulsing tortuously still, his hand carrying an invisible curse which he threw at her. Her vision fogged, until is was overrun by white and gray tones. She fell back onto the ground, unable to think beyond her own labored breathing, and the blindness of her eyes. "Tobin-" she called, hoping her friend would find an escape from another of the old man's attacks. One second she was aware of her own sleepiness, closing her eyes thinking she would rest for just a second; and the next she was dreaming in a world of darkness and isolation.