Gladesbale Grove Book 3 - Chapters 61,62,63

Chapter 61

Nuke It From Low Orbit

All across the area below the staircase, at least 100 feet below, pairs of green eyes flickered to life. A flare of aberrant magic rippled across the gathering, and Rud couldn’t help but feel fear seize his heart. Good thing he had a cleric, paladin, and experienced wizard with him. Before he even knew what was happening, a shimmering barrier of gold and silver erupted around them and caught a blast from a spell that Rud couldn’t even hope to understand.

“What was that?” Rud shouted, panicking and leaning on his first instinct to run away and do as Ban had said. He wanted to get to the top of the staircase and set the whole place on fire, letting it burn for however long it needed.

“You fools,” a voice called from below, amid the sea of green eyes staring up at them. A pair of purple ones, blazing with power, appeared. “You have entered my domain. Prepare to feel my wrath.”

“No, I really don’t think so,” Rud said, turning tail and darting up the stairs. He wasn’t surprised when the others followed closely behind him. He used his druidic powers to cast the Shape Plant spell along the way, pulling the staircase up behind them and leaving no chance for whatever evil lurked here to follow.

“Wait!” the creature shouted after them, sending another spell that simply ricocheted off the barrier. “Come back!”

“No, thank you,” Rud shouted, pulling more of the staircase up behind him before there was too much distance between them and the monster for him to get a good shot. The ascent was arduous, but soon the party spilled out into the tower, falling into a heap and heaving for breath. The druid covered the gap in the hole with powerful roots, sealing it, and then watched as Elm applied her own wards. Everyone remained silent for quite some time before they spoke again.

“That could have gone worse,” the paladin said with a shrug.

“That was a lich,” Oak said, her voice dripping with venom. “We’re lucky to have gotten away with our lives.”

“Yeah, well, he shouldn’t have revealed himself so soon,” Elm said. “It’s best to keep the element of surprise when you’re trying to get the drop on a bunch of mortals.”

“So, does somebody want to explain what just happened, or what exactly a lich is?” Rud asked. 

Oak took a steadying breath, as though recalling the information required to explain was taxing in and of itself. She eventually nodded and looked the druid in the eyes. “A lich is a being that has given itself to necromantic powers. They remove their soul from their body by placing it in a phylactery, which they typically keep in a safe place. This makes them basically immortal. This one seems to have taken the entire academy underground. For what reason, I cannot say.”

“Okay, next question. How do we kill it? Or do we want to kill it? Is it a person? Is this something I am not allowed to do?”

“It is a monster,” Barrow said. “And yes, we should kill it.” 

“With fire,” the Paladin added. “Lots of fire.” 

“Good news! I’ve got this really cool stuff called Fairy Peat. Although I guess Elm could just cast one of her very cool pillars of fire spells.”

“Let’s do both,” Elm said, clapping a sweaty hand on Rud’s shoulder. “As long as we have the Grove’s permission to take care of this anyway.”

“Please,” Ban said, speaking into Rud’s mind. “Nuke it from low orbit.”

“How could you possibly know what that means?” Rud asked, shaking his head. “Whatever. Let the nuking commence!”

Of course, it wasn’t as simple as that. The first thing Elm suggested was that they wait around for a little while to ensure that the lich was truly trapped. It became apparent that whatever its initial plan was, it had failed. Perhaps it had gone down there for safety after they crashed underground. But there was no way for it to ascend the 100-foot-high span between the ground and the tower. There were sounds of spellwork below, as if the angry lich was ascending shot after shot, but it was completely ineffectual. Not only had the mage imbued the floor with powerful wards, but both the cleric and paladin added their gods’ holy power to the effort, rendering every attack completely useless.

Rud got every spirit in the grove involved. Sarya was very eager to put her wooden cart to use, and a group of adventurers helped them load fairy peat into it, watching as she vanished into a nearby bush to deposit the load into the tower below. Major did a lot of the digging, using his powerful claws to rend fairy peat from the ground as though he was simply making sandcastles for fun. Taz helped shovel, Billy supervised, and Mint glowered in the corner.

Jasper grunted as he shoved another shovel full of peat onto a pile. Rud helped him empty the wooden cart, and laughed as Sarya took off again to get another load. Standing on the first floor of the tower, they observed the many piles of the incredibly reactive peat. It was likely more than enough, but it was best not to risk it. This needed to be a long-burning fire that destroyed all the skeletons and the body of the lich.

“I met a lich once,” Jasper said, rubbing his chin as he recalled a long, distant memory. “He wasn’t that bad. Well, there was that one time when he destroyed an entire village, and another when he ensnared a mayor and forced him to do his bidding for a few hundred years. You know, now that I’m thinking about it, he was that bad.”

“Things could have ended badly,” Rud said, checking on the roots he had formed to seal the hole. They still held firmly, showing absolutely no sign of breaking down. Judging by the amount of material they had gathered, they had enough to cover most of the floor below, but he would need a way to spread it around. The current plan was to use wind manipulation to shoot it around.

“It certainly could’ve been worse.”

Through the combined effort of both mortals and spirits alike, they had gathered enough material to start the plan. Of course, the most important part of the plan was Elm’s potent fire magic. After Rud had witnessed her ability to create a gigantic fire tornado, he was confident she could get the job done. When facing an evil lich, it was best to be prepared. Which was why he was happy they had the peat. Just in case.

“Is everyone ready?” Elm asked. Looking between her sister and the paladin, they both nodded. “On my count, we’ll drop the barriers, and I’ll begin casting a spell. It’ll take a moment to fulminate, so we should begin shoveling the material in. Three… two… one…”

The group burst into a flurry of motion. The barriers dropped all at once, Rud withdrawing the roots and allowing the foul air to wash up yet again. All the spirits began shuffling madly, putting as much of the material down the hole as they could. As they did, Rud used his wind manipulation to send it flying all over the place to various effects. Mostly, it just fell in a pile straight below them, but some of it went far. That would be the kindling for the next part. Elm’s spell was ready far sooner than they were done. Shuffling, she had them all step back.

“If you value your eyebrows, I recommend standing back,” she said. The power she was holding in her soul right now was unbelievable. Even though Rud was bad at sensing arcane magic, he could feel the fire mana burning in her chest, threatening to consume her at any moment. Everybody got to a safe distance, and her eyes flared with the very flames she summoned down below.

Rud, apparently, didn’t care much for his eyebrows. The heat washed over him, completely removing his eyebrows and burning his skin. His eyes snapped shut as he stumbled back, but before he was forced away from the entrance of the hole, he saw it. The flames spread out from a central point, consuming everything below in an unbelievable conflagration. If her spell wasn’t strong enough to destroy the undead below, the embers driven by the insanely hot fairy peat would do the job.

With his eyes still snapped shut, Rud cast Nature’s Restoration on himself, healing whatever damage he had taken the entire time. He worked on the spell. He could hear the howl of the fire shooting out of the hole. The increased pressure from the heat forced the air out, rising up through the hole in a torrent that filled the entire tower’s space with sweltering heat. When he could finally open his eyes, he looked around at his companions, ensuring that everybody was okay. Of course, Elm had summoned a barrier to protect them, and Major was shielding everyone else with his body. The hair on his head and back was slightly singed, but he looked otherwise unperturbed.

“That’s what we call the chain reaction,” Elm shouted above the sound of the roaring flames. “It’ll only get more intense. I think I know what happened.”

Rud recalled some kind of weapon back on Earth that mixed fuel with air to create a massive explosion. He wasn’t sure if this was entirely applicable, but it seemed similar. All he knew was that they were lucky the entire underground city wasn’t collapsing beneath them. It took him a while to realize the reason for that. Not only had he laced the area with so many powerful roots that it was more root than stone, but both Elm and Jasper were also holding barriers that kept the force of the explosion at bay. That didn’t stop it from howling through the hole, deafening everyone there.

It took about half an hour for the flames to calm down to a point where anyone could talk. The entire room was so scorching hot that Rud was certain they would all burn up. But then it finally died down, the temperature decreasing and the sound along with it. Everyone gathered was exhausted, but the job was done.

“As I was saying,” Elm said, propping herself up and sighing dramatically. “I think the fairy peat you sent down there mixed with the air, giving the perfect balance of oxygen and fire to blow the entire place up, mixed with my magic that resulted in a long-lasting flame. I’d be surprised if there’s anything left down there. Even the rock would have melted after a while.”

“Well then, I’m very happy we weren’t down there,” Rud said, straightening his cloak and probing his forehead. Indeed, his eyebrows were gone, and he shuddered to think what he looked like. If it was bad, nobody said anything.

“Well, we still have to go down there,” Oak said. “No matter how hot the fire, we wouldn’t have destroyed the lich’s phylactery. We need to go and finish that by hand, unfortunately.”

Although nobody in the party seemed willing to go down, they needed to. There was no choice. There was no point in leaving the job half done. So Rud tested the edge of the hole and found the rock there to still be quite hot. There were sections where the barrier had failed, resulting in the rock dripping as though liquid. He found a few spots for his supports that weren’t hot enough to instantly incinerate the plant material and set to work creating the staircase once again. With all the material drawn down here, it wasn’t as hard as it was the first time.

“Okay, everyone back on the staircase,” Rud said with a laugh. “Down into the doom hole we go once again.”

“Can we not call it that?” Elm asked, giving him a playful punch to the arm.

“I’m taking suggestions.”

“Undeath Underground,” Raze said, pushing his armored form through the hole and down the stairs.

“Hey, that’s not bad. Sounds like the band I had in high school,” Rud said, heading down with him.

Chapter 62

Thanks, Lady

Although it was hard for Rud to find the words to describe how the underground space now looked, one came to mind: glassification. The heat inside had been so intense that he was now convinced Elm and Jasper's barriers were the only things that saved them above. The floor of the cavern, which had once been rough stone crowded with many green-eyed skeletons, was now rendered with a smooth, glassy finish. Any evidence that monsters or undead creatures had existed here was gone. There wasn't even an ash to tell their stories. There was simply nothing.

"Well, that spell might have been a bit more powerful than I had expected," Elm said, taking her first step onto the ground and nearly slipping. She barely kept her balance with the help of her staff. "We're looking for the phylactery now, right?"

"It should be here somewhere," Oak said, narrowing her eyes and looking around in the darkness. Only a few errant orbs of glowing light illuminated their path, and it wasn't helping much. The sameness of the environment made it difficult to make out details. “I can feel the lich. Perhaps he survived.”

Major yawned. “Not for long.”

“What’s he growling about?” Barrow asked with a laugh.

“Don’t worry about it,” Elm said with a giggle, watching as Major lumbered forward, intent on ripping the head off the lich.

"If that didn't kill the Lich, then we have bigger problems to worry about," Jasper said, his voice holding a slight tinge of worry that Rud didn't miss.

"Oh, I'm sure he's dead," Billy said. "The undead hate fire. It doesn't matter how strong you are—set a Lich on fire, and he'll die."

"Are you experienced with liches?" Rud asked.

"Not intentionally. There was a demon on our plane that practiced necromancy. He wasn't very good, but he could tell a mean joke, so we kept him around." 

Rud snorted, pressing forward and finding that it was indeed incredibly difficult to keep his footing. Instead of trying to slip around in search of the phylactery, he commanded more plants to grow. He tossed quite a few seeds onto the ground and first forced them to burrow into the earth and create new life. Once the ground was a blanket of grasses and small trees that spread their roots around, walking became much easier. The underground space was massive, meaning the party had to spread out. But Oak wanted to make sure they were close enough so that if anything happened, they could all respond.

It took the group several hours to search the entire space, but they found nothing. They all reconvened near the base of the stairs and met each other with puzzled looks on their faces. It was time for a break, so Rud disappeared up into the grove and returned with food and tea to refresh the party. It was greatly appreciated, and the mood lightened significantly after they tore into some jerky and downed some strong tea.

“It will take me a bit, but I am going to cast a tracking spell,” Oak said she had already settled into a cross-legged position and was gathering mana in her chest. “Just to make sure nothing sneaks up on me, please.”

“She calls on a favor from her god,” Raze said, jerking his head toward the cleric. "This is a potent tracking spell that only works on finding undead creatures. It is quite effective."

Watching a cleric do their work was much different from those who practiced the arcane arts. Druidic magic was different from both of them by a long shot, but holy magic was actually at least kind of similar and involved drawing favors from a god or some such nonsense. That was somewhat close to embodying the balance of nature. Still, Rud couldn't see himself casting this kind of magic and wouldn't give his druidic powers up for any other system. It took quite a while to cast this spell, but eventually her eyes snapped open, glowing with a pulsing silver power that was undeniable, even to those unpracticed in holy magic.

"This way," Oak said, her voice carrying far more gravitas than normal.

It took quite a bit longer than expected, but there must have been some part of her god speaking through her, guiding her to a point in the center of that cursed room. They all followed behind her, but even as they drew closer to the spot she stared at, their faith that she would find anything was low. It was a barren room with a hard rock floor, smoothed by the flames. There was no phylactery here.

"You'll dig about five feet down," Oak said, pointing to the ground and looking up at the party. "There, you will find the phylactery and a piece of the lich. Banish that piece before it reforms. He thought he was clever.”

“Thank you, my lady,” Raze said, bowing his head.

“Oh, uh. Thanks, lady,” Rud said.

Oak smiled. “I sponsored you personally, little one. Good to see my vote didn’t go to waste.”

Oak sagged on the spot as whatever power she was borrowing left her. Rud went stiff as a board when he realized what had just happened. "Was that actually the god?" he said, looking around in panic. That got a chorus of soft laughter from those gathered.

“That was her,” Oak confirmed. Barrow was holding her up so she wouldn't collapse onto the ground. “She seems very interested in you, Rud. I wonder why that is?”

“Oh, who knows? I'm sure it's not worth looking into, you know, gods and all that,” Rud said. “So, how about we dig a hole? Is anybody interested in digging through this crap?”

"I could use a spell, but I'd be worried about what would happen," Elm said. "Perhaps we can convince the dwarf to come down here?"  

"Fat chance of that," Rud said, shaking his head. “Taz had been fearful of the undead before. I don't think burning the whole place to the ground is going to change his mind." 

"He doesn't have a choice," Major said. "I'll drag him down here myself." 

Although Rud wasn't sure if that was the right move, he let the bear take off and fetched the dwarf. Taz had been very helpful, bringing all of the material down to the underground city. He had been shocked that he even wanted to go that far. It was likely because they had an emergency situation. But the amount of time it took Major to return revealed how difficult it had been to convince Taz to get down here and get to work. Eventually, he showed up with a grumpy look on his face and his hammerpick slung over his shoulder.

"Just for the record," Taz said, "I don't like it. I don't want to be anywhere near anything undead, and this place smells like undead."

"Smells like roasted marshmallows to me," Rud said with a laugh.

Taz stood over the spot indicated by Oak’s god and nodded. "Yep, there's definitely something beneath here trapped in the rock. What did you do? Melt the entire room?" he said, looking around. The more he saw of the room, the more concerned his face became. "You guys actually melted this stone. Do you know how hot it has to be to melt stone? You're all just standing here like nothing happened?" 

"To be fair, that was a few hours ago," Rud said. "I'm over the whole melted stone stuff. So, do you need any help digging?"

"As a matter of fact, I do," Taz said, producing another pickaxe and tossing it over to Rud. "With your fancy new attributes, you can help me out." 

Rud didn't mind helping at all. He spat in his hands and rubbed them together, which earned a disgusted look from both Oak and Elm. He then grabbed the pickaxe and swung it against the glassy stone surface, clenching his teeth as his entire body vibrated. Taz laughed, coming over with his fancy weapon and striking the earth. The stone split, a spiderweb crack radiating outward until it gave way. That afforded the druid enough space to get his pick in there, removing small amounts of stone from every large chunk the dwarf got.

The first layer of stone was the hardest, but after they broke through that, it was much easier. They removed large trunks with little effort and dug down deep. The hole had to be wide, which meant more work. Eventually, Billy, Jasper, Barrow, and Raze got in on the action, borrowing pickaxes in, going wild. 

"This is actually kind of fun," Barrow said, seeming to indeed be having a ball, striking at the stone. Rud couldn't disagree more. It was arduous work, but when he tried to bring his roots over to take care of the problem, he was warned against it by Elm.

"We should keep the interaction of magical energies to a minimum," she said. "You never know if the lich will be able to draw on any type of power. So, I'm doing my best to keep this as a magical void zone."

Although that was a term he had never heard, he understood exactly what she meant. They didn't want the interaction of energies to be anything but neutral. Since the god had warned them, the lich had maintained a piece of himself. Apparently, that small piece was enough for him to regenerate instantly, bringing a world of hurt upon them.

Eventually, the stone broke away, revealing a single skeletal hand embedded in the rock. Taz insisted on chipping it away to reveal the perfectly preserved piece of an arm. He tossed it to the side with little care, causing Oak and Raze to gasp in shock. They scooped it up and took it aside. Rud took this as a good time to break from the labor and see the purification process they employed.

"Interested in holy magic?" Oak asked, smiling as she drew an intricate circle on the ground with a small piece of white chalk. "This one is fairly straightforward. We simply need to invoke the power of my god and purify the tainted soul within. A lich will put a piece of themselves in a physical body. It is so small that it does not affect the stability of the phylactery, but it is enough for them to regain their old power."

“Can you feel the malevolence within?” Raze asked.

To his surprise, Rud could indeed feel the malevolent power of the being within. He could feel it pushing its influence out, as though reaching to grasp any vestiges of its old power. But Oak wasn't about to allow that.

"I can feel it," Rud said, doing his best to keep his own magical senses tightly bundled around his soul. "Are you using your power to suppress it?" 

"That's right," the paladin confirmed. "This way, it can't activate its trap. Instead, it will remain trapped." 

“I'm ready to cast,” Oak confirmed, holding her hands out and settling into a kneeling position.

“Got him. Go,” Raze said.

The holy circle pulsed with power. Silver flames rose on the outside while gold flared on the inside. An ear-splitting scream issued from the arm itself, which had caught fire, and a bubble of purple energy appeared in the center. Rud fell back as he watched a silver and gold spectral sword stab through it, rending it in half and sending the two pieces splitting apart to flit into nothingness. 

The druid clutched at his chest. "I didn't expect a ghost sword," he said, looking between the two with a shocked expression.

“We’re lucky. Elm’s fire nearly ruined his soul on its own,” Oak said, sighing. “A lich this powerful… It must’ve been down here for a long time. That’s the only thing that weakened it to this point. The slow bleeding of its power.”

“Good things come to those that wait, I guess,” Rud said. “So, what’s next?”

“We must find the only piece of him that remains,” Oak said. “This is the part that gives me pause. Dealing with a small bit of its power was easy… But this is the lich’s entire soul. One misstep, and we could be in trouble.”

“Good to know,” Rud said.

Chapter 63

A Wild Wizard Appears

Rud learned quite a bit about Oak. With the way she handled the piece of the lich, his first impression of her was that she was a powerful cleric. But as they dug in search of the phylactery, he learned that while she was talented and favored by her god, she wasn’t nearly powerful enough to take care of something of this magnitude. He also learned, by piecing together the events that happened here with the others, what the lich’s plan had been.

When they had set the entire underground area on fire, the Lich gathered his phylactery and prepared to escape. Perhaps he thought he had more time in the withering flames, but he didn’t. With that object under his arm, he was consumed by the fire. He couldn’t execute whatever foul magic he had planned, no matter how long he had to plan it. Instead, he and his gaggle of thralls were all incinerated. The group dug at the earth, going deeper and deeper until finally the tip of something metal poked out from the stone. That’s when Taz took over to treat it with a gentler hand.

Oak had gone off and Rud strode over to check on her, watching as she drew more holy circles on the ground. She looked up with a smile and shook her head. “You know, when I first detected this energy, I thought it was ghosts,” she said.

“Turns out it was a lich.”

“Actually, I wasn’t wrong,” Oak said. “There is an intense spiritual presence down here. I don’t know whether it was the fact that we had released the servants from the lich’s grasp or if they were always here, but there are some lost spirits I need to take care of.”

“Do you need any help with that?” Rud asked.

Oak shook her head. “I should be able to handle it. A lich might be too far outside of my abilities, but I can handle ghosts.”

Taz took great care to remove the metal object from underneath the stone. He even had a little hammer and chisel to crack apart the sides without damaging it. For a dwarf who had outright refused to come down here, he sure was going at it…

“Here we are,” Taz said, slinging his hammerpick over his shoulder. “The rest is up to you. Good luck.”

The dwarf ran as quickly as he could, huffing up the stairs and out of sight. Rud could still hear him wheezing for breath for a while before the sound faded entirely. The druid wasn’t going to be the one to touch the phylactery first, so he left that to Raze the paladin. The object was unassuming, appearing as little more than a decorative metal pyramid.

The paladin pinched it between his thumb and forefinger and lifted it, visibly wincing as he dropped it. “The evil in here is difficult to completely understand. This lich was a far higher level than we expected.”

“So what’s the plan? Are we going to burn it or maybe blow it up? Could it be cast to the bottom of the ocean?” Rud asked.

“Not unless you want the lich attached to some errant shark,” Raze said. “I’m afraid we’ll need to speak with someone more experienced in these things. There is only one group I can think of…”

Rud didn’t want to admit that he understood the unspoken words of the paladin, but they were laid before him plainly. The only person who had the kind of power needed to destroy the artifact was currently climbing the tower. Roland and his party of outworlder adventurers more than likely knew something about this, but getting in contact with them wouldn’t be easy.

“Perhaps I can help,” Ban suggested, speaking into the Druid’s mind, her melodic voice bringing some amount of comfort. “I can attempt to communicate with them in the tower since I am entwined in that energy system. Perhaps they’ll hear me.”

With positively no other options, Rud shrugged. He wasn’t as reluctant to interact with the tower climbers as the others seemed to be. So, he nodded with approval. “Sounds good to me. How long do you think it will take?”

“I’m already trying right now.” Ban informed him. “It should only take a few minutes. Well, unless... That’s strange.”

“Oh, sweet. Something already went wrong, and you’ve only been at this for about 15 seconds. Perfect.”

The ground beneath Rud’s feet rumbled as he felt a flash of unfamiliar power radiate from somewhere in the distance. He could feel the worried sensation coming from the sacred tree. It resonated through the nearby roots and made him question what his next move should be.

“I used a series of energy pulses to manipulate the power in the tower. It should have just made a sound echo through all the floors, but instead, it radiated on the outside of the tower, making it act more like a transmitter. Hold on, I can figure this out.”

“So much for contacting the climbers… We need to get out of here,” Rud said, signaling to both spirits and mortals alike and gesturing toward the staircase. “Let’s go up and out, and we can come back and deal with the ghosts and phylactery later.”

“I’ve only created one holy seal,” Oak said, looking confused. Her face dropped when she saw the expression on the druid’s face. “What’s wrong?”

“I’m not sure, but I know we need to get out of here now. Like… now.”

Once everybody understood how serious Rud was, they all made for the staircase. The spirits ducked into a bush that was growing out of the side of it, while the mortals took the stairs two at a time. Rud was right behind them, looking around and trying to sense what was going on. He felt a flash of confusion and a bit of fear coming from Ban, but otherwise nothing seemed to have changed. Only when he was near the top of the stairs did he feel the faintest wisp of something. He didn’t feel it with his own senses but instead felt it permeating through the membrane of the grove itself, as though a massive object had settled in right near the central clearing. When they rose up to the ground, he ducked into the nearest bush and teleported there.

“Okay,” Rud said, staring at a figure that loomed near the trunk of the sacred tree. “Did somebody lose their wizard?”

Standing near Ban was a tall figure wearing a multicolored robe. He had a stereotypical long white wizard’s beard and a shaved head. When he turned, he locked onto the druid with amber eyes that glistened with power even still. Rud could feel nothing in his magical senses. It was as though the man wasn’t even there.

“Stop right there, criminal scum,” the figure said. “You violated the law.”

“Hey, screw you, old man,” Rud said, placing his hands on his hips. “I didn’t do anything wrong.”

“Oh yes, you did,” the wizard said, crossing the distance and huffing. “Do you know how many violations there are around this place? Unregulated tree growth, unlicensed tea production, and—worst of all—you’re talking to animals. That’s not normal.”

“I’m a druid. That’s about as normal as it gets for me.”

The wizard stroked his beard, throwing it to one side. His expression shifted for a moment, going from confident to confused. For only the shortest of moments, his form shimmered. For only an instant, Rud saw something other than a tall wizard with a pretty cool beard.

“Are you secretly a goblin sitting on a dresser?” Rud asked, tilting his head to one side.

“No, what gave you that idea?” the wizard asked, looking down at himself and straining his robes. “I’m a completely normal wizard from your world. This world that we all call... well, it’s our world, isn’t it?”

“Okay, if you’re trying to hide the fact that you’re a goblin riding a dresser pretending that you’re from our world, which is called Garpillin, by the way, you’re doing a very bad job.”

“Ah, yes! Garpillin. My home that I love so,” the wizard said.

“GOTCHA! The world is called Asevar, ya dingus.”

“Rats!” the wizard said, snapping his fingers. “Okay. Fine. You win. This stupid magic is ruining my illusion so I guess screw it.”

With the wave of his hand, the wizard dispelled the illusion. It fell like a curtain of water, revealing the creature’s true form. It was indeed just a goblin sitting on top of a dresser. The goblin was wearing finely crafted robes and held in his hand an ornate staff. The dresser he was sitting on was stranger still and had a glass-paneled front with two blazing eyes peering out at him.

“Anyways, my name is Mark,” the goblin said with an idiotic wave. “There was a big burst of energy from this place that rattled through space-time, so I came to check it out. I wasn’t lying when I got here. That breaks the rules in a lot of ways. But now that I’m here, there are some threads of fate that are going haywire.”

“Well, you’re free to leave,” Rud said, shooing the creature away.

“Wow. Doesn’t even wanna give his name. Talk about looking a gift horse in the mouth…”

Rud’s brow twitched. There were several things that drew his attention. The first was that Ban hadn’t attacked or otherwise attempted to banish Mark from the Grove. That likely meant he was quite strong. He was probably telling the truth about space-time, and that was incredibly concerning. But not as concerning as the Earth-based idiom he had just used. One thing the druid had noticed was that whatever automatic translation the system did for him did not include things like idioms, which could only mean one thing.

“Bro, are you from Earth?” Rud asked, gawking at the goblin whose head twitched to the side at the mention of the planet.

“Uh, yeah,” Mark said, his thin brows knitting tighter. “Why? Are you? You don’t look like an Earth human”

“Yeah, and you look like John Smith with that green skin and three-foot stature.”

“Hey, I’m four feet tall easily.”

“Where you from?”

“Jersey. You?”

“Died in Miami… Yeah, makes sense that a goblin would be from New Jersey.”

“Hey! I was a human when I got isekai’d.”

“So wait, what are you doing here?” Rud asked. “Are you a time cop?”

“Space-time cop.”

Rud rubbed his face vigorously, trying to find a way out of this strangely looping conversation. It wasn’t that he was surprised to see somebody from Earth on this planet. He was surprised to see somebody from Earth here who had no idea what was going on. Every other Earthling had been plucked by Bent for his Grove Project, and each one was strangely from Florida, which was something the druid wasn’t willing to unravel right now.

“Hey, since we’re from the same planet, I’ll be real with you,” Mark said. “I came here because there was a disturbance in the recommended flow of fate, which means that something’s going to happen here that shouldn’t happen. I was lying about you having violations and whatever, but this thing is actually serious.”

“Perhaps some tea is in order,” the dresser said, causing Rud to clutch his chest and stumble backward.

“Is that thing alive?”

“Oh, yeah. Meet my sapient bookshelf, Tanquolin.”

“A pleasure,” the living piece of furniture said, tipping forward and nearly spilling his passenger onto the ground.

The living dresser might have been right about the number of strange things that had happened today. The only thing Rud wanted to do was have a nice cup of tea, wrap himself in a blanket, and sob for a few hours. He shook away the confusion and realized that, through everything that had just happened, he had failed to give his name. “I’m Rud, by the way. Well, I was Shawn on Earth, but they renamed me here.”

“Anyway, how about that tea? If you don’t have any, I’ve got some spare around here somewhere,” Mark said, still not dismounting from his perch.

“I’ve got plenty of tea,” Rud said, pointing at the longhouse in the distance. “What kind of name is Tanquolin?”

“I just call him Tan for short,” Mark said. “Lead the way.”

Rud shook out his hands and got ahold of himself. As he was leading the way to the longhouse, he looked back at Ban.