Chapter Fifty-Eight

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“I see, thank you, sir,” Everette says to the old man before bowing and rushing back over to the group.

Daphne and you are the only ones really paying attention, Abigail and Charlotte are both too busy snooping around the farm and making cute noises at all the baby cows in the baby cow pens.

You’re not sure what you think about farms. On the one tentacle, food, on the other, they smell like poop.

“Alright everyone,” Everette says as he returns. “We have a direction.” he pointed off towards a big forest past a field where a few big cows were grazing.

“Well then, shall we?” Daphne asked. “Abi, Charlotte, the calfs will still be here when we’re done,” she called.

Abigail pat-patted one of the baby cows while you eyed it suspiciously. You weren’t going to eat it because it stole one of your pats. But if you had to eat all the cows, because of some strange and unforeseen circumstance, that one would be first. “I’m coming,” she says as she rushes back.

You and the others start trekking over to the place where the farmer said he saw the big ol’ troll, you at the front while the others follow behind at a slower pace. You’re very excited to see what troll tastes like.

Then again, maybe you fighting the troll all on your own wouldn’t be fair. Charlotte has her whip, Everette has a sword. Wuffles has teeth, and Abigail has Daphne. They could all fight for themselves, get some practice in case a troll appears at the academy and assaults them while they’re in the bathroom or something.

You slow down a little once you’re in the forest. The ground is all uneven and rocky and there are branches and rocks and roots all over, so it’s a good thing that you can hang off to the trees with your tentacles.

“Look at this,” Charlotte says as she kneels down a little ways into the woods. She points to a smudge on a tree. “Blood. Not troll’s blood. Maybe from one of the cows it stole.”

“Good eyes,” Everette says. “Can you tell where it went?”

Charlotte points ahead. “That way. Look at the way those branches were moved aside. It’s not exactly trying to be subtle.”

“It is the biggest thing around,” Everette said.

“Oh, and there are queen’s lilies,” Abigail said as she pointed to some flowers off to the other side. “Their roots aren’t terribly valuable, but they’re a good reagent for some types of spells. They’re mostly used as a soporific. And they can be eaten if boiled.”

Flowers can be eaten? That gives the Gardening Club a whole lot more value. Next time you’ll stop by their clubhouse and tell them that you’re there to eat all their lilies. But in the meantime you grab some of the flowers, roots and all, and stuff them into your mouth.

Kinda grassy, but the roots do taste a bit like carrots. Maybe other flowers have different tastes?

The trek continues, mostly in silence except for Daphne’s frequent complaints and Abigail’s gentle admonishments that everything is alright. The only other noise comes from when you tear flowers out of the ground and chew on them.

And then you stumble into a clearing and lock eyes with a huge monster. It’s big, with bulging muscles under dirt-covered skin and has a weird squished face. It looks like a very, very large and very hairy man that got into one fight too many. Its face is covered in blood, but that might be the cow its in the middle of snacking on.

“Found it!” you tell the others.

“Dreamer, come back,” Everette says as he grabs you from behind and flings you back into the woods.

Wait, did he think you would get hurt? What a silly boy.

Everette pulls out his sword and Wuffles starts to growl deep and low.

“Ah, are you going to eat that?” Abigail asks you as she helps you to your feet and brushes the dirt off of your pretty dress. You’re going to make Everette pay to clean it.

“Yes,” you say. “But you need to kill it yourselves first.”

That earns you some looks from Abigail and Daphne. “What do you mean?” Daphne asks. “I thought you were all about the over the top violence and consumption of things.”

“Yes, but I want to make sure you can fight too,” you say. “Look, it’s coming here.”

The troll is indeed rushing over, a large tree trunk serving as a club which it swings around and tries to use to squish Everette into the ground. He rolls to the side, neatly avoiding the crushing blow but ending up on his side when he couldn’t roll right back to his feet.

That’s when Charlotte and Wuffles come in. The girl flicks out her whip, the tip snapping at the air with a crack and cutting a line across the troll’s chest while Wuffles circles around the troll and bites into its ankle.

“We need to help them,” Daphne says as she starts pulling bombs from under her skirt.

“R-right,” Abigail says. She seems a little panicked until she reaches out and grabs one of your tentacles. “Dreamer, I need the end of this to be sharp.”

You blink, but that’s not hard to do. The tip of the tentacle she’s holding grows pointy and hard a moment before Abigail moves closer to the fight, then plants herself before a tree and starts carving into it.

You don’t know what she’s up to, but you let her play with your tentacle because it feels funny and you like it.

The fight continues, with Everette taunting the monster and Wuffles slowing it down while Charlotte’s whip takes slices out of the monster. Daphne, meanwhile, frets and worries and seems reluctant to toss her bombs so close to her friends.

And then Abigail cheers. “I’ve got it!” she says. “Dreamer, I need aether.”

“Life juice?” you wonder. “Okay. I can get some. Where do I put it?”

Abigail points to a deep hole she made in the trunk in the middle of a circle she carved. It looks a little rough, but workable.

“Okay,” You say as you poke a small tentacle into the hole, then jam another into the ground.

“Oh shoot,” Abigail says. “Everyone, retreat! Now, now, now!”

The others take a moment to move, but they do, leaving the troll looking around all confused.

Then the lifejuice you yoink from the ground fills into the circle Abigail made.

The effect is instantaneous.

Between one blink and the next the entire clearing is filled with a huge tree, one that’s growing sideways out of the tree that Abigail carved into and whose branches are shooting off every which way. Including into and through the troll.

“Wow,” you say. “Good work Abigail!”