36 Chapter 36

Aerwyn sat down around the fire in the square for dinner with Sera and Jeren.

"You've really fixed this place up quickly huh. How long has it been? A month since you left Setrhyn?" Jeren motioned his hands as if displaying the city around him while he looked around.

"Just about, we're clearing out the broken building for now and once that's done hopefully the mine will be ready too. I'd like to rebuild some buildings and remake the walls out of stone but that goal is far off in the future... A road to Setrhyn would be nice too but that's at the bottom of the list of things to do."

"That's good, a man should have goals else you'll end up like Jeren." Sera added proudly.

"Hey! What's that supposed to mean? I'm perfectly charming, handsome, and hardworking. I'm the very definition of a Fae'Laran man." Jeren boasted with his chest puffed out but he wasn't much bigger than Aerwyn which only made it seem like a desperate attempt to recover his pride.

"Pfft, more like vain, messy and lazy." Sera laughed at the false bravado. They argued back and forth like siblings for a while before Aerwyn chimed in.

"What are you guys going to Lyr Village for?"

"Just checking in on things. Lyr was only settled a few generations ago and the village is much smaller than Setrhyn so they don't have as many rangers as us. Every now and then if we don't have anything else going on in Setrhyn, we go down to see if they need help with anything." Sera explained.

"Is Lyr far?"

"From here it'll take us about a day of running at full speed, then we just need to ferry across the river near Lyr. If we leave as early as slavedriver Sera likes to we'll probably reach Lyr by the next morning." Jeren put his arms behind his head and laid down as he spoke staring off into the starry night's sky.

They talked for another hour and Aerwyn warned them he would be using his spiders to setup webs around the forest near Ardin, explaining that he intended to leave open a path for them in the future. They soon went to sleep and Aerwyn saw them off the next morning before looking for Erit.

Knowing what he knew now, his plans had changed. He didn't want to give the goblins the opportunity to hunker down without a fight. If he waited the full week, Rorik and his hunting party would certainly slow down construction but it wouldn't be nearly enough to satisfy Aerwyn. Once they fortify the settlement they could just sit inside and use the same tactics he used on Velk's army.

Aerwyn found Erit and the spiders before grabbing Velk and heading south. They arrived a few hundred meters north of the goblin settlement and stayed put on the forest's edge, watching the goblins work.

"Erit i want the spiders to cover the edge of the forest in webs. We're going to bait the goblins into our trap. They only need to be about a meter high and cover a few hundred meters of the forest's edge."

"Master surely we can just charge them, it doesn't matter if there are five hundred or five thousand. They cannot hurt this lovely little spider." Erit proclaimed using her voice magic.

"I'm not worried about the goblins, while their numbers are a problem they shouldn't have steel so you'd be able to kill them all without issue. I'm worried about the hobgoblins, Velk did a pretty good job of slicing your legs off and there's at least two of them in that settlement, maybe more."

"HMPH! Master surely you don't believe that i'd lose to a mere hobgoblin. That Velk was simply so small i didn't even put him in my eyes and he snuck up behind me. If-"

"You've proven my point Erit. If Velk could sneak up behind you hiding amongst fifty goblins then surely Frakki and Glik can sneak up on you amongst five hundred. Just do as i say and have the spiders begin spinning their webs, i want it done quickly." Aerwyn interrupted her with a smile since she too had fallen into his trap. It's just that this was a trap of words since he knew she would be too prideful to admit she had weakness.

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She mumbled some more excuses to herself before sending the spiders on their mission while Aerwyn reached out to Rorik in the darkness. He ordered Rorik to make a distraction so the spiders could finish their work without being spotted.

"AWOOOOOOO!" The sounds of Rorik's howl mixed with roars and screeches echoed across the valley. The goblins poured out from the settlement and headed south like an ant's nest during a heavy storm.

The goblins had returned empty handed as dusk approached and the spiders had long since finished spinning their webs. Aerwyn sat atop Erit's back and waited until the last goblin had entered the gates before taking aim with his staff and firing out a flame lance. It hit the mud caked walls and exploded out in a fiery display of light but didn't pierce through.

Aerwyn hadn't expected it to, the walls were much thicker than the ten to fifteen centimeters his flame lance usually penetrated. As the explosion sizzled out he began firing another and another, constantly bombarding the walls like a cannon.

At this range his accuracy wouldn't be good enough to allow him to hit the same spot more than once, so his best bet was to hope his barrage eventually did enough damage to shatter the walls. After nearly twenty minutes of continuous fire Aerwyn took a break. The walls were damaged but still intact and the goblins made no move to attack.

Aerwyn reached out to Rorik in the darkness once more.

"Rorik, do you think you can damage the walls if you charged it? Even a tiny crack would help."

"..I can try..."

"Good, once you're done run east half a kilometer before heading north. There're spider webs everywhere so be careful."

Night had fallen by the time Rorik and his hunting party appeared outside the settlement. The brexil cats and the goblins immediately ran east leaving only Rorik, the direwolves, and the tenri to assault the walls. Rorik and the direwolves charged the walls causing it to tilt under their immense weight and strength.

After the charge the tenri joined in as well. The beasts began clawing away at the mud and clay that lined the walls until the goblins began lobbing spears from up above. Aerwyn quickly called them back, they had done enough and losing any of them by continuing would be foolish.

When they were clear from the walls Aerwyn began his bombardment once more. With each blast the walls shook and it was apparent that they would soon fall. The goblins appeared to have realized this fact too and began to swarm out from the settlement just as Rorik and the rest reached him.

Aerwyn lit the flames on his eyes so he could get a better look in the darkness like he had done in the cavern against Erit. Night became no different from day and he could see three hobgoblins in the rear of the force. They were still too far to make out any features other than they were larger and not green.

The goblins appeared to go into a frenzy, picking up speed as more and more flame lances exploded within their ranks. Aerwyn didn't bother firing at the hobgoblins, he knew from experience that they were fast enough to dodge if they knew he was aiming at them.

The goblin horde took no more than a minute to reach the forests edge and began getting caught in the spider's webs. Their speed made the first few ranks crash into each other, entangling many more than Aerwyn had expected to trap when he thought up this plan.

The goblins that he had killed with his flame lance's had begun to wake. They charged the hobgoblins in the rear of the horde, sensing the threat to their master but Aerwyn needed them to flee so he quickly shut his eyes and entered the darkness ordering them to escape.

Opening his eyes once more he found himself not in his original position atop Erit. His back was sprawled against her massive abdomen as if she had jumped and knocked him back while he was in the darkness. Thinking nothing of it he moved back in position and the sight of two hobgoblins that he was unfamiliar with caught his attention.

The first one he saw was holding a crude bow and was posing like it had just loosed an arrow. It had the lightest skin he had ever seen on a hobgoblin and it appeared rather pale in contrast to the dark leather it wore. The most surprising thing was the two bumps on the creatures chest indicating that she was quite possibly a female hobgoblin.

The hobgoblin next to her looked very much like Velk except it had darker skin and he appeared to not share Velk's affinity for fighting in nothing but a rag covering his dangly bits. This hobgoblin was wielding a sword and wearing oversized chain mail that reached his feet like a dress.

"KWEEEEEE! KWEEEEEEEEEEEE!"

The sounds of Rin and Ren screeching erratically brought his gaze down to them and it was only then that he saw a fifteen centimeter shaft sticking out from the right side of his chest.