Chapter 16: The six of Mossmallow Henge, the Tusk and the Spear

It was a motley company of goadskulls that was before them. The majority of them bore spears and a kind of light shield. Others had more unique equipment, spoils of raids or something custom made. Some wore hardy plants as armour, but it was rare to see any with any armour at all, as it was better to have weapons. There were a few however that wore the skins of beasts that they had slain. In a few cases, the skins had come to life, as clothing threatens to do in Elcon. Many denizen are wary of living clothes.

To these goadskulls however, it was a boon. Normal clothes would, especially if not of their birth materials, cause them no end of troubles. A living skin of an animal though? That wasn’t much different to having a fighting companion on your back.

Standing out from the company were of course the fastest hunters, those who had chased better than their fellows. There were six of them all told.

The first was a thin guy with long legs. These legs were clad in bladed armour. The armour was the colour of polished bone, and indeed the armour had actually been carved from bones by its wearer himself. The blades were a glowing green metal, and looked like they had been scavenged from various daggers and what not.

Sorcerer’s Steel, or steele was that metal. A metal from unearthed bones of mages who died of natural causes.

The other Goadskulls knew him as Triplefoot. He was hopping from one foot to another, but the manner in which he did this made it look like he had three feet. His eyes were a bone-white and green. The greater colour was white.

Beside the hopping Triplefoot was an ominous and curved figure. A goadskull in a robe of red leaves. The robe had the look of scalemail, even though it was just leaves. Lady Joykill was her name. They called her so because her battles were boring.

Towering above these two was a Goadskull clad in crude armour of black rock. He bore a spear as long as he was tall and a shield as wide as he himself was. That this armoured brute had been fast enough to keep up with the others was terrifying. Ran the Brute, was his fitting name. His eyes could not be seen from the darkness of his visor, which instead of a slit for his eyes, just had countless holes.

A fairly dour and sour goadskull was crouched next to these bunch. His crest was broken and running from this gap was a scar that went across his face and all the way down to his waist. His cloak was cloth made from metal, a fortunate find for a goadskull. The metal in this case was another common elconic metal, called only orange hardrock. His spear was completely made from this metal, and looked suspiciously like an oversized needle. The shield of this goadskull was horrifying to look at, and defied description.

It was a modified head of a gargoyle, thus the second material of the goadskull known as G-Slayer was the stone of those mighty denizens. The stone was the greater colour in his eyes.

Second to last, was one goadskull that nobody was too willing to get near. Cackling and rolling about was a goadskull wearing the whole pelt of a savage creature. In life a beast of brown fur with dark purple stripes. The lower half of the beast was some manner of leather, for in life this beast had not legs which it moved upon, but a bouncy sack. The fierce head of this creature had many fangs and a pair of spiked antlers.

However, the fangs, spiked antlers and claws had been replaced with palint. A violet metal formed when scrap metal in a smithy is forgotten about and left under other metal. Naturally smiths that know about this metal have a great deal of trouble producing it.

Mad-Cackletackle was laughing to himself as he watched the adventurers with eyes that were like fire and violet water mixed together. The pelt too watched them, as it had gained new life as living clothes.

The final goadskull was another woman, she was wearing fine chainmail of orange hardrock. Her shield was remarkably bracer shaped, and had an odd part on it that was probably for putting the javelins she had on. The javelins were just orange hardrock. The bracershield however was glittering diamond-like gems, connected like the shell of a turtle.

Her diamond and orange eyes sparkled with mirth.

Gemsparkle was her name, for obvious reasons.

Triplefoot clapped his feet together.

“Well then, by the looks of you lot, you aren’t going to let our prey go, so let’s have a good old bash then eh?” he said.

Ulex and co. readied themselves to fight and break their way out, as they took aggressive poses and Spongy Snaps was about to leap into them, Ran the Brute ran out.

“W-woah, hey guys, don’t get so h-hostile. We just want a friendly little fight!”

“Since you stole our fun away” Lady Joykiller accused.

Spongy Snaps paused in mid leap and turned his confused head to Ulex.

“it‘s a trap, they’ll sneak attack us any moment now!” Kepo warned.

“Goadskulls never sneak attack!” Gemsparkle objected primly.

“a likely story”

“Ehehehe, yeah, just a good ambush or two, haha” Mad-Cackletackle added.

Ulex nodded and his side backed down, the atmosphere relaxed somewhat.

“What do you suggest?” he asked Triplefoot.

Abruptly Triplefoot began doing squats.

“There’s five of you each have to fight one of us!”

Triplefoot pointed out his five fellows with his foot, though G-Slayer slapped the foot away with his shield.

“I’m Triplefoot of the Mossmallow Henge, I hope we’ll have a fun fight strangers! Come on, introduce yourselves to these travellers”

“I-i’m R-ran the b-b-b-brute. Take it easy on me ok?” The massive armoured goadskull stuttered.

“Lady Joykill. We’re all from Mossmallow. You lot are new to the forest, aren’t you?” Since they had appeared, Lady Joykill had not moved her gaze from Eadam. The horse felt quite nervous at this penetrating gaze.

G-Slayer stared at the adventurers and coughed.

“They’re adventurers, I can smell it. Try not to cause too much trouble here. Ah, I’m G-Slayer. Pity you ended our hunt”

Gemsparkle have a little half bow.

“So, adventurers, do you really eat treasure like the elders say?” Gemsparkle asked eagerly.

On the goadskull side, everyone apart from Mad palmed their faces. Mad was ignoring everything else and was sniffing about the adventurers.

“Hey hey, everyone calls me Mad-Cackletackle, but I’m not mad, you can tell right, oh, oh! Hey hey, how about you just let us chase you instead of having a few fights. Wouldn’t that be neat? Wouldn’t that be the tree’s bark?”

“No, I think that’d be the rotten wood” Waufronk objected, he had been chased enough times in his life that he would be glad to cut out any more cases of being chased.

Ulex looked at the goadskulls. There was a good number of them. Skilled and strong fighters. A friendly battle would be better than trying to break through.

“We accept, so how are we going to go about doing this? Ah, sorry I’m Ulex McHeft, the best buff mage in Elcon!”

“Eadam, of Cozzlanga uh I cook”

“Spongy Snaps strong!”

“Gheel, I raise chompers”

Waufronk gave a long sweeping bow.

“Waufronk Heer, ex-duke of the Great Attic, at your service”

Kepo did not introduce herself, she had vanished from Ulex’s head… but Ulex had his suspicions as to what she was up to. He hoped she wouldn’t get them in trouble again.

After hearing this, the other goadskulls who weren’t the six forerunners settled down to watch a good show, a number of them taking waterskins and food out to eat. Triplefoot himself clapped his feet together in joy.

“Yaha! This is great! Good fight! Good fight! Ahem, sorry. Well how about you pick one of yours to fight one of ours and then we pick one of ours to fight yours? We switch about like that and then we let you go about your business?”

“Seems fair, we’ll just have to pick who is going forth first!” Ulex explained.

His partly merry band formed a huddle.

“Not me” Eadam pleaded.

“You’ll have to go eventually Mr. Eadam” Gheel said.

“Well yeah, but you can pick off the stronger one first… wait, you didn’t call me Mr. Horse”

“Don’t get too excited” Waufronk warned.

“Spongy Snap go first, fight Mad. Have fun” Spongy Snaps said.

“Actually, I have a chomper I want to try out in battle”

Beyond this huddle, one of the goadskulls became very confused. “Hey, anyone seen my candied fruit?”

“You probably dropped them back when we were chasing”

“Nobody saw anything?”

“Not all of us have a lovey-dovy wife who makes tasty sweets for us”

“Hey, you don’t have to get jealous, I was just asking if anyone had seen them”

“You bet we’re jealous! Its lemon in the wound!”

A small scuffle broke out. Five of the six forerunners weren’t worried. It would end as soon as Mad felt that joining in would be fun. Nobody heard the small snigger of a thieving conegirl.

“Just leave me the guy with the bone-stuff, threeleg or whatever his name was. That’ll be an easy win for me” Waufronk said.

Spongy Snaps had gone very silent.

“What’s wrong Spongy?” Ulex said, noticing.

“Gheel want fight. This rare. Spongy give Gheel chance”

“Oh, thank you Mr. Snaps, nobody else objects?” Gheel asked.

Everyone nodded their assent and Gheel waddled out.

“I’ll be going first good sirs, a chomper will be fighting on my behalf, I hope you do not mind”

“Its fine, its fine” Triplefoot waved a foot.

“Who you choosing? ComeonComeonComeonComeon” Mad asked.

“Mr. The Brute, would you do me the honour of facing me in fair combat?” Gheel asked.

The armoured giant goadskull paused.

“S-sure”

Without a single clanking sound, Ran slipped over to Gheel, as if he wasn’t even wearing armour.

“Right, first one to admit defeat loses! Go!” Triplefoot said.

Ran leapt forwards, a rush of rock like an avalanche. Gheel was quite relaxed and just put a hand into his mouth and pulled out a chomper.

This one was had a flat face (filled with teeth of course), a cone-like body. Its scales were lumpy and uneven. It was brown with streaks of red and yellow. From its mouth there were also tusks that spread out in a kind of star pattern.

Before it hit the ground it began to spin, when it hit the ground, it was spinning like a top on the tip of its tail. Ran seeing this, knew he couldn’t simply run into the creature, so he turned his spear and jabbed the butt of it into the ground bringing himself to an abrupt stop. He lashed out with his shield as the spinning chomper bore down on him.

Both he and the chomper were flung back, but Ran quickly recovered and dashed at Gheel, ignoring the chomper. However, the spinning of the creature had become faster, and it returned. Once more, Ran had to beat it back with his shield, but this time he was pushed further back and the chomper’s tusks actually left deep scars on his shield.

“Ah, sorry, but I chose you because black rock is fairly easy to replace, I do hope you don’t mind do you?” Gheel inquired.

“T-thanks for th-th-the consideration” Ran said, flinging dirt, rock and root up at the chomper with his spear. The chomper slowed a bit, but making a few circular motions began to gain speed again.

-I can’t let it gain too much speed, otherwise I’ll not be able to deal with it-

Ran charged forward again, shield held in front. The spin-chomper crashed into Ran, but he had braced for this, and thus wasn’t flung back, instead he launched an attack of his own, he thrust his spear at the chomper!

*Clang!*

Tooth met spear and the chomper was flung into the air.

“Haha! T-this one is m-mine!” Ran declared!

The goadskulls collectively cheered, but abruptly stopped.

He pushed forwards to Gheel, but Gheel did not even move to dodge. Ran became perturbed. Something crashed into him from behind sending sparks flying and also causing Ran to tumble off to the side.

Dazed, he escaped his attacker, only to see that it was the spin-chomper, which was now spinning in the air! It furiously assaulted him, clashing again and again, and Ran was helpless as he could only defend.

Then, as suddenly as it started, the assault started, it ended.

“This one is my loss” Gheel said.

Overcoming the ringing in his head, Ran noticed that the spinning chomper was on the ground panting. Its tusks were quite blunt.

“There there, you did a good job” Gheel said, as he took a treat out from his mouth and fed it to the chomper.

“The stamina is a bit lacking still, and the tusks aren’t sharp enough. I’ll have to do more cultivation” Gheel mused.

The goadskulls cheered at their victory.

“Good fight! Good fight!” Triplefoot cried. “Now it’s our choice!”

The goadskulls huddled together, and they began arguing until a cold voice called out.

“I’m taking this choice” Lady Killjoy said.

There was a collective groan from the goadskulls.

“There’s only five of them, can’t you sit this one out?” one pleaded.

“One of those adventurers give me a feeling that I must fight him” Joykill declared.

Everyone sighed.

“Fine, well do it quickly” Triplefoot said, quite displeased.

Nobody was going to argue with Joykill. Not even Mad Cackletackle. Not with her mystic powers.

The robed goadskull swept out towards the adventurers.

“You, with the long face, you and I must fight!”