Chapter 33

The Saga of The Grass Knight Part 4

There were so many goblins. “It’s not working.” I snarled gritting. ‘Think! Think!’ I internally screamed to myself, whilst moving Amelia to shake off the green horde that was swarming atop her. Goblins had noticed that the plate mail of my mecha could be easily removed from the rest of the layering. With that in mind, goblins began looting the protective pieces, lifting them up like trophies whilst getting pierced in the mix.

“Oona!” I shouted. I recalled that I had given her vital instructions when things turned dire. Seeing no other paths I could take at this point, I settled for escape as my only option. ‘But how?’ I was still singing my Active Skill, as I had pondered a way of escape from this stockpile of bodies and violence.

“Through the right gauntlet!” I said out loud. Suddenly, I tilted Amelia’s helm at the wrong time---receiving a sharp rusty spear tip that had nearly decapitated me inside the helm. “Verdant hells.” I cursed a thicket of agrarian cusses. Someone could journey through the right arm compartments and breakout----when the hand compartment detaches. But I need to time it right, and only one of us can go.

“Peb!” I called.

“Yersh?” Peb answered, a gravel of crunched stones garbling his reply. From the sounds of it, it seemed that Peb was binging on his storage of stones. Taking the last minutes of life to binge through his lifetime supply before the end, whilst I was considering a way to get him out of this debacle.

Oh woe to me, on reconsidering the value of both of us living after this disaster. One too thick to comprehend the complication we are in, and the other too avaricious to know any better. And you know what the kicker was? I did not know which one was who. This was my mistake to make, my repercussions to receive. Peb was just the following participant, too null by the feature of craving exotic stones.

“Get to the end of the right arm!” I commanded, my teeth gritting at the somber mood calming the storm inside my mind. No choice on second-guessing, I resolved myself into the course I had chosen. I had lived half a life than some, it was more than enough for me to go out with a bang. Hopefully, the doors shut tight, when I exit this life.

“Whysh?” He garbled back, suspicious.

“Just do it!”

“Okay, you owe me!”

“Goddess be damn, greedy sidekicks.” I snarled, a smile opening my lips to show my clenched teeth. Peb again, making me reconsider the merits of sacrificing. Well, at least I don’t have to put up being covered in feces, or Wink’s wink, anymore. I guess, there’s always a silver lining to my dire predicament.

With my mood turning morose, I cast the Invoke song again, with the same lyrics on the tip of my tongue and a different strategy in my mind. Granted not a good one, but at least I’ll be able to save one life from my thesis of stupidity. Absurd isn’t it? The technological genius of this age, marked by the ambition and lack of wisdom granted to those too brash to mull over.

Trial and error, trial and error, my path will always lead me to those two recurring events, like a program script that is riddled with bugs. There, the moment I had been waiting for, an opening gap to the blue sky through the mixed collage of green and metal.

Lifting what was left of the right gauntleted hand, through the mire of green, I readied my mind and self to detach the frame for Peb’s hoisted escape. I hoped Oona, in all her perceived notions of me, grasped the gluttonous mass with a curse on her lips for me. I smiled at the notion. 'What do carries say, when they carry a team to defeat?'

“Time to rage quit.”

Suddenly, green gaps that had conformed to surround my vision began to lessen, dropping off to show the afternoon glare of the sun. Goblins in their rusted helms began to swirl off my mecha, hurdling out by the turbulent currents of wind. But it was not the currents of the wind, but the current of a green after-image streaming and twirling like a blur. It was a 1-meter long grass spear, spinning, smacking goblins to the side, retracting back then extended for lift, it was Teka and his grass made spear.

Like a tornado, drifting down on the soil, revolving into a whirlwind, motioning into force; Teka twirled, retracted and extended, cutting and smacking a swathe of green giants in his flux. Teka the Grass Soldier, was twirling like an expert dancer, dancing his song against the currents of giants amidst blood and wind. He was a small man, using the bodies he felled, like leverages for his extended lifts---giving me and my mecha the respite from the masses of weight that was once atop her.

Scripting Amelia to stand, I searched for the vibro-blade that had fallen, whilst witnessing the brilliance of Teka, the Grass soldier. He was like a hero from those storybooks, fighting, and felling giants in his wake. A hero for the ages with a familiar grass scarf---following him like a stream, as it fluttered its end. The grass folk of his age, unrestrained by size or weight. He was one with the wind and one with the grass against the giant wave he faced.

He ended his dance, by landing atop my helm, in front of the plumage he had sequestered in most of our journey here. A sentinel to our metal giant, a guardian for the fair folks within.

“Came to save your green and stony hides. And I’m quite dizzy of it---to be honest.” Teka shouted with a gritted grin, his face bloodied by the blue blood of the goblins he had slain. He sounded jubilant when I heard his voice. Shocked and amazed at his entrance, I just sat there, comprehending the visceral entity that was Teka.

“Attack!” A familiar gruff voice shouted. It was Marcus, commencing a flank attack on the distracted horde. I grinned then, closing my jaw drop at Teka. Arrows rain above, piercing furrows into goblins atop the grass plains. Towns guards and civilian militia with their spears and their swords charge into the distracted mob. From my estimation, at the numbers, the goblin horde had dwindled in live bodies by my mechanical path through them and the restraining massacre I led them in.

Suddenly, I heard the berserker roar of a troll in rage. His voice, aggrieved by the imminent destruction of his warband. I turned Amelia to the blue stony giant. The troll’s red eyes were glaring at my mecha and grass folk with the accusing rage of low empathy. He charged.

“Oh shite!”

I analyzed the field of living and dead goblins around me, searching for my mecha’s vibro-sword. It was the only way I could escape this, for I don’t think anything can stop this troll in his focus rampage towards me. The vibro-sword was a few paces to the right of me, clenched by a dead goblin, who was ignorant enough to touch the once vibrated edge.

Amelia had no armor, her tempo was still high, the inverted grass was still poking out from the grass frame. Which was still active with the grass connections and music boxes within. A few goblins had rallied from the troll’s outburst, running ahead before the thudding steps of the troll charging for me.

“Teka, I just need a moment?” I anxiously asked.

“A moment is enough.” He snarled. I stirred Amelia to run through the goblins that were deterring my path to the vibro-sword. Teka twirled his spear, atop my helm, as Amelia bent forward over to collect the vibro-swords handle from the deadly clutches of the dead goblin below.

The troll had leaped and charged at the side of my Mecha. I spun and ducked from the large swing of the modified log. Teka with his small weight and high strength jumped over the amalgamated weapon to then land atop it. At the end of the troll’s swing, in those sparse moments before fixing into another pose to swing, Teka acted, sprinting for distance to vault off the log---and diving straight for the troll’s head, with the extending grass spear.

The protruding tip of the grass spear, pierced through the left red eyeball of the troll, extending more by the force of the projection. In the end, the spear's tip burst out from the lower back of the troll’s head. But the troll was still alive, to my utter disbelief.

Hoping it was just the last spasm of life, the troll was animating, I pressed the pebble that would script a connection to the grass links of the vibro-sword, so it could vibrate. I swiveled and swung. Cutting a furrow through the troll’s stomach with the vibrated edge.

The troll gargled then spoke. “Regen-Regeneration!”

Suddenly the wounds on his stomach began to close rapidly in the span of several seconds to my horrification. The troll had dropped his modified log from his reaction to Teka's surprising assault. He motioned to slap Teka away from hanging on the 1-meter spear that was still lodged in the troll’s left eye.

Teka swung off the grass spear, onto the troll’s shoulder then jumped down to camouflage inside the grass foliage below. Relieved at his actions, I performed another swing, this time at the leg. But was suddenly battered away from the troll’s flailing arms, shoving my mecha a few paces back.

With my vibro-sword shaking the blue blood of the troll, I directed my mecha’s visors to the troll’s disfigured face. Goblins, ogres, and humans were fighting aways from us as we stared down at each other in our moment of abeyance. I had to think of a way to kill this, ‘goddess be damn troll.’

In the winding haze of the afternoon winds, I smelt the burning odor of smoke. Without moving Amelia’s help, I stood up from the cockpit to notice a smokey trail at the far left behind the troll. It was the plasma sword, still burning its air-fueled currents of electricity. ‘The heat, of course, that would stop the regeneration.’ The troll hadn’t noticed yet.

‘But how was the plasma sword there?’

Then I saw him, Teka the Grass Soldier, clutching the rubber pommel that had the metal gauntlet melted fixed to it. He was dragging the plasma blade through the grass, withstanding the blistering heat that the sword was permeating out. ‘This was it!’

The moment Teka propped the sword up, with his small grass frame, to pierce the sky asunder with the brilliant light of the blade, I acted. I ran the few paces that were left to me, slashing the right side of the troll’s leg with the vibro-sword, making the troll lose his center as he tried to fight back by flailing his arms. A gap opened up in his assault, which prompted me to stir Amelia to shove the troll to trip, motioning him to fall to the right.

Teka held the pommel of the plasma sword to point right behind the troll’s back as he fell, a gritted determination on his seared face. The tip of the plasma sword went through skin, muscles, and cartilage, straight through where the heart was situated. The sword burst out of the chest with simmering heat, as the troll collapsed onto the ground atop the last glimpses of Teka and the grass around.

The troll gasped calling out in his final pleas. “Regeneration...Regen...Regen...Re….”

The Troll leader of the goblin horde of the Artolian Mountains died then with his final pleas in silence, still hoping for the active skills of his classification to respond. The last sputtering of electricity had finally stammered out from the enchanted sapphire, shutting down the lethal radiant glow of the sword.

My face, disbelief of the victory, shouted “We did it!”

Abruptly, I froze in sudden anxiousness as I recalled Teka, beneath the dead giant. With urgency, I stirred Amelia to the side to shove the colossus weight of the troll, off my friend. I paused grasping, interpreting the information I had gathered when I had peered down where Teka was situated.

Sheltered by stubborn grass, unflattened by the fall, laid Teka, indented and huddled around in an egg shape. I lifted the visor of Amelia’s helm, vaulting out of my cockpit, as my mecha collapsed to kneel. I landed on the soil with a thud, my soles leaving as I sprinted towards Teka and his prone form.

I froze, comprehending, and unraveling the information of my sights. Beholding the nearly burnt-out carcass of a rival I called a friend.

“Teka, you shouldn’t be resting. The battle hasn’t ended yet.”

The silence was all that responded from the prone and huddled form of Teka. I took my last lumbering steps toward him, my heart heavy and burdensome when I tried to breathe. I saw a glimmer of green inside his huddled form. I shifted to an angle, glimpsing at Sera’s grass woven scarf, protected from the heat and soil.

Teka’s body had sheltered the grass scarf from the searing heat that the plasma sword had expunged. His back and half his face, crisped and burnt against the air. His last act was to protect his most cherished memory of someone he had loved.

While goblins yelled retreat, and humans hollered victory, I crumpled down to my knees, sobbing the stream to feed the soil beneath, next to the grass soldier protecting his heart under the canopy of grass leaves.