“Can you search those things for anything useful?” I asked Isabella as I started trying to move and shift some of the makeshift junk that was the blockade so I could open a path wide enough for the two of us to crawl through it.

“I’m on it,” she replied was starting to strip search the goblin I’d slammed all over the place and whose life she’d finished consuming to help restore some of her lost energy.

“So how’d you get them to chase you like that?” Now that it was over, I had to ask. “You know, I almost came running out to help you when you started screaming.”

Isabella giggled up from where she was searching the goblin. “Aren’t you the sweetest thing. Kissy kissypoo Drake!” All I could do is try to ignore her teasing. I’ve learned by now, Isabella thinks it’s cute to fluster me, and I think it’s her odd way of trying to ease the mood. Seeing that I wouldn’t rise to the bait this time, she simply giggled again and then finally told me.

“I used my magic to make a phantasm that looked like the hallway and wall in front of the barricade; very similar to how I’d concealed the door to the teacher’s lounge with the tacks. I didn’t have anything to enchant to hold the magic, so I had to sustain it myself, and that’s a large area to cover. It took a large portion of magic for me to block their view with a fake wall, but I did it.”

She sounded quite proud of herself, and from the way it sounded, I don’t blame her one bit! A ‘air wall’ which covered a ten-meter wide hallway, and do so convincingly enough that the guards never even noticed the difference. I’d thought her phantasm magic might be useful for movies or something minor, but she took the skill to a whole other level!

“Once the wall was created,” she continued, “it was a simple matter to dash to the other side and down the hallway, where I dropped the magic sustaining the fake wall. Once I knew you were in place and ready, I made an image of Lunchmeat and ran past the barricade while yelping, screaming, and trying to protect my poor naked self from the terrible little beastie after me. I couldn’t hold and move an image that complex very far, and I was afraid it was starting to break up before I got all the way across the hall to where they couldn’t see it any more, but the little idiots never noticed it if it did. I think they were just too busy drooling over a naked cutie being chased down by one of their own.

“After that, I just ran into the room where you were waiting, and it was a simple matter of the hounds chasing the fox. The fact that they couldn’t all climb out at once worked against them as it staggered how they got to us and let us deal with them a few at a time. It worked perfectly, if I do say so myself!”

“Yeah,” I told her, “I think it worked perfectly as well. But,“ I told her honestly, “I didn’t really like you using yourself for bait like that.”

Isabella just giggled and blew me a kiss. It didn’t seem like she had a single worry about anything going wrong! It’s amazing how strong she is!

I also have to admit one thing when it comes to goblin’s building heaps of junk – they’re frigging amazing at it too! The way things were stacked together, I had to tug on one thing just to find it pinned in by another, which was in turn locked into place with another piece of junk. I felt like I was trying to work some sort of impossible 3-dimensional puzzle. And, as much as I hated to admit it, brute force wouldn’t work in this case either. Stupid Jello-Muncher had pushed inwards on the junk several times trying to force its way in through the barricade, and all it’d accomplish was mashing things tighter together which made trying to unpack the crap even harder!

And the worst part of this whole stinking puzzle?

I knew we were on a timer and it was counting down second by second. Slowly I worked out one chair. Then a few pieces to what looked to be broken door frame. Then a trash can. Another chair. Piece by piece, I ever so slowly dug open the corner where the goblins had been using to climb in and out. After a while, I noticed Isabella wasn’t in the hallway with me anymore, but I could still keep an eye on her through the party window and it reassured me that she was still safe.

After a while, she came back and sat cross-legged down on the ground off to my side just a little. She stared at me and stared at the junk pile, and after a bit, she started giving me directions. “The chair on the left. No, not that one. The one beside it.” In some ways, it was annoying with her micro managing the operation, but I have to admit I was making better progress. I suppose she could see the puzzle better than I could by sitting back away from it.

Finally, after I’d thought I’d shifted enough to move a mountain, Isabella said, “That should do it.” I have to admit, I was shocked! I was thinking it was going to take a whole day to dig out the tunnel, but it’d only taken about an hour or so instead.

Backing up, I could see the gap that Isabella was pointing to, and even though it looked rather narrow, I also thought we should be able to squeeze through it. As Isabella was getting up, I was leaving. I wasn’t going to go through the tunnel we’d made just yet; there was one thing that I thought might be worth the delay before going in.

Moving over, I grabbed up the burnt goblin’s corpse and tossed it over my right shoulder, and then I grabbed the goblin I’d smashed into the wall repeatedly and dragged it by one arm back over to the room where the others had been killed. There, I snatched the arm of another of the little beasts with my other hand and I started pulling the bodies down the hallway with me.

I don’t know when the goblins might change shifts or anything, but I wasn’t too frightened of them. We’ve handled small groups of the beasts several times now, and I figured we could do the same once more. The thing that worried me more than anything was the ideal of Jello-Muncher sneaking up on us. I knew we’d been an hour or more already, and he took about half an hour to consume a corpse. I’d just go make an offering to my favorite Jello Guardian and keep him happy and out of my hair for a while longer.

Isabella bounced along easily beside me and the whole trip to the steps and then back to the barricade probably didn’t take us any longer than half an hour. From my calculations, that put us back to having as much time free from the Jello-Muncher’s influence as we’d first had this morning – and the barricade was now open and we could move inwards!

The wiggle through the wall wasn’t too terrible, but it was definitely easier for Isabella than it had been for me. Her frame was just naturally smaller than mine was, and I was jealous of how she could move so easily through that mess. Once on the other side, we both took a moment to look a little nervously at each other.

Up until this point, we’d basically only had one way to go – down the hallway until we ran into something. Easy something, mean something, dangerous something – from the roof to here, it was simply move forward and find a way around the something. But now? Now we had a maze that we had to decide how to get through.

If we continued down this main hallway, we’d eventually get to the central hall and the elevator. Which, that sounds simple enough, and I suppose it normally was. The problem now was the fact that there were a dozen hallways which ran east and west like the hall we used to get to this central hall, and somewhere in the maze of classrooms and those interconnecting side halls, was where the goblins were. If we just sauntered up to the exit, we’d most than likely end up with the goblins being in one of those side tunnels or classrooms, and they’d come up behind us and swarm us.

I truly wasn’t certain how to proceed, and I just stood there and started up the main hallway and cross halls for several long minutes while thinking.

“Any idea?” I finally asked. “As far as I can tell, the goblins could be anywhere. I’m thinking we’ll probably need to check each side tunnel and the classrooms connected to it, before we go on up the hall. We don’t want them to sneak up on us and catch us from behind.”

Isabella’s mouth twitched a few times and she looked like she was debating something within herself. Finally she let out a deep sigh and looked troubled. “I think I know where there might be a weapon that can help,” she finally grudgingly admitted.

“A weapon?” I asked.

“Yeah.” Slowly she shook her head as if resigning herself to talk about something she’d rather not. “Off to the left, the next hall up, there’s a weapon there that can probably help. But, I imagine it’ll kill you.”

She was being so cryptic, I couldn’t help but be curious. Anything that could help us had to be a good thing, right? Slowly I started walking towards the left hallway. I figured the safest way to get to where she was talking would be to simply go down the first hall here, make certain it was clear of goblins and things that might sneak up on us, and then move through the classrooms and come out in the second hall.

“So tell me more about this weapon.” I wanted to know a bit about what was out there that might just kill me.

“Well, she’s..”

“She’s?” I interrupted. I thought we were talking about a weapon? I was getting confused again. Isabella giggled and then slapped me lightly on my butt. I guess she was starting to pick that habit up from me. Can’t say I minded it though.

“Yes,” Isabella continued, “as I was saying, SHE is probably still here and probably still sitting in her classroom waiting for the bell to ring before she can go elsewhere. “

“And who’s SHE?” I asked.

“She is the Lady Brandr Bergstrom, and I can’t imagine that the goblins would be able to deal with her easily. If anyone survived, and probably even thrived, through this mess, I’d imagine it’d be her. Brandr’s father is one of those tall and rugged men of Scandinavian lineage. Bergstrom is an old name and means “Mountain Stream”, and it’s said that his family earned the title by being as unrelenting and unstoppable as one. He was a teacher for many martial art classes – especially the sword style classes. Kendo. Fencing. Kenjutsu. Gatka. Who knows how many other forms he studied; he was one of those lifelong martial art maniacs.

“Her mother is one of those ribbon dancers from Japan. She’s just as beautiful and graceful as her husband is big and powerful. I’ve actually met her a few times, and she’s fairly intimidating herself. But Brandr? She’s on a completely different level.

“Her father wanted a son. Her mother wanted a daughter. Instead, they got Brandr, and she was broken at birth. She can’t speak, so she never cried or did the things that little kids were supposed to do. Her mother might be graceful, but she’s also from one of those backwater little villages with a lot of superstitions. She couldn’t believe that she gave birth to a broken child, so she ignored her. Her father had no idea how to deal with a daughter, so he fell back on the only thing he knew to bridge the gap between them: his fighting styles. That’s why he named her Brandr; it means ‘Blade.’

“From the day she was born, to the day of The Crackening, Brandr has trained relentlessly with a blade. She’s been invited all over the world to spar with masters of the blade, and she hasn’t lost a bout anywhere since she was fifteen.”

“Why not mention someone like her earlier?” If we could find her, she could go a long ways towards helping us survive this mess from the way it sounds!

“Because she’s a mess.” Isabella just shook her head. “Her father died a few years back, and her mother doesn’t accept her. She can’t talk, so not a lot of people interact with her. All she does is practice, practice, practice. Go to one sparring match here, then another one there. She’s turned her back on people and turned her heart to the sword. She won’t even acknowledge you’re there, unless you’re there to fight.

“Her father was a mighty man, but cancer was mightier. Before he died, I think he was trying to offer her some words of comfort by telling her something like, ‘Someday there’ll be a man who can get past your blades and then win your heart.’ Her father was telling her that someday she’d find love, but she took it as his dying wish that she should save her heart until someone came along with enough strength to claim it.”

“And since then, she’s just shut down into her own world of practice, blade, and contest. She’ll never come with us, unless you can beat her. And with the world as screwed up as it is, and with the goblins in this area, I imagine Brandr has fully embraced the old ways of the blade.

“Blood and battle, no defeat until death!

“She’s trained herself to become a living weapon, and from what I know of her, I doubt the goblins could take her down so easily. They’ve probably came to fear her just as much as they’ve came to fear The Guardian. And truth be told, it might be easier to take down the goblins than it would be to defeat her. She hasn’t lost in years.”

Isabella paused for a moment so her words could sink in for me. “Are you certain that we want to go after her now? We might be better off if we try and find and clear out the goblins around here first.”

I had to stop and carefully think about it: To Blade or to Battle?