Elian hadn't brought arcane training back up yet. Damien was patient, she wasn't the type to just ignore his request without explanation, so he waited. Waiting wasn't difficult with the relative excitement going around lately. Two major events coincided with each other soon after he had expressed an interest in learning arcane magic. First, a new family moved into the village and then a group of slimes had taken up residence in the northern plains.

The new family was a small family of goblins who moved it. The father was a stout man, no more than three and a half feet if Damien was to guess. His head was wide. It was almost as wide as it was tall. He walked with a hunch whenever Damien had seen him which Damien believed was from the farm labor he was seen doing. He was scrawny but did have some visible muscle mass most notably extremely large biceps and calves. Despite his odd anatomy, Damien didn’t think of him as ugly, his appearance was somewhat endearing, though Damien may just have an odd sense of aesthetic. Unlike the father who was similar to the stereotypical idea of goblins that Damien held, the rest of the family was surprisingly human looking.

The mother was taller than her lover, having several inches on him. She was graced with a slim angular face that complimented her lean physique. While she was slim, her body was closer to an athlete than malnourished. She had large blue eyes and had short mousy hair cut into a bob. The two children both took more from their mother than their father. They both had similar faces to the mom, but both were noticeably plumper than their parents. The siblings were graced with pudgy cheeks and didn’t have the same hardness on their arms as their parents. The daughter was taller than the son, and both children had their mother's mousy hair. The daughter was longer and flowed down her back having no kinks or curls. The son’s head was messily styled, intertangled with itself like he just got out of bed. Both kids had rapidly assimilated with the group of elves and dominated the children games they played.

“Are they tracking me via smell? Are you fucking kidding?” Damien exclaimed as he pumped fae energy through his body to keep running. Goblins were a tracking race and had extremely acute senses and the duo was exploiting this advantage. With new players, the group switched to playing tag with two people being it, and it was the goblin siblings turn.

When he had tried to be tricky and hide close by, he saw the brother sniff the air and then beeline in his direction. Damien had dashed off but the two were dedicated chasers and both rushed him down for quite a while before the brother noticed Lance in a nearby tree and followed him instead.

‘It’s like I'm being hunted,’ Damien mused, forcing the burning of his lungs out of his mind as he gulped down more air. He was using fae energy to rejuvenate himself, but his supply of internal energy was running low and had been sprinting for a long time. He couldn’t pull more to him without time to focus and he wasn’t graced with an opportunity.

The elder sister was chasing him and he could hear her in the distance as grass crunched under her feet. He was hoping to break off from her so he could catch his breath and recuperate. Unfortunately for Damien, her pace was fast she was moving at the same speed he was and made it look like a jog. He had distanced himself with a few tricky movements as they ran through the forest but hadn’t gained any more distance in a while.

‘I need to outsmart her,’ Damien conceded to himself after trying to beat her in physicality. It hurt his pride that he was being caught up to by a child, but nothing could fix that right now. Despite playing a game, everyone was fiercely competitive and giving it their all.

Damien analyzed his surroundings, searching for something to make a difference. He saw a thick tree with low hanging branches and an idea sprang to mind. Damien turned fast, keeping up his pace and rushed towards the tree. He jumped as he reached the tree’s base, hands reaching out towards the first branch and yanked himself up rapidly. Kicking off that branch, he caught the next as he progressed up the tree. He slowly pulled himself up. As he glanced downward, he saw Selka clawing her way up quite literally. Her nails were burrowed into the tree’s trunk and defying all logic, supported her body. Both of the siblings had removed their shoes back when they first started and she just revealed why as both her hands and feet dug into the tree. She was already halfway up to Damien’s position and he was winded. Damien stubbornly forced himself onto his feet and prepared to jump to a tree nearby. He wasn’t about to lose.

Or so he thought. As he leaped, hands vying to grab the branch in front of him. He hooked his hands around it, but the momentum was too much for him and he fell several dozen feet, still moving forward as his body retained most of its momentum.

He crashed into the ground, legs barely slowing him before they flailed forward causing him to land on his rear. The fall had hurt. His feet were aching and his knee felt weak. His tailbone pulsed in pain as his eyes welled up with tears. Blinking them back, Damien resigned himself to his loss as he saw as Selka slowly made her way down the tree and skipped towards him.

After the game, Damien found out that only Saria had avoided capture. Lance was caught trying to make his way down the tree he was spotted in earlier, Kera was chased for the better part of an hour before finally collapsing out of exhaustion, and My’til was caught trying to hide in some bushes. A new tag hierarchy was established that formed a deep rivalry between the old guard and the new talent.

While Damien amused himself with the dramatization of their tag game, Lance had helped him walk back home as his legs still weren’t all the way there. He tried to heal it with his usual method but he was drained of magic and in a bit too much pain to focus on pulling natura from his environment. Fae energy was a lot harder to control when he in pain if it wasn’t generated by his body.

When he eventually got back to his house his mom gave him an ointment for the pain and swelling and sent him on his way. She was focused on devising something to deal with the slimes and hadn’t had much time to focus on him.

The slimes had migrated deeper into the plains moving away from the forest. They were also quite a bit closer to the village. Thankfully none had headed into town yet, but defenses were being mounted as a precaution. Damien spent the next few hours in bed resting and practicing with fae energies before eventually lulling off to sleep.