It is odd to watch lightning strike. On Earth, it moves so fast that you don’t truly see the fullness of the movement. It also wasn’t something that you saw leap off of someone’s hand. Watching the electrically-supercharged-bolt of magically induced plasma move from the crazy dancing goblin’s hand toward me like a professional pitcher threw a fastball was terrifying. Being hit by said bolt of plasma confirmed my body’s built-in terror identifier.

I felt almost as if I was back in Sam’s office. It is kind of amazing the things that your brain puts together as you see pain moving toward you. The thing was, I knew this wasn’t natural lighting. Sure it looked like it, and it was going to kind of feel like it. However, this was from a spell, and as I had just seen with my rain, magic is odd.

I tried to move out of the way, which again showed this was magic lightning. Tried was the operative word. The bolt hit me, and I watched it splash like a massive drop of water into a pond. Lightning, at least this lightning, had a physical mass which, with the speed it hit me, was enough to fold me over like a cartoon. My hands hit my feet as I went up and back before slamming into the ground.

The pain that hit my chest was that of burning heat. It was almost gone by the time my back slammed onto the ground. I saw my health bar show that I was down to a sliver of health, and then I felt my new armor kick in.

As Lannah rushed to my side as I watched my health climb back up to normal. While I was healing, I wasn’t moving. I had a stunned debuff with a 30-second countdown on it.

I guessed I was moving, just I wasn’t controlling that movement. Instead, I was doing my own version of the worm or the fish flop. My muscles were all spasming like I was still hooked up to an electrical outlet.

The girl just knelt there next to me. She didn’t even try to put a hand on me. Which I guess was fair as I was flopping all over the place, and I even saw some blue arching over me. It was the full 30-seconds of the stunned that I flopped.

When the timer was over, I sat up and looked down at my chest. My fur was singed in a spider pattern that started on my chest and went up and over my right arm. I felt bad. I must have looked like I felt, bad, because of the expression on Lannah’s face was one of horror.

“Your still alive?”

“Yup,” I croaked out.

“With how it threw you I thought you had to be dead.”

“Well, I think if my armor hadn’t started to heal me I would be. It sucked and hurts. Even if I am healed up.”

“How much damage was that?”

“Well with the way it happened it looks like it was about 15. I started to heal before it finished causing damage which is why I am still alive.” I said as I stood. “Let’s crawl forward this time and take a peek. No need getting blasted again.”

Once I got up to the edge again, I saw that the goblins had not retreated. I had hoped that they would back off once I rained fire down. However, it appeared that they were here for the long haul.

Most of the goblins had retreated back behind the three casters. They were too far back for me to trigger an ID on, but I felt they had to be the goblins’ version of a shaman.

The casters were yelling at the others and pointing toward my home. It was like they were trying to rally their horde to attack again.

I was zilch on my mana, and my armor’s mana was mostly gone. I might could do a fire sprinkle right now, but that would require me to make another rain rune. Other than the two bows, which I had all of 5 arrows for, I didn’t think I had anything that could damage where they were.

I would be out on mana for the next few hours after my attack and taking the hit. Which meant that I needed to be working on solutions to the problems we faced right now. Like how do I fight that many goblins without dying?

I crawled away from the cliff, slowly backing up. I didn’t want to give those magic users another chance to put me down for good.

When I got back to camp, I sat down and started mulling the problem that we were facing.

“Lannah, so my hope with my camp was alway to be able to out last a siege. I have a good bit of food up here and thought that I would be able to fish for more. However, after seeing the range of the lightning I know that we are in a serious problem. Any ideas how we can get out of this one?”

Lannah was pacing back and forth. She had recovered most of the way but still had a slight hitch in her gait. She was stressed, and even though I didn’t know her well, I could tell. “I don’t have a clue. I am glad that I didn’t get eaten, and I am happy that I lived another day. But, I just don’t see us beating that many.”

“Got any spells?”

She started to laugh. I wished the joke I told hadn’t been a desperate plea for something that could save us. She dropped herself down to the ground and drew in a breath before she started to sob.

I understood the feeling. I really did; this was one of my let me act like I have emotions at times. But, no, I got it; it looked like we were going to die, and there wasn’t much we could do about it.

The only thing we had going for us right now was it seemed like even the casters were too dumb to build a ramp or ladder to get up. Which meant that I could take a few more out.

Lannah got it together after just a few more moments. “I have a few spells but none of them will get us out of this.”

“Well what are they? Perhaps we can figure something out.”

“Fine, I have identify. It is what I used to see that frying pan was magical. I have a communication spell that lets me send a message to my dad, I can let him know that I am alive right now but that I don’t know where I am. If we knew then someone could be here in a few days. I also have a low level heal minor wound.”

“Okay, so identify won’t help at all. If you haven’t already reach out to your dad. Maybe he has someway to find you. If so we might can hold out long enough.…”

“Sure. I don’t think he does otherwise he would have already but I will try.”

I watched her get into a better sitting position, close her eyes, and then she began the spell. I should have asked how long it would take things like that. It wasn’t a short spell, or perhaps it was. For all I knew, it was two-way communication, and she was talking with her dad.

While she was doing that, I took a peek back at our welcomed guests. When I got to the edge to look over again, most of the goblins were gone. The casters were still there, along with a handful of the others, but most of the rest had left.

I wish I had seen if they ran or if they were following directions. My guess was they were up to something. I just didn’t know what it was, and that bugged me.

I moved back to camp, and Lannah still was sitting there. Looked like she must have still been in the spell, so I sat down to get to work.

I grabbed the dark wood short bow. If I was going to be dealing with a ranged enemy, then I needed to get some range as well. I might not have spells, but I had a few levels with the bow.

I needed to make sure that this bow was the best I could make it right now. Next, I added the strengthen runes along with lighten, and lastly, I added stop rot. I then carved a small socket to go into the weapon for where the core would go.

I would need to wait till I had the mana to make another core. It was going to be hard to balance my need for a better weapon versus my desire to strike the goblins now. If I waited until I got the bow ready before attacking, they might overrun me. However, if I attacked now, I might not get enough of them in my attacks and waste my mana.

It was that horrid balancing game that I had been playing since I got here. Do I stay or do I go. If I move then, it takes more effort to get food and be safe. If I stayed, then I might get killed here when a town was only a day away. Opportunity cost with mana, enemies, and my life.