Ralph

“Naturally! This is the third time this month the northern field has been griefed. I’m done with this, mark my words!” Ralph was having a hard time. As a man who’d been living on his family homestead his entire life, farming was all that he knew. Honestly, Ralph was a really good farmer in most circumstance.

A few years back his father had finally retired. What Ralph hadn’t expected was for his father to sell the farm land and move up north to live a life of leisure in his old age. His entire adulthood, Ralph had been operating under the assumption that he and his family were going to inherit the farm since they’d been living there and helping bring in the harvest every year.

That had not been a good conversation, so much screaming and yelling between him and his old man. It had even escalated to a physical altercation which, embarrassingly, Ralph had lost. There is no shame losing to a man forty-years your senior if his passive earth affinity is greater than your own. At least, that’s what Ralph told his wife when she was laughing in is face while he packed their things to set out east.

So they’d settled down in Ostlind as crofters. It wasn’t an ideal situation for him or his wife and son, but he figured that they would at least be able to make enough money to buy their own land eventually. Unfortunately as Roger got older, he showed less and less interest in learning to farm. He ended up working the small farm by himself, quickly finding out he wasn’t as good a farmer as he’d thought he was. When his son finally come of age to have his affinity unlocked and found out he was an active fire, he’d stopped assisting on the farm entirely.

“Stupid child…” Between the difficulties of farming the land on his own and the thugs who ran Ostlind taking almost the entire yield every season, Ralph’s options weren’t looking too great. He’d almost given up before he learned about the settlement to the south, Annahmia. The mayor here had even given him a large plot of land as his own, only paying taxes on what he grew for the first couple years before property taxes!

Of course, like everything he’d earned in life, something was trying to take it away from him. Between his wife screaming and assaulting him so frequently, his son trying to disown him due to some sense of arrogance he’d gotten from finding out he was a “mage”, and this damnable demon hedgehog destroying his field, Ralph was at the end of his line.

His chain was pulled too tautly in too many directions, and something had to give.

Ralph’s neighbors, the Lupanes and their pet human Jeremy, didn’t have their fields assaulted at all. The terrifying beast probably came out and pissed along his borders every now and then to scare away the wild animals. Just the thought of the giant bipedal greyhound, with his rippling muscles and suffocating aura, was enough to keep Ralph from lashing out against his neighbors in anger.

Ralph suppressed a shiver and went about carrying out his plan. The mayor had told him not to hunt the hedgehog he’d caught stealing from him ages ago but he didn’t think she’d be able to enforce the law. Sure, the settlement was hers to run but as long as he set up the traps on his own property and wasn't seen doing it, he’d be fine. She wouldn’t even know that the creature was gone.

His property was located a good distance away from the town anyways, one of the northern-most properties in the area. The trees that grew just outside of his plot of land were not as large or old as the forest’s, but he knew that they had to be a part of its domain. The speed at which they grew was too fast to be natural. Two months ago they were nothing but saplings but they’d grown into a thin woods at this point!

So with rope in hand and a few tips from the ranger who led the congregation, Ralph set toward the trees bordering his northern pasture to settle his pest problem in the dimming sunlight. The elven priest who preached for the new god had taught him how to set snares to capture the beast and had even given Ralph his blessing. ‘Any creature who is captured outside of the forest has abandoned it anyways. Any beast captured within wasn’t clever enough to survive, and not worthy of the forest god’s blessings. To be caught is to fail their trials, and forfeit their lives.’ Ralph was thankful for the priest and congregation, his new found faith was one of the few things keeping him going these days.

Most of the trees here were thin and branchy enough for Ralph to scale, which was important for the traps he was setting. He climbed a few closer to his farm and grabbed long sturdy-branches, using his weight to bring them low enough to the ground to tie off without snapping them.

He pinned them down and used shiny coppernuts as bait, something he’d heard the mutant loved to eat. He wasn’t sure if it would see the gleam of their copper exterior in the moonlight that broke through the trees, but the thing was a pest and could probably smell the food from ages away. To top it off, he even put in some corn kernels sprinkled around the snare trap. He knew those were a treat the thing loved, it had stolen them from him after all.

With his traps set, Ralph had an important decision to make. The church was getting together tonight in the forest’s first clearing for a bonfire and a worshipping session. There were a few new flock members who were going to be introduced and scripture to read. Ralph was looking forward to going and trying to get closer to the elven maiden who’d joined the group last week. Obviously Ralph’s estranged wife was not a member of the church, and had even gone as far as to call it a cult of all things.

A stupid insult, considering Ralph could see the effects his god had on his surroundings every day while her religion revolved around worshipping a set of gods who hadn’t done anything attributable in literal ages.

The decision was to either go to the gathering, eat around a warm fire and like-minded people, or to stay here and wait so that he could see the moment the hedgehog was ragdolled into the sky by his trap. By the time his last snare was set, Ralph stood up and dusted off his pants. Seeing the limp corpse of his mortal enemy would do well enough, Ralph had a party to get to.

He turned to leave and came face to face with a terrifying bat-thing. It was a grotesque mutant with a stinger that looked like a massive scorpions in the dead of the night and was hanging from low branch directly in his face.

With a less-than-manly screech Ralph backpedaled and managed to the snare he’d just set. The rope fastened around his ankle before launching him into the sky. Well, not the sky so much as into the trunk of the tree behind him. He ricocheted off the trunk and was dragged into the air where his motion kept him spinning like a top for several long moments. The fact that the tree’s branch hadn’t snapped under his weight was a testament to both his snare setting skills, and the fact that it was an abnormally strong tree. Obviously a tree from the forest.

The bat-thing flew off toward the forest proper and left Ralph there, slowly spinning back in forth upside down. After his nausea subsided, Ralph decided he would try to untie his left ankle and suck up the pain from falling. The farmer quickly found out that he needed to do more sit ups, and the knot was fastened far better than he’d thought.

He tried shouting and successfully caught the attention of his wife. She came out of the house and looked at him from the doorway before laughing and going back inside. Par for the course, he supposed. She’d come cut him down when she needed a punching bag again.

Ralph wasn’t sure how many hours passed before he accepted that he was spending his night upside down in the air. Eventually he dozed off, content to just hang out and sway in the breeze. Rustling woke him not too long later however.

The bat beast hadn’t returned, thankfully, but what Ralph saw was just as shocking. Four men were coming out of the woods farther from his property, close to the road from Ostlind, and making a really large racket snapping branches. Out came a few men who looked like the town guard, sporting slings and injuries that were hard to make out in the dark.

That must be the group that was sent to settling things with Ostlind’s mayor. Doesn’t look like negotiations went well.

As Ralph contemplated the long term effects of what he’d just seen, he heard a closer rustling followed by a cracking noise. He looked down and almost began frothing at the mouth.

The hedgehog was there with a coppernut pried open in its paws, looking up at Ralph and slowly eating its prize. The beast could not speak to Ralph, but he could see the intelligence in its eyes.

‘2-0 to me’ it seemed to say, gloating to its captive audience. The hedgehog finished up its meal with the stray corn kernels before slowly turning and returning to the forest’s embrace.