I headed over to the Wodalfar, picking out who I assumed was their leader from the tag.

Ludt: Level 86, Wodala (Wodalfar II).

He, like all of the other Wodalfar had deeply tanned skin, wild brown hair and light brown almost yellow irises. He grinned at me in an unnerving way as I approached and even when I came to a stop in front of him, he continued to sway like a tree in the wind, though his feet weren’t planted as he took small steps, back and forth and side to side, his staff rocking in his hand. Everything in motion. Those behind him moved in the same way making it incredibly hard to speak to them.

“Hey, you guys okay?” I asked with what I hoped was a warm and friendly smile.

“Some died. We will mourn them,” he said in a fast yet casual voice. “Your help was appreciated. You have saved many lives today.”

“How many did you lose?” I asked, still finding it hard to concentrate as he continued to sway.

“Twenty, we lost. Does this sadden you demon man?”

My automatic reaction was to sigh impatiently. I noticed Ludt’s expression change subtly as he cocked his head inquisitively at me.

“I assure you I’m not a demon. Not really. I was a human, and I was cursed, but… well that’s a long fucking story and this isn’t the best place for it,” I said gesturing at the corpses littering the floor.

“We’re gonna keep fighting, moving south,” I continued. “Will you join us? I can regale you with my full life story and there’ll be a new home in it for you, too.”

He shook his head frantically. “The road is our home. For now.”

“For now? What does that mean?” I asked, intrigued.

“We are on a pilgrimage. A search if you like and that takes precedence over any comfort or safety.

Talking to Ludt was proving to be more difficult than I’d anticipated. I’d assumed that everyone we found up here would jump at the chance to join us, but I couldn’t have been more wrong. I supposed there was a lesson in there about the nature of assumptions, but now wasn’t the time to wax philosophical.

“You know this whole place is overrun with assholes intent on killing everyone who doesn’t worship their god though, right?”

“I do,” he replied calmly. “We might even join you for a spell. But we don’t need your offer of a home.”

“You’ll join us?” I asked in surprise.

“Sure. If you can beat me in a fight,” he said, winking at me overenthusiastically. My friends who were listening to the conversation began to talk at once, but I held a hand up for them to stop.

“You want to fight me?” I asked in disbelief.

He nodded his head... even more than it was already nodding.

“I can fight him for you,” Olata offered.

“No. Not you Faery Queen. You don’t lead here. This strange specimen does,” he said, with his voice taking on a more focused tone at odds with his general demeanor. I just couldn’t get a read on weird bastard. At level eighty-six, he was powerful as hell, but I was proving daily that I could handle my business now.

“Why?”

“It’s the only way to see if you’re worth following into battle. If you win, we’ll follow you for a bit.”

“This is stupid. If we go at it, that’s gonna make one hell of a mess, and you've all just nearly been killed. For fuck’s sake.”

He seemed to slow in his undulation, leaning forward to study me in a really unsettling way. It kind of reminded me of Natom when he was trying to get a measure of me, but as strong as Ludt was, he was no Natom. I shook my head with disappointment and turned away.

“Come on everyone. We’ve got enough people to fight. We’re not wasting any more of our time with this idiot.”

“Are you a coward, demon man? Running away.”

“Look mate, this isn’t back to the future, and you calling me chicken isn’t going to get a rise out of me. Now, cat ya later, alligator, we’ve got people to rescue and a home to return to.”

“That sounds like something a coward would say,” he replied.

I replied with a raised middle finger and turned away. Sania was standing there pretty much blocking my way.

“I think you should… I think you have to, Clive.”

“I agree,” Danivra added. “We need their aid and considering all of the tools that you have at your disposal, I have no fear of you being defeated. I assure you there is little to lose, by fighting him close to four hundred soldiers to gain.”

The bombardment of encouragement to fight from my closest friends, unbalanced me somewhat. I looked to Olata and Grigor for their opinions. It seemed insane to me.

Olata just shrugged. “Whatever you want. I don’t mind.”

“Can you see his level?” Grigor asked.

“Yeah, eighty-six.”

“No then. It is clearly a ploy to get power within our group by playing on natural hierarchies. While that is the Wultr way, it is not the Far Reach way. I say leave them here to die. If they can’t accept our friendship after we’ve just saved them from certain death, then they’re not the type of people we want with us.”

It was not hard to be impressed with his logic. At level fifty-five, I was now convinced he had been secretly throwing points into Intelligence.

“Very wise, dude,” I replied.

“On that score, Grigor is correct,” Danivra said. “We should not bow to other customs on leadership, when we are inviting people to join in with our own. It does set a poor precedent. I apologize, Lord Clive.” She looked over at Ludt. “Join or fend for yourselves. Those are the options.”

I caught Sania's eye. “You disagree?”

She shook her head. “No. You’re right in principle and my Intelligence agrees, but my Wultr side wants you to submit him. I can’t help it.”

“Then we leave,” Ludt said, amiably.

“Okay,” I shrugged. “And I’m sorry you feel like that.”

Ludt grinned and began to turn away. At least I thought that’s what he was doing. But his turn became a spin and the mad bastard smashed me on the side of the head with his stick.

It shone slightly as it connected and hurt way more than it should have. I tried to grab for it, but he moved too quickly.

“What the fuck, man?” I gasped.

He hit me again.

Danivra’s leg shot forward and hit him, knocking him from his feet and pinning him to the ground. His people, still bloody swaying, just watched on in what looked like amusement.

“Let him up, Danivra. I don’t know what the fuck's going on, but the only thing that pisses me off more than hitting my head is someone else hitting my head.

Ludt sprung up and hit me again. I tried to defend but he was like greased lightning.

While all of the blows hurt way more than they should have, they weren’t exactly going to kill me. So, I accepted the next couple of strikes, to rattle him with a golden spicy ball. He must have had some serious Constitution as it barely rattled him. Grinning wide, his attacks suddenly sped up.

Battered as I was, I couldn’t get another spicy ball off, so I threw a desperate punch. A rapidly formed thought told me he wouldn’t make much effort to evade a standard blow, so I didn’t activate my claw of brutal dismissal until the last moment. As he soared back onto his ass on the hard, cold soil, I pulled out my Cleaver of Clive and flooded it with Neuma. My eyes never left Ludt, as he flipped immediately back to his feet, using his stick in the impressive move. He nodded what appeared to be a little bit of respect toward me.

“You really want this, do you?” I said brandishing my weapons.

He came in fast, the smile never leaving his face. I deflected the next two wild blows, the sharp end of my cleaver hitting his staff, yet to my amazement not cutting clean through like it should. He danced away from my follow up blows, like a drunken ballet dancer. Thwacking me with a cheek, long range blow of the staff on the side of my head… again.

I growled in irritation as he came back in again, using the staff to vault twenty feet into the air and whipping it up to hit me straight in the chest. I bashed it away with my claw, thinking I had him, but to my amazement he shot me with a ball of golden Neuma. At least that’s what it looked like. My demon side was suddenly wracked with intense pain, and I yelled out, while also returning a dark Neuma Spicy Ball at the bastard.

It was his turn to get a shock, as he went down from the blast, in clear plain. I raised an eyebrow at him. “Are you not Neutral, shouldn’t both my blasts hurt the same?”

As Ludt jumped to his feet, another Wodalfar, a woman with waist length long wild brown hair that mostly covered her face so I couldn’t get a good look at her features stepped forward.

Vletha: Level 72, Wise One. Wodala (Wodalfar II).

“Wodalfar, worship the sun,” she said to me in a crisp clear voice, at odds with her appearance and mannerisms. Its warmth and light gives us our power, the darkness hurts us, despite our neutrality.”

I turned to Danivra, who nodded her agreement. It is the same for Dokalfar. The powers of light Neuma are more harmful to us.”

“Well hell, learning something new every day, aren’t I?” I looked at Ludt and shook my head. “So can we stop this shit yet or am I going to have to kill you. I’ve got no beef with you, so if you don’t want to join us, seriously just toddle the fuck off into the sunset.”

“Oh, but I might want to join with you. I just need to make sure you’re worth following.”

“So you’re…” I didn’t have time to finish my sentence as the crazy bastard attacked again.

I smashed at the stick, but he reversed his angle of attack bringing the other end up. I deflected with my face and slashed him with my glowing claws.

As he dodged my blow, I decided I’d had enough of this shit. Because I hadn’t wanted the fight, I wasn’t really using all of the skills at my disposal. Jumping back and catching myself in mid-air with neuma, I sent myself up out of his reach. He fired a ball of light at me, which I deflected with my glowing cleaver and returned at a dark spicy ball back at him. What followed was a light show from both of us. I deflected all of his, while on the ground he only managed to evade about half of mine. Then the fucker lifted into the air as well.

I wanted to ask why the hell he and the other elves hadn’t been flying prior, but I also wanted to smash the grinning fucker into a thousand pieces, so in my frustration, I added ethereal power to my next attack. As soon as Ludt’s eyes landed on the change, he dropped back to the ground and held his staff low and non-threateningly.”

I looked on in confusion. “What the fuck, Ludt? Why’d you stop now when you made me get this out of the locker?”

“It is divine power! It is you that we sensed,” he said with a hint of reverence.

“Clive! Douse it,” Danivra shouted. Olata seemed to be in agreement.

Wind of the Wild appeared suddenly, his eyes wide. “Why do you have the power active?” He said into my mind as he morphed into Ewan.

I quickly reabsorbed the power I’d been holding. “Because of this crazy assholia,” said pointing at Ludt.

“Did we not discuss not using the power unless your survival depended on it?” he said, about as angry as I’d ever seen him.

“Actually, no, we didn’t,” I replied, struggling to hide my irritation.

“Perhaps because I thought it was so obvious. Try not to do it again as you have sent out a beacon for any looking for you. We must leave this area quickly now. I will run with you for a while in case we have any unexpected visitors.

“We wouldn’t want those,” Ludt added unexpectedly.

“You can shut the fuck up,” I snapped. Of course, the irritating wanker just kept grinning.

We fled from the area, the Wodalfar joining us without another word. Right now I didn’t care if they followed or not as I seethed at the telling off I’d taken for using the ethereal power.

“Did you know I wasn’t supposed to use the power?” I asked Sania.

“Honestly, I assumed it was obvious. What’s your Intelligence again?” she asked chidingly.

“You know better than I do. But my point is that it’s a tool we need to use.”

“Perhaps. And it did have the desired effect, as long as an army of level 150 paladins of various different churches don’t suddenly appear to kill us all.”

“Yeah, but Justice doesn't seem interested. Destruction already tried and had their arses kicked by Stada and Natom. Malatia won’t, and neither will Darkness, obviously. So who else? The other followers have to be too far away, right?”

“I honestly have no idea Clive. Judging by Wind of the Wild's reaction, and Danivra’s probably not.”

“Great. We’ll expect company then. At least we got some solid fighters with us. Did you see Freeler fighting? What in the actual fuck? That dude’s got skills.”

“He was impressive. Even the smaller goblins were effective at plugging the gaps between our Wultr on the push. I don’t know what to make of the Wodalfar just yet, but one thing’s for certain. They’re tough. “

“Yeah, jury’s definitely out on them.” I said thoughtfully as I watched the Wodalfar running alongside the Fensalfar and Dokalfar, but in slightly more erratic ranks.

“Do we even know where we’re going?” I asked after a little while.

“South east,” came her reply.

“Hardy ha ha. I meant a target destination. We should probably go and ask him, seeing as he can’t fly.”

“That would be a good idea,” she replied before swooping down ahead of me to the front of the line.

As we came alongside him, I shouted over. “Where are we heading?”

“To meet some Trullan,” he replied in my mind without inflection. “I do not expect them to join you, but they are on our route south, and so we should at least try.”

“Sounds good, and thanks for showing up,” I replied. He said no more, so I lifted higher into the air again. Sania following.

“I think he might still be pissed off with me. We’re going for a group of Trullan, so that’s good.”

“You think trullan are a good idea?” Sania said, the disbelief clear in her voice.

“Sure, if they’re anything like Dug.”

“Dug?”

“Bartender in Laurel, Malatia.”

“You know Trullan are not known for their social skills?”

“I suspected Dug might be a special case and to be fair he’s still pretty damn scary. Although I haven’t seen him since I was little.” I said, laughing at my own shitty joke.