Page 9 of The Glass Unicorn: Part 4

When she spoke, her voice was that of rustling, dried leaves crackling in the wind.

“Welcome, good folk. Sen-ti has vouched for your behavior. We trust him, and therefore, we trust you. Has he told you what we are looking for?”

Startled—I had thought they were all men—I shook my head. But then, as I looked closer, I saw a few telltale signs that she was female. She had breasts—old and drooping, but they were still breasts nonetheless—and she had hair done up in a bun, the color of red clay.

“He said you have a foe who is causing havoc?” I asked. I was pretty sure that she was addressing all of us.

“We have an enemy come to the forest. He’s killed several of our people already. We cannot stand against him. He’s too strong for us. He means to wipe out our encampment.” Her voice was tinged with sadness and loss.

My heart immediately went out to them. They weren’t fighters. They were avatars of nature, who simply wanted to go about their lives. “Do you know what he is? What kind of being?”

“He’s a Forest Troll. Or a giant. Or perhaps, both,” she said. “We are seeking help. We know we can’t stop him ourselves. We cannot fight. We bend to the will of fate, but if fate decides to offer us help, we accept unless the help goes against our beliefs.”

Interesting. A pacifistic race who was willing to let others fight for them. Were they true pacifists, then? Or were they unable to fight for themselves for a different reason. The former seemed hypocritical, but the latter, I understood. Not everyone could stand up for themselves. Not everyone had the capacity to physically defend themselves.

“May I ask something?” I tried to think of the politest way to frame the question. “Are you unable to fight?”

Sen-ti turned to me. “We simply cannot fight. We carry the will of time. If you were to use your dagger on me, I would not be able to fight you off. I could lift my arms to deflect, but I couldn’t strike out at you. It’s not our nature.”

“I see,” I said. The game developers had created a race at the mercy of others. Perhaps to test the players? Whatever their reasoning, it made me angry at them—the devs, not the Wildings. To deliberately create a race of beings who were victims by their very nature seemed so cruel that it made me want to picket their offices…if we ever got out of here.

“We’ll do what we can,” Reggie said. The look on his face matched my own feelings. In fact, I suspected that every one of us was seething right now.

“I’m afraid we can’t give you much of a reward,” the Elder said. “Except our gratitude and blessing.”

“That’s plenty. We’ll do everything we can to help,” I said. “But we need to know where to find the Forest Troll.”

“I’ll take you,” Sen-ti said. “I am a Connector. I connect our people with the outside world.”

“Then, I suppose we’d best be off,” I said. “Let’s go.”

As Sen-ti led us out of the portal, into the woods, I was beginning to realize just how complex the world of Abarria was. It was no simple set of stats and rules on paper. Whether or not they knew it, the creators of the game had also created a sophisticated, multifaceted world, and Syms or not, their characters had become very real.