Keeper's Justice
Copyright© 2025 by Charly Young
Chapter 3: Quinn
Quinn
Lachlan Quinn sat on the porch of Keeper House, staring moodily at the ten-acre wildflower meadow that served as the front yard. The morning sun peeked over the old growth cedar trees that lined the five-acre meadow fronting the ancient log cabin. Four whitetail deer slipped out of the field of wildflowers and native rye grass and into the safety of the dense brush of salmonberries and blackberries to care for their fawns and doze the day away. The air was full of birdsong and the buzz of bees at their morning work. Fat gray squirrels chattered in the background. A woodpecker hammered away on a hemlock snag. Behind him, snatches of brownie-song sounded from inside the house as Mrs. Periwinkle and her brood went about their daily tasks of caring for Keeper House.
“You’re turning into a whiny shitbird, Doc. Get yourself unfucked or some being’s gonna harvest your fobbity-ass.”
“Aye, aye, Gunny. Getting myself unfucked,” mumbled Lachlan Quinn.
The past few months had seen him having imaginary chats with all sorts of people from his past as he drank his morning coffee and greeted the dawn. Quinn knew deep in his bones that he was slowly morphing into someone remote, untouchable. He didn’t like it, but he was powerless to stop it.
He knew he should be as happy as hell; he had a regular, peaceful life. He had zero kicks coming. There had been a pleasant month doing the finish work on Sven, the software millionaire’s “fishing cabin” on the Stillaguamish River five miles outside of town. The six-thousand-square-foot log cabin was a marvel of luxury.
Another good couple of months had been spent building and outfitting his new woodworking/metal-crafting shop until it was the envy of the Emory crafters.
He shifted his weight and winced, favoring the bruise on his side where the Sylvan combat master had landed a vicious kick during this morning’s sparring session. Months earlier, the slender being, no doubt sent by Vuza the Warrior, had emerged from the Opari to silently resume his training. The last time the Three Troll Women had come to him, she had reprimanded him about the degradation of his physical and mental fitness. He knew it was pointless to argue with her, so for the last year, he’d religiously followed the brutal physical regimen she’d set up for him: week-long runs through Opari, every night pacing along the complicated fairy labyrinth behind the house, forcing his way through the painful mental veils the troll women had spelled into it to test his concentration, topped off with hours of combat with hand and saber. The resultant exhaustion should have helped him sleep better.
It didn’t.
He was bored and on edge at the same time. All this exercise was preparation for something that he had no doubt was going to be awful.
Last year’s events still weighed heavily on his mind. He couldn’t shake the feeling that one of the loose ends he’d left unresolved in Oldtown was sure to come back and bite his ass.
And he missed the cheerful chatter of Charlie and Katrinka.
Thus, the brooding.
Thus, the mental image of the Gunny kicking his ass for being in a funk he couldn’t escape.
His new shadow, a big yellow lab, returned from her morning adventure, drank noisily from her bowl, settled on the porch out of reach, and gazed at him with soulful eyes.
A month ago, Quinn had come out of Opari after his run to find six sprites shrieking with glee as they hag-rode her. The big dog was close to death from exhaustion when he intervened and sent the chastened sprites on their way. He had carried her back to the house, soaked her down good with lukewarm water, set a big dish of water beside her, and watched her carefully to ensure she would recover. Recover she did after a couple of hours. She’d been hanging around ever since. Now she seemed to spend her days studying him.
A prickle of unease interrupted his bout of introspection. Some being was focused on him. After years of the troll women’s training in the Murk, a part of his mind constantly accessed the environment. He knew instantly when he was being watched—a fact that had saved his marines from ambushes more than once back in the day.
This morning, the culprits were two young boggles peering out from Opari’s border.
Boggles were the size of grizzly bears, dark and hirsute, with characteristic huge ears, large yellow eyes above hooked noses, and sharpened teeth. They were the largest and most vicious of the seven goblin species.
He relaxed when he saw it was Ozz and Oild.
Quinn motioned for them to come out. The pair, breathless and white-eyed, limped out of the tangle of blackberry and vine oak that bordered the forest. Oild’s arm was obviously broken. Ozz had a bite mark on his right leg that was oozing blood.
“Master,” Oild’s whistle-clicks were low and raspy as he tried to catch his breath, “They attacked us. They even killed the babies. They killed the old chief and cut out his heart!”
“Sit you down, and I will tend to your hurts,” Quinn whistle-clicked.
He walked to his pickup and grabbed his latest purchase, a Black Hawk medical pack. He set Oild’s arm and splinted it. Then he washed the bite on Ozz’s leg with saline solution and slapped a pressure bandage on the wound. Both beings would heal quickly with no ill effects. Boggles were tough.
“Who did this thing?”
“It were Kobolds,” Ozz said as Quinn set and splinted Oild’s arm. “Beings angry. Foaming at its mouths.”
“Kobolds?” Quinn asked skeptically. “How could kobolds attack the Tribe?”
Kobolds were relatives of the hobs and feral brownies that lived along the borders of Opari. They were shy beings who lived on small animals and insects—extremely unlikely beings to attack their larger cousins. Raccoons don’t attack bears.
“They were in frenzy, master.”
Quinn’s green eyes narrowed. He stood. “Lead me to your camp.”
He rarely interfered with the lives of beings who dwelled in the Opari, but he owed Ozz and Oild, and his gut was telling him something was off.
As always, the chaotic green magic of the forest that was the Goddess Opari snared Quinn’s mind as soon as he entered. Mixed smells of sweet fern and loam immediately soothed away his dour thoughts. The colossal life force of the Goddess—millions of tiny rustlings and whisperings—sent the tales of their tiny lives deep into the root of his brain. Another thousand million voices sang greetings to him, pulling at his spirit to join and go adventuring with them.
He could sit and spend the rest of his days happily exploring Her mysteries and being healed by Her grace.
But Her voice’s song was odd this day, as it had been for months. Too eager. The madness of the manna surge.
“At last. You’ve come to us at last.”
The dragon’s whip symbiote in his arm twisted in terror and dived deep into him to hide as it felt the wildness of her season.
The Other sat back in the corner of his mind and regarded Her presence with profound suspicion.
Opari’s quincentenary pollination event was in full flow. A hurricane of manna swirled out from the vast infinity of her.
Quinn fought his way free from her seductive grasp. He spent a couple of beats finding the perfect balance point between detachment and singularity. Finally, the overwhelming data that had poured into his senses from the environment coalesced into information his mind could use.
The yellow dog sat by his side and watched him. Oddly, she seemed to have no fear of the alien forest.
Quinn motioned to the two boggles, who were dancing with impatience, to lead on.
The usual gaggle of hidden watchers followed their progress. As they moved deeper into the geo-temporal chaos that made up the Opari, his fingers were constantly busy signaling greetings to some and warnings to others. He was alert for any newly arrived predators who might not be aware of him and attack.
The environment changed. At first, there had been the familiar, clean mossy smells of the northwest rainforest. Ferns and mosses were everywhere. Shade-loving flowering plants like trillium and foxglove bloomed out of mossy beds. Masses of huckleberry grew out of fallen trees. Gradually, as they went on, the vegetation changed to a tropical jungle. Greenhouse floral smells gave way to the smell of decay. Water dripped everywhere. As they pressed on further, the darkness deepened. The canopy far overhead blocked out much of the light. The sounds changed as well. A cacophony of mad shrieks and giggles from the dryads and nymphs who inhabited the upper levels of the canopy mixed with the hum of a billion insects.
The two boggles occasionally stopped and tracked in a large circle around danger: a grove of carnivorous plants. Another detour took them around a grove of fruit trees covered in thousands of palm-sized red spiders.
Quinn absently registered all this at the back of his mind while he mentally pulled at the puzzle of the kobold’s attack. What would arouse the usually timid kobolds into a frenzy? All goblin-kind were capable of the state of mindless violence that was frenzy, but it was extremely rare in kobolds. Sensible retreat was their go-to response to threats.
After an hour of travel, they pushed through some thick brush and stepped out onto the beach of one of Opari’s vast inland lakes. The remnants of the boggle band lay on the shore, dully watching as two undines, probably attracted by the smell of blood, pulled a squalling wounded young male twice their size into the lake. The two predators were females, five feet tall, with the typical bone-white skin of new mothers. Their hair was moss green and hung short of pointed elf-like ears. Gill slits lined their throats.
Their huge yellow eyes tracked Quinn. As he neared, they snarled, showing yellow, shark-like teeth, but dropped their prey and disappeared into the green water with a splash. This time of year, spawning season, female undines were driven mad by ravenous hunger. You didn’t swim in this part of Opari’s lakes and rivers unless you had a death wish.
Quinn dragged the wounded youngling away from the water and knelt to tend to his wounds.
Ozz and Oild moved through the wounded instinctively, carrying out a primitive triage, calling Quinn over to tend to the more maimed.
Things were not as bad as they had breathlessly told him, but bad enough. Four of the band had died, including the old chief. Two tiny infants lay twisted next to the tree line, their little necks broken. Their mothers sat helplessly wailing beside them. Five males and two females would be a while recovering. The rest suffered cuts and broken bones.
They described the kobolds’ attack: armed with sticks, they emerged from the forest and attacked the band as it was spread out, eating the morning’s forage.
It was a puzzle. Boggles and kobolds usually ignored each other. They were typical goblins; if a band happened upon a single being, bad things happened. But Opari was too vast and resource-rich to risk physical damage in a meaningless squabble over territories.
Something was strange.
He sighed.
Better find out.
The kobold band left a trail a child could follow. Another odd thing. Like the boggles, kobolds normally moved through the jungle with liquid ease, leaving very little trace of their passing. This trail was as broad as a highway, littered with leaves and broken branches, footprints, and blood traces. The band had not escaped without some wounded.
Quinn and the yellow dog moved swiftly. As they went deeper, the jungle changed to temperate hardwood forest, like one would find in the Appalachians.
He finally came upon the band resting along the bank of a slow-moving, murky river. Most were sleeping, sprawled out in an odd fashion. Two elder males slept with their mouths slack, snoring. They lay perilously close to a fire ant colony. The rest were too close to the banks of the river to be safe.
Quinn dragged the two away from the fire ant mound and up under the shade of a massive beech tree, then settled down next to the yellow dog to wait for someone to wake up.
An elderly female was the first to awaken. Her bloodshot eyes widened in terror when she spotted him.
Quinn whistle-clicked. “Be at ease, grandmother. I mean you no harm. I have a question for you, and I’ll be on my way. Your kind were in frenzy. What causes it?”
“It is magic potion, Master. The half-bloods reward us. The potion makes the tribe strong. They give us gift because we lead them down the trails out of Opari into the Murk. We been doing that because they do not know the way.”
That minor exchange apparently exhausted the female. She fell asleep or into torpor—Quinn couldn’t tell which. She seemed healthy enough, if malnourished. The whole band looked half-starved. Whatever potion or drug had definitely interfered with their normal foraging habits.
Quinn continued to wait until the gray-faced female woke again.
“Grandmother, you know our Mother does not allow medicine like that in her realm. Did you forget?”
She wouldn’t meet his eyes.
“It were only once, Master. The tall one with one eye said that the goddess would not care this once.” She brightened. “The kobold grew strong. Did not need to hide when boggles hunt.”
“Where do you meet the one-eyed half-blood?”
“The tall one with one eye waits by the grandfather tree where the big fire was three times ago. Our outliers tell us when he and the others come.”
The concept of exact time was a modern human construct. Other hominid races viewed time, if they thought of it at all, much more vaguely. Both the kobolds and the boggles noted time as the changing of seasons. Quinn knew that a “time” was when the leaves of their home camp’s big chestnut tree returned after winter shedding.
“What else about the tall one with one eye?”
“He an Asrai and has a scar on his throat. Yes, the tall one eye does.”
After Quinn tended to the scrapes and bites of the tribe, he and the yellow dog walked the trails back to Keeper House, reflecting on the monumental stupidity and greed of anyone who dared the wrath of the Mother Goddess. There were far easier ways to bring slaves into Alfheim. There were lots of thinnings that connected the realm directly to Oldtown or Earth. Why take the risk of passing through the Murk? Then he wondered if maybe the destination was the Murk.
Odd
The grandfather tree was an ancient grove of clonal aspens that overlooked Lake Chelan in eastern Washington. There was a portal to Oldtown’s Southmarket district by that lake. It was rarely used. That meant the wolf-kin were involved. That mother-damned Alpha again. He wondered if Niamh was aware of it.
What a clusterfuck this was going to be.
Quinn and the yellow dog came out of Opari to find his best friend, Gus Hope, and his mother, Marigold, sitting in rocking chairs on the Keeper House’s porch. A tiny table sat between them, holding a pot of tea and a platter of scones and muffins.
Brownie hospitality.