3 Massacred

Who knew a goblin base would have bloodied wall for hallways. We continued the path with blood everywhere, it smelled like blood as we kept going. The walls, floor and ceiling just covered in blood, it doesn't smell like human blood. As a trained assassin, I've killed a lot of humans to know how their blood smelled like, and this wasn't it.

As we kept going passing through the bloodied hallways, we come across a lot of corpses of goblins, it was as if they had fought something or each other. The rest of the group were starting to feel uneasy, I could tell with this silence. We made it to the end of the cave path and see ruins at the end. Of course, with goblin corpses everywhere.

"Didn't we just pass by 4 goblins outside a while ago..?" I ask nervously.

"I think we're having the same thoughts.." Ravenna glances towards me and I can see how worried her eyes looked.

"That can't be true right? I mean, they're just 4 goblins! They couldn't have killed their own race-"

Razz would be interrupted by a huge roar in the ruins.

Domotraus was the first to react, he hides in one of the corpses and covers himself with blood to hide his scent. We were too shocked and frightened by that roar, it sounded like something here killed all these goblins. I waited for Ravenna to say something but from what I can see, she looked too frightened to think straight. Seph tapped me on the shoulder and somehow, I didn't feel scared anymore. I took the initiative to check where the roar came from, I hid behind a huge rock and took a quick peek.

There'd be pillars in a circular formation, and a round table in the middle of the circle formation. I spy with my little eyes...... a weird shadowy humanoid figure with 2 scimitars. Whoever this person is, he looked like to be the source of that roar. This ruin is filled with glowing purple flowers, like they're literally everywhere. Makes our torch look like a joke. 2 goblins would show up holding their swords getting ready to attack the shadowy humanoid figure, let's call him Darky. Darky just glances toward 1 goblin, then suddenly that goblin gets filled with darkness, like I could see a dark aura literally around him. That same goblin does a surprise attack on his goblin friend, what a friendly fire. Soon after the friendly kill, the goblin kneels down in front of Darky, offering his sword that comes with a goblin head bundle pack. Darky takes the sword and easily beheads the goblin. Darky then walks toward the round table and takes off a green crystal from it and then he just fades away. Razz follows behind me just right after Darky fades away, perfect.

"What was the roar sound thing?" Razz asks as he looks around.

I point towards the goblin's head.

"Whoever made the noise just killed that goblin, I couldn't see the face but from what I could see, it was a humanoid shadowy figure with 2 scimitars. Also took a green crystal from that round table there."

I also point at the round table. Seph approaches the round table and examines it.

"Soooo what is it?" Domotraus asked curiously as he reeked of goblin blood. He'd be standing with us behind the huge rock also looking towards the round table, watching Seph do her thing.

"Isn't this the same round table located in the Holy Land? Ravenna check this out." Seph would be surprised

by the fact that this round table looks like the one in the Holy Land. Though I've never seen it, so I don't know how special it is.

Ravenna goes towards Seph, and we follow them to that round table. The round table looks like a table thats round, nothing special, aside from this table having a hole in the middle, probably where Darky took the green crystal from, and there would be writings engraved on the table. Sadly me, I can't read this. If only I knew more than just the Common language.

"Yeah this table is similar to the one in the Holy Land, the writing is in a different language." Ravenna informs us. Ravenna begins to explain the use of this table.

"This was used during the war. Think of this table as a gateway, a bridge to another realm. Depending on the stone placed in the hole, you may end up in a realm that goes beyond our understanding."

She continues explaining more about the round table, and honestly I wasn't interested in a lecture right now. So I just tried not to look sleepy. I spaced out a bit from the lecture, then I begin to sense something. It felt like a dark presence is approaching us. I turn towards the direction I sensed the dark aura, and there I see a man walking towards us. Ravenna and the party noticed the man. He was unarmed, but I had a bad feeling about this.

"Sir are you al-"

Right when she approaches him, he starts to go on the offensive. Luckily with Domotraus being the best here, he knew something was off with the guy and is fast enough to catch up to Ravenna and block the attack from the man.

The man throws a punch, and was blocked by Domotraus. Even though Domotraus blocked it, he and Ravenna were both pushed back by the force of the punch. The man lets out a roar, it was the same roar we heard, very loud.

"Back away!"

I shout to them as I make a run towards the guy. Razz helps Domotraus and Ravenna up, while Seph got her handbow ready and immediately fired a bolt at the raging guy. While I dash and slide past him, I slash him behind his knee, and surprisingly he didn't fall. What is this guy? The slash wound didn't heal so he should be taking in pain. The bolt hit his shoulder, and he just let out another roar and turned towards me with his arm up about to smack me. I was able to parry his attack so his hand hit the ground right beside my face. I roll away and quickly get up, but he caught up to me with his next attack ready. As I got up he kicked me right in the gut, and I wasn't fast enough to block it. I flew a good 15ft away from him and quickly recover myself midair so I landed on my feet.

"This guy isn't human!"

I say obviously knowing the others knew that already. Razz gets his short sword and dashes toward the enemy. Ravenna supports him using her magic. She created a Minor Illusion of him mimicking his movements as they switch places. He reaches the enemy and slashes his chest then jumps backward creating some space between them. Something strange was going on, is he feeling the pain of our attacks? But another thing I noticed is that he was getting larger, like he's now way taller than us compared to a few minutes ago. As I look at the enemy, I also notice a spot that seems to be the source of his dark aura. I see Domotraus running towards the side of the enemy holding a rope. I see what he was trying to do, so I stood up and ran towards the enemy as well. In a flash, he threw me the extension of the rope and I stab it to the ground with my dagger, followed by Seph shooting her bolts at him and Razz using all his strength to slash him. The enemy staggers as he moves backward tripping to the rope we set up. He falls to the ground and somehow Ravenna caught up with the rest of us. Ravenna stabs the enemy's hand to the ground, while Domotraus applies strong pressure on that dagger preventing him from breaking free, while Razz did the other hand with his short sword. I was fazed by how he was still strong enough to break free of the dagger and short sword. I saw this as a golden opportunity to strike as he's still on the ground and he just broke out, I got my dagger and strike him straight in the heart. The enemy stops moving and I can see the dark aura fading away, he died.

"What the hell?" I say.

"He's like a berserker, how'd he get that much power for a villager?!" Razz says in disbelief.

"We should head back to the village, maybe those 4 goblins that left know something."

Ravenna makes the decision to abort not knowing what happened to the other 2 villagers. We go back the way we came from and the goblin we killed earlier isn't there.

"Isn't there supposed to be a corpse here?" I ask

"Something weird is going on here..." Razz states the obvious.

We make it out the cave and it was night time already, we could see a smoke coming from the direction of the village. As if the village is on fire. We rushed back towards the village with no rest and it is on fire. I rush towards the house of the village elder and see that the village elder was murdered. We checked the other houses to find survivors and every house we checked had corpses. I couldn't find the daughter of the village elder, so I assumed she knows something. We found the dead bodies of the 4 goblins, burning in the middle of the village at the stake. Since when was there a stake in this village?

A few minutes pass by and we couldn't find the source of fire. We hear noises of horses approaching the village. The horses reaches the village being ridden by knights. We would see 2 villagers standing in between us, I don't recall seeing 2 villagers. It was as if they just appeared there. These villagers had something off about them, as I could see the same dark aura as the villager we fought in the cave.

The villagers turn to the knights and kneel.

"Please help us, this group of assassins burned the village and killed everyone here! We can't fight them they're too strong, our guards were murdered!"

The knight ,that stood out the most with his armor being different from the other knights, got off his horse and readied his longsword.

"Stand down you filthy rogues!"

The other knights get off their horse and readied their swords, approaching us trying to surround us.

"Drop your weapons!"

"We should kill these criminals!"

The knights slowly approaches us as we try to make some distance between us and the knights. The villagers would be behind the captain smiling like an evil maniac. With that we don't have any other escape. If we tried to outrun them they would get on their horses and chase us, there was no other way to escape this.