Cinders of Nightmares

There was nothing left. He burned it all. The thicket of shrubs and ferns in the middle of the dark forest once hid the small small huts and hovels of my friends and family. Now only dying smouldering embers remained on a newly formed blackened glade. The bodies were lying in irregular patterns, many charred black. Some were missing limbs. All were dead. I struggled to keep myself from falling to the ground as despair took the strength from my legs.

The dead silence was broken by a pained groaning sound and it took me a while to figure out that it was coming from me. It was all so wrong. I was trying to reach my home, but in this ashen glade I couldn't even find my bearings. It was all wrong. It was there to the left, but how far? I screamed into the sky. Tears were smudging the ashes over my face and made my eyes burn. The next moment I was jerked back to awareness as I felt a grip around my shin. It was firm and felt rough to the touch. I spun around. The terrible sight made me lose my balance and I fell to the ground, but the grip remained. Staring straight into my eyes was a goblin. Half of his face suffered a terrible burn and only a single eye remained. I broke eye contact, feeling nauseous and saw the arm grabbing me. The arm was marked with cuts and blisters. The damage continued all over the body. There was no second arm. Some of the skin was completely charred away. The sickly red replaced the healthy green colour. I felt bile rising in my throat. It was hard to believe that someone could still be alive after damage like this.

"You," the goblin said. His voice was hoarse and barely audible, but it still petrified me. I was unable to respond. "You! This is all your fault!" This time the accusing words were loud.

My heart sank. "No," I protested. "I never, it's not," I tried making excuses, but I the words left me and a choking feeling inside my throat was making it hard to say anything anyway.

"You left us!"

"No, I had to leave. You all knew!"

"Traitor!" This time it was a female voice coming from the side. To my horror, I saw a female goblin crawling towards me, joining in the accusation.

"No! I'm not!" I tried shouting back. My voice broke part way through. It was hard for me to defend myself, when a voice inside my head was telling me, that they may very well be correct.

"You," the voice came from yet another direction. Soon I saw goblins crawling towards me from every direction. All shouting accusations of betrayal at me. All were deformed by terrible injuries. As they reached me, they started grabbing at me and scratching my body. They never ceased shouting. I began whimpering, both the pain and the knowledge, that I was to blame for the deaths of so many.

A hand slapped over my face. I jolted, trying to get up, but the strong hand held me down. The shouts were still ringing in my ear, but the smell of ash was gone. It took some more time for me to understand where I was. As I calmed down, the hand released my mouth. A single scar marked that hand, but it was old and faded.

I had been sleeping in the branches of a tall tree. I wiped the tears and snot from my face and wiped the hand on my cloak.

"It's your turn to keep watch," the one who had been holding me down said.

"Nyeh, I'm up, I'm up," I replied and stretched my arms.

"And stop with your crying. You will give our position away," he grinned and showed his sharp teeth.

"Gladly," I said. The words left a bitter taste in my mouth. Even months after my village had been destroyed I was still haunted by the memory. Even though I wasn't there to witness the assault I saw the battles in my dreams over and over. My imagination was given free rein to explore boundless horrors caused by those damned pink-skins.

After my own home was burned down I joined another goblin settlement. I was accepted, but even so everyone was cold towards me. I mostly kept to myself and thought about the home I'd lost. A couple of weeks ago out king made an alliance with orcs, kobolds, lizardmen and even some vampire clans. Something like that had never happened before. Even though we were never really at war with other races, there were always tensions and isolated skirmishes or raids.

It all changed about a year ago after the human kingdoms were united under the banner of some so called hero. He escalated all the conflicts not only into war, but outright extermination. They began with waging war on the demonic empire. The humans won every single engagement and the demons ended up evacuating from this continent of Glarenia. No other race or kingdom involved themselves in the conflict since nobody cared much for the demons, but it soon became obvious that the humans didn't mean to stop there. In just a few months there were no more trolls or elves, only a single dragon remained and a handful of giants.

The goblin kingdom only stood because even most of us had no idea where it was located. Not that we were spared much thought. Being one of the weakest races on Glarenia we were simply killed off whenever the advancing armies of humans just so happened to march in our vicinity. Of course they only ever sent a small group of a couple dozen soldiers. It never took more than that.

"Quit dozing off Razeck," the sudden rough whisper in my ear jerked me back into attention.

"I'm awake Bock," I replied and shook my head. Guard duty was never my strong point. It was no problem for me to be awake during the day or night, but only as long as my sleep was regular enough. On this mission it absolutely wasn't. Over the course of last two weeks, a small group of us goblins were doing our best to spy on the human hero. At first all we could do was follow the army from afar across the open fields, daring only to sneak into their camps under the cover of the dark nights.

The real work began after they entered the forest. In this way we were able to move among them, or more accurately above them. We prowled in the branches, jumping from tree to tree. All of us prided ourselves in our silent and furtive movements. We observed every single move of the hero. To our dismay, it looked as if the human was escorted everywhere by his heavily armed escorts. Even with their identities hidden behind helmets and masks it was obvious at a glance that each of them was a soldier worth a small army.

As long as they surrounded the hero we stood no chance. There was however a single place where the hero went alone. It wasn't to relieve himself or anything like that. It was far more secret and more sinister. The path the army took was never the shortest or easiest way to their final destination. They took many detours on their way. Some of them were obvious – they were butchering anything non-human. The other detours ended with the hero venturing out alone. We were observing the guards and saw that they were exchanging glances. It seemed as if they were unsure of how wise it was to leave the hero alone, but not a single one of them spoke out.

The hero rode out on his own and we were barely able to keep up with him. Thanks to the undergrowth the horse wasn't able to gallop. Even so, we had almost lost the bastard by the time he stopped. We had abandoned the branches of the trees halfway through and ran with all our might behind him. We stopped a stones throw away from him and I threw up behind a tree. We all collapsed with exhaustion and kept hands in front of our faces to muffle the noise we were making.

The hero never noticed. He didn't seem to care enough to even look around to make sure he was alone. He cleared away some shrubs and fallen leaves to reveal the ruins of an altar. He stabbed his large sword into the ground in front of the altar and fell to his knees. He was speaking, but we were unable to hear anything. Our mouths gaped open as he was suddenly enveloped by a bright light. Some sort of god must've heard his prayers and answered.

It was brilliant to the point of being blinding, so I looked away. After that wasn't enough I closed my eyes. My eyes felt as if they were burning. I pulled my cloak over myself and cowered in the mud. After a while the light finally faded away. When I looked at the hero, he was already walking away. Both his skin and armour were emanating a golden glow. He seemed even stronger and more terrifying than before. On the way back we made sure to keep an even greater distance. It was hard for me to tell apart humans by their ugly pale faces, but the face I saw that evening burned itself into my mind.

We never managed to figure out why he went to these sites alone. Was it a rule set by the gods, or perhaps a jealous way of keeping the power all to himself? It didn't matter. All we knew is that this presented us with the only chance against him.