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Gwendol marched up the mountainside.

She kept marching until she was out of sight of her grandchildren, and then she began to run. She already felt bad about leaving them alone in the Murmur. She would not allow herself to be away from them for one minute more than she had to.

She pushed her out of shape body uphill, stretching the limits of her aging flesh until her heart felt like it would pound its way out of her chest. Still, she kept on.

Neither uneven ground, random stones, nor the increasing gradient of the mountainside could slow her down, because Gwendol was more than just determined. She lived here.

Gwendol knew the mountainside and the Murmur better than any person living, human or goblin—with the possible exception of her distant neighbor Cerysa. Her body’s knowledge of the terrain was almost as strong as her mind’s.

Without consciously thinking about it, she almost skipped over stones and repeatedly steadied herself as she seemed about to trip over little holes in the earth.

When she was halfway up the mountainside, Gwendol finally allowed herself to slow to a pace more appropriate to her age. Her body was soaked in sweat, her gray hair plastered across her forehead and the back of her neck in thick wet clumps.

I need to bring a towel or something on the way back, to wipe the sweat away, she thought. I don’t want the kids to see how out of shape grandma is. They’ll think I’m too old to play with.

She walked for the next quarter of the distance, her eyes on the mountain ahead of her without really seeing anything, until the cool breeze caressing her face and her damp body began to restore some of her vigor.

Then she jogged the last quarter of the distance. As she reached the elevation at which her cottage stood, the air became slightly thinner, and she had to take large gulps to keep her body going. She normally did not notice the shifts in elevation so much, but now she was almost exhausted.

But finally, she stood in front of her home again.

Hurry up now, grandma, she told herself.

Gwendol entered the cottage, and she began by gathering up a bowl of fruit and placing it on the table.

Next, she cut her remaining loaf of bread into the thinnest slices she could manage. Then she took down a large slab of cured meat from the ceiling—in her hurry, she did not even care to notice what kind of animal it had been, only that it was red meat and would be bad for her heart—and set it on the table. She began carving off hunks of flesh suitable for making sandwiches with.

Despite her arthritis, she moved quickly and relatively dexterously as she rushed to get everything ready. She was almost done, when—

“Ahh, fuck!” Gwendol swore loudly and stuck her left middle finger into her mouth.

She had sliced herself carelessly, despite a lifetime’s worth of experience handling knives.

This is what happens when you rush—gods damn it, that hurts!

She swore under her breath, then shook her head, walked away from the table, and found a rag. She wrapped it tightly around her finger—I don’t think the bleeding’s that bad—and she sliced the last few chunks of meat, moving more slowly now to avoid further mishaps.

I’m glad the children weren’t here to see that. Very embarrassing.

Finally, she bundled everything up and placed it into a picnic basket.

Then Gwendol stepped out of the cottage and saw the sky again.

A thin column of gray smoke was rising from the forest below her, and the smoke carried a certain odor with it. A distinct, sharp scent. A smell that someone who did not have Gwendol’s life experiences might have confused with burning meat.

A terrible feeling seized her heart before she had any conscious idea of what she was afraid of.

Then her mind jumped back to a dozen different horrendous moments from the war, and she knew instantly what that smell was.

Burning goblin flesh. Her body broke into a cold sweat instantly as she struggled to remain upright and hold onto her sanity.

Fire had been a favorite weapon of terror for some of the humans.

Her eyes slowly tracked the column of gray smoke downhill. Her body stood petrified as her eyes searched as far as they could see. Sure enough, the smoke began somewhere in the Murmur. She could not see clearly where the trail ended, but she could guess well enough.

That’s around where the children were. No!

Gwendol dropped the basket and began to run downhill, hoping against hope that it was not too late to rescue her grandchildren.

—

Malin awakened to a feeling of intense heat.

A moment later, her body burst into flames.

She wept and screamed and tore at her clothing and tried desperately to get away as she burned.

She was dimly aware for the first few seconds that there were people around her, the humans she had just been fighting with, but for the most part, she was only aware of pain and the stench of her own burning flesh.

She could feel the outer layers of her skin burning away, her eyes scorching to nothingness.

The smoke filled her lungs as she gasped for air.

I can’t breathe!

Malin spasmed and choked and began to lose consciousness again.

The last sensation she felt was her bladder releasing involuntarily.

—

As the goblin who had attacked him burned, Geoffrey felt a choking horror to witness it.

That thing was still alive, he thought. I could have sworn I choked the life out of it. He could not tell the goblin’s sex. It was invisible. He only assumed it had to be a goblin, because the other enemies had been goblins.

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

I wouldn’t wish that death on my worst enemy.

“Aaaaah!” The goblin let out a horrible, piercing scream.

A feminine scream.

Another girl goblin, then.

He stepped back. He could hardly breathe the air, with the burning goblin so close to him. The smoke when a body burned was so thick. His father had never mentioned this, on that occasion when he told Geoffrey a story of his war days.

You wouldn’t mention that, of course. Why mention the ugly bits?

Geoffrey coughed. Looked away from the dying goblin. Refocused on the situation he was in. The other goblins’ bodies had already burned to a crisp, though gray smoke still rose off of them.

The smoke might draw unwanted attention, whether from the goblins or our side… Gotta get out of here.

“We need to start collecting the loot!” Geoffrey barked.

The others looked at him, slightly stunned. A few of them had been staring at the burning invisible goblin. Cornelia had been staring off into space, as if trying to forget where she was.

“What are you talking about?” Thomas asked dully.

“The money. The gold. What we came here for.” Geoffrey spoke emphatically. “We have to gather it up, before other people or more goblins show up here.” He pointed at the smoke. “We’ve got a big fucking signal pointing right to us!”

“That was your idea—” began Imogen.

“Who gives a fuck whose idea it was?” Geoffrey asked harshly. “All of you, start pulling some gold out of that hole! We have to get our fucking treasure and get out of here.”

He pointed at the depression in the ground where the smallest goblins had been recovering gold when this bloody affair started. The gold coins that had been scattered around the outside of the hole were still there, though they were now slightly stained with blood and soot.

To Geoffrey’s satisfaction, the group started moving quickly in response to his orders.

He was about to step forward and join them, when the air seemed to flicker and change before him. The goblin who had been invisible was now suddenly visible.

She was blackened or at least her back was, but her appearance was not what drew his eye. There was a tiny sparkle of moving gold on the ground between himself and the goblin, and Geoffrey stooped and picked it up.

It was a gold ring with symbols that he neither recognized nor understood inscribed all over it.

“What the…”

“I want it!” Imogen practically pounced on him as she spoke. “You have to give it to me, you owe me after—” She gestured wildly at the chaos of the site of battle. “After all this!”

“This is what you signed up for,” Geoffrey countered.

“Come on, Geoff, you won’t even know what to do with that thing,” she pleaded.

“I’m sure I could figure out a few things,” he replied.

It’s a fucking invisibility ring. It would be just my luck if you need magic to use it…

She lowered her voice so that only Geoffrey could hear her. “I’ll give you my share of the gold,” she said quietly. “All of it.”

He raised his eyebrows. Imogen had negotiated to have the largest share of gold.

How valuable is this thing? He turned to look at his allies, who were pulling fistfuls of gold out of the hole as he and Imogen carried on their conversation.

That’s too good to resist. It’s not like I would know where to sell this thing if I kept it, and I don’t aspire to a career as a professional thief…

“All right,” he whispered. “Don’t tell anyone. I’ll let you have it now, and you give me your share after we get back.”

This would prevent anyone else from quibbling over the sudden alteration in share distribution. Despite his general resentment toward her, Geoffrey trusted Imogen more than any of the others besides Cornelia. He had known her the longest, and she was an honest woman.

“Deal!” she whispered back, almost shaking with excitement.

They shook hands, and he surreptitiously passed her the ring.

Then they joined the others in fishing gold out of the hole the goblins had died protecting and packing it away into their bags.

—

Gwendol dashed down the mountainside, doggedly putting one foot in front of the other despite repeated stumbles and falls, including one in which she rolled twenty feet downhill over steep, rocky ground.

Her heart pounded painfully, her head ached with her shortness of breath, and she thought she might have twisted her ankle in one of her particularly bad stumbles.

All her grace and finesse around the terrain had deserted her, and only Gwendol’s indomitable will kept her moving.

Running heedlessly downhill.

Then hobbling downhill.

All the way, Gwendol kept her mind focused on one thing.

“Have to reach the children,” she rasped to herself repeatedly. “Have to save them.”

Her mind refused to imagine the shape of what might await her, despite the ominous gray smoke that still floated wispily up to the heavens. Despite her years of experience with the cruelty of humans.

Finally, she reached the base of the mountain. She stumbled onto the leveler ground of the Murmur, her body wracked with pain and her mind whirling. The dark shadowy ground of the forest felt as if it could reveal an enemy at any moment—or something worse.

How did I ever feel safe leaving the children here? she asked herself.

As she continued to hobble-jog her way forward, her chest felt as if it was going to explode. The foot that she had twisted seemed as if it might fall off. Her breaths came short, as if her lungs were no longer working properly. Somehow even her arms felt a creeping pain.

Her body badly needed a rest, but she drove it onward.

Not much farther now…

She reached the place where she had left the children, and they were not there.

Her mind was not functioning at a hundred percent, given the tense urgency that was swelling up inside her, but she still saw the obvious signs of where the children had wandered off to. Her tracking skills had been top notch during the war. Chasing after children was far too easy.

It was sadly made easier by the lingering smell of burned bodies.

Her heart in her throat, Gwendol pushed forward through the thickening odor. The smoke had mostly died away already, but the smell it carried was still unmistakable.

As she drew close to the place where the reek of scorched flesh originated, Gwendol started to see signs of others who had been in the Murmur besides her grandchildren.

A snapped twig here, a broken plant stem there, would not have meant much, except that they came from a different direction than the children had moved in, and some of the signs of movement were above head height for the children.

Humans.

She stepped through a pair of branches and came upon her worst nightmare.

“Arrrgh!” Gwendol let out a choked scream.

Some part of her subconscious mind kept her from screaming at the top of her lungs. The enemies were probably still somewhere close by.

The blackened bodies of her grandchildren lay scattered around a small clearing in the Murmur. She recognized them from the parts that had not been burned. Some bits of green skin and some other physical features remained untouched by the flame.

Gwendol felt an excruciating pain in both body and mind. Her heart felt as if something with jagged claws was trying to rip it out of her chest.

Her eyes fell on the corpse closest to her.

My little Gweneth…

A scrap of her little dress remained unburnt, proudly bright red and frilly as it had been that morning. But the child’s face was gone.

Gwendol’s chest seized. She collapsed to her knees.

I know what this pain is. I’m dying. Thank the gods, I’m dying too.

Darkness clawed at the edges of her vision as the pain in her chest worsened. Her body swayed gently from side to side as she fought her body to remain upright.

She felt a wrenching pain inside that had nothing to do with her heart, noticeable even through the agony of her chest.

Then one of the corpses moved suddenly.

Malin’s face, half-melted, jerked up off the ground.

“Grandma,” she said weakly. “I’m sorry…”

Then Gwendol was falling. Her head hit the ground, and mercifully, she knew no more.