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Gwendol tumbled through swirling darkness.

Her world collapsed into nothing but black emptiness and pain for a time.

Then the visions began to appear.

Visions of fire and pain.

A young goblin child who Gwendol did not recognize stood before her, smiling. Then a faceless human stepped out of the darkness and shot magical fire at the boy. The child let out a silent scream.

That was when it became obvious for the first time that the scene was without sound.

Not paying much attention to the strange silence of the whole scene, Gwendol reflexively leaned in to try and grab the child and smother the fire with her body. She moved right through the boy as if he wasn’t there.

And of course, he wasn’t really.

Her mind’s eye was punishing her.

Or perhaps she was in the underworld, suffering for her failures as a goblin and a grandmother.

Either way, she could not long look away.

She found herself compelled by an overpowering force to turn around and watch the child burn to death.

First came more of his silent screams as his body convulsed, wracked with pain. Then the cloud of gray smoke formed on the outside of his body, blessedly hiding some of what was happening from her view. The boy collapsed to his knees, coughing as he choked on the smoke.

Gwendol saw his eyes and skin smoldering. The eyes burst, the skin blackened, and the arms and legs moved strangely, knees and elbows bending and fists clenching as if the boy was in the midst of a fight or some other exercise. Then the boy was dead.

She knew he was dead, because his wounds were so terrible that his body could not possibly move on its own anymore. She had seen people burn to death. She knew what the body could endure and live.

But even so, the boy continued to move somehow. His charred, blackened fingers unclenched just enough so that he could point at Gwendol.

His lipless mouth spoke some words, and Gwendol read them from the movements despite the lack of sound.

All your fault.

This was the first of a procession of horrors that seemed designed to break Gwendol’s mind. Perhaps to punish her for her failure.

Over and over, Gwendol saw scenes of children burning alive. She tried repeatedly to save them, but she was never allowed to interfere, as if she—or they—were ghosts.

The darkness showed the deaths to her in silence at first, but then they began to play with sound.

When the sound began, Gwendol heard horrendous cries of pain and fear. The sounds she had imagined in the other scenes.

The subjects were not her own grandchildren at first, but other children who she did not know. She had seen many burned children, their bodies or bones laying in blackened heaps, during the war. Victims of the humans’ raids on goblin villages. Often their parents or grandparents lay beside them in the same condition.

But not me, she thought. I missed the murderers.

She had only very rarely come upon any of these children still alive—not counting Malin, assuming that her mind had not invented that experience. But her imagination, or whatever was driving these scenes of suffering, filled in the gaps in visceral and horrifying detail.

“Aaaaaahhh!”

“No, please!”

“I don’t wanna die! Mommy!”

“It hurts…”

After several scenes of strangers’ children burning to death, the visions began to include Gwendol’s own grandchildren in the midst of their suffering.

She stood paralyzed before a scene of the children struggling to fight and defend themselves from faceless intruders.

When the burning children were her grandchildren, the cries became more specific.

“No! Grandma, help us!”

“Grandma!”

“You can’t be here! This is grandma’s land!”

Gwendol had thought she had become almost numb to the scenes of suffering, but as she watched her grandchildren burn for a second time, she felt her heart collapse inside her.

The visions continued, brushing past her little ones as if their lives and deaths were nothing significant.

Goblin children on fire, their skin blackening and peeling away, their bodies crumbling to ash and dust.

Some of them were strangers; some of them were hers.

As she looked on, wishing and waiting for the end, one blackened figure with a half-melted face knelt in front of Gwendol and looked up into her eyes.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t protect them, grandma,” the figure said.

Gwendol realized it was Malin.

“Don’t say that. It was my fault, child,” Gwendol said, choking up as she spoke, tears streaming down her cheeks.

Malin collapsed wordlessly in front of Gwendol, and as Gwendol bent to try and scoop Malin’s body into her arms, it disintegrated before she could touch it.

Some of Malin’s siblings who appeared in the visions were less understanding.

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They stood and poked at her with blackened fingers and yelled reproaches.

“This is your fault!” shouted Memphis.

“Your fault!” agreed Gweneth, pointing at Gwendol with a pudgy, burning baby finger.

“Why didn’t you save us?” demanded Raucus and Embrus in unison.

“Grandma, you left us!” screamed Neon.

“Why did you let this happen?” asked Corin.

“It is my fault,” Gwendol agreed, struggling not to lose her mind as she watched the children burning and listened to their cries mingled with their accusations. “I’m sorry. I failed you all. But I’ll join you all soon.”

That seemed to be all she could offer them. Her own death.

Perhaps it was the only kind of peace Gwendol could attain.

Then a figure stepped forward from out of the darkness. She was on fire too. Gwendol recognized her immediately this time.

The blackened body and half-melted face would probably be her permanent image of Malin now. Gwendol did not question her reappearance, even though Malin had just died in front of her.

“I’m sorry,” Gwendol began, ready to repeat what she had told the other children. “Soon I’ll—”

“No, grandma,” Malin said seriously. “You can’t die. Not yet.” Her voice seemed to cut through the sound of the other children’s cries, as though the rest of what was happening in this vision was merely a nightmare, but Malin was real.

Gwendol listened attentively, looking her granddaughter in Malin’s single remaining good eye.

“I’m sorry too,” Malin added.

“My poor sweet Malin,” Gwendol said, almost moaning, voice shaking. Fresh, hot tears streamed down her cheeks.

“Grandma.” Malin looked as if she wanted to cry, too. Her voice trembled. Then she shook her head. “That’s not what we need right now. We don’t need our grandma to cry over our boo-boos and kiss them better. This can’t get better.” She touched her own blackened, melted flesh and winced in visible pain. A tear flowed from Malin’s eye.

“They murdered us on your land,” Malin continued. “So they could steal this.” She held up a coin. “They killed us to take this cold metal from your forest and leave no witnesses behind.”

Gwendol almost objected that the coin Malin was holding was gold, and Gwendol had no gold, nor had any ever been dug up in the Murmur as far as she knew. But Malin began to speak again, and Gwendol held her peace.

“We don’t need our grandma right now,” Malin insisted. “We need Bloody Gwendol, the goblin who filled the humans’ hearts with fear. How can you die here?!” Her voice suddenly rose to a shout, and Gwendol felt dimly aware that it did not sound much like the Malin she remembered. The voice was too deep, too harsh, and too powerful. It was as if some god was speaking through Malin’s person. “How can you rest in peace when our blood cries out for vengeance? Murdered on your territory, in the shadow of your mountain! How can you allow this injustice to stand? Gwendol, I task you! Gwendol!”

The voice seemed to come from everywhere around Gwendol for the last few seconds, and then she found herself blinking awake.

The late afternoon light fell over her face, though a figure stood between her and the window.

Gwendol’s fingers instinctively moved toward her waist, where she kept her knife, but then she saw the figure was green-skinned, stooped, and almost as old as Gwendol herself.

Gwendol relaxed and let out a heavy breath. Even breathing was painful. She became aware instantly that her body had become merely a focal point for different aches and pains to gather and ply their trade.

Her mind put together the identity of the person standing with her back to the light in a fraction of a second.

Just Cerysa, she thought.

Gwendol would recognize the mountainside’s only other full-time resident anywhere.

“Gwendol,” Cerysa was saying. “I ask you, can you hear me? Can you—”

“Yes, I hear you.” Gwendol’s voice came out as a croak. Speaking made her even more aware of her physical condition. It was not just her voice that was broken and weak. She felt feebler now than she had ever been in her entire life. Her chest was the center of pain, as if someone had attempted to carve her heart out with a blunted knife.

But apparently I’ll live, she thought bitterly.

“Thank the gods,” Cerysa said. “I found you lying in a pool of your own vomit. When your heart seized up, you must have spilled everything in your stomach.”

So that’s why I feel so hollow. I thought that it was just that everything that mattered to me has been destroyed. Tears gathered at the corners of her eyes as the losses became real all over again.

“I don’t know how you survived,” Cerysa continued. “Some god must have been watching over you and pushed your head to the side an inch or two. Otherwise you’d have been breathing it in. I can’t account for how you didn’t drown in that puddle other than divine intervention.”

Some god intervened and saved me, Gwendol thought dimly. Damn that god.

“Malin,” Gwendol rasped. Her head turned from side to side, hoping against hope, but she saw no one else in the healer’s shack.

“I’m so sorry,” said Cerysa, her voice catching as she spoke. “It was too late. I was too late. When I got there, she was already dead. I found you lying next to her. I almost thought you were gone, too, but you were barely hanging on. You still had a heartbeat. Who did this to you all?”

Malin, next to me? Gwendol thought. It didn’t make sense. When I passed out, she was a few feet away. Unless…

Her mind ran over the things she had seen before, during, and after her heart attack. Already, the memories were becoming mixed and muddled in her memory.

“I’m so sorry, Gwendol,” Cerysa said again. She took Gwendol’s hand, and Gwendol fought within herself to keep from pulling her hand away.

Your misery is your own doing, Gwendol thought. Don’t punish her for it. This woman is the only person who’s helping you right now.

“I should thank you for saving my life,” Gwendol said carefully.

I should, but I can’t, because you’ve saved me for a life of misery.

Suddenly, Malin’s face appeared at the forefront of her mind, and Gwendol remembered the words her oldest grandchild had spoken in the vision.

No, I’m wrong. Gwendol’s thoughts sharpened, took on a definite sense of purpose. You saved me for her. To avenge all of them.

“Of course,” Cerysa said. “I’m sorry I could not save the children.”

“How long have I been out?” Gwendol asked.

“Oh, only a couple of hours, I think. I don’t know exactly when you had the attack, but if it had been a long while before I discovered you, you’d be dead—or at least have suffered some serious brain damage. My healing arts have limits.”

Gwendol nodded, barely hearing the other woman. Finally, exerting strength she wasn’t certain she had, Gwendol began to slowly push herself up.

“You probably shouldn’t—” began Cerysa.

“Help me get up,” Gwendol said.

Cerysa just stood and stared at her for a long moment.

“What?” she finally asked.

“You heard me,” Gwendol hissed. “Help me up. There’s work to be done.”

Questions raced through Gwendol’s mind.

Can I do this?

How will I tell Madden what happened to his babies?

Did the humans truly do all this to get away with stealing some gold?

How much of what I saw was real?

Should I bury the children first? Will the killers get away if I take that time?

But all of the questions were overshadowed in her mind by a single thought.

Our blood cries out for vengeance.