[WP] Who won?
...
"Captain! Captain, are you there?" Eron stepped carefully as the others followed, each mindful of the blood and gore which soaked the ground. About the outpost, hundreds of green corpses lay in scattered conditions, some with arrows protruding chests and limbs, others with gashes or wounds, and others still with no visible explanation beyond horrid exit wounds that suggested a terrible blow of abnormal means. "Captain?" Eron called out again, stepping overtop the largest of the bodies, warily eyeing the half bared, half-missing, skull in the open air of the base's courtyard.
A terrible battle had taken place. The walls had been scaled, the gates had been broken, and up ahead in the outpost's main building, Eron cloud clearly count dozens of ropes and grappling lines dangling haphazardly as the wind strummed along. What was once a rustic but functional hold, had been reduced to the equivalent of some abandoned ruin. No window was left unbroken, and no wooden entryway had been passed over without violence. Behind him, Eron heard another's voice whisper their disbelief.
"Are you all seeing this shit?" A man dressed in foreign garb stepped through the blood and muck with high-boots, indifferent to the carnage underfoot. "First Ghouls, now Goblins- Hey, are these things going to come back as Goblin-Ghouls you think?"
"Don't be ridiculous Rob." Beside Eron, a woman's voice hiss. "We'll burn them long before that can happen, now stay quiet- there might still be more alive somewhere."
"Somehow I seriously doubt that." The foreign man continued, using his left boot to kick over a rather mutilated looking corpse. Eron turned and watched as the man's grimace matched the dead goblin's own for the briefest of seconds. "This one was shot with a rifle, I think." Pausing, the man crouched down. "Yeah, this unlucky bastard was dead before he hit the ground."
"Rob, I'm not kidding." Beside him, a woman in dark robes pivoted to survey their surroundings with palms raised in a practiced stance. "If you can't be quiet- go back and wait with Joe in the car." She nodded in Eron's direction. "Eron and I can deal with this alone."
"Listen, Sandra, I really think you need to relax a bit. You see all these dead-folks here? I mean, honestly there's nothing left alive f-AH!" The confident statement ended as a burst of flame erupted from the woman's hands, engulfing the nearest corpse with a wave of blue fire. "Holy Shit! Sandra! You crazy bitch!"
"Sorry, I thought it moved." Sandra replied with a smirk. "Apologies."
"Quiet, both of you. We must remain alert. However small, there is still a chance of ambush." Eron turned back to the main building, shaking his head with a faint expression of disappointment. Raising his hands, he breathed in deep, clearing his mind as the embers of flames rose up along the skin of his palms: prepared to cast on the slightest of notice. "I'm going to need to go inside. Sandra, I'll need your assistance."
"And me?" Behind him, Rob's voice questioned. "What should I do?"
"Wait." Eron replied sternly.
"From a safe distance." Sandra added. "It would be a terrible shame if you happened to get caught up in one of our castings."
"Your partner in crime has some serious issues Eron, I hope you're aware."
"We all have problems, Rob." Eron replied. "Now stay here, and stay alert. We'll be back." He said, as he stepped through the hold's stone doorway, flames in his hand surging to life like torches as he illuminated the first floor of the outpost.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.
"Fine. I'll keep an eye out." Rob's distant reply was muffled as it arrived, Eron glancing towards the source of mana to catch view of Sandra casting on the threshold: blurring the air with a weak barrier.
"Just in case he doesn't listen." She stated, fires flaring up in her own hands with a flourish of blue and orange. "Or if something tries to escape."
"Ah, of course." Surveying the outpost hall, Eron found the second reason Sandra provided seemed far less likely than the first. It was much the same as outside, Goblins corpses scatted about in heaps and droves, blood slick or drying on the walls and floor. Coatings of shit and piss and gore and awful stenches that pulled Eron's mind quickly back along memories of the Western lands, but unlike the courtyard outside, there was one major difference.
This time, Eron could see that Human soldiers also lay among the dead. Several of them, in fact. From lower ranks, to the clear mark of Royal service on tarnished armor. There had been a brutal fight here.
"Once the front gate to the building had been breached, it seems they chose to thin the numbers." Sandra spoke from the far side of the large room, motioning towards the stairs. "Looks like they fought, then retreated up to the second floor." Under the light from her hands, broken furniture, ropes and shields lay shattered, splintered and burned along the rising staircase. At the foot of the last step, dozens of Goblins were piled in a rough heap, many filled with enough arrows to seem gruesome variations of pincushions.
"Then we must go." Eron stated, marching calmly past to take the lead. "To the second floor." Sandra nodded with relative optimism, following after himwith careful steps. Still, Eron's own hopes soon faded. The further they went, the worse the damage became. Carefully stepping aside what may have once been bunks or tables, sawed and chopped away for a passage through and over, he noted the weapons still wedged or impaled along the ruined wooden barricades. Axes, daggers, spears, swords- any number of arrows. It seemed this had been a hotspot of activity, and the number of green-skinned corpses scattered about it seemed to support that assumption, but again: several more humans lay dead. As Eron turned the bend to reach the second floor, his breath hissed with displeasure. Goblins, humans: The entire building might as well have belonged to a plane of the damned.
"I don't see the Elf, Eron." Sandra passed him by, walking into the room with disinterest to the expressions of pain and agony frozen in horror along the floor. Her hand seized unseen tethers, pulling to drag a pile of bodies into a toppled sprawl as she looked them over. "I said it once, I'll say it again. If the Captain dies before that shovel-swinging git, I'll eat my robes. No Elf means no Captain."
She was right, Eron realized. Several knights, almost a dozen common soldiers- likely the unfortunate souls stationed here by coincidence, but no Elf. To the far side of the room, past the corpses, the broken bunks, the shattered shields and imbedded arrows, Eron's eyes found another passageway.
"One more floor." He said, nodding to Sandra as he made his way over with a wary eye to the shattered windows, and gruesome splatterings of crimson. This was not the kind of battle that happened overnight. Gaunt faces, broken weapons, goblins laying dead- filled with their own arrows presumably picked up and shot back at them. This was without a shred of doubt, a long and drawn-out stall: a bitter resistance in hope of reinforcements that never came.
"This must be the tower." Sandra said, as they began their ascent on the wide stairs past the doorway. Immediately light summoned on a gentle press of mana, Eron's eyes widened at another three human soldiers not two steps from the threshold: each brought to a brutal ended by mix of spears and daggers. They had not gone down easily, for one of was still violently clutching the strangled corpse of an unfortunate goblin by means of a brutal death-grip. Peering closer, Eron could see that it's face was a dark purple, eyes bulging wide enough to prompt a hiss of disgust from Sandra as they finally passed the scene by, continuing up the spiraling steps.
As they moved on, passing along more bodies of the dead from both sides, Eron's stomach churned at the silence. Only the howl of wind seemed to reach his ears now, no words or conversation- no gnarled goblins barks or human shouts. Everything that had come to pass, was already long finished. Stopping at the final steps, Eron turned to Sandra once more at the thick wooden door that stood firmly shut, weapons and splinters sticking free of its frame.
"Captain?" Eron spoke the name aloud as a question, listening for any sound beyond the door, but none came. With a nod to his companion, he raised his hands, summoning the flames to burn it away to cinders. "Captain, are you there?" He asked again, stepping forward into the gusts of air and smoke.