As the morning came so did the blinding sunlight accompanying it, the chaotic night was in the past and the village had all but completely burnt down. The village was littered with both bodies and buildings, some were burnt beyond recognition, others were brutally cut up and had become food for the wolves and other wild animals.

A spell from a nearby village had created rain clouds to put out the forest fire during the night. But nobody had come to help the town, since it was a village full of kobolds. Some people were actually happy about the tragedy that befell them, but most just didn't care.

No one knew and no one cared as to what had happened, and certainly there wasn't anybody that even bothered to look into it.

As the day went on, some of the more fortunate kobolds woke up and came out of their hiding spots. And so the arduous process of clean up started, first by burying the dead and looking for other survivors. Some simply ran away after witnessing the horrors that happened during the night. Hoping for better luck somewhere else.

From the once 143 people that lived there, barely 13 had survived and 3 had run away. Nogh was one of the 10 people still in the village, however, no one knew he was still alive since he was still lying unconscious under the main roof beam of his former house. If that wasn't enough to convince the others of his death, then his black and bloody body sure was.

The kid looked like he had run through an inferno trying to save his sister. His sister, the one who was laying there, a few feet away from him. She had sadly passed away in her sleep from all the smoke before he even tried to save her.

The old kobold druid had also survived the night, but only because he wasn't in town when it happened. Raouk had been out in the forest gathering herbs, accompanied by his son Ralk. Some plants only bloom when they are under the direct light of the moon, and the old man was determined to find some of these highly coveted herbs.

But once they saw the bright light coming from the foot of the mountain where their village was hidden, they knew that something had happened. They could also see the red dragon Drak spewing flames out of his lair and hear its mighty roars as it fought something.

Raouk and Ralk had slowly made their way back and managed to save some of the villagers that had run away, but they didn't dare enter the town. They weren't combatants and would only die a meaningless death by trying to fight back against their invaders.

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So they hid, they hid until the invaders had finished what they had come to do, and only then did they make their way back into town.

They had spent the entire day trying to either save people or burying them. When they got to Nogh's house, they saw how he had sacrificed himself to save his sister, and they were absolutely distraught when they realized that it had been all in vain.

Since they didn't have enough strength left to get Nogh out from under the beam, they chose to bury his sister beside her parents' grave instead. They also dug a second grave next to it in preparation for Nogh before they became too exhausted to continue.

As they sat by their old house drinking herbal tea and munching on a few jerkies they had, they heard a cough. Initially they ignored it, thinking it was one of the few people walking around town scavenging what they could.

But as it started getting more and more frequent, they realized that it sounded like a kid.

A kid… A kid was still alive in the rubble somewhere!

The thought that they accidentally left someone dying in the rubble shook the exhaustion right out of them, and they jumped into action, looking for the source of the coughing.

To their surprise, it came from Nogh, a kid barely 10 years old who was currently stuck under a beam and a body that looked like it was cooked to a crisp.

They yelled for help before running to Nogh and waited for everyone to gather, so they can lift the wooden beam off of him. Thankfully, it had fallen in such a way that only a portion of the weight was on his frail little body. Ralk along with the 7 other kobolds managed to lift the beam up just enough for Raouk to pull Nogh out, before they were forced to drop it back down.

Raouk had quickly used all the healing spells he could to save Nogh, he wouldn't allow another innocent life to leave his grasp like this. And even though the healing spells weren't enough to completely heal the boy, it was enough to stabilize his condition and save his life.

He was then bandaged up and laid to rest in one of the few mostly untouched beds they found. And they eagerly awaited for the boy to wake up.

It was around midnight when Nogh's eyes finally opened, he was surprised to wake up in a bed… Very surprised, so much so that he tried jumping out of it, waking up everybody around him as he simply fell out of the bed.

It took them a few minutes to calm him down and once he did, they explained to him everything they knew from the attack to the fire and to his sister. That last part hit him extremely hard. No matter how much they explained it to him that he wasn't at fault, he wouldn't accept it, blaming himself for his failure to protect her.

Eventually, Nogh fell asleep, thoroughly exhausted from crying his eyes out. The villagers knew that he would most likely never recover from this and pitied him as they grieved alongside him, sharing the pain and mourning their own losses.