Eritance - Chapter 27

“What. what happened?” Ciara said sitting up confused. “Where are we?”. She had been passed out for the remainder of the battle, and for the journey to the campsite, so it makes sense that she was confused.

I didn’t want to be the one to break it to Ciara, that her father was dead. “Well, you see” Simon started. He trailed off awkwardly and we both looked away awkwardly. Ciara picked up on this and she sat up quickly. “What aren’t you telling me? Where is my father? What happened to Hallen?” she said with a hint of desperation in her voice.

“Your father. the villagethey’re all. gone.” I finally said quietly. Ciara screamed with shock. I immediately jumped towards her and covered her mouth. The screaming was not stopping though. “Ciara, I know, you’re in shock, you probably feel like you’ve lost everything right now, but you have to be quiet, we’re not that far away. We don’t know if any of the orcs and goblins are nearby. If they hear us we’re dead” I said while holding my hand over her mouth.

However, even saying this though, Ciara couldn’t calm down. The shock was too great for her. She was going into hysterics, tears were streaming down her face. Simon became alarmed at this and he stood at the ready just in case someone or something heard us and came over, he put his hand on his sword as well.

I didn’t know how to calm Ciara down. I had no idea how to deal with this kind of a thing. It wasn’t that I didn’t feel bad for her, I wasn’t a guy without emotions, but I had never had any family. I grew up on the lowest rung of society, and the closest thing I had to a friend had been brutally killed before my eyes.

Other than that, I had always been alone. So, I did the only thing that I could in that moment. I pulled her into an embrace and kept my hand over her mouth not saying anything. As soon as I embraced her she calmed down a bit. She wasn’t screaming loudly anymore, but she was still sniffling, and her body was convulsing.

We sat there like that for some time, and while we did this Simon left to patrol the area nearby. After a few minutes Ciara began calming down a lot more. She still had a crestfallen look on her face, but her breathing had steadied a lot more. “Orin” Ciara said. “What?”. “I.” she started to say but was interrupted when Simon came crashing back through the brush. “We have to go now, grab the packs” he said hurriedly.

“What’s going on?” I said with a suppressed tone. “Not far from here a troop of orcs and goblins are beginning to look around the forest”. They must have heard Ciara’s loud screaming from before and got together to come find the source of the noise.

Hearing that I jumped up dragging Ciara with me. “Let’s go” I said. With that we grabbed the packs that we had grabbed from the escape tunnel and began moving as quickly as we could away from the area while maintaining silence.

Avoiding orcs is not that hard to do, while they are very strong, they don’t have a lot great night vision. On the other hand, goblins shine in the dark. They have excellent night vision. It doesn’t matter whether it is day or night, goblins can see fine. That is why they can be found dwelling in the underground or in dark forests. It gives them an advantage over creatures like humans and orcs in those territories. I guess it makes up for their relatively weak bodies.

The orcs and goblins that we’ve seen so far seem to have a strict hierarchy. It seems that the goblins are subordinate to the orcs, having been dominated by their strength. In that case, the goblins will probably have to stick closely to the orcs.

This set up will slow them down and give us an opportunity to safely move away. We continued moving for several tens of minutes without incident. Just when we thought that we were safe, we heard noises nearby. “Is it them already? How did they find us? I thought.

The noises were heard all around us. Knowing we had been discovered we formed a triangle with weapons drawn. We mentally prepared ourselves for a battle, hoping that we would be able to survive again. Although we had gotten some rest before, we still hadn’t been able to recover yet from the battle with the orc chieftain.

Soon a group of fifteen goblins surrounded us. There were no orcs with them, but we were sure that the orcs would come soon. “How did they find us so quickly?” Simon shouted. “I don’t know, but it doesn’t matter anymore. If we can’t break out here we are done for.” I said back to him. “Ciara, can you fight?” I asked her. “Yes, I can. I’m not weak enough where I can’t take out a goblin or two” she said.

The goblins approached us with soft growls, making sure to keep a circle around us. We tightened our grips on our weapons as we got ready to fight. Suddenly two goblins burst forward and attacked with spears. With the difference in our stats though, they seemed so slow. I grabbed the spear that was coming towards me. I then threw it to the side and stabbed the goblin through the heart.

As this was going on, Simon parried the other goblin’s strike and Ciara slashed its neck wide open. We had killed two, but there were still so many goblins eft. We were in a time crunch though. Any minute now orcs would be showing up, and then we would be in real trouble. We had to find a way to break through the encirclement or we would surely not live to see the morning’s light.