• A cold wind whipped around me as I stepped onto the frost bitten ground. As I let the door to the inn slam shut behind me, a few passing villagers paused, stared at me with widened eyes, and then hastened down the street. This kind of thing was nothing new to me. I’m famous for all the wrong things, I thought, walking up the bustling street. People look at me like I’ve got the plague!

    As I walked, people who saw me started to whisper to their friends, and soon the crowd dispersed a little, fear in each set of eyes. And my cousin wonders why I prefer to live in seclusion.…It’s the same in every town I go through, in Armanat, I thought, as I pulled up my face mask and lowered my hood so that it covered my eyes, casting the illusion that I didn’t have a face. Everything I wore blended in with my cloak, making it look like I was a Druid, or something. Bad move. Now everyone was staring. Damn it, I thought. Druids are some of the most infamous and feared beings in all of Marr. If people hadn’t already have been staring at me, the entire town would’ve been in a frenzied panic.

    You never want to meet a Druid in person. Druids are nightmarish creatures, with unknown origins. Some say that they come from the lands west of the Haran Sea, but no one has yet to even sail to the western shores of this humongous body of water. The belief is that there is nothing but a hellish wasteland, where nothing but a Druid, with all its evil power, can survive in. But enough of where they’re said to come from.

    If and when you meet a Druid, you can almost immediately tell that it’s coming. That is only because they travel in a low, mist-like storm cloud. Druids have complete control over their little clouds; able to contort and change it’s shape and size to their liking. Druids often use these clouds to kill, instead of hand-to-hand combat. A Druid will only reveal itself to those in which they are after. But even then, they are rarely truly seen. You’re one hell of a lucky man (or woman) if you ever survive an attack from a Druid. Only a few former comrades and myself have survived such.

    But I thank the gods many of the Druids have disappeared, in the last decade, or so. But I was starting to wish even more that Druids had never even existed, because the watchful eyes of what seemed like the entire town was starting to aggravate me.

    I quickly stepped into a dark alleyway, where a dirty beggar woke and after seeing me, ran half-stumbling out of the alley. With gritted teeth, I half ran through the alley, jumping over a low wall. Thankfully, no one but myself was on the other side. And then, I began my walk to a very familiar place.

    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


    It was some time after noon, when I stopped at the bottom of a grand hill. Looking up, I could see the top of a giant gray wall. I sighed heavily, and make the easy climb up the hill, until I reached the wall. And then I saw it: A giant castle, with many tall, magnificent turrets, and giant wooden doors.

    As I looked up at Kir castle, I smiled a little. I’m home, I thought. After all these years…….Kir was originally a place of learning, and then it became a military fortress, then a hideaway, then a birthplace of hope. This place was a lot of different things to everyone, during the war. But not anymore. Now it’s just an abandoned building, that no one ever respects, anymore, I thought, leaning against a hole in the wall. Then I looked at the things next to me; giant pieces of stone, and another 50 yards to the rest of the wall. “ Boom! Jax, get your men out of their!’ ‘Aaaaaah!’ Crash!” I shook myself after that flashback, from that time that seemed so long ago, now. I then walked towards the castle, in what seemed like a great hurry. Let’s see if what I came for is still here….

    As I walked, I had a strong feeling that I was being watched. I looked around as I walked, but after seeing nothing or no one, I continued onward, trying to shake the feeling that wouldn’t go away.

    At the doors, I reached for the door handle, but I barely touched it, when I heard a loud creaking, and the doors fell to the floor with a crash, sending a thick cloud of dust up into the air. I have chuckled, half coughed. They sure don’t make doors like they used to, I thought, and I walked into the entrance hall, still with the feeling of being watched.

    I immediately walked towards the nearby courtyard. Good. It’s still here. I stepped out of the dark corridor into the bright courtyard. Or should I say cemetery? Yeah, cemetery. My friends. All dead. All here.

    I walked among the headstones, pausing at some of them. The first one I stopped at belonged to a good friend of mine: Dan Fallis. “Wish you hadn’t died on me, mate,” I said, kneeling down. “You should see how much has changed here. How much the people changed. And how fast it all happened. No one seems to appreciate what we did. What we all did.”

    After saying a quick prayer of remembrance, I sighed heavily and stood. I continued to walk among the graves; walking slower and slower as more and more memories came to me. The more I saw, it seemed, the more depressing it became. Oh, the memories. Some were painful, some happy. Some even made me laugh out loud. But all the same, I kept wandering among the graves, a phantom of the living, surrounded by those who are dead. No!

    I rushed over to a now demolished headstone, now barely legible. Then something on the ground caught my eye. Bending down, I inspected it. A footprint. Goblin. Approximately 80 pounds. Approximately 4 feet tall. As this newfound information ran through my head, I followed the prints, drawing an old, black sword. And then I heard a loud crack behind me. Whipping around, I placed the tip of my sword right under the goblin’s chin, applying just enough pressure to keep it still.

    I looked into the goblin’s cold, gray eyes. They were surprisingly calm for someone who could die if I moved the tip of my sword less than half a centimeter. When I thought this would be the only thing surprising to be found about this goblin, it did something no other of it’s kind has ever done, to my knowledge: spoke.

    “Welcome, Jax Wolfblood. We’ve been waiting for you.” It spoke so calmly, it gave me a very foreboding feeling. Wait a minute….

    “We? What do you mean, ‘we’?” I spoke to it just as calmly, but pressed a little farther into the goblin’s lower jaw

    “Exactly what I said, human,” it said. “Do you not remember? I’m sure we’ve met before. You probably don’t remember me specifically. But if you barely remember anything, I’m sure we can refresh your memory.”

    "And how about these friends of yours, eh? How the hell did they get here? Goblins only go out of their rotting caves if they’re told to.”

    “All in good time, Jax. All in good time. But I’m sure my friends and I will tell you, when they get here.”

    “All in good time? You better tell me what I want to know, goblin, or you may lose your head,” I said, now adding so much pressure to the sword that even this goblin was starting to look slightly uncomfortable, a trickle of blood running down his neck.

    “I assure you, my friends are on their way,” said the goblin, still with that same cold voice. “But while we’re waiting, why don’t we have a little chat? I know how you humans are, nowadays: always wanting to talk, to get a word in. So, how have you been, since that terrible war ended?”

    I made a noise in my throat that sounded like I had something stuck in my throat. “Like you care? Don’t play nice with me, you scum. That war was more than terrible. It even affected your kind, in their dirty little rat holes. In fact, if I’m not mistaken, it was your kind that took this castle away from myself and all the ones that resisted His army.” I was speaking louder now, the temptation to just chop of the goblin’s head growing stronger by the second.

    “It was a decision many regretted.”

    “Yeah, especially those who lost their loved ones and their lives, by your kind’s hands.”

    “And my people regret killing all those people.”

    “That’s pure, genuine bullshit. I highly doubt your kind gave a rat’s a** who died.”

    “You shouldn’t.”

    “Well I do. Where are these ‘friends’ of yours? They better show their ugly faces soon, or I may just have to silence the squeaks coming out of the hole in your head your kind call a mouth,” I threatened. “I should just kill you, and leave you to the crows.” Well, that certainly shut the stupid thing up. The goblin just stood there, gazing up at me with cold, gray eyes.

    I was about to speak again, when a low beating could be heard, probably from down in the dungeons. The goblin looked up at me, his mouth curling into a wicked smile, showing his pointed teeth. “I believe you are going to meet my friends, now…Do you really think you should’ve come back here, now? For I know that you knew something was going to go wrong, but your wife probably just convinced you that you were paranoid. But you realize now that you weren’t just being paranoid…you should’ve died in that war, Jax. Just like your weak friends-”

    The goblin was dead before it hit the ground, and I was already darting around the headstones. I must get out of here…But how am I going to get past that goblin’s ‘friends?’ I ran out of the courtyard, holding onto my now bloodstained sword tightly. I didn’t get far, however, before a black-shafted arrow landed centimeters from where my foot was. Immediately I stopped, and looked at what I was up against. I didn’t like what I saw.

    About a hundred yards away, there was a group of maybe one hundred goblins. There was something much larger than any goblin, but it was at the very back of the group, in the shadows, so I couldn’t make out what it was. Damn it! How long have these creatures been here?! They don’t even look that old, but a group of this size couldn’t have gone unnoticed, even in the dead of night! I started to back up, heading towards the closest corridor, and, from what I remembered, the nearest exit out the hellhole that was once the hope of Armanat.

    By the time I made it about three quarters of the way to the corridor, the goblins (and whatever else was with them) was moving faster, and was closer to me than ever before. Let’s see…if I run for it, they’ll charge. But if I don’t, they’ll catch up to me anyway….Man, I’m getting to old, for this…or at least I should be…I soon reach behind me, and feel the cold stone of the wall. I kept feeling along the wall, my eyes still on the advancing goblins. I nearly fall, when the wall suddenly disappears from behind me. Yes! Now, to get out of this hellhole!

    I whipped around, and just as I disappeared into the shadows, an arrow hit the stone floor the exact same spot as where my foot was 2 seconds later. As I continued down the narrow corridor, it seemed to get darker and darker, the air getting heavier. And I still had that strange feeling of being watched, again. I did my best to shake it, and focused on feeling my way around. These creatures could’ve at least lit some torches along some of these passages…The thought barely crossed my mind, when I saw a dim light around a corner some 20 yards away. With newfound hope, I rushed forward, until I heard a hellish, growling voice.

    “Find him, NOW! If you don’t, He’ll send us into the Abyss!”

    Grumbling and growls answered the voice, and I could see shadows coming around the corner. Hearing a noise above me, I looked up.

    “HRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHH!!!!!!”

    As the creature dropped down onto me, my head smashed into the wall, and my vision blurred. As I began to lose consciousness, it called to the others, saying something about rope…