Terem hustles through the frantic town. People are seen running through the crowded streets or pushing their boats along the narrow canals, trying to reach the edge of town before departing on foot.
Everywhere, people are frightened. Many are desperately shouting for explanations only to be answered by heartfelt screams of abject terror. Even the sensible people are shouting and shoving their way through the crowd as the fear spreads like a virulent plague. However, each person holds one common goal; everyone is rapidly moving towards the plains where Terem first arrived.
Terem, however, is an abnormality within the singleminded conglomerate of citizens. Unlike everyone else, he is slowly heading towards the western edge of the city.
This side neighbor's the lake but also opens up into an expansive valley dotted with small conifer groves and falls.
It takes Terem almost an hour to wade through the panicked crowd of people and reach the westernmost part of town. By the time he arrived, only a handful of adventurers along with eight platoons of soldiers stood, or sat, at attention. Their faces were straightlaced and their eyes were unfocused upon the horizon.
The adventurers stood apart from the soldiers. Each one was busy doing something different to pass the time, whether it was whittling, taking care of gear, or even simply talking in hushed voices.
Terem was impressed at first. Nearly 500 people had responded to the emergency call from within the small fishing town, although in reality, it was more of a commercial town. The number was nowhere near small. However, Terem's hopes were squashed when he peered through the afternoon haze into the distance.
At first, nothing seemed amiss. The green cliffs stood greyed out against the light mist and the small clumps of trees mottled the valley with splotches of darkness. Upon closer inspection, though, Terem could make out several uncharacteristically dark plumes along the horizon.
And after he noticed the first, he only noticed more. The fuzzy towers of darkness seemed to multiply in front of Terem's eyes as he went from noticing one to two to three to ten and so on. They never ended, expanding as far back as the fog would allow Terem to see.
"What the hell is that?" he couldn't help himself from cursing. The somber mood quickly spread and infected him. Or, so the surrounding people thought. In reality, his eyes were usually cold, and they looked especially forlorn in the fading twilight.
But, everyone knew that the defense of a wall-less village was beyond hope. The only thing that the guards could pray for was the safety of their wives and children. They would fight for the well-being of every evacuee. And they would most certainly die.
Tom fell back to the end of the line to meet up with Terem. As the leader of the adventurer's guild, it was his duty to organize the defense of Merilin alongside the local lord, Lord Henry: a pompous but knowledgable man who led the small town to an age of prosperity.
"I know how it looks, boy, but trust me when I say we have a chance." Tom's tone was jovial, and no twitch in his muscles betrayed his inner fear. He knew that he was helpless, and he had resolved himself to die upon the field. However, in this situation, even his steadfast will might not be enough to protect his people. Terem didn't care about any of this.
"What are they?" Terem's inquiry was met by a rueful grin.
"Orcs, goblins, and a few ogres is what the scouts reported. Nasty buggers, the lot of them. However, they're exceptionally crafty at times, and to make it worse, the size indicates that they might all be under the leadership of an Orc Lord. If that's the case, I don't think I can even delay their army long enough for the evacuation to finish."
Terem took a minute to process the new wealth of information. To his limited fantasy-related knowledge, goblins were cunning little green cretins that lived in dank caverns away from the light. Alongside this, he knew that orcs were a stronger and, most likely, a more knowledgeable species of monster than the goblins. And ogres supposedly fleshed out the saying of, 'all brawn and no brain.'
Despite all this, a leader would be a troublesome opponent. Terem jumped from biased conclusion to biased conclusion and finally reasoned that the Orc Lord was most certainly stronger than an ogre, firmly believing that the relationship between the three species was purely based on strength rather than diplomacy.
"I think I got it."
Tom looks up at Terem, surprised that he hasn't spouted a stream of questions. But he shrugs and continues to tally up provisions while conducting militaristic calculations, mainly about how much ground to give and how much time the soldiers would need to buy before retreating to another line of defense.
He was also attempting to predict possible enemy movements, running and rerunning difficult scenarios through his head to arrive at the best possible outcome for the human side.
Among these tactics, Tom considered kiting the goblins, conducting hit-and-run warfare, and even a simple siege defense. He eventually discarded most of his strategies for various reasons: disadvantageous terrain, his time constraint, even the enemy's intelligence. Other's, Tom kept in mind just in case the enemy general made a huge mistake that could be capitalized upon; however, the more he thought, the more hopeless the upcoming skirmishes seemed.
Terem watched as Tom's eyebrows furrowed in concentration. A dangling strand of beard twined around the old man's finger, subjected to the push and pull of stress.
Terem decided to leave the man alone with his thoughts. After all, he was having a hard enough time already. And his old age wasn't helping one bit. At one point, his breathing became so heavy that Terem thought Tom had gone into cardiac arrest.
Returning his attention to the soldiers, Terem reevaluated the mens' odds. With the new information, Terem concluded that the survivability rate was abysmally low. Most, if not all, of these men... would die.
Their faces showed it as well. Or, more specifically, their eyes did. They were empty, devoid of life, dead.
From the crowd, a group of three stood away from the rest. Each sat around a small fire that they had lit. Knowing them, it was probably to brighten the moody surroundings, a small spark of hope from within the endless sea of misery. Of course, these people were Ron, Lucy, and the infamous Vanessa.
Before Terem could avert his gaze, Ron noticed it and flagged him down. Terem reluctantly walked over.
"Good to see you on this fine evening, Terem! Come and join us by the fire. The Gods know that it still gets cold during the nights."
Terem only grunts before sitting down as far away from Vanessa as possible. Expectedly, his troubles turn out to be fruitless since the blasted girl crawls on over beside him before pestering him with an assault of questions.
"Terem! What have you been doing these days? I haven't seen you in like forever, right? Come to think of it: you didn't join the adventurer's guild. How are you still alive?" So on and so forth.
"Slow down, Vanessa. Wouldn't want to scare him away again." Ron says this while concealing his laughter. Lucy, on the other hand, is a lot less stealthy, occasionally mimicking a speedboat in her attempts to conceal it only to turn the laugh into prolonged convulsions.
Vanessa is less than impressed.
"Just so you know, I have never chased anyone away in my entire life. I only welcome people with open arms."
"And open teeth."
Vanessa turned towards Terem. Shock is plainly written across her face due to his incomprehensible words.
"Rude!" is the last word she shouts before brusquely turning her head to avoid even looking in Terem's vicinity. Unfortunately for her, Terem takes the hard-earned moment of respite as a luxury.
At this point, both Lucy and Ron cannot hold back their guffaws any longer, and they both roll back onto the soft grass.
The ruckus attracts the dead gazes of the soldiers, quickly ending the uprising of happiness in sorrow and a few teary apologies from the perpetrators.
"So..." Ron tries to pick up the conversation where they left off. However, a bone-chilling interruption breaks off whatever he was about to ask next.
A deep thrum rumbles through the valley, traveling on the wind, shaking the green canyon walls and frigid hearts alike.
-Bwooooooooooooooom-