Relief started to flare in the adventurers' eyes. The goblin horde had thinned considerably, their initial ferocity molded into a desperate scramble to escape.
The adventurers, battered but fierce, roared triumphant battle cries, chasing the retreating creatures with their mustered confidence.
One young adventurer, fueled by the adrenaline of victory, became overzealous.
He cackled madly, sprinting after a particularly cowardly goblin and delivering a humiliating kick in the air, mocking them for their defeat.
But before rounding the corner by the town gate. His laughter died in his throat.
A massive hand, as large as a wagon wheel, came in like a flash, clamped around his torso.
Jolted, he was lifted effortlessly, his legs dangling uselessly like a ragdoll, struggling like a helpless puppy.
Terror replaced his earlier celebration as he looked up into the face of a hulking ogre, its single eye gleaming with sadistic cruelty.
"Shit!" Gørg bellowed, his voice laced with dread. "Embrace yourself, guys! Looks like we got more company here!"
The young adventurer's scream was cut short as the ogre squeezed with bone-crushing force. His life flashed, as blood burst through his socket, leaving him dangling lifelessly.
His limp body was tossed aside like a discarded rag, shocking the crowd vastly.
Panic now replaced the once triumphant atmosphere. Choking them with sheer terror.
"No… there are more of them…" one of the adventurers stammered, his voice staggered with fear.
There and then, their worst nightmare surfaced, here to reckon a sole ogre could be the lowest to come.
But…
It wasn't just one ogre. It was a hulking horde of them, easily over ten strong, lumbered into the town square from the outer wilds, their guttural roars shaking the very foundations.
And flanking the ogres were even more goblins, these no longer the scrawny creatures they had faced earlier. These goblins were different, clad in crude armor, sheathed with a genuine sword, and worse, some equipped with shields.
Cassandra swept the scene with a sinking feeling. "This... this is not good," she muttered, her voice barely a whisper.
"Everyone! Steeled your sword!" Cassandra declared, urging the men and women to be ready for their worst nightmare, the battle of dismal.
Then, in a short period, the battle shifted the favor with sickening swiftness...
The adventurers, once victorious, were now being cut down like wheat before a scythe. One by one, they fell prey to the ogres' crushing grip or the armored goblins' brutal attacks.
The retreat offered no answer. Iron-tipped arrows rained down from the rear of the goblin ranks, pinning them like a herd of hopeless gazelles.
Even the once valiant female adventurers, previously optimistic and assured, were not spared.
Screams of despair echoed through the night air as ogres snatched them away, their triumphant cries quickly replaced with pleas for mercy.
Cassandra, the iron in her will still ablaze, fought with sheer perseverance.
She continuously parried the goblins' attacks while dodging the ogres' deadly monstrous swings.
But the odds were overwhelming. Just as she cut down the goblins charging towards her, a familiar scream pierced the air.
Ava, surrounded by armored goblins, was pinned to the ground. The goblins shrieked in utter disgusting tones, their wicked hands tearing at her robes, attempting to conduct deeds worse beyond death.
This sickening sight of Ava, her innocence completely defiled, ignited a white-hot rage within Cassandra. Fueling her with an absolute wrath.
"AVA!" she roared, she tightened her grip, charging with pure ferocity.
With adrenaline coursing through her veins, she hacked and slashed her way through the goblin ranks expeditiously, while dodging and weaving from those monolithic ogres' bashes, closing the distances.
But before she could reach out to Ava, she could save her, her concentration was shattered, shattered by another desperate cry that immediately drew her attention.
Gørg, also surrounded by forces of ogres and goblins himself, fought with the vehemence of a cornered beast. Roaring like an actual beast.
He was outnumbered, outmatched, clinging to the thin line before his burning heart. His armor was dented and bloodied, completely drenched in stab wounds and mud, he was no longer in a condition of battling.
Torn between saving Ava and her fallen comrade, Cassandra hesitated, making her mistake to halt.
Dawned at Cassandra's vacillation, Gørg quickly responded, "CASS! SAVE AVA! SAVE THE YOUNG LASS!" his desperate plea resonated through the clamor.
Taking a deep breath, she nodded grimly. "Don't worry, Gørg! I'll come for you after I get Ava!"
"NO, CASS!" Gørg bellowed, his voice raspy with exhaustion, struggling against the overwhelming forces, "TAKE THE LASS... AND LEAVE...! FORGET ABOUT ME...!"
"Not in a million chances!" Cassandra roared back. "No one dies today! None of us will!"
Just as she appeased her desperation, a monstrous fist skimmed through her while she was distracted, connecting straight to her stomach. The impact sent her flying through the air, whizzed, crashing back to where she started.
Coughing blood, she slumped against the ground, the world spinning around her.
As she struggled for her feet, beside herself, the once courageous Guard Captain, Silas, now lay unmoving, his lifeless eyes staring vacantly at her.
Wiping the blood from her mouth, smearing a crimson trail across her bleeding under lip. Cassandra exerted herself upward, attempting to recompose herself. Despair was a luxury she couldn't afford.
With her hand wrapping around her sword, she hoisted that cumbrous head of hers, gaze aligned with that disdaining smirk of the ogre that delivered the blow.
The ogre chortled a hoarse, depraved timbre that sent shivers down Cassandra's spine. It was a sound that echoed with pure rotten.
Deliberately, the ogre loomed towards her, its massive fist clenched from its behemoth palm, ready to deliver the final crushing blow.
The world spun wildly as Cassandra struggled to her feet. Her vision swam, filled with blurry shapes and flashes of red from her own blood.
The eerily deafening ringing in her ears made it hard to hear anything but the pounding of her own heart.
Given the damage she sustained, her heart still pounded with sheer perseverance, embracing the worst.
Just as Cassandra was primed for another round, that's when everything faltered…
A glance around confirmed her worst fears. Gørg, already overwhelmed by the goblin horde, lay crumpled on the cobblestones, boundless wounds and a crimson stain blooming around his fallen body, blood foamed around his bushy mouth as his body contorted in pain.
Ava, her face streaked with tears and defiance, was now limp on the ground, her struggle silenced, utterly submitted to her cruel fate.
"Gørg…? Ava…?" Horrifying realization struck, acknowledging her worst nightmare had manifested, her failure to save anyone.
Fumbling in her own mind, she was rooted to the spot, quivering with nothing but disbelief.
The ogre seized the moment and loomed closer, its sadistic eyes fixed on Cassandra, with a revolting smirk its fist raised high for the killing blow.
Despair threatened to swallow Cassandra.
"This wasn't how it was supposed to end," said Cassandra in her thought, "We were supposed to fight, to win, to live another day... Please... Ava... Gørg... stand up...!"
But now, she was alone, surrounded by death, despair, and defeat. The world swirled within her, pulling her deep into the vortex of dismay.
Consumed by her own failure, she barely noticed the looming ogre with its raising fist, ready to deliver her fatality.
Within the whirlwind of clashing denial, her entire world now had shrunk to a single point, the tarnished faces of her fallen friends.
Just as the ogre delivered its final blow, time seemed to slow down around Cassandra, the witness of Gørg's collapsed body, grip on his axe loosened and his body finally giving in. Ava's bland tear-streaked face, a portrait of silent resignation and despair. And those who once fought courageously alongside her paved the floor with their flesh and blood, the once boisterous bunch was now a depiction of tragedy.
When the ogre's fist was about to descend, a new sound pierced the air. It was Ava's, a faint whisper that cut through the melancholia, "Cassandra… Gørg… I will… save you… I will… save you… both..."
Despite their distance stretched beyond the voice reach, her whisper, a desperate yet tinged with hope, played in Cassandra's deafening ears, one that channeled with pure magic, breaching through the wall of reason.
A tremor ran through Cassandra, her lifeless eyes revivified, muttering, "Was that Ava… was that her…?"
She darted her eyes across the detritus, stopping before Ava, quivering as her eyes aligned with hers.
Ava returned her glance, letting out an assured smile, followed by a single tear, glistening like a tiny diamond, rolled down her cheek, she muttered, "Cassandra... I... will... save... you..."
With a last flicker of vigor in her lifeless eyes, Ava smiled and began to whisper a chant.
The words were unfamiliar to many but not to Ava, this was a clause that only arcane wielder spoke. Perhaps only those with a deep connection to the arcane realm.
A torrent of power then crackled around them. Three enormous magic circles materialized consecutively in the air before Ava, pulsing with blinding light, humming the song of pure energy.
Goblins and ogres alike distracted, their attention immediately ripped away from Cassandra and any sadism they committed, by the mesmerizing display.
Cassandra realized the play, the trick Ava was about to unleash, she swiftly bawled,
"AVA, DON'T!"
Before anyone could blink, a blinding beam of energy erupted from the sky, channeling directly through the magic circle and aimed at Ava, emblazing the night sky completely while dispersing clouds that hindered its befall.
In a mere second…
*BOOM*
The blast was deafening, an inferno that incinerated everything it touched within a mile. Cassandra was thrown back by the force of the explosion, her body spun like a ragdoll, before slamming right against the cobblestones far away, halting her trajectory.
After a few rolls down on the cobblestone-paved street, Cassandra delivered a wave of coughs, puffing out the dust she choked.
Moments later, the cacophony and the dust dissipated, and the stench of burnt flesh hung heavy in the air.
Amid the square now laying a large crater marred the cobblestones, a silent testament to Ava's final sacrifice. Her body, like her spirit, was gone, entirely evaporated by her own magic.
As Cassandra salvaged her remaining vigor, though stunned momentarily, her memory flushed back in like a tidal wave. Recalling the ultimate sacrifice by Ava.
Cassandra, battered and bruised, pushed herself forward while crawling. "Ava…!" A choked dolor scream ripped from Cassandra's throat, a hoarse whispering cry that echoed through the smoke and carnage.
She scrambled, straining forward on hands and knees, tears streamed down her face and completely indulged in grief, devasted.
But her mourning was only cut short when a handful of ogres and goblins, though stunned by the blast, were still alive. Some were singed and wounded, but many remained standing. While Gørg… he too lay still, his blood staining the cold stone.
The goblins and ogres, though battered and bruised by the unexpected destruction, recovered in no time, and Cassandra's sobs only to call for their arrival, exposing her breathing.
One of the ogres hustled without any further, shrugged off the debris, and swiftly lumbered toward Cassandra, a nefarious grin stretched across its coarse lips, resonating its heinous thirst.
Cassandra, her vision blurred by her tears, realizing the shockwaves crackled by the ogre's wave of stomping, flagged her impending doom.
Then, instead of struggling, Cassandra sighed.
She believed her resistance was futile, her struggle only to prolong her inevitable death. Besides, what's the purpose of living, when her hope was eradicated, leaving only so much agony and despair that was instilled within her? Perhaps death was the only kindness that remained for her.
Fraily, she flipped over her body, turning her gaze towards the sky, gawking at the first streaks of dawn break over the horizon. The nightmarish battle had stretched into the early hours of the morning.
As the first rays of sunlight kissed her skin, she squeezed her eyes shut and began to chant her daily rite in a low, mournful timbre, a final farewell to the friends she had lost, and her departure from the world she endeared.
When the stomps called their rest, a guttural roar from the ogre shattered the morning stillness with his fist reaching for the delicate, rosy sky, calling for its descent.
Cassandra braced herself, closing her eyes as the ogre's shadow loomed over her. This was it. The end of her story. Her time in Ferania.
Just as she depicted her demise in her thoughts.
Before the ogre's fist descended, a deafening explosion ripped through the air. The ogre's body contorted, then erupted in a shower of gore and bone fragments that splattered against the cobblestones.
Cassandra whimpered a little by the blood, before peeking open her eyes, wiping away the blood that had sprayed across her face and shocked.
As her vision slowly centralized, not far away, a figure stood silhouetted against the rising sun. It wasn't a goblin, nor an ogre. It was something else...?
Or was it... an elf?
The figure was cloaked in shimmering light, wielding a staff taller than itself. The elf moved with an effortless grace, gliding towards Cass as the remaining goblins and ogres charged.
But these creatures were no match for the mysterious figure. As they lunged forward, their bodies erupted in the same horrifying fashion as the ogre, leaving behind nothing but smearing blood. By the time Cassandra could fidget another blink, the elf's leathery boots adorned with elven glyphs reached before Cassandra, and the battlefield was eerily silent.
A voice, as light as a feather yet carrying the weight of ancient wisdom, spoke beside her. "You..." it declared, "...are still breathing. It was a miraculous endeavor for such like yours to survive in this massacre."
Cassandra turned her eyes upward, squinting at the figure bathed in the morning light. It was a female elf, her blonde hair shimmering like spun gold. Her eyes, the color of a deep ocean, held a glance of aloofness and something else – concern?
"Who… are… you…" Cass rasped, her voice weak and hoarse. Every attempt to speak sent searing pain through her battered body. "Ava… Gørg… What… happened…. to them…"
The elf remained collected, tongue as cold as a freezing tundra. "It's a bit uncivilized to question your savior before offering a thank you, wouldn't you agree, human? Let alone whimper the grace to those who stood tall against your frail incarnation. And besides all that, I have questions for you."
Before Cassandra could stammer out a reply to the elf's bombarding, "Wh…at..?" exhaustion claimed her. With a whimper, she drifted back into unconsciousness.
The nightmare had reached its cessation.