The Next Day

Penny

The next day, we set out, fully armed and armored. We had plenty of venison jerky to sustain us, and almost six liters of water. We'd taken as many precious gems as we could carry, filling our pockets with more wealth than most people would ever see. The forest was less terrifying and combative now that we had proper gear, and progress was swift as Alice burned her way through the brush.

The town of Pyrtroke was little more than rubble, nothing but half-ruined buildings still standing defiantly against the elements. The ruins of houses, shops, and other buildings littered the once bustling town. An atmosphere of dread filled the air, making the hair on my arms stand on end, and my heart beat just a little faster. Rivers flowed on both sides of the town, before combining into one big estuary that ended in the ocean another fifteen kilometers away. The location was chosen for its defensive position, with two sides completely defended by rivers, enemies could only come from the forest or the heavily defended North. Unfortunately, the weaker South entrance was where the goblins came from and killed everyone. Bones were scattered throughout the abandoned streets, the only sign that this wasteland of a town was ever inhabited. I heard Yas sharply suck in a breath as she came out of the forest and took in the sight of her former home. She must have been crushed to see what had happened. A stray dog ran into the center of the main road with a femur in its mouth and began to growl at me. Alice ignited her sword behind me and the mongrel ran.

"Shit, Yas. You sure this is the best idea?" Alice asked, nervously taking in the ruins. "Who knows what lives in this town now."

"Unless you two fancy a swim across thirty feet of rushing water, we have to go through the town. I don't like it either, but it's our only choice." She replied shakily, seeming unnerved. I rubbed her shoulder reassuringly and started to walk down the road. She was right, the rivers on both sides were deep rapids, filled with anything from beautiful naiads who would accept sex for safe passage, to creepy tentacle monsters that would drag me to their lairs and fill me with their babies. It was too risky, and so we had to walk through the town. The torn uneven road was pitted with holes, and as I walked down it, my foot jammed into a crack. I lurched forward, stumbling on the shattered cobbles, and stopped at the entrance of the town. The ruins loomed menacingly, glaring down at me with apocalyptic fury. I felt the blood drain from my face as abject terror filled my veins. It took every ounce of willpower in me to stay there, while my instincts screamed at me to bolt and run back to the forest. I could hear chanting, the faint voices singing darkly in a tongue I didn't understand.

"Hey, you okay? You look like you've seen a ghost." I jumped as Alice placed a hand on her shoulder.

"Y-you don't hear that?" I whispered nervously. Alice stood silently and cocked her head to one side, listening intently. The faint chanting was still going on, the voices reaching a crescendo as the tempo of their song sped up.

"I don't hear anything. You sure you're okay?" Yas said, suddenly appearing on my left and making me jump again. The two of them looked at me with concern as I stood petrified, almost scared enough to piss my pants.

You're being stupid, hearing things that aren't there. Calm down, and stop being a little pussy.

"Y-yeah, I'm fine. Must have been the wind." I slowly said, and **** a smile at the two of them. Yas seemed satisfied with my answer, but Alice looked at me with worriedly, not sure if she should press the issue or not. Yas started walking into the town carefully, looking around and taking in every remnant of her home, once-hopeful memories now tainted with sorrow. Alice began to follow her, but stopped and came back to grab my hand. Her fingers fit perfectly between mine, and with a reassuring smile, she started to gently pull me towards the ominous ruins. The chanting had slowed down to a sonorous tone, syllables blending into each other as each word was dragged out.

The howling wind swept through the ruins, nothing but the scent of **** and decay flowing in the breeze. The chanting was louder, the singing like nails on a chalkboard that grated against my ears. All I wanted to do was clutch my head and scream, but my friends weren't affected, and I didn't want to be the weird one hearing voices. We carefully made our way through the town, avoiding the corpses, rabid dogs, and holes in the ground. There was no way that goblins did this. They weren't capable of such devastation, and why the hell are there so many skeletons? I looked around and studied the remains of the people of Pyrtroke, trying to figure out what exactly happened. And I made a chilling discovery.

Oh no. It wasn't goblins that did this.

"Alice, look." I stopped, and she looked where I was pointing. The chanting suddenly stopped mid-sentence and the silence made me even more anxious than the dark singing. A pile of skeletons was shoved up besides an overturned cart, and the thing that caught my attention was their pelvises. I could see three whole skeletons, and about a half dozen more half-skeletons. But all of them were female.

Goblins enslaved women, they would never have killed them.

"What am I looking at? It's just more bones." Alice asked, confused as to why I pointed out a specific group of skeletons.

"Their pelvises. Men have narrower ones, but the ones here belong to women. And goblins don't kill women, they enslave and breed them." I walked over to a male skeleton and brought over his pelvis, before putting it next to the female one.

"Are you sure?"

"Yes."

"Shit. We should go. Now." Alice ordered, before glancing over at Yas, who was forlornly rubbing dust off a sign in front of what was probably the town hall. "Yas! We have to leave!"

Alice started walking faster, almost at a jog as I followed behind her. Yas fell in behind me and we rapidly made our way through the center of the town onto another main road leading to the exit. The chanting started again, no longer a song but a single drawn out syllable screamed into my head. It felt like someone was hammering nails into my skull and I fell to my knees, clutching my head.

SCREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE...

"AAAAAH!" I screamed and collapsed, curling up into a ball as I tried to cover my ears to no avail. The chanting wasn't physical, and I couldn't do anything about magic penetrating into my brain.

"Shit! Yas, cover us! I'm gonna take her to the town hall!" Alice ordered, and I felt her pick me up. She sprinted over to the building and kicked open the door before following Yas up some stairs. She laid me down on the bed, and placed a warm hand on my forehead.

"Yas, check her temp. I can't feel heat because of my magic."

"She's burning up. Like, she's as hot as you right now. What do we do?"

"What's the fastest way out of this town?"

"The way we were going."

The screaming muted, just as suddenly as it had started, and my mind started working again now that pain wasn't overwhelming me. It was still going on, but almost like a whisper now. I groaned and sat up, rubbing my forehead, and Alice immediately crouched down besides me and placed a hand on my shoulder. I looked around the large bedroom, pink paint faded from exposure, and dozens of pictures and paintings covering the walls. It was comparable to my bedroom in it's size, almost as big as the average peasant's common room. The bed I was on was massive, easily able to fit the three of us and then another three people. The windows were all shattered, and the drapes waved in the wind as a cold breeze swept through the room. And I saw old pictures, of a smiling girl with her parents, then that same girl grown up with her arms wrapped around the neck of a very handsome man as they both looked at the painter. And that girl looked a lot like...

This is Yasmina's bedroom! Damn, her husband was hot.

"Penny, what happened?" Alice asked, looking at my pained expression with concern.

"The voices I was hearing since we got close to the town, they started screaming at me." I grunted, head still aching.

"Guys? We got company!" Yas called out as she peered through the broken windows. We joined her to look out the window and saw a procession of sorts making its way towards us from the other end of town. About fifty hooded figures wearing black cloaks were slowly walking towards us in a line two men wide. They were maybe 100 meters from us and at their current pace, we had maybe five minutes before they reached us

"Penny, can you walk?" Alice asked.

"Yeah." I replied and got out of the bed.

"Permission to open fire?"

"Granted."

Alice walked over to the window and conjured a basketball sized fireball. She masked it by bending the light around it, and sent it hurtling down at the ghastly procession.

Boom!

The invisible fireball exploded in the middle of their ranks and sent them scattering. The black hoods were sent flying in every which way as their formation collapsed. Their numbers dropped from around fifty to close to forty now. Their screams of agony could be heard even from where we were. The voice in my head went silent as their concentration broke, and I breathed a sigh of relief.

"The screaming is gone!" I called out, and Alice looked back at me with a cocky smirk. She readied another fireball and threw it at them, but they were ready this time. One of them threw a counter-fireball that smashed into ours mid air. They both exploded in a shower of sparks that rained down upon the black hoods. I could see them frantically pat out embers on their cloaks, but they hadn't taken any casualties this time. And then the black hoods began their counter-attack. All of them were mages, and the elements themselves began to **** the townhall. Fireballs rained down from the sky alongside deadly icicles and hail. The ground shook, and the wind howled as it **** itself into the room. It wouldn't be long before the already damaged building collapsed around us. Alice fired one last cloaked fireball, arcing it into the sky and ran. She grabbed my hand, dragged me behind her and Yas followed behind. Just as she set foot outside the room, that entire section of the building collapsed, falling down with a horrific sound of cracking wood. A beam dropped onto my head, stunning me, and I unceremoniously collapsed like a sack of potatoes. I felt Alice scoop me up and start sprinting, but everything was kind of blurry, and there was a loud ringing in my ears. And then everything faded to black.