A dream:

You shake back to consciousness, everything hurts, as you open your eyes there is a layer of white all around you, ash. You push the heavy shield off of you, the once painted surface now charred black. There is still smoke rising from smoldering piles all around, the red embers still glowing. You looks down and your hands are red and blisters are starting to form on the larger surfaces. Your face also stings and you can feel blisters starting to form there too. Even the smallest movements hurt as you attempt to stand. You check yourself over and you don’t appear to be too badly injured, other than the burns you find a few small cuts, you unstrap your armor and check and there are large bruises on your stomach and sides. You put the armor back on being careful to tighten it down even over the bruises, it hurts but not doing so could leave gaps in the protection that might cost you more. You start to look around, skeletons everywhere, bits of burnt leather and plates and bands of metal that were once armor are scattered around as well. You go through as many of the corpses as you focus more on the less damaged ones trying to find some semblance of functional gear. Most of the swords are now missing any kind of handles and with those missing the rest of the assemblies seem to fall apart, there are some that seem to have escaped the flames and once you find two of them that seem mostly untouched you store them in your scabbards and continue your search, finding many blackened arrowheads and javelin points. You gather as many as you can find of these but are unable to find any kind of food or water that survived the flames. You look around and you can’t find any single spot that looks like it would be any easier than anywhere else to climb out of this burnt out crater. Making your way over to one of the sides you take out some of the javelin points and stab them into the earth making up the wall, the point sinks in, it seems to be a tough clay, made tougher by the heat but not solid by any means. You grab the burnt shield that you survived under and strap it to your back. Back to the side with a few more metal points slamming another and another into the clay until you can step on one and reach higher to place another this process continues until you can reach the surface. You roll over the top edge and lay there for a moment on your back staring at the sky. The light of the sun burns as it hits your skin. You make your way to some shade. You sit and rest, in the bushes you see some hits of leather, you don’t bother to stand but crawl over reaching under the leaves, it is a waterskin, the outside of it is stained red. You push the branches aside and there is more items here. A couple broken bows and pieces of armor, some bags and a couple arrows discarded here and there. No bodies here, but enough congealed blood on the ground that there should several bodies here. You open the waterskin, full, you look up at the sky through the branches and you whisper a few words before lifting it to your lips and taking a good long gulp from it. It feels so cool going down. You plug the skin up again and begin searching what else is left, no food, but a sleeping roll and a knife. Swallowing some more water you try your best to orient yourself and start moving. You walk quietly along through the trees, no matter how far you move you can still smell smoke, most likely from the shield you still have strapped to you. You are starting to wish you hadn’t tossed away your helmet during the fire, while the sun would have made you hot you feel very exposed and miss the comforting feeling that having it would provide.

There are sounds up ahead you aren’t sure what it is and make your way to a tree and lean hard up against it straining to hear more. Movement in the underbrush not too far away, you reach down and slowly pull a sword free of the scabbard. You get the same feeling you had under the shield the day before, you try your best to be quiet, no breathing, no sound. They are footsteps definitely footsteps, they don’t sound like they are headed in your direction but they seem to be on a path that leads them nearer to you. You shift slightly to put more of the tree between you and the newer direction of the sounds. As you do there is a small sound, a corner of your shield bumps the trunk and the movement stops for a moment, then after a few very long seconds continues again. You start to see bits of movement, leather and metal shifting on large standing frames, grey/green skin peaking through. Orcs, damn why did it have to be more orcs. You grip the handle of the sword tightly and try again to be as quiet as possible.

You wake