I was with a group of ten wild humans. It was a mixed group where I only recognized Lorrie. She was walking near me, holding my hand as we headed down a path to the river. We were going to fish and enjoy life a bit. I was walking just in my fur, and I had a spear over my shoulder just being happy. Everyone was happy. The summer had been good for us, and we had lots of food. Our hunts had been excellent, and our women had gathered good foods to make the meat better.

We were one bend from the water when it happened. Lorrie had just smiled at me and laughed a bit. Then, she pushed me on my shoulder and yelled back, “Race you to the river!”

That was the last thing she said as a bunch of little green monsters came out from the woods. I didn’t know what they were in my dream, but I was sure it was a goblin. None of them were over two feet tall, and all of them had those little arrow spears I’d found. They were all charging at us, and she was right on the edge where they were. The first spear thrown from one of the bigger ones found her throat. She turned towards me, screaming as she fell to the ground dead.

I felt a rage in me fill up my body, and my spear spun from my shoulder to a ready stance as I charged the first one. I was screaming her name as I slammed my spear into the first one breaking off the stone tip. I then yanked my spear around with the monster still on the tip and bashed the one next to it.

There were dozens of them coming from both sides of the path. The spears they threw were so weak that they bounced off as they hit my fur tunic. It was rare for one to even stick to the tunic, let alone pierce it. The women in the group turned to run as the rest of the men made ready to fight. There were only three of us, and we just had our fishing spears. We should’ve been safe here, but we weren’t.

As the women ran, more of the green monsters came out in front of us. We fell back trying to slow them down, but we were only three, and they numbered over forty by now. One of the men fell to a spear in the eye, and then it was just the two of us. My spear was broken in half as the dead weight broke it off after I’d used it as a club.

Larger green monsters that were four feet tall or so came in behind the group of little ones. There weren’t as many of them, but they had real weapons. Clubs and spears that looked like ours, and one rode a boar. When we saw that group come out, I yelled, “Run!” and I turned and ran towards the cave. Shouting as loud as I could, “we are under attack.”

When we got to the cave entrance, the gate was in place. The women had gotten through, but now we were blocked out. On the other side of the gate, the men made ready. I knew that the gate wasn’t something they could open for us. I could only hope that they could help defend from inside and cover us to keep us alive out here.

“Throw me my sword and shield!” I yelled over my shoulder to those behind a fence.

I turned to watch the approaching horde. I knew that there was little chance of me living through this. These monsters might not be able to kill everyone in the cave, but they would kill me. I was happy to die, happy to kill. I’d nothing left anymore. My mother was long dead and my father a few years before. The only one I cared for was now laying a pool of her own warm blood.

The horde slowed down in front of the cave, and they milled around like the little ones didn’t know what to do. Then the bigger ones showed up and pushed to the front. The one on the boar moved a little in front of the rest. He turned it around to look at his group and started to shout in some language that I’d never heard before.

Then another one pushed to the front with a staff in his hand and started to shake it. The one on the boar raised one arm and shouted. He turned around the boar again to face us as his whole body began to glow red. The guy with the staff started to jump up and down, facing the other monsters.

As I was watching this, I heard the sound of a shield and sword hitting the ground from behind me. I turned back to see Lorrie’s brother jumping down from the fence with his axe and in his full armor. I dropped my broken spear and picked up my sword and shield.

He looked at me and asked, “Where is Lorrie?”

“She’s dead, the first one they killed,” I growled out. The tears were running down my cheeks as I turned away from him.

“I’ll stand with you and we will kill them all today and when we are done here we will bury her with the blessings of the Shaman,” he said to me.

“You will bury her and put me beside her, for today I have already died.” I looked up at the sky and yelled, “Chaos! Here me! My heart burns, and my coal goes out. Give me my foe today and take me to your fire!” With that, I looked forward to seeing the monsters charging me.

I charged forward to meet the boar head-on. As I closed towards it, I dropped my shoulder behind my shield and prepared for my active skill, Steadfast. My shield turned black with white swirls as I felt my bare feet sink into the ground. The boar hit, and I didn’t move; I held fast. My shield took all of the charge from the bore and sent it to random places. It was a bad skill to use if fighting near people you cared for, but it was great to stop something big. The boar was dazed as I stepped to the side and slid my sword tip into its neck. A fast kill as I pulled the sword back, I spun around and decapitated the head of the rider before the boar finished falling.

My shield fell off my arm, broken where it took the charge, but that was the price of asking for Order and Chaos to lend their hand in a fight. The rest of the little monsters hadn’t stopped running at me even though their biggest guy was down. The smaller ones all threw their spears at Acastus, who had caught up to my mad charge, and me. Acastus just ducked his head a little, and the tiny spears bounced off. For my part, I dodge by running forward. I planned on selling my life today with as much blood as I could get.

There was one of the bigger ones in front of me by about ten feet when I turned on my Rush skill and plowed through the six or seven smaller ones. I’d left my sword hanging to my side and out when I rushed, and I felt the tension of the blade as it passed through the bodies of the tiny monsters. They were so weak, yet they killed her so fast. I wasn’t even injured, and they killed her with their first spear!

The larger one had a large hammer that he swung at me. I parried its shaft and felt my sword being pulled from my hands. I followed my sword so that I wouldn’t lose it. Without the sword, none of my active skills would work, and then I wouldn’t be able to kill these monsters. I managed to stumble forward and keep my sword. As I recovered, I felt a jab into my leg from a small spear.

I kicked back at where the stab had come from without even looking and felt my foot make contact and send the little monster flying. I turned around toward the guy with the hammer and saw that he was already swinging again. This time I jumped at him. I had more weight than him, and so I knew I could knock him down before he hit me, and so down we went. He was on his back, and I was on top of him. I held my sword with one hand on the hilt and the other on the blade. Then I jabbed his neck and then rolled to get up.

I looked around me to see that of the horde that charged, I had about half around me, and Acastus had the other half. Balta, who had run with me from the river, was on the edge of the fight and was using his fishing spear to jab the small ones who were trying to get behind Acastus. I’d most of the big ones to myself, and they closed in tighter on me. I’d the reach, but they had the number. I felt like a sky bear we would hunt. Circle up and try to attack from behind. The thing was, I didn’t want to live the sky bears did. So I did what only the mad would do.

I charged towards Acastus’s circle. If I could break them, then he would have a better chance of living. I activated my Rush and broke out of my circle to attack one of the large ones facing my friend. I cut down the monster from behind as I saw my friend hacking the ones around him to bits. I felt a blade across the back of my leg and went down on one knee as I turned to see one of the big guys with a bloody axe in his hand laughing a monstrous laugh. I gutted the fool who was just standing there with his axe up.

As I struggled to my feet, I realized that my leg wasn’t going to move right. I wasn’t going to be able to dodge as I needed to in order to fight with no armor. I was surrounded again and unable to break free as another round of little spears landed all over me. This time one found my left hand, and a point went into my wrist. As I pulled it out, I felt a sudden weight on my back from what could only be one of the little monsters as it jumped on me and bit my left ear.

I reached back and yanked him off my back and threw him on the ground, and ran it through with my sword. Then I felt more of them grabbing my legs like toddlers do. These were biting me as I started to use my sword to try to hack them off. More kept grabbing me and weighing me down as one of the bigger ones came towards me with a spear.

They all kept yelling as the big one took a real spear and went jabbed me in the gut with it. As I felt my tunic push in, I saw the dancing monster with his spells and staff cackling not ten feet away. I activated my last skill, one I used to save my friends in the past. A magical skill to swap places with those just a few feet away. I’d never tried with someone that wasn’t a friend, but it seemed like it worked as the magical monster appeared where I’d been and caught a spear not to the gut like I’d have but to the neck. I cut the little ones off my legs and then charged back in. I could only Swap once a day, and my rushes were out. Unless I leveled soon, I’d be dead, which I was okay with, but there were still more to kill.

When I looked over the battle, I thought that it might be something that I could walk away from. While I intended on dying today, our foes were weak and only had numbers and luck on their side. I’d killed more than I knew and so had the others. From the fence, our men with bows were taking out as many as they could. I was charging back into the fight from behind the enemy line as they thought I was finished when Acastus yelled at me.

“Behind you Arn!”

I turned my head back and saw I was wrong in thinking that the monster on the boar was their boss or leader. It was the one who was as tall as me who came out of the woods with a few more his size. They were all slightly gray-green and had small tusks coming from their lower jaws up. They were orcs in my dream. I had heard of them, and I knew of them from games; I was also glad they weren’t Orks. The group of five orcs charged into the battle. Each one of them was wearing armor as Acastus had on chainmail and a shield.

I was bleeding and out of active skills with no shield and only my fur as armor. It was these orcs that would kill me, but if I was lucky, I might take one or two out. As they were almost on me, the front one sprouted an arrow through his eye. The next thing I saw was the battle was happening in front of me and below me, and I was on the fence. Where I’d been standing was Aegis in his armor. Unlike most of us, when we looted our enemies, he took the heavy and thickest armor. There had been one man who had armor of bronze that was wrapped down to his knees as large hoops. It was that armor that Aegis took along with a shield that was the size of a man and a helmet that rested on his shoulder with just a tiny slit for each eye. Aegis was a huge man, which is how he could move in so much metal. In his right hand, he had a huge wooden maul. I’d need both hands just to lift it, but he was able to swing it with just one.

I saw him appear where I was, and the orcs stopped. Not that they had a choice when he appeared, two ran into him and fell over as he used an active skill to hold his place. Then I saw him use another skill to force them to all attack him. As they came at him, that maul in his hand moved fast and knocked one of them back around ten feet. The orc didn’t appear to take damage which was the problem with that weapon. It was a force transfer weapon in that it would do no damage but would transfer all force into the target at three times normal.

The only hope that Aegis had in this fight was to knock them out by them falling wrong or other people helping him. I wanted to go back out, but I could barely hold myself up with my leg bleeding as it was.

I felt a hand on me from behind, and our shaman was standing there casting a healing spell on me. I felt my leg heal, and the cuts on my face and neck closed up.

“Thank you Ezio,” I said as I stood up.

“Arn, you need to armor yourself and be ready, I see a great evil coming today.”

“The evil is already here and we can finish this if we all go out now,” I told him.

“No, look!” He said as he pointed beyond Aegis.

I looked out and saw that the orcs I’d seen were but a few. Another twenty orcs and over a hundred of the other monsters were now coming out of the woods.

Ezio grabbed my arm and looked in my eyes with pleading, “Arn, you must go to the other caves and let them know what is going on here.”

“It is too late for that and I want blood,” I snarled at him.

He placed his hand on my chest, “Chaos heard your vow! She claims you, her fire is yours now your path is not your own. Now feel the coal burn.”