Most of the blows coming at me, I dodged, and most of the blows I threw, I missed. But I was doing better than the other humans surrounding me who were getting mowed down like flies. If I had a moment, I might’ve stopped and wondered why there was almost some supernatural type of quality to how I fought. It wasn’t like I didn’t train hard, but this was different, it was like every single step was made with invisible strings pulling me around. One step to the front, dodged a blow, a step and swing to the side, wounded an enemy, like a dance that my body innately knew, even if my mind didn’t.

Something hard smacked me in my face, and I went down to the ground, gasping for air. The dirt was soaked with blood, and I gripped a handful of it, screaming and throwing it in the face of the goblin who came down upon me. He spat as he swiped away the bloodied dirt that muddied his pale face and got into his emerald eyes. His hair was long and blond and unbound, and even with my distraction, he quickly fell upon me.

I aimed a kick toward his chest only to be kicked roughly in the stomach in turn, and I curled up into a ball as the pain exploded, sharper than knives, bringing blood up to my throat and lips. Eyes shut tight, my stomach curdled as I realized there were no more sounds of battle around me. Only whooping of victorious monsters and the dying, ragged breaths of my fellow man.

The goblin pulled me up by my hair, and I hissed in pain but opened my eyes, resolved to look at them until the very end.

“You smell like the Permafrost,” he muttered before throwing me down once more. “Why do you smell like the Permafrost?”

I got to my hands and knees only for another gut-wrenching kick to force me back into a ball on the bloody earth. Around me, bodies were cut open, bashed in, bruised and torn apart, bloodied until I no longer knew who they were in life. Bile rose in my throat at the smell of the corpses, but I’d had nothing to eat and so I had nothing to throw up other than the blood dripping from my lips.

“Run,” the goblin who kicked me said.

I stared at him with wide eyes. His brethren were coming behind him into a half-circle, jeering with devious looks on their faces.

“I said run!” he yelled, and I scrambled backward until I was on my feet and sprinting toward the woods.