The battlefield was a tempest of chaos, with dust swirling and weapons clashing, but in the midst of it all stood King Kraggul. His eyes burned with a mixture of rage and desperation as he faced Rain and the thousand Ebizo soldiers who had just arrived.
The blinding light that had interrupted his final strike on Helliana still lingered in the air, casting an eerie glow over the scene.
Kraggul's thoughts swirled back to a time long before this chaotic present.
When starvation hit, Kraggul's parents made a heartbreaking decision — they had only enough food for one child.
At the next meager meal, they handed him both his portion and his little siblings, telling him to eat. Kraggul tried to cut it in half and share it with them.
His mother shoved it back to him. "You eat it all, or they get it all. It's you or them."
Kraggul's throat tightened with each bite, tears streaming down his face. His siblings cries turned to whimpers, then silence, their once bright eyes becoming vacant and unfocused.
One day, they simply didn't wake up. The memory of that moment haunted him, fueling his resolve to never be weak again. Weak Hobgoblins were destined for a fate of starvation and servitude.
He remembered his childhood, a time when he and his closest friends — Gralnok, Vargash, Drakthor, and Morzog — had been sold to slavery.
Born into a world where their race was considered weak and subservient, they had known only hardship and suffering.
Other, more dominant races had used them as laborers and cannon fodder, exploiting their physical prowess but denying them any semblance of dignity or freedom.
As Kraggul stood there, the weight of his past and the uncertainty of the future pressing down on him, he felt a pang of sorrow. He had promised his friends — his brothers — that they would create a world where their people could live without anyone looking down on them. Without anyone thinking that they were weak.
He envisioned a world where everyone feared the Hobgoblins — a race that could dominate the world. They would no longer be slaves but conquerors, not weak but formidable, far stronger than others had ever believed. Find your next read at m_v l|e-novelhall.net
Kraggul's dream was to transform his people into a force that would command respect and inspire fear across the lands, and not just submit to a fate of slavery.
Now, with the arrival of Rain and his soldiers, that dream seemed to be slipping away.
The Hobgoblin army, 20,000 strong, might have stood a chance against the Orcs, but they were weary and exhausted from relentless battles to face a new army. With the fresh and formidable Ebizo soldiers, their morale waned. Even though the Ebizo numbered only 1,000, their presence was overwhelming.
The Ebizo, clad in thick, impenetrable shells, moved slowly but with a terrifying inevitability. Each step they took seemed to reverberate through the ground, a harbinger of doom for the Hobgoblins.
Despite their sluggish pace, the Hobgoblins' meager strength was utterly insufficient to breach the Ebizos' defenses. Arrows and swords glanced harmlessly off the Ebizo's hard shells, causing little more than scratches.
Desperation began to take hold as the Hobgoblins, driven by fear and fury, launched themselves at the Ebizo. The clash of battle was fierce, the air filled with the sounds of metal clanging against armor and the cries of the fallen.
Yet, the Hobgoblins' weapons could not penetrate the Ebizo's natural armor. Blades bent and broke against the Ebizo's shells, rendering the Hobgoblins' efforts futile.
When the Hobgoblins drew close, hoping to exploit any weakness, they were met with the Ebizo's spears. Long and deadly, the spears pierced through Hobgoblin flesh with brutal efficiency. Each thrust was precise and powerful, skewering multiple Hobgoblins at once. The Ebizo soldiers, with their well-coordinated formations, repelled every attack with ease.
The battlefield became a scene of carnage. The once-proud Hobgoblin army, reduced to desperate skirmishers, was systematically dismantled.
Their numbers, though vast, dwindled rapidly as they fell to the advance of the Ebizo. The Hobgoblins' cries of pain and frustration filled the air, mingling with the unyielding march of the Ebizo soldiers.