Hadran woke up, still groggy from the painkillers mixed with the slight amount of alcohol still in his system. Enough of it had passed through his system to wake him up. The pain in his left leg was still absent, the drugs at a high enough level to numb the feelings. He looked down. His pants were covered in blood and the thigh swelled massively.
He knew better than to try to move it. The return to consciousness brought his sight partially back into focus. He looked around.
The stench of death filled his nose as the room became visible. The large numbers of dead that littered the floor each added their own disgusting part in the array of red shades pooling on the floor.
He looked at the three men nearest to him, shielding his eyes from the brightness of the rest of the room before looking to the other side. The dead he could see were divided into two distinct groups, the men and women dressed in wizard garb on the left, towards the back of the room. And the Argo's on the other side. Each side had taken massive casualties.
The three men were lying next to each other, their faces on the floor; each was laying on a gun of some sort. All three guns were of essentially the same design. The loud type, hard to aim and fire, utilising only a long thin tube to fire whatever it was that the wizards use to do damage.
Hadran kept his eyes on the men for a few seconds as his vision cleared further. His enhanced hearing detected something, its high level of sensitivity feeling some sort of crunching sound.
He waved his head to the right, to the area he guessed to be the doors into the wizards building. All he could see was the block of darkness that went outside. The rest of the area was fuzzy.
He rubbed his eyes, hoping to see what it was. Once again the world cleared further, this time becoming much more visible. The room became clear. The bright lights now gave no problems to his adjusted eyes.
The exact location of the sound became clear as Hadran kept his hearing focused on the doors to the outside. There was a small pile of bodies which kept the source secret from him.
The group were the only wizards on that side of the room. About five or six were piled up neatly, reaching a height of half a meter or so, as if some giant had picked them up and stacked them on top of each other.
Hadran looked around. He had never been inside the wizards building before, much like the majority of the populus. The grimness of the situation could not hide the power of the place. The walls and ceilings were a near perfect white, along with the globes which descended from the ceiling which gave of the constant light that filled the room and still slightly hurt his eyes.
The three were still lying dead, their weapons just out of his immediate reach. The sound grew louder. A sound not unlike that of thick mud being stepped in, every few seconds. A sound of cracking came less often, but often enough to make him nervous.
The sound stopped and was replaced by a few low growls and hisses which repeated in different volumes and sounds. A deep sound, just human enough to indicate its angry emotions, yet not giving any hint of higher intelligence.
Hadran looked around, trying to find any way to get one of the guns from the three dead men. He tried to move his body, but pulled himself back into his position of leaning against the wall when a huge jolt of pain came up his leg.
The sounds stopped and grew louder; a number of cracking sounds grew from behind the pile. Hadran listened to them, his heartbeat rising.
The cracking stopped, along with the slurping sound. The growls returned with a number of different volumes and levels of intensity. Hadran guessed about five or six of whatever it was were making the sounds.
He reached over again to the gun pinned under the closest dead wizard. The gun was pinned with the tube part just out of his reach. He leaned over at much as he could without the pain returning.
Most of the growlers grew quiet as they were replaced by a single, deep and louder one. It barked the others into silence. It stopped for a second until a yelp of pain echoed through the room.
He looked around, trying to see if anything he could use to defend himself was within reach. Nothing was. The closest thing was the gun tube. It pointed right at him, pinned to the floor by the weight of the dead man.
Hadran heard the growls get louder. He looked over at the pile. The wizard who was on top, an overweight woman of about forty, fell away from him onto the creatures making the noise.
A number of yelps echoed from the other side, hit by the weight of her. The growls grew from every creature, each distinctly different, yet all the same.
Hadran grew fearful. He leaned over further, the pain returned up his right side. He ignored it as much as he could. His left hand gave out, making his body fall to the hard floor. His legs stretched out immediately and he let out a loud cry of pain.
He immediately bit his tongue and scrambled his hands to the gun. He reached the end of it and pried the heavy metal tube off of the ground an inch. He slipped a hand under it and wrapped it around the tube.
He used his other hand to lift himself up again, the huge pain in his leg overridden by his survival instinct. He pulled the gun towards him, ridding it from the death grip of the man. It came easier as it cleared the wizard's weight.
He pulled it up, his tired arms given renewed strength by the danger. He pulled it to the right, towards the doors and the pile.
The pile was no longer his object of interest though. Four goblins were half walking, half crawling around the pile. One, a very big one by goblin standards, about four feet tall stood entirely up on top of the pile. His head towered over the others as they too stood up, each making sure they did not get a position with their heads higher than the leader
As he stood up, another climbed over the pile of flesh, behind the other four. They all were looking right at Hadran, like an eagle about to snatch a hurt rabbit. For that was what he was.
Each had the ugly faces every goblin wore, and the heads that seemed out of proportion for their bodies. Their heads were almost the size of humans, their fronts being almost solid. The big one had a small patch of red skin on his forehead, extending all across it to each of his temples. The rest of his body colour was like the others, a deep and dark green which went all over their bodies.
The goblins stood there, watching him. The large one kept growling angrily, keeping his eye on Hadran. The other, smaller goblins spent their time looking at Hadran and the largest of the ugly group. They looked at him, waiting for the strike to begin.
Hadran looked at the gun. It was heavy and had the words, "12mm AP rifle, handle with care" inscrolled on it into the metal of the long tube which went up two-thirds of its length.
He knew how they worked; you pointed the tube at the enemy and pulled the trigger. Although they were hard to aim they usually gave off a large amount of fire, so there was little need to be good at firing them.
Although this one was of a different design than the larger one he had fired previously, the general idea was the same. The goblins growled at him. The blood from their sickening feast of the dead in the pile began to drip from their faces.
Hadran had no idea how the goblins had come into the city when the Argo's were attacking, but he hoped he was strong enough to be able to aim straight with the gun.
He kept his right leg straight, its pain now a permanent occurrence. Gritting his teeth he turned his waist, pointing the tube directly at the leader goblin. He pulled his finger up to the trigger.
He was steadying his aim when the lead goblin screamed and began running towards him. The others jumped after him. Goblins, even though their legs were only a foot and a half long, could outrun a man if there was reason. The goblins saw a reason, a wounded human.
The leader had realized, it appeared, that the gun was a weapon. Their half walk, half scramble made them scary as they dodged and jumped over the dead. Hadran pulled the trigger and watched as the leader took a shot which chopped a chunk of flesh from his shoulder.
He kept his finger on the trigger for a second longer, no shots came out. He released it and pulled again. The bang indicated that he now needed to pull once for one shot. The second shot did nothing, as the four normal goblins kept moving at high speed. The leader was enraged as he got up in an impossible amount of time and ran towards him faster, overtaking the others' lead of five meters in less than a second.
Hadran pulled the trigger quickly, squeezing off three shots in two seconds. Two of the smaller goblins fell; one took a shot directly in the chest and the thick skull of another exploded. He kept firing as they neared him, having traversed the twenty meters in seconds.
The remaining leader jumped at him. He rolled just out of the way, the leader hitting his head against the wall. It made him only angrier. One of the other two left, a female, came right at him, only to be knocked away by the leader, incensed from the pain of the shot.
The monster stood at his feet. Hadran pulled the gun up and fired, the outsized fist knocking the end of the firing tube away. The blast flew away and hit the ceiling. The last of the other goblins came to his right about to strike him. Hadran's reflexes pulled the trigger again as it lined up with its body. The creature gave a yelp of pain as its upper spine exploded out its back.
Hadran realised his luck just as the surviving largest goblin smashed its hand onto his chest. Hadran twisted his arms, ramming the butt of the gun into the large creatures head.
It yelped in pain again. Hadran rammed the butt as hard as he could, making the goblin take a step back automatically.
The second it took for it to return gave Hadran one second and one chance. He could not beat it into death. A goblin's head had a skull twice as thick as a human. Something he had discovered the hard way, when young and on a hunt. Its thick skull was balanced by their brain size.
Hadran swung the gun around again, pointing the tube at its leg. It stepped back towards him. Its face covered in its own and the dead wizard's blood. Hadran grabbed the trigger, jammed his thumb behind it and fired. The shot hit, crunching into the thigh. The stunned creature gave another cry. Hadran took its lapse in concentration and pulled the gun upwards, using the last of his strength. The shot blew away the skull of the creature.
It collapsed onto Hadran. He screamed as its knee jammed right into his swollen and bleeding heavily right leg. He rolled it off of him and passed out.