Brother's Vengeance

The air, thick with the stench of goblin blood and the acrid tang of fear, still clung to us. Roric lay still, his usually stoic features slackened in a final, silent repose. The hammer that had so often been a symbol of his strength and his reliability lay discarded beside him, a stark testament to the abrupt end of his watch. My chest ached, a hollow cavern where breath struggled to find purchase. This wasn't how it was supposed to end. Not Roric. He was the bedrock, the one we all looked to when the path ahead blurred into an indistinguishable wall of danger. And now… gone.

Bowen’s face was a mask of raw, exposed grief. His knuckles, white-knuckled around the haft of his axe, were the only outward sign of the tempest raging within him. He stood over Keal, who had scrambled back a few paces, his daggers still slick with Roric’s lifeblood. Keal’s eyes, usually so unnervingly calm, now held a flicker of something akin to triumph, a ghastly gleam in the dimming light of the forest.

“You… you killed him,” Bowen’s voice was a low growl, barely audible over the rustling leaves and the distant, mocking chirps of unseen birds. Each word was a hammer blow against the fragile peace that had fractured moments before.