TiElodea
Ellie had been too focussed. The chink of glass upon glass, the swill of liquids, the whisper of poured powder. That was all she heard; the fighting was far away, for her allies to deal with. Not her. She sat below, away, preparing to help who she could. Thus, she missed the faint groan of the window complaining on its hinges. It was not until the thud that she turned, and by then it was too late.
Spilling into her sanctuary were Goblins. She stared, confounded. This shouldn’t be happening. She should be safe down here. The fighting happened elsewhere, always; Ellie made sure of that. But they came all the same, a wave of chaos, destroying everything in their wake. She backed away slowly, flinching as they smashed the bottles, feeling tangible pain as her collection was mindlessly ruined. Everything had been in order, the way Ellie liked it. Now it was gone. Hours upon hours of work, gone in mere moments. And she just looked on, paralysed by fear, stunned by the suddenness of it all. The world was numbed far beyond what the numbweed could ever manage.
Yet, that was far from the worst of her concerns. The shouts from elsewhere below deck told others were discovering a similar fate. She took another step away. A board creaked underfoot. A goblin, smaller than the rest, was roused from its destructive reverie, seeing Ellie again as if for the first time. A chill finger ran along the length of her spine as she watched a mangled maw slowly open into a sickle-blade grin.
Ellie turned. Ellie ran.
A bottle shot past, showering her with shards of glass as it exploded against a beam overhead. Then the world fell away. She watched it turn and tumble. The goblin had tackled her legs from under her. Her body snapped against the floor, but she kept trying to move. She clawed at the planks, trying to pull herself away. Her nails splintered under the strain. Yet to no avail; the goblin was still holding on. Her now-bloody fingers wiped trails of slick crimson across the floor, useless. She felt the goblin let go, only the weight of his body remaining on her shins and ankles.
And then the world exploded.
Pain. Agony. White flecks danced across her vision as black crept in from the periphery. Everything felt cold. Yet the situation clarified. She kicked from reflex, trying to pull her legs away, but the jerk just brought a gout of blood from the fresh wound in her thigh.
The goblin crawled up to her waist, twisting her round onto her back. It licked the edge of the blade, red dripping onto Ellie’s chest and exposed neck. She stared with wide, glossed-over eyes, quivering with each heartbeat as they thundered in her ears. The screams that reached her echoed what she could not express. Fear. A deep, ominous fear, as though the pit of her stomach had fallen away into a bottomless chasm. She would die here, she realised. Die here, away from the sea, separated only by a few planks of wood. It may as well have been a thousand leagues and more. She would not find her brother, if in fact he had not met a similar fate, but she would be waiting for him in the lost grove.
Shards of the bottle lay tangled in her fanned-out mess of hair, glimmering like the sands of a distant shore. A promise, of safety and freedom. She could have reached out whilst the goblin took its time raising that crude iron blade, another promise, though this one was vile. She could have drove a shard of that bottle into its neck and watched it bleed out. She could have stabbed it again and again, cutting up her own palms, but not caring. She could have been a killer. She chose not to be.
In the moments after the blade began to plunge, her body found function once again. Her arms raised, grabbing the Goblin’s forearms and holding the blade at bay. She was not done yet. It snarled, and Ellie screamed.
“Help!” Her arms shook, from adrenaline and exertion, “Help me!” Tears stung as they welled in the corners of her eyes. The blade slowly inched closer to her throat.
She would not give up. Could not. She was not ready to die; her brother still needed her. She would find him, and he would laugh, and then they would go home and dance and sing, like they used to, and they would be happy.
A desperate plea tore its way from her soul, the tears now streaming freely down the side of her face.
“Please!”
