After the battle ended, the valley fell quiet once more.
The heavy stench of blood mingled with the sharp reek of urine, filling the air. The morning sun slanted into the valley, casting several visible beams of light. Dust stirred by the fierce battle still drifted through the air, making the scene look peaceful and beautiful.
But George, the logger, was anything but calm. His temples pounded, and his excited heart raced even faster.
He looked down. Everywhere he turned, he saw glaring shades of green and red.
Goblin corpses sprawled across the uneven ground in every twisted, broken pose imaginable. Some had their skulls smashed open, brains splattered across the gray-brown rocks like grotesque graffiti. Others had been disemboweled, their mangled organs and intestines spilling out and drawing flies from above. Most lay with their bodies bent at impossible angles, like dolls twisted apart by immense force.
Thick, dark-red blood soaked into the earth, collecting in the hollows to form pools that made his heart sink.
He took a step and suddenly trod on a finger. The sensation sent goosebumps erupting all over his body, and he shuddered before instinctively backing away.
Then came a wet squelch as he crushed an eyeball.
"Ah!"
George let out a brief shriek and jerked his foot up, staggering several steps as his body failed to obey him.
The soft yet firm thing beneath his foot, the way it had then collapsed and burst, and the faint but unmistakable squelch kept replaying in his mind, growing louder with each repetition.
He looked down. A viscous yellow-white mess clung to the edge of his battered shoe, with a thoroughly crushed eyeball, barely recognizable as such, stuck in it.
A surge of nausea shot from his stomach to his throat.
He spun around, braced himself