Kenzi - Journal scraps, spellbook doodles and random thoughts and things.

[Courie]

18 Tarsakh 1351, A farmstead in the Beluir hinterlands, around midnight.

I open my eyes to the sharp sound of a scream, wondering for an instant if the scream was but a lingering product of my sleeping mind.
But, before the half-thought fully formed, I hear another scream, a man’s high-pitched scream this time, somewhere distant. Then… sudden silence. That’s somehow worse.
As I scramble out of my bed, confused and still mostly sleeping, I can hear all hell suddenly break loose outside.
A bell begins to ring, screaming and shouts cry out - in both common and goblin, shatter the quiet night.
Pulling my robes on as I moved, seemingly in slow motion, I yank open my bedroom door to see my father, holding a short sword, making his way down the hall. The look he gives me says everything I need to know. I quicky fall in behind him, hastily slinging my spell component belt over my shoulder.
Behind us, my mother and brothers were ushering the younger kids into her and my fathers’ room.
Downstairs and at the main door, my father, he braces himself to open it.
His body posture drops into a fighting stance, short sword at the ready and yanks the door open.
We are blinded and tossed back as the world explodes and turns upside down.
After the trapped door exploded inwards, a rush of gibbering and screeching goblins followed in the smoke and chaos.
My father had kept his feet and he met the goblins head on, jabbing and thrusting his blade into them in a blurred fashion.
The goblins were obviously not expecting such fierce resistance and were quickly out-maneuvered and out-matched.
Me, covered in bits of blasted smoldering door, I was on the floor, sitting on my bottom. I concentrated hard and through the madness and smoke and cuts and scrapes.. I managed to successfully cast my spell and fired off two magic missiles at a goblin that was rushing my father. This already-battered goblin looked like he’d gotten caught in his own trap too, and the missiles were enough to finish him.
That was my first kill and the proud nod and smile my father gave me... I carry that memory always.
Outside, the hired farmhands were making quick work of the goblins. Already they had broken the back of the main assault, and the surviving goblins were beginning to flee back to their lairs, some miles north of here in the Lluirwood forest.
Tomorrow.. a few Marchswardens, the militia and dozens of volunteers would track the goblins back to their filthy little burrows and eradicate the pests, saving the farmsteads from any further near-future worries from goblins.