Year 510-520
The smell of smoke and ash filled the air. The sky's beautiful, clear day was blocked out by black smoke. Beneath the canopy of Eleos's forest, a war raged. Goblins clashed with elves, spilling and wearing their entrails like golden chains and re-soaking their liver caps in blood, doing triumphant jigs over their corpses.
A horde of goblins had descended upon the forest after discovering the guardian was no longer there to protect the elves. Fueled by their ancient desire for revenge against the dark elves on the Eastern continent, they sought to mutilate and massacre the elves residing in the West.
Crying over his dead wife, Aello clutched her corpse close. Her neck had a gaping hole in it. The goblin that did it had run away, playing her larynx like a trumpet.
Around him, elves and goblins clashed- fangs against wood, claws against bone, and magic against soft tissue. It was carnage. The once-gray blossoms now held a fresh painting of red.
"We're winning!" one of Flora's children cried out—before a rock split his head open, crumbling him backward into a heap.
"Drive them back!" an elder cried, his wind blades cutting down goblin after goblin.
Oversized branches were used as a last resort, their magic forcing goblins back and slaughtering them. But it couldn't stop the seemingly infinite number of stones, fangs, and other objects hurled their way. Many were wounded. Their magic, capable of stopping such things, was depleted after what felt like endless waves.
Breathing heavily, Aello's hunched figure began to spark with red energy. Fury rose from his tears of loss and despair, watching as many of his sons and daughters fell around his beloved wife.
"Aello Faewynn! Snap out of it!" the same elder shouted again, but it fell on deaf ears.
The elves, who had begun to gain ground, were forced to fall back after noticing this anomaly. The red energy seared holes through nearby blackened bark and relit extinguished flames around him in a perfect circle. It turned the stones and fangs hurled his way into scattered ash.
Aello looked up with rage, his once emerald-green eyes now ruby red. Gently resting his wife's body on the ground, he stepped over it and unleashed a torrent of crackling red energy in an arc. The landscape that once made Eleos's home flattened and turned to ash in a coned shape—along with the goblins.
Without rhyme or reason, without the level-headedness of the elves or the finesse of their style, Aello charged toward the still-swarming goblins. Their eyes glinted with bloodlust, each of them donning their detestable red caps- entrails soaked in blood, worn like trophies.
"Forward!"
Elves cried out behind him as his newfound powers struck down goblin after goblin. Before long, the goblins- every last one- were defeated. But the elves had lost over half of their adult population.
While the others tended to the wounded and mourned, Aello, still filled with rage, went on alone toward the mountains. The goblins, driven by bloodlust, had left a clear trail behind.
Before long, he found himself among the peaks.
His ruby eyes darted, spotting caves that occasionally spat out a goblin. Most of them were dry, but one released goblins covered in strange mucus. Compared to the others, these emerging creatures held a look of curiosity and confusion before the flash of madness consumed their eyes.
The remaining goblins were easy work- cut down without much of a fight.
Aello slowly walked into the cave to behold the grotesque sight. A normal elf, or any other person, might've vomited or stepped back in fear. He, however, eyed it with disdain and wrath.
Unrecognizable biomass coated the interior of the cave, pulsing with life. From the center of this organic mass, a new goblin squelched out onto the floor and scrambled to life. A seemingly innate self-defense reaction caused it to spring into action only for its head to be instantly severed.
"Her children..."
A gurgled, female rasp echoed from deep inside, behind the organic mass.
"My children... Why... again?"
"Again?" Aello asked coldly. "This happened before? Are there more of you?"
Another goblin spat out from the organic mass and another was slain. This time, the cave echoed with wails of despair.
"Stop killing my children!"
Several of the biomasses burst outward along the wall, prompting Aello to step back in surprise as several goblins emerged all at once, bloodlust already embedded into their psyche.
It was brief, however. As before, he slaughtered them without mercy. During this, the walls began to change color from a soft, gooey red to a more blackened shade. Seeing and sensing the shift into more malicious energies, Aello acted swiftly.
His red energy crackled, and the organic matter burned like dry moss. She screamed as her body incinerated, filling the cave with an unhealthy smog.
Coughing, Aello was forced to flee the cave. It burned, as did his skin, but it felt like the job was done. A quick glance back confirmed it was all incinerated. He should've felt relieved but a subtle scratching in the back of his mind told him this was not over.
There were more.
And he would hunt them.
---------------
"Well," Atlas frowned, eyeing the carnage and the destruction of the one Brood Mother he'd placed there. "Didn't expect it to be that bloody."
"A non-dark elf, retaining his mind, using the red mana," Wisp pondered. "Weaver Atlas, it appears the elves have better resistance than the other races."
"Yeah. With the other races, it's almost guaranteed they go mad or suffer mental derangement. The elves somehow retain their sanity... perhaps it's their intelligence stat?"
"Or their natural biological traits," Wisp replied. "It is unknown. But it works in our favor."
"That it does, though I wish it didn't take half a populace being massacred to discover this."
"You don't hold the same affection toward them like the dark elves, Weaver Atlas?"
Atlas shrugged. "Not really."
"You don't worry this proves Myra correct?"
"Even if it does, the elves here need to toughen up for what's ahead. They might not be involved in this conflict, but might be in the next."
"Speaking of," Atlas said, brushing the globe with his fingertips and focusing in on a newborn Brood Mother being placed into a cave.
"It seems that Brood Mother had one offspring before it perished. Aello will still have work and the continent will continue to grow stronger."
Tilting his head, he eyed roaming goblins that no longer held madness in their eyes. Some of them, with their female counterparts no longer bound by a will, had even begun to inhabit caves of their own free will, creating dens.
"This is more like it. But they won't have the same berserker state as the ones under a Brood Mother but will still pose a tangible threat."
"Ah, Weaver Atlas!" Wisp chimed. "It appears Ira has returned with a Primordial."
"Hm?"
The globe spun in front of him and zoomed in. Ira, with fresh claw wounds down the front of his chest and underside, was flying in the direction of the dark elf outpost with a Primordial corpse in his grasp.
"He works quickly."