Steel Burner

What needs to be done

Once the guards had all grouped the surviving villagers into the larger cave at the end of the tunnel, they released Grell. He promptly fell to the floor onto his knees; His eyes were cold, the only emotions present in them was the fear of what was to happen next, and his fathers death.

The guards rounded up the survivors and did a head count to find out just how many losses they sustained. After finishing,a couple of the guards whispered to themselves.

“Bloody hell. They got almost all of our village.”

“Yeah but it could be worse for the neighboring villages, let’s hope they’re as lucky as us.”

“What’re we gonna do now?”

Everyone didn’t know what to do and started asking each other; the only gremlin excused from this was Grell who just sat there, unresponsive to the outside world.

He was lost inside his own thoughts, oblivious to the rising panic all around him. Finally, one single thought loomed through his head, ‘What should I do?’

Grell looked around and finally took in what was happening around him. He saw the people, his people, start to turn against each other. Some had even started to physically fight and the few guards that remained could not keep the quarrels from arising.

Finally, he took in a few breaths to calm his nerves and stood up. Grell knew what to do.

Grell went to the center of all the madness, and in a mighty voice to which the royal sisters would cringe at, he yelled. “HEY! Shut it! All of you!” Every single gremlin stopped whatever they were doing and turned to the young guard Grell.

“Gremlins, look at what we are doing? We are in very big trouble and we might die if we don’t do something while we can..” Grell paused, taking in a deep breath. But before he could continue, another voice popped up from the small crowd of villagers. “Then what should we do, smart ass? If you’re so smart then tell us what we should be doing!” The gremlin looked like he’d won when Grell spoke up again. “I was getting to that!”

Taking in a breath once again, he spoke his mind. “We need to follow the tunnels through to the other villages, we need to warn the ones that are not under attack, and we need to get out of here alive. Once we’ve rounded up and rescued all the gremlins, we can head off into the main tunnel towards Equestria’s borders.”

All of the villagers started to mutter towards one another about what Grell had just said; they all were scared and he seemed to be the only one with a plan. Reluctantly, they went silent and turned back to him.

“We need to split up into groups to make this as quick as possible. Now, there are two routes that are not the main hallways, so any willing volunteers please step forward.” Five out of the ten remaining guards stepped forward, as well as three female gremlins, and six male gremlins.

Once they did, Grell continued his speech. “Alright! Split up into two teams! The rest of you who are not volunteering, stay within the main hallway and we shall meet up with you all when we’ve done all that we can. There should be enough fresh supplies down here to last long enough for our mission and get us to the Equestrian borders. Is there any complaints?”

When no one piped up or raised their hands, Grell smiled and continued once more.“Good. Now how about we get this mission underway?” Grell took a breath and looked over at the volunteers.

With a sigh he picked out who went with who. “You two guards, you female and you three males are group A. The rest of you are with me as group B. If anything goes wrong, head straight for the main hallways and wait with the rest. If something goes wrong in the hallways leave without us, everyone understand?”

With a nod from the majority of the villagers and guards, everyone went to do what they needed to.

After grabbing the proper supplies, Grell took his group through the hallway to the left, group A took the right hallway, and everyone else took to the middle hallway.

The group started to walk, staying at a pace shortly behind Grell as he took the lead.

One of his group members, the young gremlin female, went ahead of the group next to Grell.

“So what do you think’s happening with the rest of the villages...?” she whispered to him.

“Probably already under attack and had the same idea as us.” Grell responded bluntly.

She looked a bit more nervous and looked behind at the group before whispering back to Grell again. “H-how are you holding up? It must be hard, to... you know...” She blushed and turned away muttering, “nevermind forget I said anything,” in a nervous tone.

“I’m fine, let’s just hope the other villages fare better than ours, Lulya.” Grell spared no second glance to her as he sped his pace up, back to the head of the group.

Lulya looked to the ground, a blush present on her face. She started to slow her pace and fell to the back of the group. She scolded herself in quiet mutters as she struggled to keep up with the group.

After a few minutes of the pace they were keeping, they made it to the first village. The entrance was undamaged and there were no gremlins in sight. At first, the group thought maybe they hadn’t attacked this village yet......

....Nope.

They had gone up through the entrance, carefully they looked around. The town hall was more or less undamaged. There was no signs of blood or major sign of damage to the building, so they hoped it would raised the group’s hopes.

Once they opened the door to the outside of the hall, their stomachs’ dropped. The majority of the village was destroyed and in ruin. Whatever buildings that were not completely demolished were on fire. Blood was splattered across every inch of dirt and grass there. Bodies of gremlins were strewn about everywhere like ragdolls a little girl got bored with. Other bodies of similar species of their assumed attackers were also there, but in far less number.

“I think we should split up and look for survivors.” Grell spoke up in his cold tone, eyeing the surroundings.

“What!? You must be mad to think that as a wise idea!” One of the men spoke up, they sounded scared and frantic.

“They obviously already came through here; that means that they are most likely long gone. We need to check for survivors otherwise we could make a big mistake.” Grell said in an almost unfeeling tone.

The group fell silent, nodding to Grell as he stopped and turned to the rest of the group.

“Alright, we’ll split it up like this. You, guard, you Lulya, and you, Gelmos, you’re with me. The rest of you go together, we make this a quick search and rescue before moving on, we don’t have time for dilly dallying, got it?”

With a handful of nods and one not so enthusiastic and more nervous nod, the group split itself and went to search their respective half of the town.

Grell’s group started to scour the town, looking through the rubble and burning buildings cautiously. After a while they were ready to give up.......

....Then they heard the sound of crying, not the crying from a grown gremlin, but a baby's cry.

Lulya was the first to act and rushed towards the sound, Grell called out to get her to wait up for the rest of the group but she was too far ahead. She turned the corner to a building of rubble and stopped. She stared on at what she saw and covered her mouth as tears began falling from her face. At first, the group had no idea of what she was looking at, until they got close enough to see.

They saw the scene before them with big eyes; there was a very weak and dying gremlin, impaled onto a broken wooden board. He was holding onto his child, trying his hardest to keep moving as blood continually pooled around him.

He looked up from his child to see the group of gremlins. In a weak tone, he spoke up. “P-please.......S-s-save my child...” Tears began to fall from his face and mixed into the blood that pooled around his feet, “P-please..”

He took a few steps towards the group and started falling forward. Acting fast, Grell and Lulya stopped his descent to the floor. The gremlin was turning grey from the large amount of blood loss. He turned towards Grell and carefully handed his baby to him. After that was done, he grasped Grell’s hand with some miracle of strength. “P-p-please, promise me, y-you will take c-care of him, please.”

Without faltering, Grell looked into the man’s eyes and responded. “Yes, I promise”

The man gave a slight chuckle of relief and spoke up again. “H-his name’s n-n-n..” The man coughed up an absurd amount of blood. With a few hacks and coughs, he continued. “Neebs.. Take good c-care of him for me.”

“I will.” Grell watched as the man’s eyes shut, his life finally drained from his body as it fell limp.

In a quiet tone Grell spoke up. “Let’s get the others and go.” He turned and walked away, a faint sign of a tear forming in the corner of his eye.

A/N: Big thanks to Nobrains for helping with this chapters completion. The story will be on hiatus as of now. You can check my blog on Tumblr “HERE” or on one of my older blog posts on my fimfiction page for a more in depth explanation.