The Agony of Defeat
The Never Ending Quest - Episode 29187
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A tragic, flamestruck landscape stretched along the horizon as far as the
eye could see. Under a desolate sunless grey sky, it seemed like a scene
from somewhere in the very depths of the Void. Yet even as the scorched
and blackened hills still smoldered from the ravage that had covered all
of what is now Havnheim, down in the little ridges and valleys life-
giving water still nourished the land. Grasses, flowers, and saplings
would often grace these streams, along with edible plant-life, and it was
here that a rag-tag and weathered grouping of three dwarves were
gathered... "There! There it went again!" cried the stoutest of the three, his thick, ornately braided beard his most distinguishing feature. "Bah! Ready your axes, something's setting an ambush! Curse you, Lobon! I told you we were being trailed!" "Curse yerself!" spat the irascible Lobon, a grim looking dwarf, his sunken, lantern-jawed face seemingly etched out of living stone. Like the others, he showed the signs of slight malnourishment. As he scanned the ridges above, he seemed less troubled than the other two. "Let them set the ambush! WE WILL SLAUGHTER THEM THROUGH!" His deep voice echoed through the ravine with a satisfactory rumble. "We haven't gone this far to be waylaid by some petty highwaymen," he added less noisily."Petty highwayman, I am not," said a great serpent, rising up from the mists that obscured the charred and stunted tree trunks that still clung to the blasted ridge above. "Though less could be said of my present company." "Deltumnimos," the third dwarf, who bore the air of nobility, muttered impassively.The great, winged-serpent laughed horribly, ascending to a higher ledge in front of the trio. "Yes, it is a rather anticlimactic way to end our ever enduring Great War, is it not? The War that your grandfathers bled and died for, the War that has nearly drove both of our kind to extinction." He hissed in delight, licking his lips. "And now it is just...us." "How...?""You filthy earth- spawn, can you not smell your own reek?" He blinked his great eyelids sleepily. "I am an Ancient Wyrm, and I grow tired. When your race is lost to the mists of time I will still be sleeping on my bed of treasure. Yes, it's all mine now. The War is over, the Orcs are invading from the west, the giants from the north, the humans from the south and east. The dwarves are lost. And now, it seems, they have no King..." A great collumn of flame enveloped the defenseless trio. The golden age of the dwarves had passed.
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Ib (my options are never creative)
6/4/2003 3:13:03 PM
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