What the bloody @#$......

The Never Ending Quest - Episode 7267

....are you saying?Walker says to herself, more that slightly taken aback by all that has occurred.

All this was kept behind a mask of utter calm and composure (an entirely false mask). She awaited to hear what the spokesman of the gathered dwarves, Tarin Gazin, had to say.

She had been struck with an eerie feeling when she had returned to find each and every dwarf (those who were not of her Survivors), had....for some harebrained reason.....shaved away their beard and mustache!

Shaved their beards....the pride and joy of every male dwarf. Their beard....the thing that had made more than on of her recruits scream in anguish as hey had been forcedly shaved clean! To be without a beard was a mark of deep shame (though being clean shaven was Military regulation....and Walker was going to be damned if her recruits were going to be coddled just for their vanity!!)

Severl of the dwarves had a few nicks here and there, but all were smiling and laughing....as if this was the greatest thing in the world.

"Gods damn thing always itched me anyhow," one of the greybeards mutters to the side just before Walker had launched into the rather strident demands her commander had nearly bowled her over with.

Somebody had kidnapped some of the Military's darlings: Astra 4 and her infants. Somebody was going to have a VERY bad day if Walker had any say on the matter (she was one of the many members of the fan club of the D'Honaire and Friends). Wanting to keep good relations with the friendly governments of Terra....and wanting to see justice done himself, Captain Sterndeck had ORDERED her to use whatever means necessary......ANY MEANS......to try to find rescue them alive and whole. If not, then avenge them.

There was no way in Hell that she could find the missing ones with the resources she had brought with her. The transport ships' sensors (the heavy cargo ships that had brought and dumped the reparations) were bare minimal....and not up for the task of detailed scanning. However......

There were the dwarves....who knew a heck of a lot about a certain now Orcen Clan that was going to showcase some firearms that seemed to....mimic those created by Aqualaria and Ethiopia. The dwarves know the location of this Clan that was said to have allied itself with Orcs.

Orcs with handguns?

The smell of dwarf detected at the sight of the kidnapping?

Magical probes being thrown off by some type of magic? It couldn't have been the dwarves, considering that they are pretty much not much in the way of magic using (to put it mildly). However, recounting that Walker had read about Orcs with some interest told that they had magic users of a sort.....shaman.

Balok the Orc and the newest green hided monsters under the sun might not be guilty of kidnapping.....but Walker would eat her helmet if they didn't at least know something about this!

So she'd gone back, ready to use her position as Avatar to the Forge to get the Dwarves to co-operate.....get them to pitch in on this hunt. However....

They'd shaven off their beards and were bowing to her. They said that they wished to join the Military....if they were worthy....and.....

And for her to be their Empress/Commanding Officer!!

God, the Captain said "By all means necessary" but....I'm likely to get a Court-martial for this.....and a whipping within an inch of my life afterwards Walker nearly whimpered to herself. But it.....

"I accept," Diane Walker, Avatar of the Forge, and now Empress of the newly united Dwarven Nation, says softly.

An excited murmur passes throughout the crowd. The last Avatar to the Forge had been born five hundred years before the crushing of the Dwarven Nation. He had died defending the Realm. Nothing was unusual in the fact that the Avatar had been five hundred years old. The unusual thing was that he hadn't aged a day since the Forge Touched him....as he had Touched Walker.

She was going to be Empress for a LONG time!

Quick as lightning, Walker's mood changed, and she was shouting at the top of her lungs.

"All right ya wanker!" she yelled in her best command voice. A voice that even made the hardiest of dwarves step back in surprise....and a bit of fear. "We gotta Princess and seven litt'uns to save....so get ya people togtha and get marchin' on Balok's!"

  1. "So says your Empress," Walker says sweetly in a light voice, smiling. Dwarves beging dwarves, they nod in acceptance and then hurry off.....with a lift or three from the transports....

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