Lizzie ducked under the clumsy swing of an axe, turning the motion into a rush forward past the man, claws slashing at the unprotected side, where the crude armor didn’t cover. As he went down, the next behind him raised his weapon for an overhead strike, painfully slow, a delay long enough for Lizzie to snap a roundhouse kick into his face, following up the spin to grab a third by the neck and slam him up against the wall, grabbing sword-holding wrist with her free hand…
The attack had, indeed, come as promised, a dozen guys storming down a nearby set of stairs to blindly charge their position. Lizzie hadn’t wanted to be involved, but simply couldn’t remain so safely. They’d attacked her just as they’d attacked the red-skinned creature and the goblin. And yet, even outnumbered 4:1, they were winning, and doing so with ease. Squeezing hard, Lizzie heard and felt arm bones snap like kindling, sword clanging to the ground. Noting a shrill quality in her opponent’s scream of pain, Lizzie paused, then grabbed the helmet (little more than a pot with some holes banged out of it) and yanked it off.
The boy couldn’t have been a day over thirteen.
Holding him in place, she looked down at one of the fallen ones, kicking off another helmet (this one a wooden water bucket no doubt). White hair and wrinkles stared blankly up at her. Farmers and stable boys. Armed with wood axes and swords that’d sat too long on the mantle, and armored in whatever crap they could find and make fit. This was no attack; it was lambs to a slaughter.
Noticing how her companions were rapidly finishing up their opponents, Lizzie settled for slamming the boy into the wall again, letting him slump to the floor out cold. Stepping over bodies, she said, “That was… pretty weak. For an attack, I mean…”
The goblin snorted as he sloppily wiped blood off of his blade. “Too right. Last wave at least made it to the traps.”
As the imps came into the area, picking over the bodies and dragging them away, Lizzie found herself asking, “What’s going to happen now?”
The goblin shrugged. “Survivors to the jails, rest to the graveyard. Those that can be taken there, anyways.” He glanced towards the red creature in what he clearly thought to be humorously pointed. The creature belched. Lizzie just turned away in disgust. “Anyways, the Keeper’ll want us heading topsides…”
As if on cue, Zorlond’s voice boomed as if from the sky. “All Forces: Advance And Secure!”
The three walked up the stairs (Lizzie trailing glumly behind, still not very willing, but also still sore from the last ghostly hit for speaking up), into daylight. What greeted her eyes was death. A dead forest adorned the mouth of the tunnel, and further along, dead fields of crops far as the eye could see, a small village huddled up among them. Noting how she was looking over the scene, and completely misinterpreting it, the goblin said, “Lovely, ain’t it? The Keeper sets up, then sucks the life out o’ the land. Trees, crops, even most of the animals. Folks know they have ta kill ‘im to get their crops back, without crops they don’t eat. So, the local guard post sends their crew. Then, if the king’s feelin’ generous, some mercs come. Then the farmers pass the hat around to hire a couple more, then they gots no choice but to come themselves.” The goblin laughed nastily. “Course, they all comes to us, when we’re all prepared for ‘em. Gots no choice, and no chance. And then, it’s all ours. Keeper lets go on the spell, and we does what we like.”
What followed was even worse than the fight down below. Some scared women, young children, and a couple invalids, that’s all that was left defending the village. Males were killed on the spot, the females captured and bound, dragged into the tunnel while their homes burned. Forced to line up like a slave market before the twisted hulk of Zorlond, and after a comment about the ‘slim pickings’, two were selected to be his and the rest given to the monsters as ‘spoils of war’.
“You! Creature, come here.” Lizzie, slightly glad for the distraction from the ‘fun’ the other monsters were having, came forward to stand before Zorlond. Looking her over slowly, with a mixture of cold analysis and lewd hunger, he apparently came to a decision. “You will come with me to the next target. No reason to stay here any longer than necessary. Just follow the slaves, clear?” Not knowing what to say that wouldn’t be taken as offensive, Lizzie just nodded, secretly thinking unpleasant things about him.
With that, he closed his eyes, folded his arms, focused… And the entire mass of his bulk sank rapidly into the floor, disappearing with a liquid squelch. Peering quickly over the edge, Lizzie saw the torso, still attached to a descending mass of flesh inside a tunnel of flesh, looking unpleasantly like a bowel movement in reverse. Lizzie barely had time to gag in disgust when the two slaves were forced into the hole, screaming into the darkness below.
Glancing back, Lizzie briefly debated her options. Stay here, with a bunch of monsters now without an overlord looming above them, or down into the hole after an unpleasant variation of a person she didn’t really like in the first place. As a few of the monsters turned, and started staring at her in disquieting ways, Lizzie came to her decision.
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Tue Dec 14 14:33:13 2004
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