"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGEEEEEEEEEEELLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLHHHHHHHHHHHHHHGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG!!!!!!!!!!!!!"
A screaming horde of Skittering Rat-Things barreled down the corridor towards Maris
"TALLPOINTYDEATHKILLRUNRUNRUN!!!!!" They screamed in no particular order.
Maris sighed wearily. "one, two, five, ten, twelve...."
The Rat-Things at the head of the stampede noticed Maris standing directly in their path for the first time. An imposing skeletal figure swathed in black robes, the pale bone of his gleaming skull split by a jagged crack running diagonally down from his left brow revealing only darkness within, his right hand clad in a heavy armoured gauntlet that smoked faintly in the pale torchlight.
"GGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGKKKKKKKKKKKKK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"
Screamed the Rat-Things, suddenly changing direction.
"TALLBONYSKULLFACERUNRUNRUN!!!!!!"
The swarm veered sharply right down an intersecting corridor and straight into a pit trap.
It really was going to one of those days Maris reflected bitterly to himself. Evidently there was an intruder, and it had managed to spook the Rat-Things. Whilst the Rat-Things natural combination of enthusiastic tenacity and base stupidity normally made them an excellent delaying force, there was of course always the risk that at some point during a fight one of them might get the idea to run away. Having naturally short attention spans the other Rat-Things will cease on this new exciting idea with their customary enthusiasm and the whole pack will rout in spectacular fashion, normally stopping only when they finally collapse from exhaustion.
Or run head first into a pit trap.
Either way, at least they make enough noise to alert whatever the next line of defense may be.
"Well, I suppose that'd be me then" thought Maris, brightening slightly. He always felt a little cheerier at the prospect of an impending battle. Death or Glory as the old battle cry said. Thing is, he'd already done the whole death part, so it was only the glory that remained. Or as close to glory as you could get strangling idiots to death with their own reanimated organs.
He pushed on up the corridor and into a scene of slaughter. The corpses of Rat-Things littered the room. Each one pierced with a single arrow. He started to count the bodies, but then remembered that dead Rat-Things didn't count for his census so stopped. Something was nagging at the back of his good mood. Something to do with arrows.
Arrows meant Rangers. And Rangers meant.....
"Lo, it is I!"
Oh bloody hell.
The green clad figure emerged from one of the side corridors. Tall, pale, long flowing golden hair. Pointy ears.
An Elf. Oh joy.
Maris hated Elves. This wasn't really that unusual. Most people he knew hated Elves. He'd heard a legend once, that some dark and evil god or other had taken elves and corrupted them into twisted hideous forms, and that was where Orcs came from. The reason the Orcs hated the Elves so much was because they reminded the Orcs of these dubious beginnings. That they were so good and pure and perfect and that this was something the Orcs could never be.
This, of course, was bullshit. The Orcs hated the Elves for pretty much the same reasons everyone else did: The Elves were a bunch of insufferable tosspots. They came with this deep rooted certainty that they were BETTER than everyone else, simply by dint of being Elves. That no matter what, they were always superior. More graceful, more handsome, more intelligent.
That was only half the problem though. The other half was that most of the time they were right.
Thus they looked down on everyone and everything with this ghastly pitying condescension. They succeeded at almost everything with effortless grace. And like most people who succeed at things without the slightest effort they couldn't understand why no one else could, or why everyone HATED them.
"What is this now which stands before me? Figure in black!" Warbled the Elf in the most needlessly melodramatic fashion possible. Maris simply stared at it with flat loathing.
"Begone foul spectre of the grave! I slay you!" Yelled the Elf, and with one sickeningly swift and graceful movement loosed and an arrow. It struck Maris in precisely the location his heart would have been, had he had one. Which he didn't. What he did have was a hole in his favorite robe and an arrow lodged rather uncomfortably in his rib cage. He looked down at the shaft protruding from his chest and then back up at the Elf, who was watching him expectantly.
"ow" he said flatly, and started loosening the clasps on his gauntlet.
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