This entire island reminds me of Skyrim. Everywhere is at least "cold" including the swamps!
The next target was another troglodyte, by the name of Alveror. This journey would take him further west than he'd gone so far, but he would be able to circle around northwards to eliminate his remaining targets and return home. Then he could leave the treasure with his people, and hopefully find more wicked creatures to be cleansed.
By the early afternoon he'd left the snow valley and come to the strange forest of evergreens and bamboo. Through this he came into soggy, rolling hills with bogs in the valleys and fog in the air. These passed quickly into drier hills just south of that fateful tundra. After going west through these for a while, with the sun beginning to lower in the western sky, he saw something very strange. Birds. Or at least, they looked like birds. They had heads like birds, and feathers too. Two legs. But they were much too huge; bigger than a mountain lion! And they seemed to have no wings, only giant legs. Deebus crept away to fill his belly in peace, as these creatures seemed sinister. Few things that big were good for kobolds, especially not if they seemed nervous like horses.
Not much further, Deebus came into a strange, barren land. There were no plants, no animals to be seen. Only cold, bare gabbro stone and blowing orange fire clay dust. As he travelled further west, eventually strange, sparse plants appeared, little bulby things covered in sharp hairs. Enormous, towering green things with many arms stood motionless in the frigid winds, their skin covered in little thorns. It was truly an alien land, though come to think of it some of these things sounded like more stories from the southern caves. Those birds must have been Ostriches, though he knew not the names of these plants.
The afternoon wore on and evening fast approached. The thought of spending the night in this place filled him with dread, as there was almost nowhere to hide. There did not seem to be anything to hide from, but nevertheless it was told that evil spirits could prey on the unfortunate anywhere under the moon. When the sun was low in the western sky, though, he crossed a river of ice that cut through the parched stone, and soon after came upon tundra land. This was just as exposed, but more familiar to him and snow made for good concealment if one knew how.
The tundra only calmed his mind for so long, though. Soon he came to the edge of it, and there was a long way yet in this direction to travel. So it was that back into the barren land he went, this time not seeing any plants whatsoever. At long last, at the western edge of the rocky land and the eastern edge of a snow plain, he at last found the hole. Crawling it he found it very strange. The floor was hard clay but the walls were thick ice. Alveror was a tall female specimen, narrow and large of forehead. She was known in the southern tribes for being particularly savage with her victims, though Deebus did not fear her.
He pierced her lung with the silver spear from behind. She whipped around, though, not giving him a good angle to finish her with a stab to the head, so instead he clubbed her with his shield. After many attempts to stab her head, getting knocked over from her flailing at the unseen terror, and getting back up again, he drove the spear into her belly. With the pain too much Alveror passed out and never woke again. Deebus withdrew the spear from the troglodyte's head. Now he could rest here, and not out in the desert.
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Topic: The journey of Deebus, a kobold story. (Read 193097 times)