Prologue
"Mebzuth", said Urist, "I lowered the bucket in the well and when I brought it back up it was filled with blood."
Mebzuth immediately knew what this meant. He ran to his room and locked the door. Could it be-?! Was it-!?!
Urist returned to hauling duty, and was so preoccupied with carrying lye that he didn't notice what was behind him until it was too late.
Chapter 1
"Now, listen, you peasants-"
"I'm actually a soap maker, a valuable and traditional skill that I learned from a long line of legendary soap makers."
"-Yes, we get it, you're overcompensating. Now then, Urist has gone missing. And so did his cat. The well is full of blood and I saw a toddler trying to bite off its own arm. Something's up. So from now on, be careful out there and especially don't drink out of the well."
"I wasn't going to anyway because I'd be too busy making soap."
"Grow a pair, you suds-sucking nancy!"
Immediately the haulers filed off to lug around giant heavy rocks everywhere. A shadow crept up on one of them, and yet it was a shadow without a caster. It peeled itself off the ground and flew up one of the hauler's nostrils. The hapless hauler immediately started carving something into the smooth stone wall before dying of shadow overdose.
Ñ
Chapter 2
Tosid the wood-cutter ventured off into the caverns, trusty battle-axe in tow. He began hacking at a tower-cap, smiling when it finally gave up and slammed into the floor. Suddenly, he felt some moisture on his feet.
Blood!
He casually (but quickly) walked away from the oncoming puddle of blood, but it could casually spread faster than he could casually walk and soon it was all over his pig tail socks. The entrance stairs awaited ahead, which he ambled up with glee, tracking spatters of blood every which way. He leaned over to touch one of his sockprints...
As he made contact, a single instant passed before his eyeballs began to shrivel up. He screamed in agony as they retreated within his head, but it was too late and his entire skull imploded with the sound that exploding a potato in the microwave makes.
Chapter 3
Meanwhile, Cerol the other woodcutter ventured above-ground. Most dwarves didn't like the hellish sun-blasted landscape, but Cerol enjoyed the feeling of the rippling muscles that inexplicably grew out of the ground as they bent and snapped underfoot. As a dwarf born in the fortress who only got to see the outdoors for the first time when she was fifteen years old, the eyeballs on stalks swiveling to watch her as she passed were perfectly normal. A huskifying dust cloud drifted by, and Cerol happily waved as it sucked up a hapless cat and immediately spat it out as a horribly mangled living skeleton. After felling a particularly old glumprong, Cerol tied it to her backpack and set to hauling it back.
Suddenly, a skeleton popped out of a nearby bush! Cerol tried to run, but the fine log made of the world's densest wood tied to her back slowed her down, and the last thing she saw was a skeletal finger poking out her remaining eyeball. Fortunately she survived the encounter, but she would never again see the bulging muscles underfoot, just feel them tenderly snapping and spraying blood everywhere as she stomped over the beautiful purple hills of the fortress.
Chapter 4
"Don't worry", said the baron. "I think I've figured it all out."
"Really?" said the manager. "Because PEOPLE ARE GETTING HORRIBLY MANGLED A LOT."
"Yes", continued the baron. "The caverns are haunted with taint. You must mount a very unhappy ghost-hunting expedition so that they enter fell moods and murder the nearest ghost."
"Damn you, I'm drunk as funk. Let's do it."
The expedition was soon mounted, but Udib of the Third Wall-Building Corps immediately succumbed to an insatiable urge to murder someone, and leapt upon the baron before stabbing one of his beard hairs straight through his skull and sewing together a shirt made of his bones. Everyone else scattered in fear.
"Fear not!" cried the fortress' vampire, sealed deep within a wall. "It just so happens that I can sense fellow night creatures, and there aren't any. From the gossip I've heard, the tide of blood in the caverns is probably just caused by some pathetic forgotten beast made of blood who leaks when he walks but causes a head-implosion disease, the skeleton who pokes out eyes is because you twats set off to build a fortress in the world's most magically contaminated area and Urist vanished because his cat must have murdered him. Now can you let me out?"
"Excuse me? We weren't going to find that out until there was only one out of two hundred dwarves remaining!" yelled the manager.
"Yes, but if I was the only one left then there wouldn't be anyone for me to kill when I break down this stupid wall. Hey, do you have a hammer or something? One of these bricks is giving me a lot of trouble."
The cat pounced, killing the manager instantly.
TO BE CONTINUED