The baron wandered down the identical hallways of the fortress. To all but the dwarves, it was an impenetrable and insane maze of corridors put together in the worst way possible, but to the baron, it was something else: home. As he walked, he noticed a thresher and his pet kitten licking the rock salt walls near The Bin Chamber, presumably part of a recent competition to "Findde the ƒaltiyƒt Part offe our Fortreƒes Fine Halite Walls!!!! Prizes Aƒ Liƒted!!!!!!". He had not shut down the competition, as it was important that the farmers stayed content during the harsh winter when none but plump helmets would grow. The baron shuddered at the thought. How many of those horrible purple fungi had he been forced to scarf down in those early years? Every day, he checked his beard for purple hairs: signs of plump helmet poisoning, a death sentence for any dwarf. It only struck those venerable dwarves who lived to 150 and above, but not a single dwarf ever made it above 170. The baron's grandfather had died at 168, and his beard was stained a deep, deep purple as he writhed on his deathbed, vainly struggling against the plions attacking his aged brain.
The king slept in his royal chambers. Gossip had arose that there was a "fuchsia" aspect to him: a dwarven slang-term meaning that either a noble was very skilled in one aspect, or he was feigning expertise to disguise his true identity as a necromancer. The similarities were many. Perhaps it was the habit of necromancers to wear the same flowing purple robes as the nobility, eventually bleached into a pure pink by bone-dust and foul reagents. Whatever the cause, it was a compliment to the king, as he happened to be a legendary bone-carver. He was also a necromancer, delighting in making his fine bone figurines come to life, clacking and dancing in whatever shape he chose. For now, he slept with his child nearby. He liked playing with the boy - he was a creature of both flesh and bones, more than anything he could ever hope to create with the lost arts, and he loved him fiercely. One day he would pass on the secrets of life and death to his heir and eventually crawl into his masterful tomb and pass on, but voluntarily, unsealing his ancient contract with the God of Death and secure in the knowledge that before he could be dropped into the dark afterlife of perpetual despair, his eyes would snap open and the first thing he'd see would be his grown son opening the lid of his coffin.
A single cat prowled in the dining room, killing the occasional cave swallow and then secretly dropping it through the grate into the goblin pit. Although the cat was not evolved to the point where it was capable of abstract and sentient thought, seeing the crazed and starved goblins diving for the remains and slaughtering their comrades to get at the only food source ever available to them made the cat feel a warm glow inside. The dwarves would let the goblins starve, but such a fate is too cruel for the goblins. They deserve to be kept alive as long as possible, as was the cat's equally nameless mother when the goblins came to call. As her litter scampered through the doors as they closed, she was slowly dismembered by a Master Lasher, each lash weakening her bones and sinews a bit more before the leg finally snapped off with a sickening thud. This was repeated four times, to the laughter of his comrades. That Master Lasher was now the longest denizen of the pit, having lasted three years on the befouled water dripping in from the cavern drains and the broken corpses of rats. By now, he was completely insane and had eaten his whip last month. The cat watched as, in a fit of lucidity, he clawed at his chest to try and break through to his stomach to tear out the whip, having temporarily retreated from the melee to rest his many, many wounds. The dwarves enjoyed watching the sickening tableau, too. Betting on who would die next was a very popular pastime, and a few bookies charted the wins, losses and injuries of each goblin, deciding how likely it would be that they would expire in the next brawl over a dropped plump helmet stem or crust of bread. Especially the master lasher: despite trailing most of his internal organs behind him and having a whip embedded in his gut, he had never lost a fight. Even when he appeared dead, he would be alive as ever the next morning. But today he had received a mace to his windpipe, and it looked hopeless for him as he choked on his crushed larynx.
The king slept well. Tomorrow he would probably have to do some work in the pit. Such were the perks of being a learned monarch such as himself. The bets he invariably won on the survival odds of each goblin were good, too.
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Topic: A picture's worth a thousand words (Take 2!) (Read 6460 times)