*Pant pant pant*
The cave-swallow woman ran through the caverns, the ceiling being too low to fly. She ran through the twisting passages, fleeing past riches that would be, to a dwarf, unimaginable. To her, they were just shiny walls. She ran up a slope, and tripped over a crundle, sending her falling into a ravine. As she looked up, she saw the three twisted, shadowy figures that had been chasing her.
"Oh no, plea-please no!"
***
Eldrich had woken up a few hours ago in a hospital bed. There was a couple of dwarfs in the beds to his left. To his right...
There.
Was.
An.
Elf.
He simply stared at her for what seemed like an hour. She shifted in her sleep, as though aware of his gaze. He stared for a while longer, then got out of the bed. He walked over to the Elf's bed, and paused, as if unsure. Then, as if making up his mind, he put one of his two ritual daggers, and its scabbard, in her hand. Her fingers closed around it, and he walked out of the room into the hallway.
He went to the left, walking and turning seemingly without purpose. He passed two thieves talking about their plans, and easily pick pocketed their ill-gotten gains from them without notice and continued on. He passed an old man grumbling about them young'ons and turned right into a dining hall. There, he paused, listening to the loud argument coming from the hall.
" It is a demon, a murderer, a monstrosity! We must kill it before it kills us!"
" Now listen you old coot!"
" DID YOU JUST CALL ME AN OLD COOT?"
" I sure as hell did. I used to tolerate your ... ""zeal"", but that was before you started talking about murdering burn victims in their sleep!"
"IT IS NOT A BURN VICTIM! IT IS A KILL-"
"Ahem"
Silence fell instantly, and the assembled creatures turned to look at the masked and caped figure that stepped out of the shadows.
" In my society, the accused are allowed to defend themselves in front of a jury. I thought yours did too."
The "old coots" cult sneered at him, but the cries of some of the dwarfs drowned them out.
" Yeah! Lets hear what the bogeyman has to say!'
"Bah! Fine, hear what the murderer has to say! I will be in the temple praying to the gods for your souls!"
The "old coot" turned and stomped out, his cult on his heels.
Eldrich watched them go, then turned back to the crowd.
" I will admit, we do kill people. But we need the resources. Our clouds cannot support tools for getting resources, and when was the last time you heard of a city that would trade with the bogeymen? Or one that would even talk to them?"
There were some uneasy murmurs among the crowd.
" Would you not kill to keep your children alive? Would you not kill to keep your race alive?"
He cleared his throat. " We have to kill, or our city's will fade and our family's will be food for the Roc's. I don't know how to make that any clearer to you."
He stared at the murmuring crowd for an minute, the turned and was about to leave when the dwarf that had been arguing with the old man came up.
"Er, hello, my names Derm. Uh, what's yours?"
".....Eldrich....."
Author
Topic: [Community] Nomekast - At War with Nothing (Read 180287 times)