I'm not sure if I'm proud or ashamed of this ... oh well, here it is:
DEONIDEAS and the plunderers by Umlaut Van Karst
The deep orange sun sets behind the mountain, the wisps of cloud flicking off the peak with the far away wind. Deonideas was on foot, walking the lonely road, en route to the bandit camp at the base of the mountain. The bandits had first betrayed their position but two nights ago. Thinking themselves alone and isolated, they cooked over an open fire. Deonideas saw the thin black line of smoke, and could smell the roasted fish from his position several miles away where he had been waiting for 2 whole weeks now. He lived off naught but the memories of sexual conquests past, and moisture squeezed from the heather that scattered the ground at this height.
He had waited the two nights to ensure the bandit’s false sense of security was heightened and his hunger was at its most desperate. He wanted to ensure that after his victory he could pick every last sinew from the still-warm bones of his prey. He took up his gentle stroll as dusk began on this third night. The line of smoke that others wouldn’t have seen remained etched to his mind, and he walked towards it with nonchalant purpose.
There were no rags on his feet and his movements were silent. He left no footprints in the peat and his movement from rock to stripped-bare tree through open marshland was such that at no point did he leave a possible silhouette against the late-grey horizon. His only witnesses were the snakes, whose poisonous fangs bounced off his thick warrior’s hide.
He approached the camp now, in silence and with his hunger tearing him apart. He stood there, continuing to use the black moor behind him as a disguise, and stood a hundred yards from his quarry. He stood and admired the last few seconds of their horrible lives. He could smell the sweat beading on their armpits as they rested and muttered to one another, sharing a flagon of water. The water they drank was gathered locally, he could smell the silt disturbed. He heard the leather trousers of the nearest bandit creak and groan as he walked. The stitches stressed under the movement and the crumbs from the unleavened bread he was eating rolled down his chin. Deonideas observed it all.
These boys would make for no sport for Deonideas, and he was not entertained by the inevitability that he would have to kill these people brutally. The sport he had come for was the bandit king, Dyionisideonus. A terrible man of fewer morals than Deonideas himself, whose only source of joy was the collection of other men’s treasures. Deonideas did not judge him for his greed, but he did judge him for taking a treasure that Deonideas himself must have, that of the beautiful Minky Moo, princess and heir to the throne of Baylia, a bountiful land famed for its beautiful women and the hidden city of Clenerus, where so few men have visited.
Dyionisideonus stepped out from his tent in to the late evening air. He surveyed the surroundings and chatted briefly to the men near him. Deonideas heard the syllables they muttered, but did not understand the foreign tongue. With the wafting open of the tent he caught the unmistakeable jasmine smell of the beautiful Minky Moo, and his solid bronze wrist bracer fractured in his anger.
The unmistakable sound of rapidly failing metal caught the ear of the Bandit King, and spun his body round quickly to Deonideas’ position. Having left the lantern-lit tent to the relative darkness of the evening on the moors, he could not make out the events as they happened in front of him.
Deonideas punched clean through the back of bandit dressed in the leather trousers, sending his spinal column out through the front of his chest. Deonideas had picked up his liver and was biting and swallowing whole mouthfuls of it as he ran and approached the other two bandits, who had barely been alerted by the muted gargling screams of the first victim. His iron-rich snack was fortifying him as he ran, and with his blood renewed his muscles pumped harder. Jumping up to the first bandit, Deonideas grasped the back of the bandits head with his hands, the upper back with his legs, and clamped his mouth over the eye-sockets, sucking them out one at a time. Falling from his blinded opponent, he quickly righted himself and with a single powerful swing of his right lower leg, kicked in-two both of the femurs of the final bandit.
Dyonisideonus, the bandit king, stood there aghast. He was now able to see under the low light, and a dark silhouette of the hero, Deonideas, was apparent. Blood from the liver continued to slither down the face and upper body of Deonideas as he continued to eat. The bandit king spoke:
“Deonideas, you have come. I feared this day, but understand this, you will not have Minky moo. I have set a potion in that tent which will gradually overheat, to explode, unless I am there to reset the levels, using my deep alchemical knowledge. You kill me and in one minutes time, the tent will explode. You do not have time to save her, my unfortunate friend”
Deonideas didn’t give a shit*. He raised the palm of his hand up to the bandit kings forehead, clipping the front of his scalp clean off. As Deonideas lay over the body of Dyonisideonus, taking part in an impromptu culinary lobotomy, the tent behind him exploded with the bandit kings alchemical magic - sending torn, burning leather and furs over the moors. Deonideas finished eating the brain of the king under the emerging moon, and turned to examine the wreckage behind him. He saw the lower body of the princess, still largely intact, and warm. He had won the treasure for which he came.
*copyright Willfor, I had to use it it was too funny, hope you don't mind!