A wagon pulled by a pair of horses rolled along deep in the forest; a dwarf sitting in the front pulled on the reins and slowed to a halt, presumably having reached his destination, though admittedly with the way dwarves navigate (i.e. while under the influence of enough liquor to kill ten elves) he and the six dwarves riding behind him could be absolutely anywhere. Wherever they were, they were here; the seven dwarves stepped out of the wagon trepiditiously, craning their necks around to get a better idea of where "here" might be.
The dwarves tell many tales, and with the amount of liquor they consume it is hard to tell how much is truth and how much is drunken hallucination. There were tales of lands in which living eyeballs sprouted out of the earth, peering up at passersby with soulless gazes. There were tales of hellish pits of torture and depravity from which magma floods would issue forth, charring the landscape for miles. There were tales of monsters that lived in water and leaked poison that would cause any who drank it to slowly rot to pieces while still alive.
This place wasn't nearly as fantastic as the tales. There was only the wind hissing through the dense trees, the steady trickling of a nearby stream, a strange sense that there was something or someone here that very much disliked their company, and the raucous chattering of a pair of crows.
The dwarves quickly hollowed out a small room in the soil to shelter in while they dug out living accommodations and a farm; they didn't quite know why, but they were deeply relieved to get away from the incessant whistling of the wind blowing through the tree branches. Shortly after they had finished, one of the seven -- a swordsdwarf tasked with ensuring the safety of the workers -- very reluctantly stepped outside to get a drink from the wagon. The wind's whistling made him anxious, but anxiety isn't nearly enough to keep a dwarf away from his liquor. He heaved the barrel over his head and drank deeply (the only acceptable method of imbibing among dwarven connoisseurs).
As he drank, he became dimly aware that his subconscious was furiously prodding the rest of his mind in an attempt to get his attention. Something was wrong, something far more sinister than the wind blowing through the trees and making eerie noises. He regretfully placed the barrel on the grass and stood stock-still, his soldier's instincts taking over.
There was nothing to hear but silence. No wind and no birds; even the cold trickling of the stream had faded away. A chill ran down his spine, and his ears started to ring.
Suddenly, the muffled sound of footsteps against grass could be heard behind him, ringing starkly against the silent background. The soldier quickly spun around to face its source. A muskox was slowly cantering towards him, its glassy eyes staring unblinking into his. There seemed to be something wrong with it; large patches of its fur were missing, and its left hind leg looked oddly skinny. He didn't pay this any mind; all he knew or cared about was that this creature was obviously trouble -- probably rabid, from the looks of it -- and had to be disposed of immediately.
He charged forward yelling, just like his instructor at the mountainhome had taught him, and moved to draw his sword, which, as it turned out, wasn't actually there -- it seemed that, in light of the fact that there hadn't seemed to be anything remotely threatening for miles around, he had decided that lugging his sword around just to get a quick drink wasn't worth it. He planted his feet into the dirt, pitching forward and hitting the ground just in front of the strange muskox. He raised his head from the ground and saw, to his horror, that the reason its leg looked so skinny was because the flesh had rotted away, exposing bits of mud-caked bone and thin strips of muscle black with decay.
The six dwarves underground heard a blood-curdling scream which was abruptly cut off; after a second, their instincts had cheerfully informed them of who it likely was and what it likely meant for the rest of them. For several agonizing seconds, there was complete silence, with no movement save for the dwarves' terrified trembling.
The group's mason then stood up and began hurriedly dumping rocks and bits of clay into a pile next to the entrance to the room the dwarves were in. Eventually, he decided that he had enough supplies and started piling the rocks into the doorway, plugging any small holes with clay, blocking the only path to the outside and, by extension, their wagon and, by extension, the booze. The other dwarves' hearts sank; while a dwarf would grudgingly admit under extreme duress that it was better to live without booze than to die with it, the prospect of having to get by on cavern water for a few months until the crops came in was almost too much to bear.
They'd be safe, at least; once a dwarf builds a wall, that wall stays built; whatever it was that had almost certainly killed their friend would just have to deal with it.
The mason frantically piled the stones into the entrance, fumbling in his panic. Bit by bit, the wall rose to the ceiling... a quarter of the way up... now halfway up... now five-eighths. They'd be completely safe once the entrance was entirely walled off, floor to ceiling. Seven tenths...
Eleven twentieths...
Suddenly, the wall burst outward, showering the mason with debris; there was a loud crack as a stone struck him in the leg, shattering the bone. A muskox stood in the doorway, somehow still moving despite the fact that its skull was smashed in -- presumably from ramming it into the wall. The mason tried to scramble away from it, dragging his leg behind him; the dwarves saw the horror in his face right before the beast's massive hoof crushed his head into the dirt, splattering the ground with blood and fragments of bone. The five remaining dwarves scrambled desperately into the corner furthest away from the beast and huddled together; they watched, paralyzed, as two more muskox -- one of which appeared to be missing half of its head -- pushed through the room's entrance, blocking off the closest thing to an escape they had. The sickening stench of decay filled the tiny room.
Several minutes later, the last of the screams stopped, and there was nothing to see or hear except for a gore-splattered hole in the ground, ten barrels of wine sitting forgotten in a slowly-decaying wagon, and the wind whispering through the trees.
Dramatised account of that one time my little sister attempted to embark on a terrifying forest. Badly-edited, as I'm in a hurry right now.
Fixed some silly typos and whatnot.
I know it's a bit late, but I just noticed an incredibly annoying superfluous comma and if I didn't fix it now it would haunt me for the rest of my life.
Author
Topic: Dwarven horror stories (Read 8926 times)