We were sent here. The outcasts of a civilization, accused of crime after crime - some of us guilty, some of us innocent. It matters little now. Our enemies will be many.
Sent on a one-way trip to provide a bastion against the hated elves and goblins to the southeast, a warning post, in exchange for not being executed.
The area we are going to has some trees. In fact, it borders the savage and untamed forests to the east. Still, I fear the rumors I have heard of these mountains. Even just skirting around them, we lost many to strange rains and oozes. Yet we dare not turn back, even when our guards disappeared one night and never returned.
Still, dwarves are hardy creatures. How hard could it be...?
By the time we get there there are only seven of us left. We should have stopped earlier. Nothing for it now - we must get underground quickly, or the rains will be the end of us.
Fortunately, we have some skilled dwarves to help us make our start. With stalwart companions such as these, surely we can bear any catastrophe.
The ooze in the mountains that continually rains from the sky burns like molten lead. It stops in a curtain at the very edge of the mountains, where the grass begins to grow. It is like the forest itself rejects it. Some splatter falls upon the grass - and what little does fall there kills it. Perhaps one day this place will grow to consume the world.
We set our camp at the very edge of it, beyond where the rain splatters, and hope we do not have to relocate. We fear the river, you see. It flows into the mountains. True, the water upstream is safe, but what if something could swim through it, against the currents?
You would not believe the things we have seen.
We immediately start hollowing out an underground burrow with space for the precious supplies from our wagon, which we start moving inside, and a trade depot. We struggle to bring the wood in and start making doors. There is a flurry of activity. We try to make doors, but there is just so much to do...
The goo quickly grows so intense that it has coated the mountains entirely, and yet when we are outside cutting trees, we can tell there are things moving, far off in the distance. Creatures that should not exist, cannot exist. What kind of hellspawn could survive this deluge? If this had happened before we had arrived, not even us few would still be alive.
I hope that we can finish the doors and bring everyone inside before-*A smudge is left on the page, as if the writer was startled by something.
They're dead! They're all dead! Some sort of giant, rotting cow - animated by forces I cannot even imagine - killed all of them! No, four or five rotting cows... The best dwarves I had ever known, the hardiest, gone! I... I must...
I must go outside. I will not die here in the burrow.
Armok curse the men who sent us here!
--
"Hm." Shorast tapped his finger on the yellowed page of the journal. "... Where are the bodies, then?"
"Did you find something, Shorast?" Kadol called, ambling up behind him with an armful of cloth from the wagon.
"Yes. A journal. All of them are dead, Kadol."
The rest of the guards in the party turned and stared at him.
"All of them perished on the journey, or while here, thanks to a band of reanimated cows. Or water buffalo."
"Are you sure?" Kadol furrowed his eyes, scratching at his beard. "There are no bodies."
"The necromancers must have gotten them." Kulet piped up, animatedly. He was the youngest of the Queen's Guard that had been sent.
"Maybe so, lad, maybe so." Shorast sighed, then looked towards the burrow. "... We should bunker in. We have already lost three of our party."
"What, and stay here until winter? Are you mad?" Kadol blinked in astonishment, grabbing Shorast by the shoulder.
"The cavern is prepared. All we have to do is move into it and wall it off. We have enough supplies to last a year." Shorast blinked, in turn, in surprise at him. "Unless you want to tell me that you want to march back to the mountainhomes with no armor and little weaponry?"
Kadol stared at him for a long moment, knowing he was right. The bloodrain that they had encountered had irreversibly damaged their armor and steel weaponry, corroding it away to nothing. All they had left was a few bronze and copper things.
"Yes, you're right, of course." Kadol said, after a long moment. Then his head snapped over, and Shorast spun around. "What in Armok's name is THAT?!"
"... I think we found where the bodies went." Shorast groped for his sword, but did not find it. Of course. He left it back in the wagon. Foolish. The practiced warrior in his brain was probably still thinking he had his steel sword - the bronze weapon never really felt like his.
Shrugging in amusement as the ruined skeleton came at them, he shattered it with a single punch. Bones flew everywhere.
They were interrupted by a scream from behind them.
A horse skeleton had snuck up behind one of the men in the company who Shorast had never learned the name of. As one, all of them rushed to help, screaming war cries.
This was a huge mistake.
The noise attracted others. Soon more came, and more, and more. The same horse skeleton that had attacked in the beginning seemed invincible - their weapons and strikes and grapples could not harm it, and it broke arms and legs and skulls with but a careless kick of its hooves.
Standing in the middle of the carnage, Kulet stared, weaponless, watching as every dwarf around him fell. Then he lifted his hand and screamed, and charged, his mind lost to beastial rage.
The skeletal horse, later to be known as 'Fasteneats', and the partial skeleton of one of the undead from the first expedition, both fell upon him. They took their time, ripping off Kulet's extremities, and then they callously walked away, leaving Kulet to be torn apart by the undead yak retainers that followed them.
Kadol cried. He crawled forwards, and he stopped to cry some more. He crawled, blinded by pain and rage and sadness and emotion.
The goo was slowly dissolving him. It did not match the pain in his heart. His skin blistered and bubbled, his clothes dissolving away.
The droplets of acidic rain intensified once again, forming pools around him. He crawled still.
He did not see the zombified half-corpse of one of those who had gone before, shambling towards him.
It did not kill him quickly, as he desired.
