He's a human, not a dwarf.
Inside the tower, the adventurer is greeted by a pile of bones lying in the corner of the entrance hallway, and a rotting corpse at the first intersection. The flies apparently hadn't found it yet, although the stench was overpowering. Or perhaps they were just smart enough not to go inside.
Our gladiator moves past the corpse, continuing down the the main path.
He hears footsteps behind him, and turns around to find the source as they hurry down one of the other corridors. Going back to the corridor, the adventurer steps gingerly around the rotting corpse, only to find another one at the other end of the corridor, followed by a room smeared with blood on the floor and walls.
Two more corridors branch off of this one, and the hero does not know which one the creature followed. He picks the one on the opposite side of the room, and breaks into a run in order to catch the thing.
A dead end. More corridors branching off into the darkness. Not a sign of anything alive, or even alive recently.
Another blood-drenched corridor, again packed with the rotting corpses of two goblins.
Suddenly, the pattering of footfalls returns and a goblin careens around the corner in front of the adventurer and rushes at him, its intentions made dreadfully clear in its fever-lit eyes.
The hero back pedals and the goblin misses him, albeit by a somewhat slight margin. Hefting his mighty axe, our gladiator smashes it into the goblin with all his might, sending it flying back down the corridor before slamming into a wall and sliding down into a crumpled heap on the floor.
The hero started making his way over to the creature, but knew that it wouldn't be alive by the time he reached it. The hard splotching sound that arose from the goblin's chest had more than indicated that the creature had little time left in the living realm.
The creature was still alive though, attempting to breath with two horribly mangled lungs, but still alive. The adventurer, not wanting the creature to suffer more than absolutely necessary, lifted his axe and brought it down to end the goblin's life.
He missed.
The axe struck the goblin in the right foot, cutting open the creature'e big toe. A bit taken aback, the gladiator attempted the act a second time.
He hit the creature's foot again. This time, however, the small appendage was seperated from its host body and sent flying to land with a soft splash in one of the numerous pools of blood.
Now very confused, the adventurer put everything he had into ending the goblin's life quickly and efficiently. It was harder than expected.
At least he wouldn't hit the right foot anymore.
A third blow hacks the creature's left leg off at the knee, a fourth blow broke the creature's hand and split open two of the fingers. With his fifth blow, the adventurer struck the creature's left arm, and with a sickening crack the bone was broken inside it.
With a faint wheeze, the goblin finally bled to death at the feet of a very perplexed and shaken adventurer. An adventurer who apparently could not execute a coup de grāce on a creature before it bled to death. Things were not going well.
Still in something of a daze, the adventurer blunders down the hallway, looking for a new chance at actually killing something with, instead of all these damnable bleedings. Every creature he had yet killed had simply bled to death, and this was beginning to wear on his nerves.
Taking the stairs at the end of the hallway, the adventurer found himself standing on yet another rotting corpse, his boots sinking into the spongy flesh.
Here, the flies had most certainly not been deterred. They swarmed about the room in a buzzing haze, glittering bodies zooming about the room in their almost mindless zig-zags and loops.
Another corpse lay beside that of the first, and a few articles of clothing were scattered about the room.
Among these, the adventurer found a relatively untouched waterskin made of a shiny black material he did not recognize. Checking it, he found it full of water, and a quick sniff proved that the water, although not entirely fresh, was at least clean.
Our gladiator takes a drink from the waterskin, and the straps it on next to his own. No need to let it go to waste, after all.
Making his way through the blood-spattered and corpse-littered corridor, the adventurer found nothing of interest other than the innumerable signs of conflict, and a single iron boot which was of human size, instead of a goblin's or a dwarf's. This single item disturbed our gladiator more than most of the other things he had seen along the way, as though the death of an unknown human affected him more than the death of an unknown dwarf. Now it seemed that the death of his kind, and thus his own death, was possible.
Gulping down his nerves, the adventurer dropped the boot back onto the smooth obsidian floor and continued on his quest through the tower.
After taking another flight of stairs up, the hero found another item of his kin. An iron gauntlet, smeared with goblin's blood, lay haphazardly on the ground. The tower was silent as to who it belonged to, as silent as it was about all the other happenings within its black walls.
As silent as the dead, even.
Not wanting to dwell on such thoughts, the adventurer began moving through the halls again, hoping for something to happen. Anything that would block out this damnable silence, and drive the nagging thoughts out of his mind.
And then something did happen. A goblin leaps out of the gloom as the hero makes his way towards another stairwell, punching at the hero with a gnarled and bony fist. Caught off guard, the hero reacts insticntively and blocks the blow, while simultaneously bringing his axe to bear.
A quick swipe, and the goblin's head is lopped off. The first "real" kill for the adventurer, and it all happened so fast. Once the head settled into a confident resting place at the bottom step of the stairwell, the silence moved in again. Our hero made his way up the steps, careful not to slip on the blood that now coated them from the goblin's neck.
The hero, tired of wandering through the twisting halls, made his way towards the top of the tower, in the hopes he might see something from the greater height.
Even with his determination to leave the confined innards of the tower, its disturbing images would not let him pass so easily. Severed and rotting limbs lay strewn about on the ground, as well as an occasional blood-spattered item.
Throwing himself around a corner, the adventurer comes across an unexpected sight. A goblin guard, peacefully sleeping on the stone floor of a room that was practically stuffed with odd bits of clothing.
The hero dropped his axe, and grabbed the goblin's quiver of bolts before any of them could be shot at him. His grip slips the on the first attempt, but the guard continues sleeping, apparently untroubled by the new action going on around him.
The second attempt lands him the bolt-stuffed quiver, and the guard remains sleeping on the floor. Time to wake him up, then.
Taking a bolt from the quiver, the adventurer flings it at the sleeping guard, breaking his left arm! The guard continues to snore. This guard is either cursed, or one very deep sleeper.
A second bolt strikes the guard in the lower body, cutting it badly enough to open a large wound through which the guard's intestine poured out onto the cold floor. He would have been awake now, if he hadn't passed out from the pain.
The hero stands over him for a moment, as vomit spurts out from the guard's mouth and blood spurts from his stomach, and then throws the quiver full of bolts at its prevous owner, breaking his leg.
With a hand free, the adventurer grabs the guard's head, and performs his signature move. Once both eyes have been torn from their sockets, the stone-faced and grime-covered adventurer grabs instead for the guard's throat, strangling what life remained in the small body out of it. Small burps of vomit manage to pass by the stranglehold and coat the adventurer's hand, but he doesn't notice. He doesn't notice the small cracking noises the guard's neck is making either, and he does not notice when the guard finally dies, throttling the dead husk for a few minutes more until finally letting go.
Something had been broken. A veneer over something else which had been broken since the day this man was born.
No more pretenses of mercy. No more disgust. No more hesitation. Only death. Only silence.
Empowered with the fever strength of utter mandess, the gladiator propels himself through the halls, looking for a new victim. All must end, and he must end it. Silence must conquer all.
Reaching the top of the tower, the adventurer finds a veritable battlefield. The top of the tower is covered in blood-soaked clothing and armor, and what few trinkets had been raided by the goblins were buried under piles of dark red cloth.
Two more guards slept on this rooftop, and the gladiator made his way over to the one carrying a crossbow. The adventurer plants his hand over the goblin's face and rips out his eyes just as the creature stands up and fires a bolt into the adventurer's shield.
He then picks up his great axe once more, and hacks off the guard's head. He then moves on to the next one, still sleeping through the chaos.
This one, a pikeman, has his pike ripped from his grasp before it is plunged deep into the goblin's left lower arm, sticking firmly into the wound.
The guard gives a gasp of pain, and then passes out as the adventurer twists the pike brutally around, opening up a major gash in the goblin's arm before finally pulling it out and stabbing it into the guard's lung.
Again and again the hero thrusts the pike into the goblin's flesh, until there is nothing left but a bloody mess. The hero then turns his wild eyes upon the third guard, throwing the pike at the sleeping form. The pike shoots through the wound, only the lower half of the wooden shaft appearing from the front of the goblin's chest. He was dead before he could even flutter his eyes open.
The hero picks up his axe and the pike again, and then stands between the three corpses, surveying the carnage.
There was little to do here other than make his way back down. Would he seek the secrets of this place in the other towers, or move on? What would the future hold for the adventurer?
Vote, dear audience. The game is neither won nor last at this junction, it must go on!
A) Sift through the other towers.
B) Wait a while on top of the tower, something may come by.
C) Leave this place and head into the wilderness.
D) Leave this place and head towards a site (please name the location of interest)
E)*_________
As a side note, I must say that's it's quite interesting making your way through a place that's seen some action. It's a very dark and bleak atmosphere in the towers, and that makes the occasional goblin all the more unexpected.
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Topic: Death and Glory! (Read 55920 times)