Vees tried with all his goblinoid might to keep his panicked breath lower than the sound of his tiny pounding heart that he could feel pulsing in his large, floppy ears that flapped with each slap of his crooked feet on the damp overgrowth he raced across. In his bony hands, the terrified, impish creature clutched a leathery looking egg as big as his own head; a prize he quickly felt was a bit too far out of his league. After leaping over a gnarled tree root in a fashion as valiant as a goblin could muster, he found himself looking between a distantly familiar moss-covered stone and a tree riddled with bitter-lips fungus. Bulging yellow eyes darted between the landmarks, his modest brain wracking on which direction would take him back to the forward squattings of his fellows. His discernment was cut short however, by a distant, though quite uncomfortably not too distant, screech from the verdant mass behind him. Nearly dropping the fruit of his sneaky pilfering, Vees determined to scamper moss-way, sputtering hope beyond hope to the high marsh-boss that it was the right way.
Twice praised and thrice cursed, the snot-skinned thief felt splashing under his feet, signaling his retreat was nearing home, though what else it could have signaled to what unknown interlopers of the Ravensway, he dared not imagine. Thrashings from a ways behind kept him from worrying more than necessary, giving himself wholly to the escape, until a panicked grimace twisted into a snaggle-toothed smile of delight when he saw the dirty banners of the Raven Worg Cutters poking menacingly above the choking foliage ahead.
"TEEK! SKEEP!" Vees squealed to his companions that were to have returned to the squatting for rest. "Is Vees! Scaley mudjaw comes! Eats worg-friend! Spears! Spears!!"
Vees leaped valianty once again over the defensive rotten log that sat cleverly lined with poisonous ivies, feeling his feet splash into soaked grass of safe territory. Hoisting the egg up high over his head, he chattered victoriously. "Prize egg! Vees steal from mudjaw! Eat like hero!" He looked up at the muddied morsel, the light breaking through the canopy giving it the sort of glowing corona the goblin would imagine from the legends of Reek the Pimpled. The glory of it all would make the yolk all the sweeter, though unfortunately for Vees, the feeling was short lived. A sluggish squish and the most unpleasant hot burning from his belly buckled the goblin at the knees. The egg slid from his hands, tumbling down his now grief-stricken face before it knocked into the crude javelin in his torso, and landing in a splashing thud on the ground. Vees fell afterwards, his vision quickly becoming blurred as he looked upon the bodies of Teek and Skeep, and the pair of muddy, scaled lizard-folk that stepped over them towards him. They made a sort of yipping laugh as they clicked their snouty maws in a crude dialect he understood.
"Worg-friends too weak! No leave Mudmaw territory but cannot hold! Look you - stealing dud-egg like treasure! We feed you to the young! Glory to Mudmaw!" The second of the two lizard-folk beat a boney club upon it's leathery shield in approval, while the one who spoke moved to retrieve its javelin from Vees' gut. "Feed you to Mudmaw young! It comes now, likes best you still alive when it feeds, yes!" It laughed again.
Vees looked about weakly, no longer trying to hide his panicked breath as he clutched the wound in his belly. New sounds came, the thrashing of vegetation gave way to a heavier padding of feet, and soon the great head of the pursuant beast, apparently only a hatchling, hovered above him, the light of the canopy giving it a similar glowing corona as the egg did before, but Vees hardly had time to absorb the irony of it all before the beast's gaping maw closed everything into darkness.
