Dwarves? Dwarves! Goblin?! (Paradox, GoblinFae)

[Looshi]

   "You abandoned them."

   Eirdis kicked hard. There was a loud crunch and shriek. Dust clouds took over the air, and she found herself covering her mouth with the sleeve of her wooly coat. Particles stung at her eyes, she blinked them away. The door laid down in front, torn off its hinges and carved face cracked and now worthless. Eirdis bent down and trailed her fingers along wound, feeling the jagged edges. She understood sentimentality. Whatever family owned this tomb would like to have a word with her, she assumed. If they knew who she was. Eirdis wasn't planning on leaving a note.

   "Every last one. "

   She stepped over, or tried to. Her short legs didn't quite make the breadth, she ended with stepping on the door with her boots, she could feel the carved grooves through the soles. Now, was this the room she wanted to go in?  She adjusted the hilt of her axe attached to her belt, hands ready to grab it incase anyone else had the same idea she did. There was a brown haze to everything, and the smell of a hundred old grandpas was ripe in the air. The room was lined with shelves cut from stone, an old brazier sat in the middle and looked to not have seen use in at least a century. Stone tables were spread out, and various embalming tools were set on top of them covered in cobwebs and dust. At the very least she had found the most morbid room.

   "You coward."

   But that voice was starting to get on her nerves.

   "If you wanted to do something helpful," she said, "You could start by telling me where the gold is." With her luck raiders and bandits had already cleaned the place out ages ago, considering she was able to get in. Eirdis had no subterfuge skills to name, and she could sneak as well as a troll. Which was not very well. She was half expecting the tomb to be locked up tight with only a special key to open it. Much to her surprise she could just walk right in. Eirdis took a few paces around the room, light was spilling in through the ground level holes in the wall, it gave her enough to see if there was anything worth while. Hint: there wasn't.

   She grabbed one of the braids of her moustache and played with it in her fingers. Under normal circumstances she wouldn't be grave robbing. But she was getting desperate. On the road back to Ketra from a job that went bust she found herself not having enough coin to spare to bribe a merchant to take her to the city on the edge of his wagon. She couldn't ride horses. They were huge and cumbersome, you had to take care of them, and they tended to eat her hair. So Eirdis was stooping low, which wasn't the first time according to her little friend. In truth, she could have walked the way, but she was low on provisions and was going back empty handed.

   She wondered how her boss would like that.

   "Yourself, is that all you think of?"

   It was getting harder to ignore. But what did a disembodied voice really know?

   Eirdis decided to take her searching elsewhere. The main hallway had been picked clean, and there was some evidence of it being recent. Spots on shelves had a distinct lack of dust clutter, alluding to something once being there. Something valuable. Eirdis' spirits were in rapid decline, and her efforts feeling futile. It was a long shot, and a part of her was glad she didn't have to resort to desecrating the dead. No, all of her was glad. If her parents knew was she was doing, she doubted they would stay silent and let it pass. She deserved as much.

   "And what do you think they thought when you left?"

   She bit at the inside of her cheek. Now it was getting too personal. If she did anything, it would be finding out who that voice belongs to. She was pretty sure it was not in her head. Pretty sure. However, exhaustion started to weigh on her and she made her way back to the room where she found the brazier. After some struggle, she was able to light it with the flint in her pack. The holes in the wall would filter the smoke out, she had no worry about suffocating. With some satisfaction of finding a warm place to sleep, she unrolled her bedroll. Eirdis ached to her bones, and was washed with relief as she sat down. The orange glow from the fire illuminated her face, her body, and grew the shadows up the walls. Placing her hands out in front of her to warm her, she began to sing.

   It was about gold, of course.

[Paradox]

The lone traveler stumbled erratically down the grassy hill. As he reached the bottom, however, he slipped and went down with an unceremonious splash into one of nature's conveniently placed puddles rump first. A gaggle of crows cawed in alarm and took flight, startled by the traveler's fiery and quite strident oath directed towards the All-Smith's stones, the traveler grumbled grumpily and pushed himself up to his feet.

He looked down at himself to inspect the damage, twisting his thick torso slightly around to view the soggy taint of mud that now caked his posterior. "Bah! They were wet anyways, ah suppose."  He told himself aloud with a snort and, picked a couple of leaves free from his muddy behind and tossed them aside, watching them be carried away by a sudden gust of chilly northern winds. The traveler, as wet as he was, pulled his cloak about himself tightly and shivered.

A flash illuminated the sky, briefly revealing a thick and ominous shroud of grey that swept out as far as his eye could see- which actually wasn't terribly far due to the rain which fell in endless sheets. "Damned clouds! Quit takin' a piss on me, or I'll march up there and beat ye bloody, aye!?" He snarled , shaking a meaty fist threateningly above his head with a vengeance. Naturally, the clouds were hardly feeling threatened and , if he didn't know any better, the traveler would have SWORN that the rain proceeded to come down even harder prior to his idle threats.

He caught sight of the mud on his hands out of the corner of his eye and wiped those on his pants as well . Why not? He was wet and positively filthy now anyways. A little more muck couldn't possibly hurt! Right?

Sighing, the traveler turned his attentions away from the incredibly offensive sky and peered straight ahead. Not but several hundred paces from where he stood now there was a copse of evergreens. "Mmm. Better cover o'er there, " he mumbled to himself and continued his journey onward, moving as quickly as his short legs could manage.

Reaching the dense tree cover, the traveler sought a dry spot to take reprieve. Unfortunately, every rock and patch of grass was as soaked as he was and getting ever more waterlogged with each passing moment. "I give up," he sighed and sat down in the grass, leaning his back against tree. He closed his eye and nodded off for several minutes before coming awake again and stumbling to his feet. "Bah! Too damn cold and wet! "

And so he pressed on, wandering aimlessly through the woods, searching for a dry place to sleep. The last thing he expected was for the earth to crumble beneath him and gobble him up! He lay there atop a mound of dirt, mud and grass he'd brought down with him and stared up at the hole he'd fallen through. "Ohhh...me back..."

He didn't notice where he'd fallen immediately or the other dwarf nearby he'd been kind enough not to bury alive with his oafishness.

Ooc: Okay. This made no sense towards the end! It made so much more sense in my mind. >>

*tosses logic out the window* SUFFER! If you need me to fix something or need some clarification , lemme know!

[Looshi]

   She tried not to think of home. The song on her tongue didn't help, and a few minutes after her voice was rising, she stopped. It was also a stereotypical song her younger self would have sang while brandishing a mug of ale, and acting like an idiot. She felt shame prickle at her insides; shame that it was the only musical lyric that she remembered. She wasn't a very good messiah after all, even her people's religious hymns were lost on her. Greater gods forgive her, for what it's worth.

   Eirdis sat back, bracing herself on her arms with her legs crossed in front of her. The crackle of the fire was soothing, drowning out whatever eerie whisper these old stones would say. And it seemed to beat back the voice as well.

   "No it didn't."

   Her lips curved into a frown. "Listen you troll pimple," she started with her fighting words,"Stop reading my mind. Or I'll..."

   "Brandish that axe of yours, and run?"

   "That is not what happened!" She said, standing up, her fists clenched at her sides. Before the voice could make its retort, there came a shaking from above her, and dust began to drain from the ceiling, snuffing out the fire. Her eyebrows furrowed first, she stared up second, her heart lurched third as a section of the stone broke away. And came down towards her. Eirdis couldn't find her feet in time, but she found a moment to curse.

   The impact should have killed her; All that weight on a small body, however Dwarven, shouldn't have been able to withstand. That is, it would have been the case if the person in question didn't have an advantage. Eirdis had ducked, whatever good that did, and the hair on her face began to glow in the most dramatic fashion; shimmering with specks of light drifting from it. She felt the pain. All of it. When it was over, she did not come out unscathed.

   Eirdis tasted the bitter iron of blood. The dust settled around them, and when her ears stopped ringing she pushed the slabs of stones off of her, beard still shining. Magic tingled in her muscles, and it was like moving a bed sheet. That was made out of rocks. It was an unfortunate move for one Dwarf laying on top of them. She hadn't heard his voice, but she did feel him slide off when the extra weight disappeared.

   When she was free, her hand went to her beard with haste, rubbing out the glow. Her nose was bleeding, she noticed, as her gloved fingers came back bloody. There was a slight throbbing to her head, yet the initial torment of being crushed faded fast. Dwarven resilience, she would have jested, but she wasn't feeling funny in particular.

   Her clothes were covered in dust and dirt, and gods knows what else was in her hair. The soggy world outside began to drip into the room unfettered. It wasn't her concern, not at that moment. Her eyes shot towards the mass auburn hair and with a nonchalant demeanour her father would be proud of, she managed to dust herself off and go to his aid.

Much to her surprise it was another Dwarf.

"You fell through the ceiling," she said, stating the obvious. "Good work."

She wasn't being sarcastic.

[Paradox]

Quite accustomed to being accident-prone, Delvar hopped up to his feet quite quickly though it was not an action that didn't yield any pain. The dwarf grumbled about his back , not hearing a word that Eirdis had said to him. By the manner that he seemed to not even look her way, one might have come to the conclusion that he was completely oblivious to her presence. He looked up at the hole he'd made and shook his fist, "Hah! It'll take more than a wee fall and a potentially fractured spine t' stop me, old man!" The eccentric young dwarf declared triumphantly.

Dramatics aside now, Delvar looked around and NOW noticed another dwarf. His eye widened and his expression was one of pleasant surprise.

Unfortunately , his greeting was quite jovial but strident and might have caused the other to cringe. Or perhaps his shouting might not be such a bother. Most dwarven folks were a noisy lot anyhow, "Well, burn me beard an' call me an elf! Ifn' it ain't one o' the stone-folk! "

At least, he ASSUMED it was . No Sky Dwarf he knew had the stones to explore the underground. Buncha cowards, the lot of them! He looked around again. He seemed to be in some kind of ruins. A tomb? He'd seen his share of them to have an idea. "Lookin' fer somethin' are ya!?" He continued to shout , "Where's yer excavation team?"

[Looshi]

Falling through the ceiling was quite a feat, and at the same time an ounce of dread came upon her; what if that happened when she was sleeping and unable to activate her magic? Even the Gods would not be able to bring back a flattened Dwarf. If Ifs and Buts were pans and pots, she'd have herself a whole kitchen. She decided not to let her mind waver on the bad. Besides, what was much more interesting was her new friend.

   When he hopped to his feet, she wasn't surprised. She crossed her arms over her chest, watched and listened. The Dwarven man shook his fist towards the hole, she found her eyes gazing up at it, staring through some hair that had come to fall in front of her face. Old man? She pondered that statement. Was their another up on the surface - no, couldn't be, she had yet to see their face stare down at them. She supposed it was a god he revered of some sort. Eirdis couldn't say which god, there were so many it was like feeding maggots on a corpse.

   Eirdis remained un-phased of the loud booming voice that could be near to threatening the rest of the stone around them, if the tombs demise worked like an avalanche. But she doubted it was thinking 'Hmm yes, falling down is a good idea right now'. Or at least she hoped. Back in Styr, Dwarves were still a noisy lot, and thus she grew up around it - but the shouting? Most didn't shout to have a word with you. Unless you were a child doing something they weren't supposed to. Like playing with your father's weapons. Not that she ever did something like that. Of course not. She assumed the man's ears were ringing from the fall, nothing more.

   She wore a grin at his greeting, doubting that he would in truth burn his beard. That would be a tragedy. Just look at it! Magnificent auburn hair draped his head , shoulders, and chin, braided in such a way that reminded her of home. Her own paled in comparison - there was a reason for that, but she was struck by sudden envy.

   "And you're not of the stone?" She said, raising her voice, but not quite to the shout that her friend was so generous to give.

   "Grave robbing." Blunt and to the point, no reason to hide it, she'd just get tangled in lies in the end. "I'm alone, or I was, good friend." She went over to him and clapped him on the shoulder with a gloved hand, still grinning ear to ear. "I'm Eirdis Stoneoath. I haven't seen one f our kind in years, I was beginning to think I was the only one on the surface."

   "Ooohhh is that your boyfriend?"

   The voice came again, and Eirdis tried to hide the annoyance on her face.

   "Looking to replace Yoya, so quick are we?"

   
Ooc: Up to you whether or not Del hears the voice. We could always just have it bothering Eirdis and her looking like she's lost her marbles, haha.

[Paradox]

He watched the lips moving and strained his neck forward, trying to listen , "Eh? Nae! This isn't me home! Ah'm nae from around 'ere!"He shouted at her, completely unaware of how loud his voice was.  "Ah'm from High Glorvir.'Tis th' 'ome o' the Mountain Dwarves, aye?  Ah would nae be surprised ifn' ye ne'er 'eard o' it or o' us. Me Clan's nae what it used t' be! "

Delvar stared when the other dwarf spoke.

For now, the nameless dwarf would be 'Beardly' because he wasn't very original with names and ,well, Beardly was a pretty fantastic name by his opinion. The stranger would approve! What dwarf wouldn't? His first child was gonna be Beardly even if it WAS a girl! Maybe the power of such a dwarfly name would cause her to grow REAL facial hair like the deep folk! He could picture it now. The first sky dwarf woman with a beard! She'd be famous! And her beard would be fantastic...

Whoops! He was getting a little mentally carried away with himself here! He'd nearly forgotten that he wasn't alone!

When she so bluntly pointed out that she was 'grave robbing' he heard 'knave lobbing' , and he nodded, " Ah've ne'er 'eard o' sooch an activity before , but it sounds fun! Dannae see any knaves though." He looked around, " Maybe ye ought t' try yer luck in a more extravagant catacomb. Ah'm not fer thinkin' yer gonna find any rogues t' toss in this impoverished lil hovel. "

He wrinkled his nose when the other dwarf clapped him on the shoulder. Fortunately, Eirdis was closer to him now and standing nearer to his right, the ear he could hear much better out of. Thankfully, THIS time his voice wasn't quite so deafening, "Eirdis Stoneoath, ye say? A fine name, that.  Ah'm Delvar Stormgirdir. A great pleasure t' meet a ..." He had to look just to make sure. Ascertaining the gender of a Sky Dwarf was easy , but one of the Stone Folk? That was a wee bit more difficult for him because he hadn't seen them quite as often,  "Daughter o' th' stone." He finished with a grin.

He shook his head, "Ye 'ead south o' 'ere an' climb them Thunderblacks an' yer bound t' find a whole bloody kingdom o' me people. Glorvir dwarves are surface folk. 'ave been fer...well, since me father's boyhood ah'm thinkin'. O' course, ah would nae advise goin' there. Me people aren't so fascinatin' . Hidin' behind a great wall and tremblin' like a buncha elves. No fight in 'em at all. No sense o' adventure . Pah! Ye'd be downright insulted by the sight o' them!  " 

Look who is talking. You're the brat who threw a fit and ran off in pursuit of a pipedream.

"Eh? " Delvar thought he heard a different voice . Was it behind him? Above? Below? It seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere all at once. "Thought ah 'eard...nae. Moost 'ave been th' wind."

Hard of hearing, are we?

"Ach! What are ye babbin' aboot? Me name isn't Lee and ah appreciate it that ye find me endearin', but ah'm certainly nae lard! "

...

If a spirit could facepalm...

ooc: special. xD

[Looshi]

Eirdis did her best not to burst out laughing when the other Dwarf misheard her. Was all that hair affecting his hearing? She wondered. She had never fathomed such a thing, but with all the weird oddities in the world she supposed it could be true. Was a beard growing out of his ears? Her eyes glanced over them but she could find no evidence to her theory. Drat. That would have been a story to tell. An earlobe with a mustache.

She took a step away from him, parting her hand from his shoulder, and now realising that perhaps she was a little too forward. Eirdis didn't want him to get the wrong impression. Gods forbid, she wasn't hitting on him - he wasn't exactly her type - and this wasn't Styr, Delvar was not her comrade in the Shield. Even after all these years on the surface, the habits still held hard on to her. Not that she ever tried to break them, they were a part of her like blue mould on cheese.

"Delvar Stormgirdir of the...?" She began, amused that he was calling her 'of the Stone', and trailed off on her sentence. There was movement in the corner of her eye, and for a moment she turned its way. Just as quick as it came, it disappeared. Eirdis thought she might be losing her mind. When it came to the voice, and now seeing things, it was easy to see how she came to that conclusion. Being too long away from home, that could do it. Could she even call it home now?

Either way, this Delvar Stormgirdir was an interesting fellow. Surface Dwarves? That was a new one to her. She couldn't imagine what it must have been like to been born under the sky instead of the ground. She felt sorry for him, and that showed on her face by a twitch and a turn down of her lips. While the man seemed to tell her not to go there, her curiosity was perked, like a cat sitting over a tank of piranhas. How did they live? Where they still Dwarves even after being on the surface? She stopped her thoughts there and reminded herself that she was once assumed to be a wretched creature of the deep when her face was bare of a beard. She remembered how much that stung. Delvar was still a Dwarf, despite the circumstances.

Before she could probe him for more answers, the voice came again; itching at her ears, yet this time it was not directed at her, having found a new playmate to torture. Eirdis' thick eyebrows furrowed. Well, at least she knew her sanity hadn't gone to the sheep's pen.

"Two Dwarves sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G."

"What?" Eirdis scrunched up her expression, taking a bit to reconfigure the spelled out word. But when she did, one of her hands went to the hilt of her axe strapped to her side. All right, it was going to make those jokes now? Someone needed to deal with it, and it was going to be her.

"Two dense Dwarves."

"At least we're smart enough to know we're not sitting in a tree!"  Yes, that was an excellent come back Eirdis, well done. Gold star.

"That voice has been bothering me the entire time I've been plundering this tomb." She said to Delvar, her voice a little more than a grumble. Without another word, she began to move the rumble to salvage what she could of her rucksack; her cooking ware, and whatever other valuables she had brought with her on the trip - which was none, because she wasn't as dense as the spirit made her out to be.

"Ah here it is-"

Something cut her voice off.

[Paradox]

Fortunately for Eirdis, Delvar was quite innocent, jovial and oblivious. Where Eirdis might have felt uncomfortable and questioned her greeting, Delvar was quite at ease because he saw the greeting for what it was. A friendly greeting. Nothing more, nothing less!

He watched the other dwarf curiously, pondering what might have been distracting her though he seemed not terribly concerned by it. Perhaps it was a knave that was fixing to toss? He'd enjoy seeing that!

The look she gave him when he spoke of Sky Dwarves didn't surprise him. At all. He merely shrugged his shoulders in response.  Other dwarves typically had this sort of reaction to him and it hardly bothered him and others had the audacity to scoff and say that surface dwarves were impossible. And even his own family questioned his dwarfliness because he'd spent so much time learning alchemy and blowing things up with the gnomes rather than training to be blacksmith , learning to forge Sky Steel like his father wanted. "Ain't natural fer a dwarf, son," his old man would always argue , but Delvar had always KNOWN what he was meant to do and no one could ever tell him otherwise. He was just as stubborn as his father and perhaps this was why the pair of them had always been smashing heads against one another , shouting drunken insults and beating the stones out of one another.  His father could say he wasn't acting like a normal dwarf all he wanted  , but Delvar knew that he was a dwarf. He could feel it in beard and in his bones.Nothing would ever change this. Ah! His aching bones. He rubbed his back and grimaced. If only he DID have a bit more stone sense. Then he might have been able to see that damned hole in the earth coming.   

Now the voice was saying many things and Delvar heard all of it , but where Eirdis MIGHT have looked quite cross, Delvar looked exceedingly confused. Though, by perhaps some miracle, he actually heard the last 'insult'. He wasn't sure what the owner of the voice was trying to do. Amuse him or ...no. It sounded pretty funny to him. So when SHE grabbed her axe, he laughed.  "Nae, there is a sight ah would pay a pint t' see. Can ye imagine two dwarves climbin' intae a tree joost t' exchange a wee smooch? Ye e'er tried t' climb one o' th' bloody things with legs like this?  Damn near impossible without the proper climbin' equipments and even then, why would ye bother ? Ye'd 'ave t' be one or two stones short in th'  'ead, if ye know what ah mean." He indicated to his short legs which looked a bit longer and thinner than what may have been expected from a NORMAL dwarf.

He didn't hear the second insult, but it must have been an offense because Eirdis looked about ready to murder something.

"Aye! We're not smart enough to have degrees! Wait..what? " He agreed with WAY too much enthusiasm, seeming every bit as idiotic as the spirit was implying. His star should have been platinum.

This pleased the troublesome ghost and it giggled like a naughty child that was QUITE pleased with itself.

Delvar strained his ear to listen to what Eirdis was saying , but since she had moved away from him..."That voice has been fathering you since you've been blundering with a broom? " He blinked, wondering if he'd heard that right. He was sure his hearing wasn't THAT bad though. Clearly , the time away from the stone had made her a bit mad. Yes. That must be it. She wasn't accustomed to the surface as he was. But he wouldn't judge! He wisely kept his mouth shut.

While Eirdis was preoccupied with her rucksack, Delvar decided to have a look around. He wandered over to a corner in the room and looked at the embalming tools spilled out over a dusty stone slab. It took him a few moments to realize that it was actually a stone coffin. Now, MOST sensible folk would figure to leave well enough alone , but Delvar was...Delvar and therefore his curiosity got the better of him. "Ello. Wonder who's in 'ere..." And where a normal human would have had trouble lifting such a heavy coffin lid that probably weighed well over a couple hundred pounds, Delvar slid it open with ease. Not surprisingly, his nose was assaulted by a stench that rivaled the thousands of dead grandpas that Eirdis had been smelling earlier. No. It smelled more like a hundred thousand dead TROLL grandpas!

"Woah! That's rank!" Delvar gasped and stumbled back a couple steps, guarding his nose with a hand. 

Then, curiously he moved forward again to the coffin to take a peek at its dead resident.

[Looshi]

Eirdis looked over her shoulder when she heard the giant thump of the stone lid of the casket being lifted to the ground. Her eyebrows raised as she watched for a moment the stumpy body of Delvar peering over. Even from where she was, she could smell the terrible stench stretching out its long fingers over their noses. Yuck. Hindsight was everything, she supposed. Eirdis rubbed at her nose, feeling where the blood at caked on her mustache. She looked a right mess, if she could bet anything. She pulled her rucksack out of the rubble without an inch of trouble, and set it down again to rifle through. Her cooking pot was missing, and by the weight of the stone it was flattened like a good ol'whatchamacallit. She had to pry out her bed roll, as well, now that she thought of it. Sigh. Could be worse. She could still be under there.

All her things were in her rucksack in more or less the condition they were before Delvar fell through the roof. Some even looked better than before. Funny that.

"EHEHEHEEE."

Said the spirit.

Eirdis stuck a finger in one of her ears, trying to dislodge the memory of that giggle. It made shivers roll down her spine, and the hairs on the back of her neck and arms stand up. No one could giggle like that and be innocent. She leave her bed roll for later, it looked like she wasn't going to be able to sleep after all, and her curiosity was profound and linked to Delvar. And what he was doing. She sauntered over to him, and peered with her own eyes into the casket. There draped in fine clothing was a corpse. Not surprising, it was a tomb. The fabric was being eaten away and had lost its value a long time ago. However, something shiny and gold caught her eye on the fingers folded together on top of the chest. Her hands went for them, not thinking about what impression it would have on her new Dwarven tomb-mate.

"This place wasn't bare after all." She said palming the jeweled, gold incrusted rings. At least she could bring something back to the keep, even if it meant a stain on her own morality. She could wash that out. Couldn't she? 



ooc: Short compared to the other posts, lol. If you need me to write more, I can. I have some other ideas I can fling at them.

[Paradox]

Ooc: Don't worry. I've worked with a hell of a lot less before. ;) And my post is short as well! I'm pausing for reactions, but lemme know if you'd like me to make some magic! (make things happen! Tada!)

Ic:

Either Delvar was ignoring the spirit or he simply hadn't heard it. He studied the remains of the stone casket's occupant. "That's odd..." the dwarf stroked his magnificent auburn beard , appearing as thoughtful as he sounded, "Looks t' be dwarven, but ah've ne'er 'eard o' any clans livin' this far from the Thunderblacks afore. Ah , but ah cannae read any o' the inscriptions ..." He leaned over the open casket and reached out with a beefy arm, pointing a thick finger at the markings all on the insides of the casket, " Looks more like chicken scratch than a proper – huh? Wot are ye doin'!?" Delvar exclaimed as Eirdis just nonchalantly waltzed up beside him and stole the dead guy's jewelry.

He stared at her incredulously. He wasn't the sort to judge. He had his own personal oddities such as conversing with deep gnomes and learning the fine trade of alchemy and blowing all things to higher than the tallest of peaks , but such things were not against his own people's superstitions. "S'bad luck to go takin' from tha' don't belong t' ye. Specially from the dead. Might be cursed..." He eyed the ring curiously and then frowned, " Well,  don't say ah dinnae warn ye. At th' first sign o' spooks, ye're on yer own. Ah hate bein' harassed by dead people."

Ooc: lol he doesn't even know...

[Looshi]

   Curses? Who cared about curses? Those were baby toys. Eirdis snorted at the very thought. But her friend's other words got her thinking. Dwarven. Now that she looked at it, without being distracted by shiny, the corpse and its eaten garments did look familiar. Not that they were native of Styr, it was too far away. Then, she thought, she was here after all. It wasn't out of the question. But she doubted it. Her bet was on it being a different dwarven clan; dwarves all had their similarities to each other - like their beards. Her eyes glanced up to the big hole in the ceiling, and her mouth twisted into a frown. Rain fell into the room with greater haste than before. The smell of must, further disturbed by the crumbling tomb, rose in the air, and it itched at her nose. She sneezed. Dust blew off the edge of the casket. Then she rubbed at her nose. She was completely lady like, what are you talking about?

   There was a twitch. A finger. The digits of the corpse's hand began to curl. Eirdis grabbed Delvar by the shoulder, and grinned. Now this was getting interesting!

   "Look at that! Seems our buddy here wants to meet us." She said, not considering that the corpse might be a right dastard. It was not every day that you saw a dead body rising from the grave, though she acted like it was. In all honesty, this was the first time she dealt with such a thing. And it was exciting! The hand rose, and and she could hear the bones cracking as the moved, as if not feeling the gift of life for centuries - which was the case. For a moment, a light in the eye sockets flickered and then bloomed bright.

"Good evening!" Eirdis said, beaming, and the corpse turn its head in the casket only slight.

"GOOD EVENING." It said.

[Paradox]

ooc: This is so painfully short , but it must happen!

ic:

It's a common misconception that dwarves feel no fear. This is because humans simply have no understanding of anything outside of their own species (and even then their knowledge is quite, well, iffy!). Rather than screaming and fleeing , a dwarf's beard will begin to tingle and twitch most uncomfortably. Shortly after, the dwarf will suffer from spasms of aggressiveness. Delvar was certainly no exception to this rule for the moment the corpse started moving, he proceeded to nervously tug on his beard which was twitching as though it had a life of its own!

And then the violent spasms came the moment the voice boomed in greeting. Delvar grabbed the coffin lid off the ground , lifting it up with strength that made any dwarf proud (and leave any human man feeling seriously emasculated ). He raised the thing high and bashed it down hard over the talking dead fellow's cranium.

HOW RUDE.

Delvar smashed the coffin lid down again for good measure.

[Looshi]

Well, that was one way to get things done.

Eirdis had flinched at the terrible crunching sound the bones made under the weight of the coffin lid. There was a soft sort of squeal coming from the corpse that sounded like a beg for mercy, but it was clearly extinguished by Devlar's second crushing blow. Her mouth twisted into a frown. There went her curiosity, and a possible lead on the spirit. But there was little to do when a dwarf got the fear in them. Except to sit back and watch.

"Could have been a friendly corpse." She said though, despite it all.

"Hah!" Came the disembodied voice again. "Now you will never escape my clutches!"

Eirdis thought that was an odd choice of words, as the door was right out there past the hallway, and there was a rather large gaping hole in the ceiling. With a little manoeuvring they could make stepping stones out of the rumble and climb their way out. The spirit's threat fell flat. It was losing its touch.

There was a shuffling noise across the ground, of feet being dragged along stone. And a clickity clack that went along with it. It grew louder, and then there was more of it. Eirdis sighed and drew her axe from the holster on her belt.

"We have company, friend." She said, "You may want to grab that coffin lid again."

In from the door more corpses shuddered in, wearing similar garb to the one that had its head busted. Family, perhaps? Oh good, they got to kill the aunts and uncles. Well, not kill, just make dead again.

"HELLO, HOW ARE YOU?"

Many voices resounded at once, and Eirdis had to grin.

"Fine, thanks." She said in response. "But you won't be."

Then she charged at them.

[Paradox]

This time, possibly because Eirdis was standing juuuuuust close enough to him on the right side, he actually heard what she was saying, " Friendly? 'Ow can a spirit trapped to a mortal vessel fer hundreds, maybe thousands o' years with nothin' t' do , but harass rats or the occasional person who falls down here possibly, be friendly? His or her beard has turned t' doost and...AND they dannae even 'ave ale!  Tha' would drive any sane dwarf mad! An' mad dwarves aren't friendly!"   

He looked up when he heard a familiar voice that seemed to come from everywhere. "Ne'er tape 'is crutches? What's 'e on aboot? What does a dead guy need with those? An' what is tape anyway?"

He heard the shuffling too and instinctively reached back for his rifle.

Whoops! He blushed beneath his beard. Silly Delvar! He'd left it at home!

"Bah! Ah'm a dwarf ! Ah dannae need a weapon! Lemme at 'em! Ah'll wrestle them with me bare hands!" The violent spasms that dwarven fear often brought on were kicking in again.

A skeleton shambled his way holding what looked like to be a serving tray was to be his first victim. "Would you care for some -"

"FER TH' SMITH FATHER's BEARD! RAAAAAR!" Delvar shot forward like a rabid dwarf that had several ales too many and tackled the poor undead being. The tray went flying. Tea pot, moldy biscuits and all.


ooc: Poor undead people. D: Delvar and Eirdis...worst house guests EVER.

[Looshi]

Her knuckles went white as she gripped tight onto the hilt of her axe and swung. On her first swing she knocked a head clean off of a corpse, and as it was flying she could have sworn the expression was one of utter befuddlement. What a weird thing to think. Eirdis rammed her shoulder into the still upright body, and an arm was jumbled out if its socket. With a drying desperation, the hand drew itself and the rest of the arm across the stone flooring, trying to escape. Eirdis curled her lips into a smirk and stepped on it, pushing down hard so that under her boot she heard and felt the sweet, sweet sound and motion of something being crushed. She couldn't say it was not satisfying after a long hard day of getting nowhere fast.

"Oh don't do that!" A different corpse said, its jaw chattering. "Look I've made some cookies. Fresh from the grave."

"I appreciate the sentiment." She said, her tired eyes giving the tray a glance over. As Delvar was rocketing around in the midst of his fear, Eirdis stopped for a moment and picked up a 'cookie'. Well, it was more like a rock.

"What is this?" Feigning offense she tipped the tray over in the undead's arms, and gave them a push to the ground. She was a nice person, honest. The corpse stuttered, trying to find words with its disembodied voice. And for a moment, Eirdis felt a bit sorry. Only for a moment. Her axe then came crushing down on its head with a nice crack. She lifted it up with a jerk and looked to her new friend.

"Need some help there, Delvar?" She asked as if this happened every day and there wasn't anything weird about it.

[Paradox]

(( :'D That's hilariously cruel! I love it!))

"Oh my!" The incorporeal voice of the ill-fated undead being beneath Delvar exclaimed, his voice hardly strained even as the dwarf's meaty hands encircled around his bony throat and proceeded to strangle him, "I seem to have slighted him."

"It's the ash and lemon, I think." Another ethereal voice which vaguely sounded female responded with a weighty rasp, "I think dwarves find lemons infinitely offensive." 

"I don't think it's the lemon so much as it is the lack of ale."

Thanks to Eirdis, heads proceeded to roll and cookies were so heartlessly rejected.

"Well, " the female voice sighed, " you just cannot please some people!"

With a mighty roar , Delvar twisted the poor skeletal being's head until he was rewarded with the loud yet satisfying sounding of cracking bone. His victim's head came clean off and he held it up in his hands staring into the hollows where eyes would have been were it a living being. "I beg your pardon, but would you be so kind as to put that ba-"With a rage-filled bellow, Delvar hurled the chattering skull at the next nearest corpse to him, pelting the poor being in the shoulder and knocking its left arm clear out of its socket.

Delvar whirled on Eirdis, his expression looking quite exasperated in spite of the rush that this sudden episode of irrational violence had given him,  "Ah told ye nae to touch ,but noooooooooo. Ye joost dinnae listen!"

[Looshi]

The bodies laid in shambles around them. A couple of them still twitching in their afterlife. When Delvar whirled on her, his face almost as red as his beard, her thick eyebrows raised, and she grinned once he spoke.

"Well," she began. "It was interesting! You can't argue against that."

If he intended to actually argue, she was going to have none of it. Satisfied, she knocked on one of the torsos sprawled out along the floor. The ribcage once held a heart like hers, she mused. Funny how that worked.

There came a shudder to the walls, and a deep bellowing howl.

"Hmm?" Now what? A pang of excitement rolled through her at the thought of swinging her axe again.

"Ooooooh! You'll pay for this my pretties!"

[Paradox]

Delvar opened his mouth to argue because it was in a dwarf's nature to argue every point no matter how ridiculous the argument was or how irrational their counterpoint might be.Deep down, he agreed with her, but he had to find some way to make his agreement sound like it was only a partial agreement because then he'd be appropriately sticking to the stubbornness of his nature,  "Well, we better hope the extended family doesn't rise up for revenge! Ah cannae fight when ah'm parched!" And by 'parched' what he actually meant was that he couldn't fight without something to drink! Ale. Mead. Beer.

Delvar only half heard what the disembodied voice cackled, " Eh? We'll slay cities? Ah'll be needin' a lot more ale fer that!"

[Looshi]

The voice rang in her head again. Okay, it was getting very annoying, especially with how shrill it became at the last word. It almost sounded like her mother when Eirdis would do something she wasn't supposed to. So, her mother's normal voice.

Her tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth, feeling the dryness. She chuckled at her new friend's misunderstanding, but agreed about the ale.

"Say, this seems to be a Dwarven tomb." She said and sheathed her axe at her side, still feeling the confidence of the fight running through her veins. "There should be some... Refreshments around here." Though they were probably old.

Really old. But did that matter? Probably not.

[Paradox]

Delvar did not appear very certain. Stroking his beard thoughtfully , the eccentric engineer adopted a contemplative expression, "Ye think so? Ah dannae, Eirdis." His eyes swept around the forlorn tomb, "Ah mean, they offered us tea! What kind o' dwarf in his or her right mind does sooch a thing? 'Tis damn insultin' , ah tell ye! Tea is for pansy , pointy eared, flower-sniffing , tree-hugging , beardless, skinny, frail, weak little ELVES! Even me people with our 'eads in th' clouds know better than t' pay sooch an insult to a fellow dwarf! Tea?! Bah! " He threw his meaty hands up in the air and dramatically. "Ye cannae 'ave a proper old fashioned brawl on tea! Nae, nae. Ah suspect there's somethin' off about this place! Me beard senses are tinglin'!"

And when his beard sense kicked in...that meant something was either horribly wrong or he was just being crazy , as usual.   

He gasped quite suddenly and moved closer to her, leaning to whisper in her ear, " What if th' reason they're all dead is because they ran out of ale? " That seemingly ridiculous (by human logic) speculation left a horrifying chill thrilling through his short , dwarven spine. "Maybe they went crazy and started liking, "he shivered, "tea."

What kind of dwarf liked tea? Honestly! It just wasn't right!