Chills ran down his spine as the sound carried through the tunnel, the screams were loud, terror filled and the sound of someone in pain. Shortly after the first scream started another one took up its call, this one a female, and it was a blood curdling scream.

Springing into action Bjorn gripped his pickaxe tighter and went running up his tunnel, by the time he got to the mouth, into where the minecarts ran a third scream sounded, again by a different voice. The first two were eerily silent, as he was running up the corridor the first scream had been cut short, it had made a gurgling sound at the end of its life. The second had sounded as if it had been drug away. The third scream had been more of a startled cry rather than a full scream. This one too had been cut short by a gurgle.

As he stood there trying to orient himself, the gnolls that were supposed to be their guards were all standing there, they had moved from their seated position around the table to a standing position staring off down the tunnel towards where the non ore was taken.

“Are you going to do something?” Asked Bjorn in a rather rough tone towards the gnolls. All but one of the gnolls continued to stare down the tunnel, the last one looked at Bjorn and shook its head. Not wasting another second he lept off heading down the tunnel. Rounding a corner in the tunnel Bjorn came across the site where the attack must have happened. There was a man with a hole in the side of his neck with blood trickling down from the opening. Underneath his body blood pooled staining the hard stone red. With him obviously dead Bjorn kept moving, further down the tunnel.

There was another pool of blood, but looking at the spray pattern on the wall something had rent this victim open, and with some force if the distance the blood spray could be found was any indication. The blood pool wasn’t entirely a pool, it was streaked on one side of it where the body had been pulled through the pool. Right next to the pool lay a feminine looking arm. With more blood spray off to the side, in that part of the tunnel there was a small patch of dirt. The dirt had been disturbed by something being drug through it, and with what looked like the woman struggling to break free. Not far after the dirt it turned back into stone where there was a blood trail where the woman was drug off.

After the screams the tunnels were eerily quiet, when everyone was down here working there was always a din of sorts of pickaxes hitting rock, of people talking quietly, of the wheels on the minecarts rolling down the track. All of that was gone. In the time it took Bjorn to fully investigate the situation no one came to investigate, Bjorn was the only one to have shown up.

After spending a few minutes paying his respects for those who were killed, Bjorn turned around and went back down the passage. When he came upon the body of the man he stood there. It didn’t feel right to leave him there, but at the same time Bjorn didn’t want to pick the guy up and have himself get covered in blood, he also thought of how someone once told him that when a person dies their bowel muscles eventually relax and they release their excrement everywhere. Sighing, it wouldn’t be right for the man to be left there, so he knelt down and put the guy's body over his shoulders and started to head back to where everyone was.

When he made it back to where the gnoll guards were situated they looked at him carrying the body and said. “How many did it kill this time?”

“3, what did it?”

It was the gnoll that looked at him and shook its head earlier that answered Bjorn. “We don’t know, and its hunting patterns are never the same. Sometimes it will kill 5 or 6, other times it will only kill one. Sometimes it will wait a few hours in between attacks, and sometimes it will go weeks before it kills one of you slaves. It is rare for it to leave behind a body though." After it finished its sentence, silence fell for a few minutes, then the gnoll spoke up again. “Where are the pickaxes?”

“They are back there in the tunnel.” Replied Bjorn.

“That won’t do, go fetch them, otherwise the next group of miners will be short on pickaxes. It will be your fault, and you’ll have to pay a hefty price for your failure.”

Biting off a retort Bjorn turned around and headed back down the tunnel, he wanted to say something but thought better of it. Walking away he did grumble under his breath though. “How is that my fault? What a crock of shit. I think it's your fault, I mean you let whatever it was kill three of us.” Stuff like that. Luckily for Bjorn he was able to retrieve all 4 of the pickaxes that were left down that tunnel. For one of them he had to walk a ways down the tunnel before he came across it. He was no expert in forensic science, but if he was to guess the pickaxe had been clutched in the woman's other arm and had been drug along with her body before it had caught on a rock and been wrenched out of her dead hands. After getting the pickaxes the gnolls told him he had to take care of the body, so Bjorn had to carry the man’s dead body up to the cave the gnolls' home was built in before he could go back to mining, which took most of his shift.

The rest of his shift after that had passed with nothing else of note. When he made it back up to the surface the gnolls had written him down for another portion of food due to his work getting the pickaxes back.

This is how another two weeks of his life went. Most of it was mining and sleeping, and very little changed. Some days he would go mine by himself, others Meira would be around him as he worked, but she never did anything herself. If he got any food he would give Meira a share of his food. Not knowing why he did it, he shared what he could with her. Maybe it was pity, maybe it was a desire to not be alone in this situation. Who is to say the reason for Bjorn’s care of Meira.

In those two weeks there hadn’t been another attack. He was making some gains though. His mining had hit level 9, apparently spending 14 hours a day grinding a simple skill like mining was amazing at gaining skill levels. One thing that was unexpected though was he gained another level. He hadn’t noticed how close he was to another level after his fight with the gnolls before he was captured. That daily experience was coming in clutch. Using his three skill points one went into strength, and two went into endurance. He figured more stamina and decreased drain on said stamina would pay more dividends at the moment mining than anything else. He had also gained 2 skill levels in water magic by his time spend purifying the drinking water. You would think that with how often and much of the water he purified every day the water would be plenty purified, but no. There was a small stream that bubbled up and ran into the trough, so it was constantly being refreshed, and with how many different people there were in the slave encampment the water he purified didn’t last long, there were always some people around it drinking from the water. So far no one had said a thing, or even interacted with Bjorn when he was casting his purify water spell.

Even though many good things were happening, it was few and far between. Most of his life had become hard, rough, and dangerous. All that needed to happen was for him to look at a gnoll the wrong way and he would receive a beating. One day his pickaxe handle broke and for that he received a beating. Another, the man he had beaten had recovered enough to want revenge, and so Olvog’s men beat him. That one was the worst of them all. The other slaves didn’t react to Bjorn, he tried to interact with them, but either Olvog beat them into submission so they wouldn’t talk to Bjorn, or they had no will for companionship. The only thing that gave Bjorn hope was he could see Meira crying more often than she did initially.

Thus it came as a terrible surprise when Bjorn was sitting in the slave camp when the gates opened unexpectedly and the gnolls pushed a dwarf into the camp.

“Eh you cunts get your grimy hands off of me.” He said in a gruff voice, it sounded something like a scottish accent but with more gravel in it. The gnolls ignored the dwarfs' complaints and shoved him into the camp before closing the door behind him. “Now this is a sorry state to see.” He said gravely as he looked over the field of people. He slowly walked into the group. “Ello, what ‘ave we ‘ere?” the dwarf said as his eyes made contact with Bjorn’s, they held each others gazes for a moment before Bjorn averted his eyes. “Oh no you don’t laddy.” the dwarf made his way through the crowd, the slaves parted before the dwarf as they did for Bjorn. Standing before Bjorn he looked down and said. “Now what’s your name?”

A moment passed before Bjorn replied. “It’s Bjorn.”

“Ah a good strong name, My name be Alaric. Tis a pleasure to meet you.” There was a pause as Alaric looked around the camp. “What’s the story ‘ere?”

Quietly Bjorn quickly filled Alaric in on what all happens at camp. As Bjorn was finishing speaking the flap covering the entrance of the building opened, and a man drug Meira’s limp body by one leg. He drug her to the edge of the huddle of people and dropped her. As he watched Alaric’s facial expression grew dark. He got disconcertingly quiet. “Oy! That’s right, big boy, I'm talking to you! Why don’t you pick on someone your own size.”

Barely contained rage could be seen on the man’s face as he turned towards Alaric. It was the same human man that Bjorn beat for trying to take Meira away from him. The man stocked up on Alaric, and he towered over the dwarf. Alaric didn’t seem to be bothered at all by the posturing. Instead he just calmly stood there looking up at the man.

“What did you say?”

“I knew from looking at you, you were slow. So I'll spell it out for you nice and slow. Why. Don’t. You. Pick. On. Someone. Your. Own. Size.”

The man scoffed. “My own size you say? I don’t think you are talking about yourself. You are nowhere near my size. It would be like beating a child.”

“I would think that wouldn’t be anything new for you.” Alaric said, looking pointedly towards the man's crotch.

The man’s rage boiled over at that comment. Raising his arms he went to push Alaric back, placing his arms on Alaric’s chest the man shoved hard. Instead of Alaric stumbling backwards it was actually the man who was pushed back. Quickly recovering he raised his arm to throw a punch at Alaric. Throwing it Alaric stepped to the side, stuck a foot out, and tripped the man, who fell face first onto the ground. Bending over he grabbed the man by the back of the shirt and pants he hefted the larger man up and started to walk towards the latrine. All the while the man flailed about trying to free himself from Alaric, but with little success.

Once they got to the edge of the pit Alaric commented. “Oof, that sure doesn’t smell all that great. Perfect.” And he threw the man head first into the pit. The man yelled as he fell, but the yell didn’t last long, it was cut off by the sound of a squelch, as the man landed in the pit. Turning around he walked back over towards Bjorn rubbing his hands together in a gesture that looked like he was wiping something from his hands. All Bjorn did was just stand there staring at Alaric, slack jawed.

“Well that takes care of one of them. How many others are there?”

“There are 4 more, including their leader. He is a hobgoblin named Olvog.”

A head poked out of the building looking around, after all the sound of the man hitting the latrine was loud enough to most likely be heard in the gnoll city. The man looked around after a few seconds of looking, the head retreated back inside. After a minute all four of the building's occupants came out, Olvog was Strutting in the lead, head held high, behind him his three minions slunk along. Olvog walked boldly up to Alaric. As he grew closer the sense of unease that Bjorn felt every time Olvog drew near slowly overtook him, and soon he had the feeling of needing to avert his gaze.

“You dwarf, what happened to my man just now.”

“Well, you see I had the sense that he was about to take that little elf there.” As he pointed to Meira. “And take her back into your building, and rape her. Tha’ doesn’t quite sit right with me stomach, so I taught ‘im a lesson, he won’t be forgetting. That’s if ‘e can crawl his way out of that shithole.”

Olvog’s face grew tight and his eyes became slits and he looked down at the dwarf he towered over. “I’m sorry, I don’t think you’ve been entirely acquainted with how things work here. You see…” Olvog trailed off as Alaric’s voice came booming out over the field.

“I don’t give a flying witch's teat about how things work ‘ere. While I live ‘ere there will be no raping of young elves around me, as a matter of a fact. I think there will be no raping of any women while I’m around.” He stopped for a second and gave one of the lackeys a stern look. “There will be no raping of men either.” At that statement the man’s face grew red as he grew angry at the not so subtle suggestion at his proclivities.

“If that is how you want to do it.” Said Olvog. Without any hesitation as soon as he finished speaking Olvog whipped his head down towards Alaric trying to headbutt him. Anyone who had ever spent time with a dwarf would understand that folly, because as soon as his head came in contact with the dwarf’s head we went reeling back. Olvog stumbled backwards as blood started to pour off of the spot where their heads connected. Alaric was fine, he didn’t even blink as he stepped forward and threw a punch into the hobgoblin’s gut doubling him over. That was when the lackeys all jumped the dwarf

You would think that three on one the dwarf wouldn’t stand a chance. It was by no means fair, and the dwarf started losing immediately. But it wasn’t as lopsided as one might think. For every 4 or 5 hits the dwarf took, he landed one solid hit that would send his opponents flying, or would knock them down. All the while Alaric didn’t stop his litany of insults.

“You call that his punch? My grandma hits harder than you.” “Did you just slap me? You sissy, I almost feel bad for hitting a girl like you.” “You pansy, I didn’t even hit you that hard.”

When Olvog recovered and joined the fray. That 4th person was enough to tip the scales and the dwarf started losing quite badly. Two of them got a hold of his arms and held him fast, the other 2 took turns hitting Alaric.

In Between punches landing on Alaric’s face he called out. “Hey you!” Talking to Bjorn. “I could. Use. A little. Help. Oof, Here!” Each sentence was cut short by the sound of fist hitting flesh. Mustering his courage Bjorn stood and leapt at the orc lackey. Slamming into the orc they both went tumbling to the ground, as they fell their bodies clipped the human holding Alaric’s arm and he was able to break free. Rolling on the ground the orc quickly got the upperhand and ended up on top raining blows down on Bjorn. As for Alaric, the time where he was getting beat by all 4 of them took it’s toll on him, and he wasn’t looking the best. But still he didn’t stop talking shit. “Come on ya green skinned bastards, i can take on all 6 of you!” Alaric said as he stumbled back to his feet.

As for Bjorn he quite handily lost his fight versus the orc and the orc left him in a bloody dazed state. Once Bjorn was out of the fight the orc joined the rest and soon Alaric was also down. After Alaric went down they kept beating his body. Eventually they grew bored of the beating and went back into the building, leaving Meira where she lay next to the two men.

That day all 3 of them missed the mining shift. It took 2 days for both Bjorn and Alaric to recover enough to do anything of note. The man that Alaric threw into the latrine ended up getting quite sick, after a day of retching sounds he got kicked out of the little hut and then the next day he succumbed to his sickness. Whatever he did he must have offended Olvog because there were no repercussions for his death. The gnolls didn’t seem to care all that much, and Olvog didn’t try to get pay back for the death. After Olvog’s numbers went from 5 to 4, a tentative truce fell over the camp.

“You know Bjorn, I appreciate you helping me out there, but that was a pitiful display. Have you ever even fought before?”

Bjorn looked at Alaric briefly before looking away. “I’ve been in a few fights before, but mostly I had a knife, sword, or bow to help me kill whatever I'm fighting. Never really fought with my fists before.”

“Aye, that’s evident enough, well we will have to fix that, although not here, I don’t think the gnolls or even our hobgoblin friend would take too kindly to us fighting in here.”

“We could always work on it during a mining shift. If we both volunteer I don’t think they would stop us, they only feed us if we get ores though. So we can’t dedicate all of our time to teaching me how to fight, but that is something.”

“Aye aye, aye aye, that seems like a good plan, I’m something of a fair miner myself, so I'll be able to take care of getting us some ore, I’m assuming you’d want to get enough so the little missy can eat too.” He said as he nodded towards where Meira was sitting on the ground with a vacant expression. Bjorn nodded back to Alaric. “That’s settled then, next mining shift we are going to join it.”

12 hours later all three of them made it down to the mines with no issues. Alaric was as good as his word, in less than an hour they had 4 chunks of raw ore big enough to qualify to get the food. It was quite the sight watching Alaric hit the rock with his pickaxe, in the time it would have taken Bjorn to get a single rock out of the wall Alaric had made 15 times the progress. And on top of it all it was almost like he had a sixth sense to where the metal was situated in the walls. Out of the 3 chunks Alaric had found them in the tunnel leading towards the end, and it only took a small amount of effort on his end to get access to the ore.

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

“I think to avoid suspicion we should split the chunks evenly between the two of us.” Bjorn said, then indicated towards Meira. “I don’t think she will be in any state necessary to make it convincing that she was the one to get the ores. “ Alaric nodded in agreement. “We should also wait a few hours before showing up with the first chunk, and space out how to turn them in, first me, then you, then you, and then finally me for the last chunk.”

“I agree, now let’s not waste any more time, it’s only a matter of time before Olvog decides that our defiance is no longer tolerable and tries to kill us off. We got lucky with that fellow dying of sickness.” Alaric made a grimace, hocked a loogie and spit it onto the ground. ”Gnolls are right sick bastards, and they are doubly cruel to their slaves. They are as rotten as they come. They are nice enough to each other, but are sadistic bastards to anyone else. Honestly our living arrangements are almost lavish, I’ve raided gnoll encampments and I’ve seen people who have had to use corpses for blankets, and for food. They don’t even normally provide water, or a latrine. It is up to you to find a way to get that yourself, I’ve seen people who have drunk blood in an attempt to satiate their thirst at gnoll encampments.”

A look of horror crossed Bjorn's face as the implications started to sink in as to what Alaric said. “Like I said, our camp is actually not bad. But they probably won’t take kindly to a real fight breaking out in camp. They tend to get angry when their slaves kill each other. I have not doubt that if the man was killed by us and not by a fever then the gnolls wouldn’t hesitate to pull us out of camp and torture us to death. But enough of that, let's see what we can do about teaching you how to fight. Come at me, and don’t hold back, I’m pretty sure I can handle whatever you throw my way.”

Nodding Bjorn set his feet, assumed a boxing stance, took a step forward, and took a swing. Alaric easily dodged the punch by stepping to the side, he then took his foot and kicked almost lazily at Bjorn’s front leg. Bjorn lost his balance and came crashing to the floor. Chuckling Alaric offered him a hand. His strong grip easily lifted the larger man to his feet. “Again.” This time Bjorn took a different approach, he still did the step forward and this time threw a jab. Alaric easily deflected his blow while stepping in closer to Bjorn, grabbing him by his upper arm right where it connects to his shoulder Alaric pulled with surprising strength and Bjorn went flying. This time tumbling over Alaric’s back. “Again.” Alaric said with dispassion in his voice. And again Bjorn tried to hit the smaller dwarf, and failed.

“Alright, well, it could be worse.” Said the dwarf. “You could be dead, and then everyone could hit you.”

“Oh come now, It can’t be that bad.”

“Tis pretty bad. I’ve seen children better than you. Hell my brother could have probably kicked your ass at the age of 10.” Said Alaric looking Bjorn up and down. “Let’s not waste what time we do have.”

And so Alaric started trying to teach Bjorn how to fight. Which at the beginning felt like an exercise in futility. Alaric showed Bjorn how to hold his arms, how to throw a punch, how to place his feet, all in an attempt at instilling a small portion of how to actually defend himself. “When you throw a punch you need to step forward like this.” Said Alaric as he placed his foot forward. “When your punch is going to hit you put all of your weight on the front foot, but don’t leave it there, otherwise.” Alaric used his foot to sweep Bjorn’s foot out from under him because he had just been doing exactly what Alaric was saying not to do. Crumbling to the ground, Bjorn just lay there. It was humiliating, having a man a foot and a half shorter than himself constantly putting him on his ass. By the second day of training the humiliation had turned into a sort of respect. With every single mistake Bjorn had made Alaric saw it, and he pointed it out. Sometimes with words, sometimes with actions. One particularly bad throw and fall left Bjorn unconscious for the better part of an hour. And on the third day all feelings were gone, all except for a grim determination. Bjorn would learn how to fight one way or another, he figured it would be better to learn from someone teaching him rather than from someone beating him.

And so a week passed, and then two, then three. All the while Alaric was teaching Bjorn how to fight. He was making slow progress, there were times where he and Alaric would spar and he would almost land a hit, but he never actually landed anything on Alaric. Bjorn’s skill levels in hand to hand combat rose by leaps and bounds, but as Alaric kept saying. “Your skill levels in hand to hand combat may be growing, but you're still as useful as a wet towel in a fight. You might be able to keep people occupied for a second, but if it ever comes to a real fight you're completely useless. Skill levels don’t mean fighting ability, and don’t you forget it.”

Not all of their time was spent sparing, and learning how to fight, Alaric also taught Bjorn how to mine, he taught him how to survey the stone, what he was looking for to find the weak spots in the stone. The amount of effort that had to go into moving the rock wall dramatically decreased. Some days they had to dig for hours before they found even a small portion of ore, other days it took minutes. But either way Bjorn was no longer the dead weight of their sane group.

Meira had made improvements as well, she had gone from sitting and crying every once in a while to now she just had a vacant expression and when you got her to meet your eyes it never seemed like she was looking at you. But even without seeming like she was entirely aware of her surroundings, she followed Bjorn or Alaric whenever she was awake. Which was a burden off of both of their shoulders, now they didn’t need to worry about her being left behind. That little improvement took a large part of his worry away from Bjorn. If she had improved even at all, it showed that she was likely to make a recovery eventually.

Alaric and Bjorn were becoming fast friends, and because of Alaric’s companionship he was starting to regain a little bit of his own fire that had been beat down while being a slave. He stood taller, spoke with more certainty, and even started to make eye contact once again. Bjorn started to actually like gruff, harsh, and ill mannered dwarf. His spunk and fire were contagious. And in turn, the dwarf was growing fond of the dopey and helpless human. Even though the human was as spineless as they came, and didn’t have the sense any good dwarf would ever have. But still their friendship was what kept both of them going. Just because they weren’t under the yoke of Olvog and his goons doesn’t mean their life went without pain. The gnolls would beat both Bjorn and Alaric and even sometimes Meira for no apparent reason. After a the first week Bjorn let Alaric know about his spellcasting abilities, which he got complaints from Alaric once he found out what spells Bjorn knew. “You let me drink that donkey piss that they call water? Come here you spineless welp, I got a thing or two to teach you. Why are you running?”

Olvog and his goons were idle for a good while. Awfully quiet for around two weeks, on that third week though one of the goons finally made an appearance. Based on his appearance and what he was carrying, it was likely they had also caught whatever random mook #5 had caught. At least in his mind that was how Bjorn began to think of the dead man.

The attacks on the mining crews continued to happen, around the same frequency as they had in the past, on average 6 or 7 of the miners would die every week to whatever it was that was killing everyone. And still, the gnolls did nothing. They never tried to protect the miners, they never even seemed to care that the slave camp was slowly being whittled down. Even though there were hundreds of slaves, it was still noticeable how many of the slaves were no longer around.

With all of his time spent either at camp resting or in the mines Bjorn found out where the end of the track led to. One day when he brought his bag of stone to put into the stone minecart one of the gnoll guards stopped Bjorn and nodded down the corridor with fear settling in his stomach Bjorn started to move the cart down the track. The tunnel traveled straight for a bit after the first initial curve. After 10 minutes or so of pushing the full cart the tunnel turned around another corner and the tracks stopped in a medium sized underground cavern. In the middle of the cavern was a pit. Not sure what to do, Bjorn grabbed one of the stones from the minecart and dropped it down the pit. There were no sounds of rock hitting rock, or even dirt. In Fact there was no sound at all. Shrugging Bjorn started to throw the stone down the pit, around halfway through the entire cart there was a stone with glowstone embedded in it. Throwing that stone down into the pit it traveled downwards lighting up the walls as it fell. After 50 feet or so of falling the rock hit the bottom and lit up the ground. Again expecting a sound Bjorn was surprised when no sound was forthcoming. Pretty soon he saw why. In the bottom of the pit there were thousands of the large worms that Bjorn found when he first was locked underground. The difference was that these worms were alive, and they writhed on the ground. Bjorn just stood there in horror as he watched thousands of these large worms wriggle on the ground, soon the rock with the glowstone went down one of the worm's gullets and the light was snuffed out. Working as fast as he could, Bjorn threw the rest of the stone into the pit and quickly started to push the cart back to the main expedition. The return trip took 3 minutes instead of the 10 it did the first time.

The peace, at least as much of a peace as you could get being a slave, in a slave camp, was finally broken on the same day Bjorn landed a hit on Alaric. It wasn’t a strong or a solid hit, but he landed a hit nonetheless. When he did land the hit Alaric broke out into a solid smile. “Now we’re getting somewhere, nice work.” As Bjorn and Alaric were standing there grinning at each other like idiots a single high pitched woman's scream echoed down their hall.

Immediately Bjorn’s mind went to the worst. “Meira!” He exclaimed as he grabbed his pickaxe and bolted down the corridor. The sound of heavy footfalls told Bjorn that Alaric was directly behind him. They didn’t have to travel too far, because halfway up the tunnel they met Meira heading down the tunnel towards them with a panicked look on her face. Letting her past them they looked at each other and turned to block the way forward. Two figures could be seen stumbling down the corridor. Soon they saw what made Meira run, and couldn’t blame her for running.

Out of the low light that the tunnel was perpetually in came two “Creatures'', if they could even be called that. The smaller of the two creatures was the same size as Alaric, it had a crows head, 4 legs, 3 arms. It was mostly humanoid, two of the legs and arms were in the normal places that was expected. The third arm was larger than the other two, and was sprouting out of the side of its neck and because of the arm, its head also hung to the side, directly away from where the arm was sprouting from. One of its extra legs was smaller than the rest of its limbs, and came directly out of its belly button. The last leg came out of the right knee and drug uselessly on the ground. The larger was taller than Bjorn by at least a foot. It had two heads, One head was that of an elf, but its skin was a pale purple color. The other head had a regular dog neck and at the end of the neck was a pure black wolf head. Its limbs were unnaturally long like the gnolls arms only longer, standing fully upright, the hands drug on the ground as it stalked forward. At the end of the arms it had pieces of broken bone protruding out of the knuckles on the back of the hands. The fingers on the hands were more like claws, from where he stood Bjorn could see that its fingers were actually closer to blades than they were fingers. Covering the tall one’s body was more bone spikes, and eyes with all sorts of different retina styles and colors. The smaller one’s body was covered in mouths, some mouths were filled with fangs, others the perfect white of well maintained teeth.

As the two creatures shambled forward Bjorn used his WAILA ability on the creature.

Name: ???

Race: Flesh Abomination

Age: 6 Months

Level: 18

Flesh Abominations are creatures born out of pure unattended death energy. The death energy combines with the residual malice from those killed often from events such as battles. That combination then has to seep into a pile of dead bodies, over time the energies end up forming a core. That core then goes on and absorbs the flesh surrounding it until a flesh abomination is born. Flesh abominations gain 1 in Strength, endurance, constitution, intelligence and wisdom per level. It also gains 1 free point to allocate per level. Flesh abominations have their charisma set to 1, and it can never go above a value of 1.

Bjorn barely had time to fully comprehend what he was looking at before the abominations were upon them. Alaric yelled out, “Get behind me Bjorn, cast your spells, you being up here fighting wont help.”

Without hesitation Bjorn dropped back and began casting cast stone. Both of the creatures fell upon Alaric. Fearing for his friend he let his concentration falter and the spell failed. His fears were unfounded, as Alaric was a force to be reckoned with. Between well placed kicks and shoves with the pickaxe he was able to keep the abominations back. But with both abominations advancing Alaric had to slowly give up ground to be able to maintain a safe distance from both of the creatures. Without pause Bjorn began casting his spell again, upon completion he shot it at the smaller abomination. Scoring a solid hit on the creature’s head, there was an audible crack as the stone came in contact with the bird’s beak, and the lower part of its beak snapped in half and fell to the ground. The creature reeled backwards off balance from the strike to its head. Alaric used the momentary opening to use his pickaxe and sink it into the side of one of the larger abomination’s neck. With a great heave he was able to pull the larger abomination to the ground, which was a mistake. Because when the abomination hit the ground it used one of its long arms to sweep the legs out from underneath Alaric, and he hit the ground hard. The large Abomination immediately was on top of him. During all of that Alaric managed to keep ahold of the handle of the pickaxe and was using it to keep its heads away from biting him. In such close confines the abomination’s long limbs were actually more of a hindrance than a help. But the combined weight and the strength of the abomination was slowly overpowering Alaric as the sharp bone spikes started to dig into Alaric’s flesh. Which caused him to yell out in pain.

The smaller of the two abomination’s had scrambled back to its feet and was moving to fall upon Alaric, in a split second decision Bjorn took his pickaxe and threw it overhead in a two handed throw directly at the approaching abomination. It rotated twice in the air as it flew and hit the abomination square in the chest. Unfortunately for both Bjorn and Alaric it struck handle first, not head first. It did knock the small abomination back, buying Alaric a few seconds. A small piece of luck was in their favor though, as the pickaxe rebounded and struck the larger Abomination before clattering to the floor right next to Alaric. Using the pickaxe in the neck he braced it on the ground, which freed one of his hands which he used to grab the pickaxe that landed next to him. With a yell he swung the pickaxe and struck the abomination in its other neck, causing it to pull back briefly. With that distance he was able to get his feet on the abomination’s stomach and with a mighty shove he threw the creature off of him as it flew towards the other abomination. Which ducked as the large one flew right over its head, and continued its shamble forward. During all of that Bjorn recast cast stone and landed a hit on the flying abomination as it flew over the smaller one.

With both Alaric and Bjorn now weaponless they backed away. Alaric was dripping blood from multiple wounds on his body. The worst of which was a gash right above his belly, where his diaphragm sat.

“I’m having a hard time breathing. But god does it feel good to go down with a fight.” Said Alaric with a big smile, his teeth were covered in blood. “What do you say we try to take this one down and stab it on the larger creature.”

“That’s a terrible idea, but let’s try.” Bjorn replied.

At the same time they fell on the smaller abomination Alaric was on the side with just a single arm. They bore the creature to the ground and proceeded to both get ahold of one of the arms on either side of the torso. With great effort they were able to get back to their feet. With their difference in height Alaric had to hold the abomination up higher than Bjorn, but they were able to get the abomination’s feet off the ground and now all four of the legs dangled uselessly. By the time they had the abomination mostly subdued the larger one had returned to its feet and shambled forward again. Charging forward they picked up speed trying to impale the two together. As they are running the third arm made its presence known as it clamped down on Bjorn’s deltoid and squeezed. More than just the squeeze Bjorn felt a mouth bite down on the muscle of his deltoid, apparently there was a mouth on the palm of its hand. Crying out in pain as blood welled up from where the mouth bit down hard. Almost there. There was a crunch as his collarbone gave out and he lost a lot of the strength in his right arm. Gritting his teeth they ran the last 5 feet to the large abomination.

There was a sharp jerk as the abomination’s body was impaled by the larger one and it’s momentum was arrested by that. The arm got ripped off of his deltoid, and because of that a chunk of his flesh was ripped out as well. Stopping and looking back the larger Abomination was struggling to get up as the smaller one lay limp on top of it. One of the bone spikes pierced all the way through the body of the smaller one and embedded on the tip of the spike was a small red orb. Quickly Bjorn used WAILA on the orb.

Flesh Abomination Core

Rarity: Uncommon

This core is filled with an intense vitality. Ingesting this core will bless you with the some of the Flesh abomination’s regenerative properties, granting you increased health regeneration.

Upon finishing reading the prompt he popped the orb into his mouth and swallowed. Alaric made a short cry and stuck his hand out to stop Bjorn. “What in the 9 hell’s do you think you're doing?”

“It increases health regeneration.”

“And how to the hell do you know that? I’ve never seen these creatures before.”

“I’ll tell you later. Let’s focus on this creature.”

Nodding they turned back to the abomination, during the few seconds it took them to converse the creature had made no progress in its attempts to escape. One of its arms had impaled the smaller one in several places and was useless. Its other arm was flailing about and scoring deep wounds in the other abomination’s body. Alaric walked around to the side of the creature that didn’t have a flailing arm and grabbed ahold of the handle of the pickaxe sticking out of it’s head, and with a yank tore it out of the body. Both head’s screwed up in a silent scream. Bjorn had no doubt that if the necks were fully intact an inhuman sound would have escaped from the mouths. Using the wider side of the pickaxe he was able to fully remove the first head in short order. Soon he moved on to remove the second head. Removing the second head was a slower process due to the arm trying to free itself, but soon he had that hand removed as well. During the head removing process Bjorn kept casting cast stone over and over into the arm trying to disable it. After a minute and almost all of his mana he was able to succeed in his task and the arm went limp. From there they slowly started to dissect the abomination on the hunt for the core. Once they got the core Bjorn offered it to Alaric.

“No. You could tell me that if I ate that core my shits would turn to gold, and I still would eat it. Did you not see what that thing came out of? I’m pretty sure half of that flesh was rotted. Look at that! It is literally falling apart!” Bjorn looked at where Alaric was pointing and as he said a section of the flesh of the creature sloughed off and landed with a rather wet sound as it plopped to the ground.

“You have a fair point, but we’d be fools to not take every advantage we can get.” Bjorn offered it out again.

“No, no, no, NO! A thousand times no!”

“Fine suit yourself.” Said Bjorn as he took it and put the core in his mouth, swallowing. Not wanting to admit it, but the act of swallowing the flesh core did actually make Bjorn want to throw up. Only through a pure force of will he was able to keep it down. From there they turned towards Alaric’s wounds, they looked worse than they were. The spikes didn’t actually hit anything important in Alaric’s body, what it did do though was the spike actually slid into the diaphragm and that was what was causing Alaric to have a hard time breathing. With the wounds addressed they went back up the tunnel to where Meira was cowering.

“It’s okay, we killed them.” Bjorn said to Meira.

In a moment of clarity that they haven’t seen so far from the elf she looked Bjorn in the eyes and smiled. “Thank you.” She said, her voice was smooth and sweet as honey.

“Oh my god, Meira, you spoke.”

With a shaky nod she stood and started to walk back down the tunnel, all under her own free will. Not knowing what to say or do Bjorn and Alaric just shared a glance and then followed after her.

Soon after a contingent of gnoll guards came slowly down the tunnel, their eyes fell upon the rotting pile of corpses then quickly shot up to where the three of them stood. The lead one looked at the pile and then back at the three of them. “You did this?”

Both Meira and Bjorn looked at Alaric. “What are you looking at me for? Oh alright, yeah we took care of them, I imagine that these are whatever it was that has been killing your miners.”

Taking one more look at the flesh piles the gnoll nodded and said. “I imagine you are right, you three should follow me. I think there is someone who would want to see you.” The gnoll turned around, and then beckoned the three to follow after him. Exchanging glances they followed.