Far Over Roaming Mountain Cold - 05/08- Varga (+DTA Cleaver)

Varga brought down her hammer again. It would have felt therapeutic if she knew the word. Doing something so fitting with her clan's creed as crushin' boulders helped her relax. She stood in the tiny backyard of the Hung Rabbit and was using her warhammer to make large boulders smaller and more manageable. Cleaver was popcorning around, springing from the ground, walls, and Varga in some sort of a nonsensical pattern of jumps (a person from a more technologically advanced world would have immediately recognized his movements as Brownian motion). His new chainmail, embellished with metal flower petals and sand-polished to within an inch of its life, reflected the sunlight like a party ball.


'Looking forward to a nice bath, huh?' Varga said between blows, following the sunspots with her eyes. 'Which ones do you want first? These are the rocks from the Plane of Earth that pawnites didn't mind me taking,' she motioned towards a sack with boulders that looked so stereotypically rocky they could serve as a standard of rockiness for other rocks. Upon hearing the words 'Plane of Earth', Cleaver stopped jumping around and dashed towards the sack, hugging and nuzzling it. 'And these ones' Varga pointed towards the other sack. 'Used to be four-handed gargoyles.'


She picked up one of the boulders that looked suspiciously like a hand, and chuckled.


'Yeah, I remember that one! Just when I thought I was nothing but Bahgtru's pawn myself, but I must have had Gruumsh's blessing, cause I cut it down like a tree with my axe! It was fighting Dwirhian at the time… Well, more like trying to fight her, she was way too nimble for it. So it didn't even see me coming! Cut it down in two swings!' She grinned proudly.


Cleaver approached the other stone pile and carefully sniffed a stone that seemed singed.


'Ah, that's Joilene!' Varga explained. Cleaver looked at her questioningly. 'Ah, right, you don't know her. Joilene mercilessly exploded this gargoyle with just a small bolt of lightning, all the while looking like she might explode herself. Of course, that's after myself and Kavel gave the gargoyle a couple of hits. And there was that other genasi, Sabeline. She went ahead everywhere, completely reckless, and at one point she got so scary three undead animals ran away in terror. Great team. And I was afraid having a sorcerer and a cleric in the raiding party would drag us down! It was a nice camping trip, all in all. Not what I'd expect when the Academy people get involved, but scaling that flying mountain was fun, really felt like back home, and then plane-jumping, and talking to stone people…'


Varga finally noticed that Cleaver was barely listening to her, glancing from one stack of stone to the other, looking more and more conflicted by the moment. She sighed.


'Need help?'


Cleaver shook his little head and kept at his glancing match against both stacks of stone until he became dizzy from turning his head all the time and fell on his back. 'Yeah, right, like Dwirhian didn't need my help climbing the floating mountain,' Varga huffed.


Cleaver tried to get up, but the gnome axe on his back was acting as an effective counter-balance, so he was just squeaking and scrambling his little paws in the air.


'You know what happened?' His owner continued. 'Myself and Kavel had to drag her up in the end. An elf. Falling from a rope. Twice,' she said, approaching Cleaver and returning him into an upright position. 'Point is, everyone needs help from time to time. Now, Cleaver, that's why etiquette exists. If you don't know what to do, just think what's appropriate, and do that,' she said very sternly. 'Like here. Did you train today?'


Cleaver ran up to a small pawn that looked like it was blown out of a crystal as if it was glass. The chinchilla took it into his small front paws like it was a barbell, and did several deadlifts.


'Okay. Did we win a battle and crushed our opponents?' Chinchilla jumped up happily, vicious gleam in his eyes as he remembered how he bit the half-orc Varga won against in the pits.


'Did we loot them for their valuables?' Varga asked, glancing at Cleaver's new chainmail. It had a bit of an overlap so that it would stretch when the young chinchilla would grow to his full size and girth. Baine realy knew how to forge stuff. And it wasn't expensive, their winnings in the fighting pit more than covered the price of the materials, and the generous giant didn't feel like overcharging. Cleaver squeaked proudly and stroke a heroic pose.


'So, now, the appropriate thing would be to celebrate by bathing in the blood of our enemies,' Varga finished nodding towards the gargoyles' remains. Cleaver jumped on her shoulder and nuzzled her cheek gratefully. 'Ah, you're welcome. That's not complicated. You'll still have to wait until I crush these into dust, though,' she grumbled.


Cleaver opted to wait on her head. He had a strange knack of not falling off rapidly moving objects as long as they were covered with hairs.