Post by Imp (Dan L) on Sept 29, 2019 20:10:33 GMT
Gegrun waved goodbye to the five others as they stomped (or, in Arkadius’ case, flew) their way over the crest of the divot where the temple was located and disappeared out of sight. He waited until the sounds of trampled underbrush faded into the pastoral hubbub of the Feythorn Wood, and turned to face the temple entrance at the bottom of the divot and the task that lay before him.
If Gegrun had known the word ‘ruinous’, he would have used it here. Instead - because he didn’t - he put his hands on his hips and whistled through his tusks and teeth.
“Oo-ee, this is bad,” he said, casting his eyes over the rubble. His strong mountain accent turned bad into bay-uhd. Deep inside, Gegrun knew he should leave every place better than he found it. He wasn’t sure if that was a divine tenet or just something his mother used to say. Either way, it was important. He dropped to his knees and closed his eyes, alone in his thoughts. The outside world ceased to exist as he pulled air through his lungs. He was still unused to the thick air this far down from the mountains, but his head still calmed and the ache in his muscles faded slightly.
“Hey ma, hey sky voice. Sorry I haven’t talked to y’all much recently. I’m still findin’ my feet, and you always did say I needed a map and a miracle to find anything, ma.” Gegrun got to his feet, pulled off his chainmail, and draped it over an overhanging branch. The branch creaked in protest, joined by the clinkclinkclink of the settling armour. He pinched his undershirt away from his clammy skin and clapped his heavy hands together. The noise ricocheted off the treeline and startled a family of nearby magpies, which took off with annoyed skwarks. Gegrun jumped.
“Still not used to these here forest, honestly,” Gegrun said, getting to his feet, “hope you don’t mind if I work while I talk to y’all. Work always helps me think, and y’all both know I need all the help I can get there.” Gegruns muscles began to heave and bulge as he shifted the biggest boulder from occluded temple entrance up the sloped side of the crater. A few pushes, heaves and grunts later and the big rock was settled.
“That’ll do as a marker,” Gergun said, stretching out his back, “case any people can’t find the place. Don’t want nobody lost in the woods, ‘specially these ones. I’m glad them folks came to help, really. I always knew this’d take more’n me and Mace. Mace is this lovely lil’ demon lookin’ fella, he’s helped me quite a bit. And he got loads of friends. Honestly ma, he can talk the back legs off a donkey. He got the info ‘bout this here temple.” Another hour of toil and Gegrun had managed to arrange the rest of the staircase-blocking boulders in a wall around most of the entrance hole.
“Now none of them woodland critters can fall in. Be kind to animals. That’s one of the rules, ma, I don’t ‘member if I tol’ you. Actually, sky-voice, I was wondering about that. I been eatin’ chicken wings and we had a converm- converna-” Gegrun sighed, defeated, “we was talkin’ about Arkadius and his wings. He’s one of Mace’s friends and tall as a tall glass of water, he’s hugemungous. And he got wings, and didn’t take kindly to us talkin’ about roastin’ or fryin’ ‘em up like you used to do when we had chicken, ma. I was thinkin’ them birds probably wouldn’t take kindly to it either.” He finished the sentence quietly, half expecting a divine rumble to burst across the sky, a divine cacaphony of thunderous assertion that eating chicken wings was a-okay in the divine rulebook, but none was forthcoming. He shrugged.
“No more meat then, I can do that,” he said, and continued to move the rubble around. The spare flat stones that hadn’t made it into the circular safety wall were hoisted up the slope and pushed into the loam, spaced a little ways apart, as makeshift steps.
“Wil took a lil’ tumbled down here, and I don’ want a repeat for nobody else traipsing this way,” Gegrun said, stomping down the last step, “or was it Kinnead? Both guys with more magic in they pinky than I got in my whole being. You need smarts for magic, I ain’t cut out for that. But I can protect them, that’s important. Kinnead had a nice rock that glowed, I think he called it Keith. He helped me kill a big buzzing devil thing, with Mace’s help. I put a big shield of magic on Mace, but he stands far away. I think it might be better if I cast that on myself, so I don’ get hit as much. The big devil thing looked a bit like those huge horseflies you used to hate, ma.” Gegrun smiled, and anyone nearby would have seen him shake a few tears from his eye. But there was nobody nearby, and the unseen droplets fell silently on to the ground in the passing twilight.
“I guess them horseflies ain’t botherin’ you now, eh ma? And if they are,” he wagged a faux-accusatory finger at the sky, “me and you gonna have words, Mister God Sky Voice.” Gegrun had chopped down a few wiry saplings and gathered some dry-looking sticks, and assembled them at the bottom of the temple entrance steps. He struggled for about an hour to get them to take, but eventually the drier twigs and bracken caught sparks and send think, snaking tendril of smoke out toward the sky. Gegrun warmed his hands and set his stuff aside, pushed into a pile so he could rest his head. He’d propped open the secret door with a rock. The mechanism had protested for a while, noise whirring in the background, but eventually the grinding stopped with a twang!-clunk as part of the mechanism seemingly capitulated to the age-old power of a stubbornly placed heavy rock. This place, Gegrun thought as sleep began to envelop him, was hard enough to find without somebody hidin’ the rest of it behind a secret door. Honestly, some people got no sense.
Gegrun awoke the next day stretching weary muscles across ancient stone. The previous day had taken it out of him, but almost all of the stone had been cleared at the entrance of the temple was now accessible. He ate half his last ration for breakfast, amusing himself by hacking off the nasty bits of the designs with a piece of hard flint, and carving smiling faces into any of the snake people on the wall. He wasn’t sure if snake people smiled much, but in this temple they definitely did. After surveying his work with a tusky grin, he got back down on his knees with a few deep breaths to resume his play-by-play prayer.
“Hey, me again. Gegrun. I want this to be a happy temple, so I carved off some of the nasty lookin’ snake people. Hope that’s okay. I’m gonna do another sweep. You should have seen me sweeping through here last time, ma. I carved the horsefly thing in two. Mister or missus sky voice,” Gegrun jammed a thumb upward toward the sky, “helped me do it.” His brow furrowed. “Still ain’t got a name for you, sky-voice. Y’all can tell me at any time. I can keep secrets.” He tapped the side of his nose, but the ancient deity didn’t deign to take this moment address this hint.
“So yeah - I carved into it, and the smart wizard man finished it off. Just as well, cause it was lookin’ hungry-like at Wil. I quite like Wil,” Gegrun said as he grabbed and lit a torch from the campire’s embers and made his way into the temple depths, “he looks out for me. He smells of fish, but that ain’t no mind. Mace looks out for me too, but it’s like when pa used to look out for them ladies who’d come visit when you was away. He’s got a gleam in his eye, and you always said ‘gleaming’s schemin’’. I think the guy with the big wings is the same.”
Gegrun’s voice echoed through the empty underground halls. Occasionally he’d find some rubbish, or collapsed stone, or even a few ancient bones, and he’d ferry them up to the surface. He was checking for potential cave-ins and weaknesses with his rough hands and the base of the torch. Gegrun may not have known much about fancy wizard things, or books, but he growing up in mountain mines had taught him a few things about making the underground safer so you didn’t end up under six feet of stone. Gegrun’s dad used to say ‘negligence is the miner’s grave’, and as soon as Gegrun figured out what ‘negligence’ meant, he’d taken that message to heart.
“Mostly sound,” he said as he made his way into the big chamber at the centre. “This is where we finished that thing off. Don’t know what it was, but it did not like swords or glowing heaven fire, that’s for sure.” Gegrun inspected where the devil had been slain, but there was nothing there save the echo of a memory. He shot a few glances upwards, expecting to see a grinning imp dancing in the torchlight’s shadows, but they were absent.
“That’s more’n enough for now, I think.” A last sweep yielded only a few more bits of easily clearable rubbish, which made their way up with Gegrun. His mostly filed tusks caught the noon light and he sat, fumbling in his pocket for a familiar piece of parchment and his calligrapher’s kit. Heavy fingers unrolled the parchment, which read:
Be nice.
Be just.
Be kind to animals.
Underneath that, he daubed a careful ‘4’ and followed it with ‘Leave every place better than you found it.’ Nice and simple. Yes, something that his mother and the voice above would appreciate. He felt the warm of the sunlight and imagined, for one moment, that the warmth was coming from somewhere else. But that fancy quickly faded.
On his way back to Daring Heights, Gegrun pushed and arranged the stones and hacked the undergrowth away in a way that meant the path back was clear and obvious for any weary travellers lost in the woods, or himself to find again. They’d cleared a lot of it on the way there, so the job was easy enough to complete.
Eventually, with a few loose stones connecting the wood path and the Port Ffirst - Daring Heights road, the link was made and Gegrun was beaming. There was more work to do in the coming weeks, but for now he’d left the temple in a much better state. Gegrun lifted his glaive and made his way back to Daring Heights, wondering if there was a new notice on the board.
If Gegrun had known the word ‘ruinous’, he would have used it here. Instead - because he didn’t - he put his hands on his hips and whistled through his tusks and teeth.
“Oo-ee, this is bad,” he said, casting his eyes over the rubble. His strong mountain accent turned bad into bay-uhd. Deep inside, Gegrun knew he should leave every place better than he found it. He wasn’t sure if that was a divine tenet or just something his mother used to say. Either way, it was important. He dropped to his knees and closed his eyes, alone in his thoughts. The outside world ceased to exist as he pulled air through his lungs. He was still unused to the thick air this far down from the mountains, but his head still calmed and the ache in his muscles faded slightly.
“Hey ma, hey sky voice. Sorry I haven’t talked to y’all much recently. I’m still findin’ my feet, and you always did say I needed a map and a miracle to find anything, ma.” Gegrun got to his feet, pulled off his chainmail, and draped it over an overhanging branch. The branch creaked in protest, joined by the clinkclinkclink of the settling armour. He pinched his undershirt away from his clammy skin and clapped his heavy hands together. The noise ricocheted off the treeline and startled a family of nearby magpies, which took off with annoyed skwarks. Gegrun jumped.
“Still not used to these here forest, honestly,” Gegrun said, getting to his feet, “hope you don’t mind if I work while I talk to y’all. Work always helps me think, and y’all both know I need all the help I can get there.” Gegruns muscles began to heave and bulge as he shifted the biggest boulder from occluded temple entrance up the sloped side of the crater. A few pushes, heaves and grunts later and the big rock was settled.
“That’ll do as a marker,” Gergun said, stretching out his back, “case any people can’t find the place. Don’t want nobody lost in the woods, ‘specially these ones. I’m glad them folks came to help, really. I always knew this’d take more’n me and Mace. Mace is this lovely lil’ demon lookin’ fella, he’s helped me quite a bit. And he got loads of friends. Honestly ma, he can talk the back legs off a donkey. He got the info ‘bout this here temple.” Another hour of toil and Gegrun had managed to arrange the rest of the staircase-blocking boulders in a wall around most of the entrance hole.
“Now none of them woodland critters can fall in. Be kind to animals. That’s one of the rules, ma, I don’t ‘member if I tol’ you. Actually, sky-voice, I was wondering about that. I been eatin’ chicken wings and we had a converm- converna-” Gegrun sighed, defeated, “we was talkin’ about Arkadius and his wings. He’s one of Mace’s friends and tall as a tall glass of water, he’s hugemungous. And he got wings, and didn’t take kindly to us talkin’ about roastin’ or fryin’ ‘em up like you used to do when we had chicken, ma. I was thinkin’ them birds probably wouldn’t take kindly to it either.” He finished the sentence quietly, half expecting a divine rumble to burst across the sky, a divine cacaphony of thunderous assertion that eating chicken wings was a-okay in the divine rulebook, but none was forthcoming. He shrugged.
“No more meat then, I can do that,” he said, and continued to move the rubble around. The spare flat stones that hadn’t made it into the circular safety wall were hoisted up the slope and pushed into the loam, spaced a little ways apart, as makeshift steps.
“Wil took a lil’ tumbled down here, and I don’ want a repeat for nobody else traipsing this way,” Gegrun said, stomping down the last step, “or was it Kinnead? Both guys with more magic in they pinky than I got in my whole being. You need smarts for magic, I ain’t cut out for that. But I can protect them, that’s important. Kinnead had a nice rock that glowed, I think he called it Keith. He helped me kill a big buzzing devil thing, with Mace’s help. I put a big shield of magic on Mace, but he stands far away. I think it might be better if I cast that on myself, so I don’ get hit as much. The big devil thing looked a bit like those huge horseflies you used to hate, ma.” Gegrun smiled, and anyone nearby would have seen him shake a few tears from his eye. But there was nobody nearby, and the unseen droplets fell silently on to the ground in the passing twilight.
“I guess them horseflies ain’t botherin’ you now, eh ma? And if they are,” he wagged a faux-accusatory finger at the sky, “me and you gonna have words, Mister God Sky Voice.” Gegrun had chopped down a few wiry saplings and gathered some dry-looking sticks, and assembled them at the bottom of the temple entrance steps. He struggled for about an hour to get them to take, but eventually the drier twigs and bracken caught sparks and send think, snaking tendril of smoke out toward the sky. Gegrun warmed his hands and set his stuff aside, pushed into a pile so he could rest his head. He’d propped open the secret door with a rock. The mechanism had protested for a while, noise whirring in the background, but eventually the grinding stopped with a twang!-clunk as part of the mechanism seemingly capitulated to the age-old power of a stubbornly placed heavy rock. This place, Gegrun thought as sleep began to envelop him, was hard enough to find without somebody hidin’ the rest of it behind a secret door. Honestly, some people got no sense.
Gegrun awoke the next day stretching weary muscles across ancient stone. The previous day had taken it out of him, but almost all of the stone had been cleared at the entrance of the temple was now accessible. He ate half his last ration for breakfast, amusing himself by hacking off the nasty bits of the designs with a piece of hard flint, and carving smiling faces into any of the snake people on the wall. He wasn’t sure if snake people smiled much, but in this temple they definitely did. After surveying his work with a tusky grin, he got back down on his knees with a few deep breaths to resume his play-by-play prayer.
“Hey, me again. Gegrun. I want this to be a happy temple, so I carved off some of the nasty lookin’ snake people. Hope that’s okay. I’m gonna do another sweep. You should have seen me sweeping through here last time, ma. I carved the horsefly thing in two. Mister or missus sky voice,” Gegrun jammed a thumb upward toward the sky, “helped me do it.” His brow furrowed. “Still ain’t got a name for you, sky-voice. Y’all can tell me at any time. I can keep secrets.” He tapped the side of his nose, but the ancient deity didn’t deign to take this moment address this hint.
“So yeah - I carved into it, and the smart wizard man finished it off. Just as well, cause it was lookin’ hungry-like at Wil. I quite like Wil,” Gegrun said as he grabbed and lit a torch from the campire’s embers and made his way into the temple depths, “he looks out for me. He smells of fish, but that ain’t no mind. Mace looks out for me too, but it’s like when pa used to look out for them ladies who’d come visit when you was away. He’s got a gleam in his eye, and you always said ‘gleaming’s schemin’’. I think the guy with the big wings is the same.”
Gegrun’s voice echoed through the empty underground halls. Occasionally he’d find some rubbish, or collapsed stone, or even a few ancient bones, and he’d ferry them up to the surface. He was checking for potential cave-ins and weaknesses with his rough hands and the base of the torch. Gegrun may not have known much about fancy wizard things, or books, but he growing up in mountain mines had taught him a few things about making the underground safer so you didn’t end up under six feet of stone. Gegrun’s dad used to say ‘negligence is the miner’s grave’, and as soon as Gegrun figured out what ‘negligence’ meant, he’d taken that message to heart.
“Mostly sound,” he said as he made his way into the big chamber at the centre. “This is where we finished that thing off. Don’t know what it was, but it did not like swords or glowing heaven fire, that’s for sure.” Gegrun inspected where the devil had been slain, but there was nothing there save the echo of a memory. He shot a few glances upwards, expecting to see a grinning imp dancing in the torchlight’s shadows, but they were absent.
“That’s more’n enough for now, I think.” A last sweep yielded only a few more bits of easily clearable rubbish, which made their way up with Gegrun. His mostly filed tusks caught the noon light and he sat, fumbling in his pocket for a familiar piece of parchment and his calligrapher’s kit. Heavy fingers unrolled the parchment, which read:
Be nice.
Be just.
Be kind to animals.
Underneath that, he daubed a careful ‘4’ and followed it with ‘Leave every place better than you found it.’ Nice and simple. Yes, something that his mother and the voice above would appreciate. He felt the warm of the sunlight and imagined, for one moment, that the warmth was coming from somewhere else. But that fancy quickly faded.
On his way back to Daring Heights, Gegrun pushed and arranged the stones and hacked the undergrowth away in a way that meant the path back was clear and obvious for any weary travellers lost in the woods, or himself to find again. They’d cleared a lot of it on the way there, so the job was easy enough to complete.
Eventually, with a few loose stones connecting the wood path and the Port Ffirst - Daring Heights road, the link was made and Gegrun was beaming. There was more work to do in the coming weeks, but for now he’d left the temple in a much better state. Gegrun lifted his glaive and made his way back to Daring Heights, wondering if there was a new notice on the board.
