What a catastrophic fuck up. A blunder of calamitous proportions. We'd half a regiment of Drow hot on our heels and Gristle couldn't keep from cackling. "Oh, shut up!" My voice was a shriek, shrill from hours of fighting our way through the Underdark. Yet again, I'd allowed my charcoal-skinned companion to woo me with tales of ebon tits and mounds of platinum. Now here we were, two inches from death and no proverbial booty in tow.
Celine, moving with all the grace of wisp despite the bulk of her plate armor, had easily taken the front, gesturing to a sliver of sunlight just ahead; sweet freedom. Our escape couldn't have come quick enough as a hail of curses and poison-laced arrows pinged off of the granite slabs surrounding us. I'd need to think fast if I was to secure our escape.
"Run, run, run! Fuckin' basterds, very fast fast!" The veritable retard barked before finding his second wind and surging past me to cave mouth. Gristle's advance had worked out well enough for my plan, lest he wish to be buried with our assailants. Just as a Drow maiden could nick me with the sting of her cutter, I rallied the last of my mana in a thunderous bolt of blue energy; it struck the cavernous ceiling with a deafening crack. Its collapse provided the perfect blockage, even if the tumbling boulders had nearly taken my legs with them. As my vision burned white hot with the sting of sunlight, I found myself wheezing in a wet patch of grass.
"Blow!" Gristle snickered like a rot-lunged Gnoll, mimicking the recent explosion, bloodied to the pits but with a snaggle-toothed smirk upon his face. "Fuckin' crooshed em real good, ya did! Nice nice!" I looked to Celine, who beyond the expressionless mask of her silver full-helm appeared all too eager as to wring Gristle's throat. Celine's plated panoply was spattered with fresh bits of Drow flesh. She released an aggravated huff through the grill of her silver salet. I'd half the mind to join her, but then again, what did I expect of Gristle?
The little shit was, by all accounts, the dumbest goblin I'd ever the displeasure of encountering. Anomalously, Gristle had been born with coal-colored flesh, so unsightly that his own wart-skinned parents had mockingly named him—well, Gristle. A splendid nitwit, with all the couth of a stillborn cockatrice, Gristle was my best friend; though 'friend' was used liberally. I'd half the mind to singe his blackened hide an even deeper shade of pitch when I wasn't ready to sing the lucky bastard's praises. "You dolt. You blundering, cock-headed oaf." I began my string of usual insults, still shaking the dust from my robes. In this, Celine did not join me. Her proverbial coals had already cooled, and she'd already begun searching for the nearest trail.
Celine, in all her quiet solemnity, had been something of an enigma. Why exactly she'd decided to travel with a duo of pariahs like us, we'd never know; not that there was much that we knew about her in general. For all our prying—and Gristle's lechery—we'd never managed to steal a sight of Celine outside of her platemail. Not once. No one knew who or what Celine actually was, yet for all her mystery, there was was one thing we knew for sure; Celine loved violence. Beneath that quiet, ever feminine suit, was a terrible lust for violence.
"Oi, come on, humie! That was lotsa fun!" Gristle laughed, limping towards me to offer a hand. I'd half the mind to zap the bastard but accepted his comradery instead; not that he could lift me very far up. With our foray into the Underdark a major bust, our awkward trio pressed back into the forest of Milos, all the more bloodied and just as poor as before.
***
"Well, we can always head to Kirkgard to resupply." I posited,