The Worst Cook in Grobb - Part II

The Worst Cook in Grobb - Part II

Once again, Kruzz was awoken roughly from his dreams. This time, however, there was more than just a single crash. He opened his eyes and rose, sliding up the side of the pen to a sitting position. In front of the pen, his guards lay prone in front of the pen, and in the distance, he could hear the sounds of fighting. Most curious of all he noted that the sky was full of curious storms. In the dawn, they filled the sky with inky blackness and charges of blue and purple energy that swirled powerfully. Kruzz didn't know what was happening, but he knew he had to get out of the pen. He crept along the ground and inspected the bodies of the guards. They were both dead.

“Good riddance,” he muttered to himself, a giggle rising in his throat. He stuck his arms through the bars of the pen and pulled one of the bodies close. Groping across blood stained clothing, his hands finally clamped around a key. It was only once he was out of the pen that it truly struck him that in the distance, he could hear sounds of fighting. Kruzz felt every muscle in his body freeze up. He quickly scurried across the ground, tripping and falling in his panic, and made his way as quickly as he could to the shelter of a cluster of boulders. He shimmied into a gap between two of them and watched, the muscles of his hands tensing and releasing, as he watched the scene before him. Not long after he had hidden, he watched as two trolls locked in combat knocked each other onto the ground in front of him. He shrank back further into the rocks, but also narrowed his eyes to see what was going on.

Rekec was tearing into another of their clan members, a male named Brazzt, fiercely. Though he fought back, Kruzz watched and marveled as it seemed that a second individual was fighting with her – that shadowy figure he'd seen before. Despite that, Brazzt nearly overpowered her, but then there was a hideous cry and a creature rushed toward them. Rekec stepped neatly aside as a massive black beast with pincers for arms rushed at them and snapped Brazzt in half. His torso landed against Kruzz's rock, and he had to bite his hand to keep from letting out a noise.

The female troll walked up to the beast, and for a moment, Kruzz was certain she would be taken out similarly, but then the two conversed in a language unlike anything he had ever heard before. Rekec's voice sounded nothing like her own. Finally, the two of them wandered off.

Kruzz was paralyzed. He didn't know whether to move, or stay. There would only be so long that he could stay there without anyone finding him, but running meant very certainly passing one at some point. Fortunately, the prisoner's pens were on the outskirts of the village, and he would have a clear path away.

Finally, the decision was made as he had so many muscles spasms, he was forced to move to settle them down.

Kruzz slipped from the relative safety of the rocks and broke into a full out run away from Grobb.

He was not sure at first where he was going, but instinct drove him to Guk. He skipped through the soggy earth of Innothule Swamp in its direction. It was a well fortified location, and if there was anywhere to go to be safe, it would be there. Other voices in his mind screamed other directions for him, but the loudest said Guk, and so he ran to Guk.

Suddenly, Kruzz went sprawling over a fallen log and landed face first into the mucky water of the swamp floor. Though he might have at first cursed ill fortune, it quickly proved to save his life, as shortly after he had fallen down, he heard voices behind him. Panicking, he dove deeper down and under a patch of bogweed. He held his breath as long as he was able and then drifted up slowly so that his head only emerged very slightly in the bogweed. He watched as a group passed a distance in front of him. If he had any question as to whether he should come out – which was questionable either way, as he was a criminal among his own people – it was cleared up when he noticed two of those large beasts stalking beside the group of trolls.

Fortunately, they did not head in the direction of Guk, so when they had long since vanished from sight, he clambered out of the water and continued on toward Guk, certain to thank what was no doubt the residual good luck of the monkey tail for saving his life.

But just as he paused to think how lucky he was, he heard a vicious noise behind him. One of those storms had descended down into the swamp, and it uprooted trees and grass and anything else in its path within a terrifying vortex. Even the foliage just outside of it did not go untouched. The currents of oddly colored power slashed burn lines into the trunks of trees and charred leaves with a touch. Kruzz looked on longer. Screaming, he tore on through the swamp as quickly as he could away from the storm.

As he broke a tree line and entered the final stretch to Guk, he stopped and stared in front of him. Before the city, piles of bodies were scattered, and the ground was gored and scarred with the marks of battle. Still, it was quiet, and he had come this far. He ran to the city's entrance and ducked inside.

The halls were silent. He called out, “Hello?” There was no response. Fire in his nerves spurred him to run down the moss-covered stone hallways.

When he reached one of the large open halls, he finally stopped. Where exactly did he think he was going? What did he expect to find? Since he began running, he had held Guk before him as a goal, and the goal kept him going. Now he was here, and it was clearly not offering the miracle he had been hoping for. He scowled at himself and settled in a broken chair to consider his options.

He had only a moment to rest and begin the process of puzzling out his situation when an ear-shattering wail erupted in the room, and one of the beasts tore its way through a side entrance, scattering stone throughout the room. Kruzz jumped to his feet and immediately began screaming and scrambling away. It was only when he reached the wall and realized there was nowhere left to go that the stupid desperation of his actions hit him. Where had he thought he was going? What was there left to do but die?

The beast approached him, wailing its massive pincer arms around, and he shrank further back against the wall and then ducked below a nearby stone table just as it approached. As the creature veered to follow him, it crashed into the table, smashing it to pieces. Kruzz's screams were muffled as rubble fell all around him, and the sound of the wailing beast grew muffled and distant as the world faded to black.

Kruzz awoke as a sensation of warm energy passed through him. He gasped, inhaling air deeply as the world spun around him. Through the haze of his confusion, he heard voices, dimly.

“And now tell me why I bothered to heal this garbage?” asked a gruff voice.

“He no doubt has the best idea of what happened here,” explained a calm, even voice. “You and Nurgg may have seen some of it, but he looks as though he was straight in the thick of it.”

“I wouldn't trust a single word that came out of a troll's mouth,” said the first voice, thick with disgust, “but if that's the only way you'll have it.”

“It is.”

Kruzz felt himself picked up, carried, and then laid out gently. As his vision cleared, he saw a host of individuals around him, all gazing with an almost alien emotion he recognized only from the looks mother's gave their little trolls – concern. His own mother was never particularly concerned about him, but others had been.

He scowled and looked past what appeared to be a dwarf frowning deeply at him to the face of a – barbarian of Hallas? He'd seen these Hallas men with their curiously pale and soft appearances only once before, and they had all been dead. Barbarians, thus, had always existed in his mind as being dead in their ideal state. This one stood above him, quite alive, and carrying a very big sword. Kruzz disliked him immediately. In fact, he disliked all of them, and it occurred to him he should be thrashing. He cried out and whipped his arms and legs around.

“See!” said the dwarf. “I told you it was a bad idea. He's going to get us discovered!”

The barbarian quieted the dwarf and narrowed his eyes at Kruzz, staring directly into the troll's gaze. “Quiet,” he said, “unless you want us all to die.”

“You could go ahead and die,” muttered Kruzz. “That would make me very happy, but I would not be so happy to die myself, so I'll be quiet.” Grudgingly, he calmed himself, and once again scanned the crowd. He saw among them a barbarian woman, an ogre man – who looked very familiar, somehow – a girl of some variety of elf, the dwarf, and finally his gaze was back to the leader. He disliked them all immediately too, though particularly the dwarf, because it was obvious he hated him as well.

“What happened here?” asked the barbarian woman, brusque and to the point.

“I think you should tell me who you are first,” said Kruzz, glaring at her, “and why you are here.”

They exchanged glances and then the barbarian man once again spoke, “My name is Bayle, and these are my companions. We've come here following the storms, and the beasts. I believe you know what I am talking about.”

What sarcastic confidence Kruzz had mustered drained away, and he began shaking. At the end of the table, the elven girl put a hand on his ankle. He blinked at her and hissed, but then lay back, continuing to shake fiercely.

“I take that as a yes?” asked the barbarian. Kruzz stared at each of them in turn again. The man sighed and said, “I suppose if you have nothing for us... then we will just move on.” He began to turn away.

Kruzz, without thinking, spat out, “No!” He almost clamped a hand over his mouth, not believing he'd just said it.

The man raised an eyebrow and said, “You will cooperate then?”

“Yes,” said Kruzz, and all of the sudden, he was overcome with emotion, “I'll tell you whatever you want. Just get me out of here. Please.” The barbarian glanced at each of his companions, who one by one shrugged or nodded. The dwarf looked at him with an expression of extreme exasperation, but finally muttered and nodded.

“Very well,” said the man, “start in the beginning.”

And so Kruzz, reluctantly, started in the beginning.

''And so began the time of Kruzz Skullcleaver with the Ethernauts. Can I honestly say we made the best decision that day? I believe it. Though Kruzz was neither the most heroic, nor the best intentioned of us, he did his part, and I, for one, thought of him as a redeemable character.

How would our course have been different if we had never brought him into our fold? Who can say... but I'm not one to question fate. Even the fate of saving Norrath at the side of a troll.''