Dave Qymlore [Qymlore - Lothar’s Descension

L othar deflected another arrow with his shield, which was beginning to splinter and break apart before his eyes.

"You are not going to take me down today!" he shouted with force, but knew that was a lie. He was almost certainly going to die right where he was standing.

The goblin horde was gathering on the ridge a good thirty feet higher than the sweat and dirt covered warrior. Only some of them had bows, while even fewer had arrows remaining to fire. The rest of the greenskin devils made do hurling rocks at him, along with insults spat in a language that was both harsh and foreign to Lothar's human ears.

They were beginning to waver despite their obvious advantage. He had been expecting the horde to close in on him soon after he decided to run into the canyon that was flanked in either side by the high up cliffs. He'd been counting on it, expecting it to be easier to take them on if they were forced to come at him just a few at a time.

"I guess even wild goblin scumbags aren't that stupid," he muttered as he reflected on the predicament his tactical choice had places him in. It was better than being chased down in the open, but not by much. Worse still, he had nowhere to go now. The canyon came to a narrow point just ahead; a space that was too tight a squeeze for him to be able to fit through.

An arrow whizzed by and nearly hit him in the neck. Then another one following just seconds after, but this time he was not lucky enough to avoid injury. The crude arrow tore a nasty gash in his side, causing white hot pain to flare up. Adrenaline started to course through his body immediately.

Lothar was a strong guy. Sure he'd been out of combat for many months now, but it still had not come to the one year anniversary of the end of the war. Since then, he had been more than busy building up a farm. He had not let himself become weak and flabby.

Despite his strength, it was unlikely that he was going to get out of this canyon without taking more injuries or worse. Holding his side with his hand to lessen the flow of his blood onto the dirt below, the warrior-turned-farmer hastily backed away farther to the back of the canyon. The high sides of it become more and more narrow as he went, but it also made it difficult for the goblins above to hit him again.

He almost tripped and broke his ankle when the ground suddenly gave way below him, while he was not looking where he was going. There was a hole in the ground, previously hidden by a boulder that he had sidestepped around. Looking where he was going was probably a good idea. An arrow shot down and narrowly missed his head this time. That one probably would have been the end of him if it were just a few inches to the left. The boulder might be useful for a bit of cover at least.

Lothar recovered his footing and turned to look at the hole he'd made and almost fallen into. He ducked down behind the boulder. Kicking some pebbles down, he tried to look and listen for how long they took to hit the bottom. They dropped from view into the darkness below and collided with something that sounded hard, which told him that this wasn't just a big divot in the desert soil. No, it went down into a more substantial area. Maybe there was some kind of cave system he could use as a last-ditch escape route if it came to that.

A rock came flying down and ricocheted off the boulder. He dared to take a peek over the top. A sea of angry green faces looked down at him with murderous intent in their eyes: there was no way he was getting out of that canyon until every single one of those goblins was slainor he was a corpse. That wasn't going to happen without him at least trying to do something about it.

"Oh well," he muttered. "Fuck it." Without another thought, he dropped and tried to lower himself down carefully. Another rock was thrown down, but this one bounced off one side of the canyon and smacked him right in the face. It had luckily lost some momentum from hitting the side of the rock, so it was no longer at full force when it hit him. Otherwise he might have been seriously injured. As it was, this still caused him to lose his grip on the edge of the hole.

I t would have been better to lower himself down slowly. Instead, after being hit with the rock, he dropped what must have been a good dozen feet. He still had the adrenalin pumping through him from being hit by the arrow, and his warrior instincts from the military were tingling. He'd survived some grave dangers back then, going up against some truly fierce opponents. He wasn't about to let some goblins and a nasty fall take his life now.

Lothar jumped up andwell, at least he tried to jump to his feet. The reality was, his leg was probably broken. It sent an angry jolt of pain all the way through his body to his throbbing head. He started to feel his way around the dark floor where he'd landed. There was a thin beam of light coming from the hole high above him, but it didn't reveal much of the strange chamber he was in. At least, he assumed it was a chamber. He'd left his travel bag back with his wagon full of caged chickens, which he'd been bringing to the market to sell. Those were probably goblin food for sure now.

The idea of being killed like this while on a trip to market, after going through the war, made him let out a sardonic chuckle. "So this is my fate then?" he asked the gods who were probably too busy to pay attention to his predicament. He was looking up to the small dot of sky he could see through the hole. For some reason the goblins still had not come down to finish him off. They were probably just making sure he wasn't hiding in wait to attack them. Coming down to fight him up close would lead to at least one of them dying; likely more. And goblins were known cowards.

As he looked up and questioned no one in particular, something stung his eye. He rubbed at it and felt dirt starting to sprinkle over his face and head. It began to flow more heavily, and he realized what was happening with just enough time to throw himself sideways. Straight into a wall. Chunks of dirt and rock rained down where he'd been standing a split second ago. The hole above was starting to widen.

He couldn't move farther away with the wall there. So he covered his face and held his eyes shut to shield them from the dust and flecks rock that bounced off as they landed on the growing pile of dirt. It eventually stopped, and with the sound of the falling dirt and rock gone, Lothar could hear the goblins jeering and whooping now that the hole was wider. It also let more light in and made it so that he could actually look around. He let out a guttural roar to scare them. Scurrying and tittering sounds from above told him it worked.

He was in a room full of fixtures, with all kinds of other precious metal. And precious stones adorned those. The walls were covered in intricately crafted adornments, like woven patterns running up and down in columns, scenes in miniature depicting battle scenes, gladiatorial fights, duels, and so much more. The sheer violence of it took Lothar aback at first, despite the number of people he'd personally killed. And he had enjoyed it mostly; reveled in it. Something about this room brought those raw emotions flooding back to him. Red rubies and other blood-colored gems were used to depict the blood, while blues and greens made the sky and earth in the pictures. Had he been an artist or historian, this would have probably meant a great deal more. Even being a simple warrior-turned-farmer, it sent his heart racing. This was something no one had seen for a long time, maybe something important.