An Attack By Dwarves (Mythic Series Volume One)

Canvas the brush when creatures sleep

Quietly survey the open field

Transforming the present image

Into the way it shall look tomorrows’ eve,

Lutes recording time in notes

Taping up wounded brothers,

Closing the lids on many more,

Friends and foes alike,

Flesh is flesh without

Individuality,

All shall pass and pay reckoning,

All shall meet his time, and pay his due,

When I returned to camp,

Lights were dim, as they should,

Yet something just did not feel right,

From sheathing unleashed a flash

Of tempered moonlight,

Stealth never being my strongest suit,

Charging like I’ve been raised,

A boar attacking prey at night,

I find ogre children or so I thought,

Standing aligned, center of a circle,

All my kind were entranced, bewildered

Under some evil notion each of them,

And there then in that moment,

As light reflects their form uncovers, the mangled faces of these wicked fiends,

Tricksters, half men, imps, devils’ rejects

Different parts hold different names, beast or man; I will not ask this of them,

But distrusted in any case, flows from their eyes to the paralyzed,

Emitting stories, drawing pity from the emotionless,

Like succubus draining blood, taking souls from each of them,

Letting slowly until the flesh will collapse around bone

So bold they continued still,

They saw my rage, and I their fear,

Yet they stood cement to mud, their trance would not be censured,

Only way to sever this, detach their skulls midsentence,

As my clan recovered without recollection of these events,

Events I shall not remind out of respect and friendship,

I display dwarf, another of their name, upon dwarf to the pyre,

The blackened smoke will signal another talisman,

Yet another gateway removed,

This a message to their darkened master,

Next time you best try better