"Damn, stinkin' weeds," Redface Hawkitt hissed.  Knotting his brow, snorting sharply, he continued, "Contaminatin' all that was past like some sickenin', evil parasite."
"Or better fulfilling magical reconstructions after such a great loss," Mollo Dimpp responded, his short, rotund frame slouching with a rare sadness.  Huffing longly, scratching stubby fingers through his curly hair he frowned and finished, "Redface is correct  we are too late."
"But we cannot be!" Pyia Swaif suddenly hollered.  Striding between the two the tall, slender Wood elf female growled lowly, clenched a fist, and said, "By the recuperative growth of essential plant-life, cleansing all assimilated forces with a profound innocence, the truth must exist  Princess Alorri must still be alive-"
"Naïve, young elf," Redface interjected, his long, orange  oustache-and-beard flaring with the effort.  Stomping forward, his mithril-plated armour and back-strapped war-axe clattering an eerie assent, he sighed, spread his callused hands wide and stated, "The dang-blasted princess is either
dead or kidnapped by tort'rous demons anyways  So now all we have to do is explain it to her vengeful, foreign peoples  or die trying."
"Ignorant, dwarven pawn!" Pyia countered.  Bending low, flaring her nostrils, the elegantly beautiful elf ­ attired in tight brown-green-and-purple satins and silks; with leather pouches around her belt and a black cape draped over her backside ­ concluded.  "The very weeds speak of life, of continual commitment!  Not of ale-drinking, womanising fantasises that  your thick ears fail to hear."
"  But the dead, the fallen, lady Swaif," Mollo commented as his smartly-dressed, impish frame ­ in coloured velvets with a similar, small blue cape attached ­ wiggled an obvious discomfort.  Scrunching his nose as his magic-welding fingers fluttered at his sides, he said, "Life
 aside from the weeds, the broken ground, the numerous fires  is no more."  Slouching his sorrow-laden body even more he finished, " Indisputably, by what surrounds, Redface is right."
Countless, bloodied corpses offered an unheard voice.  Fiercely raging fires cackled a lunatic-like domination.  Sky-stabbing, mutilated depictions of life once grand, now horribly expired, foretold.
 Crumbled granite, splintered wood, and severely dilapidated homes  emphasised the ugly tale.  For not a single child's voice cried and not an usurping monster roared.  It was a grave scene.
"But the princess's crown remains intact," Pyia indicated, her sure fingers reintroducing a glittery mud-encrusted, but colourfully jewel-adorned, sterling-platinum headpiece.  Consecutive gasps sounded amongst the three.  "Surely in its odd survival there exists the chance ­"
A petrified wail suddenly sounded.  From unbeknownst depths, past the accumulated, mortal remnants of a vicious, blood-wrenching battle long past it sounded dreadfully harrowing and rightfully unbelievable.  It was in all disassociated terrors a worsening reminder.  It was life renewed.
"Oh, the Queen...  The glorious Queen is lost!" a sharp, whining voice announced.  Charging forward from a secretive thicket of scorched wood, bunched wild grasses, and a warped carriage wheel - with wide eyes alight with an obvious friight ­ a slim man suddenly appeared.  As a haunted
apparition long dismissed he continued, "Oh, the Princess...  God save the beautiful princess!" the emaciated, hollow-eyed, ashen-faced man said.  Dressed shabbily in torn and burnt woollen cloths with dried blood flakes atop his shoulders, hands, neck, and face he represented a grim reminder
of events to follow.  "The promise...   The fabled promise is lost...  The second coming arises!  We are doomed...  Doomed!"
"As usual, looks like another slippery lil' coward avoidin' the cold-blooded, calculated slaughter," Redface hissed, his voice quivering with a necessary anger.  Focussing on the taller, much thinner, messy-haired man as he frantically hurried to their destination he furrowed his bushy, orange brow
and spat.  "Better ta throw 'em all ta the monstrous hordes when we get the chance is all I haveta say."
"Impulsive elements are sure to speed one's premature ending, especially without dutiful, magical relevance to aid a warrior's flirtatious spending," Mollo's riddle-filled voice explained in a strangely calm demeanour.  Fiddling his fingers before his ample girth, he chuckled freely, and said, "For in
this one fateful knowledge of the missing princess might be garnered in steadfast return."
"He is the sole survivor...  A life amongst horribly desecrated disorder," Pyia offered, an impassioned sympathy resonating in her clear, feminine voice.  "Surely, he above all other can answer our queries."
"Speakin' from his grave is the way I'd prefer it.  The lame-blasted, sickenin' dastard incarnate," Redface cursed as his clenched fingers loosened and his thick, muscular arms and flying hands
grabbed hold of the grossly warbling man.
"The princess is lost!..  The second coming arises!..  We  are doomed...  Doomed!"
"Shut up ya ugly, lil' troll dung!" Redface demanded, his crushing fingers shaking the red-face, profusely sweating man harshly.  Sneering discontentedly as free-flying spittle splashed atop his flushed features and wide, glossy eyes cast an empty soulnessness on his being, he cussed, "By all
counts, yer probably the reason for the princess' dis'ppearance."
"N-No...  No!" the light-voiced, sour-smelling man replied with a trembling voice.  With his glistening, brown fingers reaching a dire desperation and a raw pungency overtaking further nauseating odours he pouted, contorted, and screamed, "The second coming arises!"
"It would appear that the poor fella has lost more than the princess," Mollo hinted as he twiddled his fingers and perked a bushy brow.
"Indeed, one could only presume that whatever...  whoever...  stole the princess left a damning impression on this poor man," Pyia concluded, moaning an obvious despair as she turned away.
 "Life avenged to forever depart...  He will be of no help.  We must find the princess on our own."
"Yah, better we ta figure out this god-awful puzzle than relyin' on a craven, lil' gnat-"
"P-Puzzle?" the babbling, wild-haired man suddenly stopped and inquired.  Dancing clumsily backward, his mouth agape and his eyes wide - and expressing a revitalised intelligence - he asked again, "Did you say puzzle?"
"'Nough with yer games-"
"Puzzle...  Yes...  Puzzle...  That's the key," the thin, nameless man interrupted.  An mud-encrusted, index finger raised as he presented a lopsided smirk, he repeated, "The puzzle is the...  the key!"
"No magic can repair this tragically-mislaid lad's mind, I'm afraid," Mollo indicated.  "He is lost, just as the princess is lost."
"Indeed, he is of little help, Mollo," Pyia agreed, strolling away.  "We must find the princess by our own means."
"That's if she's still alive," Redface reiterated grimly, his own irritation at having the sniffing, smelly man near lessening as he realised the full scope of his words.
A hundred score of unseen voices chimed a vengeful response.  A slowly lapping, green mist escaped venting fissures.  A biding chill breezed nearer.
"Espec'lly based on if we survived against the princess's partic¹larly spiteful people," Redface added as quick fingers grabbed around his mystical war-axe's handle before he growled. "Nothin' thicker than boilin' family blood and a heated misunderstandin'."
"Her magical people will not abide by normal communications or moral persuasion, I fear," Pyia added.
"There will be no escaping their wrath, magical or otherwise," Mollo furthered.  "By all unorthodox, magical transgressions they will most certainly come."
"Demons and all lamb-blasted credence!  We might as well¹ve invited the whole, damn bunch of kidnappin' monsters to this little, damnable fanfare!"
"Monsters...  Demons...  The princess was not...  not kidnapped," the unnamed man murmured with a quivering voice.
"Dumbass, snivellin' lil'-"
"Not kidnapped?" Pyia interjected a red-faced Redface.  "But the bodies, the massive blood loss, the... utter lifelessness...  How?"
"The puzzle can tell you...  The puzzle is the reason," the man responded quizzically.  Straightening his limber frame and producing another odd smirk, he pointed, "The puzzle is...  there."
"Dammit to Elridga!" Redface hollered, pounding the war-axe's keen blade into soft earth as the man's right-handed index-finger pointed toward a heaped mass of lifeless remnants.  "You say one more thing 'bout a damn puzzle...  especially while disrespectin' the valorous warrior's sacrifices...
 and I swear I'll lop that sickenin', smiley head of in one clean swipe -"
"Under the bodies I see," Pyia mentioned, again interrupting Redface. "Something particular, something strange."
"Something mythically claimed and precisely forbidden," Mollo added as with a deft swept of his tiny, right hand an invisible, telekinetic field pushed the fallen warriors off a darkly condemning magic unknown.
"The black magic exposed!  We are doomed!" the man squealed suddenly as he back-pedalled fiercely into Redface's brawny grasp.  "The second coming arise -"
"A portal," Pyia said as she strode carefully to where a bodily-concealed, black-onyx, ground-laid circle sat.  "Is this what prevents the princess from rejoining with her people?  Is this the puzzle?"
she inquired.  With a pallor-faced nod the now silent man confirmed her questioned.  "Is this what caused the slaughter?"  Again the man nodded.
"Well, if anything, I'd reckon ta wager that whatever laid this piece is a whole lot bigger than a despic'ble goblin or orc tribe or even a disorganised bunch of ugly ogres."
"A mighty entity or an even a mightier presence capable of creating an unthreatening, but indecipherable, riddle...  possibly from a significantly supernatural genius unbeknownst and horribly ill-suited."
"The puzzle..  The second coming...  We are doomed!  Doomed!" the man yelled.  His face gleaming a deathly disposition as he wobbled on sapling-thickness legs he continued, "I saw in my village's abrupt attacks
 The dark magic, felt its dark power...  Heard the screams...  The
deaths -"
"Doesn't explain yer livin' nor yer underhanded betrayal of yer whole village," Redface interrupted, hissing angrily and curling his fingers around the meticulously etched axe handle.  "How are we ta know ya ain't the damn, loathsome demon yerself?"
"I-I...  No...  No," the man fumbled, an obvious humiliation filling his cheeks with a healthy redness.
 Inhaling a great breath and gasping consecutively, he said, " I was knocked out, like many of my fellow villagers, but not before...
before witnessing the -"
"The riddle?" Pyia inquired sharply as she crouched and stared alongside Mollo.  Shrugging a memorable irritation  Redface's keen gaze quickly caught sight of the deeply-etched, but illegible wordage, on the circle's front.
"Temptations knot the piteous victims of those who fought...  The bloody war undone, only to be won by forgotten episodes of grant strategies reversed and needlessly cursed," Mollo's light voice emphasised the perplexing riddle.  Shrugging an obvious confusion he looked to Pyia and Redface.
"I hate riddles!" Redface uttered, his head pounding from the concentrative effort.  Growling lowly, knitting his fingers tighter around the axe's handle, he spat, "What in devilish tarnation does that damn, teasin' thing mean anyway?"
"Grand strategies reversed and needlessly cursed," Pyia reiterated, a finger to her lips as she closed her eyes briefly and shook her head.  "I cannot decipher its meaning."
"Nor I, I'm afraid," Mollo offered, an overwhelming sadness in his usually bright and compassionate eyes.  "Truly a riddle beyond magical insights."
"And natural paths," Pyia added, her impressionable beauty seemingly laden with an unknown emotion.  "It is, in all sinister suspicions, utterly evil and without natural influence," she concluded grimly, a rare distaste flashing in her reflective orbs as she sneered and turned away.
"The explanation for the princess's disappearance possibly," Mollo indicated.
"Or a trickster taunt meant to damn us all to an unforgivin' peril in the princess' vengeful people's hands," Redface huffed, feeling as his moustache whiskers curled an eager outrage alongside the rest of his body.  Swivelling furiously, his stony features set as he grabbed harshly at the nameless
man - near breaking his slim frame in two with his  two-hundred-and-thirty-five-pound, short frame
- Redface hollered, "Where's the princess, coward?!  What does it mean?!  Tell me ya damn, putrid rat or so help me you'll be hangin' fick 'n fiddle from those damnable, evil, sky-pointin' crosses with yer braver, but dead, brothers and sisters in fallen arms!"
"It would be wise to speak, little human," Pyia included, a lingering smile playing on her lips.
 "Redface is a dwarf of incomparable merit and outstanding courage...  but to get there he is also one known to-"
"Break the balls and leave them asunder," Mollo interrupted, a similar, thankful smirk lighting his features.
"Yep, these 'ere blades have done many a dissectin', decapitatin', and torturin' in their hayday...
 And I haveta ask, why stop now?" a calmer Redface questioned the blubbering, ashen-faced man
as he chortled loosely and gazed steadily.  "Yer choice coward-"
"The...  The princess is... is...  alive!" the man burst suddenly, loudly.  Wriggling a deadman's frenzy in Redface's unbreakable grip and expiring a collapsing breath, he continued, "Away...  Away...
 She went away -"
"Did the monsters kidnap her?" Pyia inquired.
"Or did the portal take her?" Mollo furthered.  But pressing hands to his temples, scrunching his face up and shivering entirely, he man screamed:
"I don't know!  I... I fainted, I think," and he slumped forward into Redface's grasp.  Again, releasing a series of inconsistent breaths he finished, "She was gone when I awoke, before  your arrival."
"When ya crept into yer infested rat-hole without liftin' a single finger ta help, ya damn, sickenin' bastar-"
"Then she's neither dead nor kidnapped...  Just missing," Pyia explained.
"Explain that to Œer people," Redface cussed as a nearly overwhelming urge to pummel the man senseless assailed his being.
"Maybe they would understand," Mollo mentioned.
"Yah, and maybe they'll understand once their cleanin' their swords of our precious lifeblood."
"The princess is still alive...  She has to be," Pyia encouraged.
"But where, one might ponder, is sh -"
Suddenly, from behind a mist-and-foliage-shrouded knoll the answer came.  For charging headlong, in a sweltering throng of monstrous roars and feminine catcalls, it quickly presented an unreal revelation.
"Retreat you ill-willed, malevolent fiends! Retreat into your demise, irredeemably ludicrous demons!" the high-pitched, feminine vocalisation challenged.  In a swashbuckling, silvery-haired form of a small, lithe, and acrobatically-strung woman - known to all as Princess Alorri - it left all
within the party - including Redface - stammering an indescribable shock.  For in a vivid blur of superior swordsmanship as a slender long sword and a red-pulsing short-sword whirled astonishingly proficient arcs in quickly falling, howling monster ranks it was a stunningly grand scenario.  Mollo gushed an atrocious breath.  The nameless, skinny man nearly collapsed.  Pyia
hummed a feminine admiration.  Redface smiled and chuckled.  "Your unintelligible wrath is, and will always be, the death of your kind, ignorantly stupid fiends," she roared, her beautifully sculpted features radiating a wondrous majesty.  "Into hellfire disorder you shall stray, and stay forever
damned!  For, I, Princess Alorri, denounce you!" and through flagrantly dark blood splatters and fiercely back-pedalling creatures Princess Alorri victored. The maliciously disorganised monsters stood no chance.
And absolutely stunned, Redface witnessed the unbelievable spectacle and smiled wider with a fatherly pride.  But the offensively competent warrior known only as the destined Princess Alorri did not react.  Rather, driving the horrendous throng of goblin, orc, skeleton, and ghoul-kind back she smiled brilliantly and yelled finally:
"Return to your hell-spawned remains...  Forever!" and with a flurry of vicious, decapitating sword-swings she drove all howling, oppressively divided monsters into the riddle-filled portal entrance.  "Begone!"
Instantly, a tremendous, sapphire-fire ignited.  Surging upward and around the feebly defensive monster parties and quickly quelling numerous agonised screams it mastered and destroyed all without mercy.  It was the ultimate answer.  For even as annihilated monsters aplenty dissipated into the now disappearing currents, and a sour odour filled the crisp air, Redface sensed it was the ending of the end.
"Grand strategies reversed and needlessly cursed," Mollo said, his voice quivering.
"Forfeited corruption...  an abrupt changeover of evil guards," Pyia added, her jade-green orbs flashing a retrospective knowledge.
"Figures they'd all escape ta their cowardly domains when the true battle was waitin' right here," Redface mentioned, chuckling with a rare apprehension as all cast wary gazes on Princess Alorri -
while the slender man crept behind the threesome.
"After countless lives of sacrificially-valorous defenders lost the battle is finally won," the low, solemn voice of the Princess murmured.  "My homeland, my glorious people await my return...  It is finished."   Then with a long, elegant stride - with barely an acknowledged nod on the
anticipatory three - she entered the mysterious portal and disappeared from view.
A lengthy silence followed.
"Evil deceived is evil believed in a loss such as this is surely a delusional wish," Mollo said.
"She tricked the dire demons for her return," Pyia added.
"Still stole a real good war, if ever there was one," Redface commented.
Abruptly, in all directions - where beckoning siren-songs and challenging war-mongering chimes once reverberated from Princess Alorri¹s once vengeful people - a response hailed.  In the form of a zipping, feathery shaft as it sliced outward from nothingness before slamming hard into a wooden fence post it represented an oddly satisfying reaction.  For even as its brilliant-orange, feathery end wavered unthreateningly in the seemingly tranquil breeze Redface recognised a fellow warrior's
baiting catcall.  He chuckled loosely, delighted.
"Apparently, Princess Alorri's people are also not ones to deny a bull-headed, shameful tactic," Pyia mentioned as her strong fingers pulled the ebony arrow shaft and pointed tip from the post.
"Yes, apparently, the Princess' beloved people have invited us into their mysterious kingdom  for a reason however uncertain," Mollo added, a clear, puzzled expressions lighting his supple features.
 "As thankful friends or dire enemies only ones worthy of dutiful mends are sure to ­"
"Friends, is all I'll call 'em, fer now...  So long as they're up for a few games," Redface mentioned, chortling loudly, affectionately, as he regarded to arrow.
"Just pray their competitive camaraderie prevails," Pyia said.
"And their ale remains everlasting to ole' dwarven folklore," Mollo hinted, smiling an unabashed humour.
"To the dwarven mountain gods we'll sing!" Redface bellowed, but then stopped and turned to the skinny, nameless man.  "Hope yer stomach's strong."
And the three followed the Princess into a world assured to please in a dangerously mystical fantasy everlasting.
Redface smiled.  The man shrieked.
Princess Alorri's people cheered.
The games had only begun.

mjessen@total.net