>>5493543Both the bickering males look up at this voice—the gravelly hiss of the Hunter, expert ranger and marksman, recruited by the Dragonborn on his most recent return to their deep-dark homelands, below the northern realms.
“They have not escaped,” the Hunter continues, elaborating upon his point.
“You found them?” the Pit-Guard asks, sounding relieved.
“No,” the Hunter answers grimly. “But I found something else.”
Two of his followers stride forward, dropping a ragged mass of matted fur and keratinous spikes at the centre of the cavern-chamber. The strange mammal looks haggard, half-dead, sodden and shivering… But as it looks up, the darkly-defiant eyes and savagely-heroic set of the face is unmistakable, even to those not accustomed to differentiating between mammals.
“The Bugbear Boss,” the Bastard hisses.
He’d been missing for months now, ever since he led his people—the spikey, ape-like goblinoids called bugbears or ‘Bogbarri’, in the first of many successful raids against the dwarves, as part of an alliance with Bloodrise’s Dragonborn. Since then, his people had turned foul and feral, and none had been able to contact him.
“Did you capture him attacking my slaves?” the Pit-Guard demands. “We should torture him to death and sacrifice him to the Dark Gods for his betrayal!”
The Hunter holds up a hand, and the Pit-Guard simmers down somewhat.
“He claims he isn’t responsible,” the Hunter explains.
“I must admit, it looks like he hasn’t been experiencing much happy hunting,” the Bastard laughs cruelly.
“I didn’t capture him,” the Hunter admits with no small disappointment. “He actually SURRENDERED… To the slaves. He was babbling something in dwarf-speak…”
The Bugbear Boss grunts something, a guttural croak that might be dwarven… or, then again, might not.
“Begging for his worthless life?” the Bastard speculates.
“Requesting our aid,” the Hunter acknowledges. “And bearing warning… About a kobold sorcerer, amassing an army of demons and dead, readying to strike.”
The two supervisors of development in Bloodrise exchange a meaningful look, their rivalry put on hold for the moment. They both know what this means: Hapo the Necromancer, one-time co-ruler of this place before defeated once by their master, has completed his dark studies of the ancient tomes which he stole away with… And he has returned to take his revenge.
