-I’m unreasonable proud of creating Beelzeburro-
A large, cloaked figure pushed open the ancient oaken door and entered the room. Despite the packed bar, no one present acknowledged the arrival; the stench of death on the figure was so strong that all knew who it was without having to see: Argal the Bloodletter.
Argal moved swiftly for his size through the room. His draconic snout and tail protruded from the cloak and what little light was offered from the torches in the room seemed to be swallowed by the dark cloth and even darker scales. One inebriated man set down his ale as Argal approached.
“I’ve heard tales -” he began as he set his hand on one of Argal’s claws. As soon as his fingers brushed the silver claws, his hand turned black and blistered; withering quickly as the blight spread up his arm. He was on the floor before the dragon’s next step. The man’s companion said nothing, but reached across the table to take the remaining ale. Once Argal had passed, others in the bar set upon the corpse as would flies and relieved it of its possessions.
Argal made his way to an ornate table in the far corner. Three other figures sat in ebony chairs at a similarly ebony table. They too wore cloaks that seemed almost impossibly dark and when Argal took a seat, they lightly bowed their heads.
“The Order of the All-Dark does not often send me out to deal with the problems of mortals. Twice in the last 1,200 years, in fact. Tell me why it is that I have been dispatched. And know, if I do not find this worth my time, you will all be…”
“We are undone,” one of the figures interrupted, “we do not fear you or the Order of the All-Dark’s retribution. You may slaughter all of us now and grant us that sweet release. There are larger concerns…”
“Figuratively speaking,” said another of the cloaked figures.
“Well, that goes without saying,” replied the original.
Argal reached to the third figure and clenched his large, clawed fist around its head. There was a stifled ‘pop’ as blood flowed between his fingers and the body dropped headless to the floor. He released the crushed skull from his grip.
“I believe I told you to tell me why I have been dispatched.”
Their eyes trained on the newly empty chair, both men spoke at once, “Bonbon Piddlewinks.”
Half the bar scattered out the door like roaches facing the light. Those who remained were unconscious or silent. The bartender audibly soiled himself.
“I am not familiar.”
“You will be,” began one of the men, “I first heard of him in the realm of Dolington; where a bard told me the tale of THE SHORT ORDER COOK IN DEATH’S DINER!”
Known as ‘the Broken King’, Myrssius ruled Craggdorn with a molten iron fist. Blessed, or cursed, with the ability to set men aflame with only a glance, countless fell under his rule for fear of the consequences. He commanded an army of over ten thousand men, orcs, kobolds, and even full blood dragons. The world beyond the borders of Craggdorn held no interest for Myrssius and that was the only reason he did not wash the land in the blood of his enemies. The law in his army was a simple one: climb command by death. His generals were famed for their ruthlessness on the battlefield and off. There was no registration for service in his lands. Soldiers would raze their own villages and, if any villager killed a solider, the villager was immediately conscripted. Families would race to kill a soldier, simply to earn the right to slaughter their own family members. It was a kingdom bred from battle, for battle, that would end in battle.
It drew toward midnight on a full blood moon. That was when the first dragon caught a scent he never had before: one drenched in blood. The blood spilled by the thousands in the army had long numbed the dragon’s nose to the smell, but this cold breeze coming over the hill…it carried one stronger. Whatever army was nearing the hill had bathed in the blood of enemies that Craggdorn’s armies could not dream of. Then, two figures crested the hill: a gnome and a burro.
If Argal’s permanently scarred, twisted snout could smile, it would have. If Argal could laugh without bursting the eardrums of anyone inside a five mile radius, he would have.
“Know before I kill you, this is the closest I have been to ‘humor’ in a long time.”
“It is no joke, my dark lord,” one figure said as his hands began to shake violently, “it is his arrival.”
At the top of the hill stood Bonbon Piddlewinks. Strapped to his back was a massive greataxe; massive if even the largest human bore it. In the dark of night, the axe was nearly invisible due to the material from which it was crafted. All that shone in the darkness were golden rings piercing the axe head and handle. Dozens of them. It was the legendary greataxe, Heave-n-Cleave. Some knew it as the Dark Matter Axe of Entropy’s Cold Embrace. It was said to be the axe that Nerull saw and was inspired to create death. Long rumored to have been lost to time or be so massively heavy to have sank to the pits of hell itself, the dragon could not fathom the weapon he saw before him. That weapon paled in the face of he who wielded it.
The burro on which Bonbon Piddlewinks rode blended into the night almost as well as the axe. The black coat lightly speckled with brilliant white patches and pillars of flame spewing from the creature’s nostrils gave away its name: Beelzeburro. Almost as legendary as the Heave-N-Cleave, Beelzeburro had long been the trusty steed of Nerull. At a spoken command, his entire body would be engulfed in a flame as hot as four stars. The burro’s feet never touched the ground. He simply was wherever the light of the stars and moon were touching. Existence itself was his road. His portal. And in addition to Bonbon Piddlewinks and Nerull himself, the only other rider that accompanied him was Destruction.
The dragon’s roar raised the alarm only seconds before a great black axe silently sliced the air and relieved him of his head, before curling back to the gnome’s hand on the hill. His tiny heel dug into inky burro’s side and before the army could take their eyes from the hill, he was in the heart of the entire force.
“Pinkberry!”
Bonbon leapt from Beelzeburro’s back as the animal’s fur became engulfed in a white flame. The men immediately next to it became ash and dozens of others tried pointlessly to pull their now-molten lead armor from their boiling, frying flesh.
As Beelzeburro ran through the ranks, creating the largest bonfire of still-living flesh in recorded history, Bonbon became to spin, twist, and seemingly fly through the men and creatures along. The rattling rings of the weapon were a subtle wind chime blending with the grating screams and cries for mercy. His great axe relieving entire squads of their shins before they could see him. One newly minted private that had killed his family and his entire cub scout troop with a melon baller took a step toward Bonbon. Before his second foot fell, the private realized his left leg was gone. Specifically the femur. He never registered that was what buried itself in his skull. Another nine souls were murdered by that femur before it splintered while being introduced to the kidney of an orc general.
Within minutes, half the army was routed; a literal lake of blood began to form. Everything attempting to escape were floundering, falling, stampeding, and drowning in the growing seabed. Picking up a medium sized, smooth pebble, Bonbon skipped it across the deep red surface of the life-water. It killed fifteen men before lodging itself in the brain-pan of an elder green drake.
“The fall of Myrssius is well known in the Order. Your tale matches with some recreations our mystics have divined, but it is impossible a single creature, let alone a gnome, could have -”
“And the burro!”
Argal’s eyes shifted to a man behind him. For the first time, he saw that the story had drawn a crowd.
“He had that beetle burro -”
“Beelzeburro.”
“Yeah. That. He had that. Two creatures.”
Argal’s tail flicked, cutting the two men in half. The remaining crowd stampeded out of the tavern.
“A bard told the tale based on a séance held to communicate with a gardener that bought sod from a man whose second cousin saw the entire thing on a scroll by a young boy who survived it! He even pulled a boot from the blood-soaked mud that belonged to Bonbon. I carry it to ward off evil.”
“And it’s NOTHING compared to when I first heard of Bonbon Piddlewinks!”
“This has been mildly entertaining, but I must kill you both, and this town, and return to the order -”
“The CALL OF R’GYLLISH!”
In the times before recorded history, before unrecorded history as well, the Old Gods walked the barren Earth. Eons before that, the Elder Gods shaped the barren Earth. If any had been foolish enough to wage a celestial war against these beings, their war god would have been R’gyllish. Over three hundred feet tall, from a distance, he would appear as a mountain. Indeed, many Elder Gods are rumored to have become mountains. They sleep, you see, by eons, not hours. When they awake, that is when our time is over. Time for all is over. The Earth will be shaped again. This story, however, is about a single god merely stirring from slumber.
To truly behold any Elder God would destroy any mortal’s mind. Immortals would relinquish their everlasting life, merely to be able to kill themselves to forget the sight. R’gyllish has been described in Elder texts as “the ugly one”. His head looked as thought a goblin shark bathed in razors and glass. His jaw could extend a half-mile from the face and engulf acres at a time. His body was that of a naga, but a naga that could use a mountainside as a lounge chair. On land, he was fast. Impossibly fast for his size. His age was before the creation of physics, and as such, he was not bound by them. He fly through water as though it were air; swam through earth as though it were water, and walked on air as though it were earth. All bent to his whim. His body continuously secreted a slime that gave birth to all poisons in existence. The sight of it would poison your eyes if you caught a glint from the sun. Touching it was as touching lava. No one knew what would happen if it was ingested, but it was believed to taste quite terrible. His very existence destroyed. When he rubbed the sleep from his eyes, the falling crust created hazardous growths in all creatures for miles around. He inhaled and pulled the life from the plants and animals within a thousand yard. He exhaled noxious fumes and burning sulfur.
Rumors abounded just eighty years ago that this great god of gods had stirred from his sleep. It would mean only one quarter the world’s population would be slaughtered. Bonbon Piddlewinks sat at an inn, dining on bread buttered with the blood of his enemies. The staff was understandably terrified of the mountain coming toward them in the distance. Through the green, dense fog that rolled in miles ahead of R’gyllish’s arrival, they could see his grotesque form moving toward them. It was the last they’d see as the mist eroded their sight; perhaps mercifully. The hysteria made it so that Bonbon’s mug of ale went dry. It went unfilled. His requests were drowned out by the wails of the recently blind and those throwing themselves from windows to spare themselves the future horror. With a heavy sigh, Bonbon picked up a quill the waitress had brought to sign his tab and walked into the fog, toward the behemoth.
An hour later, a sound unlike any had heard before or would ever hear again crashed into the village. Buildings shattered and four heads exploded. Milk soured and wells dried. The green, deadly fog dispersed and those remaining villagers saw Bonbon reentering town. The mountain the distance had stopped moving and was just a grey lump on the horizon. Bonbon entered the inn, signed the tab with some putrid green ink that burned through the parchment and table, left the payment, and departed. No one ever saw him in the village again. He forgot his gloves, which my family has prized these many decades.
Argal the Bloodletter stared at the two men in silence. Despite what they’d seen, them men awaited their deaths. Argal sighed. He continued to sigh. Then, directly down the middle of his body, he began to pull apart. A black, viscous blood pooled beneath his chair as his body split evenly in twain. Behind his chair stood a gnome with a massive great axe strapped to his back.
“Gentlemen, I believe you have my some things of mine.”
Defacto the Matter 