Chapter One: Fury

  A grunt, a long two-armed stretch, and a thunderous flatulent breaking of wind cause the birds to stir. A bare-chested barrel of a dwarf quickly shakes his head twice, strokes his big red beard lovingly, and then reaches into his side pouch to procure a silver flask. He winces as he tastes the hair from the dog that bit him.

  "Bahh!, guess I forgot da fire?" He grunts "Oh well..."

  Hungover and feeling halfway normal again, the sun peeks through the forest canopy and catches him in the eyes. He squints, looks up from his seated position next to the large tree he passed out next to, and shakes his head again. Then he looks down at the silver flask and takes another long swig and sucks at his teeth.

  "FFFuggg! This Golden Gut Rot Whiskey is great! I dunno remember anythin' from last night! Imma bettin it was a goodn'!" He barks a belly laugh.

  Finally, when he decides to stand up, he wobbles left, then wobbles right. Does one last quick head shake, and slaps himself a couple of times. He also jumps up and down and punches the air, just to get the blood circulating again. Who knows how long he has been passed out? Good to go!

  As he does his post-hangover, routine self-check, he pats all his various weapons holsters on his very thick dwarven leather belt, suddenly he stops. His face turns white. His heart starts trying to pound out of his chest. Both massive axes are right where they are supposed to be but the back-right-most loop is missing his most prized possession. The highly controversial, highly magical, very well-known, and expensive Magical Flagon of Destiny!

  "NO FUGGIN' WAY! He's gunna bash me head in!" He yells out loud to no one as he runs around the large tree.

  On the third rotation around the same tree, he stops, looks around, his heart still pounding, and vomits all over the place. Then he keeps running around the same tree.

  "IT'S GOTTA BE HERE, IT'S GOTTA BE HERE, IT'S GOTTA BE HEREEEEE!"

  The flagon is not anywhere near or around the large tree. After about fifteen minutes of fruitless running and yelling he realizes this and stops. He spends the next minute or so with a thousand-mile stare looking off into the distance trying to piece together a logical scenario where him losing the flagon even makes a lick of sense. Nothing comes to his golden gut rot brain, and he sits flat on his ass, holding both large knuckled fists to the sides of his head.

  "Bahh.. imma nev'r drinkin' again!" He mumbles to himself quietly.

  "Now good dwarf where is the fun in that?"

  "Huh? Who's there? Where's me fuggin' flagon?"

  The dwarf, quickly and with more agility than expected for an abnormally large, five-and-a-half-foot dwarf, bounced up and drew both massive two-handed axes in each hand. For perspective purposes, these axes would be hard to wield with two hands even for the taller races. So his strength is through the roof.

  "Wowww now, you're a very excitable dwarf aren't you?" The tiny feminine voice said. The voice has a very melodic and harmonic quality to it that seems to come from every direction at once.

  "I swear to the Tri-Gods dat if you donno give me back my fuggin' flagon, yull be tastin' da heads of dees here axes!" The dwarf swore as he turned in circles, twirling the massive axes menacingly. He still can't locate the voice anywhere.

  Then suddenly there was a burst of light right in between the dwarf's eyes. He winced, dropped his axes, and went to cover his now blind eyes. As a beautiful, long sky-blue-haired fairy with pink eyes and a black dress popped into existence.

  "I promise, good dwarf, regardless of your axe prowess, even if I did take your stupid fuggin' flagon." The fairy said mockingly as she did the double air quotes. Then she got right into one of his eyes and pointed one tiny little finger.

  "You couldn't dream of landing a single blow! So be careful who and what you threaten with those over-grown carriage wheels you call axes! You stupid oaf!" She said slowly and quietly.

  That was enough to make the dwarf rage. Dwarves are known for their rage ability. There isn't much that can stand in the way of a raging dwarf. Whole human armies have been laid to waste from just a small unit of raging dwarfs. They don't feel pain, they don't get tired, and they don't bleed out, some say it's magical. Once the rage runs out if the dwarf is too badly injured though they die on the spot. But as long as they have something to hit, that is all that matters. Rage peeters out in about thirty seconds or so if the dwarf doesn't smell blood or have any enemies to cleave, leaving the dwarf fatigued and ravenous.

  This dwarf stomps his massive boot and screams.

  "FORRRR THEEE TRIII-GODDSSS!!!"

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  The ground around his boot cracks and craters. The trees shake and the birds squawk and fly away. The dwarf grows six inches in height and his muscles bulge. You can see all his veins grow like worms, up from his forearms to his biceps then to his neck, and up to the one in his forehead. They pulse with manic raging dwarf blood. This particular dwarf is known for hitting first and asking questions later.

  His axes magically shoot to his hands.

  Thhwwuummppp!

  Thhwwuummppp!

  As they land, he is already spinning into a tornado-style whirlwind. He screams his rage and it turns into a crescendo of wind and hate. He's just a blur of axe and beard. Nothing matters besides dismembering his foes and bathing in their blood!

  The fairy rolls her tiny pink eyes, flies up, and sits on the dwarf's head, crossing her legs, she pulls out a cup of tea. Slowly sipping and waiting for the raging dwarf to quit being a baby. She raises her wrist to check her non-existent watch and mouths to herself three, two, one. She arches one eyebrow tapping at her wrist like her watch is broken when the dwarf continues to rage for another thirty or so seconds. Way longer than a typical berserking dwarf. Curious.

  Finally, the wind dies down, the screams turn into a slow and steady groan, and the dwarf drops his axes and falls to his knees. Deeply breathing in through the nose and out through the mouth, he looks up and sees the egotistical fairy sipping her tea looking at him with a smirk on her face like she knew exactly how this would play out. Turns out she was wrong. Around twenty-seven seconds wrong.

  "Finally done you excitable dwarf? I do say though, it lasted a lot longer than I expected you must have royal blood."

  "Fug....You....Fairy...I....Almost....Had....You!" The dwarf gasps in between large inhalations.

  "Ha! Almost had me? I sat on your head drinking rose pepper tea while you danced around like some kind of baby axolf! Truly dwarf it was quite ridiculous!" The fairy scoffed as she threw the cup and it vanished into thin air, as she flew down in front of the dwarf's face.

  "Bahh, now I'm starving! What in bloody hell is an axolf?" Asked the dwarf as he reached into his pouch to procure a fully made, thick sub sandwich, and took a huge bite.

  "Doesn't matter, look dwarf, how about you tell me your name, I'll tell you mine, so we can stop calling each other dwarf and fairy. Then I can tell you where your stupid fuggin' flagon is. I was tired of seeing you run around the same tree for the entire afternoon and puking all over yourself, so here I am intervening with mortal affairs for a bad-tempered dwarf who thinks so highly of himself that he could strike down a fae with an iron axe! Pffft if only my mother could see me now! Like mewwwww Fury you're so madddd all the time you should try being nicerrrrrr...see where it gets me mommm???"

  "Me axes are mithril, not iron! Who's stupid now...FAIRY!" The dwarf sticks his tongue and waves his massive axe at her.

  "I crafted it meself, wait did yee say yee know where me flagon is? Why didn't yee start with dat? Lets go fairy!" And he starts running off into the distance with out even waiting for the fairy to reply.

  She slaps her forehead and snaps her fingers. The dwarf stops in his tracks as she disappears and reappears right in front of his face again.

  "Let's start like this okay?" She draws out each word slowly like she's talking to a young child. "My Name Is Fury-Fae, but you can call me Fury for short. What is your name?"

  "Oh dats an easy one, my name is Pallet...Jack Pallet but you can call me Jack." He says back to her proudly with a big smile and two thumbs pointing to himself.

  "OK! Jack its...very nice...to meet you!" says Fury with an obvious amount of struggle like she's having a hard time being nice at all. "Let's put all the name-calling and you know...raging, berserk dwarf stuff behind us okay?"

  "Ummm okayy? But yee know where my flagon is? Its really important I get it back." Jack asked scratching his beard and looking at her questioningly.

  "Actually yeah I do. I was following you around last night because you were singing this really stupid song while you marched that I couldn't stop myself from enjoying. For some reason, even though it was incredibly stupid, it was quite catchy." She says ignoring the fact she just called his singing stupid multiple times. "Anyway, you were so drunk that I figured you would keep doing entertaining things when you finally stumbled next to a tree and completely passed out. I was about to leave when I saw the goblin sneaking up on you with a knife. I thought he was going to stab you but he just snipped the loop and took off with that gaudy flagon of yours."

  "Bahhhhhh! Stinkin' green skins I'll obliterate dat 'tire tribe! Tell me which way dey went!" The dwarf yells as he stuffs the rest of his giant sandwich back into his pouch. He grabs his axes and starts running off in a random direction before ever even getting directions.

  "For the love of the fae! Jack stop running off before I chain you to a tree I'm trying to do something nice for you, but it's like trying to train a baby cobfish." She groans exhaustingly as she flies after him.

  She grabs onto his long red braid of hair and flies in the oposite direction to try and stop him. When he realizes what is happening he stops and looks at her likes she's stupid for trying to stop him.

  "What'r yee doin' fairy let's go get me flagon?" Jack says with an arched eyebrow. He also grabs his flask, uncorks it, and takes a sip. Recorks it and puts it back into his pouch.

  "First of all JACK! I told you to call me Fury. Not fairy, it's demeaning. Second, do you even know where the goblin camp is? Because you are running in the completely wrong direction."

  Jack then looks around, left to right, and up and down. Shakes his head and just keeps staring at Fury expectantly.

  "We are going to need to do some recon okay? I'm not going to let the first person in a millennium that I decide to be nice to, run blindly into a goblin camp and get run through." Fury says with a motherly tone.

  "I don't do recon fairy, I lead with me axe and heads be rollin'. Especially in a teeny greeny little goblin camp. I be doin' the runnin' through." Jack growls menacingly.

  "Okay Jack, how about this! I take you to the camp, you wait somewhere and rest a little bit, maybe eat the rest of your sandwich. While I go in and find exactly where your flagon is." Fury says like it's the best idea she ever had.

  As she is telling Jack this, his stomach growls so loud it scares a squirrel up a tree and he nods his head absently while he thinks about the full, roasted turkey he has in his pouch fresh off the grill.

  "Okay fairy, yee have some sense, let's skedaddle. I'm so hungry I could eat a dragon"