2009 någonstans skrev jag en kort berättelse baserat på Diablo 2 karaktärerna, fast med en liten twist. Den är på engelska, men jag tror att den kan fungera även om jag så klart kan översätta den i framtiden. En liten enkel tribut till Terry Pratchet, en av vår tids största fantasy komiker som avled 12:e mars 2015.
Chapter One: When things go boom…
Bal-tek, the mighty barbarian from the north let his mighty 5 feet body up from behind the rock he was hiding behind (rather futile appempt since the 6 feet sword on his back, its carriage straps and support wheel made the stone look like a bit suspicious anyway). The huge helmet fell down over his nose again with a loud clomping noise and cursing he tried to untangle his inpressive mustache from its rich ornaments with spider like fingers.
From behind another rock Ungras the Necromancer gave him a toothless grin. Ungras had experienced a slight mishap in his youth as he tried to learn the art of spirit teeths and somehow, much to the surprise of his mentor, managed to lauch not just one tooth, but a hole barrage...unfortuately it was not spirit teeths, but his own set of teeths. His skills had inproved since then. Barely. The grin soon vanished from his eyes as he heard screams from the camp below them.
The group crawled back a few feet, with Bal-tek's carriage making lots of squeeking noises and a large mark in the ground as the weel dug deep into the earth from the weight of his impressive sword. Once gathered they started to make up plans.
"Fear not good friends, I will go down and slay the foul bests to rid this world from the evi..."
"Shut up you pompos bastard!!"
The words of Handsome Goldenheart, their self proclaimed leader and obnoxiously holy paladin got slapped in the head by Leia, their Assassin in training with enough bombs to remove mount Arreat itself if needed and he got a hurt look in his eyes.
"Infidels..." He mumbled to himself and sat down with a squeeking sound from his pure white full armour.
"Thank you Leia, now..we must find a way to take out this group of baals minions before we can move on to the village. I estimate their number to...80?" The tall amazon looked around, trying to make out the shapes of her comrades while pulling out her tight outfit that had a nack for vanishing up between her massive cheeks.
Her efforts were soon joined by Leia as she tried to make her extremely small outfit less intrusive and her her efforts were carefully monitored by both Ungras and Vacras the druid. A quick slap in the face and a murdering look from young Handsome took their minds off Leias lower areas and back to the issue at hand.
"I might be able to distract them with a spell...I seem to recall back in the days we had a spell, what was it called..."
"NO!!" The group answer came in unison and Nunny, their elderly and slightly senile sorceress sat down besides Handsome to pout with him. If someone had placed the two in fron of eachother their pouting would have instantly turned into a kiss from their pouting.
"Direct assault would be best and as far as I could tell they are only 10 down there..." vancras sounds like a thunderstorm and he has the massive build to match. He gave the group a long look.
"Erhm...yes, 10...thats what I thought to, just wanted to make sure I had your attention." Inya brushed away some hair that had fallen into her piglike face with her three fingers that were all that remained after a slight accident when she mistook a harp for her bow and accidently lost 2 fingers.
"Yeah right...you blind bat..." The soft murmor came from Bal-Tek the mighty and he got a look that could vaporise small villages from Inya that unfortunately looked straight at Nunny that gave her a slightly confused look back.
"What, what did I do now?" Nunny looked confused for a while then smiled happily.
"You know...insted of storming we could make a spell that..." Her words were cut short as everyone stood up and started running towards the small camp at the base of the mountain.
"CHARGE!!"
The sound of the battle cry came out of all the mighty heroes throats, except for Ungras who swallowed an unfortuante bug and made less articulate sounds.
The demons below looked up and drew their sword in preparation for the battle...
The heroes from westmarch(or the nearby areas such as byzan 400 miles to the west on another continent) rushed down the slope when they heard a shriek that made the hair on their necks feel like porcupine thorns and from above they could see Nunny coming running like a bat from hell with fire blazing from her feet.
"AIIYY, its after me!!" The old, senile woman had apperantly forgot about her inherant fobia of fire and lit her feet on fire with some spell of hers and now she tried to get away from the flames, totally oblivious to the fact the she was the source of the fire.
The group blinked a few times as she ran passed them right towards the supprised group of demons, then they started to realise what was about to happen (everyone but Ungras that still tried to get that blasted bug either up or down the throat so he could breath again) and slowly they started to act.
Bal-tek cursed loudly and tried to draw his mighty sword (which actually weight twice as much as the impressive 90 pound Barbarian) and fell flat on his face when the weight came off the attrap he used to carry it with. Cursing and screaming with his mouth full of grovel he was trapped like a turtoise taking a nap in quick cement for a few hours.
Inya put a new arrow on the bow and fired it with the might of the ancient arts and managed to put it straight in the behind of a praying handsome that got a supprised look in his eyes before he remembered how poorly he could deal with pain, especially his own, and he fell to the ground with a stupid look in his otherwise perfect face.
Leia tried to get her thong out of something fierce with one hand and throwing explosives with the other hand, which resulted in one landing a bit to close to Vacras who had just shifted to werewolf form and working himself up to a nice frenzy which means lots of foam around the mouth and as much intelligence as a moth on acid. When the smoke cleared Vancras was napping peacefully with patches of his furn burned away. Fortunately he was still in werewolf form, so the loss of hearing (and a foot, 2 fingers, a piece of an ear and most of the left shoulder) would probably heal in a day or so.
"Ooops..." The short comment from Leia was cut short as another arrow came flying by her ear and she could see Inya sqinting her eyes like a newborn kitten in hopes of getting her aim right and Leia knew that once Inya got you in her "sight" you had better run. So she did, right towards the camp, tossing throwing stars left and right without aiming and an occasional explosive just to keep the demons below busy until she could regroup.
One of the explosives ended up in Handsome's lap where it exploded gently, denting the white armour and throwing the self-righteous paladin 12 feet into the air before he landed next to Ungras that accidently swallowed the bug that he he almost got up. Ungras looked down at the now slightly scorched paladin with a green look in his pale face.
"Gackash pfthhh huhhhhs" The toothless necromancer tried to form some sort of coherant sentance, but failed miserably so he shook his head and looked to see how his comrades where doing. Below he could see an impressive display of fireworks as Nunny started to come up with a spell to put out her burning feets.
The demons tried to decide if they should pursue her or the almost naked woman with the huge bombs (both litterally and figuraly speaking) running their way, dodging arrows from a huge piglike woman that they thought had some sort of lethery swimsuit on, but it was hard to determine on the massive form. Most of the demons hoped that it was some form of clothing anyway...
In her endless and frantic attempts to find a spell that could take out the flames that was chasing her, Nunny managed to summon a blizzard storm that froze not only the demons, but also the jumping and dodging Leia and the blind archer Inya behind her. The battle stopped abruptly and Ungras blinked a few times as everything became silent, except for the constant howl of Nunny that was running madly between the frozen statues below. He tried to decide what to do next when suddenly Nunny ran into Leia and knocked them both over and in the process put out the flames at her feets.
Nunny looked down at Leia and frowned a bit as her stale mind tried to put that face together with some sort of remembrance. Finally she gave up and settled with the fact that she looked familiar...and cold.
"dont you worry lass..I'll defrost you in no time. I have this wonderful spell...." Leia just started to regain consciousness when she saw Nunny and the glowing madness in her eyes. Her mouth formed a soft "oh my" before she closed here eyes and hoped for the best (which included beautiful male doctors and lots of ful rejuvination potions, perhaps some sort of dinner to that would be nice...)
"Heh..." Inya slowly defrosted having the same protective layer of fat as most whales would envy and she just had time to look around before she heard Nunny and saw the flames in her hand. She barely managed to roll behind a protective stone before the fireball ignited the explosives strapped to Leia's minimal outfit (which actually was 3 sizes to small, but Leia insisted on wearing it because it was given to her by her father..at the age of 13). The end result was an inpressive explosion that threw the two 90 feet back up in the mountain behind them and smashed the frozen demons into million pieces.
"Huuuunh..." The stunned Ungras blinked numerous times and then smiled.
"Piece of cake..." He slowly walked away to turn Bal-tek over so he could help him grab the rejuvs and start patching the group together again. Bal-tek was unconscious from the lack of oxygen as his head had been pressed into the ground for to long so Ungras picked up the sword and put it on the ground next to the little scrawny man and picked up a rejuvination potion and gave it to Bal-tek.
"Not a bad battle...not bad at all, we are getting better at this I think." He smiled to himself as Bal-tek came out of his selfinduced coma and started cursing.
Chapter 2: When things go boom...again
Once the group was finally back on their feets again after draining dozens of magical healing potions of rejuvination they continued their travels towards the small village of Ulm that they had been sent to protect, or liberate, depending on who you asked.
"Man...this will take forever. How far is this village anyway?" Leia frowned and tried to get her suit out from between her lower areas, much to the amusement of Bal-tek that walked behind her and heavily bent over he had his head dangerously close to Leia's "preciouss" as he called it.
"Naver fear fair lady, my holy powers will make the journey quick and safe" Handsome's perfect voice was as annoying as ever and when he for a moment stopped to summon his holy powers as he like to call them Bal-tek marched straight into Leia, getting his huge nose stuck between her cheeks when she instictivly flexed her rock hard muscles that she got from years of training from her father the legendary Incas, the Assassin (Yes, that was actually the best name he could come up with...he was a great assassin, but not much of a scholar if you ask me).
"Oumph!" Bal-tek's situation rapidly got worse as Inya walked straight into him from behind and with her massive form managed to further pressed him into the already dangerous situation. Then they all fell down from the shockwave when a lightning suddenly struck Vancras that was in point now that Handsome was attending his chanting for higher powers.
"Ooopps. Wrong spell I think..." Handsome's soft, surprised voice was abruptly interrupted by a shriek from behind. For a moment they thought they were under attack, then they saw Nunny coming running once again with her feet burning. As she passed then they could see the wild panic in her eyes and for a moment they smiled in amusement, but then she trampled the scorched Vancras and managed to put what was left of his furcoat on fire.
Leia moaned and tried to get Bal-tek out of her "preciouss", much to the dissapointment of Bal-tek that was divided between the sensation of being squashed by Inya's heavy body and the sensation of being so close to Leia's more admirable traits. His decision was suddenly made for him as Inya stood up and with one arm tossed him into a cliff where he ended up on his back like a beetle as his sword made getting back on his feet impossible.
"No worries my friends...My powers will protect and heal him." Handsome switced his aura to a protection from fire and walked towards Vancras to put him out when a sharp pointed arrow struck him in the arm. A soft "eeep" and then he fainted as he saw the blood on his now slightly less perfect white armour.
"Haha!! I got you hellspawn!!" Inya walked towards Handsome with her bow lifted for yet another strike towards the "demons" that obviously had attacked them.
Leia cursed loudly and jumped behind a rock next to Bal-tek that for a moment stopped his feeble attempts to beck on his feets as his "preciouss" once more appeared in all its glory just a feet away. Leia ignored the choking sound from Bal-tek and throwed a handful of granades towards Inya in hopes of stunning the huge woman before she killed someone. Unfortunately she had never been very good at calculating the effects of her explosives, or remember just what each bomb was, which resulted in a slightly larger blast that she expected and Inya was suddenly airborn.
Uncas watched the scene from the rear of the column with mild interest as he was still a bit sick from swallowing that bug during the last battle. It could be that his attempts to get it out by reanimate it and try to get it to fly out had something to do with it, or the fact that it now wandered around mindlessly in his stomach.
As Inya was blow sky high he uttered a soft "Ooohh" and he was impressed with the accurancy the gods can place events as Inya fell down again, right on top of Leia that could not get away as Bal-tek had accidently got his hand tangled in Leia's belt in some freakish way. The end result was a huge explosion as Leias other explosives detonated.
The silence was almost defening when the detonation suddenly faded away and only Nunny's screaming on the path ahead disturbed the peace. Uncas could see her running as the path made a curve and from a distance he could see her suddenly stop as she forgot to avoid one of the larger cliffs. Soon he could see a small flame growing larger where she fell...
"Heh......."He decided that there was just one thing to do, so he took out the Rejuvs again from his huge backpack. This would be a very long trip indeed....