The|MULTIVERSE

BONUS SCENE: Gilgrig

Kharon's Dyke, The Stifflands of Chao's Dale

Or-Fo Realm, Universe Mo

"Damn bunkum slug-eating puppets! You've done gone and fuddled with the WRONG dwarf!"

Regret came swift for their synthetic hides. Gilgrig Goldhammer and his dragon mount Erigante brought the pain. A cacophony of explosive expletives thundered the angry red air. The dwarf rammed his heavily-thorned copper dragon through a mass throng of stringless puppet dolls, man-sized entities forged straight from the weird bowels of some demon child's hell house.

And through all of that breakneck malice, the black dwarf bore a face of true hell, beard-locks thrashing about like fierce tentacles and his eyes lacked fear while he faced-down the sulfuric face of death. As Erigante busted a path through the legion, a savage chorus of ripe swear words roared from the mad dwarf's fat lips. Hard words of a war-sparked curse that probably rivaled a familiar pair of brotherly pirates whose fluent obscenities tore beyond the feral of blasphemies. Gilgrig's words posed a contest. These evil puppets really pissed him off.

Erigante demolished a crowd of them beneath his large claws. Four massive scaly feet pounding the earth. Puppets crackled and popped like a treacherous mob of crushed toys splintering under the weight of a charging elephant. The fiery light in their eyes fizzled and steamed out of sight, and their motley limbs shattered like glass, releasing their blades and spiked hammers to the earth. The unscathed got bold and bounced over each other to ascend upon the riding dwarf, but an offended swing of Dawnbreaker, Boon of Hate; his rocket-propelled warhammer; turned those precarious puppets into yesterday's trash.

Gilgrig scoffed. "Dim-wits..."

The dwarf and dragon battled their way into the deepest dikes of the dale. Carnage laid behind them. Erigante stopped upon an overarching cliff, took a peek over its craggy edge, then lept a great gap back in one heck of a springing cat's abandon as this GIGANTIC titan marionette sprouted from the abyss in one big grand event, boss battle style!

The looming creation screamed crude and eccentric. Its smaller kin slain were drones compared to this menacing machination of ragged limbs and a spinning head of many faces: joy, lust, grief, and anger. It was going to take more than a few swings of Dawnbreaker to crack this one's monster head. Gilgrig and Erigante never shied from a fight.

"OH! So we're pulling out the ole busted BIGGUMS, now?!" The mad dwarf hollered and smiled his best grin. "Bloody wazzocks! Sufferin' Malecroix scum's surely touched in the festering domes for this one, eh, big boy?!"

Erigante snorted. The titan marionette of limbs, blades, flaming torch nipples and a demon clown's smile appeared all the same to the dragon of muscle and thorns. For if it moves, regardless of its source, then it can be torn to shreds.

The dragon pounced the freak toy giant, its clowning face filled with joy, and down the hole, they went. Gilgrig braced his saddle's hold and together with Erigante, they crashed into the chasm's deep end. The titan marionette pinned under the dragon's weight. Its face of grief spun into anger, and it managed its legs under the dragon's dark belly and kicked the beast from its frame. Gilgrig hollered as he vaulted from his war saddle. Erigante hit the earth like thunder. They sprung to their feet and the titan marionette, a face returned with joy, scrambled at them. Its torso a death gyre as bladed limbs became a tornado of severing damnation.

It kicked into the air. Its whole frame tilted. The earth split beneath its hateful spin, and both dragon and dwarf vaulted from the cleft and blades carving a path straight at them. The marionette bounced off course, inverting its form. The crude thing returned in its twirl of terror and crashed against Erigante's thick tail of spikes.