The rangy northerner had taken one more shuffling step sideways and stopped, squarely facing The Keeper. Nick leaped up on a low outcropping of rocks and turned to watch the confrontation, spear at the ready. He could hit The Keeper from his vantage point, but he didn’t know what harm he could do against such a... well, what was he? Sinner was speaking to The Keeper, as if reading Nick’s thoughts;
“Again with the souls, Nosaj. What have you done? Become an errand-boy for a false god?” Sinner had sheathed his sword and slipped his bow from his shoulder. “What has The Orms given you? Domain over some rocks, some smelly holes in the ground and a - a snail farm?” An arrow was now notched in the bowstring, but Sinner held the bow loosely as he continued in a conversational tone. “Power? Power to do what? If you had the powers of a demon, we’d both be dead by now, and you’d be trotting off to your lord with our souls like the good lackey you are!”
At this insult, The Keeper was apoplectic, his eyes bugging from their sockets, colourless lips pulling back over broken, carnivorous looking teeth.
“POWER?” he roared, his oily skin seeming to run with venom. “I’ll show you power, you germ!”
Arms swung wide, The Keeper floated bodily off the ground a full arm’s length. The hood of the blacker-than-black robes fell completely back, exposing The Keeper’s huge domed skull, devoid of hair and heavily veined.
“I will eat your flesh myself, you... you... Aah! What’s this?” As The Keeper had floated free of the ground, Sinner quickly raised his bow, aimed and loosed his arrow. The projectile traveled swiftly and true, piercing The Keeper’s chest and causing him to float backwards, almost directly over the slugs that had gathered at the edge of the flatland. The wound was deep and bled freely, the blood soaking invisibly into The Keeper’s robes. Still floating mid-air, The Keeper looked down at the arrow protruding from his chest, then at Sinner.
“An arrow? You think to fell me like you would a bird? How quaint!” The Keeper laughed as he grabbed the shaft of Sinner’s arrow, tearing it out with a violence that made Nick wince. The result was more blood, which The Keeper ignored. The slugs on the ground below The Keeper had picked up the scent of the fresh blood and were probing skyward with tentative tongues, seeking the source of the enticing smell. All of a sudden, Nick saw Sinner’s plan, and raised his spear.
“Enough!” The Keeper tossed the arrow aside. “I tire of this! I remember you, HappySinner the homeless. I should grind your bones to powder for what you did to me when I was... human!” The word was spat out as if its taste was acid, and The Keeper floated closer, fingers twitching. “But I will enjoy your eternal agony more as your soul toils for the mas... AAAGH!!”
As one, Sinner loosed a fresh arrow and Nick threw with all his might. The arrow hit the exact same mark as its predecessor, sinking into the Keeper’s existing chest wound until only half the shaft protruded. Nick’s spear caught The Keeper squarely in the throat, piercing the windpipe and jugular vein before twisting out and falling away. The combined impact of the two missiles drove The Keeper backwards and down, but he somehow remained floating in the air. A gurgling bellow erupted from the wounded Keeper as blood spilled into his lungs and splashed over the now frantic slugs just below. A barbed tongued lashed out, and The Keeper fell to the ground with a heavy thud, screaming and cursing through destroyed vocal cords. The blacker-than-black robes disappeared under a heaving mass of grey, slimy bodies and the screaming cut off abruptly. A sudden silence fell, broken only by the sliding and squelching of feeding Filth Slugs and the laboured breathing of the two travelers.
Dropping his bow, Sinner turned and walked slowly away from the feeding slugs. His face was drawn and haggard, but broke into a smile as he shook his young friend’s hand. Nick regarded the minstrel for a moment, then nodded towards the slugs, his face one big question.
“So... friend of yours, was it?”
