As narrated by Gnarsh the Fang
Right, listen up, bugwits, ‘cos I’m only tellin’ this story
once.
So I’m out wandering the jungle after the last o’ me mates
keeled over from liverwurm, wonderin’ how I’m going t’get paid fer this, and I
run into some silver-skinned fellow (Editor’s note: Christianus Smith) Can’t
understand a word he says, but ’e’s not a giant lizard so we stick together a
little while, and soon enough we end up runnin’ into a village of those scaly
truadon bastards you get out here (Editor’s note: Arnod). Turns out there’s a
few other explorers from the Federation out here, plus a couple o’ scalies who
can speak proper, so we get to talking and next day I’m proper employed again.
On the way we meet some elf, ’e’s got a map the boss says is worth good money
when we get back to civilization, so I taps him on the head and we lighten ’is
burden a little before we move on.
The next village down the river (Editor’s note: Sif) won’t
let us in, keep jabberin’ about evil spirits. Our face-man talks to ’em a while
and eventually gets them to send their chief or big man or ’oever out to talk,
as long as we stand in the river while we talk. Lizards, right? Anyway
eventually he agrees to join the Federation as long as we promise to go away
and stop bothering me. Also ’e gives us a rock. Bugger if I know why.
Now the next stop (Nobok), that’s where the story gets good.
See, we get there and the only thing their chief wants to talk about is ‘ow
their neighbors blasphemed by killing a sacred monster or summat. Turns out the
lot we just came from, they’ve been hunting tyrannosaurs, while this lot thinks
they’re children of some god or other. So they want us to help punish the other
lot. Only, we just got done talkin’ them into signing on with the Federation.
Bit awkward to turn around an’ give ‘em a bloody nose, y’know? Me, I don’t think
the Federation’d be missing it if we went and knocked the first bunch off the
map, but nobody else likes the idea, the boss says we won’t get paid unless we
get all the locals, and I guess I’d feel an idjit heading right back up the
river to undo last week’s work. They made us spend an hour in the river.
So instead I says: look, boss, this lot is ticked off ‘cos
they worship some bloody great lizard they think is a god, how about we
convince them Mister Silver over there is a god? So Silver puts on a show,
makes his eyes glow and starts spittin’ fire and whatnot, and we tell the head
lizard this guy’s a better god than their Great Monster. He doesn’t quite buy
it, says the Monster will devour them all if they stop worshipping, so we says,
look, this Great Monster lives around here, right? We’ll kill it and prove the
Silver Surfer is better. They don’t like it, but nobody’s man enough to try and
stop us. Or lizard enough, I guess. Whatever.
So that’s what we do. We follow the big T-rex tracks up to a
ridge a few miles off, see a few of the beasts on the way, lot of dead dinos.
They don’t bother us. (The rexes don’t, I mean. I guess the dead ones dint
either, ‘cept fer the smell.) We set up a few traps, pits and suchlike, ’cos
none of us wants to fight this thing mano a monster. Then we look around the
hills til we find a huge stinking cave with lots o’ dino footprints around. Now
here’s what we do next: one of us climbs up above the cave and gets ready to
push a bloody huge rock off as soon as the beastie comes out, another heads
into the cave and sets up a big fire to smoke the beast out. Few minutes later
we hear a big roar and the Great Monster charges out, fifty feet tall and on
fire and roarin’ bloody murder. We drop the rock on him, pour some alcohol and
suchlike, and after a minute it keels over. So we chop him up and haul the good
bits back to the village.
Now, I can’t read lizard faces worth a damn, but I’d say
there were pretty shocked. Their shaman fellow gives the Silver Surfer ‘is
feather hat, there’s a feast, they agree to whatever we ask for.
Oh, and the tyrannosaur flambe was bloody good.
That’s the story.
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