Broken Chains

After deciding on the course of action, first was time for something else. Cursing. While sitting there, with his whole-body aching and the desk way too high to look on it, Puck began to curse his life, and the cavern he was in and the stones that hit him on his way into the cavern.

Just when Puck was about to call the desk in the middle of the room a bad example what happened when stupidity was paired with free time, he heard something. It was as if something or someone had spoken in the darkness.

With a high-pitched screech and a tearing agony of his muscles Puck jumped on his feet. And as Puck screeched another voice answered him in the same volume.

“Aaahhh, my ears, can this dirty, dirty thing please refrain from sullying this one’s ears?”

As Puck heard the voice the second time, his still confused brain suddenly ground to a halt.

“What was going on here?”, Puck thought. The voice seemingly came from atop the desk. But who, and more importantly why would anyone be on this cursed desk in this cavern in the middle of nowhere?

Puck slowly counted the seconds as now suddenly a silence stretched on between him and the mysterious other being on the desk. When Puck reached twenty, and that was anyway as far as he could possibly count, the voice suddenly spoke up again.

“Well, can you talk? Please be able to talk, I can’t imagine to be held by something that can’t even talk! It can’t be the language at least, my glorious self speaks in all languages at the same time, even the most disdainful ones.”

Puck, slowly realizing that the voice was talking about his glorious self when it said things like “the dirty, dirty thing” started to get very angry as he curled his hands to fists, his own claws digging into his flesh.

Without further thought he decided that he simply would throw the desk to it ‘s side, so that the one talking with him would fall down and become visible to him.

Now, for the time being ignoring the voice from above that keep on insulting him, Puck walked forward toward the desk on aching legs. Then, after a glorious windup, Puck kicked the desk with all he had.

But instead of the leg of the desk breaking of, or the desk falling to the side Puck only felt like his foot was breaking and he shrieked in pain again.

The voice from above seemingly also noted the development and snorted derisively: “Truly, my luck to be left in this grove for eons, only to then have a half sapient animal come and disrupt me.”

Puck, now also being angry on himself, started cursing loudly with all his ability while slowly reaching down to the very bottom of the leg of the desk before him. Then under great pain and an immense effort he finally managed to lift one side of the desk form the ground, and after some agonizing seconds of effort the desk slowly started to topple, the voice from above now joining Puck in his cursing efforts.

After the desk fell to the side, the surface of the table still was between Puck and the mysterious being and as such Puck slowly started to walk around the desk to finally see the originator of the voice.

But as Puck looked for who had fallen from the desk there was no small creature that had fallen from the desk. No, it was not as Puck had imagined, there was not one of the rare few lizards able to speak, neither was their one of the small ice fairies that liked to ensnare poor Gremlin’s and lead them into unknown tunnels till they didn’t know the way back.

No, slightly hidden among the leftovers of the nearly completely disintegrated tablecloth, something silver and shining looked out, and again it spoke.

“You, you, … how dare you attack this one? I am the great sword Zephyrian, and none can stand before me wan I’m swung by a might hand!”

Puck, getting more and more confused carefully sneaked toward the gleaming thing, and then, with a light touch and barely suppressed curiosity and fear he touched the gleaming thing with one of his claws.

After nothing happened, but another rant about something dirty touching it. Puck went on with his exploration as he had already learned in this short time to ignore the voice. Afterall, he was much too curious, whatever this was, he had never seen something like it.

With a few hurried movements Puck removed the rest of the fabric and as he saw what had been hidden beneath, he was not sure if he was elated, disappointed, or merely confused.

There, on the floor before him, fitting to size of the desk a weapon lay. At least Puck thought it to be a weapon as he had never seen anything like it before. Afterall he was only a Gremlin that used tools out of bone as weapons.

The gleaming thing Puck had seen at the start was a beautiful stone that had been imbedded on one side of the weapon where Puck thought one should heft the weapon.

But the rest of the object didn’t look as nice as the stone, everything seemed dark brown and slightly yellow with small flakes having fallen to the ground from its form.

As Puck further studied the object, no Zephyrian, the sword, as it had called itself, he started to become aware, that it likely hadn’t always looked like this, but that time had taken its tool.

After a while, where even the Zephyrian stayed silent Puck also spoke up. But instead of further insulting or cursing Zephyrian the Gremlin suddenly seemed a lot friendlier.

Perhaps even Puck himself didn’t knew why he wasn’t angry anymore. Perhaps the Gremlin saw someone that also had a hard history on his or its back, or perhaps he simply didn’t want to ruin any benefit he could perhaps still get from this situation.

Either way, as Puck spoke up the next time, he said the following: “Hello Zephyrian, the sword, I’m Puck the Gremlin, and just like you I like cursing.”