Dust, Dust

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Súraumo's roar of agony echoes off the walls of the cavern as the Balrog's whip connects with Súraumo's maimed foot.  Although the injury is long healed, without the protective armor of scales, the flesh is tender and vulnerable.   Tears of pain course down his scarred jowl from his blind eye.  A haze of red blinds him temporarily as the pain sears through his foot and up his leg.  His head low, his maw open and panting from the pain, Súraumo casts around for the Balrog, but already the creature has pushed on ahead, and is rushing through the doors of the Temple. 

Uncaring of promises made and alliances forged, the old dragon launches himself forward, hobbling painfully on the injured foot, each step sending the rock around him shuddering and trembling from the awkward impact of his weight upon the stone floor.  The Balrog would die, and the Balrog would die NOW!   As he crosses the threshold of the Temple, his jaws are open, teeth gleaming in the dim light as he snakes his head forward and reaches for the Balrog.

Powerful legs propel him forward, pumping to bring him quickly to the temple, there, in the dense center of this level of the underdark, his own body providing all the light any surface creature would need by which to see. Though he has dwelled in darkness for long  centuries, a blackness that swallows the glow of his fire -- so complete that the passage of time had robbed him of all sensations of touch or smell as well.  His arms work in tandem with the motion of his body. He sends his whip flicking out, left and right and ahead of him, coiling about the necks of Drow both still rushing to their deaths in vain attempts to save the rest of their people  and those desperate to flee alive.  There is no conscious thought as he jerks the whip to snap their necks, as the blood and roasted flesh rises and fills the air.  

He rushes to the temple, heedless, thoughtless, of all else but the presence of she who summoned him.  She is inside, his blood sings inside him. She is inside, his need to be free of her exults, All the while, in some small corner of his being, he is a detached observer, wondering how it came to be that such a creature as he, who has prided himself on his intellect, his wit and his cunning,  can think, smell, sense, feel nothing now but the need to destroy this dark-skinned female who has entrapped him.

Súraumo's attention is completely focused upon the Balrog as he lurches into the Temple.  The impact of the blow, when it hits him as his jaws are just inches from the Balrog's head, is all the more powerful for its unexpectedness.  "A Spellcaster!" The thought shoots through his mind even as he reels beneath the power of the assault.  He roars his frustration and shame of having been caught as vulnerable as a hatchling in his rush to taste revenge. His feet scrabble on the stone floor, talons screeching against rock, as he struggles to maintain his footing.

Balrog

The Balrog rides his blood lust, his howling hatred for the Matron who summoned him and leashes him still, and his thoughts go no further than to find her.  The dragon is roaring, but dragons roar. As they entered the temple, the slaves made no attempt to halt their progress but scurried into ink dark corners.  Now the Balrog hears the thunderous slamming of the doors that were opened to them, and there is the sound of the rushing of feet and the thud of the dropping of a bolt into place. The Balrog gives a shout of joy.  The puny fools have thought to lock him in their sacred temple as if to cage a wild beast, but instead they have  closed the doors upon the Matron's destruction. Now he may pursue his goal without thought to their attempts to protect her.

Súraumo lurches awkwardly to the left  as another blow hits him from the hidden Spellcaster.  Desperately his eye darts around the chamber as he seeks the source of the attack.  The Temple is stark and plain and dimly lit.  A statue of their Goddess stands proudly on delicately carved arachnid legs in the center of the room behind a sacrificial altar.  The body of an unknown Dark Skin lies inert and bleeding upon the altar.  Clearly their unexpected arrival had interrupted some dark ritual.  Dark Skin priestesses are scurrying for cover behind their Goddess, clearly believing somehow that she will protect them.

But where is the Spellcaster?  Yes!  There!  Behind a pillar on the far side of the room Súraumo spies movement and lunges forward, his maw open and spewing fire-breath.  It is then that he is hit again by another powerful blow.  Too late he realizes there is more than one Spellcaster in the Temple.  Too late, as he is caught off-balance with his leap forward.  He lands awkwardly on his maimed foot. Weakened from the recent attack from the Balrog, the leg crumples beneath him.  Unable to stop his forward momentum, Súraumo crashes heavily to the floor, sliding forward, unstoppable.  His mighty shoulders collide with the statue with a sickening crunch, shattering those finely carved legs and sending it crashing to the floor in a cloud of dust and cinder and ash as the air is driven from his very lungs by the impact of his fall.

The Balrog casts his gaze about the room, a tongue flicking out to wet eternally dry lips.  There, upon the altar, is the lifeless form of one of their own, a male by appearances, the iron metallic smell of his blood mingles with the bodily odor of feces. The offering had fouled himself as he was sacrificed.  The fear he left curls  and roils about the room like the delicate scent of flowers blooming in Vana's garden. For a moment,  the Balrog sees not the blood stained altar, the befouled lifeless body, but the gardens of the Lady Vana, in Aman, as he remembers from his days, not as a creature of Fire and Death, but as a Maia, shining and so beautiful, it struck terror in the first come of the Children.  The Balrog, shakes his head to dislodge the image, looks up to see the one he came to find. The Matron, the she dog, the only thing that keeps him from his freedom.  She raises her arms and beckons him with a seductive curl of her fingers, and a satisfied expression on her face.  Try as he might, he cannot resist, he cannot defy.  His whip drops from his hand, and he shuffles forward. 

For all his prowess and intellect, his world narrows to the shape of her mouth, the words she  now utters which direct his steps.  He neither knows, nor sees, or hears the chain of happenstance events that sends the dragon to his belly, that dislodges the statue of Lloth.  Deaf, dumb and blind with only his hatred to fuel his awareness, he stands while the statue totters and then tips, crashing to the ground in a shower of marble .....right where the Matron had stood. 

Súraumo's vision dims as his lungs pump frantically for air.  His eye rolls as desperately he tries to keep track of what is going on around him.  As though through a fog he sees the Balrog drop his whip and start to move forward as meek as a lamb. Then, suddenly the creatures stands as though dumbstruck.  At last, gasping, his lungs begin to function again, and he can draw breath.  For a moment he continues to lie where he fell, all his senses extended to ascertain where his enemies hide.  It is then as the dust and smoke from his fall settle and clear that he becomes aware of feminine screaming and wailing.  He swivels his eye and sees Dark Skin females dashing from their hiding places as they rush forward.  For a moment he thought they were closing in to attack him, but then he realizes they rush to the far side of the destroyed statue.   For this small window in time no one is aware of, or cares about, the fallen dragon.

Súraumo stealthily gathers his feet under him, quietly assessing damage as he does so.  This shoulder, where it had impacted with the statue, is gashed from top to the lower joint and is bleeding freely,  although it is a shallow wound.  Under the gash, the muscles still work, albeit painfully.   Gently he flexes his maimed foot and felt a bolt of pain shoot up the leg.  Serious harm has been done there yet again.  Still, he knows well enough how to favour that leg. Centering his other fore-paw under him to take the full weight of his forequarters, with a whispered rustle of his scales against the stone floor, Súraumo lurches to his feet.  For long moments he stands stunned, blinking disbelievingly at the scene of chaos and devastation he sees before him.

Sound, motion, sight, smell, awareness came rushing back to the Balrog, all at once.  He stands rooted, blinking slowly, staring at the pieces and broken rubble that was once the statue of Lloth. The altar is buried beneath the marble,  the stone floor further cracked and broken beneath the wreckage. Slowly, the Balrog lifts a hand that a few moments ago would not obey him and flexes and curls the fingers.  Free!  He is free!  He breathes in the stone dust, fresh blood and congealed, rocking back on his heels.  Freedom smells like fear and death. Freedom tastes like blood and ashes on his tongue. Somewhere, beneath the wreckage that was the statue of the dark skinned Drow, the sounds of someone is mortal pain floats up, music to his ears. The Balrog bends down and digs through the stone and bits of the statue, finally lifting a part of the statue's upper torso and casting it aside to spy a delicate, blood stain dark hand.  HERS!  He roars his approval at the sight. 

He starts to reach down for the arm, thinking to wench it off the rest of the body, to hear her scream, once, for him, but he is distracted by the scraping and shuffling of the dragon. The dragon, yes. He turns his thoughts of revenge now to the Dragon and straightens up, Slowly he moves away from the statue and instead faces the creature who helped him to achieve this freedom.  His eyes drink in the wounded dragon.  "Now," he hisses, "Now, let's see who will gnaw whose bones this night." 

Súraumo narrows his eye thoughtfully as things shift in his mind.  All that he knew of the Balrog and the circumstances of his previous existence and summoning now combined with what he had just witnessed.  Hearing the creature's words, he knows he has only moments to act.  He stands no chance against the Balrog injured as he now is.  In a desperate cast of the die he chooses to throw his fate upon a guess.  A strong guess, but a guess nonetheless.

At the same time as he bunches the powerful muscles in his hind legs, he opens his maw and sends a stream of fire-breath arcing across the room into the group of gathered Dark Skins.   It would not serve his purpose if he defeated the Balrog only to have a Spellcaster defeat him in return.  Just as it seems that he had been deaf to the Balrog's threats, he unleashes that gathered power in his hind legs and lurches forward upon the remains of the statue, sending all his weight crushing down upon it.  There is a short, sharp shriek and then silence.

In the silence, the Balrog looks down at the rumble upon which the dragon has landed and back up at  Súraumo, his mouth open in undisguised surprise. In that moment, the Balrog has full possession of his faculties, and even as he hears  a rush of angry hot wind swirl  up from the ground at his feet, twisting this way and that, forming a circle that encapsulates him. He tilts back his head and gives a wordless, bone rattling shriek of hate, bitterness and impotent desire for revenge.  A thousand upon a thousand voices, disembodied, whispers, moans, curses their fate, laughs. The Balrog tries to step past the circle, tries to rush past the dragon, but that one brief moment of freedom, before the dragon extinguished the life of the Matron, is the only freedom he will ever have.

Beneath the Balrog's feet, the grounds shifts and shakes and a portal opens beneath him, a hole of darkness out of which grossly malformed legs, arms, and tentacles reach out, wrapping around the Balrog's fiery body and pulling him down, sucking him in.  His eyes lock upon those of the dragon, and they are filled with hate. "I will find you, Súraumo. I will tear you limb fro....."

His body disappears in the hole, his words lost.  And as quickly as the portal opens, it closes. The Balrog is home..again.

Súraumo lies panting upon the ruins of the Goddess Lloth, his maw slightly open and his tongue pulsating with each breath he takes.  The chamber is eerily quiet after the roaring torrent of sound that had accompanied the abyss reclaiming its own. At last the old dragon lifts his head, arching his neck to peer around the chamber.  Dead.  They are all dead.  His gaze is drawn to the spot where the Balrog had last stood and shouted his defiance.  "I will find you, Súraumo. I will tear you limb fro....." he had screamed.  In a gesture more reminiscent of a cheeky young hatchling than an ancient old warrior, Súraumo's ears twitch and flick in merriment. "You, Balrog, shall be doing nothing," he murmurs as he lurches painfully to his feet.

Careful to avoid the fallen rubble, the old dragon shambles forward.  Old, yes. Wounded. Most definitely.  Defeated? No.  In an ancient and primal show of defiance, Súraumo comes to stand over the spot where the Balrog had shouted his defiance. As the soft scales of his rear underbelly part, the old dragon lifts his leg and his voice is deep and prideful as he rumbles his final taunt as his fallen opponent. "Find this, Balrog, for it is all you shall ever find of this cunning old dragon."

With these words in an age old gesture of humiliation upon a fallen enemy, he sends spurts of hot, pungent urine squirting to the floor, uncaring that some splashes upon the fallen statue of Lloth and those buried beneath it. When he lowers his leg at last, although he may still shuffle to favour his injuries, still there is a new gleam in that malignant eye, a new way of holding his head. "I may be old bones," Súraumo thinks, "but I am still a warrior yet."

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