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06/11/09(Thu)03:59 No.4841024Lost Journal of Dimkin, Gnome of the Stump
Day 75
My battle with the rat left me feeble and incapacitated for nearly a week: I scarcely had the energy after the battle to skin the beast with its own teeth and make a bag from its bloody hide to carry back grain and rat meat to my gopher-hole home. Lapsing in and out of fever dreams, my only ventures outside during my period of weakness were to collect morning dew to quench my thirst.
It was upon one of these dew-collecting expeditions that I glimpsed a sight which even now I cannot fully believe. I had turned at the sound of a great creaking noise to witness the entire side of Blood Mountain twist and deform, stretching outward and revealing a yawning black cave of unnaturally straight and rectangular proportions. Awed and fascinated by this change in the mountains solid form I gazed into the cave, hoping for a glimpse of whatever strange force caused this rift in the mountainside.
What emerged was nothing less than madness made solid -- it was a Gnome, but not a Gnome. It stretched out from the ground, and though dwarfed by Blood Mountain it was nonetheless unimaginably tall. Its proportions were hideous and like nothing I had beheld before, with long spindly limbs that were each thicker than a full grown gnomes body, a huge red face devoid of beard & clothing (or perhaps skin) which shone with a riot of colors. This thing, this creature, strode out from the cave and beyond my sight as I sat paralyzed with awe by the dew drenched grasses.
I have not emerged since from this hole, though my lips are cracked and my throat screams for water. I had thought that fear was something for children or Under the Hill gnomes, but even as I write this I can feel it creeping into my heart and eroding my former unshakable pride. |
