by J.D. Firneno
The morning was gray and cold, covered by a blanket of pregnant dark clouds which appeared to undulate in the sky and gathered in the far corners of the boundless horizon. Dorkuss Do-Nerdin could sense the imminent rain in the moist air, could smell it with his heightened bright smelf senses. For he was no ordinary smelf! This was Dorkuss Do-Nerdin who could sense a storm that was yet hours away. He could predict the weather with such unwavering perfection that his friends, especially Rondor the snerfling, often called upon him for his services as not only a super legendary awesome warrior but as a meteorologist too – which was a profession that wouldn’t be coined and created for thousands of years.
Dorkuss completed the last sixty-five moves of the naked morning dance he performed each day as the sun climbed over the edge of the world, filling it with rich pinks and oranges. This was obviously not such a day, as the sun could not be located behind the sheet of thick cloud cover. But Dorkuss did not let that deter him and his intricate movie-like choreographed interpretive dance. He felt his manhood slap the side of each thigh as he moved, felt the sweat drip off the tip of his nose. He urinated while he was at it, and believe me, that too was a thing of beauty. In the past he had attempted to teach others the dance but had failed miserably, discovering only that other races in fantasy literature lacked the skill, agility and grace to complete even the first few steps.
It also depended on the class they chose. Barbarians and, believe it or not, Bards made absolutely horrible dancers, Dorkus had found, but that was a story for another time – a time for celebration and reverie, a time for mead around crackling fires, a time for wind through the trees of a campsite.
No, this was not such a time. For you see, a horde of dorcs were just over the mountain, laying claim to all that was in their path and destroying everything else. Dorkuss’s reconnaissance told him that there were as many as a two-hundred dorcs mustering strength until the night, when they would inevitably attack the nearby town of Breakwind Kale. And Dorkuss meant to put an end to that. Alone.
For he was no ordinary smelf! He could best a thousand dorcs with only his ghostly, probably invincible extra-planar pet as a companion.
And of course, he had his favored weapons, Connor and McGregor. Once he finished his super seductive naked interpretive reverie dance and made sure he was healed to full hit points and mana, he drew those weapons resting at his sides. Connor came first, a large magical club. Well, let’s be honest, it was simply the severed leg of a long-dead giant – but! – it was probably blessed by a 20th level priest or something. And Dorkuss was pretty sure the club also dealt ice damage. Pretty sure, yeah. Listen, that was almost 30 samey novels ago – I can’t remember so let’s go with that.
Then came McGregor, one of the mightiest weapons on the face of Whitemalenerdrus. It was a cane of the finest plastic, encrusted in fake multi-faceted jewels that caught the eye and dared to hypnotize if one looked too long at its splendor. Dorkuss found McGregor in the shite pile of a unicorn he was once bedding. He had never asked why the unicorn, who was at the time in human form of course, ingested such a thing but one unicorn’s shit is another smelf’s legendary weapon, he supposed. And so it was. The magical digestive tract of the unicorn had imbued the weapon with arcane properties best left to legend. One day, Dorkuss would write an entire first-person memoir of really depressing shit where he would cry about his friends and their perceived deaths on each page, but that was a story for another time.
Dorkuss focused his energies, clothed himself and gathered his gear for the coming lopsided battle.
On his feet were leather tap-dancing shoes which allowed him to, you know, tap dance in the middle of a fight. Very useful.
On his ankles he wore a couple of really cool multi-colored friendship bracelets. He really liked the blue one. They didn’t have any magical properties but, man, they looked awesome in the middle of his fighting-dance.
On his wrist he wore an Apple Watch. Go ahead and judge. It’s a sleek piece of wearable tech that helped Dorkuss remain focused during battle and assisted him in counting his steps.
Dorkuss averaged 100,000 steps per day, motherfucker. What do you average?
His armor, which he almost forgot to put on, was made of the finest hemp. Light as a feather but as strong as iron. Also imbued by some magical creature somewhere along the line. This is why Dorkuss was going to write this stuff down one day. His memory wasn’t what it was now that he was 299 years old and the star of almost 50 identical books. Shit, he had lost count at how many times his friends had died and came back. Good times. Good times. But that’s a lot of false mourning and manufactured sadness.
“I wonder what Kittie will get me for my 300th,” Dorkuss wondered aloud, a plume of icy breath leaving his perfectly sculpted smelf face. His breath, even first thing in the morning, was legendary and smelled of pure peppermint oil. “Hopefully some much needed sexy time. I haven’t been laid in three books.”
Kittie was the love of his life, a girl two hundred years his junior, but hey, he didn’t let that bother him. Age was just a number after all. He began to envision her flowing purple hair and all those pieces of metal she liked to punch through her ears and face. She even had them above her ass. Dorkuss reminded himself to ask her how she got them there but usually he became transfixed with her tramp stamp tattoo. He could see her toothless witty grin in his mind’s eye. He could practically smell her in the air –
But that was story for another time!
Dorkuss had a job to do and made his way up the mountain with the greatest of ease, barely breaking a sweat as he climbed the face of the rocks without the benefit of a rope.
As he reached the top he surveyed the area. A small army of dorcs indeed, sleeping and waiting for the night when they would strike again.
“I think not,” Dorkuss said to the camera and winked. It was kind of his line. Well, one of them.
Dorkuss reached into his bottomless pouch and retrieved his figurine. It was made of pewter and shaped to look like a man in a long flowing dark cloak with books and scrolls hanging off of his belt and a large magical staff in one hand. Wrong one. That was his D&D figure. He loved playing a warlock in 5e. He put that one away and grabbed the one he really wanted.
A figure of a small three-inch white worm, a maggot. He rubbed the figure vigorously until he could feel the heat building between his fingers and the figurine. Such a glorious feeling. He lost himself in the rhythm of it, that’s how good it felt. Waves of pleasure swam through his lean, athletic smelf body, forged by years of physical activity. “Come, Moonlight,” he said, his eyes clamped shut in the throes of pleasure building at the base of his spine.
A few minutes later the figurine spat out a dull-colored liquid from the tip of the maggot.
And a few minutes after that the liquid formed into… a three-inch maggot in the physical realm. He named it Moonlight. For reasons.
Here’s the thing: Moonlight wasn’t the most fearsome companion, sure, but he sure did know how to make an entrance and Dorkuss never started a battle without summoning his invincible pet. Nothing evened the insurmountable odds like a slow, slimy super short maggot. And if he was lucky, Moonlight might even take out a dorc’s toe or two.
Without further ado, Dorkuss began his signature death-dance of whirling weapons! The crowd went wild and more than a few readers probably went from six to midnight if you know what I mean.
I won’t bore you with a totally unnecessary description spanning 20 pages of the minutiae of this fight. Instead I’ll tell you how it ended. The same way it always does.
Dorkuss feigned a strike with Connor to the dorc’s right. The dorc raised his weapon to parry but no, Dorkuss was expecting that very move, and followed up with a combination strike from Connor’s quasi-twin weapon, McGregor. The magic plastic stick took the drooling dorc in the soft parts of his neck and felled the vile creature in a spray of blood that would make Tarantino jealous.
The field of battle was considerably thinned by this point, the dorcs numbering only 10. Dorkuss, for his part, sustained a scratch to his elbow but that was it. It would take more than a thousand dorcs to fell Dorkuss.
For he was no ordinary smelf!
From a distance Dorkuss saw a dorc leveling a nasty looking bow in his direction. He would have to close the distance between he and his attacker in short order if he was going to not do his best impression of a pin-cushion.
So he did the only thing any weapons-master smelf would do: he broke into a super awesome roll, Sonic-style and rolled right into the dorc’s knees, breaking them in two.
Then, after all the dorcs were dead and stinking, he jumped off the cliff toward his camp.
As he hit the ground he rolled once to absorb the shock of the fall.
Then he rolled again to absorb more shock.
He rolled once again to make sure all the shock was absorbed. I think it works that way anyway.
But remember, Dorkuss was no ordinary smelf!
He rolled another time.
And another.
And once more for good measure and to totally show off how legendary he is at rolling.
Damn.
Dorkuss gathered his camp and made way to the only place he knew he would have to go. I think it was a contract thing, honestly.
Back to the Undercave, where his story began all those years ago. He himself was quite exhausted at the prospect of seeing his brothers and sisters but there was no help for it.
There’s another novel on the way. It has a new title and cover, but you’ve read it before.
Disclaimer: They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery so before you grab the torches and pitchforks, let me say that I owe Salvatore and his writing a great debt: he converted me into a reader at the age of 16, and that’s no small thing. I’ll never forget the feeling of being completely swept away by a novel – something I didn’t think possible at that age.
I have, however, noticed a few things within the writing that makes my eyes roll more times than that legendary elf he writes about. And that is how this idea was born.
It’s all in good fun, and it was certainly a lot of fun to write.
Cheers.
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