The Sleeping Giant

Three months ago

“So why do you want to hire us? Do you think there are ancient Lizardmen artifacts there?” Yuqal'Cho-ax asked.
“If there was, would I invite you? I don’t want to get atwixt a Rango and some handle-less obsidian dagger or some other worthless relic. I know your kind get as mad as hornets and treacherous as goblins when your ancient 'treasures',” said the Hetrek the dwarf.
The larger skink bristled at the insult, his had hand instinctively reached for his empty holster before remembering they agreed to disarm for this meeting deciding to just hiss and scowl. The skink priest gave his friend an admonishing look and Kai'ax softened his expression, but not by much.
“You rangos aren’t the only folk with ancient ancestors. My employer believes this might have some elven or human artifacts from the World that Was.”
Kai’ax failed attempt to give a polite smile gave away to a look of genuine confusion.
“So why hire two Rangos?” he asked the suspiciously well-dressed human.
The dwarf shrugged the shoulders rippling his silk suit, the fanciness of which didn’t match his haggard facial features and scarred callous hands suggesting a far more humble origin. Hetrek took a sip of coffee. His eyes had an intensity that suggested he was off-kilter or perhaps he had too much coffee. The skink was politely sipping the coffee offered to him, but decided he might be better off without it.
“It’s mainly for theater. The area has a bad reputation, the workers believe the site is haunted. You two Rangos have a reputation for taking character of weird critters. It will make the superstitious men feel safer if you cut a figure there, but you can stay in the backseats”
“And how much are you willing to pay for our backseats performance” Ka’ax asked.

***********
Two weeks ago
Kai’ax sat under a shady tree on a hill over-looking the excavation site. He was sipping water and cleaning his rifle for the second time today while his Culchan hid her head in a burrow trying to catch a rabbit. Not too far away from the excavation site were the three small tent cities. The dwarves refused to camp next to the goblin workers or maybe the goblins refused to be near the dwarves. Either way, the humans were in between. He flicked a fly off his feathers and noticed his friend approaching.

Yuqal'Cho-ax walked up the hill.

“We shouldn’t have taken the job. I think that dwarf is cross-grained,” Kai’ax said.
“Maybe he is, but we are essentially being paid to do nothing,” his friend replied.

“The crew found more artifacts today.” The priest told his friend.
“Broken spears, rusty shields, or rusty swords?” the larger skink asked indifferently.
“Helmets and axes. Relatively intact. Randolph, the human from back East thinks this might have been a site where elves and dwarves fought in ancient time. Something about ‘the War of the Beard’.” The priest replied.
“War of the Beard?” I know dwarves are proud of their facial hair, but they ancient dwarves and elves fought a war over beards?” the warrior asked
“Milk drinkers have fought over stupider things,” the priest replied.
“True, why bother digging this up?” Ka’ax asked
“Some collectors will pay good coin for ancient relics of the World that Was.”
“It better be real good coin. That dwarf is paying us, his own bulldozers, and half a hundred workers. He ain’t no Lordroid Goldman. His pockets have got to be nearing empty.” Yuqal'Cho-ax
“We he hasn’t stopped paying us yet, so we can stick around.” Yuqal'Cho-ax
“If we don’t die of boredom.

***********
One Week ago

The workers had really hit the motherlode of ancient artifacts, they seemed to be getting more dwarfy and less elfy the further the men dug. They amassed piles of assorted weapons. Meticulously sorted into specific piles by type. He was especially interested in the old muskets. Primitive rifles with very large bayonets on them. Almost impractically large.

Ka’ax picked one up and examined it.

Randolph seemed scandalized responding with his ridiculous Old World accent.

“Mister Saurio, please don’t touch that! You might damage it!”

The skink just scoffed.

“This was sitting in a hole for thousands of years and pulled out of a rocky pit by goblins and you are worried that my feathery digits are going to break it.”

One of the dwarf funders of the expedition just laughed.

“Oh my ancestors built things to last and take a beating. I wouldn’t worry, Randolph. The skink is not going to harm it. One ol’ fire glaive is not going to matter much anyway.” The dwarf said.

Kai’ax kept handling the odd weapon. He tried to mime firing it.
“Definitely an old musket, but it couldn’t have had much accuracy, probably did most of their fighting with the blade part.”


“I didn’t think the dwarves had any black powder weapons during the War of the Beard, accurate or otherwise.” Randolph exclaimed.
“Who said it is the War of the Beard? Just because we got dead elfiedears and dwarves in the same place don’t mean it’s the big war. They had small grudge wars all the time in ancient days.”

A goblin found a metal sheet with some runes on it. He sheepishly presented it Randolph and scampered away. The Easterner examined it for several minutes.

“I don’t recognize these runes.” He finally said.
“That kind of looks like a cow.” Ka’ax blurted out.

A smile flashed across the dwarf’s face, but we quickly hid it.

“Yeah, I think it is a cow. The dialect is ancient but I think is an old quarter master’s report. That worn out rune was probably a number saying how many head of cattle they had.”

Another goblin scurried over.

“Sirs, We’s found a big metal hand.”

The dwarf smiled big at this.
“Show me,” he said grinning with delight.

***********
Today

The workers had dug around the hand and eventually unearthed a giant metal man. Though sideways, the metal giant measured twenty-three and a half feet from head to toe. The bottom third of its body was still in the dirt. The metal man was exquisitely detailed, wearing ornate ancient dwarf style armor, but his face was a featureless plane.

About half the workers were digging through the rocky, clay rich soil. The others were on break, but most were sticking around to gawk at it. Randolph had his nose buried in a book. He put it down suddenly and ran towards where Hetrek was standing supervising the digging.

“Hetrek, sir! We must stop the excavation at once! I translated the rune!”

Everyone stopped what they were doing to look at the commotion. Hetrek’s eyes flared briefly but he replaced it with a mask of polite curiosity.

“Oh?”
“It’s the symbol of Hashut, god of the Chaos Dwarves?”
“Bosh! There is no such thing as Chaos dwarves, they never existed. The ancient dwarves distrusted magic so much that they forced those with a talent for it into exile and falsely labeled them followers of Chaos. The ancient dwarf wizards fused magic and metal to make wonders the world has never seen. Blades that never dull, trains that required no tracks and no coal.”

The dwarf gestured at the partially submerged metal man.

“Magnificent metal men to serve as their laborers.”

Randolph sputtered incoherently and pulled out a pendant of Sigmar’s hammer.

I didn’t think that human was religious. The skink priest mused to himself.
“You speak blasphemy, sir! We must stop this excavation at once.”

The haggard dwarf sighed.

“I didn’t really think you would buy my explanation.”

He blew three staccato blasts on a whistle around his neck. The human bulldozers as well as about a quarter of the workers (who seemed to be in cahoots) descended on the mass of people and they started clubbing dwarves, goblins, and men with the butts of their rifles or firing warning shots to herd them into one place while the two skinks just gawked. The mad dwarf turned towards them.

“You were supposed to kill the Rangos first! You were only supposed to take the other alive.” Hetrek shouted as his minions but the skinks reacted faster.

Kai’ax regretted not packing his heaviest irons on his person, but he pulled his six shooter and began firing at the thugs. Yuqal'Cho conjured a lightning bolt and threw it at Hetrek but it rolled off of him like water off a duck’s back. The haggard dwarf revealed a hidden charm around his neck and smirked
Kai’ax downed two of mad dwarf’s bulls but missed with four of his shots. A few bullets came his way, but no one was especially accurate in the panicked confusion. He wondered if it was a coincidence the worshiper of the bull god’s hired men were nicknamed “bulls” but he didn’t have time to ponder this. He was out of bullets and their enemies were regrouping.
Yuqal'Cho summoned a magical fog and the skinks fled towards their Culchans in the confusion.

Most of the workers were near the metal man in the ground, but not all of them, the two skinks warned as few humans and dwarves on the outskirts and told them to find a horse and hightail it while the skinks mounted their Culchans.

They heard a distant shout of Hetrek. “These are not fueled by coal but by blood!” followed by the death screams of goblins, dwarves, and men alike.

Kai’ax tried to rally the fleeing men.

“I know we all want to get gaited, but as much as I want to put distance between us and those madmen, we need to grab some food and water first. No sense escaping with our lives only to starve in the desert.”
Two skinks, three humans, and two dwarves had hastily gathered as many provisions as they can loading up a donkey cart anxiously, when they saw the partially submerged man glow red like an iron on a smith’s forge and push itself up. A fiery evil face appeared on what was once a featureless surface.
Yuqal'Cho’s sharp ears heard the distant shout.
“Mighty K’daii, I have brought you back to life, now you must serve me!”
The sound coming from the metal monster was heard by all.

DWAAARF!

YOU SEEK MY POWER FOR YOUR OWN PETTY GREED, BUT YOU DO NOT SERVE MIGHTY HASHUT. NONBELIEVERS MUST BURN.

More death screams filled the desert air. Hetrek’s loudest of all.

“Now is the time to escape with our lives.” Yuqal'Cho said.
They rode as fast as they could.

Within a few hours, they lost sight of the glow of the thing that Hetrek called a K’daii, they didn’t stop riding till the horses were so lathered they were on the verge of collapsing.

A week later the skinks rode back alongside a hundred cavalry men. The men rode into a veritable bone Hetrek and his followers made a blood sacrifice of all of the goblins and most of the dwarves and humans to awaken the monsters. Vultures and flies feasted on their corpses. Not far where the fire charred corpses of Hetrek and his followers.

A blind man could have followed the deep tracks the K’daii left in his wake. They followed the tracks for about three miles before they found the metal monster silent, non-moving and bereft of its fire. Once again it was lying on its side.

A few of the men fired their carbines at it, but they didn’t even dent the sleeping giant.

“Cease fire!” the captain ordered.

He looked about nervously as if the shots would make it come alive, but it remained unmoving.

“So what do we do now,” the captain turned to the Rangos.
“That’s a stumper” Kai’ax said.
“I reckon we should bury it again and hope no one digs it up again.” Yuqal'Cho suggested.