Prejudice

This is a short story roughly set in Bill's Universe.

Here it is:

It
was a forest of unearthly quiet. No birds sang, no animals called. Only the
sound of the wind in the trees and the occasional stream broke the heavy
silence.

Four lonely figures approached the edge of a small clearing. From their vantage
point they could see a temple, rising up from the surrounding elephant grass,
its ziggurat steps reaching higher than the tops of the trees.
The trees themselves were tall evergreens, but still retained a strange alien
quality, something they had become used to whilst trekking through this region.

One of the figures, the tallest and heaviest of them, threw back his poncho and
took a map from his belt. The others crowded round him.
'Well, this is the temple then, from here we have maybe five more miles before
we reach the dungeon.'
'Five miles!', cried the woman at the tall mans left shoulder, 'My feet are
killing me as it is!'

The man looked her over. She was dressed in a long black figure hugging robe
and held a slim wooden staff. On her feet she wore high heel boots.
'I told you your footwear was impractical, Engloria', muttered the man.
The smaller figure beside her, a halfling, looked up and said,
'Well, I must say I like the temple a lot. I think I recognise the features as
well, early Jaloria, Jasper Dynasty. Lovely. Is there anything of any value in
it? But I hope there are no monsters!'
The final figure stepped forward, a tall and slender black skinned man, dressed
in a suit of pale green leather armour and replied,
'Handor, I declare, your cowardice is only matched by your greed.'
'Hmff!', snorted the diminutive Handor, 'And you are just a goodie-two-shoes Kraddick.'
The first man rolled up the map and put it back under his belt,
'We have no time to explore I'm afraid, this is just a landmark - we have to
get on, the sky is bruising and we may be forced to camp. I want to get to the
dungeon before nightfall.'
'Well, you will be responsible for my blisters then Aggr, because I don't think
I can take another step!'
Aggr muttered under his breath as he pushed his poncho back into place,
'Can't you cast a spell, or what about Kraddick? He's a cleric after all.'
'Never mind', she grumbled, 'I will just take them off.'

They turned and walked away from the temple and were soon lost from view in the
deep dark forest.
Unobserved by anyone, the temple slowly faded away until it popped out of
existence all together. Then the clearing itself seemed to vanish as trees
gradually began to appear and soon it was if there had never been anything
there at all.

The adventurers continued walking, following no path, but just weaving through
the trees. The evergreens were tall and evenly spaced so there was plenty of
room for them to move in.
Engloria, true to her word, had removed her boots and was walking bare foot on
the pine needles.
'I love the smell of this place.', she remarked.
Kraddick sniffed,
'Hm, I detect a blend of organic compounds, chlorophyll and the usual inert
gases.'
'Trust you not to get it Krad', she shot back.
'Get what?', he replied evenly.
'Well, your kind would never understand what is so nice about the smell of a
pine forest.'
'My kind?'
'Huh! Stop answering everything with a question!'
Kraddick was silent for a moment but couldn't resist repeating his last remark,
'And what is my kind exactly?'
Aggr shot the woman a warning glance.
'Don't worry Aggr!', she laughed, 'I won't break the mood, as it were. Your kind
then, let’s see. Black skin, pointy ears, white hair, what kind would you be? A
dark elf? A drow? You have no room for compassion, no room for love, no room
for life!'
'Maybe this is true', came the immediate reply ,'But then I have no room for
envy, hate or anger.'
'Guys come on.', said Handor, waving his hands around ,'We came down here to
get away from all this. Erm... down from the city I mean. Don't start all over
again.'
Engloria folded her arms in peeved silence.
'When do we eat anyway Aggr? I'm starving!', continued the halfling.
Aggr laughed, 'You ate two hours ago!'
'That was just a snack. And I missed elevenses this morning.'
'You halflings. All the same.. always thinking with your bellies.'

As they continued walking Kraddick joined the conversation again and said,
'Hmm, another prejudice. Interesting that even here we see it all the time.'
'Whatever Kraddy, I'm hungry is all..'
Engloria sighed,
'Ye gods, much as I hate to say it, I agree with Aytee...erm I mean ..
Kraddick. For the last two days we have done nothing but bicker. Aggr is your
typical stupid barbarian...'
'Hey!'
'...Kraddick is a cold hearted dark elf, Handor is a greedy halfling.'
Handor laughed and said,
'Well what does that make you?'
'Don't even think it, shorty', she replied with acid dripping from every word.
Aggr sighed,
'Well listen guys, maybe this isn't as much fun as you'd all hoped. But I like
it out in the forest, down here. It's beautiful. Can't you just humour me?'
'I agree with the Captain! Besides, there is a dungeon full of monsters waiting
to be liberated from their treasure at the end of it!'
Aggr smiled, 'That's right, Handor. Down here the name is Aggr though, I will
let it go just this once. It doesn’t speak well of us that we can’t leave our
prejudices behind, but we have things to do here. The dungeon is the hidden
camp of the orcish slavers and we have sworn to destroy them. Let’s have no
more argument.'

Finally they arrived at the dungeon as night fell and cautiously approached the
cavern entrance.
The way was barred by a walled in door, set right into the rock face.
'Hm, no surface guards, they must be confident no one would ever find this
place. Anyone tired? Or shall we continue?', asked Aggr.
They all signalled a willingness to continue,
'Engloria, you do the honours then.'
The sorceress nodded and said,
'Everyone step back please!'
They all did so and she raised her arms and cried,
'SHAZAM!'
Suddenly a blaze of fire leapt from her fingers and flew towards the door. With
a mighty crash it flew from its hinges to end up a dozen yards from the
doorway, a smouldering wreck.

As they carefully stepped into the dungeon Aggr looked at the sorceress and
said,
'Shazam?'
'Oh shut up. You love it.'

As they descended further into the dungeon they encountered more barred doors
that Engloria destroyed, and simple traps that Handor used his skills to
disarm.

Their first violent encounter came after a long decent into the gloomy darkness
of the dungeon. They entered a large empty stone-walled room just as a troop of
angry looking orcs entered it from the other side.
Spying the adventurers they rushed to attack.
They appeared to be typical dungeon guards. Green skinned, pig faced and
dressed in a variety of ragged clothes and bits of armour. They carried either
twisted clubs or rusty old swords and each of them had a wooden shield with the
symbol of a coiled snake on it.
Aggr drew his long bastard sword from his belt and held it aloft crying,
'Handor, protect the casters!'
'Why must I always protect the skirts?', the halfling muttered to no one in
particular as he took two knifes from his belt.

As Aggr charged forward and met the first orc head on a fireball seared right
past his head and took out a green skinned attacker beside him and sent it
flying back into two others.
'Thanks Eng!' , Aggr he shouted as he moved on to tackle another foe.

Aggr hacked at another orc, taking its arm off at the elbow, then leapt back as
three more came directly at him. They traded blows for a while and the skirmish
wove back and forth across the room, orcs running everywhere trying to land a
blow on Aggr.
And the blows were landing, although he had felled four, he had several
bleeding wounds.
'How about a heal!?', he cried desperately.

A cry came back, 'Busy here!'

Aggr sketched a glance over his shoulder. Kraddick and Engloria were holding
off a mob of angry orcs. Where was that halfling?
Just then he saw a sudden movement in front of him and two orcs went down,
throwing daggers protruding from their necks. With a cry of ‘Hah!’, Handor, who
had suddenly appeared at his side, drew two more daggers and leapt off into the
fray again. True to character anyway thought Aggr, he always wants to be in the
action.

With renewed vigour, the barbarian pressed the attack. As the fighting ebbed
and flowed he tried to make his way back to the sorceress and the cleric at the
entrance.

'You stupid thing! Why don't you heal me?' , he heard Engloria cry.
'I am currently occupied,' came the dispassionate reply from the cleric.
'I'm dying here! I'm bleeding!', pleaded the woman.
Aggr tried to look over his shoulder to see what sort of trouble they were in
but his opponents were keeping him too busy.
'Right that's it, this isn't fun anymore, that stupid android isn’t healing me
deliberately. Captain, can we have a time out?'
Aggr growled, 'For god's sake Carol, try and stay in character.'
'It’s him! That dumb robot isn't healing me!'
'I am an autonomous self-repairing fully sentient android. I have rights under
the 303 charter and it is considered racist to refer to me as a robot.'
‘How can it be racist? You’re a hunk of metal!’
‘Actually I am made up of a complex structure of polymerised plastics and..’
Aggr shouted, 'Right that’s it!'
He waved his arms around, saying, ‘Cancel code omega, Betty.’

The orcs vanished. Then the room vanished. Then they were suddenly back in the
forest. It was still night and a glorious display of stars hung across the sky.
Aggr looked up. Although he couldn’t see it, his ship, a needle-configured
Valkeryie class corvette was up there, keeping a watchful eye on them.

Handor came trotting over.
'Awww, I was enjoying that. What happened?'
'What do you think?', grunted Aggr, 'These two started arguing again!'
'I would like to point out captain that I was not the first to break character.'
'You liar!', came the bitter reply, 'He was deliberately not healing me!'
'I was engaged against an enemy.'
Aggr raised his hands to silence them.
They all stayed silent as the illusions on them, beamed down from Betty above
faded away. It always felt slightly embarrassing to them, as if caught
undressing.
Aggr’s poncho remained but his other clothes faded away to reveal a loose
fitting tunic and combat trousers. Kraddick's armour faded into a tight fitting
set of overalls, his skin changing colour from black to a pasty white.
Engloria and her revealing black robes faded to reveal a slightly chubbier
woman underneath, dressed in a T-shirt and black jeans. She was still bare foot
though, her boots slung over her back.
Handor faded away to reveal a small hairy creature of some alien origin. With
long horns, gingerish hair and a somewhat bovine expression he looked like a
tiny humanoid highland cow.
'Carol, AT-22, Enough with this endless feud already. I suppose it was too much
to ask that we might get a whole adventure done without the usual fights
starting. When we found this planet I had hoped .. well these forests are just
perfect for the Orc Slavers Campaign Module.'
'Yeah', grunted the hairy alien that had once been Handor, 'Less Ex-Pee for
them I think Cap'n, as punishment. I was just eighty-five points away from
levelling as well!'
'Well, Xrgot, we can start another game next week I guess. But not here, we
need to be out of this system by tomorrow to make our next warp window.'
The Captain gave his medic and systems officer one last silent look then said
to the air,
'Betty, we're done, take us back in would you old girl.'

All four of them then glowed blue for a brief second and vanished with a sharp
pop of inrushing air.

One last voice which might have been saying,
‘..I liked the temple particularly Captain, I think I even know the database
Betty got it from…’,
wafted on the air, then the forest resumed its eternal silent once more.