This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.
The original was posted on /r/hfy by /u/Fontaigne on 2024-10-01 14:23:46+00:00.
Oh Ney shot
The eldest boy, Damon, retreated along the ridge onto the spur they had chosen for the ambush. The Dark Lord followed him, laughing, dark lightning sparking from the monster’s armor at every futile strike.
Damon turned and ran a dozen steps, opening the range… but not enough for the Dark Lord to change tactics. The creature merely followed, feet pummeling the red rock of the ridge at each step, an evil smile writ large across its distorted face.
Just a dozen more steps to the place… ten… three. Damon avoided looking at either of his siblings where they were concealed, continuing past them and spinning to throw a dagger that clanged off the Dark Lord’s helm and sparked off to land on the bare rock.
He backed a few more steps.
“Ah, then you are all here!” boomed the Dark Lord, stepping forward into the kill zone of their trap. “It will do you no good. Three are not one, and the prophecy says I will be defeated by the Chosen One.”
“You read it wrong. Now!”
Cables of steel and silver slammed from each side across the Dark Lord, not quite a net but not merely bindings.
“Do you know why we chose this place to capture you?”
The Dark Lord laughed, long and loud, as it stood to its full height and began to gather its power. Black and greenish lightning sparked along the cables. In places, they began to melt.
“It does not matter. I will melt this fluff, and then extract your souls for my pleasure.”
“Oh, but it does,” Werdria called from the right. She was the scholar among them. “These nets are grounded deep into this ridge, to the very Earth whose powers and children you have stolen.”
The Dark Lord’s laugh returned, and the glow increased…then both flickered and faltered.
The Dark Lord made a thoughtful noise, calming its efforts, and then examined the bindings. “Interesting… but ultimately futile. No matter how well grounded these nets, they are only nets, and the rock is only rock.”
Little Tito snickered from the left.
The Dark Lord brought the lightning back to a crackling green haze around itself, and began to stomp its feet, sending great cracks and fissures into the ridge below it.
Damon held his breath. Had Werdria been right, or were they about to die?
Another stomp. Another. The ridge shook. Damon heard Tito stumble and fall.
Another. The rock crumbled, and melted, and the Dark Lord suddenly sank half its height into the ridge. Then half the remainder.
The Dark Lord redoubled its efforts, and boomed out something incoherent as its mouth began to fill with dust and rock. Its eyes and ears remained momentarily above the ridge. A single word was intelligible,
“HHOOWW?”
Werdria smirked. "The ore under your feet is primarily magnetite. It greedily eats back all that you have stolen, and returns that to its mother.”
Damon continued. “For a thousand years, you have mispronounced what was written."
Tito, ever precocious, pronounced the Dark Lord’s doom as he danced a little jig. "The word was not English ‘won’, it was Japanese ‘oh-ney’.”
Werdria laughed as the creature’s head sank below the surface, yelling after the Dark Lord, “You were defeated by the Chosen Ridge.”