He stood there at the edge of the treeline, looking down the hill at the field full of bodies in the pre-dawn light. He'd known it would be bad, but he was hoping that there would at least have been some survivors, some cluster of humanity huddling together holding out hope for a rescue. Even the horror of moans or screams or crying would have been encouraging.

The only sound came from the wind and a few birds singing to each other cheerfully a few trees away.

Stomach churning, but otherwise emotionally stunned, he made his way down among the bodies, stopping occasionally at faces he knew to check, fruitlessly, for any signs of life. After a moment he struck upon the idea of using his thermal goggles to look for discrepancies against the cold ground, and fumbled around in his bag until he got it out of its case.

A collection of writing fragments inspired by nightmares I have had.

Loopi Jaroo is a slightly insane bard I came up with some years ago and adapted to the online environment of Crimson Spire back in 2003. This is the parent node for all of the fragments of fiction I wrote about him. Some of the pieces refer to Arronell.

We were in a dark tunnel, 3 of us. Two ledges, on either side of dark rushing water beneath us. We were in an opening about a foot or two above one of the ledges. The ledge on the opposite side was about 6 feet below the one on the near side, and looked very treacherous. Below us, rushing through the water, was a horrible creature, perhaps twelve feet long, and three feet wide, with an alligator-like head riding above the water as it rushed through. The other two were also specialists, one man and one woman. We were carrying a fair amount of heavy gear, and armor that would float. I checked the maps. We had to go to a point downstream first, then back past where we started on the upstream side. It was going to be tricky. I looked down the tunnel a ways, and saw that the ledge on the other side flattened out quite well and would be easy to walk on.