Gnome Story: Lump

Leonardo Uthar Marvelo PaTooka, but you can call me Lump.

Holilandra Unduli Marvelo PaTooka was a Deep Gnome enchantress with a gift for dream magic. Her power gave her the ability to influence not only her own dreams, but the dreams of others. It took decades for Holilandra to learn to control her gift and she was driven away from more than one settlement within the Under Burrows because of the nightmares that radiated from her troubled mind. She learned to stay on the move, traversing the world below the surface, rarely seen by anyone in the waking world. Throughout the years many have seen Holilandra in their dreams. She was a sight many wish they could forget.

Her hide was a patchwork of various shades of gray, that blended with the stonework tunnels she called home. Squat and thick bodied, she looked much like two rocks stacked upon each other, legs and arms being an afterthought in her creation. Large misshapen ears protruded from her head, a nest of white bristles sticking out from each ear hole. Her nose was so large that it dropped in front of her mouth letting only the edges of her lips and jutting canines be seen. But it was her eyes they remembered, for if her hide was like living stone, her eyes were like liquid emeralds touched with onyx pupils. Her eyes spoke of loneliness and the madness that her seclusion had earned her.

As luck or fate would have it, Holilandra happened upon a sleeping dragon, as she explored Rojala's underbelly. In a moment of brilliance, or madness, she concocted a delightfully devious and ambitious plan. She would steal the one thing more precious than a dragon's gold. She would steal his seed.

With all the focus she could muster, Holilandra filled the dragon's dreams with his most erotic fantasies. For years she lived among the sleeping dragon, never bothering the amassed horde of riches within the lair. Her singular focus was the great black dragon, keeping him asleep and wrapped up in the dream of her making. Her efforts were rewarded, and eventually the dragon spilled that which she sought. She thanked the dragon and the Dream as she gathered up the gift in a clay pot. She left the dragon's lair but not his dreams and as she took in the stolen seed, she made him dream of sons.

My name is Leonardo Uthar Marvelo PaTooka, but you can call me Lump. My mum gave me a big name, she had big expectations of me. After all, she had to seduce a dragon just to have me. And let me tell you seducing anything can't be an easy task for me mum.

She was the first to call me Lump, me mum, and I think I might've been a great disappointment to her. She wanted the son of a dragon, a son born of magic and the Great Dream. Instead her thirteen months of agonizing discomfort delivers nothing more than the only gnome uglier than mum. Me.

Mum reminded me all too often that I wasn't what was intended. I had no magic, I couldn't even dream-walk, a trait mum had ever since she could remember. She would fill my dreams with greatness, with all the wonders that I was not, in the hopes that one day I could live up to her expectations. She was not so pleased when her dream became reality.

I had, once again,caught what mum called "craggy belly" when your insides feel like they're full of jagged rocks and bubbling acid. Mum assured me that it would pass, it didn't. The pain grew worse. Eventually Mum grew annoyed with my moaning; I felt the not so gentle push of mum's magic, my eyelids drooped and fluttered for but a moment. My gut twisted with pain, any notion of sleep was forgotten, and I wailed. My eyes flooded over with acidic tears that left a trail of gross blisters in their wake.

Mum rose from her chair, all curse words and threats (mum's bedside manner left much to be desired). Mum radiated the need for sleep as she approached me intent on laying her hands upon me to heighten the effects of her magic. Her power battered against my will, my eyes closed. I felt her calloused fingers press against my head from my temple down my jawline. Her thumbs pressed against the center of my forehead. "Sleep!" She commanded me, with all the focus of her gift. Mum's thumbs burned with the cruel touch of acid, she withdrew her thumbs and watched in morbid horror as my third eye was born. A seam of acid bubbled and drew a crude outline of an eye within the center of my forehead. The lid opened with a painful rip of dissolved flesh. The eye that burst forth was draconian in nature and radiated nothing but loathing for Mum. She recoiled from the acidic bite and the loathing with equal hurt.

My hands closed around her head, propelled by a will far superior to mine. "NO!" I shouted in a voice not my own, right before I vomited acid on my Mum for the first time. She was able to avoid the brunt of the acidic bile that spewed from my mouth, I only melted away portions of her face. She wasn't much of a looker, my mum, and her pride of having a son born of a dragon outweighed her meager vanity.

We had tapped the well of magic Mum wished on me at my conception. Yet we discovered early that my father's magic held a certain hatred for Mum, and each time my dragon eye opened, my first attack always targeted her. Luckily mum is a nimble old witch and she learned to keep her distance while I practiced. Still my magic came with a malicious price and it became too dangerous to use around mum. I left the Under Burrows, to become a great sorcerer, something worthy of my dad's blood and my mum's dreams.