Chapter 4
As I woke up again, I was greeted by a much uglier face. The face that sneered down at me was a man, he had a beard that was tucked into his belt about three times but still reached to the floor. I was lying on a soft mattress with no bed underneath. When I say the man's, beard grew to the ground it was a lot of facial hair but for him it must have been quite easy to let his beard grow that long, seeing as he would probably only reach my hips.
"He's awake!!" The guy yelled with a deep voice obviously used to giving orders. "Easy lad, a hit like that should've put you out for at least another couple of hours." He said as he helped me up. "The one who hit you was my stupid troll friend there in the corner sniffling like a wee born babe." He continued, pointing to what at first looked like a huge boulder until it moved and showed its pockmarked face with loud moaning sounds coming from its lips.
"Oh dear, well I suppose this is a good thing." A man said. He had brown hair cut neatly, short almost military, a neatly trimmed beard with blue eyes. Oh, and he also had a brown horse as a lower body. "Young man I am Charles Nutmeg." He introduced himself, blushing as he said his last name. "Grungi please get our guest a glass of water I'm pretty sure he is thirsty." He ordered the guy who had woken me up. As Grungi left to complete the task he grumbled something about waterless mines and a troll named Sam.
"Quite sorry about the rude greeting, but Sam has a strange way of welcoming newcomers," Charles said as he looked around him as if looking for something. He trotted away beckoning me to follow. "It is quite unfortunate that your first visiting station was the Med bay but I'm pretty sure you'll enjoy yourself here at 'Ancients', although I must warn you, do stay away from the lava pits and landmines." He said, somewhat to himself.
My head was not spinning, but now I was sure that I must have passed out in my room after Jackson probably gave me some of his 'special Brownies'. Well, that's what he called it, but it was just brown sludge that tasted awful with drugs that he got who knows where to take you sky-high. So this is probably just a strong batch.
We heard a loud curse and a lot of words that would probably have made a lot of dwarves' blush to the tips of the bushy beards. I was pulled back to my current reality. We turned just as Grungi came up with a tankard of what looked like beer and two glasses, one full of water, the other empty, behind him there was a bunch of disgruntled looking women in nurse uniforms staring daggers into his back as he carelessly bombarded through the med bay. As Charles saw the beer he gave a disapproving look at the dwarf.
"What? The beer is for me." Grungi grinned and winked at me. He didn't even try to use the glass he grabbed the tankard, said cheers and started chugging. He drank the entire tankard in the time I took two swigs of my glass of water. He then looked straight at Charles burped the loudest burp I had ever heard, smiled and walked away laughing at Charles' obvious discomfort. "That is your best introduction to the dwarves. Believe me, he is one of the nice ones" said Charles as we walked on.
We continued the tour of the place, it was situated on an island somewhere on the coast of Scotland. Charles described it as a safe place for all supernatural creatures. He kept calling it a school, but it was rather obvious it was more of a city than anything else. The place could easily make Oxford, Cambridge, MIT, Harvard, and Yale look like middle schools. The place was huge. It had its own mountain range, lake, racetrack, library (the size of two football fields), and farmlands, shooting range and what looked like a saloon.
Charles was talking about the various school activities, but I was not listening until I was yanked away from a giant hole in the ground with lava in it. "Kid, I told you, be careful," Charles said. "Is that a real salon?" I asked. "Ah, yes the vampires and fairies demanded it, they need to look their best to work their best. Or that is what they say." Charles answered while shrugging, he permanently spoke more to himself than to anyone else, he seemed used to the idea that nobody listened.
"You stupid, dumbass dwarf!!" We heard someone scream just as a dwarf flew over our heads and hit the wall behind us taking half of the wall with him as he crumbled to the ground.
"Well hello, newcomer…I'm Thrin ... could you maybe help me up." The dwarf mumbled through a mouth full of plaster. Just as we helped him up a guy came storming towards us and planted himself firmly in front of Thrin. Thrin started fumbling with what looked like a hammer at his side. The other dwarves didn't even try to help him, they couldn't even stand up straight, and they could barely stop laughing. "You idiot, I asked for a pearl necklace this is a diamond." The guy screeched holding up a necklace that looked like it could easily cost a couple of thousand pounds, without the giant diamond in the centre.
Before Thrin could get hurt any further Charles cleared his throat and the guy holding Thrin by his beard dropped him, he looked at me and sneered.
"They truly are scraping the bottom of the barrel nowadays aren't they, what's a scarred medical reject doing here?" Charles tried to be civil and get the guy to apologize, which in turn just egged the asshole on. "Whatcha gonna do, oh mighty stallion? You gonna step on me?" I had never initiated a fight and I have no idea what happened, but the next thing I knew my fist was firmly planted in the guy's face. The benefits of having trained on a human-sized bag of meat for the past couple of years showed immediately. The guy, being about a head shorter than myself, flew through the air, he crumbled into a heap and stayed there.