! written by u/NoGoodIDNames on 2013-03-08

He came out of the desert.

In the twenty years I've been chief, not a single thing has come out of that desert that wasn't about to blow me up or eat me. So I see something moving out there and I get everybody up in their houses. We are battening down the hatches as he gets closer and all of a sudden I realize that this one is different. He's human, or something close. He's certainly not like us. How can he even smell with a nose that small?

We send Frank out to see what he wants. Frank comes back with a handful of emeralds and no clothes. "He wanted armor", he says.

So every now and again this guy comes out of the desert to trade. I send a few guys to see what this guy is doing out there. They come back with stories about a house that gets bigger and bigger, about strange clanking and clicking that comes up out of the ground. I decide it's best to leave him alone.

But then it happens. This guy comes in one day stacked in steel and looking to trade. And it just so happens that he runs into Ed, the stingiest asshole in town. Well, obviously Ed tries to scam the dude, and he gets angry. And suddenly this stranger stabs Ed through the goddamn chest! Out of fucking nowhere!

Well, we're all too stunned and scared to do anything, so we're just standing there frozen until he leaves. But after that, we're pissed. We have rules around here, and he broke them. He kills a man, we get his Xp.

We suit up. Sure, he's armored to hell, but enough of us swarming him could work, right?

We get to his house in the desert after about half a day, plenty of time to kill him and get back before the spiders get antsy. His house is huge. I had no idea something that big could be built on sand. And sure enough, there's this clacking and ticking from under our feet. I don't know what it is, but it sounds nasty. We go in through the front door.

Halfway down the hall way things go bad. Fred trips the wire going in first. The whole goddamn floor opens up and he falls in. It's not too deep, he isn't hurt by the fall, but then the floor closes again. On his head.

Well, by now we're all screaming, and suddenly we realize just how long the hallway is to the door. Bill gets there first, just in time to look up at the lava coming down. Me and Ted back away, but we can't escape Bill's scream. We go tearing off down a side corridor.

Ted's gone. I don't know where we got split off, but i thought i heard him scream. Me, I ran into a room full of zombies with some sort of cage in the middle. Running as fast as I can, I see some kind of purple light. Well, it can't be worse than where I am now.

I'm in hell. It couldn't possibly be anywhere else. The heat rises up from the lava, the air so thick I can barely breathe. What's that? Some kind of ungodly chirping. I can see something white...

I knew the only things that came out of the desert would eat me or blow me up. I guess the stranger was no different.