BOING!

“Oh, balls” Krugor said as he shook his head in disappointment. His giant fungus just touched the doors, not even scratching it a little and then bounced back like a dwarf after a good toss.

“They must’ve reinforced the doors pretty heavily. Who knew?”

As the mushroom slowly shrunk back to its original form and made its way back to the tip of Krugor’s staff, the trio of ostriches got quite restless. They shrieked, started flapping their tiny, useless wings around and began sprinting towards the reinforced doors.

“Guys, that wasn’t part of the plan!” the skeleton yelled as he began a pursuit of the birds.

”KRAAAAAAAAAGH!” all three of them roared in perfect harmony as they leaped towards the doors, heads back and legs straightened and pointing forward. Six ostrich-legs jump kicking the door proved a bit too much for the thing to handle, as it cracked and broke under the raw power of the birds. “What in the world..!?” one of the guards inside yelled as he noticed Philippe, Gaston and Antoinette storming the hallway. “Aack!” the guard screamed in agony a second later as Gaston had pinned the man to the wall with its powerful right leg against his chest.
As if they had rehearsed this moment many times before the other two birds spread out across the dungeons, Philippe going left and Antoinette taking a right turn, at the end of the hallway.

Krugor entered the building a few moments after the birds had entered it, his massive backpack making it difficult to do an effective sprint, and already the place seemed ransacked. The doors hung off their hinges, a passed out guard lay against the wall of the hallway and loose feathers covered the floor. “Stupid birds, they should’ve stuck to the plan. Now where do I go?” he mumbled to himself as he tried to follow their tracks. Reaching the end of the hallway he decided to take a right turn, hoping to catch a glimpse of one the birds. Maybe if he could mount one of them he could still finish the mission.

But going around the corner only revealed more destruction by the birds. Several of the doors on the left and right hand side of the corridor were broken down and a pair of torches had been torn from their rightful place on the wall. More guards laid squirming on the grey stone floor, covered by bird feathers. Damn, these birds don’t mess around Krugor thought to himself as he carefully moved through the corridor, avoiding touching the guards and fallen torches. It took him some time to reach the other side, as he frequently apologized to some of the guards laying on the floor, but as he neared the end he noticed descending swirling stairs. Not waiting around to see if there was another way out of there the skeleton made its way downstairs, trying to pick up the pace and skipping a few of the thick, stone steps here and there, he tripped over his own feet and tumbled down the massive stairs. The pots and pans on his backpack made so much noise the entire neighborhood would’ve be wakened by now. As he was somersaulting down the stairs Krugor tried to steady himself by grabbing unto anything he could hold on to. But it made no difference, the featherweight skeleton was being propelled by the weight in his backpack and with a loud smack he hit the stone floor at the bottom of the stairs.

“Son of a… I’d like to have a word with the mason who made these stairs. It’s a straight deathtrap!”

“Good thing you’re already dead then, skeleton!” a deep, thundering voice said.

As Krugor laid there, with his face on the floor and his backpack pressing on his neck and back, he realized that voice sounded eerily familiar. He could feel a big, strong hand placing its fingers around his skull and as the skeleton felt his body rising from the floor he knew it was over. “I’m going to enjoy this!” the bulky guard said and he threw Krugor over his shoulder, carrying him to what the skeleton knew was going to be a very tiny and very moist room.