“….Truce.”
“Honored Foe, I approach.”
“Approach, Worthy Opponent, but attempt no treachery!”
“I will not dishonor parlay, Honored Foe.”
“That is good, and right. Now, Worthy Opponent, what would you say? Why…why do you shake so? You, who have shrugged off the terror of even my great weapons? Speak! What has so unnerved you, my Worthy Opponent?”
“Honored Foe, I fear that it will not be your fate to achieve success where so many before you have failed. No, it will not be you, honorable though you may be, who wins the glory of my defeat.”
“Ha! What stratagem is this, my Worthy Opponent? What cunning play do you thus make? But no…. You would not dishonor parlay, even if such a stratagem would secure your victory. And still you shake as if frozen to your core. Speak! Name your dread!”
“It shames me to show such weakness in your presence, my most Honored Foe. But I am all undone. We will both be undone…. The Adversary wakes.”
“No. This cannot be. It was defeated in my grandsire’s time.”
“So too do our books record, Honored Foe. But look! Scan the horizon! There is no mistaking that visage. Our mutual doom is upon us!”
“I am unnerved beyond words, most Worthy Opponent! What you show me shakes me to my bones. It is unlike any enemy I have ever seen!”
“Woe, Worthy Opponent! Woe, and death, and defeat are our lot now! We will perish, our names forgotten. The Adversary will eat our legacy even as if feasts upon our mortal forms.”
“Woe, indeed! ….But wait, my Honored Foe! Here is a stratagem! While it will not preserve our corporeal legacy, yet it may save our good names!”
“I am listening, Worthy Opponent. Although I am disgraced to come thus before you in fear, your words give me heart. Speak your stratagem!”
“The Adversary is indeed strong, my Honored Foe. True! We may neither of us hope to defeat it. But did we make common cause against it….”
“….Most Worthy Opponent, yes! Together, though we have no hope of ending its miserable time upon this Plane, we might perhaps in our dying moments deal it such hurt as to drive it off, and thus preserve our names at least in the Rolls of Honor!”
“Honored Foe, against whom it has been my great fortune to struggle these many years in glorious combat, will you now raise with me the battle cry of our kind? Though we are but kith, and not kin, will we enter battle today as Brothers?”
“You are more Worthy than I had ever dared dream, Brother.”
“It is I who am Honored on this day, Brother.”
“Together then, and forth into battle!”
“MMMMRRRRRROOOOOWWWWWW! DEATH TO EL VACUUUUUUUUUM!”
