…he found that he was alone in a narrow winding tunnel.
He didn’t mind being alone, and he certainly didn’t mind the dark. But presently, coming from far in the deeps, he heard a distant howling, and the clash and clanging of a great tumult. What it was he did not know, but the howling and the noise of tumult sent chills of fear through his little body.
Quaking and trembling, he buried his face into the soft earth, hoping that whatever the furor may be, it would not come his way, or discover his hiding place.
But the noises grew louder, and closer, and soon the tumult was upon the frightened little demon. His fellows, the ones who had dug into the earth to escape the sunlight, came tumbling back, fast through the tunnels. They were torn and bruised, wounded and bloody, from what must have been a huge battle deep in the tunnels below. And they fled past, those who could, with great terror writ large upon their frightening faces.
Chasing them with tiny spears and sharpened teeth were thousands and thousands of little human-like things. None of them was much bigger than your hand, and many of them were even smaller than your pinkie finger.
But for all their tiny size, these puny people were most ferocious fighters. They were the Theeroi, and they lived in tiny burrows under the ground. The demons and goblins that dug into the earth had stumbled upon their lands, and the Theeroi fell upon them with spear and rock and teeth to drive them away.