It was a jagged, gaping maw in the side of the mountain, and the gullet sloped down and away, choked with the bloated carcasses of the fallen ogre patrols. They lay in pools of their own blood and waste, creating a stench that not even the sulphur fumes that belched from the fissures in the ground could overcome. They had lain there for two days, and they would lay there until the flesh rotted from their bones, or until more of their beastly kind found the corpses and disposed of them.
Not even the carrion birds would enter the lair.
The King had been flung from his throne and his council lay scattered and dead around him, but the echoes of his bellowing could still be heard in the bowels of the cave. It rumbled and groaned, occasionally sending a clattering of stone skipping down the walls and disrupting the clouds of steam that erupted from the stinking cracks in the cave floor. Other than that, there was no movement in the yawning chamber.
Another tunnel, leading deeper, clogged with more corpses from which the blood still seeped intermittently, but the growing reek did not come from them. The battle-cries, the enraged roars did not come from them, the rumbling deep in the earth and the shifting in the ground that set their still-soft, fleshy bodies to trembling did not come from them. Further down, around the final corner, behind the gate made from massive tree trunks, they could be heard. Their voices were raised in the song of battle, calling out to comrades, crying incantations and spells, grunting in pain as they were struck or roaring in fury as they attacked...and over it all was the enraged bellowing of the Dragonkiller.
The Grim had come to his lair, and together they had vowed - Gruul would not live to see the dawn.