Butler- Intimidating Dwarves

The dwarf, Cruik, was suddenly visible.
“Aha,” said Butler, hauling Cruik from the surf. “Dwarf head.
Good.”
Cruik had forfeited his gift of tongues along with the rest of his
magic, but he had been living among the humans for long enough to
pick up a smattering of several languages, and Butler’s simple
statement was terrifyingly easy to misinterpret.
Dwarf head? This Mud Man is going to eat my head.
Butler was actually glad to see the dwarf’s head because dwarf
heads are disproportionately large, and this particular dwarf’s head was
even more bulbous than most. It was almost Butler-sized and there was
a helmet perched on top of it.
With a fairy helmet, I can see what this little guy sees.
It was the helmet Butler was after, not the meaty noggin inside.
“C’mere, slippy,” grunted the bodyguard, intuitively snapping the
helmet’s seals and popping it off. “Did you just try to shoot my sister?”
Recognizing the word shoot, Cruik glanced down at his own hands
and was dismayed to find them empty. He had dropped his gun.
Cruik was a career criminal and had lived through many close calls
without losing his nerve. He had once faced down a gang of drunken
goblins armed with only a jar of burn lotion and three bottle tops, but
this bloodthirsty giant with a face of fury and a thirst for brains finally
sent him over the edge.
“Nooooo,” he screamed shrilly. “No brain biting.”
Butler ignored the tantrum and the musty helmet pong and gripped
the protective hat one-handed, as a basketball player might grip a
basketball.
Cruik’s skull was now totally exposed, and the dwarf swore he
could feel his brain trembling.
When a dwarf finds himself unnerved to this extent, one of two
things is likely to happen: one, the dwarf will unhook his jaw and
attempt to eat its way out of trouble. This option was not available to
Cruik because of his suit’s hood. And two: the terrified dwarf will trim
the weight. Trimming the weight is an aviators’ trick, which involves
jettisoning as much unnecessary cargo as possible to keep the ship in
the air. Dwarfs are capable of shedding up to a third of their body
weight in less than five seconds. This is obviously a last resort and can
only be performed once a decade or so. It involves a rapid expulsion of
loose-layered runny fat, ingested mining dirt, and gases through what
dwarf mommies politely refer to as the nether tunnel.
Trimming the weight is mostly an automatic response and will be
engaged when the heart rate nudges past two hundred beats per
minute, which happened to Cruik the moment Butler enquired whether
Cruik had tried to shoot his sister. At that moment, Cruik more or less
lost control of his bodily functions and had just time to scream “No
brain biting!” before his body decided to trim the weight and use the
resulting propulsion to get the heck out of there.
Of course, Butler was not aware of these biological details. All he
knew was that he was suddenly flying backward, up high through the
air, holding on to a jet-powered dwarf.
...

Butler wasn’t even listening. If there were a time to engage with
Mulch’s ramblings, he hadn’t reached it yet. Instead he turned to the
remaining hostile dwarfs.
“You two,” he said, treating them to his fiercest expression, an
expression which had once made a troll think that maybe he had bitten
off a little more than he could chew.
The two in question quailed under Butler’s gaze and wondered
anxiously what this giant would order them to do.
Butler jerked a thumb toward the bay door. “Jump,” he said, keeping
it simple. The dwarfs looked at each other, and the look spoke
volumes.
Should we actually jump into daylight, they thought, or should we
stay and fight this terrifying man mountain?
They held hands and jumped.

- The Atlantis Complex, Chapter 6