Near four years had passed since Lavendakost was first settled by a hearty team of seven talented dwarves. The first seasons were hard and many nights were spent shivering on the rough stone floor, eating an endless supply of purple plum helmet mushrooms and drinking purple plum helmet wine.
But the Dwarves toiled on, honing their skills and expanding their settlement. The first traders to visit were surprised at the progress they had made. Great caverns had been hollowed out and filled with farms, dining rooms and surprisingly plush quarters. They eagerly traded steel and fine cloth for the remarkable crafts these hardy dwarves had wrought from the very roots of their mountain. Soon word began to spread.
At the end of the first year a troop of weary dwarves nearly twenty in number made the long journey to join the young but increasingly famous enclave. The original seven were quick to incorporate their new friends, assigning them tasks and using their new skills to further refine the growing settlement. By the end of the second year more than 30 dwarves now lived in the glistening engraved halls of Lavendakost. They dined together in a great hall and had their pick of many lavish meals, exotic meats and fruits and a wide assortment of ales, beers and wine. Fortune smiled upon their growing fortress.
In the second Spring the first signs of a dark future began to show. The newborn daughter of a recently migrated mason was snatched away by goblins while she was gathering stone. It was decided that the colony had grown large enough to draw attention from many fell creatures and it was time to consider defense.
First drafted was a young peasant girl named Erith. She had only lived in Lavendakost a single month when she was appointed as the head of a new security force, given a crossbow, and tasked with becoming a soldier. A hall was hollowed out of the mountain for her to train her marksdwarf skill and another dwarf was given the single task of crafting for her all the bolts that she might desire to loose upon her practice target.
For a time things were peaceful. Erith’s talents grew at a remarkable speed and many dwarves that remembered the frail young girl who arrived the previous Summer marveled at the strong, agile and tough young captain of the guards that she had become. So it was not with shame and anguish that the community greeted the next goblin snatcher. The alarm was raised quickly this time, the thief sniffed out by a trusty war dog chained to the central stairway of the fortress. Erith was able to spring to readiness and was standing in wait when that foul creature came skulking into the great entry hall with another poor child clutched in its hands. He did not even know what struck him as Erith’s yew crossbow filled his wretched body with a fur of bolts.
A great celebration was held in Erith’s honor and five young lads were assigned to her in training. A new set of halls were hollowed for them to work and train their skills. Erith designated the Great Hall as her personal station point and warmed the heart of every dwarf that entered entered by that route. She installed a series of great traps down that wondrous corridor, so awesome that many wondered what unimaginable evil she might possibly be expecting. The young dwarves soon became elite experts in their various weapons and came to join Erith in perpetual vigilance in the hall.
Unfortunately, when disaster next struck, it did not come by way of those great stone doors. The crime that forever chilled the once glowing halls of Lavendakost was committed by one of her own.
Nearly a year and a half previous a young milker by the name of Mebzuth Cuborrakust had joined the fortress. His skills were sadly unneeded in his new home, but he quickly found his place as an assistant to the great miners, helping them haul away the rubble of newly created caverns.
For a time Mebzuth was content, even happy. He made himself comfortable amongst his brother and sister dwarves, was given his own room and dined and drank with them in merriment. But after a year in this new life he began to feel a distant calling. His dreams were tormented by the image of a great scepter, the magnificence of which was near indescribable. Though he tried with all his might to resist this wild urge, he felt himself slowly giving into the calling. Finally the dreams, the urge, became too insistent to refuse. He woke from his most troubling dream yet – the exquisite elegance and beauty of his scepter still glowing in his visin, and he made his way to the crafts shop with a single minded determination.
Those dwarves that saw Mebzuth that morning described him as a dwarf possessed. His eyes were aglow with a passion that teetered on madness. Many of the dwarves of Lavendakost agree that they were lucky no other dwarf was in the workshop that morning, as there was no telling what evil Mebzuth might have wrought upon them. When he arrived at his destination he quickly locked himself inside and began his fell work. He drew up sketches and diagrams of his dream and set straightaway to make it a reality.
Many dwarves argue that had Mebzuth possessed what he needed that his tragedy might have never been, indeed, that had he been able to complete his great scepter they might have regaled him a genius, a dwarf of legendary skill, his creation so magnificent that it would instantly become a great artifact for all dwarf kind.
However, Mebzuth did not have the materials he needed.
For nearly a month dwarves tried to reason with him through the securely locked stone door of the workshop. They cringed and looked away at his tortured screams, tried to ignore his heart wrenching begging for mysterious cloth, shells and exotic woods. Many thought it might even be worthwhile to summon the traders in the slim hope that they might have these things he desired.
In the end his dream drove him well beyond the edge of madness. For two days Mebzuth’s workshop was frighteningly silent. Then, on the third day, he emerged. Only a month ago not a dwarf in all Lavendakost would have recognized the creature before them. He barely even resembled a dwarf. He was thin to the point of death, hair greasy and tangled from his lack of rest, and as he stepped forth from the threshold of the workshop, still wrestling with the unbearable failure in his life’s most important work, he let out the most wretched, racked and torn scream that would ever echo in the halls of Lavendkost. Mebzuth’s last shreds of reason were scraped away and he turned his sunken eyes on his transfixed and terrified dwarven brothers and sisters and began his berserk rampage.
Many were lucky that day. They heard his horrid scream and fled in the grip of terror from his terrible wrath. Poor Ingish, the quiet furnace worker, was not among them. The monster’s scream was drowned in the roar of the furnace and he had barely a moment to register the wretched form of Mebzuth before he was brutally struck down. Sakzul the leather worker came running to his aid, compelled by the sounds of Ingish’s last screams, only to find Mebzuth relentlessly pounding his now still body.
Sakzul made a brave attempt to flee, but was no match for the murderous rage of the once milker. She was viciously beaten down, her crumpled body left to die as Mebzuth continued on, looking for more life to vent his uncontrollable wrath upon. He spied several of the fortress’s cloth workers then, huddled by the end of the hall, and began to advance upon them. Along the way he found Shem, the herbalist, hiding in the kitchen stores, and cruelly murdered him almost as an afterthought.
He might have gone on to murder the weaver, dyer and clothier as well, but was distracted again, this time by the golden, playful form of Kosoth, a spring kitten born of a pet from the most recent wave of immigrants.
Mebzuth’s rage was no less potent for the gentle and innocent nature of his victim. The cloth workers tried to turn away as he first struck the kitten so hard that it was rendered unconscious and then continued to beat it in an unchecked maniacal fury.
By this time word had spread through the fortress and the young guards had descended to the workshop level, led by Domas the sword dwarf. His heart was gripped with fear, uncertain of what he might find, and so he was struck silent and unmoving by the horrible scene presented before him.
Mebzuth, chocking forth an endless stream of tortured, incoherent curses, mercilessly, relentlessly pounding the soft form of gentle Kosoth into the stone floor, long past the point where any life remained in the body of the once playful kitten. His eyes steeled as he watched, his own rage building as he took in the path of violence that had been wrought here.
Finally Mebzuth dropped what remained of Kosoth upon the ground and now fixed his blasted stare upon Domas. His mouth twisted into a grin as he bounded towards the young soldier, his fingers already outstretched to choke the life from him.
But Domas was no gentle furnace worker or herbalist. For many seasons he had pitted himself against the great gears of the old screw pump, honing his strength. For many seasons he had wrestled with his fellow soldiers on the hard barracks floor, perfecting his technique. Mebzuth was empowered by his madness, strengthened in his berserk rage, but Domas was a hardened soldier.
It was not easy, but it was quick. Domas was able to grab a hold of his insane brother, had at first intended to restrain him so that he might face their mountain justice, but Mebzuth fought, twisting and thrashing like carp from a deep, icy stream, and so he wrestled him to the ground and begin to pummel him, his great fists smashing the life from his insane captive until he finally struggled no more.
The halls are quieter now. The once lively workshop floor that rung with the joy of dwarves singing at their work is now eerily silent save for the clank of hammered metal and the rush of the furnace flames. The dwarves of Lavendkost regard each other with a certain measure of doubt, wondering when each might be possessed by that insurmountable dwarven need to create the epidome perfection.
-Nik
Author
Topic: The Plight of the Berserk Milker (Read 1298 times)