It was nearing midnight when Ozon's skipper-caps hit him. His view of the dwarven mahjong game before him was tinged green, just for a moment, and the bronze tiles appeared to swim before his eyes.
A grin spread across his face; he lifted his gaze to peer around the familiar sight of Ushar's Cafe. The southerner bar was packed. He and the other six players sat in a circle around the tiles of their game, surrounded by four other groups, male dwarves jabbering in rapid-fire oceantongue. Interspersed between them sat larger groups of female dwarves, who chatted between puffs on shared hookahs, and took turns tattooing eachother's arms with traditional nether-cap needles.
The fungal drug began to alter the sight. The slow rhythm of the tattoo needles was trailed by a spectral trail of soft pink. His whiskey fluctuated between red and blue in his bottle. The room was a kaleidoscope. The walls began to--
"Alright there, minnow?" Ozon re-focused his eyes and turned to the source of the voice. Ushar stood above him, an aging dwarf in a dark, silken abaya. Her eyes settled on him, blind, oriented by the touch of her hand to her shoulder. The right half of her neck was inked with an owl extending its wings in flight. The owl, the watcher in the night; she made sure none lost their minds to the trip. It was an honor that commanded immense respect -- and a healthy number of customers.
"Yes, mother bird," Ozon murmured, the passage of his tongue slowed by the drug.
"Good, good." She kissed his forehead, and then moved on, navigating by the touch of fingers to shoulders around the seated crowds.
"C'mon! We finish soon!" One of his fellow players bumped his ribs with an elbow, and Ozon realized it was his turn. He flicked his eyes over his tiles, and drew another, inspecting the character inscribed into its bronze face. Third cavern. He discarded the useless piece. He'd made a half-hearted attempt at a set of three cave bears, but his hand sat in disarray before him. Tablets of bronze clattered left and right across the gabbro floor, but he hardly noticed. The music would start soon.
Half a game and three quarters of a bottle later, he proved to be right. The hookahs were stowed, and the tiles carefully tucked into woolen bags. The cafe's crowds stood as three musicians rolled out great metal drums of copper and began to play their fingers on their inner surfaces, digits coated with a viscous resin. The center drum was the loudest, played by an elderly dwarf with a blue-ink nightingale, the finest of the song-birds, stretching from his jaw to just beneath his left eye. Its bassy notes provided a pounding rhythm for the first night's dance. His daughter and son sat on either side of him, melodies in alto and tenor above their senior's pacy heartbeat.
The song's emphasis fell on that bassy speed, and the cafe was quick to play along. Dwarves wrapped their arms around one another, thumbs curled over the lips of their drink bottles to prevent spillage. Ozon was no different; the mushrooms augmented the music, visible manifestations of the notes rising from the ground to curl around his ears. His forehead pressed against that of his partner, a dwarf clad in a turquoise kebaya and inked to her elbows in soft magenta tones. Together, they settled into a rhythm, matching one another, and began to lose themselves in the moment. For Ozon, the mushrooms aided his passage; for his partner, draltha milk rumbled in her gut and assisted her mind in departing the world for a time.
It was a time-honored experience. The steady rhythm coaxed the two's souls out of their prison-flesh, leaving their bodies to sweat through inked skin and press hip to hip, arm to arm, bare foot to bare stone floor. Their minds focused only on themselves and eachother, each losing their consciousness in the depths of the other's gaze. In their dance, the world faded to black, reaching a space without regard for the corporeal world. Sound became nothing but their beating hearts and the beating of the drums.
It was impossible to tell how long the dance-trance lasted, but straight away, Ozon knew his had been too short. Something thundered between his separated body and mind, fusing the two together again with the sharp needle and coarse thread of reality. His eyes re-opened, meeting the equally confused eyes of his partner. Their lips were locked; they both broke away, staring around the room. Just like them, other patrons gazed around in disarray, drifting in a sea of hazy confusion before Ushar, all at once, called them back.
The old woman stood as tall as her stooped body was able, blowing hard on a discordant horn. "DUNIES!" She cried, before letting out another long call.
The room erupted.
A bolt of steel whizzed a few inches away from the back of Ozon's head and buried itself in Ushar's chest, slamming her against the stone wall. The note of her horn petered out two seconds later. The more sober dwarves dropped their bottles to the ground and rose their fists; Ozon was not one of them. He stood stunned, a detached observer, weaving in place; his dance partner had already rolled up the right sleeve of her kebaya. The clattering of iron boots from behind filled the room as soldiers in full battle regalia slammed into the crowd. Swords were drawn.
The invaders were fast; the southerners were faster. Ozon's partner leaped past him. A soldier stood there, sword raised, shining bronze covering him from head to toe. Her left hand seized the beard poking out from beneath his helm and yanked upward, while her right snapped forth. The sound of flesh thudding against flesh cut through Ozon's mushroom-fuelled confusion, the sound piercing the mist that clouded his mind like a hellish tugboat's foghorn before her hand departed the striking spot. The soldier's eyes had gone wide; larynx crushed, he dropped to his knees, his brain denied oxygen for the rest of his short life.
She was already gone, into the melee of fists and swords and armor and - very quickly - blood and screams and oceantongue war cries.
A hand thumped against Ozon's chest, and he was sent stumbling back, crashing into the far wall where those too drug-addled to fight were heaped. He thumped his skull against another, and his eyes fell on his own reflection, brought into view by a plate of polished bronze on the wall. Shock overtook his helpless mind, and he absorbed every detail of the picture. His southern face was marked at the cheek with his sign of occupation, as was traditional: a sturdy shovel, slanting across his features. In a curious blend of acute stress and mushroom absurdity, he recalled his father, and his nightly relay of the family lullaby to him as a child:
Undertaker, undertaker, just how do you suspect,
A kinder soul such as your own should come to such distress?
The second verse didn't come. An overweight dwarf, half-unconscious and drooling, thumped against his face instead. The sights and sounds of battle were extinguished like a spent lantern.
Thank you! I'm glad you're enjoying it.
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Topic: War Gods: A Dwarf Fortress story (Read 1375 times)