Bellum Omnium Contra Omnes
I.
The fortress was already in shambles. The dwarves went about their daily lives, doing no work and contributing absolutely nothing to the already crumbling fortress in which they lived. Nevertheless, the old penal colony still maintained some vague semblance of order within its halls and it seemed as if their society would simply make a gradual disappearance. The future, however, is often unpredictable, and not all fortresses are as they seem.
The year two-hundred-sixty-two had just begun when one member of society decided that there was no further need for the continuing existence of Steelhold. He did, after all, have more important matters to attend to, and Steelhold was just a single step in his master plan; therefore, he decided that he would move on to his next step. Making his way down to the lowest depths of the fortress, he proceeded down a flight of stairs which lead right through a tunnel of warm, blue ore. He found himself in an impressive structure composed of silver—comfortable in decoration, though comfort was not his goal in this instance.
He trod quietly past the bedchambers of Dr. Asmoth, who had made a home for Thikut, her daughter, and herself in this place. As he passed, he could hear the doctor holding a conversation with the young girl.
"Mother, I can catch him within a month! I don't need to sleep, and the desert will slow him down. Think of how far he put up back!" Thikut shouted.
"No, child. You think. You have no way of knowing where Kairus went, and if someone else finds you, a child travelling alone through a desert is going to raise questions! Just- Did you hear that?"
The dwarf did not waste any more time eavesdropping, but proceeded on with his goal. He came up to a great drawbridge, and with a mighty push, managed to let it fall down before him, opening the fortress to the world of the demons.
The dwarf stepped out of the tower and called out into the darkness: "Brothers! The moment of our triumph is nearing fast!"
The dwarf stepped into the light of the fires, allowing himself to be seen by the many eyes of the damned. He was a young dwarf, though he stood tall and had an aura of nobility to him. As the devils bagan to gather, he swept a bow and removed his hat. "I must introduce myself now. My name is James Joyce Esq. -- also known as 'Corley.'"
Asmoth, faintly hearing the noise, eased open the door of her bedroom, peering down the corridor. There was a familiar silhouette lit by the glow of the pits outside, though she could not see its face.
"Lenehan!" she gasped, then realized there shouldn't have been any light behind him.
"Not quite, doctor," grinned Corley. Behind him, the demons massed.
"Thikut, find Shank or Uristador. Tell them they need to get everyone out of Steelhold, now." Asmoth was vaguely proud that her daughter didn't waste time asking questions. She clicked her tongue disapprovingly at the legions of Hell.
"At least your father had some imagination. Releasing the horrors of the underworld? Bit of a cliché, don't you think?"
She then threw a scalpel at her grand-nephew's head. He quickly threw himself on his back, allowing it to fly right over him. He then got back to his feet with incredible speed.
"If you think that I'm allied with the demons you are sorely mistaken. As for imagination, couldn't you have done anything more impressive than simply throwing your scalpel?"
Asmoth glared at her nephew, tilting her head down and showing her fangs.
"Must I remind you that I myself am a vampire as well? After all, I have you to thank for that."
Corley leapt back and motioned for the demons to gather.
"I'm afraid that our reunion must be held off temporarily, for I have business to attend to."
He ran up the stair way into the fortress itself, leading the demons along with him. Although the demons did not know it, they were not heading in the direction of the fortress, but rather to a pool of magma where several hundred vampires once perished.
. . .
Uristador stalked through the tunnels beneath Steelhold. He couldn't remember the last time he'd had a drink. Well, rather he preferred not to remember it; that poor dwarf had trusted him.
Funny, nobody tells you about all this when you enlist. You hear all this talk about the honor and glory of your nation. Nobody ever talks about having to watch your friends die. Nobody tells you that you might have to do it; they expect soldiers to be machines. Well, he certainly wasn't a machine.
The sound of battle could be heard somewhere in the tunnels. Probably a berserk dwarf. With luck, that one would be occupied in killing some of the wild-life that Steelhold had once farmed, and nobody he was responsible for. Uristador shuddered. He was not going to wind up like one of those poor bastards, their mind gone and replaced with pure animalistic rage.
As much as it pained him to admit it, Steelhold was dead and buried. It was time to move on, and as soon as possible. As soon as the Guard could move out of the infirmary and set out for civilization. Maybe they could find mercenary work.
Then it hit him; there shouldn't be a breeze down there. The smell of brimstone drifted across his nostrils. That could only mean one thing; somewhere, there was a breach.
Panic seized him. If the demons were free, what hope did he have? They'd killed Rhaken, and that tough old bastard was at least twice the soldier he was.
But then again, Rhaken hadn't had a weapon like Uristador had. Hefting his artifact adamantine axe, Uristador braced himself. Maybe there was some redemption to be gained dying to hold back the horde; at least he'd never have to drain another dwarf again. Steelhold deserved a last stand.
He began to run into the depths of the fortress, to Lower Steelhold. After all, there was no mistaking it. The screams and howls coming from the deep could only mean the Hell-Spawn were loose. Not for the first time, Uristador cursed whoever decided to put the lever for Emdief's last project so far down; there was no way to pull it in the event of a breach unless someone happened to be right there while it occurred. Not that it could have stopped the horde, but softening them up could have helped them all live a little longer.
More members of the Guard had gathered around the staircase, waiting for the first of the demons to come upwards. Uristador knew he should be down there, and he would return as soon as possible, but someone had to prepare. At this point, he couldn't martial the masons to block off the lower levels entirely, so the demons couldn't be contained in the fort. The only option left was to martial those who could fight, and let the others evacuate.
Uristador never really wanted to lead. So long as people let him be, he saw no reason to ask anything of them. He assumed they wanted to be left alone as much as he did. Steelhold's remnant deserved someone better than him to send them to their deaths.
Then he got an idea, one crazy enough to work. It's not like things could get much worse.
He knew the room well; the faction had been using it to meet since Asmoth took over. It was no difficult task to find what he was seeking. He pushed with all of his might, and Emdief's slab toppled and fell to the ground with a crash.
. . .
The iron flavor of blood shook the dwarf to his senses. It dribbled down his chin, still warm, dripping down onto his breastplate. His hands were soaked in it, up to the wrist.
Shank groaned; he had done it again. He had let the beast take control. After fighting the urge for months, he had collapsed, only to wake up in this very situation—wandering the hallways, with another dwarf's blood all over him. Had his victim survived? Probably not. When the hunger took him, he rarely stopped. It was like a battle frenzy, taking away all sense of himself and replacing it with a singular urge to feed.
He had given up on his work. Both as royal guard, and as royal spymaster. How could he manage a network of spies if he couldn't even manage his own impulses? And the queen was under arrest, locked away where none could get to her. Her sentence called for decades of imprisonment. In another time, perhaps, the irony would have pleased him immensely. Imprisoned in her own penal colony, how droll; the chief would have loved it.
Limbs trembling, Shank wandered the hallways. He wasn't sure where he was going. Sights passed him by without fully registering in his twisting mind. He passed other dwarves, some cursed, some mortal. He paid them no heed. His feet were taking him somewhere and hadn't deigned to inform his brain what their destination was.
Thoughts assailed him as he walked. Despite this entire ordeal and the horrors he had seen and done, Shank felt stronger, somehow. His senses were sharper than ever as well. He could hear the heartbeats of the creatures around him, smell the delicious blood in their veins. His mace felt light as a feather, and his armor felt light as a pig tail cloak. And what had it cost him? The ability to eat? To drink? To die of old age? The price didn't seem quite so overwhelming anymore.
But then what little conscience he had left came back, and with it came the guilt. He had killed plenty in his life, but never had he murdered another dwarf. Nor had he ever taken leave of his senses like this. Was this the curse's fault as well? Or was he heading down this road even before that fateful day with the chalice of blood?
Shank's feet stopped. Looking down, he saw a bin, its lid most of the way off. He was in the stockpiles. Amidst piles of green glass trinkets, he saw a glimmer of gold. Not fully aware of what he was doing, Shank dipped his hand into the bin and retrieved the object, examining it in his hands.
A golden, featureless mask. It radiated power. Shank looked into its empty eyes. The mask told him all its secrets.
Somewhere in the distance, the howls of demons could be heard.
. . .
There were at least twenty demons inside the tower before Asmoth pulled the lever in her room, and perhaps ten more before the gears finally ground into motion. The entrance of the Silver Tower rumbled and flowed as sections of it shifted and fused together, sealing the entrance again. The beast clawing at her door finally gave up and followed the rest.
"Why does everyone in my family except me have to be insane?" muttered Asmoth, pulling on her tattered dwarf-leather lab-coat. She quickly exited her tower and began to run through the fortress.
She couldn't remember much about Corley. Quiet child, maybe a bit too clever for his own good, and then Lenehan had gone off to war, and she'd been in prison before he'd come back. She wasn't sure if it was good or bad that the masked dwarf wasn't around, but it didn't really matter. The best she could do with the information she had was find Thikut and start the project again somewhere else. There were plenty of dead names they could use. Of course, they'd have to hang around long enough to see what Corley was actually doing, but there were plenty of loose-ends she could tie up in the meantime.
She suddenly found herself in a dark chamber. She could hear a faint breathing sound coming from the other side of the room.
"Who are you?" asked a voice. Asmoth peered and recognized the voice immediately. She soon realized she had gone straight to her first loose-end without even thinking about it.
"Don't worry about me, your Majesty," she said brightly. "I'm just someone on the lookout for a pound of flesh."
The screams didn't stop for a long time.
. . .
Corley marched through the halls with the demons and he led them to a great pit of fire, and beckoned them to enter. Smarter demons would have found this suspicious, but Corley brought only the most foolish with him, and devils fear no fire. They filed into the pool until no more could possibly fit, and then Corley began to remove his gloves. Once removed, his quivering hands were revealed, and his veins began to pulse and glow a dull red. It was exactly as he had hoped, for he knew that a vampire such as he could make use of simple magic, and Steelhold was utterly flowing with magic at this point.
He began to mutter the incantation, and the flames in the pool grew hotter as he did. They soon became so hot that even the demons themselves began to scream. Some tried to crawl out of the magma, but they were disintegrated before they had a chance. The earth shook violently, and several structures and stairways built within the fortress began to crumble. When the spell was complete, the fires died down, until all the magma had cooled to rock.
Miles above, in the fortress itself, the dwarves about the halls began to feel intense emotions. They felt sorrow, joy, pain, hate, ecstasy, and melancholy all at the same time. It was too much for any dwarf, even though many were vampires. They began to throw the furniture and engage in fistfights. Within minutes, metal weapons were drawn. It was brother pitted against brother in the dining hall.
. . .
Oku blinked, disoriented. She had not intended to return to Steelhold. The gods must require something more of her here, then. Her mask had been left here, true, but that was on purpose.
A cry of alarm rang out from across the room, drawing Oku's attention. Across the room stood an unfamiliar dwarf, next to a broken slab.
Oku grinned, not bothering to raise her illusions.
"A little dwarf, alone in the fortress? What a shame. I could have used a challenge."
Oku stomped once, and the ground around her erupted. When the dust settled, the dwarf no longer faced an unarmed human, but one encased in massive sheets of black iron, wielding a pair of titanic swords as if they weighed nothing at all.
"Now come forth, little dwarf, and meet your death."
Uristador knew his assailant. That he was certain of. But where could he have seen this monstrous apparition before? It didn't matter; today was as good a day as any to die.
“Iron, eh?” He hefted his axe. The craftsdwarfship was exquisite; not even a king had a weapon this fine. Uristador would never stop wondering why fate had offered him it.
“Why don't ye come see what a real metal can do to yer’ knees, ye’ tall bastard. Ye’ might've thought yer’ home down there was hell. Common mistake to make, ye’ see, because Steelhold will make that seem like a bloody vacation.”
When he saw the slightest hesitation in the apparition's eyes, Uristador didn't bother to turn around. It was pretty obvious what would happen after he toppled the slab. He had never been made for leadership. The best choice he could make was to be led.
He didn't react as the vengeful spirit of Emdief entered his body. He had been ready to die for some time, now. He joined the voices of Steelhold's dead whispering in their champion's head. They never could get their hands on a savior, but perhaps they'd find themselves an avenger.
The dwarf who had once been Uristador's eyes glazed over, and his face broke into a manic grin. Where he stood, a void grew as magic fled from his awful presence.
“Well then. No mask, I see. Shame, that. I had explicit instructions from Modi to shove that down your throat.”
Cackling madly, Emdief swung at the human's legs.
Oku deflected the blow without thinking about it, swinging the other blade at the reborn Emdief's chest. The dwarf jumped away from the blow, showing more agility than he had ever demonstrated in his previous two lifetimes. Oku stepped back slashing one blade in an arc, sending a blast of shadows rippling over Emdief to no noticeable effect.
"Interesting. Your magic resistance remains intact."
That's right, demon-woman. No magic tricks for you.
Oku grinned, swinging both blades towards the dwarf, who was forced to duck one and parry the other. Before Emdief could respond, her swords were back in defensive positions.
"Don't be so sure, little dwarf. I can still crush you like a gnat. I have over two hundred years of combat experience. What can you claim?"
Emdief responded only with more attacks, which were met with more counter-attacks. Emdief dodged and weaved, but every strike he attempted was knocked aside before it began. He had to admit, Oku had become a fearsome fighter over the centuries. Despite Modi yelling advice at him, he still couldn't land a hit.
Suddenly, Oku hesitated, as if distracted. Seeing his chance, Emdief lept in to strike.
Faster than he could have thought possible, Oku whipped both of her blades around, slamming the flats against his chest. He was aloft before he knew what hit him, slamming into the wall on the far side of the room.
Pain washed over him, threatening to overwhelm his consciousness. He fought against it, struggling to rise, but it hurt too much. Through a haze of pain, he heard Oku speak,
"Think long and hard on this, little one. Remember this the next time you cross me."
By the time he managed to stand, Oku was long gone. Emdief staggered through Steelhold. How could he have let that thing get away? The voices in his head were oddly quiet; ominously quiet.
Almost subconsciously, he walked back to his office and retrieved his gear. It seemed so simple. He had to have a purpose, having been sent back again. The current state of the fortress could be traced back to the Masked One. Had Asmoth self-taught magic? Had Corley really decided alone to dig so far down, despite already having adequate stocks of adamantine? Inconceivable. It all came back to the Masked One. It had to die.
Retrieving his crossbow, Emdief set down to work. These hands were rather nimble. In no time, he'd detatched the arrowhead and replaced it with a broad, sharpened wood opal. He grabbed a vial of Lenehan's substance, diluted it with forbidden beast extract, and lathered it onto the point. Then he wound his crossbow.
It was time to resume the hunt.
. . .
Asmoth put the queen back in her cage. The doctor was pretty sure she'd live, but a few nerve endings wouldn't be working again any time soon. She absent-mindedly licked some of the blood off her fingers, winced at the taste and wrote a reminder to test if it was nobles or other vampires that tasted so horrible. The screams in the air finally got through to her, but she decided it was probably some ruffians taking the opportunity to riot. She had to find Thikut before she did anything else, especially now that the fortress seemed to be glowing, shaking, and bleeding. The doctor spat. Magic. All it did was get people blown up.
"Mother?" Thikut inquired several minutes later. There were a couple of children with her that were normally covered in blood and smiling. Now they looked like children: scared and following the only person who looked like they knew what was going on.
"Thikut, I need you to do exactly what I tell you, okay?"
The girl nodded slowly.
"Go north and stay at the first fortress you find. Spin them the old 'my home is overrun and I can't find my mommy' story. Do not kill anybody! If I'm not there in a year, find somewhere you can start a cult of the vampire baby or something, and restart the project. My notes are all here," she added, handing the child her journal.
"But what about you?" her daughter asked.
"Well, first I'm going to finish setting up these flasks. Then I'm going to have a family reunion, and if I don't like what your cousin is doing, I'm going to give him a slap." Asmoth grinned, raising the queen's severed arm. "If he kills me, these should catch fire in an hour or two, causing that big old pile of booze I've been making to explode, which should put a dint in anyone's plans."
Thikut nodded, wiping something away from her eye as she did. Asmoth watched them go, then headed into the madness that was Steelhold.
Meanwhile, Corley calmly took a stroll around Steelhold. Everywhere he looked, dwarves were murdering each other. They sliced, stabbed, and mauled those that were once friends and family, occasionally taking strikes at themselves as well. What little reason was left in any of them was shocked to find that they were lasting much longer than they would normally. In fact, many had lost several limbs and had their intestines pulled out, but they were not dying. They continued to fight, and it seemed as if their injuries were healing during the rare moments when they were not in combat.
Eventually, Corley came to his destination: the tombs. Not even this dark, secluded area would be spared the insanity of the fort. His face twisted into a smirk, as he saw the corpses convulse and flop out of their caskets and onto the floor. Their faces showed terrible pain, as twisted souls of vampires and demons alike entered their bodies. Each one began to grow large fangs, like those found on vampires. These, however, were not vampires, but an even worse king of monster; before long, the dwarves fighting in the upper levels would become like them as well.
Corley exited the chambers, content that all was going according to plan. He had just one final destination, then he would leave Steelhold forever. He had to make one final trip to his father's lab.
. . .
Asmoth idly watched a pair of maddened vampires. Their fangs were longer than before, perhaps, and she was nearly certain that their eyes hadn't been glowing red. Another dwarf dove into the fight, dragging one of the combatants away with him. The other immediately turned, charging at the doctor as though he'd known she was there all along. Asmoth jumped away, which seemed to surprise him. He crashed into a wall, and Asmoth rammed a knife into his eye as he staggered back. He collapsed, but his eye repaired as soon as she took the knife out, so she could only assume his brain was healing too.
"It could have been great, you know," Asmoth told him as she turned him over. "No magic, no demons, no queen. Just us, working together. The world could have been ours." The dwarf was groaning, but stopped once she severed his spinal cord. She left the knife in this time.
"You know, it's times like this that I wish I'd studied combat more," she told the paralyzed dwarf. "On the other hand, killing him won't give me any answers, so I might as well ask him nicely."
She pushed to her feet, leaving her attacker behind and walked to her old office. Corley would want to be somewhere significant for his endgame, she thought, looking at the cracks in the ceiling. It was funny, they soothed the walls and floors, but never the ceiling. And it was covered in fissures, especially where the vents had gone on fire.
She thought for a moment. She had perhaps forty minutes before the explosion, plenty of time to check on the machine, barricade the room if he wasn't there yet and get out. She could probably even check the baron's old rooms, and his tomb was outside, so there was no time limit on that. Asmoth sighed and left, following the cracks.
. . .
Boots thundered down the stairwell. Dwarves ran down the steps, barrels of food and booze in hand, Shank holding up the rear.
"Quickly, through here!"
The dwarves scrambled through a doorway, into a section of the fortress that hadn't seen use in some time. They passed the old barracks, then through the abandoned archery range, around the execution pit and into the gulag. First built by Rhaken to house goblin POWs until their execution, the many chains in the room now held more exotic prisoners. A mantis woman, a thrips man and a family of albatross people, shrieking and cawing at the dwarves that had barged into their prison. Shank directed them through the massive lead door at the back of the room, into a long hallway of side-rooms and row upon row of restraints.
"Are you sure it's safe here?"
"As safe as can be for now," Shank told the dwarf. "There are several doors between us and them. If the demons come around, I'll hold them off."
The refugees began to settle in as Shank went to secure the doors, setting down the food and unpacking what meager belongings they had managed to bring with them. The royal guard had come to them promising safety, and they had all followed his instructions. Now, a great drowsiness came over them, a weariness in the bones that demanded them to rest. Within minutes, not a single dwarf stirred in the old POW camp. Not even when Shank put them in irons, one by one, chuckling and talking to himself as he went.
"Segregation, that's what we needed, oh yes. The mask was right, of course. I can't believe I didn't figure it out earlier." he wrapped chains around a dwarf's wrists. "Separate the mortals from the immortals! Brilliant. Simply brilliant. The chief would have been proud of me."
He tied chains around a child's legs. "Too bad I couldn't get them all. At least this lot wasn't hitting each other over the head just yet. It wouldn't do to lose them now, oh no. We're going to need every mortal we can get."
His work done, Shank dusted himself down, then helped himself to a quart of blood from a nearby fisherdwarf. A bit saltier than he liked it. He fished out the golden mask from his backpack. Twirling it this way and that in his hands, the spymaster assessed the bound dwarves in front of him.
"Hrm. Two breeding pairs and a calf. I'd hoped for more, but that will have to do."
Time dragged on, and his cattle began to awaken. Finally struck by the madness that had gripped the fortress, they began to scream and thrash, trying to claw at themselves, at each other, but kept from any such foolishness by their restraints. Shank felt more than heard the heartbeat of the one leaving the cage stockpiles in the other room. The unnatural rhythm of a vampire, one that Shank recognized. Asmoth was finally done with Kivish. If the mad doctor tried to barge in on him, she would find the door locked and bolted.
Once she was gone, Shank stepped outside, toward the cages. Following the trail of fresh blood, he reached his prize.
"Kivish."
Asmoth had done quite a number on the queen. Though her wounds were beginning to close, Shank could see the monarch's liver. Her entire right arm was gone. Her skin had been flayed, peeled apart with surgical precision, and was even now in the process of knitting itself back together, crawling over Kivish's exposed flesh like taupe slugs trailing blood. Her left eye had burst, and was now sluicing back into its socket, trying to return to its correct shape but not quite managing.
She looked up at him. "Shank... blood. I must have blood."
"Thy will be done."
Shank dragged the queen of the realm into the new cattle pen, directed her to the howling carpenter. The scent of circulating blood flooded Kivish's mind. She began to pant, mouth gaping so wide it tore slightly at the corners.
"No killing," Shank admonished. "We only have two breeding pairs."
Kivish sank her fangs into the carpenter's thigh. She began to feed. More screams all around, from the carpenter, from the other cattle, even from Shank. Because why the hell not, he figured. Everyone else is doing it.
He pulled the queen away before she could kill her victim. The fresh blood triggered her regeneration, and within minutes she looked presentable again.
"So. This is all we have?" She eyed the wretched dwarves, disappointed at how few had been salvaged from the madness.
"They are the only ones the mask could save," Shank offered. "The others will succumb to your rule, once the madness is done taking hold. Corley did well."
"Our rule, Shank," Kivish corrected, putting her one remaining hand on his shoulder. "Our rule."
The two vampires kissed like lovers lost in passion. Then they began to bite one another, savagely, without restraint, cackling in pleasure. They wouldn't kill each other. They were just having some fun.
In the depths of Steelhold, the dead stirred. Their shrieks held pain, rage, and most disturbing of all, triumph.
The King and Queen of Steelhold danced to the music of the dead
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Topic: The Insidious Sons of Steelhold -- Revival Succession Fortress (Read 282090 times)