For the first time in several weeks, there was a true sense of celebration among the halls of The Overlook.
The gem-maker who had hidden herself away weeks ago in the gem-cutting store had suddenly emerged from her seclusion this morning and walked triumphantly into the tavern, dragging the fruits of her work behind her.
The sight of such fine craftsdwarfship had already lifted the spirits of the inmates, and the news from the lookouts had only compounded that. The besieging force outside had finally had enough and upped sticks almost overnight, departing to menace some other place with demands for proper pay and fair employment. It was good news for a fortress with a population as rowdy as The Overlook’s residents, and a party was in full swing already in the pumpkin tavern.
Quantum had been rather less enthused. What in all of the hells had she been thinking? Dragging an artefact behind her in a place filled with debtors desperate to pay off what they owed; it beggared belief! He’d ordered it put in the same place as those made during the previous warden’s reign – behind a set of upright iron bars like those on the cells, visible enough to be admired but not easily stealable.
Still, he reflected, it was probably for the best.
It was a universal truth that every dwarven fortress, prison, and settlement was reliant on four things: booze, metal, overseers, and a steady stream of failures. (However much of a tautology the last two might be.) Steel, iron, and a number of other precious metals were in abundance, at least, despite the lack of things being forged. But the alcohol situation – that was rather more troubling. Even without the roughnecks busily knocking back keg after keg in the tavern, there were barely a dozen barrels of brew in the whole prison.
As if to purposefully stoke his ire higher, the new company policy in the introductory file demanded that a form several pages thick be filled out before a production order be issued. He was halfway through filling it out when a cry went up from outside:
Swiftly following that was the heavy crash of armoured footsteps, and the sound of shouting. He paused for a moment, hesitant, then returned to the form again. Again, he was soon broken from it as one of the militia’s captains came crashing in through the open doorway, iron spear in hand. Her face was twisted into a look of fury, teeth bared in a snag-toothed snarl and her cheeks red with exertion.
“Well, should’ve known this was going to happen sooner or later…” Quantum muttered, raising his head with a muffed groan. He tilted backward slightly in his chair, giving the militia captain a clear shot at his chest. “I know what you’re here for, Captain. Get on w –”
“I assure you, overseer, you bloody well don’t!” The captain snapped, raising her spear to point back toward the fortress gates. “Bastard in some kind ‘a fat suit’s out there, tearing a couple of the bards up. We can get out there an’ try to rescue ‘em, or leave the poor bastards and focus on whacking it. What’re your orders?”
“Do what you think is necessary.” He was already returning his stare to the form. “So long as they don’t get in.”
The militia captain halted for a moment, staring incredulously at the overseer, before shaking her head and departing at a run, slamming the door behind her. Silence reigned for a few minutes more. He took a sip from the mug on his desk, silently enjoying the burn from the alcohol. It was a recommendation of the doctor’s – a way of lifting his mood, and giving him the energy needed to deal with the endless reams of paperwork seemingly needed for anything.
He was almost finished with the form when there was another knock at the door, this one strong enough to send it swinging in on its hinges and crack off the stone wall beside it. Quantum started in surprise at the noise, the jerk of his arm accidentally knocking his inkwell over. A black flood of ink rolled over several of the papers on his desk; only a frantic scramble and luck kept it from blotting out the form he had been filling in.
“Armok give me strength!” Quantum growled, stabbing his pen back down into the righted well and starting at the doctor. “What is it this time?”
“Just me, Quantum.” Dr. Lolorodem swaggered in through the doorway with a grin on her face, eyes flashing with excitement above the restraint-mask that hung around her neck. “Did you hear the news?”
“About the attack?”
“Aye! We’ve got a bunch of those bloody malefactors incoming. I already saw that thing gut one of these irritating minstrels in front of me, Quanty.” Dr. Lolorodem’s tongue flicked out over her dry lips, putting him in mind of a lizard about to strike at its prey. “And I want them. I want to see what makes them…
tick. Ah, the things to be learned!”
Quantum merely stared at her for a moment, trying to dredge up an appropriate response, before finally just shaking his head to himself. Whatever the leather-masked dwarf meant, he neither fully knew nor cared; but if he didn’t get this order filled out soon, she’d be learning firsthand whether a screw press and bill could turn a dwarf into a passable wine.
Recognising a dismissal when she saw one, the doctor swiftly rose to her feet and went briskly striding off toward the sounds of fighting, humming to herself as she imagined the things she could learn from the captive Malefactor.
“Wax-brains! Clay-skulls! What have you feldspar-eyed idiots done?”
“Killed it, boss!” One of the militiamen answered with a grin, pointing his spear down at the broken corpse laying on the ground beside him. One of the predators of The Overlook was already enthusiastically sawing up the body, seemingly oblivious to her objections and ire.
“You are certain of it?”
By way of answer, the swordswoman almost casually walked over to the twitching corpse and kicked it hard between the stumps of its legs. The bloated corpse twitched with the force, its dead weight shifting slightly. Her iron boot sunk in almost to the heel and as she pulled it free, it brought a trailing length of intestine with it. Almost at the same time, the predator working on the corpse tore the spinal column and head free completely with the aid of its blade.
“That answer your question?”
The doctor’s eyes flashed above the mask set above her neck, her teeth grinding together hard enough for her jaw to creak.
“Then I suggest,” She bit out, one word at a time. “That you assist me in bringing this refuse down to my cell. I have work to do and things to learn, despite your utter failure to follow o—!”
She was building steam for another stream of curses when the inmate rolled her eyes and cut her off with an annoyed bark of her own.
“Hang it, doc, and stop squalling. We’ve got rid of them; what more does it matter?”
“Squalling” was the word indeed. At this Dr. Lolorodem’s ire rose to such a fevered pitch that she simply threw her hands up into the air in utter frustration and stormed toward the bodies, cursing all the way as she hauled them back off toward the fortress and through the corridors to the cells she had claimed as her own. There, she practically threw the corpses off against one of the walls and stalked off to her writing desk.
“I told them! I told them a dozen damned times! “Take the creature alive.” AND WHAT DO THEY DO?” She ranted to herself, furiously scribbling with each word. “They tear the damned creature apart! Well, no more!”
On the parchment before her, a shape began to take form, basing itself off the plan that Quantum had passed to her several days before. A blunt square, funnelling into a broad, open space – and every inch of it lined with cage traps, rigged to snap shut the moment some unfortunate creatures put so much as a toe out of line.
“This should work – the construction of a new way into this hovel, and I’m lining it with every possible means of incapacitation possible! I refuse to let this sentence be the end of my research!”
That done, the doctor half-flung her pen back to the desk and stormed out of the room with the parchment in hand, already seeking out a labourer to conscript.
The dying days of Spring saw the caverns opened again at the Assistant Overseer’s advice; according to her, the soil and mud down there would provide plenty of space for farming mushrooms and cave-plants the next time disgruntled contractors came knocking. More importantly, it would begin to let them alleviate the alcohol shortages that had been plaguing the fortress.
The forges were roaring, as well, hawking up thunderheads of exhaust smoke into the sky. The smelters and forges were running at full capacity again on Overseer Wardedbridges’ orders, churning out new steel ingots from a fresh hematite vein, forging them into steel arms and armour for the militia. Already a few of them were walking the halls with their new gear equipped, torchlight silvering their shiny new steel armour and gleaming off the honed edges of axes, spears, and even a couple hammers. (A handful, too, had been requisitioned by the doctor for her own purposes.)
Beneath the grey lid of forge-smoke and cloud cover, The Overlook’s corridors were abuzz with activity. The Overseer’s first floor plan had been carved out in full, and anyone not busy with gathering fermentable plants or setting up the first, tentative cavern-farms or working in the roughly hacked-out forge levels had been tasked with smoothing the rough stone. Quantum himself had not been out of his office in days, save for the constant stream of signed work orders and the occasional plan for another expansion of the cell blocks; even these were sent mostly through the doctor.
The relative calm was shattered by cries of alarm and the sudden tolling of bells. Hematite had arrived, and it was bringing with it a less than welcome sight – a half-dozen twisted creatures, led by a pair of twin-headed brutes, cresting the hill and preparing to surge down the slopes toward The Overlook’s entrance.
It was comical, in its own way, to see the sudden mayhem spread across the field as the rabble of Chaotic Beings slammed face-first into a swarm of ravening Gorgers as they burst from ambush. Eagar for the taste of something new, the bloated humanoids wasted no time in hurling themselves at the two-headed creatures, practically frothing at the mouth in their eagerness to bury their jaws in living flesh.
The militia halted at the mouth of the tunnel, bunching up around the gate in a confused mass as the stone portal was winched shut again. The alarm bells were still tolling somewhere over the shouting and the slither of stampeding boots. Members of each squad were still arriving piecemeal; others ran this way and that with weapons and shields at the ready, blocking the already-tight tunnels further. Most of the civilians were already running for the shelter of the tavern, or the deeper cells.
It would be several tense hours before they were relieved of duty. By that point, the bulk of the invasion forces had ripped each other apart, leaving a carpet of fleshy debris strewn across the crest of the Overlook. What few remained had run straight into the cage traps of the new entrance, much to the delight of the doctor. She swiftly conscripted a half-dozen hauliers to assist with dragging the newly-caged catches down into The Overlook’s deeper reaches.
That, however, proved the extent of excitement for Hematite. No wagons came to disgorge new shipments of prisoners or trade goods; no disgruntled contractors came to shout their outrage at the closed gates; even the gloomy figure of the ghost drifting around the fortress halls seemed strangely subdued. The closest thing to it was the occasional request for citizenship by the hired entertainers, the sound of arguments drifting from the tavern, and the rare screeching noise from the newly carved “Solitary Confinement” cells in which the doctor had taken up residence.
Limestone, too, proved curiously calm for the first fortnight. Crops continued to be harvested and fruits gathered; the alcohol stores slowly ticked their way up toward replenishment. A handful of cave-dwelling troglodytes made efforts to rush up into the central stairwell through the caves, only to be snared in the traps set there. They were promptly hauled off to the Solitary cells, to the mockery of the hauliers accompanying them and the delight of its sole (so far) occupant.
An artefact was even created by one of the younger members of the fortress, albeit after several days spent babbling in tongues and occasionally frothing at the mouth.
The only thing worrying was the discrepancy in the records. A dozen steel weapons had gone missing – swords and axes, spears and shields – without so much as a trace. None of the work details knew anything of what had become of them, and a thorough search of the cells by the militia had turned up nothing more dangerous beyond the occasional mouldy biscuit or outraged labourer startled from their rests.
With no evidence and the inmates growing more restless with each day, Quantum reluctantly gave the order to cease the searches. Wherever they had gone, he could only hope it was not a portent of darker things.
The midpoint of the month saw the first new shipment of prisoners arrive at The Overlook. As before the prison wagon came rolling up to the gates of the prison, and the guards hauled their living cargo out onto the rain and blood-wet grass before it. Most of them hastily made for the lower, narrower slit of the trapped entrance, seeing the sentries on duty there and the large bridge standing upright at the main tunnel’s mouth. One among them, however, made a point of striding toward the closed gateway and shouting her demands for entrance up at the stone.
Hearing it, but not the individual words, one of the inmates near to the entrance lever went over and hauled it into the “open” position. Then she heard the words, and cursed several times as she realised what she’d just set in motion.
“Let me in, you ruddy dimwits! I’m the outp—”
It was at that exact moment that she took one step too far, landing herself right in the middle of the area where the gate would descend.
There was a wet crunching noise, a heavy *thump* as the gate struck the ground, and a long moment of silence broken only by the rattle of lowering chains and mechanisms.
The pair of dwarves manning the gate ran out to help, but they needn’t have bothered. The drawbridge had ironed the outpost liaison flatter than weeks old beer.
It was then they noticed the marking on her shoulder: an almost cartoonish ghost sewn into the fabric of one sleeve, “DFM” in bright thread beneath it.
The reaction was swift: after a brief round of inventive cursing and a resolution of the guards to not inform the grumpy old git of an Overseer or his maniacal assistant, the body was scraped off the dirt and propped up with the assistance of a couple wooden splints. A battered hat and old coat were hastily thrown onto the corpse to hide the worst of the damage, before it was hauled to its feet by two of the inmates. They carried it forward into the halls of the fortress with its dead weight slung between them, legs dragging slightly on the smoothed stone.
Despite the busyness of the corridors, they attracted surprisingly little attention as they went trekking through the halls. Most of the inmates were busy partying, drinking themselves into a stupor in the taverns or running about to and fro in the hollowed out meeting areas. Those few who cared enough to stop and look closer often quite swiftly left at the expressions on their faces, though a handful were perceptive enough to see the outline of the patch against the coat, or recognise the facial features under the hat.
At first, they terrified the pair; they felt their hearts leap into their throats every time their eyes flashed with recognition, instinctively bristling with the fear of discovery. None of them, however, raised the alarm. They merely gave subtle, knowing smiles or touched a finger to their lips before pointedly turning their heads away, letting them pass deeper into the prison’s guts. The two had just begun to think they might get away with it, when the Overseer himself emerged from one of the nearby corridors, eyes immediately settling onto the figure.
“Ah, hello. I presume you are the outpost liaison?”
“Satisfactory, Overseer.” One of the two –
Kosoth Bodiceshocked, her name tag read – replied, pitching her voice at a deliberate falsetto. Her mouth barely moved, but neither did the corpse’s, covered as it was by the brim of the hat and collar of the coat. “Not quite as pleasant as I had hoped, but your men have helped greatly. Excuse me – I must be underway.”
“So soon?” He blinked in surprise, head turning slightly onto its side. “I thought you would have wished to... well, to speak with us – myself and my deputy. Gain an understanding of how things have been…”
“I am afraid that will not be necessary, Overseer.” Beside Kosoth, Ustuth Machinelucky silently strained to make the corpse’s head shake – just enough to convey disagreement, without giving away the game. “We are quite satisfied that one of your… experience should be capable of running the prison without a repeat of the past.”
Quantum flinched backward at that, hesitated a moment longer, before slowly shaking his head to himself and starting to amble away.
“Well… well, I hope you enjoy your visit, at any rate, madam.”
“Nice work, Kosoth,” Ustuth muttered as they moved on, half-manhandling the corpse down the central stairwell and entering into the space the Overseer had ordered carved out. The Solitary Wing’s iron doors loomed out of the gloom ahead.
“Thank you, thank you.” She gave a mock-ironic bow, grimacing slightly as the corpse’s head flopped forward. “I might start up my own puppet show at this rate. ‘Performances every hour, on the hour! Dead people a speciality!’”
“Yeah, har bloody har.” The other muttered, shoving him past. “Let’s just get this done and out of here already…”
The Solitary Wing lived up to its name in both senses of the word. The place was almost completely deserted despite its recent completion, the heavy iron doors into each cell firmly bolted shut and the closely set bars thick with cobwebs. Only the echoey, half-distant slithering of caged things broke the silence as they manhandled the corpse deeper into the shadows.
Before long, they found the cell they were looking for: like all the ones in the wing, it was little more than a blank iron portal mounted on a set of heavy-duty hinges. *Un*like the rest of them, it bore a familiar name, etched in bronze against the grey metal:
Dr. D. Lolorodem, MD. Neither dwarf bothered with niceties; a knock at the door and an unceremonious dropping of the corpse sufficed, followed by the sharp slap of shoes on the stone as they went sprinting off before the door could open. Skidding around the corner, the two of them paused as they heard it grind open.
“Oh, the things I can foresee in your future! So much potential; so many things I can create from a fresh cadaver!” The doctor’s voice carried faintly from the cell they had hidden the body in, her tone high and manic.
“And the immaterial power already infused within your flesh and bone – just delightful! Yes, you will be just perfect as raw materials for my newest experiments!”The pair of gate guards exchanged a look with each other, the desire for drinks intensifying, before synchronously turning and walking away without a backward glance.
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Topic: Spookyfort IV: The Overlook - Overspookers welcome! (Read 17752 times)