Yes, the first story I've posted here. A slight embellishment on the final fate of my first fortress with Adamantine. Slightly spoilerish if you don't already know what Adamantine typically leads to. Anyway it's short, but I figured I'd give writing a shot. If you like it or dislike it, you should leave a response so I can hear what you think.
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As you pry open the heavy door, you see a scene that has come to be common in the past week. A small room, roughly hewn from the idigenous stone, with a modest bed and, amongst a putrid smell and thick coats of dried blood, another dwarven corpse. Something strikes you as odd, however, as this dwarf is significantly better preserved than the others. Clutched in the dwarf's left hand is a torn sheet of parchment.
Carefully, you step across the room, ignoring the elf sitting on the floor, staring blankly forward. There are dozens of them around the outpost, of human, elven, and dwarven race, all completely insane and incapable of any communication. The elf does not react as you edge past him. Gingerly, you pry the fingers of the deceased from the paper, and hold the paper close to your lantern, while carefully watching the inky blackness beyond the opened door of the chamber.
The paper is heavily bloodstained, and the writing itself maintains the rusty brown color of long-dried blood. It appears to have been scrawled with the tip of a knife, carefully and laboriously, and without the assistance of the dwarf's dominant hand. Looking once again at the corpse, you can see the dozen or so fractures along it's right arm, where the bone shows.
You carefully smooth the paper and begin to read:
Second of Slate, year 1056.
My name is Meng Akmeshimushk. I am, so far as I can hear or tell, the only remaining survivor of Onolivom. If you are reading this, then I am dead. Read on, so that we are not forgotten.
I am a officer of the fortress guard. We had little crime, and little want for much of anything but drink. Most of the dwarves here were simple farmers, skilled in nothing more than tilling and planting. Onolivom was to be a breadbasket for the mountainhomes. We had some contingent of miners and engravers, perhaps five of any notable skill, that lived here before last week. Mostly migrant workers. I lay the blame for this on them.
I was like any other. When I saw the metal, the gleaming shine of the most precious of all metals, I coveted it as much as anyone. By Thun, it nearly glowed with beauty. Light, strong, but instantly malleable with the right work, it was perfect. I'd only seen it once before, in the form of an amulet carried by Tosid Ralukral, the noble who commissioned this place and worked as it's leader in the beginning. A week ago, we were waist-deep in the stuff.
We were rich. We were all going to be wealthy beyond our wildest dreams. The vein was deep, running near vertically through the base of the mountain. Our miners tore through it quick as lightning, and the farmers could barely tend to the crops for need of hauling the ore upwards. I was on double duty for three weeks running, as everyone who had a moment would keep a sliver for himself, having done none of the work for it.
If we had only known, I would have poured the world's worth of magma into those halls and never set foot near Onolivom again.
I was resting here, after a brief scuffle with a kobold theif three days before, when I heard the screams. It was strange, I knew immediately that everyone was already dead. There was a pall, a shadow over the entire place, almost instantly. The screaming. I have never heard such sounds.
These blasted elves and humans filled the corridors first. Three came and stood in my room, babbling nonsense. They occupied themselves petting the walls or rocking back and forth in a fetal fugue state, and completely ignored my questions about what was happening.
It wasn't long, and IT came into view. I can't describe it. Even now, this knife trembles in my hands, and it's writhing body--
No. No, whoever is reading this will not be burdened with it. It took my arm, and it crushed it. I have never felt such pain, and it's... limbs were coated in some slime that even now burns my dying flesh.
My arm is ruined. After it did this, it stopped for a moment, as if considering, and then pulled away. Two of the maddened creatures followed it, and then it was silent in my quarters, aside from the calm, nonsensible mutterings of the elf now sitting on the floor.
It has been a week since this occurred. The water in the bucket that had been left for me here is nearly gone, and has been completely foul ever since that day. I am going to die here, of thirst and exhaustion. I am the last.
Reader, you must run. You must leave now, and you must never look back. Tell whoever you can, whereever you came from, that this place must be sealed forever and never reclaimed. Hell itself is come to Onolivom, and it can never be cleansed.
--Meng A.
You carefully fold the note, pressing it into a pocket on your pack. You peer carefully past the open doorway, with the darkness that seems to have taken a malevolent bent since reading it. The hallway remains silent, excepting the ranting of the madman you left in the entrance.
As you step out of the outpost, feeling the cool mountain sunlight stream over you, you turn once more to the wretched place. Aside from the swaying of the cave wheat growing weakly around the entryway, there is no motion to be seen. You turn, heading northwards towards your village, holding the last memory of this forgotten fortress.
Author
Topic: The Last Writ, a short story (Read 1279 times)