A short story I did for my English language GCSE, which would be about a year and a half ago now.
It was long before I started playing DF, and I based it partly on the Dwemer from Morrowind.
It was good enough to get an A*, anyway.
In the darkness beneath the Mourning Mountains, an old race slept. They had slept for countless years, beyond the limited reckoning of man, and unknown to any other race. They slept in vast networks of caverns, deep below the reach of any normal mine. They were, and indeed still are the dwarves. The reason for their deep and prolonged sleep was unknown to anyone, excepting, of course, the dwarves. By now, they were nothing but a fairy tale, along with all the other races that had seen fit to hide over the eons. But now, the caves of the dwarves had just admitted their first waking being for thousands of years. And this is what happened.
Johan the walker had just fallen down a hole. It had obviously been covered at some point by a metal cover, which was now lying in heavily corroded lumps around his feet. He looked up. He had fallen down a long shaft, with glass-smooth sides, and had landed on some kind of orange fungus. Since he wasn’t choking or being absorbed, he reasoned he was safe, and began to look for a way out of this rather odd cave. It was especially odd because it was quite pleasantly warm and dry, and clearly man-made. A little part of his mind whispered. “Or is it man...” The rest of him, being a rational man of the age, told himself that he was speaking poppycock, and should stay quiet. Still, that big metal disc on the wall didn’t look like any work of a man, and he’d seen a lot. Since it was clearly a door, he walked over to it and prodded it. It swung open at a touch, although judging by the thick cascade of dust; it hadn’t been opened for some considerable amount of time. It opened into a long, round corridor, warmly lit by little glassy tubes on the ceiling. He stopped for a moment, wondering what they were, then, realising they were far beyond his understanding, continued on his wander through these tunnels. He now came to the realisation that he’d been falling for well over five minutes down that hole, and judging by the slope, he was probably deep underground, where fairytale dwarfs and gnome and things lived, or so the books had said when he was a boy. He had to admit, he had liked the stories, silly as they were... Regardless of this, he kept walking, marvelling at the wonderful doors and straight tunnels. Eventually, he came to a chamber, containing a spring of some sort. The spout was carved into the shape of a gear of some sort. He was about to drink some, when a tinny voice from a grid above his head. It said something in an unintelligible language, then another, and finally a form of Mournish he could recognise. “Please do not drink out of the washing basin.” Since he could safely say that no-one had come here in years, let alone washed, he drank some then filled his flasks. After a few more hours of wandering, he stopped in some kind of hall filled with benches. It had two roads down the middle, but these roads had a rail hanging above them. He decided to go to sleep to wait for something.
What Johan didn’t know, and what any dwarf could have told him was that he was in fact doing quite a sensible thing. He was unknowingly waiting for the Durzenrail, a kind of monorail leading from the little town he stumbled across, to the mighty city of Durzenkhart, or Deep Travel. Both of these were made by the men under the mountain to ease population trouble, and to show off their engineering prowess to outsiders, who were only allowed to see these two wonders. This is because the little men under the mountains guarded their secrets well, under more than just lock and key. And now, Johan’s train is about to arrive, and you wouldn’t want him to miss it.
Johan woke up with a start. He had heard a rumbling and a squealing of metal. He looked out across this hall, or as the grid on the wall had said, the “station” Where an empty road had been, there was now a large, boxy thing, made out of the same slightly corroded metal as all the other things, and lit with the funny little tubes that he couldn’t explain. Without a moment’s notice, he leapt onto the box-thing, and it began to smoothly glide along the track. He took this opportunity to catch up on the sleep he’d lost, and curled up on the seat. Some time later, he woke up, refreshed from his nap. The thing was still hurtling along the tube, so he decided to look around. He walked up the isle in the middle, looking around. There seemed to be rows of identical seats, continuing for an absolute age. The boxes or carriages were joined together with a substance a little like leather, but black and soft. When the thing eventually came to an end, there was a simple box built in to what was currently the front wall. Inside, he could see lots and lots of pipes, gears and bulbous versions of the glowing tubes. Above, it had writing in various languages. The first was the same angular runic script he saw on everything, but somewhere on the label it said. “Driver and overseer machine.” Just as he was about to prise off the cover, this thing with a driver stopped. He decided to step off to avoid another long journey. He stepped out into a place that was, for his rather technologically backward mind, another world.
Johann looked around himself in awe. The platform had been left open so that he could see the entire city in all its glory. Gears and wheels spun and clicked, just as they had been doing for so long. It was like being inside an enormous clock, and a clock that looked like a city too. But where, he wondered, were the people? He wandered over to a large, brassy ball and looked at it. He flicked it. It went “Ping.” Then, it began to shudder, and began to unfold. Long, spidery legs folded out, feeling for a floor. A thin spine, made of segments of metal straightened up. He found himself looking into a pair of blank, green lenses. The thing whirred. The legs began to move, and it clattered off into an alley. Unnerved, Johan walked in the opposite direction, towards the tall building covered in pipes. As he wandered in, he noted that it was rather like a town hall, with desks and clocks and chairs. But the desks and chairs seemed remarkably low. He carefully walked further into the brightly lit building. He eventually came to another round door saying “PRIVATE. Non-surface dwellers only.” Reasoning that there was no-one to stop him, he sneaked inside the door. A smallish cylinder awaited, a door set into the surface. He prodded it, and it opened with a hiss. Upon walking inside, he was met with an interface of buttons and runic script. Having now spent a few days in the place, and now being quite passable at what he had come to call “Dwarvern” One particularly promising button, once translated, said “Sleeping-halls”. He pressed the button. Almost immediately, the thing began to fall. Johan clung to the console, wondering what he had done wrong, when there was a “Clunk” and the little metal cylinder stopped. A tinny voice spoke, and he walked out of the door.
The first thing he noticed was the heat. The heat here was intense, like furnaces had been roaring away down here for centuries .The air was dry and still, and there was a distinct smell of coal smoke and oil. Down here, the lighting was a sullen orange, lit by strange circular holes in the ceiling and walls. At the end of this corridor was an enormous door, inscribed with runes, most of which he could neither read nor translate. He walked over to it. It said something about a race asleep that would be woken again when the time was correct. A wheel with a handle was mounted on the door. He began to turn it. Again, it was easy to turn, so it must have been on the same bearings as the other doors. When it was open, he stepped inside. This place was dark, and cool, the place you would expect in the heart of a mountain. He pulled an impressive lever on the ground. Tubes instantly flickered into life, and it was then that he saw the very strangest thing he would ever see in his entire life. Tens of thousands of short, stocky men and women, the men with long beards, the women holding children, all lain out in clockwork boxes. Johan stood there, not sure whether he was terrified of in awe, scanning the vast room. He began to walk, hesitantly along the middle isle. Thoughts ran through his head “Are they dead? Are they sleeping, will they suddenly wake up and boil me alive?” All of these ran through his poor mind, but one thought appeared again and again. “Are these the Dwarves? Are they real?” After walking for what seemed like weeks, he came to a raised dais in the middle of the cavern. He walked up to the top of it. Another console with ornate levers and green screens with letters scrolling down them presented themselves to him. A skeleton reclined in the red leather chair near the desk. It wore a crumbling velvet robe and had a golden key. He pulled the key off, letting the skull fall to the ground with a clonk. He put the key in the console and twisted it, pulling the biggest and most ornate lever. A cascade of ticking sounds filled the room. All of the metal caskets had begun to open, their cogs clicking away. Johan the walker stared on in horror as the little people all began to stir, some leaping up, some simply turning over. An unfortunately lively one turned around at him and said, in his strange language. “The waker has come! Wait... The waker is only a man?”
Johan simply keeled over where he stood, and by the time he hit the console, he was already unconscious. He woke up what seemed like minutes later, in his own bed in his house. The village doctor was standing over him. “Ah, you’ve come round. You made quite a few people worried, my boy, you were missing for almost a week until Hans and his woodcutters found you on the mountainside near some old well. They brought you back here, and you were out for near on two days!” Johan stared at him. That hole he had fallen down in that dream he must have had on the mountain had looked like a well when he fell down it. “And another thing” said the doctor.” We found all sorts of things in your pockets and bag. There were little machines made from clockwork and crystals, a bag of ancient coins, and a little box with a grille on. I’ve kept them for you, even if that old priest says we should throw them down the well. May I ask how you came across these; I’ve only seen things like this in the Curiosity house in Wörmbourg.” Johan looked at the doctor, before replying.”I think I must have found them somewhere in that well, but a learned man like you will not believe the ramblings of a simple wanderer like myself.” The doctor laughed. “Oh, my dear man, I saw so many strange things when I learned medicine in Wörmbourg many years ago.” Johan was about to begin when there was a hammering at the door, and old Frau Braun burst in. “The Mountain is on fire! The Mountain is smoking!” Johan looked out of his window, and sure enough, smoke was pouring out of holes in the mountainside, complete with glowing embers. He smiled, and began. “Doctor, Frau Braun, I think that I can explain both my disappearance and the smoke from the mountain at the same time.” His audience of two stared at him.” It began when I was walking up the mountain, and I fell down that well...”
And that is the story of Johan the walker, and the dwarves under the mountain. And that is where this story ends.
It is a tad over 2100 words.
Author
Topic: A story about dwarves not from DF. (Read 952 times)