I've always wanted to do a story or a community fort. Recently I've been possessed by a story, or rather an idea, to build a fortress of dwarves who are terrified of going underground, and not without good reason. It's fairly undwarven, and downright odd, but nonetheless the story has unfolded and the characters have taken their place. The stage is constructed, the caravan has been launched.
Grendus has been taken by a fey mood!
Grendus has claimed a new topic.
Grendus has begun a strange project.
The wagon creaked along slowly, gently rocking as the dwarves drove through the night. The noise was almost soothing, threatening to put the driver to sleep. Shem shook her head and slapped herself awake, struggling against the exhaustion that threatened to overtake her. She feared sleep almost as much as she feared heights and goblins now, something she had never thought possible. As a child she had been given to sleeping in late and going to bed early, something that had perplexed her father until he realized that she had been saving her alcohol money and secretly returning it to the family's meager chest. He had been a good father, and realizing that there was no future for them in the mountainhome had gathered the family and risked the long journey to Blazingbanner. She remembered that day, leaving their home with nothing but the clothes on their backs and the family cat. The wagon hadn't creaked then, it had been newer and hadn't spent so much time soaking up water in the marshes outside the fortress. A cold breeze stirred her hair, but she didn't notice.
She remembered walking down the corridors lovingly smoothed by her brother, the stone always inexplicably warm. He had tried to explain that there was liquid stone that was somehow hot enough to keep the whole mountain comfortable, but she just knew that it was always warm inside. Warm and safe. The long entrance corridor loomed before her. She knew that somewhere out there was the mountainhome where she had grown up, and that along the paths marked on the traders maps there were creatures called humans and elves. She had even seen a human once, when she had helped her father carry a especially heavy bin that turned out to contain steel weapons. Her father had explained that humans didn't know how to make steel, and that those few weapons could be traded for many human goods. The humans had smiled at her, babbling in their strange language. Her brother had later explained that the human had thought she was a child because she was so short compared to them. But today there was no promise of mystery, nor was there the desire to stay in the warm safety, only terror.
She ran for the dim glow outside, trying to tune out the screams coming from the mountain. The air began to heat around her, the pleasant warmth growing painful, but she only ran faster. Someone began screaming near her ears. The glow grew larger, and she could dimly see the silhouette of a wagon, with dwarves frantically loading whatever they could get their hands on into it. Behind her the screams changed, devolving into wails of terror and then of madness. She could hear something impossibly large scrambling along the tunnels on too many legs. The light ahead swelled, and then she was through. Twelve dwarves stood assembled, seven guards and a few of the haulers who had been managing the surface stockpiles who had moved on from loading the wagon and were now hitching a few animals lucky enough to have been nearby. The guards stood and hefted their weapons.
Something slammed into her legs from behind, knocking them out from under her, and wrapped around her ankle. The soldiers lunged forward, blades and hammers so caked with blood and... something else that they could no longer gleam in the blinding sun. The grip on her ankle released and she scrambled out of the way. She looked down and saw a long gray cord, thick as the grip on a hammer, still wrapped around her leg ending in a green stump. Behind her the guards grunted and screamed as whatever it was struggled to get through. One of them was thrown into the wagon and lay still, his skull cracked in two and his body twisted into a wrong angle. Turning around, she saw that only two of the guards remained. A hammerdwarf tried to slip under the creatures many arms, but got caught around the neck. The creature began to shake him around like a ragdoll, cutting his screams short. The other guard stepped in and, showing no fear, brought his heavy axe down through all 7 of the creatures remaining arms. It screamed, for the first time probably in it's life feeling terror, as the sole surviving guard brought his axe against the creatures eyes. He began to savage the creature without pity, bringing the axe down on the twitching mass again and again until it lay still. Shem watched in fascination and horror.
"'Urry up, 'afore another one of 'em gets through," the guard yelled, snapping her back to reality. She quickly jumped into the wagon, knocking a barrel out in her haste. It cracked, spilling the turtles inside.
"Shit," she yelled, trying to jump down and gather the supplies. One of the other dwarves grabbed her hair and yanked her roughly back, snapping her face up to look down the tunnel. Her brother scrambled around a corner, running so fast that even an elf would have envied him. He sprinted down the corridor, with something so far beyond terror etched across his whole body that it was amazing he could move at all. The wagonmaster shook the reigns, urging the animals into motion.
Shem's brother called out to them, begging for them to wait. The driver slowed the animals, though he didn't dare stop, and turned. From within the mountain, a fearsome red glow emerged. Living fire flowed down the hallway impossibly fast. It didn't even stop to attack Shem's brother, merely moving through him as his body simply ceased to be anything more than charcoal. Shem tried to scream, and for the first time realized that she already was. The wagonmaster urged the pack animals away. Shem screamed. The monster threw it's arm forward, and fire engulfed the entrance to her home.
Shem jolted awake with a grunt. Large trees lurched out of the darkness towards the wagon, threatening the pack animals. She jerked on the reins, turning the wagon sharply back onto the path. Behind the wagon came a wet thud and a loud curse.
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Topic: Sakrithgeshud Angzak Uthgur - an identity lost (Read 1318 times)