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[sir_laser]

This is fuckin' brilliant 

[BackgroundGuy]

This is really well written.  You've given enough prior information that when we enter a new area, I find it easy to visualize what it generally looks like, and I found myself with a significant emotional attachment to the characters despite being a short story so far (Vaboook, Todeee).  The afterlife sequences are riddletastically wtf and dreamlike.  Questions that I hope will be answered:
1) What is Zulban specifically?  It obviously has deadly (cave-in) dust that causes deadly vomiting, and it has horns, but what it is specifically?
2) Is the countess continuing the experiments out of respect for Vabok
3)

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

 oh god did microscopic amounts of dust get in the trade goods

All in all, very nicely done.

[Nil Eyeglazed]

As steampunkfox said earlier, how about capturing your beast of flame and beast of lignite and locking them in a small room?

You know, I'm about to finish off those caverns, but I think this is really about Zulban as much as it's about Lanterndark.  Other forgotten beasts are just going to dilute it.

This is fuckin' brilliant 

Wow, thanks!  You know, this is where I wish I could be all stoic and shit and tell myself that I don't need the praise but really I do.

The afterlife sequences are riddletastically wtf and dreamlike.  Questions that I hope will be answered:

Thanks, I hoped somebody would like that.  Big fan of twin peaks, maybe it shows.  Don't worry, all questions will be addressed in time.

Wall of text today, hopefully some of y'all will read it.  I made up for all the words by putting in lots of blood.

[Nil Eyeglazed]

Oddom Craftbald reached for Listenpeaces.  He couldn't be scabbarded, and Oddom could run faster with him in her hand than on her back.

She had this strange sense of deja vu, every ambush.  She couldn't remember everything perfectly, but it was, "Right, he drops the weapon and tries for a take-down," or "Okay, right, he gets another swing in, then he falls down," or "Yeah, I remember her back there, but the arm comes off before she can connect."  Grandma had told her about berserkers she had seen, from the end of the Riddled Siege, when everyone fell back to the armory for crossbows but there weren't enough bolts to go around.  Oddom had thought that's what it must be, but then she'd seen berserkers with her own eyes, her own Pinnacles dancing around missiles like the goblins were shooting from underwater, and when it was over, they couldn't remember how many blows they'd landed, they couldn't remember where they'd been wounded, they couldn't remember their own names, not for a while, and Oddom knew those were her grandma's trances when she saw them, knew that it was something different for her, even if she didn't have a name for it.

This one had a spear.  He lunged, putting his whole body into it, but Listenpeaces was higher, if angled wrong, and she batted down the spear, still running, stepped on the haft as she came and the goblin lifted forward like an acrobat with a pole, so Listenpeaces was angled right after all, and the iron mail split, and so did the rib cage.

It used to be disconcerting.  She had began every fight trying to remember if this was the one she lost.  She had thought that if she could remember which one she lost, she could do things just a little bit differently than she remembered them happening, turn it into a win.  "Hammer comes down, dodge left but then I fall, so I spin back instead," and then it'd be over, and she'd remember, "Oh yeah, this was one of the ones where I thought I was going to do it differently than I remembered, but that's just because I couldn't really remember everything perfectly, so I did it just the same as I remembered."

It didn't bother her anymore.  She would remember, when the time came, and it didn't matter anyways.  It left every fight a dance, carefully choreographed swings, every step memorized ahead of time.  It left her a lot of time to think.  Seems like these were the only times she really could think.

The goblin was still clutching the spear uselessly.  His ribcage had stopped the blow, more or less, so she didn't need to recover, and the backblade was right over his hand.  It separated from the forearm cleanly.  Living bone doesn't look the same as dead bone.

The deal was that Kol managed the civil side, and Oddom managed the military side, and Oddom thought that she had handled the military side pretty damn well.  Going on 14 years at Lanterndark now, and one military casualty.  That poor boltboy, what was his name.  One of Reg's.  Oddom had never even seen the body, never seen where he fell.  Walled up now.

Listenpeaces was low, now, a little tangled under the hand, the haft, the arm.  Oddom turned.  There he was, right where she remembered, charging with a spear held in both hands, over his head like an upsidedown sword.  Lunatic.  Her shield hand was already where it belonged, her shoulder too.  The spearhead went clear past her head, a good foot off, and the goblin reeled back, clutching his face with both hands.

Not Reg's squad anymore.  Fikod's.  Reg had that thing with the tigers.  Oddom had told him, "Reg, one of these days, one of those cats is going to tear your arm off," and it had done worse than that.  It was Reg's life to lose, and he'd proven it.  You splash around in a bathtub long enough, you're gonna drown.  But that Vucar kid, too-- he was lucky that he could still walk.

Listenpeaces was free.  He might have the shape of an axe, but hold him your hand, you knew he was a razor.  Oddom could shave dwarves with him, trim the sideburns and leave the braids-- hell, had, that time that Tosid had been getting too proud, thinking he couldn't be touched.  It wasn't about being cocky or being humble, that's what they didn't get.  It was about knowing how fast you actually were and doing what you could with that.  The lasher was close, but really too close for whipwork, and she followed the block forward, driving her shield into his face.

Oddom wasn't looking forward to the conversation with Kol.  Surface work wasn't wholly civil and it wasn't wholly military.  The leg came off below the knee and slowed Listenpeaces enough that she took the same leg off above the knee.  She and Kol would have to talk about it.  Kol loved to talk.  She was good at it, like Oddom was good with an axe.  Holy Zas these entrails stunk.

And the migrants, that first bunch.  14 of them, assuming they got the parts all matched up right.  Oddom had never seen so much blood.

The one with the hammer saw Oddom with one foot in the air and thought she was off-balance but she was just winding up, there was that lasher behind her to manage.  The maul came down, a huge head of iron, clamshelled in each of the hundred tangents where it had landed before, and sparked when it hit the earth.  Oddom smiled, remembering, then felt the satisfying crunch where her steel-weighted toe landed.

That elephant sure bled a lot.  Maybe a tie.

And Aban.  Maybe she should count Aban.  Aban had been a hell of teacher, just touched the dwarves and they got it right next time, but she never could stand any dwarf dying.  It was Monom's squad now, good every way it counted, but he still couldn't get them to swing.  Hardy Arches were the best damn defensive squad you could ask for, but that's because they wouldn't take their openings.  Aban had taught them how to stay alive, not how to kill.  Oddom ducked.  It's like Aban couldn't stand for any of them to ever get hurt.

Shorast and Uzol had agreed.  It was because Aban wasn't hard enough yet.  Oddom had taken care of the first few ambushes, then Shorast, then Uzol, and they'd all seen their share of killing, they knew they couldn't expect their students to live, they knew there wasn't any such thing as a good death.  Squad leader's a hard position.  You have to love them to teach them, but you have to be able to walk away, too.

That's why they'd been sending Aban out so much.  Probably too much.  Aban was more of a teacher than a fighter, always came back, but always came back wounded.  Shorast had said she'd be okay.  She was, until she starved in traction.

Well, the point was, there had been very few military casualties.  Oddom had done a good job.  This was another thing they needed to learn: there wasn't really anything wrong with a low weapon, when that weapon was swinging in the right direction and your opponent's wasn't.  It cleaved to the breastbone, although just the sacrum in back, which is fine, because it was a clean cut, Listenpeaces was free, which she knew from the ringing she remembered, just off-center of the xiphoid, the sound of a crystal glass goblet.  Wonder if she could get one for training purposes.  The point was, she needed to bring that up when she talked to Kol, because Oddom had some good ideas, even if she wasn't as good as Kol at talking.

Vabok.  Oddom didn't even know what happened with that one.  She'd sat uselessly, locked in that pitting chamber, waiting for the ettin to drop.  Guess Vabok counts.

She remembered now.  This was one of the ones she had won.  She turned a slow circle.

That elephant hadn't really bled all that much.  Guess she'd seen more than that after all.

[Nil Eyeglazed]

"Tell me about the unicorn again, Urist."

"It wasn't a unicorn."

"Auntie calls them unicorns.  She says the elves ride them in war."

Urist lay on top of the sheets.  Too hot to sleep.  But she wasn't in the mood for telling stories.  "Go to sleep."

"I can't.  There's something under the bed."

"There's nothing under the bed!  And there aren't unicorns, and you don't even have an aunt."

"You didn't even look!"

Urist sighed dramatically and climbed down.  "There.  Nothing.  Just dust."

[Nil Eyeglazed]

Udil didn't like it.  One of these single tile jobs.  Bridges and doors, a path leading to a wall of natural granite.  The worst part was Tosid, barely moving but metal clanking under his robe when he did.  Udil didn't need supervision, and Tosid was the kind of dwarf that was like as not to correct you with the flat of his axe.  Udil had met plenty like him, didn't need to meet any more.

Granite's hard, but his pick was harder.  He knew rock now, saw the faults, saw the lines where water had frozen and evaporated a million years ago.  It wasn't just about lifting the pick and dropping it, that's what he'd figured out.  There was an art to it.  You had to love the mountain, and then she'd tell you her secrets.  He paused, wiping the sweat from his brow, and kicked himself a stable place to stand.

Right now, the mountain was telling him that there wasn't any more mountain behind this granite.  This was her skin.

A couple of swings and the last of it crumbled.  Udil couldn't help but whistle.  It was a dwarven paradise.

The cavern was lit faintly by the iridescent flicker of tunnel tubes, the warm glow of distant magma, and cool with nethercaps.  Dense moss carpeted the muddy ground.  Udil cocked his head, wondering if he could just hear the flapping wings of a distant cave swallow.  They sang, sometimes, a lot of dwarves didn't know that.

The flapping grew louder, louder, much too loud, a windmill, a waterfall, a cave-in, and then it came into view through the dewy dark, a bird, wasted with starvation, short-beaked, but bigger than an elephant.  Its three eyes were weeping pus.  Tosid pushed Udil roughly aside, a flash in the pink gloom, and thick, rancid blood spilled over the moss.  He shouted instruction, barely audible over the great beast's roar:

"Close the bridge!

"And mind the blood!"

[Nil Eyeglazed]

She didn't know what the subjects called her.  She had been born before language, before hotbloods scraped their stories onto stone walls.  Names were toys, but she wouldn't begrudge her subjects names if those were the toys they wanted.



She wriggled her legs uselessly.  There wasn't any pain, hadn't been, except when they had snapped, just for that sublime instant.  There had been a clutch, once, in the bloodthorn briar, a million worms wriggling out of ripped, translucent bronze sacs, and maybe that's what was happening to her, now, wriggling out of her own broken body.  She was crowned.  She didn't need her legs now.  They would fall away in time.

She had sighed then, sometime before time, witnessing the birth of her million daughters, and her breath had settled out over her children, and they had drowned in a million tiny puddles of blood, puddles so small and so thick they formed spheres on the ground, sacs of bronze to be born from and sacs of blood to die in.  There would never be anything so beautiful again as those countless red beads beneath the bloodthorn briar, not if all of time lasted a thousand years.

Something whined and scrabbled, above the ceiling, and she shifted delightedly.  The best dishes in all of the world were served in her castle.

[Nil Eyeglazed]

Kol pulled the lever, wincing.  Her hands were still raw.  The silk was fine enough to slice with, and the threads had to be kept taut.  Kol could barely manage the lines with her clumsy hands; gloves might protect her fingers, but she'd never be able to weave with them on.

The silk farm was a big step for Lanterndark.  Kol could barely keep her temper long enough to seize the elven rope reed, and now, she wouldn't even need that.  She couldn't even discuss the encounters with Uzol.  The venom would spill out, she could never hide anything from him, and he'd be so damned calm, so reasonable.  The Savage Mountain wasn't the Mirth of Balancing, but they were monsters just the same.  They were probably feasting on somebody's uncle right now.

Kol stepped lightly, laying the ephemeral thread over her arm to give the hand a rest.  She cocked her head and listened.  She could hear the whining of the dog behind the raised bridge, and that horrible hissing, spitting, clicking, the stuff of nightmares.  But there was something else behind it.  Some kind of rattle.

Kol shrugged.  She had the keys, after all.  And better Kol than Oddom.  Oddom would dissect that spider in a tornado of grisly blows, given half the chance, and there'd go Lanterndark's source of cloth.

The door opened with difficulty, glued to the walls, the ceiling, the floor with a mess of silk that rippled in its first breeze.  The dog scrabbled behind the next door.  Poor thing.  This closet stunk of refuse.  Kol turned, reluctant to spend more time in the cobwebbed foetor, then there it was again.  The rattle of unwelded iron.  The cage.

The trap was a precaution, should the spider somehow manage to find its way through the thick marble doors that enclosed it, and it had been invaluable when the first three designs of the silk farm had all proven imperfect.  But the cage was tripped, heavy gate barred, by something other than the spider.

The dwarf inside the cage was purple and bloated with decay.  Kol gasped, then gagged.  She gathered her worn dress into a handkerchief and covered her mouth and nose, then looked closer.

Melbil.  That trapper that had come with the miner and the boy.  Melbil had known about the trap.  She'd armed it herself.  She was a trapper by trade.

How in Etur had that happened?  Kol giggled despite herself.  Maybe it was horror breaking into hysteria.

[monk12]

Damn good story. I feel a terrible urge to dust my house now.

[Nil Eyeglazed]

Damn good story. I feel a terrible urge to dust my house now.

Sometimes, I'm scared that I'm being too subtle

Pardon the exposition today, folks.  It's a long update, but I figured that if I didn't just do it cheap like this, it'd take about a hundred entries to get across.

[Nil Eyeglazed]

Urist had inherited the nethercap bed when Cilob came of age.  She sprawled out on it now.

Erush spit.  "Once upon a time there was the stupidest mayor that has ever been.  He wanted lay pewter even though there ain't no tin and if there was I wouldn't use it for no lay pewter.  So he threw the armorsmith in jail for about a hunnerd years.  When the armorsmith got out he forged a huge hammer out of lay pewter and he hit that damned imbecile in the head until it cracked wide but there weren't no brains in there and everybody lived happily ever after."

Vucar was disappointed but he didn't say anything.  It was a small variation on a story he'd heard many times before.  But he'd asked for a story and he'd heard a story.

"Dwarf could get used to this idling.  Drink and sleep.  Nice and cool up here, too, away from the mountainblood."

Urist didn't think it was so cool up here, not for Vucar at least.  Suddenly she felt sorry for the scrawny child trying to get comfortable on his highwood bed.  "I'll bring you another pot of fisher berry wine if you tell us another story, Erush.  A good one this time."

Erush opened one eye at Urist.  There was a huge pot of purple wine within reach of his chain, but he had drank the fisher berry wine fast, in just his first few days.  He dropped his gaze and scrunched up his face and tried to think of a good story.  Nothing came so he just opened his mouth and started talking.

"Once upon a time....  Once upon a time there was a great dwarven civilization that existed up in the Crewed Spike.  Lancedcrystals had towers of hematite and Beltrough had towers of marble and Notchedlabors had the fire and had engraved towers of obsidian.  Mirth of Balancing brought wood and every year they smelted steel up at Notchedlabors, starting in autumn and not stopping until the wood was all burnt up.

"But there were thick veins in Lancedcrystals, and Beltrough was pretty much made of flux, and the elves were stingy with their wood.  Meanwhile, dwarves were marrying, making little dwarves, and it was getting to where an honest smith couldn't get a decent night's rest with all the kids making him tell them stupid stories.  So they founded Rhymeoils, up there where the Crewed Spike met the Forest of Vipers, and pretty much had all the wood they could ever want after that.  So they didn't need the Mirth of Balancing caravans anymore.

"But the elves still needed the dwarves.  It's only dwarves that smelt steel.  For a few years, they'd come by with trinkets, bears and eagles, binfuls, literally binfuls, of cloth, that rough stuff.  But these dwarves weren't having none of it.  They were doing things that you wouldn't believe.  They were making steel puzzleboxes, clothes out of metal, taming cavern beasts.

"So then the elves took a different tack.  Got all self-righteous.  Showed up at Winterlabors with a piece of paper from their queen.  Said to stop cutting trees.  But no way would the dwarves have none of that.  Trees are soot.  Trees are steel.  Most dwarves don't like to admit it, huff and puff, mutter some crap about coal, but dwarves and trees are like hammers and anvils.

"The elves came by a few times with their envoys, told the dwarves to cut it out, but the dwarves never did.  Didn't think the elves would ever do anything about it.  Didn't think the elves could, if it came down to it.

"War broke out in 45.  They didn't want the mountains, just the steel.  Brought eagles with them and sat outside the gates.  Anybody stuck their head out, about a hunnerd arrows flew into his head.  Until the mayor just gave up, raised the white flag, dumped everything metal and the elves carried it all off on the backs of grizzly bears and the dwarves were left in peace to try to bury the dead, least, those that hadn't been ate.  Elves got the worst of it but it didn't matter, they outnummered the dwarves two to one.

"Went on like that for about a hunnerd years.  Few other outposts, set up in the heyday, abandoned, turned into ghost towns.  Dwarves were striking back, too-- they'd wall up, send out miners, hit the elves at home when the armies were marching, set fire to the orchards.  Eventually the Mirth musta figured they had to finish it.  Probably had enough metal to armor their trees by then anyhow.

"Beltrough was the first to fall, and then the dwarves were stuck.  No flux, no steel.  They did what they could.  Rhymeoils walled up.  Starved rather than letting themselves be ate.  They say there ain't no doors that open on Rhymeoils now.  Lancedcrystals met them in open field, to the last dwarf.  Honorable but damned stupid.  Notchedlabors fell last.  600 elves against 13 dwarves at the Riddled Siege.  Smiths forging bolts till they ran out of ore and there still wasn't enough.  Their last king died there."

Erush paused then.  The words had just come of their own accord.  "A dwarf works up a thirst, telling a long tale like this one."

Urist didn't bother looking.  "Then a thirsty dwarf had best finish his tale."

Erush swallowed drily.  "But there'd been escapees.  Refugees.  Fled south, mostly.  Elves didn't much feel like chasing them, I guess.

"About a hunnerd years they wandered, a civilization without a home.  Fell into other communities, did what they did best to survive.  Bore their own children, told their own history, in words when they didn't have rock.

"Until one day seven of these refugees thought that maybe it was time for a new mountainhome, a place where a dwarf could be a dwarf.  Went out along the mountains and stopped where they saw trees and flux and magnetite, all within a bolt's course.  Which was a damned stupid place to stop by the way.  And the refugees started flooding in."  He stopped.

Vucar was rapt.  "Then what happened?"

"Then they got in another war with the damned elves because they couldn't stop asking stupid questions and they lost because the only armor they had was made of lay pewter and their only smith had died of thirst in prison!  Now get me that barrel!"

[person5]

Excellent.  Please continue.

[Hugo_The_Dwarf]

"Until one day seven of these refugees thought that maybe it was time for a new mountainhome, a place where a dwarf could be a dwarf.  Went out along the mountains and stopped where they saw trees and flux and magnetite, all within a bolt's course.  Which was a damned stupid place to stop by the way.  And the refugees started flooding in."  He stopped.

Vucar was rapt.  "Then what happened?"

"Then they got in another war with the damned elves because they couldn't stop asking stupid questions and they lost because the only armor they had was made of lay pewter and their only smith had died of thirst in prison!  Now get me that barrel!"

LMFAO

[Nil Eyeglazed]

Excellent.  Please continue.

Thank you!  Have to admit, haven't been doing a lot with Zulban lately, but that's because there is a Top Secret Project that maybe I will mention when it is all done...

LMFAO

Personally, I prefer the earlier story, where the smith forges a gigantic lay pewter hammer and smashes the mayor's head in, but I guess Vucar got tired of it, hearing it in various versions over and over again.

Okay, so kinda chill today, kind of a place-holder.  I have news: Udil has a lady-friend!  I don't think he's the kind of guy who really wants to talk about that stuff with strangers though.  Might not want to ask if you value the current shape of your nose.

[Nil Eyeglazed]

Don't meet a lot of old miners.  Udil hadn't noticed that before.  He kept trying to think of any old miners.  Nothing came.  Not a pleasant think.

He had a lot to think about on these long hikes to the dig.  Tosid had proven better at cartography than conversation, and the maps were accurate-- not that that helped Udil's stomach any.  Just gave Udil more anxiety to know that, just behind this wall, there could be another one of those elephant birds bearing down on him.  That cavern didn't look like such a utopia anymore.

He'd built as he dug, careful not to cut himself excavating the blue ore.  He'd ruined a good pair of gloves that way, and bled for longer than seemed healthy.  He had to admit that he walled with a greater sense of urgency than he mined.  Not proud of that.  Kept thinking about that three-eyed finch.  His heart  began racing every time the cavern came into view, and after he'd walled it back off again, he had to catch his breath, he'd been working so furiously.

Udil thought about walls a lot on these hikes.  He'd spent some years with the Rampart of Meeting-- curious dwarves, but alright when you got to know them.  Ate some godawful food though.  They had different gods, old heroes of theirs that they had got confused with real gods, Zas forgive them.  There was this one hero of theirs, Robek, a trickster sort.  You could buy figurines of him in the market from a hundred different craftsdwarves, vastly differing quality, but he was always depicted with a pick in one hand and a brick in the other.

There was something to that.  There's walls, and there's holes.  And everything that belongs on one side of a wall is always trying to get to the other side of it.

So you build the wall, you brick the holes, and no sooner is it sealed than you realize that there's something across it that belongs on this side, and something on this side that belongs on that side.  You make your hole to fetch what belongs and cast out what doesn't, and as soon as you do, something else makes it over to where it doesn't belong.  And it's always like that.  Always has been.  You're never done.

Thinking like that carried him to the dig faster, it seemed.  Made him thirstier too though.  Next bit was the last bit of the blue.  At least, the last bit that needs walling afterwards, if these maps were right.

The ore came tumbling, strands of lightning buried deep in igneous slag.  Udil felt that cool breeze that just meant fear to him now.  He kicked the ore backward and started laying the diorite.

Seemed like half of this blue was going into shiftwalls along the path.  Didn't make any sense to Udil.  Stiff as it was, sharp as it was, this was axe ore.  This was metal to smelt and shine and show, not to build rough shiftwalls along a mile-long path to a deepmountain dig site.

Udil leaned into the newly laid diorite.  Took his weight, no shift.  Good wall.  Last of the caverns, and he should be relieved, but he wasn't, somehow.  Thinking about walls was supposed to take his mind off of thinking about old miners, but the two went together somehow.

He raised his pick at the blue.  This was supposed to be the safe ore now.  It was just about getting it all on the right side of the wall now.  Which wall though?  The diorite wall he'd just made?  The blue shiftwalls behind him?  Why where there so many walls?

This ore in front of him was a kind of wall too.  Wall to more ore, maybe.  Pull it down, get the ore inside.  Wall to something else, maybe.

Udil dropped his pick on the rock, too softly to dig.  No.  He wasn't having it.  There had to be an old miner someplace.  If there wasn't, there needed to be.  Udil needed a drink anyhow, after that walk.