Possessing no skill at engraving, and constantly distracted by the ravenous hunger growing in her belly, Solon spent hours etching each panel of her last testament into hallway's smooth walls. The resulting images are crude, of the most meager craftsdwarfship, and bear little outward connection to one another. The first two engravings are of sweet pods, and obviously reference the sigil of the Merchant of Echoing.
The other engravings - leaves, dwarves, oysters, a shield - are more difficult to interpret. What meaning is contained in these four other images, in the context they hold with one another?
Two engravings - the dwarves and the shield - Solon etched into the floor. The others - the oysters and the leaves - were engraved into the walls on either side. They form no linear connection, either spatial or temporal, with one another.
There can be no literal interpretation of the engravings - indeed, as Solon no doubt realized, there will most likely be no interpretation at all. Perhaps, in the distant future, some bold adventurer will find the hidden path into the depths of Weatherwires, and by chance come to find the lever room - it is only a hope, faint and dim, but it is all Solon has left.
Taken as a whole, the images are an indecipherable pictogram - a confusing and jumbled impression of the last thoughts of Solon Townclenched, the very last dwarf, who had never attempted to make an engraving in her entire life. In her engravings, Solon might have vainly sought to capture some kind of story, to inform posterity of the ultimate fate of Weatherwires. Or, perhaps, they are a scrambled flow of metaphorical images; the emotions of the last member of a species, soon to be extinct, caught in abstract form.
Before she can finish a seventh engraving, Solon's hunger becomes too much to bear. The dwarf gives up on the final engravings, and returns to the lever room, searching in vain for some kind of sustenance.
The last engraving is left vague and unfinished - a tiny mystery in the midst of of an ocean of tragedy.
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Topic: The Saga of Weatherwires: Children of Dwarves (spoilers + image heavy) (Read 159507 times)