The Mines of Bha-Rack
January 5, 2019 at 11:22 am
(This post was last modified: January 5, 2019 at 11:26 am by Mr.Obvious.)
Hey everyone.
So, this being january and all; I've decided on my new year's resolution to finally finish a bigger writing project. Aka, to finally write a book.
I hope to finish it this year. One can only hope. (And work at it, of course.) I'll be happy if I've finished a novel's worth of story, though I'm not expecting it to be publish worthy yet.
This is, apart from writing some fanfiction, hopefully going to be my first succesful attempt at a bigger story. If I finish it, that will be a mark on it's own.
Decided to post the story here, because you know; feedback appreciated. If it's not going to be publish-worthy, I might as well try to get as much feedback as possible.
This is the first draft of the first story in what would ideally be a series called 'Envoy'. This chapter introduces the protagonist. The second would the deutoragonist; Tarnum Rockbreaker
Any feedback appreciated, but don't feel obliged.
Book One: The Mines of Bha-Rack
The old man's words flowed back to him, indiscernible from the great haze swirling in his mind. Yet they were noted, in that great drain of consciousness. A vortex of confusion disrupting the past, present and future.
He heard them just as well as he heard the thumping on the old, wooden door. As well as it's creaks and sighs under the relentless bashing of his former comrades.
Well… comrades might be a strong word. Oliver had never given two shits whether he'd lived or died. And he'd known Augustus as a brooding, calculated boy who'd grown up to become a brooding, dominating man. It was hard to remember a time, back when they were children, when he hadn't been towering over him; often beating him into the ground. Demanding everything from fealty to half of his rations. And yet, Augustus the boy had never intended to kill him. Not in earnest. But Augustus the man now did. And he would until the end of time itself. Ilgust knew this. He knew it in the same way that he knew he was about to die. In a way of knowing without any bedrock of certainty. His footing in reality had slipped from the ground days ago and missed it on it's way down again; eternally falling, plummeting, into nothingness.
It was hard to keep focussed. Straining on whatever willpower was left in his mind to actually feel the fear that had him running through the narrow, dark halls, and in desperation had locked him into this small room, three days ago. As meaningless as time seemed at this point in Ilgust's life. When a man finds himself with no future left, the past comes back to him. And those sanguine memories accompanied him in that small room, trapped between the living and the dead. They proved poor companions. Though not worse than the ache in his gut, his parched throat or the smell of his own sick and shit in and on his once white armour. And where the constant banging on the door and the moans of the monstrosities behind it would afford him no sleep, he found himself wandering and losing himself in them, instead.
'Perhaps the old monk was right', he reflected unto himself. Those things out there loved him a lot, that much was clear. They were trying to get to him, even if it destroyed them. Without a moment's hesitation for their own well-being or comfort. Their hands had to be bloody and raw by now. If that wasn't true love, Ilgust didn't know what was.
In honesty, his mind allowed him to wander, he didn't know. There had been women, of course. Once he'd turned fifteen. It had been the custom in the ward. But that hadn't been love. Even if he'd allowed himself to be lied to for some odd minutes, in his heart of heart's he'd known they'd only welcomed his coin. But real love? Not from the other boys. They'd been like him, afraid and dulled, albeit most often bigger and stronger. And any kinship or semblance to friendship he'd experience, it seemed now, lying there in the dark, fading in and out of consciousness as a fever took hold of him, had been mutually self-serving. Even the old monk, Rothald, whom Ilgust suspected to have wanted him to follow in his footsteps one day as the brother in charge of the library, had never truly bore love for him. Ilgust had long suspected all the man'd seen was an investment to guard his legacy. And with so much of his love spent for his God and the books he held dear, who could blame the old withered monk for not having any left for the likes of him. In truth, the old man had made him feel valued. And that itself had been something Ilgust had been most grateful for.
It all was rather sad and pointless… And he realized this more and more as his draining mind circled and circled this realization time and again. Perhaps it was best that it couldn't focus anymore though. The flashes were enough to make him grow cold. He needed not to have it forced upon him and hold the thought for any longer than that. Such a thing might be his final end.
The life he'd lead was one better than most, he knew. The wards of the home for Bastards had been educated. Given regular meals and medication. He'd never had to work the fields or steal. He had stolen, of course, as a child. But not out of necessity. Many hardships he'd been spared. And yet, lying their in his own filth, he wondered what it was that made him so desperate to return. There was nothing in that swirl he could point out… Nothing he could lay his finger on… No anchor whatsoever that seemed particularly worthwhile.
And if he didn't have any love for his old life. Then why did he feel all this frustration?
“Liar...” He mumbled. “Rothald… Liar.” He'd never hold the key to the library. He'd been chosen for a different task. Made to live stories rather than read them from the comfort of a soft chair, safe between four walls. Ilgust, a child who'd never known how to talk to people, let alone with authority, had been thrust forth as an envoy. Whoever his parents had been, they'd thought too much of themselves to let anything less slide. Even for a bastard. Even for someone so ill suited for the job.
He'd never been brave. The dried up tears on his face and the fact that he was left alive to cower were a testimony to that. Augustus and Oliver, for all their faults, had been more admirable than him, he felt. They had their cruel streaks. They held other races, like dwarves and elves, in contempt and treated them with distrust. But on the other hand they were honest. They stood up for themselves. They'd had a certain self-respect that Ilgust had shed in order to survive.
At moments in the cold and dark, it felt like the only noble left for him to do, would be to gather his strength, crawl to the door, on the other side of the twelve feet chamber, and reward his old childhood bullies for their tenacious effort.
Instead, he kept eyeing the shaking door with fear in his heart, shivering and occasionally pleading to whoever might be at the other end of the door against his back.
“Please.” He begged. “Please… Let me in.” At other times he begged for water. Or food. Or just for them to say anything. But they had denied him all for the longest of times. Perhaps the silence made it easier to let him starve. But he could hear their breathing . And as long as they were there, he tried. And grew frustrated, as much as his broken will and weakened body would allow.
The air tasted stale as he formed words, providing no moisture for his tongue, two sizes too tall for his mouth. “Please.” He begged of the living. Or of the dead, to stop. He begged everyone. And no-one in particular. “Please... Help.” His head hurt. He didn't want to be there anymore. No more. It had to end.
He'd never wanted to come here in the first place. Memories of his appointment resurfaced. As they had a hundred times before. His name called out, by the head of the order. The look of shock and contempt amongst his peers. That sinking feeling. The silence that hung in the great hall. Augustus, already appointed to being a guard, cornering him later that night and pressing him against the wall, holding a kitchen-knife to his throat and making him admit that he was not better than him. That he'd never be better than him. That this meant nothing.
It wouldn't even have been difficult to say, if it hadn't been so. The words had flowed from him like a cascade, so that no blood would. And perhaps that was why they were true. And there was no use in denying them. But maybe they hadn't been exactly what Augustus had wanted to hear. Ilgust had carried the mark on his eye for two whole weeks. Even still on his birthday. But he'd lived.
That had been not two months ago. He'd been sent on his first, official, mission shortly thereafter. With none other than Augustus and Oliver as his appointed guardians. As much as his parents may have wanted him to hold some prestige, it seemed like there were unseen forces out there that wanted him dead. Every morning of their quest he'd been kicked awake. More oft than not spat on as well. He'd been allowed enough food to keep himself alive. Augustus had needed him to do his job at Bha-Rog. So he'd been safe on the route to the mountain-village. Though Ilgust hadn't been certain he'd survive the return journey. He'd had the sneaking suspicion the young man would rather have returned with only Oliver by his side, to corroborate a heroic story of a band of bandits or goblins stricken down by the brave actions of Augustus. But sadly at the loss of their envoy's life. Which would, of course, leave open a spot. A spot that would be needed to be filled, by someone steadfast and strong of will, especially in these troubled times with insurgents, roaming marauders and monsters surfacing like mushrooms on a field drenched by battle. Ilgust was certain, that had he'd asked, Augustus wouldn't even have denied it. Augustus was, again, quite unafraid and always honest with Ilgust. Had he'd had the courage to ask, there would have been no shame in those eyes. No pity. No regret. Nothing. Not even hate. Not exactly. Unless he was taken off guard, something as simple as hate never crossed Augustus' mind. Even his childhood bullying and dominating, apart from unforeseen exceptions such as the appointment ceremony, or that time when Ilgust had ratted him out to Rothald for stealing eggs, were simply ways to ensure his status as top dog at the Home. Augustus' rage had rarely been hot, instead most often cold and calculated.
A sharp contrast to the figure outside, now. It's body cold and it's rage primal and burning. It's screams so unlike the eloquent words. It's face, Ilgust recalled, torn, raw and bloody. Unlike the fair, long-haired, dark boy he'd known.
“You dumb bastard.” Ilgust laughed, faintly and delirious. His mailed hand found a cracked stone tile. He pried the lose gravel and tossed it to the far-off door. It did nothing to affect their wailing and the clatter was absorbed by it fully.
Yet he couldn't stop his fevered half-laugh, half-cough. His headache was becoming unbearable, and yet he smacked the back of it repeatedly against the stern wooden door behind him. Matching the beat with which they launched themselves against theirs
'They will not get me', he told himself. They'd toil until they turned themselves into bloody pulp. Or perhaps they'd go at it until their flesh rotted and their bones turned to dust.
The others they'd met in the tunnels seemed to suffer just that fate. Most had been slow. Half-dead already. Suffering, not from hunger or fatigue, but of malnurishment and a lack of energy. Their bodies were shutting down, dying. Like a belated response to their souls having already left. Their frail, sickly appearance had made for quite the welcoming party. The first living peopl they'd met after descending from the town of Bha-Rog into the mines of Bha-Rack. Most of them had been dwarves; their once strong short bodies turned to little more than grey skin draped over skeletons. The heavy rune-impressed armor, once their pride, now slowing their crawling bodies down. But there were human miners too. Taller, mostly less impressively dressed. But no better off then their dwarven colleagues.
It was all a blur. Oliver's misplaced joke. The undead monster's slow attempts in the torch-lit, dark halls, to reach their prey. Ilgust' naïvety, when he first attempted to help one of them, misunderstanding it's intentions. Augustus' more level-headed response to leave these infected be, lest they get infected themselves.
Whilst trying to reason with the ill dwarf, another grabbed him by the cloak and tore him onto his back. It all quickly dissolved into wild kicking and shoving after that. With one dwarf trying crawl up his legs and the other trying to bite him in the face, he didn't know where to flail ineffectively first. So instead, he just decided to do so all over the place. He had not the room or time to draw his sword. And his guards just stood there laughing at his desperate struggle.
“Come on then, Iggy.” Oliver mustered, perhaps nudging Augustus, Ilgust was too busy to notice. “Get 'em! Get 'em!”
“Go on, Iggy.” Augustus chimed in, calmly and drenched in dark glee. “Uphold the King's justice. Make them submit. Go on.”
At some point, the struggle had to have turned into something rather sad to watch. For it was Augustus who in the end broke it off. By then one of the dwarves had managed to crawl atop him. It's little weight in flesh and bone combined with it's suit of armor and Ilgust's own enough to keep him pinned to the ground. Holding both it's arms and all the while still kicking madly at the one by his feet, the grey dwarf with grey eyes tried it's best to sink it's teeth into his face.
But then, without it even reacting with pain or shock, a blade appeared through it's chest, piercing the savage's heart. The lance's point stopped no more than two inches from Ilgust's face and sprayed the dwarf's blood on it slightly. His eyes closed out of reflex and he deeply hoped he had not gotten any in his eyes or mouth. The monks told of diseases spread through blood. And whatever this was, that had befallen the mines of Bha-Rack, he had no wish to catch it and toil forevermore in the darkness until long after the faint Brightroot torches decorating the halls and tunnels burned out. Forever crawling through dirt and gravel, too weak to find another to clamp onto.
The dead dwarf sank down, collapsing like a sack of potatoes atop his chest. It was enough to knock the breath out of the envoy.
“Get up.” Augustus ordered, a faint yet clear despise in his voice. “You're wearing the King's colors, for crying out loud. Let's go and find the foreman, and whoever is left down here.”
“Looks like we figured out why Bha-Rog has been sending so little steel and taxes the past few months.” Ilgust heard Oliver say, as he himself did his best to push the dead dwarf off him, all the while still kicking at the one at his legs. He needed to hurry, before the other crawlers made their way through the large, cavernous hall. “'S not gonna be as easy as telling 'em to get a move on and push through, now is it?”
Ilgust had finally managed to shake the corpse off of himself and turn onto hands and knees. His armor was so heavy and difficult to move in. He wondered how anyone was supposed to fight in it. Of course envoys weren't exactly expected to fight. But still.
Bony hands clamped onto his purple cloak once more. Trying to pull the remaining dwarf closer, within biting range. Without needing confirmation, he knew he'd get no more help from his guards. And from the corner of his eyes he could see four more of the diseased making their ways slowly through shadows and pillars. Their skin and eyes as grey as those of the one that lay dead on the ground.
“Get up or get left behind.” Augustus had remarked.
No sooner had he spoken those words, or he'd already began sauntering off. In desperation, and afraid to be left alone in the dark with these creatures, Ilgust had turned and shot out his arm. His mailed fingers bore their way into the dwarve's mouth and clamped down it's puss-pulsing tongue. His thumb found the lower half of it's chin. And together, he managed to push it back and onto it's back. It tried to bite down, seemingly not caring that it was breaking it's teeth on the hard, white metal.
Ilgust couldn't tell it's grunts apart from his own. With shaking hand and impressively little dexterity, he managed to find the handle of his sword and, after a few failed attempts, started to unsheathe the damned thing.
He did not love this cursed thing clamping down on his hand. He bore no love whatsoever. His frustration had to have come from the love of seeing it dead. Or perhaps there were simply things Rothald had been wrong about. Perhaps the old man had not been as wise as Ilgust had hoped. He pictured the old monk before him, in that instant; reshaping the face of the struggling dwarf into a twisted image of the head librarian.
It did not make him hesitate, as he clumsily placed the edge of his sword to it's throat. It did not make him take note of the commotion happening behind him. Those sounds were a world away, beyond the dark and gloom. He pressed down as hard as he could and dragged the long side of the blade through thick beard, skin, muscle and veins. The red erupted from it's throat. And Ilgust grew sick in an instant; spewing his breakfast over the dying man's face. Ilgust would have felt lucky, knowing the sounds of his own regurgitation drowned out the sound of his drowning in his own blood. He pressed him down until he stopped shaking altogether.
“… The fuck was that?!” Oliver's voice rang out, furiously, when Ilgust finally returned down to the underground. Disoriented and foggy as he was.
He had to make an effort to focus, but against the dancing background he managed to discern Oliver. A red streak, like the crack of a whip, drawn across his face. He covered it with his hand soon enough, stomping around erratically and swinging his halbert almost as clumsily as Ilgust had been. “Fuck!” The young man grunted in pain. His dark-blue cloak trailing as he circled himself.
“Be quiet!” Augustus urged. “It's still here somewhere!” His eyes were on the ceiling, too far and clad in darkness, well out the reach of the brightroot hanged at human eye-height. Ilgust found himself scanning the pillars himself, hazily, as far as they reached. He saw things move in the darkness, but was uncertain if it was his imagination or something more sinister. By now Oliver too had recovered from the blow. Gritting his teeth he looked left and right, eyes burning with rage. No… Not rage. Frustration.“Come out here, fiend!” He demanded. “Show yourself!”
“No good.” Augustus barked. “We're sitting ducks out here. Let's head back outside. Ilgust, get up!”
The order seemed clear enough. Simple enough to ring through the confusion inside Ilgust's head. He obliged without thinking. Without speaking. As lifeless as the crawling dwarves and humans so close to them now. He and the others backed off wearily, cut off from the entrance to the grand hall by four of the stragglers. Their eyes shifted from the ceiling to the monsters, to left and right.
“No!” Oliver had shouted erratically. “No. We're not going outside. We can't!”
“What? Why?”
Ilgust could see Oliver's confusion sinking in, it felt most familiar. “We have a job to do.” The man settled on, after a few false starts.
The envoy didn't care about that hesitance. Bloodstained sword out, all he could think about was backing up. More shapes were filing out of the darkness, barely into sight. Dwarves and humans. The miners they'd been told to contact. More than half a dozen, stumbling, shambling, but not yet crawling, closer to their party. And that were all the ones he could see. The ones who were still half-hidden. Who was to say how many more there were out there?
“Doesn't look like we have a choice.” Augustus conceded. “Come on, maybe we can bottle-neck them in the tunnels. At least that thing won't be able to get the drop on us.”
“Right.” Oliver agreed. “Right.”
“Move your ass Iggy!” Augustus shouted.
But they'd already turned and past him. Left him amongst the other wanderers in the dark. “Move or die!” He heard trail from the tunnel in which they'd ran.
For a moment, it seemed, he'd considered the latter option. His feet felt so heavy. And he couldn't muster raising his sword any longer either. It wasn't until he saw a blackened silhouette in the distance, taller than any man, unfold it's wings and tail, that he found the strength in utter fear, to turn heel and sprint. He'd never felt the urge to live as strongly as he had in that moment of pure adrenaline. That moment when he cried and ran for his life. That moment that he faced something that scared him so much that even Augustus seemed like a welcome alternative. In that moment, he'd wanted to live.
He awoke from his memory now, back in the small chamber, built as a barrier between the inner fortress of the dwarves, and the outer tunnels leading to both the entrance to the mines and the human quarters.
“I'm sorry.” He apologized to the relentless banging behind an old door beginning to be worn down. “I'm sorry.” He cried again and again, until his tears and a fever pulled him into an uneasy slumber at long last.
He dreamt of his childhood and of a life he'd never have, beyond the darkness of the mines. Beyond the grasp of the winged monster that lured from the shadows. Beyond the status he was born into. Beyond a white armor and a purple a cloak.
And perhaps, he wondered, a naive hope for that life… Perhaps the love for that idea was the source of his frustration.
So, this being january and all; I've decided on my new year's resolution to finally finish a bigger writing project. Aka, to finally write a book.
I hope to finish it this year. One can only hope. (And work at it, of course.) I'll be happy if I've finished a novel's worth of story, though I'm not expecting it to be publish worthy yet.
This is, apart from writing some fanfiction, hopefully going to be my first succesful attempt at a bigger story. If I finish it, that will be a mark on it's own.
Decided to post the story here, because you know; feedback appreciated. If it's not going to be publish-worthy, I might as well try to get as much feedback as possible.
This is the first draft of the first story in what would ideally be a series called 'Envoy'. This chapter introduces the protagonist. The second would the deutoragonist; Tarnum Rockbreaker
Any feedback appreciated, but don't feel obliged.
Book One: The Mines of Bha-Rack
Chapter One: Through the Dark
“Frustration is born out of love.” The old man's words flowed back to him, indiscernible from the great haze swirling in his mind. Yet they were noted, in that great drain of consciousness. A vortex of confusion disrupting the past, present and future.
He heard them just as well as he heard the thumping on the old, wooden door. As well as it's creaks and sighs under the relentless bashing of his former comrades.
Well… comrades might be a strong word. Oliver had never given two shits whether he'd lived or died. And he'd known Augustus as a brooding, calculated boy who'd grown up to become a brooding, dominating man. It was hard to remember a time, back when they were children, when he hadn't been towering over him; often beating him into the ground. Demanding everything from fealty to half of his rations. And yet, Augustus the boy had never intended to kill him. Not in earnest. But Augustus the man now did. And he would until the end of time itself. Ilgust knew this. He knew it in the same way that he knew he was about to die. In a way of knowing without any bedrock of certainty. His footing in reality had slipped from the ground days ago and missed it on it's way down again; eternally falling, plummeting, into nothingness.
It was hard to keep focussed. Straining on whatever willpower was left in his mind to actually feel the fear that had him running through the narrow, dark halls, and in desperation had locked him into this small room, three days ago. As meaningless as time seemed at this point in Ilgust's life. When a man finds himself with no future left, the past comes back to him. And those sanguine memories accompanied him in that small room, trapped between the living and the dead. They proved poor companions. Though not worse than the ache in his gut, his parched throat or the smell of his own sick and shit in and on his once white armour. And where the constant banging on the door and the moans of the monstrosities behind it would afford him no sleep, he found himself wandering and losing himself in them, instead.
'Perhaps the old monk was right', he reflected unto himself. Those things out there loved him a lot, that much was clear. They were trying to get to him, even if it destroyed them. Without a moment's hesitation for their own well-being or comfort. Their hands had to be bloody and raw by now. If that wasn't true love, Ilgust didn't know what was.
In honesty, his mind allowed him to wander, he didn't know. There had been women, of course. Once he'd turned fifteen. It had been the custom in the ward. But that hadn't been love. Even if he'd allowed himself to be lied to for some odd minutes, in his heart of heart's he'd known they'd only welcomed his coin. But real love? Not from the other boys. They'd been like him, afraid and dulled, albeit most often bigger and stronger. And any kinship or semblance to friendship he'd experience, it seemed now, lying there in the dark, fading in and out of consciousness as a fever took hold of him, had been mutually self-serving. Even the old monk, Rothald, whom Ilgust suspected to have wanted him to follow in his footsteps one day as the brother in charge of the library, had never truly bore love for him. Ilgust had long suspected all the man'd seen was an investment to guard his legacy. And with so much of his love spent for his God and the books he held dear, who could blame the old withered monk for not having any left for the likes of him. In truth, the old man had made him feel valued. And that itself had been something Ilgust had been most grateful for.
It all was rather sad and pointless… And he realized this more and more as his draining mind circled and circled this realization time and again. Perhaps it was best that it couldn't focus anymore though. The flashes were enough to make him grow cold. He needed not to have it forced upon him and hold the thought for any longer than that. Such a thing might be his final end.
The life he'd lead was one better than most, he knew. The wards of the home for Bastards had been educated. Given regular meals and medication. He'd never had to work the fields or steal. He had stolen, of course, as a child. But not out of necessity. Many hardships he'd been spared. And yet, lying their in his own filth, he wondered what it was that made him so desperate to return. There was nothing in that swirl he could point out… Nothing he could lay his finger on… No anchor whatsoever that seemed particularly worthwhile.
And if he didn't have any love for his old life. Then why did he feel all this frustration?
“Liar...” He mumbled. “Rothald… Liar.” He'd never hold the key to the library. He'd been chosen for a different task. Made to live stories rather than read them from the comfort of a soft chair, safe between four walls. Ilgust, a child who'd never known how to talk to people, let alone with authority, had been thrust forth as an envoy. Whoever his parents had been, they'd thought too much of themselves to let anything less slide. Even for a bastard. Even for someone so ill suited for the job.
He'd never been brave. The dried up tears on his face and the fact that he was left alive to cower were a testimony to that. Augustus and Oliver, for all their faults, had been more admirable than him, he felt. They had their cruel streaks. They held other races, like dwarves and elves, in contempt and treated them with distrust. But on the other hand they were honest. They stood up for themselves. They'd had a certain self-respect that Ilgust had shed in order to survive.
At moments in the cold and dark, it felt like the only noble left for him to do, would be to gather his strength, crawl to the door, on the other side of the twelve feet chamber, and reward his old childhood bullies for their tenacious effort.
Instead, he kept eyeing the shaking door with fear in his heart, shivering and occasionally pleading to whoever might be at the other end of the door against his back.
“Please.” He begged. “Please… Let me in.” At other times he begged for water. Or food. Or just for them to say anything. But they had denied him all for the longest of times. Perhaps the silence made it easier to let him starve. But he could hear their breathing . And as long as they were there, he tried. And grew frustrated, as much as his broken will and weakened body would allow.
The air tasted stale as he formed words, providing no moisture for his tongue, two sizes too tall for his mouth. “Please.” He begged of the living. Or of the dead, to stop. He begged everyone. And no-one in particular. “Please... Help.” His head hurt. He didn't want to be there anymore. No more. It had to end.
He'd never wanted to come here in the first place. Memories of his appointment resurfaced. As they had a hundred times before. His name called out, by the head of the order. The look of shock and contempt amongst his peers. That sinking feeling. The silence that hung in the great hall. Augustus, already appointed to being a guard, cornering him later that night and pressing him against the wall, holding a kitchen-knife to his throat and making him admit that he was not better than him. That he'd never be better than him. That this meant nothing.
It wouldn't even have been difficult to say, if it hadn't been so. The words had flowed from him like a cascade, so that no blood would. And perhaps that was why they were true. And there was no use in denying them. But maybe they hadn't been exactly what Augustus had wanted to hear. Ilgust had carried the mark on his eye for two whole weeks. Even still on his birthday. But he'd lived.
That had been not two months ago. He'd been sent on his first, official, mission shortly thereafter. With none other than Augustus and Oliver as his appointed guardians. As much as his parents may have wanted him to hold some prestige, it seemed like there were unseen forces out there that wanted him dead. Every morning of their quest he'd been kicked awake. More oft than not spat on as well. He'd been allowed enough food to keep himself alive. Augustus had needed him to do his job at Bha-Rog. So he'd been safe on the route to the mountain-village. Though Ilgust hadn't been certain he'd survive the return journey. He'd had the sneaking suspicion the young man would rather have returned with only Oliver by his side, to corroborate a heroic story of a band of bandits or goblins stricken down by the brave actions of Augustus. But sadly at the loss of their envoy's life. Which would, of course, leave open a spot. A spot that would be needed to be filled, by someone steadfast and strong of will, especially in these troubled times with insurgents, roaming marauders and monsters surfacing like mushrooms on a field drenched by battle. Ilgust was certain, that had he'd asked, Augustus wouldn't even have denied it. Augustus was, again, quite unafraid and always honest with Ilgust. Had he'd had the courage to ask, there would have been no shame in those eyes. No pity. No regret. Nothing. Not even hate. Not exactly. Unless he was taken off guard, something as simple as hate never crossed Augustus' mind. Even his childhood bullying and dominating, apart from unforeseen exceptions such as the appointment ceremony, or that time when Ilgust had ratted him out to Rothald for stealing eggs, were simply ways to ensure his status as top dog at the Home. Augustus' rage had rarely been hot, instead most often cold and calculated.
A sharp contrast to the figure outside, now. It's body cold and it's rage primal and burning. It's screams so unlike the eloquent words. It's face, Ilgust recalled, torn, raw and bloody. Unlike the fair, long-haired, dark boy he'd known.
“You dumb bastard.” Ilgust laughed, faintly and delirious. His mailed hand found a cracked stone tile. He pried the lose gravel and tossed it to the far-off door. It did nothing to affect their wailing and the clatter was absorbed by it fully.
Yet he couldn't stop his fevered half-laugh, half-cough. His headache was becoming unbearable, and yet he smacked the back of it repeatedly against the stern wooden door behind him. Matching the beat with which they launched themselves against theirs
'They will not get me', he told himself. They'd toil until they turned themselves into bloody pulp. Or perhaps they'd go at it until their flesh rotted and their bones turned to dust.
The others they'd met in the tunnels seemed to suffer just that fate. Most had been slow. Half-dead already. Suffering, not from hunger or fatigue, but of malnurishment and a lack of energy. Their bodies were shutting down, dying. Like a belated response to their souls having already left. Their frail, sickly appearance had made for quite the welcoming party. The first living peopl they'd met after descending from the town of Bha-Rog into the mines of Bha-Rack. Most of them had been dwarves; their once strong short bodies turned to little more than grey skin draped over skeletons. The heavy rune-impressed armor, once their pride, now slowing their crawling bodies down. But there were human miners too. Taller, mostly less impressively dressed. But no better off then their dwarven colleagues.
It was all a blur. Oliver's misplaced joke. The undead monster's slow attempts in the torch-lit, dark halls, to reach their prey. Ilgust' naïvety, when he first attempted to help one of them, misunderstanding it's intentions. Augustus' more level-headed response to leave these infected be, lest they get infected themselves.
Whilst trying to reason with the ill dwarf, another grabbed him by the cloak and tore him onto his back. It all quickly dissolved into wild kicking and shoving after that. With one dwarf trying crawl up his legs and the other trying to bite him in the face, he didn't know where to flail ineffectively first. So instead, he just decided to do so all over the place. He had not the room or time to draw his sword. And his guards just stood there laughing at his desperate struggle.
“Come on then, Iggy.” Oliver mustered, perhaps nudging Augustus, Ilgust was too busy to notice. “Get 'em! Get 'em!”
“Go on, Iggy.” Augustus chimed in, calmly and drenched in dark glee. “Uphold the King's justice. Make them submit. Go on.”
At some point, the struggle had to have turned into something rather sad to watch. For it was Augustus who in the end broke it off. By then one of the dwarves had managed to crawl atop him. It's little weight in flesh and bone combined with it's suit of armor and Ilgust's own enough to keep him pinned to the ground. Holding both it's arms and all the while still kicking madly at the one by his feet, the grey dwarf with grey eyes tried it's best to sink it's teeth into his face.
But then, without it even reacting with pain or shock, a blade appeared through it's chest, piercing the savage's heart. The lance's point stopped no more than two inches from Ilgust's face and sprayed the dwarf's blood on it slightly. His eyes closed out of reflex and he deeply hoped he had not gotten any in his eyes or mouth. The monks told of diseases spread through blood. And whatever this was, that had befallen the mines of Bha-Rack, he had no wish to catch it and toil forevermore in the darkness until long after the faint Brightroot torches decorating the halls and tunnels burned out. Forever crawling through dirt and gravel, too weak to find another to clamp onto.
The dead dwarf sank down, collapsing like a sack of potatoes atop his chest. It was enough to knock the breath out of the envoy.
“Get up.” Augustus ordered, a faint yet clear despise in his voice. “You're wearing the King's colors, for crying out loud. Let's go and find the foreman, and whoever is left down here.”
“Looks like we figured out why Bha-Rog has been sending so little steel and taxes the past few months.” Ilgust heard Oliver say, as he himself did his best to push the dead dwarf off him, all the while still kicking at the one at his legs. He needed to hurry, before the other crawlers made their way through the large, cavernous hall. “'S not gonna be as easy as telling 'em to get a move on and push through, now is it?”
Ilgust had finally managed to shake the corpse off of himself and turn onto hands and knees. His armor was so heavy and difficult to move in. He wondered how anyone was supposed to fight in it. Of course envoys weren't exactly expected to fight. But still.
Bony hands clamped onto his purple cloak once more. Trying to pull the remaining dwarf closer, within biting range. Without needing confirmation, he knew he'd get no more help from his guards. And from the corner of his eyes he could see four more of the diseased making their ways slowly through shadows and pillars. Their skin and eyes as grey as those of the one that lay dead on the ground.
“Get up or get left behind.” Augustus had remarked.
No sooner had he spoken those words, or he'd already began sauntering off. In desperation, and afraid to be left alone in the dark with these creatures, Ilgust had turned and shot out his arm. His mailed fingers bore their way into the dwarve's mouth and clamped down it's puss-pulsing tongue. His thumb found the lower half of it's chin. And together, he managed to push it back and onto it's back. It tried to bite down, seemingly not caring that it was breaking it's teeth on the hard, white metal.
Ilgust couldn't tell it's grunts apart from his own. With shaking hand and impressively little dexterity, he managed to find the handle of his sword and, after a few failed attempts, started to unsheathe the damned thing.
He did not love this cursed thing clamping down on his hand. He bore no love whatsoever. His frustration had to have come from the love of seeing it dead. Or perhaps there were simply things Rothald had been wrong about. Perhaps the old man had not been as wise as Ilgust had hoped. He pictured the old monk before him, in that instant; reshaping the face of the struggling dwarf into a twisted image of the head librarian.
It did not make him hesitate, as he clumsily placed the edge of his sword to it's throat. It did not make him take note of the commotion happening behind him. Those sounds were a world away, beyond the dark and gloom. He pressed down as hard as he could and dragged the long side of the blade through thick beard, skin, muscle and veins. The red erupted from it's throat. And Ilgust grew sick in an instant; spewing his breakfast over the dying man's face. Ilgust would have felt lucky, knowing the sounds of his own regurgitation drowned out the sound of his drowning in his own blood. He pressed him down until he stopped shaking altogether.
“… The fuck was that?!” Oliver's voice rang out, furiously, when Ilgust finally returned down to the underground. Disoriented and foggy as he was.
He had to make an effort to focus, but against the dancing background he managed to discern Oliver. A red streak, like the crack of a whip, drawn across his face. He covered it with his hand soon enough, stomping around erratically and swinging his halbert almost as clumsily as Ilgust had been. “Fuck!” The young man grunted in pain. His dark-blue cloak trailing as he circled himself.
“Be quiet!” Augustus urged. “It's still here somewhere!” His eyes were on the ceiling, too far and clad in darkness, well out the reach of the brightroot hanged at human eye-height. Ilgust found himself scanning the pillars himself, hazily, as far as they reached. He saw things move in the darkness, but was uncertain if it was his imagination or something more sinister. By now Oliver too had recovered from the blow. Gritting his teeth he looked left and right, eyes burning with rage. No… Not rage. Frustration.“Come out here, fiend!” He demanded. “Show yourself!”
“No good.” Augustus barked. “We're sitting ducks out here. Let's head back outside. Ilgust, get up!”
The order seemed clear enough. Simple enough to ring through the confusion inside Ilgust's head. He obliged without thinking. Without speaking. As lifeless as the crawling dwarves and humans so close to them now. He and the others backed off wearily, cut off from the entrance to the grand hall by four of the stragglers. Their eyes shifted from the ceiling to the monsters, to left and right.
“No!” Oliver had shouted erratically. “No. We're not going outside. We can't!”
“What? Why?”
Ilgust could see Oliver's confusion sinking in, it felt most familiar. “We have a job to do.” The man settled on, after a few false starts.
The envoy didn't care about that hesitance. Bloodstained sword out, all he could think about was backing up. More shapes were filing out of the darkness, barely into sight. Dwarves and humans. The miners they'd been told to contact. More than half a dozen, stumbling, shambling, but not yet crawling, closer to their party. And that were all the ones he could see. The ones who were still half-hidden. Who was to say how many more there were out there?
“Doesn't look like we have a choice.” Augustus conceded. “Come on, maybe we can bottle-neck them in the tunnels. At least that thing won't be able to get the drop on us.”
“Right.” Oliver agreed. “Right.”
“Move your ass Iggy!” Augustus shouted.
But they'd already turned and past him. Left him amongst the other wanderers in the dark. “Move or die!” He heard trail from the tunnel in which they'd ran.
For a moment, it seemed, he'd considered the latter option. His feet felt so heavy. And he couldn't muster raising his sword any longer either. It wasn't until he saw a blackened silhouette in the distance, taller than any man, unfold it's wings and tail, that he found the strength in utter fear, to turn heel and sprint. He'd never felt the urge to live as strongly as he had in that moment of pure adrenaline. That moment when he cried and ran for his life. That moment that he faced something that scared him so much that even Augustus seemed like a welcome alternative. In that moment, he'd wanted to live.
He awoke from his memory now, back in the small chamber, built as a barrier between the inner fortress of the dwarves, and the outer tunnels leading to both the entrance to the mines and the human quarters.
“I'm sorry.” He apologized to the relentless banging behind an old door beginning to be worn down. “I'm sorry.” He cried again and again, until his tears and a fever pulled him into an uneasy slumber at long last.
He dreamt of his childhood and of a life he'd never have, beyond the darkness of the mines. Beyond the grasp of the winged monster that lured from the shadows. Beyond the status he was born into. Beyond a white armor and a purple a cloak.
And perhaps, he wondered, a naive hope for that life… Perhaps the love for that idea was the source of his frustration.
"If we go down, we go down together!"
- Your mum, last night, suggesting 69.
![[Image: 41bebac06973488da2b0740b6ac37538.jpg]](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/41/be/ba/41bebac06973488da2b0740b6ac37538.jpg)
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- Your mum, last night, suggesting 69.
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![[Image: fixed.gif]](https://ibiblio.org/pha/Rationalia%20Smiley%20Repository._files/fixed.gif)
