Dain’s eyes lit up as he and his party came upon the band of drow. It had been quite some time since he had encountered the dark elves, and he was aching to fight something that didn’t have eight hairy legs. He nodded in the direction so that his comrades were aware as well. Each pulled out his, or her as the case may be, weapon and prepared for the attack. It was unusual for drow to not attack first: their focus seemed to be on something else.
“Die you filthy elven scum!” the dwarf shouted as his war hammer smashed into the head of the nearest enemy with a pleasingly wet THUD.
Instantly, the other drow swung around to face the small band of dwarves. It was at that moment that Dain saw what had been keeping their attention: a male drow was…. protecting a small human girl?! He was almost caught off guard in his dismay. What the bloody hell was going on here? His compatriots were not distracted and came in a whirlwind of furious blows. They had taken the advantage, but he was sure that they would not keep it for long when a female draped in all too exquisite robes turned the corner.
Magic flew from the elf’s fingers, taking down several of his men in one go. Fuck. He had to stop her. He took his hammer in both hands and slammed his way through to the woman. Her practically white eyes met his brown ones, and a smirk played across her face. This was going to be his last battle, no doubt. But ’twas better to die in glorious battle than to live on as a coward! He swung his hammer with all his might as the bolt of magic struck him. He fell back onto the ground and looked up as the woman stood over him, reveling in her triumph as she realized that he was the head of one of the noble houses. She cackled as she drew forth an ornate blade that he knew she was going to use to cut his heart out, but her laughter changed abruptly to a gurgle.
Crimson blood spilled from her lips as she looked down at herself in horror. A small dagger had been stabbed straight through her abdomen. The dwarf quickly got up as the light drained from the woman’s eyes and her lifeless body slumped to the ground. The human girl stood, her face a grim contortion of hatred and fear. Her hands were drenched in blood, but she didn’t seem to notice until she saw him staring at them at which point she wiped them on her tattered and dirtied tunic.
“We’ve lost Adrik, Morgran, and Hllin,” his second-in-command, Helja, reported as the other remaining members of their party finished off the last few drow.
Dain smirked and replied, “They lost a lot more than that.” He turned back to the human girl and her drow escort and, speaking in common, said, “I’m none too sure what this is all about, but a nobleman such as myself does not leave a life debt unpaid.” He bowed to the girl. “You have my appreciation, milady.”
“I’m called Helena,” she replied quickly as though she could not wait to get the name out.
“I am Zareb…”
“This lout is the Matron’s brother!” shouted one of the younger dwarves, a self-proclaimed bard.
Dain threw up a hand. “That matters not. Family ties mean little to the drow.”
“If only that were true,” the drow muttered. He looked Dain straight in the eyes and added, “I have no right to ask anything of you, but I ask that you take this girl, Helena, with you where she might be safe. She deserves to be safe, but I cannot stay with her. I must return to my home.”
The girl’s eyes widened in horror as he spoke. “She’ll kill you,” she whispered, clutching his shirt sleeve.
“I will get what I deserve. Now, you go and get what you deserve. Go be safe and happy,” he replied as he pried her fingers off of his sleeve. He looked at the dwarf again and asked, “Will you take her?”
Dain nodded. “How could I not? I owe this child my life, don’t I?”
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“Milord,” one of his servants said as he approached his master.
Dain looked up from the gems that he was inspecting and asked, “Yes, what is it?”
The servant was a youngster, barely had a beard worth speaking of, and was of no account, but it was unusual for such a one to approach the lord of the manor. The boy trembled slightly as he sputtered, “The human girl…. Your guest…. She… She….”
“She what, boy? Spit it out!” the dwarf shouted, perhaps more impatiently than he should have done.
“She has gone missing!” he practically blurted out.
“Hmmm… I’m none too surprised,” he responded with a shrug of his broad shoulders. “No doubt she has decided to return to the surface. She was none too thrilled to return to the underground even though ours is a much better home than the one that she was previously accustomed to.”
“Should we seek her out, milord?”
Dain stroked his long graying beard and replied, “No. Let the girl be. She knows where to find us if she needs us, and it seems to me she knows how to take care of herself and what she most wants.”
The young man nodded and quickly left his lord alone. What Dain hadn’t bothered to mention was that he knew exactly where the girl was going. She had looked longingly at the sky as they had trekked back to the dwarven halls within the Sunbleached Mountains. He didn’t doubt that she would endeavor to climb them, to get closer to the sky that her kind seemed to adore for some unknown reason. From there, she would probably endeavor to return to the homeland that she had spoken of, the homeland that she only barely remembered. It was worrisome since he doubted that she actually had a home to return to. On top of that, the home she seemed to recall was on the complete other side of the continent in the human city-state of Damar.
He wanted to see to her safety, but he could tell that the girl needed time to heal on her own. From the reports his personal healer had given him about the damage to the human’s body there was no doubt that she would have a hard time trusting anyone for a while. The girl was most certainly something special: even a dwarven woman would have broken under the conditions that she had spent most of her life in. He didn’t doubt that she, and she alone, would be able to protect herself properly and that his interference would not result in a positive outcome.
He walked over to the window of his office and looked out over the dwarven city that had been his home for his entire life. Fljotshverfi was the jewel of Moroo, an even greater city than the capital itself. The architecture was a beautiful combination of obsidian and various types of quartz with streets of sleek marble. Rivers of magma flowed in channels along the sides of the city streets, lighting the city no matter what the hour and keeping the city nice and warm despite the freezing conditions on the surface. During working hours, the streets bustled with life and rang with the songs of pickaxes and hammers, but now the streets were empty save for a few drunken wanderers looking for another tall mug of ale and rang with the sounds of merriment from the various taverns and brothels.
Dain watched as a couple of drunken dwarven men tried, in vain, to garner the attention of lovely little gnome. He chuckled when the woman finally acknowledged them with a flirtatious flip of her bright blue hair and a coquettish grin while another woman, possibly her sister, snuck behind them and stole their satchels of money. It served the rowdy men right, in Dain’s mind. They ought to have accepted the woman’s indifference in the first place, and by not doing so they had opened themselves up to the theft. He knew that such was the way that most of the gnomes who had made his city their home operated: They were helpful and kind up until they were pushed at which point they took revenge in whatever way they saw fit. It was a respectable way of handling such situations, and he admired the gnomes for it. Some of his fellow dwarves might view the gnomes with disdain as being inferior being, but he viewed them as equals which was perhaps why so many of them had come to call his city their home.
He loved his city; it was the city that his family had built when they had departed from the capital. His father had felt that there was nothing to be done but to leave when the current king had taken the throne. It had seemed like the best idea what with the way his mother had reacted. There was no reason to risk a civil war and possibly the family’s position as a noble family over an insult about eyebrows. He almost chuckled as he thought about his mother’s indignation when the current king had playfully remarked that her eyebrows resembled a pair of caterpillars that one of the hill dwarves had brought him as a gift once. She had broken a large slab of granite in her rage, and it was at that point that his father requested that he be allowed to take his family further into the mountains in order to build another city for the glory of their kingdom.
Dain licked his lips and stroked his beard calmly, turning away from his window. He was the patriarch of the great Quartzhacker family. He could not focus too much time and energy on a human girl who wanted nothing but freedom despite owing her his life. No, he would have to focus on the matter at hand. There was a war brewing, and the king had sent word already that the armies were to come into formation in no less than a fortnight. And with what he had been able to gather from the girl Helena, Dain could not disagree with the urgency of his king’s demand.
The drow were on the rise; their matriarch was perhaps more powerful now than he could imagine. And if the drow were to march upon the surface world… He had never been one to worry over the surface-dwellers, but the drow would attack his people first since they would desire the dwarven weaponry and armor-making techniques as well as the gnome’s technology. He sat back down in his chair and examined the map. His city was the closest to the border between the drow and the rest of the dwarven kingdom. It was his city that would have to be prepared to hold back any invaders, and there would be invaders. The drow he had encountered when he met Helena had been only a day’s march outside of the city. He wondered if he should have tripled the sentries instead of merely doubling them. Almost as if his thoughts and concerns had manifested of their own volition a loud trumpet rang out once and then twice: the signal for a drow assault.
jueln 