“Agun is dead. I am his surrogate.” Dacbold's voice is loud and carries clearly. Probably all the surviving players can hear him clearly.
“You fled like a coward at Ashir's Pass, and most of your guild died. Agun was the only survivor. You abandoned your post watching for attacks from the ridge yesterday, and most of our forces were wiped out. Agun wanted you dead, and you will die by my hand.”
Dacbold springs on Dark Guardian too quickly for him to react. Without even using his axe, he rips off Dark Guardian's arm. Using the arm as a club, Dacbold beats Dark Guardian to the ground before stomping on his legs crushing both thighs.
“AAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH! No! Please! Stop! No more!” Dark Guardian's agonized shrieks echo off the mountain behind us.
With two quick chops of his axe, Dacbold sends the heads of Forever and Eternity flying. The other nine members of Silver Horn turn tail and flee. After watching them run off, Dacbold looks down at Dark Guardian.
“Don't worry. The next time I encounter them, they'll join you in hell.”
With a single stomp, Dacbold turns Dark Guardian's head into meat paste.
As he looks around, none of the other players meet Dacbold's eyes. Their fear is palpable. If any of them are outraged or upset by Dacbold's actions, they are prudently keeping their silence.
“That is the proper way for a Dvergar to settle a blood debt.”
The deep bass voice startles me, and I spin around to look up at a ledge thirty or forty feet above the plateau. Three Dvergar are standing there looking down at us. I have no idea when they arrived or how they reached that ledge without being seen.
They are between 4'6” and 5' tall. Their shoulders are nearly as wide as they are tall. Like me, their legs are too short in relation to their body, and their arms are too long. In the middle, a grey-bearded Dvergar is slightly shorter than the other two. His full suit of chainmail has a flat black color to it, and an axe is hanging from his belt, while a shield strapped to his left arm. On his left, the tallest of the three is a red-bearded Dvergar with great axe resting across his shoulders. The one on the right is a black-bearded Dvergar with a spear.
I think the speaker was the on on the left, but it doesn't matter. These three Dvergar leave me wanting to fall to my knees in worship. They are dangerous, dangerous beyond anything we have ever encountered.
“Who are you?” I try to keep my tone of voice neutral, but I can hear the fear in my words.
The grey-beard looks at me. When he speaks, the voice is clearly different from the first. “So, ye are Thorrin the Possessed Dvergar.”
“You know me?” I can't keep the surprise and shock out of my question.
“Should ye still be living, Boran Second Father commanded me to provide ye and the other Possessed Dvergar sanctuary and arrange for one to train ye as a proper Dvergar. Out of his kindness, the Second Father has decreed that the humans with ye can build dwellings on land under Dvergar protection.”
I look behind me at the surviving players, before facing the grey-beard Dvergar with my back straight. “I promised them that I would help them all return to Earth, to their rightful bodies. I can't go back on my word.”
The grey-beard frowns. “They humans have no bodies to return to. The nameless trash has slain all yer bodies. These are the only bodies the humans have.”
When I look back at the players again, many of the players faces are pale. Also, it's clear that many of them don't believe the grey-beard's words. Still, Connor and a several of the other surviving guild leaders nod in acknowledgment.
Meeting the grey-beard's eyes is the most difficult thing I have ever done. “We'll take you up on your kind offer.”
“Ye have made the right choice. I am Grimnir, Son of Auoun, Son of Alfodr, Son of Boran. The lands the humans will live are the fief of my descendants.”
Boom!
Rubble and a spray of molten stone blast outward from the cave we exited from. Everyone present just stares at the cave. A minute or so later, lava begins to turgidly flow from the cave.
After glancing at the lava, Grimnir stares in the direction of the underground complex, a frown upon his lips.
A few moments later, Grimnir stares at me, and it feels like he is weighing and measuring me with his eyes. “Take hope. Yer old lives are gone, but the Second Father offers hope for the future. Yer minds and souls can be integrated with yer bodies. In time, it will be as they were the bodies ye were born into.”
After twelve years of fighting and struggling, it has all just ended. It's almost an anticlimax. Our bodies died offstage, and we couldn't do a fucking thing to stop it. Hope. I'm afraid to hope for anything at this point. The future will bring what it brings. All we can do is move forward.
The Survivors Part 1: The Masacre Page 18
