The three dwarves looked at each other and then began to argue.
“We didn’t know anything about it,” one said.
“He never talked about anything but training,” another said.
The third was about to speak when the Chaos Dwarf behind him drove his sword into his back, the tip of a blade burst through the front of his chest. None of them were Chaos Dwarves and long two-foot blades punched into each of their backs and out of their chest. They fell to the ground, and the room stood in silence. The only sound was that of the three dwarves trying to give their final protest, but not being able to speak as their lungs filled with blood.
“If any of you know a dwarf who is not faithful to Delvidge today, be reminded that it is your duty to make it known. If you do not, then you are as guilty as the traitor and will suffer the same punishment.” With that, Gruedor Bergmann ended his first demonstration as Tiefes Loch’s new king. He turned and exited out the side door, followed by General Moglin.
“I want the entire kingdom searched. We have gotten too lenient. It has been half a century since the Kingdom was searched. Anyone in possession of anything related to Bordin will be executed, along with their families. We are going to war, and we cannot have traitors behind us with an army in front of us,” Bergmann told Moglin.
“We will begin tonight, King Bergmann.”
“I want you to begin now,” Bergmann shouted.
“If that is what you command, that is what we will do, but if we wait until evening, the kingdom will begin to think that the demonstration was the end. We can go through after everyone begins to go to sleep and they won’t have as much time to try to hide anything,” Moglin explained to his king.
“I don’t care. Go now. Send two Chaos Dwarves with each search party. I want them to kill everyone who lives in an apartment where any item to Bordin is found.”
Moglin didn’t argue. The king was letting his emotions guide his decision, but he was still the king. Moglin’s job was to advise him, and obey him. He had advised him. The king had chosen not to take his advice, so now he would obey. He sent for his Chaos Dwarves, as well as the regular soldiers. He would send two Chaos Dwarves with each group of ten soldiers. The soldiers would search the dwarves’ homes. If anything were found, the Chaos Dwarves would carry out the executions on the spot. Moglin wasn’t sure that executing all these dwarves was a good idea. They could very likely be turning more dwarves against them than anything else. He just hoped that fear would be a strong enough motivator when the fighting started.
Chapter Three
Finding a Weakness
Flucht Longblade stood in front of a council of dwarves and representatives from each of the human armies. The two human armies still camped in the fields between Shinestone and the walls that surrounded it. Flucht told his story to all of them. He started with how the previous King Bergmann had been converting dwarves for centuries. He explained that Tiefes Loch had become a prison. He told them about the executions of Bordin’s followers. Finally he came to the part about how Delvidge himself had come down and converted one hundred dwarves into Dwarves of Chaos, dwarves who didn’t need sleep or food, who could fight all day and never get tired, and were very difficult to kill. He looked around the room as he finished. Kings, queens and generals stood staring at him with mixture looks of pity, anger, and concern on their faces.
Grundel looked from this Dwarf of Chaos back to his father. “They aren’t indestructible. The two of you killed two of them today. Since Flucht has joined us, they are now down to ninety-seven and the fighting hasn't even started yet. They also have lost the element of surprise, and we can study these dwarves. We can work with Flucht and figure out where our weapons that aren’t enchanted will work. We also still have all the enchanted weapons that Anwar made. We can test the crossbows on the dead dwarves, and see if the bolts will penetrate the armor. Flucht has given us the opportunity to prepare. We just have to be learn what we can from Flucht, and then come up with a plan.”
Grizzle looked at his son, then at Frau, the Queen of Shinestone, to whom Grundel had pledged his allegiance and his heart. She was smiling. Grizzle couldn’t help but smile himself. His son was still very young, but he was taking charge more and more. He always tried to plan things out instead of make rash decisions.
Grundel looked at his smiling father and then over to his mother. He just shook his head. “You two are unbelievable. Are you going to laugh every time I say something? OK, I like to take charge. Now that that is out of the way, what is the first step?”
“I would test your weapons,” Flucht said.
Everyone turned to him, waiting on him to explain himself.
“If you know you have weapons that can get through the armor of the Chaos Dwarves, that will help determine how you will get into Tiefes Loch. You will have to fight through Chaos Dwarves in the entrance before you will ever get to fight with the army of Tiefes Loch,” he told them.
Grundel was about to say something but he cut himself off and looked at his father. Grizzle looked at him and smiled, before looking around the room. King Kraft, King over the Haufen dwarves was there, as well as Frau, Queen of the Shinestone dwarves, King Patria was there to represent the Patria army, and Commander Boris was there to represent the army of Portwein. Around the room were the others, the friends and heroes: Jabaal, his best friend, and a powerful paladin of Kalime, stood next to his wife Hellen, who had saved many lives with her healing. She wasn’t as good as Mariah had been, not by far, but she was a great healer. Rundo the Halfling druid, who had become one of his son’s closest friends, stood next to Jerrie, who was extremely fast and one of the most skilled fighters Grizzle had ever seen. Only Jabaal could compare and even then only with the blessing of Kalime. This was it. This was who would decide the fate of the dwarves, and the first step was to see what they were up against and how their weapons would work.
“Grundel, go grab one of the crossbows and meet us on the landing. The rest of you, come with me,” Grizzle said, turning toward the door.
They were all standing on the landing of Shinestone Mountain, a large flat area that had once been used as an animal pen. This was the second time they had tested enchanted weapons here. They didn’t want to take their chances testing magical weapons inside the mountain. There was no telling how the magic would react when it encountered another magic. Dwarves were naturally suspicious of magic anyway, and they were especially cautious when it was involved.
Jerrie and Grizzle had just finished attaching the bodies of the two dead Chaos Dwarves to poles with chains when Grundel arrived with the magically enchanted crossbows. He handed one to his father and the other to King Kraft.
“Well, here it goes,” Grizzle said, leveling the crossbow and firing it at the first dwarf. The bolt punched through the armor like it was rotting wood.
“Hold on,” Grundel said and walked back toward the guard at the entrance of Shinestone. He took the guard’s crossbow and walked back. He fired the crossbow at same dwarf’s body his father had shot with the enchanted bow. This bolt did not cut through so easily, but it did punch through the armor.
“The magic must have left the body with their lives,” Flucht told them.
They all looked at him and then back to the dead dwarves hanging there with the black lines covering their steel bodies.
“Test your weapons on me,” Flucht said and all eyes came back to him.
“No, we are not going to shoot you. You came here to help us and we will just have to figure something out. I am pretty sure that these weapons will make it through your armor,” Grizzle told him, and the others were beginning to nod their agreement when they heard the snap of a crossbow releasing. A bolt came flying in and buried fletching deep in Flucht’s right thigh. They all turned around to see Kraft standing there with the crossbow in hand.
“We had to know. I wasn’t going to kill him, but he volunteered. A little pain is nothing compared to the hundreds, maybe thousands, of lives we co
uld be saving. I figured it was best if he didn’t know it was coming,” Kraft said.
They all started to protest, but Flucht yelled over them. “He is right!”
When the others turned back to him, he broke the bolt in half and pulled it the rest of the way through his leg. He hadn’t even flinched. “As I told you. I barely recognize pain. The constant pain I feel is greater than the pain of that bolt. I believe there are two lessons here. First, your magical weapons can penetrate our steel skin, and second, you have to kill us quickly with them. The others will believe that you can’t hurt them. You will have an initial advantage, but once they figure out what weapons are working, they will fight more cautiously. Remember that a bolt through the upper leg that would have dropped most others won’t even cause us to limp,” he said as he walked toward them. He drove the bolt into his shoulder. “A blow that would disable an arm won’t even slow us down,” he said, swinging his sword back and forth with the bolt still in his shoulder. He pulled the bolt out, but the head came off, catching on his steel skin.
Hellen went to his side and looked at the wound. “I can see the head; I think I can get it out.” As she started to reach her fingers toward the wound, the steel head of the bolt melted and melded with the other steel of his armor; healing the wound. She looked at him in shock.
Flucht shrugged and then looked at the others. “Even I didn’t know about that.”
“Well, he’s right about killing them fast, and we need to make sure we don’t leave weapons in their body, I guess. I wonder if the bolts will still be as effective if they don’t have metal heads on them,” Grundel said.
“They will,” Grizzle said. “Anwar said the crossbows would work the same, no matter what bolts you use.”
“So we need to make sure the magical bows were using bolts without steel tips, that way we don’t give the Chaos Dwarves a chance to heal,” Grundel said.
“Well, we have a way to defeat the Chaos Dwarves now other than just the couple enchanted weapons we have. Now, we need to start planning how we are going to attack,” Frau said.
Chapter Four
Dwarves of Chaos, Men of Greed
General Moglin walked through the tunnels of Tiefes Loch, watching as dwarves were pulled violently from their homes and searched. They stood out in the passageways as soldiers went through their belongings, looking for anything that might be considered a religious object of any god other than Delvidge. Down the tunnel, he watched as a female dwarf, who couldn’t be more than a hundred years old, had a sword shoved through her chest. The Chaos Dwarf turned to her child, who couldn’t be more than ten or twelve years old. Moglin always had difficulty determining how old a child was; they all looked very young without hair on their faces. He watched as the boy fell lifelessly to the ground. A male dwarf from the next apartment down the passage tried to stop the Chaos Dwarf from killing the child and he died for his efforts. His family followed him to his death.
Moglin understood war. He understood that things like this had to happen in order to keep others in their place, but he didn’t like this. They were going too far. It made him uncomfortable to have this many people scared and angry. Over the last few years, he had been able to feel the emotion in Tiefes Loch. Everyone was always on edge, and these latest events were taking them very close to boiling over. There was a very real chance that Moglin might find himself attacked by the dwarves of Tiefes Loch while he was trying to fend off Bordin’s dwarves. Moglin had his order though, and so the search continued.
King Merwein sat on his throne in the city of Portwein. “Nooooo!” he shouted at the messenger from his army. “The fight is over, and we still have the armor. Go back and tell Commander Boris that he is to bring my army back immediately. Send a bird ahead of you. I want them back now. The dwarves of Tiefes Loch will surely come after us after this betrayal. We are not going to get involved in this war any further. We got the gold, the weapons, and the armor, and all we did was march our army around for a few months. Tell Boris he is not to aid the other army, he is to turn back now.”
“Yes, Your Highness,” the soldier said, before snapping his heels together, turning around and marching out of the king’s audience chamber.
Merwein shouted for his aide. Rupert had taken care of him since he was a child, he had been the advisor to his father, and had advised him since he took the throne, now he was dead. He would never find anyone as capable as him. Rupert had practically run the kingdom, but now he was going to have to do everything himself until he could find someone capable enough. This aide wasn’t going to do. He watched as the man ran into the room stumbling. He bumbled nervously every time he spoke to anyone of importance, and then talked to the guards like they were children.
“Yes, your highness,” the man stumbled.
“Get me every master mason in the city by the end of the day.”
“Yes, your highness,” the man said extremely fast, and then took off out of the room at a sprint.
King Merwein sat on his throne, steaming, for hours. His food was brought to him eventually, but he barely ate. When they took it away, he wasn’t even sure what it had been. His mind just kept racing; his army had betrayed the dwarves of Tiefes Loch Tiefes Loch was between Portwein and Shinestone. He could be defending his city from the dwarves they had betrayed before the army returned. He would have to spend a lot of the money the dwarves had given him to fortify the city. Eventually, the masons finally arrived.
Two big men with forearms as big around as the king’s thighs walked into the room and knelt before the throne.
“Two? You are the only Master Masons in all of Portwein?” the king asked.
They both raised their eyes to the king. The one on the right answered. “Master Mason is not a thing that is easily achieved, Your Highness. Patria is the only other city that has more than one Master Mason, and Kampar doesn’t even have one, Your Highness.”
“Stand up, both of you,” Merwein said. He hated looking down at people. His throne was already on a platform so he was looking down at people when they were standing. “So how would two of you get anything done quickly?”
“We are Master Masons, Your Highness. We do not do all the work. There are hundreds of masons and mason apprentices beneath each of us. We oversee and inspect the work of those who work for us, and on very difficult jobs we do the work with their assistance, Your Highness.”
“Fine, fine, whatever. I want a new wall built around the current one. It must be indestructible. I want you to bring me multiple options to choose from by the end of the week. You will then meet with me and the military leaders still here in the city. We will all decide on the new wall together, and you will begin working on it immediately,” Merwein told them.
Both men gave him curious looks, and then one of them took a step forward. “Of course we will do as we are commanded, but how long will we have to build this wall and what is it we are defending against, Your Highness?”
“We have to be prepared for anything. You will build the wall as fast as you can, and you won’t ask questions. The world is falling apart, and anyone can come against us at any time. Sometime soon, we will have to defend this city and it is your job to ensure that we are ready. Now go start working on ideas. You have two days until the end of the week,” Merwein said, dismissing them.
The two men bowed and left. They weren’t sure what was going on, but they knew that the city depended on them, and they were going to be rich.
Chapter Five
Deep Dark Tunnels
Ombra Pedinatore was the last of the Black Dragons who had been residing in Shinestone with the orcs. When the dwarves came, he had fought alongside the orcs with the other Black Dragons. He had killed dozens of the dwarves with his magic, but eventually they had been overwhelmed by the dwarves’ superior force. To the Black Dragons’ surprise, the dwarves had been prepared to fight the wizards. The orcs had begun to fall and there just weren’t enough wizards to hold off the dwarves. When the dwarves overt
ook the orcs, Ombra had attempted to travel out of the mountain, but somehow he had ended up much deeper, in a tunnel far below, in the midst of a band of Kobolds.
Kobolds are gray-skinned humanoids. They are short like dwarves, but extremely skinny and weak. They rely on their speed and long extremities to give them the advantage in close quarters. Ombra had never seen a kobold before, but he had heard about them. He knew they were extremely fast, extremely accurate with javelins, and were known to ride cave lizards. Cave lizards are five to six feet long with another two to three feet of tail. They are dark in color, from gray to black to brown. Other races had attempted to tame them over time, but the kobolds were the only ones with any success. A cave lizard is only about two to three feet tall, which makes them easy for the kobolds to ride in the enclosed spaces of mountains, caves, and the lower plains. The lizards are extremely fast, with sharp teeth, and their muscular tails present a threat of their own.
Ombra had been outnumbered, and the only thing that saved him was that he reacted to his surprise faster than the kobolds could even comprehend the appearance of the man who had just appeared in front of them. He threw a dagger into the throat of the nearest kobold. He then magically traveled onto the back of the long lizard creature that the Kobold was riding. He ran his blade along the neck of the kobold before it was able to figure out what was happening. He didn’t know how the lizard would act without its controller, so he drove his dagger into its skull. He then rolled off the dying lizard, coming to his feet and shooting a fist-sized ball of fire into the face of the final kobold. This was his first encounter with the kobolds, but it hadn’t been his last.
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