Over the course of the night spent in Doetrieve’s windowless suite, the dwarf asked of and learned a great many things. Among his requests: the handwaving gesture necessary to access the elf’s mountain--though it would be difficult to teach while bound, argued Doetrieve. Indeed the disgraced lieutenant’s arms limply hung from shackles, his fate soon a transporting to the captain’s chambers. The dwarf made a mental note of the upcoming march and. after, swapped words concerning Paris. Pleased smile shadowed by shoulder length hair, Doetrieve nodded in agreement: Paris was a fine spider. The dwarf pressed and hit upon a particular wound, Doetrieve shrugging off the conditions of similar livestock; this was Captain Locust’s concern. The dwarf, surprised at his own words, shamed the lieutenant. The elf’s head bowed. He did not particularly care either for the conditions of which their arachnids were kept, but he had made no real effort to fight it. The dwarf asked if he ate them with any zeal, and he did not. A comparison to Waspig’s species fell on closed ears, Doetrieve claiming it in particular a favorite. But the two being in agreement on spiders strengthened the dwarf’s resolve for the tasks ahead. While his mind was on the subject, he brought up arachnid training.

“Ain’t ‘arder ‘an teachin’ a dogbarn. Ask away.”

Before anything concerning Paris’ species, the dwarf wanted to ask of what a dogbarn was. With how much time remaining unknown, he decided against derailing the conversation and potentially delaying his necessary questions to a repeat performance. The lieutenant’s eyes glittered in the dim suite.

“You don’t ‘ave enough time for what yer thinkin’, friend.”

But the dwarf persisted.

“Yer casket. It’ll help if Paris’ with you--maybe, or maybe not. N’ain’t trying to lead y’astray, but it shun’t surprise a fella to know each spider’s different. Some’r easy. Some are not. You really don’t ‘ave the time to learn their temperments, where they want their itches, what they don’t, whether they get on fast or creep slow.”

Having finished speaking suddenly, his lip quivered. The elf glanced far to his side yet, even in the dark, the dwarf could discern a stream leaking down his cheek.

“I wish you weren’t ‘ere to see this, dwarf. I dunno what to make of you. Dunno how you know all ya do. Y’came from flat out no ‘ere, and next thing I know yer sneaking into the room I wait death in. This is what it’s like, huh, dwarf? I couldn’t believe you when you went an’--I don’t right know what you did to shoot out from the log like that. Shatterin’ that glass... you know such a dee-vice came from the capital? Same as this ‘otel. Empty dump. Cappan knows I ‘ate it. Not that I did a thing ‘bout this either.. But seein’ you fly through the air like a pinwheel, I don’t right know, I just couldn’t believe a fella would fight--an’ actually fight--even in ‘is last moments like you did. And succeed. Well, if I ‘adn’t come in, the captain’d’ve ‘ad ya dead quick.” Doetrieve suddenly exclaimed: “An’ what you did to ‘is smug face!”

The door slammed along its rail, and several soldiers raided the suite, familiar monochrome gi entering, wooden sandals clicking.

“Chipper and awake, Mason.”

“Not tired.”

“Clearly not,” surrendered Locust.” Lieutenant Sowsmith, unshackle him. Arms ready, now.”

“Lieutenant...?”

“Do not grow jealous in your last breaths. It is unbecoming in His name.”

“You seen ‘im lately?”

“Always. Have you? Surely not, considering what sacrilege it would be if you had.”

“You’d ‘ave to execute me then, huh, Perry ?”

“Still your tongue or I will slice it out,” spat Perry. “Sowsmith, get him on his feet.”

The elfs dispersed from the room, a drooping Doetrieve first and curious Locust last. The latter hesitated in the doorway. He eventually left, and the dwarf crawled out from beneath the bed. It took some summoning of nerve to eventually crack the door open--suicide would bring him back to the chapel, but a capture by the elfs would only prolong his time alive, and he couldn’t be so sure if the captain would not prolong it further. But wanting to glimpse the color of the morning to affix the time of Doetrieve’s procession, he made his way to the end of the hall and gazed out at the blue grays of dawn, drizzle nearly consuming buildings--absolutely carts and stalls. He turned round and a door slid back. An elf of arched back exited with robes billowing black and, as the dwarf would later note of Lord Moth, her clothes movement faded in and out from reality, its shape loose and mistakable. She gave the dwarf a slight glance. A mole off the elf’s cheek caught the dwarf’s notice. She turned and slowly took to the stairway at the end of the hall, and the dwarf’s held breath released. He wasn’t sure what to make of the interaction but a simple gratefulness for no event being made of it. After some time he himself crossed the carpet to the stairs and, back to the floor below, made his way out where loose bamboo blocked and under the cover of rain.

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

“LOADING... LOADED.”...

“Wuzzat?” asked an incredulous Corporal Deertre. “Sowsmith? ‘Oo’s askin’?”

“A friend of the lieutenant's, you twit,” scolded Corporal Smucker. “At this hour? “‘Ee’s asleep at the tavern. Sleeps with a woman there, y’see. Not a big secret, huh, Deer?”

“Wuzzat?” asked Deer. “I dunno where Sowsmith is.”

Smucker gazed at his guardmate before turning to the dwarf.

“There’s only one tavern: the Beatin’ Bug. Can’t miss it.”...

The dwarf did not miss it. Locating the completely sguarcane made bar, he lay in wait for much of the night, and if he slept he did not know it, but he did rejoice at the figure exiting the Beatin’s backdoor for it, in familiar marine blue, left alone and quickly ventured off the general vine woven path. Tracking the elf, the dwarf wondered if his promotion was imminent. While he felt some regret in clubbing the soon-to-be lieutenant with a particularly hefty branch, it would not pain him later at the executioner’s reveal.

The dwarf dragged Sowsmith over to bushes and bound his wrists with tight vine, helping himself to the key stashed on his uniform. To the hotel he quickly trot after, time short, mounting the hotel’s bamboo and letting himself in just as he had the same night in a life previous. To housekeeping’s storage he helped himself, and Doetrieve’s suite soon unlocked again. The former lieutenant’s wrists the same, he rubbed at them vigorously.

“Dwarf? I dunno what to say. Brought a branch in I see. What?” stammered Doetrieve. “The mountain gesture? If this‘s how ya wanna spend the night.”

The dwarf, before the lesson began, asked if he wanted to escape.

“No sir. Not livin’ on the outskirts like some bandit. If I’m to be hung I’ll hang. I give up. We did what we could. Now you want to know this movement or not? Hold your hands out like this...”

In addition to mastering the relatively simple hand gesture and whisper (which he had never heard), the dwarf too earned more advice towards harboring friendly relations with the spiders beneath rock. Their practicing and conversation cut through enough hours to summon the captain and his mix of known and unknown elf soldiers, Sowsmith noticeably absent from the party.

“Let yourself free did you?”

“I’m dangerous.”

“Come out with it, Mason. Who helped you? And what has become of Sowsmith?”

“What are you blabbering out?”

“Coy?”

“You know what that looks like.”

“I do,” said Locust. “But you hide something yet. It’s that blasted dwarf, well? Where is he?”

“I let myself free just like you said, Perry.”

Locust, not much less in height to Doetrieve, spit in Doetrieve’s face. Assuring his men to shoot should the disgraced lieutenant struggle, the captain directed the march to his chambers as he had the same night before. In a similar vein he glanced about the room, suspicious. Locust’s long hair blew out from his head as he jerked it below the bed to meet the terrified eyes of the dwarf. The captain’s own elf eyes widened and he howled into an eventual call for assistance. Doetrieve slammed through the door shattering its grip on its rails while arrows flew. Naturally ending against Locust, Doetrieve awakened his own lungs, advising the dwarf he run.

Locust regained his stance just as Doetrieve threw a failed right hook. Recovered, the captain had shattered Doetrieve’s wrist, the latter crumpling. An ugly sneer appeared across his glass scarred face until suddenly crushed with the weight of a heavy branch.

“ONE-HANDED SKILL XP GAINED”

“ONE-HANDED SKILL INCREASED TO 2”

Locust crashed to the carpet to which Doetrieve crawled over and delivered as much force as his active hand could accomplish to the already pulverized face of Locust, and the dwarf delivered another swing against the first guard, a foreign elf, to enter. The wood in the dwarf’s grip dropped him. Another swing and another went down. Another skill increase flashed before the dwarf but, to one already resigned to death, the celebration meant little.

Out the suite the dwarf and Doetrieve stumbled, and immediately a throng of arrows set themselves into disgraced lieutenant with remarkable, unsuspecting speed. He did not cry as he hit the ground, and the dwarf did glance back while continuing to run, and the dwarf took an arrow to his beard. Unable to access the stairway, the dwarf opted for the end of the hall and took another swing with his weapon against glass: the branch shattered into splinters. Dumbfounded, the dwarf turned as elfs slowed their pace, a furious, ravaged Locust stomping near. As he beheld this, a suite door slid and the woman with mole on cheek exited, given quickly to screeching at the drawn bows. While she remained petrified, the dwarf sprinted into the open room and digested its interior with haste. It was like any other within the hotel, but black tapestries hugged the walls, all woven with strange milk colored symbols. Candles stacked and packed corner to corner glowed and where the largest of them were concentrated, a long sword in a midnight black scabbard lay. The woman rushed in behind the dwarf shoving him forward, escaping to the bathhouse with a slam of its door.

Recovered, the dwarf wasted no time in producing the sword from its sheath, its point glimmering in the warm pulsing of candlelight. Each flickering source blew back with the rushing in of Locust, and the elf watched in angered horror as the dwarf carved his stomach apart.

“LOADING... LOADED.”

Morning stale at the steeple, the dwarf laid himself atop the remains of the singed rolled carpet and said nothing to no one, acknowledging neither funguay nor flock, motionless and numb.