A single torch sconce burned bright against the darkness of Grindlefecht’s fourth dungeon.
Most of its underground chambers had survived the initial assault and the subsequent collapse. The etched carvings on the cold iron walls were untouched by the chaos that had erupted above. Through two great battles it had stood strong, and stable – a testament to the endurance of those who had built it. Many of them now occupied its main cells, their skin long since wasted away as they succumbed to the tortures Boss Skegga had visited upon them.
One truth of Thean existence, known to those of the Underkingdom in particular, was that Dwarven crafts were made to last. Dwarven walls could only be brought down by their own weapons. Or, at the very least, through the deaths of thousands of their foes.
Such walls had even withstood the screams of their old masters – screams that had echoed through the twisting, labyrinthine chambers of the stronghold’s five interconnected dungeons with just as much power as the cannons which had roared above them. And just like those cannons, the dungeons now lay silent. Only the intermittent trickles of blood from the torture racks or the bodies of dwarves and kobolds still hanging from the rafters could be heard in the eternal night of this dreary sanctum.
And it was here, amidst the bones of the dwarves, that Marcus Graham sat and waited for death.
The silence of this place that was soon to be his tomb was both a blessing and a curse. A blessing, because he could finally be alone with his thoughts. He could finally hear himself think, unhindered by the din of cannonfire or the screams of the dying above ground.
It was a curse, for the exact same reason.
“So, this is how it ends for me, huh?” Marcus said to his audience of dusty skeletons. “Not with a bang, but with a patter. Betrayal, backstabbing, and imprisonment in the very lair of my enemy.”
He leaned his head against the far wall of his chamber, his repaired muscles groaning with every movement. Skeever didn’t harm him, and he needed to know why.
The only thing still keeping him even close to what one could call ‘sane’ down here was his journal – for it had now truly become a journal – that he still scribbled with. They hadn’t stripped him of his possessions when he was thrown down here. Possibly because they reasoned that his simple words would broke no threat to them. He entertained the thought that perhaps he should leave it behind as his final words even if there would be precious few rats who would ever read them. He was vain enough, it seemed, that he’d like his life to be remembered in his own words. What man didn’t, when his time came?
What’s it going to be, then? He jotted down noiselessly in the dank darkness of his prison. Will they hang me here, like a did that Dwarf back in Spearclaw when he refused to surrender? Or maybe they’ll feed me to their queen, and see what monster she spits out next? Or, maybe they’ll trade me to the Yokun above as a slave – as a way to broker some kind of fragile alliance with their once-enemies. It wouldn’t surprise me. Nothing would, anymore.
He paused as he inked that thought, his tattered quill leaving a messy ink-blotch on the crumpled pages of his notebook.
That was my real failure, he then noted. Pride, and a lack of imagination. Thinking that I knew what motivated these bipedal rodents better than they knew themselves. You were waiting for your chance this whole time, weren’t you, Skeever? You always hated Deekius. And every word of ‘honor’ and ‘loyalty’ you ever whispered in my ear was a lie.
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But maybe lying’s what I failed to learn. And now, here I sit. An honest General with nothing but the ragged shirt on his back, standing on the bones of thousands who I’ve led to dusty deaths. What do all my successes even matter if they led me here? I’m like the Marquis of Montrose –winner of a dozen tactically adept victories and loser of one battle that cost me everything.
“Except,” Marcus sighed aloud. “Montrose had something tangible he was fighting for. If my dreams have any measure of truth about them, my reason to fight might not even be alive up there, anymore…”
He remembered his death-vision of Mari morphing into the rat-abomination so vividly that it could have happened right here in this cell. His body reacted every time he closed his eyes and saw that face snarling back at him, its hard horns and lithe tongue drooling over his forehead and etching words into his brain – words that chilled his bones.
The thought had murdered sleep for him. He dared not try and doze off, now. He must have been awake for at least three days straight. And he wasn’t planning on napping anytime soon. The next time he closed his eyes would be the last, he knew it.
But something else was occupying his hazy thoughts besides those of his inevitable demise. It could be his lack of sleep, or it could be something else entirely, but he could swear that something thin and wiry played across the fingers on his right hand when he flexed them – something that glowed with a sickening green hue and arced its way around his palm like a ghostly light made manifest by nothing more than thought. He looked at his palm and saw that light glowing even now, and he stared open-mouthed as he realized insanity must finally be taking him.
Either that, or…
The door to the dungeon flew open, its clanging ringing out in his ears as it echoed through the whole rotten labyrinth. Footsteps pitter pattered in the pools of urine and fecal matter that lined the narrow corridor separating him from freedom until. Those same footsteps brought the light of a flickering candle close to Marcus’s cell and then stopped abruptly before him. Without even looking up, he knew who had come to visit.
“Well,” he said. “Come to revel in your victory, Talon-Commander?”
Skeever laid the candle down at the bottom of his cell-door, and sat opposite him.
“There is being no victory here, Marcus Graham,” he said. “There is being only sad end of a long, long night.”
The eyes of the First-Talon met those of his commander through the bars of his cell.
“Why?” Marcus asked. “Was it about power, Skeever, all this time? Were you simply waiting for your chance? Or do you simply despise a human more than you love your own people?”
The hairs on the ratman’s neck stood to attention. “Know this, Marcus: I am loving my people more than anything. It is for them that I am doing this. Not myself.”
“You lock away the one who saved your people from oblivion.”
“’Saved’?” Skeever spat. “Is that what you are calling this? The army is being battered. The ratguard is being in lower spirits than when we are beginning our march. I am telling you to wait for reinforcements. I am telling you to use Glitterpaks. But you are committing us to the charge that killed us all.”
Marcus hid his face from the light. “I did not know what awaited us in this place,” he said. “No one did. I thought we could save them before they killed themselves. I thought you belieived the same thing.”
Skeever shook his snout. “Are you not learning? Your wish to save the creatures of Underkingdom is what is making you a butcher, Marcus.”
“And yet it has won you the North, in all its glory,” Marcus scoffed. “I thought we agreed never to lie to each other, Skeever? If your loyalties were dependent on a sense of altruism, you would have slit my throat long ago. I’ve sacrificed plenty of your people to defeat Skegga and his minions. And through it all, you flapped not a single gum in complaint.”
He crawled forward, bringing his face as close to the bars of his cage as he could. He looked right into the eyes of the traitor and saw the candlelight’s stalk reflected in those crimson eyes.
“So, tell me what this is really about, Skeever. You owe me that much, even if you are a traitor.”
The ratman leaned forward too after a moment. He bared his teeth and practically spat the word that was as much a blow to Marcus as any battlefield wound:
“Honor,” he said.
***
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