Spring’s last snow broke before the plains,

shattering against the mountain’s peaks -

thus the valley awoke at winter’s last song;

with dwarves opening their gates,

rats uncorking their lairs,

humans trading anew,

harpies creaking from their nests,

and thawing gnolls cackling with sinister cheer.

Spring’s song had come once again

and with it, waves of gold and puddles of red.

…

With the dull clattering of his dagger touching the floor marking his slip on reality, he takes in his surroundings from an objective point of view;

the blood that flows made his armor feel sticky and unpleasant as it cascades down from the top of his neck, chainmail made grimy quickly and linen soaking everything else up. There had been portraits of his friends ahead of him when he had first lifted the knife.

‘Getting them to sit still’d been a pain …’

Now there’s a chandelier, dazzling in its uselessness, shaking, rocking, as fists pounded the door twice his height beside himself. Voices from beyond the walls thickly slur within his receding consciousness, being mistaken for inner thoughts; ignored all the same, ignored like they’d been for years, in favor of his duty.

It had always been this way.

There was no defining moment in his life that made him resolve to put duty before all else. He was born with it like any of his other natural senses; a hunger for justice, for social satisfaction, just like a stomach that demands bread and meat. The days where it had granted peace were long gone. Joy, sapped by the reality of what his actions would mean, slunk into hiding where only his memories dwelled. He smiles even now at the good he’d once done but it fades, replaced by a frown, as his fleeting memories fall short.

It was his fault how things came to be.

The reasons for why had flown through his head thousands of times by now; when he slept, when he worked, when he killed and tried to love - now that there was finally no more harm they could do to him they were absent, leaving him in true silence for the first time in decades. This made him laugh and cry and shudder in disbelief even as the room fades into nothing more than glittering gemstone candles filling a night sky.

All thoughts leave his head. His eyes widen, and his mouth, barely parted, opens a little wider as a thought passes through his head;

‘I should have done this under the stars.’

Thick shapes pass by into his vision and obscure the artificial heavens. With a final breath stagnating in his lungs he tries to beg the masses to leave his sight - to cease their obstructions - but only manages to stir his lungs with a cough. As it inches its way up through his chest and sputters in his throat the last star winks out, and with it, his heart finally falls still.

…

Ting!

Ting!

Ting!

The coldness leaves his body as something echoes, reverberates, through the depths of his mind. A heaviness keeps his eyes barred from the outside world, where something, something possibly horrific, is ongoing. Every chinking noise made him think of plans and he had scrapped - ideas and schemes that his colleagues or followers had brought to him in case of certain emergencies.

Would they really do this to him? Did his death make it easy to ignore his requests?

Ting!

Ting!

Ting!

… death, death - he was supposed to be dead. The realization claws its way down skin that he can barely feel. A spine sturdier than he remembers tingles with panic, and then an unbearably hot flush of shame overtakes him. Tears squeeze themselves out of eyes pressed tightly by a material, causing the fluid to build up and flood his face with a tiny trickle of saltwater.

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‘What could I even say to them?’

‘I chose to abandon them. Isn't that what suicide is? Abandonment? If any of his friends had killed themselves, it would be a betrayal, I’d feel …’

…

unbearably responsible. Unbearably guilty. He would spend the rest of his life connecting everything, even if it wasn't relevant at all, into some sort of concise firing web of proof that he could have stopped it. That’s already what he had done when - …

… oh, gods, what else was he supposed to do? Everything was -

Light breaks through his wild thoughts.

“Thaaat’s good, … yup, looks like a healthy one!"

A large, bloodshot browned eye is only an inch away from his. The skin around it is pocked with wrinkles and scars and a big, bushy brow of black hair is creased inwards deeply as if scrutinizing a sketchy battle plan.

“I know, yer confused, just wait ‘til I got the rest of the stone offya. You’ll be walkin in no time shorthair.”

The face that had managed to disturb his melancholy withdraws and reveals the stout, burley build of a dwarf, as well as a fraction of a room filled with blue lights and statues of dwarves being carved or broken away, revealing and concealing confused folk like him. He seems to be dressed in only a leather apron and a casual robe of stained wool beneath it - around his belly is a sack of tools precariously jumbled into various holsters and baggies, which the dwarf quickly draws something from as he continues to slam at the stone around his face. It is all enough to keep his wit away from his tongue.

‘… What, is this?’

‘What is going on?’

‘Where in the republic is this? No, where in .. this must be west of Harshire? Dwarves don't occupy any spots east of it. Did they? … when was the last time he had even seen a dwarf after the lichdom formed?’

It feels like a shell or a carapace is being peeled off of his skin as the dwarf removes chunk after chunk of withering stone. The strength it once had, enough to keep him restrained entirely even to the minute levels of his facial expressions, fades away as it leaves his body. The moment it touches the floor it is nothing but indiscernible dust that nearby motions send sputtering away into vents unseen. More and more of this new place that he has found himself dragged into reveals itself. Runes, inscriptions and engravings line the walls of the room and the floor itself with a sense of aesthetic purpose that sat poorly with him but must've been regarded as acutely grand given the finer metals used to enhance the decorum. He had never endeavored to learn any other languages of the dwarves so he couldn't discern anything from the words and symbols about him, but between them are lanes of pictures.

Dwarves marching from one mountain to another.

A tale he figures to be old as the mountains themselves.

With a final weighted thwack of a hammer his leg is freed, along with the last part of his body that was constrained by stone. The dwarf that had broken him from his prison steps back and crosses his arms.

“Go on bud, take y’first steps.”

He does so.

The two steps he takes felt heavy and absurd, like there are metal weights strapped to his thighs and calves, but he couldn't tell why. He looks down and observes his body that is now layered with fat and muscle, brushed over by layers of hair, and has the makings of a beard that barely surpasses his neck. Fingers instinctively scratch at the scruffy mess on his face with a growing sense of anxiety which causes the dwarf to furrow his brows even further than before. He must be keeping his observations to himself for now as he did not say anything about what bothers him, and frankly right now the opinions of some dwarf with the least of his worries.

With loud dry slaps of his feet against the stone he steps further into a room he has yet to fully observe. On a full circle of observation he confirms that the shape was like an upright basin made of 90° angles; almost an inverse pyramid, with most of the layers of floors being connected by ramps and staircases. It seems every single level is devoted to some fashion of working on statues like the one he was entombed within. The room alone has to be taller than some of the castles he’s assaulted. As he observes longer and longer he comes to realize that this place may have been one of the pinnacles of dwarven craftsmanship.

It is not a place an outsider like him should be privy to.

An outsider -

he looks down at his own body again and bites down on his tongue as he thinks back to what had just happened to him – more accurately, what he had just done to himself. The pain and the blood that flowed kept him distracted away from the emotions of the situation and allowed him to observe it objectively for at least a few seconds. It was long enough to confirm that he most certainly died. What had happened to bring him here, into this form, lingered nowhere in his present mind. He opens his mouth with a quiet gasp and then looks to the dwarf that had heralded him into this new place.

That dwarf has a black beard strung with white hairs that in its entirety would have touched the floor if it hadn't been wrapped around his waist several times. His hardened features express concern as he sees the blood on man’s lips.

“You might wanna keep your teeths in check, shorthair, …”

his tone is questioning and maybe patronizing.

“Where am I?”

The dwarf observes him for a moment, smiles, and then puts an arm around his shoulder and leads him to a grand archway made of some kind of red polished stone. They had been on the very bottom floor of the bowl this whole time so this seemed to be both an entrance and exit, as he observed no other similar doorways on any other level. It has a set of large iron doors pounded and molded with rigid architectural shapes pleasing to the eye - he figured that nothing short of explosive magic could break it open, if the dwarves ever chose to lock it shut.

“You, my carvling, have been blessed with a life in Gashtun Nanil! That don't mean anything to you right now, aye, but it will.“

Being called a carvling catches his attention more than the confusing name of the City or fortress, though the inquiry on the matter fades from his lips which instead hang open at the site of what lays outside of this already auspicious room. Miles, miles of pillars, and structures, built from the bones of the mountains themselves. Thousands of holes and bridges stretched upwards and downwards and sideways all the cross the cavernous expanse facilitating foot travel throughout every reach of the mountain – at least he assumed so, as there is no way such a rich infrastructure isn't a direct result of a mountain range being tamed by these ambitious dwarves. Beyond just being an underground city it is difficult to stress just how interwoven into the mountain itself this settlement was.

There is not a single place where a structure has been raised in place of natural stone –added onto, perhaps, polished and layered with bricks, but he felt that if he took a hammer and began bashing holes he would only find more indigenous rock. With the number of tunnel entrances and avenues disappearing behind rocky walls, digging in any direction from this central point would probably lead him into another dwarven tunnel. An immense amount of lighting has also been strung around in the form of glowing fungus or bioluminescent life otherwise, and there seems to be large metallic grates carved into the ceiling of areas most affected by smog and gas. From this current vantage point he could see various industrial centers of forges and workshops, mercantile areas filled to the brim with all shapes and forms of life, soldiers or just normal guards posted at every corner or area, … it is quite the usual site on the surface inside of human territory but that is by comparison much easier; they did not have to dig anything out, they just had to mine for metal and stone and chop lumber for the most part. Maybe this is a usual sight for dwarven towns - there is no way for him to know right now, as this is the first he haa seen.

When he turns to look at his guide he sees a beaming smile replacing the concern from before. It made him conscious of his own expression which must have looked quite silly, urging him to pull his mouth shut and bring neutrality back to his face. The dwarf laughs and pats his still held shoulder a few times in a rough sort of way and speaks with mirth;

“This is your new home! Let’s get some robes on ya and show you ‘round, eh?”