The Blood Awakens
It had not come to him because of the honored dead.
It was an easy mistake to make. For in the wake of the first great loss of life in this, unbeknownst to them at the time, strange new world, why else would the blood of Gazul awaken, stirred into action at those seeking entrance to the Underearth?
Ever since their arrival he had been uneasy, uncomfortable. The stones and air and earth smelled off, the tools they made from lumber harvested rested uneasily on his palms. The taste of the water in the back of his throat had him twitching. Only after the fourth time he'd vomited out the stonebread supplementing their early meals was he not required to partake, and while none wished ill of him, there was an undercurrent of resentment among his peers of age that they suffered through the rations while his lack of proper Dawi endurance and stubbornness was tolerated.
He should have sought the wisdom of his elders, but he was always prone more to self-reflection, and after the healers of the Cult of Valaya declared there was nothing wrong with his body and his mind seemed sound, he could only assume it was something they would have no experience with.
A part of him would regret that bit of youthful brashness, but he was given to being by himself already and the reasoning that his oddities would only discomfort the others gave a moral imperative to his increasing isolation. Besides, there were surely more important things in a newly founded Karak than one beardling's discomfort.
Though there was one avenue of exploration outside of his own knowledge. Lorekeeper Sedlim had often indulged his bouts of knowledge seeking absent companionship, and as he grew into a beardling and his education as a productive member of Ankor society intensified, so too did his fascination of the records of lore and past as a pastime fit for lone activities.
A quiet request for materials relating to an environment inducing uncomfortable sensations into a Dawi was met with a raised eyebrow and quick direction after several moments contemplation. As he left, the elder laid a hand on his shoulder for a brief moment, and in that time he felt reassurance. The moment passed and he continued on aware that his unstated plight was not unheard, nor was his means of dealing with it to be disrupted. It spoke much of the trust he had in the beardling's judgement. Buoyed by the weight of newfound moral responsibility he perused the knowledge collected and found ample evidence relating to the polar hells and unusually strong or concentrated magical phenomena; the tales from Karak Hirn and that terribly unnatural forest occupied him for many an hour.
But lone individuals among many bearing such symptoms and issues were rare, or swept into disturbing accounts of targeted malignant sorcery. It had taken him hours to work up the courage to approach Lord Gutfroy about the matter. The keen eyes of his elder had seen his hesitance to take this matter up with others, and after much sniffing and poking and prodding and fiddling with tools and runed objects the purpose of which he could only guess at, he stated with certainty there was no such foulness upon his being. The indignant grunt and glare he received at asking for surety wrought much color to his cheeks and forced his head low in shame.
He left the Rhunrikki with a promise that he would either seek proper care and wisdom for this situation soon if he could not resolve it.
So he suffered in silence, deep contemplations of his condition spiraling into out of control forays of depression. Only in the deepest and darkest pits of the mountains that were nominally secure (and some a bit less so) and oddly enough up among the peaks when the moon glowed or the sun shone did he feel something akin to ease of mind.
Long were the hours spent puzzling over what was wrong with the world or him. And as hints increasingly appeared telling a tale of oddities and strangeness inherent in the land, his mind was further convinced of the land being the cause of his disturbance, even as his heart stubbornly persisted in worry of the sanctity of his soul.
Then came the battle, as the Hargrobi assaulted their defenses in their thousands. He had volunteered, serving as part of the reserve and assisting in the movement of ammunition, wounded, and dead.
It was the smell that got him. The smell of the goblinoids dead, their tainted blood. The hundreds, thousands of assaulted his senses even as their twisted caricatures of features burned themselves into his mind. The world became hazy, his thoughts overwhelmed by visions of darkness, death, twisted mutilation, mountains rising and shadows falling over the world, essence mangled and wrought unspeakable change upon.
A song all-encompassing tinged with discord, a land tainted, a world rendered impure.
He didn't know when it ended, stumbling about from duty to duty, torn between madness and stoic duty. He could remember little detail save a certainty that these grobi were wrong, and that somehow their miserable existences were tied with what had made him so discomforted all these years. All he could do was stumble forward, and let himself fall into darkness.
One step then another, hurried, without pause. All he could do was run forward, uncaring that he could not see though he could perceive the murky tendrils piercing the darkness, stretching and twisting and making a mockery of blackness about him.
He was going downwards, hurtling forward at times falling off his feet and rolling always before he picked himself up off the stone floor and carried on.
Then came a knock of recrimination, hurling him off his feet once more: his face stung with shame why shame? He could see? No, rather the darkness molded itself into rock of night's darkest pitch and there was a beard, a stout form bestowed with smoky facial hair. He could not make out a face but the weight of paternal disapproval was palpable.
A gloved palm was on his cheek, the pain faded and his gaze was gently moved to the side, and there lay a pool of water that reflected the blackness off itself and thereby was sighted.
The hand upon his face was gone, he looked forward again and the darkness was but darkness, yet in it there was peace.
Drawn by the curious sight, nay the only sight, he moved to peer into its depths. Mesmerizing in its absolute defiance of the ebony surroundings, so intent and wandering was his gaze he perceived the slightest fluctuation. Old scripts and records came to mind mixed with lessons passed to all children of the Ankor, and he stepped forward, palms outstretched for the stony wall he somehow knew was there. And he laid hands upon it, then eat, and listened and felt. Back and forth between guiding water and echoing stone he went, the song of moving earth and shifting stone heard and respected since before the Ancestors themselves calling him on.
At last he found where the points aligned and took a deep, fortifying breath, the hint of familiarly unfamiliar air sparking a fire in his veins.
Up was risen a pick the origin of he knew not, and he began to chip and cut away. No miner by trade; the art of delving earth and stone was in the blood of every Dawi.
Time escaped him as he hacked away. The rhythmic motion becoming everything. Miners' songs of old rang in his ears, and perhaps uttered aloud with his scant used voice.
He only knew he had broken through when his pick swung forward once more and was stopped not by cracked rock but an unyielding grip upon the haft.
It was not his grip.
"Careful now beardling. Haste has a place in all things but it needs be tempered by discipline."
The voice was smoky, signs of lack of use that should have been awkward somehow instead reassuring and even endearing. The low, hemming grumble left him feeling as though he stood on sturdy carved marble lined with gromril, his back straightening unconsciously.
But he couldn't see.
Did he speak aloud? He didn't think so. And yet, from the pitch-black comes a response.
"You will get used to it. Dawi are masters of the mountain, be it it's heart, peak, or bowels. Remember that. For now though, I'll make it easy for you."
Fire blossomed.
He had seen and envisioned weapons wreathed in fire. The flames ghosting off the edge, casting flickering shadows, the heat a constant warning of the danger it represented, mixing obscuration with illumination of the blade from which the bound inferno emanated.
This was not one of those.
Rather than a wispy blaze fluttering about a sharp edge of steep, it was as if fire had been wrangled into immobility and wrapped about a sword until it was as solid as fiery diamonds, the flat shimmer so enmeshed with the blade's shape he could not tell where the weapon ended and the flame began.
No. That was a lie. Rather than a flickering fire it was a flickering blade of pure ebony, a metal spine in a blazing body that only showed itself when you stared deeply. He couldn't conceive of what it was made of, but something deep in him said it was in no way inferior to the Gromril making up the armaments of the greatest and eldest of his hold. And upon it, burning a white that shone through the inferno about it, were runes of primordial provenance that breathed with power.
The air did not heat up around it, rather, it grew colder, and no shadows were cast. Instead the room tunnel was brought into being, as if a faint shine emanated from the surroundings themselves rather than a singular glow in response to, while around the blade itself the darkness grew, light drawn in and devoured.
It was an impossibly eerie spectacle that lent a sense of otherworldliness to the cave.
The bearer of the sword was cloaked, only faint of glimpses of dark armor visible. His beard was black as soot with streaks of grey, like the burnt remain of the finest Wutroth tended to from birth to life and ended in a fire tended to eternally and shaped into fine facial hair.
And he was not alone. Dawi in their owns and twos strode about at the edges of his vision, garbed in the finest accoutrements with neatly trimmed beards, and then they were blooded, weary and wounded, and then they were something in-between, a passing illusion spawned by torchlight.
"Quite the drawpoint you youngsters have stumbled upon." the dark figure spoke again, leaning to the side. The darkness flooded in where he once was until it seemed as if he had moved out of a painting.
"Purest Gromril on one end," he tapped a stony wall and the sweetest, most well-conducted chorus rang out, filling his mind with joy and hope and wonder, "and the basest foulness on the other." He tapped the other wall and had it always been so close or merely been there only when he tapped it?
Again music rang out, but such a term is insulting to the discordant, raucous mess that elicited fear and anger and the most terrible sorrow and discomfort.
"And it might well be that grouting would do more harm than good for once." Undertones of more than one meaning lay heavy in that statement.
"Haven't felt like this since my earlier days, when I first went awandering and found all sorts of new odds and ends. A walk can do you good, if you keep your feet firmly planted." And if his tone was wistful, the beardling dared not guess at why.
"There always needs to be someone looking within instead of without. You've gone in one direction, now wander the other. If you should wish to take unto yourself greater responsibilities, you will find me again."
He turned, and as his sword was obscured by his body the strange lightness vanished, the deepest darkness there as if it had never left, his eyes adjusting 'ere the light had never been.
Other Dawi stepped forward, their shadowed forms a bit clearer, more defined. He was led up and out until there darkness was not so absolute and the lights situated at exact measurements guided him further.
Up and up he went until he was outside, and there was a path up the peak that had not been there before. He strode forward with increasing surety, the words spoken earlier echoing in his mind, his very being: Dawi are masters of the mountain, be it it's heart, peak, or bowels.
The climb became ever more strenuous, but his will became firmer with each step. And when he stood at the summit and looked out, a blazing figure caught his eye, branded into the clouds, like the barest indications of a portal down under in rigidly defined lines and angles.
At last, the world was not so unpleasant, but it could be made better.
