Tordhir - Lost in the Deep - Part 2
I felt like a king for three, maybe four hours. Though I could be wrong, time seems to have a mind of its own in these caverns. I don’t pretend that it’s a serious theory it’s merely based on how I experience this underground world.
It might only have been an hour since I found the helmet or it might have been five. Hunger, whispers in the dark and time together with so many other things are playing tricks with my mind. At times giving me false hope, only to guide me down the path to despair in the next moments. In the end I have no idea how much time might have past, it doesn’t matter.
In a heartbeat my reign as king came to an end. All it took was a shadow created by my torch and there I was just me again, Tordhir, the dwarf who outlived his friends. It felt cruel the game that this shadow played with my mind.
For the briefest of moments the shadow looked just like her, Yltilda the last of my companions to die. What might she have thought of me now? The usurper who named himself king for finding a helmet that had belonged to a better dwarf of pure mountain blood from before the dilution started.
How I had wanted to save her but her hand signal stopped me. There were three of those Great spiders nearby so I couldn’t call out to her. She was just sitting there on the ground spear in hand. The spiders were just watching her, biding their time. They had already bitten her so they were in no hurry.
I’d found her when she called out, but sitting there she was silent, her throat had swollen, lips had turned purple. She saw me hiding behind that boulder. I had wanted to save her, both of course to save a fellow dwarf but also for the most selfish of reasons. I didn’t want to be alone.
I had to struggle to read her signs. She was holding her spear with one hand and trying to sign with her other one. Her fingers were so swollen that she could barely separate them. I was using both my hands to interpret and try to conform what she was saying.
Thinking back it wasn’t that her sign language was so bad, no the reason was that didn’t want to understand her crude words. Arrow. Kill. Yltilda.
She wanted me to kill her. I signed that she was the one that had the bow. Yltilda also had a knife at her side, she would have ended it herself but I realised that she was already paralysed by the poison. She wouldn’t have been able to lift that spear.
I was asking if she had wounded any of the spiders, and which one I should attack first. Again she stopped me and signed. Command. Forbid. Run. I had followed her orders and fled. When I try to sleep at night I wish that I had ignored her command. I hope, oh gods of stone and clay I pray that I didn’t misread her swollen fingers.
I have been fooling myself, while I gained some confidence wearing the kings helmet, it’s not the helmet that has given me a spring in my step. This time it wasn’t that I alone, was fooling myself, now the mountain itself was fooling me.
The corridor was inclining not in a steep way, but now that I realize it, the decent is impossible to disregard. It’s plain to see, the path forward is leading down deeper into the depths of The Mother.
Something within me was screaming that I was going the wrong way. But there was something about that corridor. The records doesn’t to my knowledge mention anything like this. What might it mean? Is it a secret passage only known to the king and his closest? Why was it created? What secrets await at its end?
Am I following a train laid out by the god of false hope? Was this section created by the foe and if so, where are they now? Might they also have awakened that deep slumbering evil? With the scarce supplies I have left I can’t afford to keep second guessing myself and go back and forth. I will continue down and pray that my luck has turned.