Tordhir - Lost in the Deep - Part 8
I was just staring over with another chant when disaster came for me. Leaning on my spear, it sank into a small hollow in the ground and snapped in two when I fell. Hitting the ground I felt a dull pain from my bad leg. It could have been that I was within the Heart of Stone and protected from the worst of pains.
My fear said otherwise, I wasn’t actually within the Heart of Stone and my leg was in a worst state than I had thought, a lot worse. My hand came back bloody after touching my foot. At least the wind finally receded and I was able to light my torch again and place it in the hole where I’d broken my spear.
The foot had swollen and blood was seeping out from the boot. The sight brought a severe kind of clarity. This time I didn’t need any vicious voices in the dark of my mind trying to break me. No, this time I knew. I, Tordhir Griwhem, from the Miermallian river lands had reached the end of my road.
I fished up the best remaining food from my backpack, along with this journal and began to write. Those footsteps are out there again, coming closer. Almost upon me now. I expected them to already be here, but then I couldn’t hear them any longer. Instead, I wrote and ate until I bit into something awful.
The insect crunched and I spit it out trying to eject that taste. Somehow they were all around now, brown with a hint of copper and green. Like spiders with carapace and shimmering wings. Inconceivable and alien. I grabbed for my torch and chased them off.
Then I saw the creature, the horror. Initially, I thought it to be smiling, but looking closer I wasn’t sure it could actually close its round mouth. Some of those jagged teeth looked broken, those were perhaps even sharper than the ones that were whole. The creature had a shabby cloak and a cane that towered over it.
It struck the cane on the stone and rotated its teeth in a clicking way. The insects that had scattered around me swarmed to the creature and flew into holes in the cane, as well as some hollow behind the creatures ears. I waited for the attack that never came.
Instead it squatted some distance away from me and observed. I had my broken spear in my lap as I wrote in my journal. Ever so often it banged its cane rhythmically on the stone, causing the insects to buzz and fly about before returning to their caverns within the cane.
Soon more of those creatures appeared. One of the small ones charged in for the kill, but the large cane blocked its path. They communicated with clicking noises that were hard on the ears. The shaman type pointed at me and clicked, then it produced a dwarven time glass and set it down on the ground a few paces away from me.
The five creatures started to watch the grains of golden sand as they trickled through the narrow middle of the time piece. I am feeling sleepy now, it could be that I know that the end is here, or that the pool of blood at my foot is draining me. The creatures let me write, but I see them salivating when their eyes shift from the sand to look at me instead.
I don’t think I’ll be able to stay awake until the sand has ran out. I can feel myself slipping. I am going to try to hide the necklace from Belgrima along with this journal in the small hole that became my ruin. If you ever read this and you are a fellow dwarf, know that I tried. Now I am going to close my eyes and for the last time try to enter the Heart of Stone.
GAME OVER