Tests

Excerpted from: Trials of the Apostate

I has been a long day, and I am covered in blood and bruises from head to toe. There is not a single part of my body that does not throb with pain, but I feel the need to recount the days events while they are still fresh in my mind. I am alive, if only barely but there is a part of me that wishes I had not survived this day, for I did terrible deeds in the name of self preservation, the shame of which will linger long.

In the calm hours before dawn, Cerol shook me awake from where I lay on my pallet in the barracks. In a hushed but grave tone, he told me to suit up and meet me in the courtyard. Fearing the worst, I set about doffing what little in the way of leather armor had been provided me, and headed to the weapon rack to grab a weapon. There were no weapons. “This is it, I thought,” they are all waiting for me, they are going to sacrifice me to their god!”  After several panicked minutes spent weighing my options, I decided that if death by the hands of these luddite’s was my destiny, then so be it, Kubuk Vushonul is no mouse to die shivering in a corner! I strode out,  head high, ready for death, ready to show the cowards how a real dwarf dies.

As expected, all eight of the fellow dwarves that made up the militia were waiting for me. “Cowards, all eight of them against one unarmed dwarf” I thought, contemptuously. I was about ready to mock them all for their cowardice, when I noticed Urdim, hooded, her eyes shrouded in deep shadow and standing not three spans from me, partially hidden in the deep pool of shadow left by the wide cornice projecting out from the stockroom wall.

Before I could lunge at her and tear out her foul heart, she began to speak, bringing me up short.

“Kubuk” her voice came in a lilting, low tone “you have been deemed unclean in the eyes of Armok, you are not fit to live among us as you now stand, impure and unworthy.”  Her voice was otherworldly, like the echo of a thousand harsh whispers of a thousand fell voices in the deepest delving, and although I came prepared to die, fear now gripped my heart like an Iron vice, freezing me where I stood. Looking around to my companions, I found not the faces of the dwarves that battled with me through the wilderness for those many cruel months, but only the crazed, glazed eyes of dwarves who had abandoned their individuality and reason for madness. They looked not at me, but at Urdim, lapping up her every word and gesture like crazed, starving hounds. She spoke again “I offer you one final act of absolution for your indolence, heathen! One final chance to find the way of the righteous, and bathe yourself in the blood of true faith! Will you take it!?” The mob edged closer, I could feel the anticipation of violence heavy in the air.

Hating myself, hating the fear which now burned like a hot brand in the pit of my stomach, I heard myself say “What would you have me do, oh Urdim?” Urdim smiled faintly,  as if she had expected me to acquiesce, and after a short, heavy pause she said “If you would prove your faith, go you now to the dormitory, there you will find the dwarf Led Kifedrigoth, he who has been consumed by the red rage, he who has been cursed by Armok, he who  must now die!”  The dwarves in the shuffled around with a nervous energy,  “Go now, take you no weapon or instrument of harm, and kill this creature! Bathe in his blood and revel in the slaughter!”

Without a word, I tuned and strode into the dormitory hall. Having resigned myself to obey this insane demand, I found myself now calm and and focused state of readiness. I felt eager! I know mine is a violent and capricious race, but to delight in the slaughter of a beaten, oppressed dwarf who, just like me, snapped under the strain of tyranny and injustice, this was a shameful indeed! As I rounded the corner into the dormitory, all thoughts were banished instantly from my head as a large shadowy figure lunged at me with a terrible choking scream.

My people are know for their closeness to the gods, and we are often seized by fey spirits. Our sages tell us this is the result of the gods trying to talk through us, and those souls too weak and impure to comprehend and translate the words, lose their sanity and become enraged and violent. This, no doubt is what Urdim told her crazed flock, but it’s rubbish. I knew Led snapped because he was tired of living in the rain and wind, eating the same paltry meals every day, and being constantly mocked and humiliated for his shy behavior and extreme size.  None of this knowledge factored into my decision to ward of his clumsy grasping kick, and use his own momentum to throw the large, dark-skinned dwarf into the well joined headboard of a nearby bed, snapping it neatly in two in the process.  The things that did factor into that fast piece of reasoning were One; I was now trapped in a narrow bunk-lined corridor with a maddwarf twice my weight, foaming at the mouth and intent on showing me what my spleen looked like, and Two; The only way out of this nightmare was to show him what his spleen looked like first.

Part of me comes alive when engaged in combat, my mind sharpens into a single point, and time itself seems to congeal and stop as my entire being becomes focused on a single, violent moment. This is why when the hulking figure of Led hit the backboard, rolled onto the bed and launched itself at me with incredible and unexpected speed I was able to evade the kick that would have taken off my head and instead, catch his flying mass in midair, twist, and slam him bodily onto the earthen packed floor.  As we were falling to the ground he managed to land a blow to my stomach, knocking the wind out of me, and leaving me gasping for air, and giving him time to shake his head clear, then start showering me with wild blows to the body, several of which landed before I had time to roll away and regain my feet.

We sparred for a time then, grappling once, then pushing each other away, both of us rebounding off cabinets. He swung clumsily at my head and I brought my gloved fist up in an uppercut, intercepting his blow, and breaking the third finger of his left hand almost in two, and spraying a nearby cabinet and bed in a jet of crimson blood. If the poor devil felt pain, he showed no sign.

He lunged at me again, the foam spilling down his once neat beard now pink as it mixed with blood running freely from a large cut on his lip. Ducking his arms, I reached up and grabbed his ear, tearing it partly free, as I dragged him down to the ground, holding him in a head lock with my leg while I punched him over and over again in the groin.  I held him there, beating the life out of him with both hands while i choked him with my legs, for what seemed like hours, his bloody hands flailed uselessly against my back, and my repeated beating of his groin made him projectile vomit all over the nearby wall.

Finally, he gave one last awful gurgle, and lay still.

I must have lapsed into unconsciousness, for when my eyes next opened I was in a room with smooth stone walls, a real bed and a dresser. Urdim was standing over me with an unreadable expression on her face. To my eyes she seemed….disappointed.