#laryn

“She traveled far into the Deep Roads, farther even than the Legion of the Dead.  They spoke to her of monsters but she knew the best opportunities for treasure-hunting lay further and deeper in.  They shook their heads.  They never saw her again.

“She saw beautiful things on her journey.  Stone in perfect spirals unmade by any smith’s hand.  Fluted columns and glittering stalactites.  Lyrium shining and singing in the dark.  And the old thaigs, their buildings ancient and foreign and yet somehow familiar.

“Despite the beauty, the monsters were never far from her.  She was forced to fight off entire packs of tezpadam, their eyeless faces staring up at her from where they had fallen in the dust.  Lurkers stalked her footsteps, sliding through crevices in the stone to leap upon her.  The giant spiders set traps of silk and strand for her in narrow shafts; the spider-silk dulled the blades of her axes so that she had to bludgeon the beasts to death.

“And always, always there was the threat of darkspawn.  She would hear them before she saw them, their animal voices whining and shrieking in the passageways, the metal of their boots and their armor and blades clanking as they scurried towards her.  Sometimes she could run and hide; sometimes she was forced to kill them, and she stood surrounded by so much darkspawn blood the stench made her vomit.

“But she could not withstand them forever.  One day the darkspawn surrounded her; there were too many, and her blades were broken.  She closed her eyes.  And she hoped they would kill her before they devoured her flesh.”

“What happened to her?” Dis asked.

“They took her away,” Rica said, growing stiff beside Dis.  “They took her away into the deep dark, and they poisoned her, and they tortured her, and they turned her into a monster far fouler and more terrible than themselves.  She stared with bloodied eyes, and her jaws slavered and snapped, and her rotting hands reached for more and more, ever hungry, never sated.”

Rica paused.  A long, shivering pause.

“Do you know what happened to her?” she whispered.

“No,” breathed Dis.

“She came home!” shrieked Rica, grabbing Dis’ arms with both hands and shaking her.  Dis screamed, even though she always knew it was coming.

“Shut your mouths!” their mother yelled from the front room.  They collapsed into helpless giggles.

“Thanks, Rica,” Dis said.  “Goodnight.”

“Goodnight, silly.”

***

Twelve years later Dis stared up into Hespith’s tortured face, reaching out a hand in supplication despite the carnage that lay all around them.  Before she could try to reach the other dwarf, Hespith stepped backwards -- and over the edge of the cliff she stood upon.

“No!” Dis screamed.  She made to run for her, but Alistair’s hand was a heavy comfort on her shoulder.

“She’s already gone, Dis,” he said softly.  “I’m sorry.  She didn’t deserve any of this.”

Dis took a deep breath, the axes dropping from her hands into the blood at her feet.  The stench roiled around her, and she fought the urge to vomit.  She forced herself to look at it.  At her.

The broodmother’s bloated corpse slumped forward, her foul spoor reeking, black blood and drool still pouring from her wound of a mouth.  Her tiny eyes in her ruined face stared sightlessly.  

She’d been a woman like Hespith, like Dis, once; a woman with a name.  Laryn.  She could never have wanted this, what she became.