The bucket fell from FebrezeNinja's grasp. A look of pained frustration passed over his face as water spilled all over the already muddy fortress floor.
He looked again at his wounded hands. "I can't even hold onto a bucket, Mortuus. I'm beginning to wonder if I'll ever be able to grasp my battleaxe again."
"At least you still have both of your hands," replied MortuusLupus with a forced chuckle, raising the stump of his right arm to attest to his own condition.
"I want to help the fortress survive, Mortuus, but if I can't even pick anything up, I'm just another useless body sucking up the fortress's resources."
"You and me both."
"There has to be something we can do to contribute around here. At least we can still move around, and that's better than most of the survivors. It's a good thing Smurf and Burns still have all of their limbs, or the fortress would be doomed."
"I think it's probably doomed anyway."
---
Yeol stood before the great steel door. For over five years, it had been locked and barred from the inside. From Yeol's side.
She slid the heavy bar from its bracket, and turned the bolt knob. The door unlocked with a deep metallic clack.
Suddenly an icy cold gust blew through the room. Yeol could feel her hair stand on end.
There should be no reason for such a cold wind to blow through a chamber full of magma, Yeol thought to herself.
Slowly, nervously, she turned to look behind her.
A dark shape flitted away from her with preternatural speed. It appeared to vanish through the wall and into the very earth itself.
Yeol shook her head rapidly, as if to shake out cobwebs. She was incredibly hungry. Perhaps the hunger was starting to affect her mind.
---
"I'm sure it was a ghost. I saw it with my own two eyes. And what's more, I felt it… I felt a chill in my spine when it passed by," Skanky Burns said.
"I've seen weird things around the fortress lately, too. I don't know what it is exactly, but… I remember hearing stories, before I came to Gemclod, about the cities and fortresses that fell to the Arrogant Ones. They said that the dwarves could not bury all of their dead fast enough, and the spirits of those that were not laid to rest would sometimes come back to haunt the fortress," Spermy Smurf replied.
Skanky Burns paused thoughtfully for a moment. "We should probably do something to memorialize the fallen. It's the right thing to do anyways, and just maybe we'll put these guys to rest by doing it."
Spermy Smurf nodded. "It's worth a try. You keep an eye on the wounded, and I'll get to work on the memorials."
And with that, Spermy Smurf headed down to the stockrooms to get one of the dozens of unfinished stone memorial slabs. He picked up the nearest heavy stone slab and carried it to a craftsdwarf's workshop, where he would engrave it with images, tales, and memories of one of the fallen. Their spirits would have to be put to rest one at a time.
---
2nd Granite 273
Panting, Yeol finally reached the top of the long, winding stairway. She did not remember the stairway being that long. Nor did she remember the long tunnel that curved ahead of her, out of sight. It had been so long since she had taken this path.
This had to be the right direction, though. There had been no doors, no side passages since she had left her chamber. The only direction was to follow the path ahead of her. A path that was proving to be much longer than she remembered.
She was abysmally hungry.
---
It wasn't fair!
Everything was so good before. He was happy and safe. But then the bad thing came!
The other dwarves said that the bad thing came from hell. It was big and scary! It had wings, and it looked kind of like the dragon pictures carved on the fortress walls. His mommy sometimes used to tell him stories about dragons.
But the bad thing didn't breathe fire like dragons did. It breathed some kind of ugly black dust that killed everything.
His mommy was gone now. The bad thing killed his mommy. It killed his mommy, then it killed his daddy, and then it killed his little baby brother. He remembered how he screamed while he watched it all happen.
One of the dwarves chopped off the bad thing's head with an axe. But then there was a big cloud of the black dust.
His other little brother was running to his mommy and daddy's bodies, and got caught in the cloud of dust, and then started choking and coughing, and then stopped moving.
And now little Magil Zeal was all alone.
It just wasn't fair!
He picked up an ale mug from a nearby table, and threw it against the wall as hard as he could. It shattered into hundreds of pieces. Then he kicked over a nearby weapon rack. Hammers and axes crashed to the floor in a great cacophony of clashing metal.
Breaking things made him feel a little bit better.
---
3rd Granite 273
It had been a long, long journey. There had been stairs, and winding passages, and more stairs, and more winding passages, and more stairs, and a hallway. But at long last, Yeol could see a stone door ahead of her. Although most of the journey had seemed unfamiliar, she remembered this door very well.
On the other side of the door would be one of the oldest rooms in Gemclod. It had served as an office, and as a meeting room, and as a council hall, and even as a prison. But originally, it was a room in which markus_cz and Leperfish would get together to play chess. Or was that checkers?
Yeol would have to check up on those two old friends of hers, once she had had something to eat first. These wracking hunger pangs would be gone soon, very soon.
She quickened her pace. Her boots splashed through the thick mud beneath the several inches of water that covered the floor here.
Wait… water? Why would there be water here?
She looked again at the door before her.
Water was leaking from the small space between the door and its frame. A spray of water was streaming from the sides of the door, and from above it as well.
Yeol's heart sank as she realized the implications of this.
The checkerboard room had been flooded once again. The door was the only thing holding back a torrent of water. If she opened it, she would certainly be washed all the way back to where she had started from.
