20th Granite 273
There were three hospitals where the wounded of Gemclod rested.
Nimby was the only one who rested in the old hospital of Gemclod.
There was another, smaller hospital in which three injured dwarves rested. This one was simply referred to as the Second Hospital.
The third was not really a hospital at all. It was the Baron's Barracks.
It was in this room that the Baron of Gemclod, Commatoes, rested his broken body. Five other wounded heroes of Gemclod kept him company here.
And one more dwarf, Momuz, the diplomat from the Mountainhomes, also hunkered down here.
"Commatoes?" Momuz shouted. There was no response, except for a loud snore.
"Commatoes!" screamed Momuz.
"Huh... uh... huh, hmmm, huh, wha?" mumbled Commatoes as he awoke.
"I don't care about a trade agreement anymore. I need to get back to the Mountainhomes. When are you going to do something about those three demons flying around the city gates?"
"Huh? Uh, ask the overseer..." mumbled Commatoes, as he rolled over in his bed, towards the wall and away from the diplomat. He pulled his blankets closer to him.
"Commatoes! There IS NO overseer in Gemclod at this moment!"
"Huh? Ask Daeren, Daeren's the, uh..."
Daeren rolled over in his bed. "Huh? You guys need something?" he asked.
"Daeren isn't the overseer anymore. He was the overseer for part of last year. Right now, you don't have an overseer."
"Uh... sure we do. The Tradition says that --"
"Your fortress isn't following its traditions anymore. As far as I can tell, only a couple of dwarves here are even able to work."
"Uh, sure, yeah, yeah. Hey, Izzy! You wanna be the fortress overseer?" shouted Commatoes.
"Mmmfff? No, I'masleepuh..." mumbled Izzy.
"Factory? You wanna take charge of the fortress?"
"Unghhhh..." muttered Factory Factory, his body twitching atop his mattress. "Uh'mashawabama..."
"Hans?"
"Huh?" said Clever Hans. "Yeah, sure, we can..." Clever Hans's voice broke into a loud snore.
"Dirt?"
"Hey. I've been awake da WHOLE time and listenin' to dis WHOLE conversation, and I dont want NO PART O' DIS," said Dirt5o8.
"Daeren? You wanna do the overseer thing again?
"HELL NO."
"Well then," said CommaToes, "I don't know what to tell you. Maybe one of the dwarves inside the main fortress can help you."
---
21st Granite 273
MortuusLupus and FebrezeNinja sat at their desks in their office. MortuusLupus held a masterfully-cut diamond up to the light of a candle, watching in amazement as the flickering light blinked a prism of colors off of its facets. FebrezeNinja idly slid the beads of his abacus back and forth.
"Don't do that. You'll probably lose count of whatever it was you were counting," said MortuusLupus.
FebrezeNinja raised his head and blinked. "You know something?" he said.
"What's that?"
"Markus_cz would be ninety-nine and a half years old right now, if he were still alive," FebrezeNinja said. He pronounced the name of Gemclod's founder and first overseer as Markus Check.
"Oh really? Would today have been his half-birthday?"
"No. His half-birthday was about a month and a half ago."
"So when will his one hundredth birthday be?"
"Galena Tenth. That's just four and a half months from now."
"I wish he could have lived to see it," MortuusLupus said wistfully.
"Yeah. Imagine the celebrations that would have been thrown."
"I think the fortress is too busy trying to survive to throw any celebrations these days."
"Oh... I mean, if everyone else had survived too."
"Oh. That would have been nice."
"Yeah."
"So, Galena Tenth," MortuusLupus said. "What's the name of the month after Galena these days? Is it still Yeol, or did they change it back to Limestone?"
"Uh... I don't really know. The official records don't say whether it was changed."
"Well, it must still be Yeol then, if the records don't say anything about changing it back."
"Yeah, but everybody in the fortress has been calling it Limestone for the past few years."
"I bet Yeol won't call it Limestone."
"Everyone else has been, though."
"Maybe they'll stop now that she's back."
"Maybe."
"So... hmmm... one, two, three, four, five..." MortuusLupus counted the fingers on his left hand, then nodded his head at the stub of his right arm. "Six. So six months ago, when events were being recorded for the fortress archives, what did the official records use for the name of the month?"
FebrezeNinja raised his eyebrows in realization. "Good thinking! I'll go check." He stood up and began looking through a series of massive stone cabinets behind his desk.
---
There was no edible life here.
Roresa sniffed the air. Yes, it had been fooled by the forges. The forges were all quite warm, but that was only because of the sea of magma that lay beneath.
The flesh, however, was somewhere else.
But Roresa was on the right track.
The smell of flesh was getting stronger.
The great beast followed its nose.