Beyond the taiga and deep into the arctic wastes of the Long Night lies a Dwarven fortress called Firehorn. Its 2000 hardy citizens have fought off the encroaching evil that dwells there for generations, and have even bested the war hungry Goblin empire to the south. But despite their prosperity, the fortress is rife with tension; a food shortage pits neighbor against neighbor, a vampire stalks the fortress at night preying on the weak, and worst of all, something unspeakable has risen from the depths of the earth intent on tormenting those who have dared disturb its slumber...This is part one in what might be four parts, if I finish. I didn't anticipate the story being this long (the first part is 33,000 words) so rather than wait I decided I'd put out each part as I finish.
Also since it's so long I thought it would be easier for people to read if it was formatted for e-readers rather than putting it up on the forum a bit at a time. Smashwords converts .docs to epubs, mobi, pdf, etc. for free so I just put it up there so you can download it in whatever format you like and read at your leisure.
Hope you enjoy.
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/530852EDIT: Here's a sample of the first chapter. Pardon the wall of text; as I said, it looks better in an e-reader.
The wagon lurched from side to side, and once again Rorec had to dab at the ink with his soft silk kerchief in an effort to correct the misprint that the sudden motion had caused. He was crammed into the back of the wagon with his collar turned up high on his ruddy cheeks to protect himself from the icy easterly wind. His worn walnut lap desk was placed across his knees and his inkwell stood rattling and jostling on the edge of a nearby crate of salted fish. Writing was a continual fight with the motion of the wagon and the wind, and he had to try to hold the paper with his bad hand while he wrote with the other.
Around him was a sea of soggy brown grass and slick moss-covered rocks stretching infinitely outward. There wasn’t a single hand-made object (save for the wagon) to break the monotony, and there wasn’t even the promise of mountains looming on the horizon, something which still greatly surprised Rorec. When he thought of the great unexplored north he always pictured gargantuan mountain chains of white craggy rocks rather than the dreary unbroken flatness of somber untillable earth. But then again, his kind knew very little of mountains save for the partly explored Razors in the south, and those were dry and arid and tiny compared to what he’d thought he would find here.
The overcast sky hung like wet green-stained cotton above, and the only sound besides the tuneless piping of the wind was the sloppy thud of hard hooves hitting muddy earth as they rode along. There were two travelers besides himself; one was the hoary old fisherman who owned the wagon, and the other was his sullen oily-faced grandson. The boy’s loathing of the bleak wind had dominated the bulk of his conversation over the past two weeks, but the old man hardly spoke at all except when he was urging along the horses. They were not ideal travelling companions, but the aged fisherman had been the only one at Boulder Coast who had been willing to lend his wagon to Rorec’s journey.
Each knew the risks they were taking, but it was easier to not speak of them. No one owned a weapon, but Rorec figured that even if they had been armed to the teeth, a Goblin raiding party would likely kill them before they even knew what was happening. Three untrained men wouldn’t even be enough to put up a fight, and all the swords and armor in the world wouldn’t save them if they were spotted.
And besides, the main enemy here was the weather.
Early on they’d encountered an eastward-marching snowstorm that slowed their progress considerably. Their food stores were low but game had been plentiful in the taiga. They’d seen deer and foxes and white-coated winter hares that skipped along the top of the snow, and the old fisherman managed to snag a few of them in crude traps he’d brought.
But as they had travelled farther north, the land around them seemed to change somehow. The game disappeared as the trees thinned out, and a sickly greenish-gray overcast set in above them. The horses became harder to handle, and the slightest noise would set them wild. Moreover, there was an unnamable feeling that weighed on them as they traveled, some dark-hued pall that lingered in their minds as they slept and made them sit up gasping in the dead of night sure that some enemy was at their throats.
And then one night as they camped, the boy thought he glimpsed something leering out from behind some birch trees. It was gone before Rorec and the old fisherman had a chance to look, but the boy’s alarm was such that neither of them could convince him that he was just imagining things.
Rorec stretched his neck as the wagon clattered along. That had been two nights ago. Since then he’d hardly slept, and what little sleep he’d managed had been fraught with abstract nightmares filled with images of dark shambling horrors that left him screaming out in terror. The boy and the old man had suffered the same, and it was clear to each of them that the journey was taking a heavy mental toll.
Rorec tried to put all that out of his mind. He refocused on his letter, but found it hopelessly marred with ill-placed drips and splotches. According to the duke it could take up to four months for a letter to be delivered, so everything he sent would be a full season out of date before his wife would even receive it. That made the whole endeavor feel rather pointless, but Ella would worry herself to death if she didn’t hear from him. Rorec dipped his quill and began trying again.
“Whoa,” the fisherman told the horses. The reigns and their metal clasps jingled as he pulled them to a stop. “What’s this, then?”
Rorec craned his head about. He saw a large jagged rock formation that seemed to jut right up out of the ground. It was craggy and black and roughly forty yards tall and wide, but despite its size, it wasn’t altogether unique. The barren terrain had been punctuated with similar formations every so often and they must have seen dozens over the span of their trek.
But then he saw the wall.
Rorec shoved his lap desk aside heedless of the scattering of his papers and stood up. There was, indeed, a solid wall ahead of them, just peeking out from behind the giant rock formation. It was roughly twenty yards high and gray in color, so drab and so much like the nearby rock and ground that he hadn’t noticed it at first. It was strikingly smooth and appeared, impossibly he thought, not to be made of multiple blocks of stone, but rather one giant piece. If there was an entrance hidden in that perfectly featureless wall Rorec couldn’t see it, but legends told of master masons creating entrances that only they themselves could find. Behind the first wall was another wall and he could see the tip of a stone keep built into it, also made of the same featureless gray stone. The keep had unusually large apertures leading to two levels of stone-carved balconies on the outside, but for what purpose, he didn’t know. A delicate trail of smoke streamed from its rock roof and disappeared into the dead gray sky, and as Rorec stood there looking, he realized he could smell the aroma of cooking meat wafting on the air.
Firehorn.
“We’re here,” Rorec heard himself say, though he could scarcely believe the fact itself. After so long a journey, he’d begun to think that it would never end, and for it to finish with such little warning and so suddenly came as a great shock.
“Gods be praised,” said the old fisherman, kissing the wooden visage of a deity he kept around his neck. He’d remained fairly stoic throughout the journey, but the immensity of his relief now showed through his worn features. The boy beside him was in tears, and had yet to lift his buried face from his grandfather’s shoulder. None of them had wanted to admit it, but the eeriness of the land and the length of the journey had become unbearable. The environment itself had seeped into their bodies and their minds, and it was only now, in his great relief at the trek’s end, that Rorec felt the noxious grip slacken around him.
“Look there now,” the old fisherman said, pointing. “A Dwarf!”
A vague dark shape lumbered forward at the far edge of the wall. Rorec knew immediately that the old man’s eyes had failed him; this was no Dwarf. Instantly the eldritch fear that had fled ever so briefly came back wholesale and with an intensity he had not previously felt even during the worst of his nightmares. The shambling figure twitched and lurched unnaturally, as if its limbs were being subjected to some intermittent but torturous pain. It jerked and writhed, and though Rorec still couldn’t tell exactly what it was, he could tell now that it was crawling along the ground.
Whatever it was raised its large head and turned their way, as if some foreign sense had told it of their presence. Now Rorec could see that it was some type of wolf, but of a kind that he did not recognize. Its fur was coarse and bristled like spikes and was stained with multiple layers of mud and dark grime. It strode haphazardly toward them as if it were wounded and trying to run. As it got closer, Rorec could see that great swathes of flesh were missing, and thick chords of tendon and muscle were bulging slick and dripping red in the cold open air.
Rorec tried to shout a warning but was drowned out by the screeching of the horses. They thrashed and tore at their restraints as the fisherman struggled to hold on. Rorec was tossed amongst the crates of supplies as the wagon suddenly lurched to one side. The animals were clearly trying to turn around and run, but their panic was keeping them from working together so the wagon was stuck maddeningly in place.
The beast ahead of them was now close enough so that Rorec could see its eyes. Instantly he knew that this was the vague and shambling thing that had stalked his dreams throughout the journey, the one that had left him drenched in sweat with a cry for help lodged in his throat. This was the nameless fear, the shadow in the dark, the mindless ravenous evil of that which knew no reason, no mercy, and no rest.
And it was coming right for them.
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Topic: Firehorn: Corruption, Betrayal, Unspeakable Horror, AND WAR BEARS! (Story) (Read 1130 times)