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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lazybones" data-source="post: 35119" data-attributes="member: 143">Travels through the Wild West: A Forgotten Realms StoryBook IIPrologueThe old dwarf didn’t quite hurry—that would have been undignified—but his heavy boots made a rapid patter on the hard stone as he clambered up the narrow, twisting staircase.   He realized that something was wrong as he passed into the dwelling, could sense it on the faces of those dwarves in attendance.  His brow furrowed as he pushed on into the birthing chamber, where the midwife looked up at him with something approaching relief in her eyes.  The mother, he saw, was half-unconscious from exhaustion but looked otherwise hale.  “How is the child?” the dwarf elder asked, his voice like the rumbling of stones down a hillside. “He is strong,” the midwife reported, and she held up the infant, partially covered in a thick wrap of coarse gray cloth.  The elder’s eyes widened. “By the gods…”* * * * *  A few days later, that same elder was sitting in a small audience chamber.  His face showed that same pensive frown that had not left him since the day when he had first seen the child.  That child was now before him, clutched tightly in the protective embrace of his mother.  Gira Deepforge still looked drained from the experience of giving birth, the otherwise animated young woman now wan and ashen.  But the fire of the forges still burned in her, the old dwarf saw, evident in the way that she held her newborn son in her arms, and in the way she met his gaze with steel in her eyes.“Why don’t you tell me what happened?” the old dwarf said.  She spent a moment searching for the words that she wanted to use.  “I… my husband, as you know, was serving his term on the Shield Wall,” she began, faltering a little.  “Oleg Deepforge’s axe was mighty, and tales of his bravery are still told in the gathering halls,” the elder prodded, to get her to continue.  Gira looked at him gratefully for the comment.  “He came to me, my husband, one night,” the woman said, her thin veneer of self-control threatening to falter as she revisited the memories.  “I thought he had returned from his duty, returned to me.”  Her eyes fell for a moment, and when they came up again, they were rimmed with tears.  “I did not find out until later that he had fallen that very day, holding the Shield Wall against the invaders.”“Why did you not come forward, and tell someone of this?” the elder queried.“I… I could not,” Gira said defensively.  “I myself did not understand—someone must have made a mistake… I wanted that last memory of my husband, needed it…”The elder nodded, and his gaze fell again to the child.  “What will happen to us?” Gira asked plaintively.“Your child is touched by the gods,” the elder said.  “There are tales among the urdunnir, the most ancient stories of our people, of such a thing, although it has never happened in the lifespan of any of our people currently living, or of their fathers, or fathers’ fathers.”“With the guidance of Dumathoin, we will learn what we can, but something tells me that the fate of this child is not within our hands.”* * * * * “They have breached the Shield Wall!” the dwarf shouted, darting away a moment later deeper into the fortified warrens that were the dwellings of the urdunnir.  His words spread fear among the small group of dwarves, mostly women and children clustered in the gathering hall outside of their residences.  That fear was matched by hard-eyed determination, however, and most of the dwarves, weapons at hand, immediately went into action, following the outlines of the practiced defense plans of the community.  Gira Deepforge’s place was at the third redoubt, but instead of rushing off to her assigned position she instead turned back into the shelter of her dwelling.  There, in the front room, waiting for her, she found her son.  The boy looked up at her as she entered, his eyes wide with fear.“What is it, mamma?” he asked.  “Hush, child,” she said softly, as she wrapped him up in her arms.  She could barely lift him; even though the boy had only just reached his fourth birthday, he was already heavier than most children twice his size.  Her desperation gave her strength, though, and she pulled her cloak over the child to conceal him, setting back out into the warrens.  She did not know why she had not taken the boy to be with the other children at the last redoubt, as soon as the alert had been sounded.  She did not know what power guided her steps now, or what hidden sense told her that this time, the enemies of the urdunnir would not be stopped.  Even as she ran on, the fear for her people filled her and threatened to overcome her, but the love she felt for her son drove her on. She came to a landing where a steep staircase descended into the darkness.  She let out a sudden cry as a pair of the dark ones suddenly appeared, startled that they had already penetrated this far into the fortress.  “Kill her!” one of the duergar cried out, and both came at her with their vicious axes at the ready.  Before they could reach, her, though, a battle cry rang out from further down the corridor, and a trio of urdunnir warriors—all well past fighting age, she saw—charged into the duergar from the side.  Gira fled down another corridor, quietly praying to Dumathoin to shelter her from the view of her enemies.  The sounds of battle seemed to come from all around, now, as she turned into another long passageway that was clear for the moment.  The corridor continued for an interminable length, until Gira could smell the faint hint of fresh air coming from up ahead.  She slowed, her legs feeling thick from the exhaustion of carrying her son, and emerged from the passageway at the edge of a great vertical shaft.  The shaft extended both up and down as far as Gira could see, and was completely smooth, the surface of the stone worn down by air currents and the flow of water for centuries under the ground.  Gira placed her son down on the ground beside her, and embraced him warmly.  “Mama, what’s wrong?” the boy asked.  “Mama’s got to send you away for a time,” she said, checking his person quickly to make sure that his clothes were in order, covertly tucking a small disk into a pocket of his jerkin as she did so.  Tears flowed freely from her eyes as she tugged him to her again, bending down to kiss his forehead.  “Dear spirits, protect him,” she whispered.  The boy stood confused as Gira stood, and closed her eyes in concentration, invoking the power that was a part of the tradition of her people, and their link with the deep earth.  At her call the stone at her feet shifted, and a small form, barely larger than the boy, rose up out of the rock to stand before her on stubby legs. She placed the boy into the embrace of the creature.  “Take him to the surface,” she bid the elemental, which bowed slightly at her bidding.  “There is a clan of our people, surface dwellers, who live nearby,” Gira said to her son.  “They will care for you.” “Mama, please, don’t go!” the boy cried.“I must,” Gira said.  She could already hear the sounds of footsteps approaching down the long corridor, and she knew, instinctively, that they were not her friends and kin, arriving to tell her that the enemy had been defeated.  “Goodbye, my love,” she said, and gestured to the elemental.  The creature moved effortlessly into the shaft, bearing the boy swiftly upward, the lower half of its body melded with the stone.“Never forget who you are, Lok!” she cried out, before she vanished into the darkness of the tunnel.  “Mama!” the boy cried down into the shaft, but she was gone.</blockquote>

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