Hello all, I hope you enjoy this chapter as much as I had fun writing it. I would love to see feedback. Here we go!
The Cavern
'What do you think this one is, then? Alfar? Varani? Could even be a Jottun!' a young dwarf asked his superior curiously. 'Always a surprise, eh, Guran?'
'Eyes on the job, boy!' replied the older dwarf by giving his piece of mind to the young buck that was clearly still interested but knew not to overstep his boundaries again. 'Don't matter what it is. Dead's dead. And be thankful for that, all we've seen.' The younger and still inexperienced dwarf looked down to his feet with a small look of distaste and horror mixed.
'Go on and pull back the sheet, though. It'll need to be in our report, one way or the other.
Holding his notepad with one hand, the youthful man pulled back the cover on the cart as it was moving, revealing a tall and well-built man with a well-kept short hair and a slicked bang that stood upwards. He also had a short-boxed beard, but most interesting of all was that both his beard and hair were dyed red like stained blood.
'A human, and not in a bad shape. Almain, by the look of him. Know how you can tell?' Guran asked his colleague mockingly. 'Turn him over. See if there's a stick in his arse.'
His dwarf didn't seem to appreciate the joke on the expense of the dead man, since he didn't laugh at all. Guran just sighed quietly and continued. 'All right, then. Make sure it goes into the report. You know he will want all the details.' Saying the words with obvious disdain, the two Dverga kept on strolling down the corridor.
The younger dwarf didn't pay attention to his superior. He was fascinated by the Professor's work, even though it was a bit on the creepy side.
'Amazing how well the body held up. Better than I've seen.' He noted as he was jotting down the details of the dead man's physique.
'I'm just glad it's not moving. Must have been born under a lucky star this one.'
'Anything else we need?'
'Unless you'd like to name him, I think we're done. Put him with the others!' Guran again sniped his assistant for his incompetence as they came to their destination in front of a human-sized hole in the wall.
'Well, that's it for you, then. Better luck next time.'
And with these final words from the young assistant, the body was dropped through the hole.
A heavy weight hit his body. An acrid smell invaded his nose. The buzzing of bees or flies captured his hearing, but he could not tell as he still hadn't opened his eyes. He felt tired but willed himself to open them.
Upon opening his eyes, he saw and finally felt that he was trapped under many dead and rotting corpses. Panic flooded in and he struggled to free himself from the heavy press of decomposing flesh that was on top of him.
He finally got an arm out and pushed away the body that was directly pressing on his chest, after which he stood up and looked around to see where he was. He was standing atop a pile of bodies that was at least a couple of meters high. He forced himself to look beyond them and noticed he was in gigantic cavern, with a waterfall behind him. In front of him, he noticed a small patch of a cobblestoned path that led to a staircase. On the top of the staircase, a couple of desks with notebooks layed on top were posted and various machinery could be seen a bit further in.
As he had oriented himself enough, he started descending the slippery corpses that squelched with each step the man had to make to get to the stone floor that was closest to him. He almost slipped on one of the bodies and had to upright himself by grabbing another corpse from the pile. All his instincts were screaming at him, and he started drawing short breaths trying to calm himself down and to keep on pushing, as he had almost reached the floor.
Making a final jump, he landed in a small puddle of intestines and other bodily fluids in front of the body pile, which made him retch and cough. Once the man gained his composure, he got up, glad to have to leave it behind. He stepped forward towards the staircase frailly as his head was still spinning from the stench around the place.
'Where am I...?' he asked out loudly, but there was no one around to answer him.
More importantly, however, another question assailed his head as his panic again intensified.
'Who am I...?!'
He started looking around again, feeling too lost and confused to do anything, whimpering as he couldn't figure out what to do until he slipped on a wet stone from the path and fell. He layed on the floor, trying to make sense of his confusion when suddenly a thought out of nowhere hit him. Clear as a day and at the same time the most confusing thing, it came to him like sunray in this wretched cavern.
'Elrid...That's my name.'
Calming down, he pushed off the floor and made his way to the staircase.
Many would argue that the Scholar of Vivification, Professor Fomorous Hugues is an example of a dwarf, always presentable, always with good mannerisms and never late. Well, maybe when he was in Adessa that might be true. After all, he still had to present a good image for his backers, patrons and sponsors who paid for his constant research into the Well of Souls.
But right now, with his unkempt hair and beard that were disheveled and just pointing at odd angles, with bags under his eyes after all the sleepless nights, the coffee stains that you could find everywhere and just the general feeling of failure after failure for nearly twenty years made him not care about appearances long ago and as soon as he always came back from Adessa, he just let all the little imperfections show.
He was writing down the details of his latest experiment and what he believed to be the causes of failure, when a knock on his door was heard.
'Come in.' He raised his voice so that he could be heard through the door.
Said door opened and halfway through it opening, it squeaked annoyingly as Guran, one of his workers stepped through with a notepad, most probably the report of his most recent and closest to success, experiment.
'The body was dumped in the pit after we filled in all the details in the report, sir. I thought you might have wanted it at once seeing how the body of the specimen was recreated with almost no alterations.' the loyal Dverga finishing his sentence.
'Leave it here' the Professor motioned with his hand towards himself. The dwarf obeyed the order and walked right up to Fomorous, leaving the notepad on top of other piles of documents and scrolls, some of them so long that they reached the floor.
'Tell me Guran, did you notice anything special or different about the body while you were taking him for disposal?'
People liked to believe that once you had power, you didn't need to listen to anyone else, but Fomorous liked to think that great can come from everywhere and let all his employees express their honest opinions to him about all kinds of topics.
The old Dverga looked the Professor straight in the eye for a second, then looked away sighing quietly.
'Nothing caught my attention sir, other than that he was in a far better condition physically compared to what you have previously achieved with your trials. His body was muscular and didn't appear to be damaged in any way, which is a far better sight than all the skeletons with skins that we used to drag out of the waters. Maybe the only interesting thing about him was that his hair and beard were red.' Guran acclaimed diligently although with a note of annoyance at having to deal with the job of dragging all the corpses around.
The Professor just cupped his chin and hummed.
'Thank you for your work, Guran, you can go back to your quarters.'
The dwarf turned around and left the room as quickly as possible, leaving Fomorous with his thoughts once again. He took the notepad with the report and read what was written on it.
Race: Almain
Appearance: The specimen's body appears to be in great physical condition with no anomalies, disfigurements or other issues that can be seen easily.
Distinguishing features are his hair and beard which are the unnatural color of stained blood. He appears to be anywhere between the ages of 20 to 30 years old.
He appears to be promising and shows progress in the right direction for future trials, although the reason why is unclear.
The report did not note anything out of the ordinary compared to what Guran told him and that puzzled him. For so many years now, he changed his formulas and approaches to the resurrection of the dead and always found noticeable changes each time. This time he repeated the same method with a couple of different bodies, so why did only this one react like this?
This baffled him greatly and he could only sigh as he could just envision another all-nighter of studying and researching the causes of this promising subject. He might even need to get the body out of the pit and examine him more closely.
Just as he was getting up from his desk to get a book from the bookcase at the back of the room, he heard a great boom as if a great explosion had just happened somewhere in the Allestar Tower. A second later he felt his whole laboratory rumbling stronger than any normal earthquake would cause it to.
'Professor Hugues, Professor Hugues!'
A shaken young dwarf with a moustache barged through the door to his laboratory shouting his name. 'Professor, we must evacuate this instant.'
Fomorous frowned at the boy as he tried to drag him by his arm suddenly. 'What the hell is going on? Did you fools blow up the Shadow Prisms reserve?! How many times have I-'
'Sir, it's not that! I-it's the Tuatha! They have breached the Allestar Tower and are coming to destroy the Well of Souls!'
Fomorous could only watch as his life's work started to crash around him. Starting with the screams of his workers dying.
Approaching the stairs, Elrid felt the ground moving underneath him, shaking. It almost threw him off his feet and he had to stop and wait for it to be out until he could continue. A couple of rocks fell from the ceiling and crashed around him, but luckily none hit him. He made his way up the stairs and went to a desk which had a chopper knife stabbed in one corner and in the middle of the table was lying an open scroll.
Elrid picked it up and read it.
Secrecy is still important in our work, requiring specialized disposal of our unfortunate failures. Piling remains have become a concern in the lower caverns, so an incinerator has been added to deal with the waste.
This should make disposal work slightly less horrible, although you should avoid drinking water from downstream of the ash dumps. Hardly a fitting rest for the poor things, but if it's any consolation, these weren't their original bodies in the first place.
Fomorous Hugues
So, I've been a part of an experiment, I guess. Elrid thought to himself, throwing the scroll to the table in disgust. He then looked at the other end of the room and noticed the aforementioned incinerator there. On it, there was a body lying on the stone slab and a lever to the right of it.
However, he didn't want to pull it, not after he knew that the body on the table could have been his.
He then turned to the left, as there was a door there and presumably a passage out of this hell. On the door itself, however, was a man pinned to it with a rusted sword sticking out of his chest. Elrid drew the sword out of him and then moved the body to the right, propping the dead man on the wooden frames, saying a silent prayer for him.
He then opened the door and proceeded to go through but hesitated. If this is what they did to us, maybe it won't be a bad idea to have something on me to defend myself with...'
Picking up the sword, he went on his way and out of the makeshift 'processing area'.
Elrid jogged through a small tunnel like path of the cave until he saw a wooden bridge across the precipice where he saw three small figures running away from something.
'They're all over! Run!' one of the small people shouted to her comrades.
Although Elrid woke up with no memories, he still deduced that waking up in a pile of dead bodies is not something a normal person would want, so when he heard the shout from the three scared ones, he decided to hide behind one of the rocks near the precipice.
Not a second later and an armed man in full body armor and with a sword showed up running after the three. One of the short men decided to stay back and delay the enemy while his comrades escaped. They all knew he didn't stand a chance, unarmed and with no armor, not to even mention the height and weight difference.
Elrid could only watch as the short encounter ended not even five seconds later with a piercing scream and the soldier was back on the hunt after the other two.
Once he was in the clear, Elrid continued, this time sprinting down the path, as it started slowly ascending upwards and making a left turn. Just after turning the corner, he could hear a roar of what he only could assume to be victory. Or taunt.
'Scatter, Children of Dust! Scatter before the might of the Tuatha!'
The man didn't appear to be far away and Elrid expected he'd be fighting him as soon as he crested the corner, but he instead found himself in small opening, big enough for small dining hall and facing two giant rats that were feasting on the dead bodies of small men.
Elrid did not know if they were the same ones he saw earlier or not, but either way he was enraged with how cruel it all was and jumped the first rat that had its back turned to him. Stabbing it in the back and then finishing it off with a blow to the neck, he had the full attention of the other rat, which screeched and made a run for him.
Elrid just had the time to get of the big creature's tooth bite, but not enough to miss the body slam as the rat turned its big frame into him. He fell on his back quickly rolling back to his feet just as the rat gunned for him. This time, Elrid had enough time to react and in the final second before the impact, he sidestepped the rat and swinged at its head. The blow was deadly one, but not enough to finish the pest off.
However, it did maul its face off and one of its eyes fell to the ground as the thing started whimpering and slowed down. It tried a last effort to attack against its opponent but to no avail, as Elrid simply repeated his last move and stabbed the bulbous monster in its side, drawing his sword out to bleed out more.
The man continued down the straight tunnel, running barefoot as the shaking around him intensified and more rocks and dirt fell from the top of the ceiling.
I must be getting closer to where the main encounter is, judging by this blast.
He began another short ascension up the tunnel, which led to a wooden edge platform.
'Help, anybody!' he heard a man scream. Elrid sprinted down to the edge of the platform and looked over. He saw another one of the short men lying on the ground with two of the soldiers – the Tuatha, he guessed from the earlier shout that one of them did, surrounding him. One of them had his boot on the midget's back and held him in place.
The two of them weren't hurting him, but that didn't mean they wouldn't start to soon. Maybe they were interrogating him.
I'd have to find a way to scale this lip down without attracting their attention so that I could attack them from behind. But how?
But before he figured any of that out, the small man saw him standing up there and shouted.
'You! Up there! Please help me! Please!'
And with that, the sneaky approach was damned, but he guessed he wouldn't have been able to pull it off without alerting them anyway. Elrid jumped down from the platform and into the small chamber while the two soldiers spread a bit to cover a bigger perimeter and not allow him to reach the helpless man.
'More mortal scum? No matter – you'll all die!' The soldier closest to him sneered as he pulled his sword from his sheath.
He was slow doing that however and Elrid decided to take advantage of it. He sprinted full speed ahead and bodily crashed into the other man, knocking him a pace back and off balance and swung his sword downwards from above his head, only for it to crash down in his shoulder. He did draw blood, but it was more likely just a scratch, as the sword skittered off the epaulette of the other soldier.
The force of the blow, however, was enough to knock the already off-balance soldier to the ground and Elrid stabbed him with all his strength in the chest, breaking through the thin chest plate and ending his life.
He payed for it however, as he felt a sharp pain in his lower back. The other soldier had stabbed him, although not deeply but it was nuisance enough that had Elrid grumbling in pain.
Turning with a swing, he found out that the second Tuatha had its sword in a blocking position and was expecting his attack. Elrid's momentum however was too much already, and he couldn't alter his attack and when the two swords crashed, Elrid's hand ringed out from all the vibrations almost making him drop his sword down.
The other soldier was knocked a pace back but in a better position as he was already chambering a counterattack. He probed Elrid's defenses by trying to pierce first low, then mid and high. Elrid was struggling to parry the attacks, but he managed to make it out of the first barge. He then went on the offensive, making light but fast moves and tried to get into the man's guard, but he was having none of it and just as Elrid saw an opening and went for it, the Tuatha soldier deflected his sword up the length of his and then pushed Elrid with a hand, knocking him down.
Jumping up on his feet, and backpedaling, Elrid found himself having a tough time keeping up with this skilled soldier. Parry, dodge, slash, jump. He was getting tired fast and looked at his surroundings to see if he could use anything as an advantage. He saw a couple of crates to his right and decided to use them. Jumping on top of them, he had the higher ground to fight the other man and had more reach than him. His opponent cut low at his feet but couldn't reach him as easily as Elrid did.
He cut the man at the arms and chest, just bruising or scratching him but wearing him out nonetheless and when the man finally made a mistake, Elrid took advantage of it. He was able to step on the other man's sword and trap it under his feet with the flat of it under and made him drop lest he wanted to lose his arm. The man retreated away unarmed but took a boxer's stance, ready to continue.
Little to his knowledge however, he did not predict the small man that was to be his hostage, jumping on his back from behind and stabbing him multiple times in the neck, finally killing him.
As soon as he collapsed, the tiny man dropped the bloody knife that he was holding and walked away from the body visibly shaken.
'Oh, thank you! Thank you! Why, if you hadn't come along-' the man finally turned to face Elrid and on his face was registered shock like he had just seen his own death. 'I've seen you before...on the slab! You...you were dead!' he started laughing hysterically until he finally calmed down.
'It worked! By the Tome, it worked! You're alive!' the small man cheered.
'What happened to me?' Elrid was eager to ask, seeing as how this person apparently knew what had happened to him.
'Well...you died.'
Suddenly Elrid felt sick to his stomach. That's why he couldn't remember anything from his past...
Drawing a short breath, he nodded to the man to continue.
'I don't know how or even where. But your body was remade in the Well of Souls and somehow...it worked!' he exclaimed. 'The Well restored your soul to your body and it worked! We must get you to Professor Hugues right away. He'll have questions for you!'
Elrid recognized the name, it was written on that scroll that he picked up earlier when he woke up. He didn't have a fond opinion of the man, seeing all of his experimentation failures, but he had to give him credit for saving his life, so he was willing to go listen to what he had to say. Maybe even shed light on who he was before his...ressurection. But until he met the man, he was going to play dumb. He couldn't trust these people. Not now.
'Who is Hugues?' Elrid wanted to know
'Professor Fomorous Hugues is the inventor of the Well of Souls. It's his life's work!' the midget proclaimed proudly. 'However, let's not stand here, it isn't safe. The Tuatha are coming in through the lower levels. If we hurry, we should be able to beat them to the top.'
'All right then. Lead me to this...Professor.'
Thank you all for reading this first chapter of my first fanfic. It means a lot to me. As you have probably noticed, I'm taking some of the in-game dialogue as I've decided to keep most of it in. I do alter it from time to time, but the majority of it is taken from the game itself, at least the cutscene interactions between the NPC and Elrid.
Do please leave reviews for this story as I enjoy getting feedback of any kind. It would mean the world to me as it tells me that people read the story and are invested into it!