Inollowyn the Elven Cleric

I lift my hands, the cleansing water from the sacred spring drifting down the rising cliffs above and pouring into my outstretched hands.  My eyes are closed.  I want to think of Purity, about the Earth-Mother, about the thoughts and fears and unity of my people, about the eastern shipping lanes and about the message from the Sun King’s emissary, but all my thoughts lay upon my brother, just a boy that joined the ranks within the House of Drow almost half a century ago.

The Earth-Mother blesses me anyway, and the path of Purity opens my mind into herself, and I trace the roots of a thousand trees feeding and sheltering a thousand creatures, providing safety and food for generations of families within its boughs for numberless centuries, connected and joined to one another like the roots of a giant forest, spiraling, bending, uncurling themselves like a hundred thousand fingers and claws and teeth and talons and wings and legs and eyes, searching, finding my wayward brother, my brother who left the House of Vul to be with so many of our brothers and sisters, kinsmen who have forsaken the path of Purity to protect our path to Purity, until my mind finds him and the other members of the House of Drow, waiting in the trees, watching a goblin raiding party riding their woolly boars in the snow.

Sybling. 

I call out to him.  My hands ache to cradle his face. Through the bark of the trees, I feel the weight of his feet press on the branches.  My skin is burning, burning.  I wish I could hold him up forever, but I want to tear my skin so that it would not touch his feet, to not touch his hand, to not feel his back resting against me.  My hands ache to cradle his face, to touch the flesh that once was white as oak, to caress the white tresses that once were as azure as mine.  I cannot bear to hold him up much longer, but I must hold him up.  I’m looking at him through the bark of a tree, and I must hold him up.

Sybling.  My dear, dear brother, why did you leave us for this? 

“Inollowyn, what do you see?  What news from eastern shipping lanes?” Asks the Sun-King’s emissary.

“Just a moment.”  I murmur to the emissary.  “Just a moment longer please.”

I watch as my brother quietly unsheathes his sword and jumps from the tree, bearing down on the goblins below.

Hirrin Ebonheart, the Dwarven Fighter

I heard the hushed breaths of my Shield-Brothers, our oiled and blackened armor silent in the half-finished tunnels hundreds of feet beneath our home in Galaf’s Bridge.  I heard whispered prayers in the dark, asking for blessings of Purity, of the Mother, of the Lady and of the Great Blade and any other god that would hear them.  I heft my hammer, testing its weight, even though I’ve felt its weight since my beard was white and soft as fresh down, a fifty years prior to this, a hundred battles prior to this, wielded by my father Hirri Ebonheart, and his father Herren Ebonheart.  I breathe in the moist air, and it fills my lungs and smells of earth and fire and iron.  Underneath the smell of all that is good and noble and strong, I smell the scent of our fallen brothers, not the noble warriors who fell in glorious red battle, but the half-men consumed by the Taint, stalking the old and unwary in the depths of darkness below.

They took two of the miners in Galaf’s Bridge, but our band has been tracking their movements, and the messages were passed through the stones from Helkral’s Hall to Kam’Kazud, about the duergar and their contingent of gnomes twisted into slavery.  We waited in the dark, waited for them to move.  They knew where we were, and we knew where they were, and both of our forces were waiting for the first one to make the first move.

I shift my shoulders, feeling the weight of the scaled hauberk resting on me.  This is my hundred and first battle.  We should be singing our war-hymns and pouring our ale in the battleground, but instead we are waiting, here in the dark.  It was fine though, to wait.  Stones waited for us to uncover their secrets, hidden for untold centuries in the dark. 

We will wait for them too, in the dark.

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I wrote this a while ago.  There aren't that many stories that feature non-human protagonists, especially dwarves, and I figure that they need a little more love.

In my notes about one of my fantasy realms, I wrote this story to help get a feel about how a dwarf views and interacts with the world I created, as well as some problems they might face.  I've got another dwarven story cooking, but for now, I'll be posting some of my other fantasy-related stories on this blog at (ir)regular intervals.