Archer's Quiver

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Love of the Crucified

by Archer »–)›,

formerlly known as Dec

• • •

(One hour after the destruction of the Ghol Godhead, in Myrgard)

The air stank of Ghol meat strewn about by the hills and valley. The paratroopers touched down their balloons. Balin and his surviving comrades walked away from remnants of the Ghol Godhead which they had further dismantled into sizable lumps to be made into future housing for the Dwarves that would return; but what of that? Balin's people were dying constantly throughout the West as they fought for the common good. There could not have been more than a few tens of thousands remaining the the West. Who, then, would populate Myrgard? The Mustard Plains were far from safe. There were many Ghols that lived on the plain amongst the Mustard Flower that the Dwarves once enjoyed the smell of (but the nectar of which the Ghols used as a narcotic.) More Ghols had occupied Stoneheim after it was abandoned to them. More still remained in the mountains and further south into the Untamed Lands.

This thought frightened Balin. He had kept his people alive by forcing them together into the Dwarven Missionaries with strict training that had been neglected at Myrgard; that is, before it's destruction; however, life might still escape these Dwarven comrades. The Dwarves wandered the residential half of the former city, paying their respects to the people who died there. Balin went back to the foundation of his home, only to pass it by and wander further Northeast into the hills. He was following the path that was made by the enormous Godhead as it was rolled down from the walls of the city. Balin climbed all the way to the top of the wall and hill. He looked down and saw his Missionaries. A few were on their knees, praying. Balin looked out and saw all of Myrgard. He looked over to the municipal half of the city on the West side. He closed his eyes and imagined exactly how it was. Mercantile traffic bustling in the market at town square, visitors were reading the inscription under the statue of Eiren. He imagined what it was like back in the residential half on the East side. He saw mustard flowers being watered, children playing in the public garden. One of those children was him for a moment, but then the image changed...

Balin walked up the wall. He had just come from the forest and the river from the East. Balin was very afraid to be out on his own, he was more alert during his walk home than in his entire life. Balin looked and saw the great dam behind him. That dam was meant to keep water away from the Ghols, he remembered. The dam ended up just diverting the river around the original valley. Balin looked forward into the original valley. That valley was made into Myrgard, he realized.

The anger and pain of his closest friends' deaths, especially Fend's, just a few hours ago was nearly unbearable. Balin looked down into the city and saw his mother, tending the garden. He ran to her and told her of all the terrible, terrible things that had happened the previous night. His sorrow drew a crowd.

A few months later, Balin had basically recovered from his ordeal. During that time, he practiced his great skill at molitov throwing. His anger and eternal rage against the Ghols was building with every minute that Balin knew they existed. The fact that his father had been away from home, fighting the Fallen, for so many years without word did not help his temper.

The incident that happened to Balin involving the Trow was merely a small beginning. It turns out that the Trow, recently embound to the Fallen, had realized the potential power that the Ghols could bring to the Forces of Dark. They then sent their own emissaries to the Ghols.

"...or we will fell your people like a pine forest," said the Trow named Nuntius Rex.

"Why pine?" grunted the Ghol Warlord.

"Because once cut, pine never grows back."

The only response the Ghols could give was a deafening silence. The Ghols were then enlisted into the Forces of the Dark with only one wish in exchange: The Ghols needed direction and planning to take over Myrgard and Stoneheim that they were not capable of. Therefore, several Trow and hundreds of Soulless came to the hills to the east of Myrgard to direct a massive battle. They had planned to rush every militant Ghol right through the city. Some Ghols had recently gotten excellent reconnaissance and had seen that Myrgard's defenses were low. If they did it right, with the right direction, the Ghols would be able to take hostage almost all of the city, for what they didn't kill.

The Ghols numbered in the tens of thousands. 63% of their entire population was there. The Trow, impervious to most molitov cocktail throws but equally destructible if they kicked a loaded dwarf, lead the thousands of Ghols to the top of the wall. From there the Trow shouted instructions and orders to the Ghols. The attack was like a flowing ocean of Ghols, their colors blending together to make a brownish-black color of their terrifying mass. First, a few suicidal Ghols went in to cause as much destruction as possible. This made the Dwarves kill each other by accidental throws. Only half of the 2 thousand at the beginning of the battle remained from this accidental mass suicide. One of the many, much stronger and more accurate Dwarves was Balin. He was almost killed by a stupid, untrained Dwarf's molitov. That Dwarf ended up killing himself.

Balin and the other Dwarven Heroes gathered around the hills and high ground. The women and children ran behind their defenders. Balin stood at the top of the central hill where Eiren's home was. Balin's long and wonderful tosses killed hundreds of Ghols in the following few minutes, until the whole of the Gholen masses congregated at the top of the walls. A few flanked first, then the others flooded and inundated past the residential half of Myrgard into the municipal half. A few others flanked from behind the Dwarves on the hills.

The Ghols were ordered to kill as few Dwarves as possible. They ended up only killing six directly by the time they were merely disarming the Dwarves. The Ghols would cut off the straps of the Dwarves' packs by cutting into their shoulders with their cleavers. It was unneccesary, but safe to keep the Dwarves more under control. The less than thousand remaining Dwarves were gathered together in the front of the great statue of Eiren, now dead outside the walls of Stoneheim. The Ghols were preparing to force the Stoneheimers to surrender themselves in exchange for the lives of those in Myrgard and any Stoneheimer they could get their cleavers into.

The Dwarves, on their ponies, rode up into the small park in front of the Western entrance to Myrgard with its reflecting pools displaying the upside down world that had been created: the Ghols were in the city, the Dwarves were fearing in the plains. The great, Ghol Warlord, leader of Gholen kind, stepped just outside of the gates of Myrgard. He looked out onto 9,500 Dwarves, all of them armed, all of them willing to fight to the death. The Warlord gave a silent order to bring many of the hostages to the top of the wall, threatening them each with a mortal fall or a mortal cleaver. The Warlord, knowing many languages well, spoke in a grunted tone: "Dwarves of Stoneheim, you are out numbered to the highest degree. Myrgard is captured, but we have over one thousand of your comrades with us. If you do not comply with this following command, they and you shall all perish. Lay down your packs on the ground, then come up here, slowly and steadily. Do this now, or you shall all die."

The Dwarves looked amongst themselves. The Stoneheimers knew that surrender would mean certain death and slavery, the Ghols were merely covering their bases, though well they did at that. They whispered and plotted. They had only very few ideas left, seeing as it was an uphill battle. They decided to play a little trickery. "We comply, Warlord," said Duri. "We will come just a few at a time." Duri, Norling, and a dozen others come slowly up the hill, but had not dropped their packs. The Ghols shouted orders and commands, primarily in their own language. "What??" asked Duri, falsely. "I can't understand any of you. Speak up now!" They approached the gates very slowly and without threat.

The Ghol Warlord quieted down his people and spoke, "Put down your packs now!" The Warlord was no more than two meters away from the Dwarves.

"Oh, I see, Warlord. I'm sorry. Dwarves," he said looking back at them, then forward, "put down your packs." They all motioned to take them off, but instead took out several molitovs and threw right at the Warlord and surrounding Ghols. Ghol pieces flew everywhere. The stupid Ghols, acting on instinct, rushed towards the Dwarves to kill them, but not before they blew over a hundred Ghols into airborne viscera. Norling, realizing his fate, threw his pack into a crevice at the side of the stairway. (The stairway would be turned into a ramp in a few years.) Norling wasn't sure why he did that, but it seemed like his only way of living beyond his natural life.

The Dwarves were ready to attack the incomers, but were suddenly flanked by one hundred Ghols on each side. This broke off an entire third of the Dwarven Forces as half of all the Ghols attacked the surrounded Dwarves to disarm them. More than 3,000 Dwarves were captured. The Dwarves ran to their ponies to try and ride away, but were instead ambushed further by Ghols from the surrounding hills. Another 250 were taken. The Dwarves on their ponies, just slightly faster than the hordes of Ghols, made it to Stoneheim to prepare for battle. Realizing the certain fate of little Stoneheim after the fall of Myrgard, the women and children, escorted by a squadron of Dwarves, were snuck out as the battles at the walls of Stoneheim ensued. Most of them got to the legion led by the young Cui Roi to attain safety.

As the Dwarves held out at the walls of Stoneheim like an ancient Alamo, Balin's mother was being taken off the display wall at the Gates of Myrgard and was released back to the rest of the prisoners. She ran to her son and hugged him tightly. Balin started crying, something he almost never did. It might be expected, he was only a pubescent. One of the more intelligent but no more moral Ghols walked up to Balin and said, "Are you crying??" He hit Balin in the back of the head with his fist. "Don't you dare cry! This isn't your little sissy town anymore!" He hit Balin again.

"Get off my son!" ordered Balin's mother. She pushed the Ghol back.

The Ghol swiped and knocked her to the ground. Balin cried out. The Ghol pounded Balin with the butt of his cleaver.

"Get off my son!" she yelled from the ground, her face bleeding.

The Ghol took out his cleaver and started cutting into Balin's mother. She shouted in pain. The yellowish-brown Ghol gave no mercy as he let in the killing blow. Another Ghol, blue, noticed and walked up to the yellowish-brown Ghol and asked in their language just what the hell he thought he was doing. The blue Ghol smacked the yellowish-brown one across the face with the broad side of his cleaver. The blue Ghol then ordered him to eat the carcass and mess he had created. "Gladly," the Ghol responded the equivalent of. He walked up in front of the crying Balin and ate his dead mother right in front of him. Balin could not help but crying. When the Ghol was finished, he kicked Balin in the stomach and knocked him into the cliff side. The bully then returned to his regiment. Later, the new Warlord, formerly second in command of the Ghols, asked what the death count was. His subordinates said six, covering up the death of Balin's poor mother. The death count was seven.

••

The sun burned in the sky like a raging fire. The cloudless, blue sky seemed unusually ominous to Balin.

"Get back to work!" ordered a Gholen slave-driver has be knocked Balin's head down from looking up. Balin looked down at the seeds he was sowing into the fields of the Mustard Plains just outside of Myrgard's park. He had originally said he was only of young age and not a grown man, so he was put into a group of people that consisted of very young children through older children and the elderly. Some of Balin's closest friends were in that group, including the Dwarf Eitri, just a year younger than he, but not nearly as strong. Balin knew he should stay with family, and just after he told the Ghols, under order, his age, his uncle was sent to a completely different group than he.

Balin stuck out of his group like a sore thumb. He was stronger than most of the other people in his group, that was evident to the Ghols on watch. One came up to him and asked "How old are you?"

Balin replied falsely that he was an adult. The Ghols, not knowing, put Balin with the rest of the weaker adults to work at farming in the fields. (The strongest men were commanded at deconstruction of the city.)

Now Balin was working under the burning sky for 14, 15 hours a day, starting at just before dawn. He could see from the fields how the Ghols were dismantling most of the fortified defenses of Myrgard. One night when he came back into the city from the fields, he saw that several dead trees with very short, spiny branches were put into the ground in three sections. This forced anyone who would go through the original Gates of Myrgard to move in a tight, single file, "W" shape to keep everyone under control and make escape very difficult. In case anyone tried to run, Soulless patrolled the sides of the gates to ensure that they would be able to impale the fleer with their poison tipped javelins.

This efficient equivalent to barbed wire was put everywhere around the city, including the walls so not, if a Dwarf survived the fall, he would be able to escape by jumping. So efficient was the system that only one quarter of the originally necessary Ghols to control the concentration camp was needed.

One night, Balin met up with one of his uncles during the second and only other meal of the day (which consisted of what Balin thought was the meat of his Myrgardians turned into a stew) and spoke to him. That uncle was the younger brother of Balin's mother. Balin told him what happened to his sister. His uncle was strong enough to work as a hard laborer at construction and deconstruction of the "future" Myrgard. He told Balin of how he was forced to break the Great Statue of Eiren, the only remaining physical evidence of Eiren's existence, into smaller pieces. They were then forced to make those pieces into round, monolithic forms that the Ghols would worship. He told of how there were plans to disassemble every building and every complex stone structure that was disliked and unnecessary to the Ghols, including stairs. Every stair in Myrgard was further disassembled and made into stone bricks that would make the homes of the Ghols. The Ghols' homes were not anything like the Dwarven homes, said Balin's uncle, they were complex tunnels that were entirely subterranean. When Balin asked his uncle if he had seen where the younger children and elderly were, he gave no response.

••

Balin, like one or two random Dwarves every day, was ordered to get food for the slave-driving Ghols. As he was given his "free passage" pass by the Ghol, he was told that if he ate any of it, he would be cut by that Ghol's cleaver. Balin understood as he came up the ramp and showed his pass to the guard. The guard nodded him by. Balin then saw that many Dwarves, perhaps 50 of them and all elderly or young, were being gathered on a flat area that had recently been cleared of debris and building. Balin hid in one of the few remaining city bushes so he could watch what transpired. There was an odd stench in the air that Balin realized was chemical explosives of some kind, but the combination was very unfamiliar to him.

At the middle of this cleared area was a large, brown cloth of some kind that bulged in the middle. Then, one by one, with the grown men on the bottom and all face down, the fifty Dwarves were piled onto the cloth, including Balin's young friend Eitri. This pain of many Dwarves on top was minor to the men on the bottom because something quite soft and giving was beneath them. They had no idea what it was or why they were doing this, but it or the cloth stank ferociously. The few Ghols going through this operation, the only other beings within thirty meters besides Balin and the Dwarven heap, threw a large tarp over the pile of Dwarves. It had about five, long, thin slits cut into the sides of the tarp. For breathing?, Balin wondered. The tarp was tied down very tightly onto poles that went deep into the ground and also had large loops at the top for tying.

Then all the Ghols stood far back, just in front of Balin, as they gave an order in their language. "RiTaGH!" the commander of the operation said. Under the tarp, at the bottom of the heap, the mean saw and felt an arm move from beneath the cloth. It was obviously carrying a blade because it poked at them from beneath the cloth. Then, from under the cloth, a terrifying sound like that of pain itself roared as the sound of skin and flesh tearing, like breaking celery, screatched.

Balin watched and listened to the muffled sounds from inside the tarp. The tarp, slightly loose and slack, then ballooned out as extremely powerful gusts from multiple shockwaves erupted out of the slits along with a bright yellow light. Pinkish-red puss and Dwarven viscera spewed out across the flat area and over part of the town square. The Ghols were used to dabs of Wight puss on them, they weren't affected, but when a small amount fell through the bush and froze Balin's hand, like the searing and numbing pain of frostbite, he cried out. A Ghol approached the bush, his cleaver gleamed and shone like a silver sun. He parted the bushes, looked inside, and then returned to his cohordes. "We really should get rid of those bushes," he said in his own language. "The stupid birds in there make all kinds of noise."

Balin had ran for another bush and continued to watch as he shook his hand back to animate life. Balin gazed through the bushes once more, examining the horror that unfolded. The tarp was removed to reveal an enormous heap of Dwarven remains and a few Dwarves still alive, though barely. The Ghols then came in and efficiently cut them to ribbons. Balin's now reanimate hand burned to have a fired molitov in it so he could kill them all. He however realized that he should bide his time, things would soon change. He went to get the food for the Ghol slave-driver.

••

The pain in Balin's stomach reminded him of when the Trow killed his training squad; when one of his comrades' heads flew at hundreds of miles an hour and hit Fend in the stomach. How much pain he must have felt to actually vomit blood like that. That is how Balin felt then, completely helpless, on the ground, near his end.

He had been upgraded to hard laborer, something to ensure his survival for sure. He was now dismantling the great granite steps that led up through the former Gates of Myrgard, now replaced with hideous dead tree posts that emanated pure fear and pain. The Ghols were cannibalizing every easy-to-get piece of mineral in the entire city so they could build there massive tunnel network. The Ghols did not want to work on the mountain sides like the Dwarves had done to get the original stone.

Balin was about finishing the last few steps and placing them into the wheel barrow when he looked down into the crevice to the side of the ramp. In it was the pack of a Dwarf. Whose, Balin wondered. He took out the identification slip and read that the pack had belonged to Norling son of Reitig. He then looked inside the main part of the pack. It was almost completely full of ready-to-light molitov cocktails and the materials to make more. (There were the potential for 200 cocktails because the Dwarves had made the bottles screw apart and then fit into each other like nested cups.) This is what Balin had needed to escape. I mustn't try now, he thought. He decided to place the pack into a neatly created space between granite steps in the wheel barrow. He was able to hide it in the bush he had hid within himself several months ago when he saw the Wights explode and kill fifty Dwarves. He soon learned that people were killed like that all the time as an "efficient" way of disposing non-desirable workers.

Balin learned more about the Wights. They were merely corpses that had good skin on them. Within the skin they put a very volatile gas that contained powdered amounts of a natural mineral that existed heavily across the Mustard Plains, but especially in the riverbeds of the hills. Myrgard was the riverbed that was exposed by the dam. They same chemical was always used by the Dwarves for their own explosive mixtures, but this fact of accessibility to a lot of the chemical is what made the Fallen even more interested in the Ghol use trade-off. It would mean mass wight production on an economical basis. Another tool for the Fallen was sealed.

Balin was one day assigned to help create some Wights and bring them to the state of reanimation. (The Slaves were used because Ghols would not do the dangerous work, though they were in charge of it.) Soon, hundreds of Wights were wandering around an enclosed space; the space was surrounded in those dead tree posts so the Wights would just move in circles. A few Ghols stood on duty to keep the Ghols from exiting the only door way and guide them back into the free-range. Balin was finishing putting the gas into one Wight he was putting together when he drew from his inner shirt pocket (that he sew himself) a slow-burn molitov. The wick was very long and slow-burning (though dependably burning) and encapsulated in a material that did not allow air to escape, but instead absorbed the CO2 and released a solid oxygen fuel for the fire. (Balin did not know of these specifics, but only that it worked.) He carefully, oh so carefully, placed it into the stomach of the newborn Wight and went to his upcoming job, the construction of a hill fortress where Eiren's home used to be. This hill was just above where the Wight free-range pen was.

Balin had it all planned out: He would climb the hill and work for a half hour or so before the molitov exploded in the Wight's chest, destroying every Wight (which are not so easy to make) and then draw the pack from the wheel barrow he had brought from the bushes and was now on top of the hill, where he worked. Balin would kill every Ghol in sight as they would scurry around, dizzied and confused. He'd carve a trench through any forest of Ghols that came between he and the Gates of Myrgard. If he would succeed, he might be able to make it to a pony that could be strapped up, though most were turned into the stew the Dwarves were forced to eat.

The ticking timebomb waged it's temporal war on the Ghols and they did not even know it. Actually, Balin had started quite a ruccuss between the Wight guards by throwing down from the hill pebbles at both of them when his guard was not looking. This started a predictable fight that was obvious to Balin in it's likeliness because he had observed them do this before over less. The fight drew a Gholen crowd of 39 with more coming. It erupted into an enormous brawl between every single Ghol that felt another was a jerk, or stupid, or any reason. Soon, hundreds were fighting each other, yet were surrounding Wights that would soon explode with a massive fury.

Balin, distracted with pleasant thoughts of the future, became absent minded that he was removing the stones from the very hiding place of Norling's pack. It then became visible to both a more than embarrassed Balin and one of his Gholen guards. "What is this??" he asked furiously, just clutching it, but not picking it up.

Balin grabbed the fist of the Ghol and forced it to quickly cut his neck wide open. "Your death sentence," he whispered. No one had seen this but the two involved. "Help! Guard!" called Balin with false but affective alarm. The Ghol clutched his gushing throat to conceal his wound. "He's cut himself accidentally with his cleaver!"

"What will we do with you, Thrasher," the other guard replied in his own language as he came over. "Let's take a look here." He pulled his hands away. "YE GODS!" he screamed and grunted as blood poured over his feet. This distraction is what Balin needed to be able to make a molitov cocktail unhindered and not have to kill the Ghol guards first. The two guards clung to each other as they walked down the hill in the direction of the enormous brawl that kept growing. The unhurt guard was knocked down and Thrasher collapsed, gushing blood and was being stepped on. The Warlord was just coming over to see what was going on.

PERFECT! thought Balin, happily. Then, the wonderful sound, that of the air rushing through the cocktail right before it exploded in the Wight's chest. The chain reaction was absolutely spectacular! Balin's quick thoughts processed the events in slow motion: One Wight blew up four, each one blowing up another five or six as the shockwaves built and built and built on top of each other as they concentrically moved outward from the epicenter. After just a few milliseconds, the combined shockwaves was supersonic. In this incredibly slow visualization Balin had, the Ghols just barely moved, like clouds on a windless day. The shockwaves seemed to move like arrows, going from one wight to the next. The force of the vacuous shockwave was SO great, that it sucked in air from the surrounding space. The last milliseconds of the Ghols' lives were filled with the curious thoughts of why they were being lifted off the ground (like a hurricane) towards the Wight pen. The shockwave hit the closest Ghols with an incredible, six Mach force that shattered them apart as if they were cheap glass from molitovs, like those in Balin's hands as he constructed and screwed them together, all in slow motion. The burning shockwave of pure heat, pain, terror, and utter hell passed through the splattering Ghols faster than a Soulless javelin through a Dwarven Epidermis. Quick as the wave was, every Ghol felt extreme pain in their final measures of Earthly time. Balin's slow-motion thinking did not last very long (but long to him) and normal timed resumed in his eyes.

The shockwave roared across Myrgard and ricocheted off of every wall, mountain or building, right back into each other causing immense devestation and paralyzation. 500 Ghols were killed and only 3 Dwarves were (some that were about to be killed because they were too old.) The Gholen crowd absorbed enough of the energy to not let the shockwave go too far. The defining screams from everyone but Balin were louder than the Wight shockwave. Balin took advantage of this by strapping on his pack and running through the scrambling and fumbling crowd of Ghols and Dwarves alike. Balin made it all the way to the Gates and passed them, killing the soulless (though inaudibly in the screeching riverbed.) Balin got on his pony before throwing some Hail Mary shots right into the Gholen crowd (he made sure his throw was far from any Dwarves) killing 20 dozen more because, as he had made his way to the Gates, he had dropped 35 satchel charges he had stuffed into every crevice of his clothing. This gave him more than enough time to escape into the Mustard Plains.

••

Balin breathed a breath of fresh, night air and the pollen of Mustard flower. His pony was slowly walking along. Balin wasn't pushing it, he knew that would only make things worse. He rested for the night. Before dawn, he arose like he had been forced to do for months (no rest for the weary indeed.) Balin was making his way south to Stoneheim, his brother-land. Maybe there was still an encampment of Dwarves trying to make a stand.

The hills south of Stoneheim came into view. That therefore meant that Balin was looking strait at the town, also built in a mountain-draining stream that was rendered a dry riverbed. Balin then came upon a group of over 20 Dwarves on foot. They turned out to be a group of sharp-shooters that the leading volunteer had recruited from the plains. The leading volunteer gave Balin the details of the plans: The fortress of Stoneheim was far too big too defend with the VERY small number of Dwarves that they had, just about 169. However, the present Stoneheim Leader, Travin, was confident in his actions and that he could destroy the Ghol armies of over 4,500. The Gholen campaign was lead by the Sub-Warlord and military leader, Screama Arra. He was rather insane, not cool headed like his former leader who died at Myrgard. Balin was further told of how the Dwarves had found the experimental mortar cannons the brains of Stoneheim had been working on before the occupation of Myrgard. They were just being setup at that very moment, ready to fire. The unfamiliar explosion they all heard from the plain was a mortar charge hitting the ground.

Balin did not perticularly like newfangled machines like mortar cannons; his forte was in classic, strait-arm throwing; but he did not mind if they posed a strategic advantage that could lead the Dwarves to victory again over the Mustard Plains, especially what he had experienced in the last several months. Of course, the Stoneheimer volunteers at the walls of the great and former city were fighting just as long (with constant resources from the innerwalls, including food, ammunition, etcetera.)

The present statistics of the great battle were 4,500 and more coming on the Gholen side. The Dwarven side now had a total of 190 with the sharp shooters joining. The new recruits were quickly and safely let in by the men on watch. They were taken right to the great military leader of the single Dwarf-only regiment remaining in all the West, Travin. He informed the sharp-shooters that they would do most of the killing because one supply was running low; the cocktail bottles. "Every shot must be better than perfect," he said.

"No problem at all, sir," answered Balin, spying an incoming Gholen scout. Balin pulled back his arm and threw as hard as he could, 3 times the distance of most Dwarves, right across the Western, diverted river and into the face of the Ghol, which promptly blew to bits. This incredible action stunned the others, including the sharp-shooters.

Travin, once a lawyer in Stoneheim, now said with just simple and few words, "Good."

The days and skirmishes passed and eventually earned good Balin the nickname "Ghol Bailer" to describe the piles of the carcasses that formed so neatly and so far from the walls of Stoneheim. Another great thrower, one of the recent recruits, gave him this name. His name was Dvalin son of Brokk. Brokk was a famous Ghol-hunter before the invasion of Myrgard where he was killed. Dvalin wanted to leave Myrgard and his father did not. His father had emotional connections to the city and would not leave, no matter how high the danger, even though it cost him his life in the end. Dvalin wandered for quite some time, killing Ghols, until he grouped up and discovered his father was in the concentration camp of Myrgard or dead, though death was always assumed.

Dvalin, or "Dvali" as he was often called, was SO good that his comrades gave him a little song. To give it some flow, Balin thought he could be called "Brokkette" because he was like a little Brokk. Then, everything fell together:

o/' Dvali.....Dvali Brokkette, son o' the ol' Moliteer.

Dvali.....Dvali Brokkette, made Fending a good carrier... o/'

and so forth in this little song.

Then came the fait-filled day of when the Ghols stormed the Eastern walls of Stoneheim, led by Screama Arra. Satchels were dropped onto unsuspecting Ghols who exploded on the impact of the satchel charges. The Ghols were getting a continual edge, though. That's when Travin ordered Balin to take his wife and child, along with a few others, out of the city via the Western Gate. "I know you'll be able to protect them, my friend. I only trust you." Balin tried to protest, but to no avail. "Now, go!" Balin was turning and ready to quickly leave by the opposite entrance, when Travin said, in the Ancient Dwarven Language, "Balin; Empfel dar stone Heim!" meaning "Remember the second half!"; the second half of the fight for anti-Gholen occupation of the Mustard Plains that failed. Balin promptly left with the four others on pony-back, headed for the West.

Meanwhile, The Ghols were intruding into and rushing over everything near the Eastern Wall. Dvali Brokkette, unable to fill new molitov's quickly enough, was forced to just smash the bottles across the faces of the incoming Ghols. Travin headed for the edge of the wall with a huge container filled with the chemicals that fill molitovs. Travin had added to it ground up mandrake roots from a Journeyman who had traveled through one time. The combination make a link to all surrounding life forces and amplified the chemicals inside the mixture 10 fold. He poured and spilled it all over the attacking Ghols. Then, even though cleavers were digging into his back, Travin threw down the spark of the Avatar, a gift from Alric, the former leader of the not-far Muirthemne. The spark dropped in slow motion for the dying lawyer turned leader. It glowed like an injured firefly, falling after being swiped at. The falling cinder of goodness made close contact with the spilled chemicals on the ground and on the Ghols. It's energy fields ignighted the mixture and forced its energy through 92% of the remaining Ghols that were on the ground, 85% of the whole remaining Ghol attack force, led by Screama Arra. The chain reaction destroyed every single Ghol at it's very central, spiritual core as the force of the Avatar and the life-connected energy of the mandrake root worked together in beautiful harmony to destroy over 970 Ghols, including the eternally terrified Screama Arra. As Travin's eyes were forced closed by pain to never see light again, he felt happy and sneered a gloried sneer of happiness and victory. The Ghols, in his mind, had lost.

However, in the end, 189 Dwarves exactly were killed with no survivors; except, of course, Balin and the four non-combatant women who all escaped and survived to sing and speak again of the great heroes of Stoneheim.

...Balin now imagined the city of Myrgard filled with Ghols atop his hilly perch. He again felt the stinging pain of their cleavers in his back. Suddenly, along with distant yells, Balin was pushed flat over onto his face by a small shockwave. He then felt blood spill on the back of his neck as he opened his eyes.

"BALIN!!!!" screamed Ivoldi. Get up, Dwarf. A stray Ghol just attacked you! Didn't you feel it?

Balin, dazed and confused with his remembrance, thought and then replied. "Yes...I did."

"Well, cap, we better get moving soon. We wanted a quarter mile perimeter city survey by nightfall."

"That's right, I'm sorry. Thank you for saving me there."

"Don't worry about it, just keep your eyes open." He smiled.

Balin thought and closed his eyes once more briefly. If only he could have kept those eyes closed when his citymates killed themselves in distress when the first invasion wave hit, when his mother was hacked to bits and then eaten, when his great friend was torn apart by paralyzing pain...If only he could have kept his eyes closed during the whole experience...even, perhaps, his entire life...

Then his thoughts dwelled on Stoneheim as he walked back to the little base camp. He may have slaved to destroy the city he loved, but did not go through the hell that all his companions did for years before killed finally. He also did not fight for almost a year constantly with no rest in order to defend principal and justice. He did not even attempt to free his fellow slaves, but instead hoped he could come back some day to free them. He had come back that day...and he freed their souls. He prayed to the Gods that was enough. Perhaps memory is the best thing, he thought. If we only remember the people, every one of them, we give them honor and purpose so they did not all die in vain. We must remember the first half, the second half, and..., he laughed..., the third half of today. We live now only because of them, they deserve every respect. What now? Now to Stoneheim. Empfel dar stone Heim!

• • •

Remembrance.

I watch the old men

Pale

Bleached with age

As they sit

Warming old bones

In the winter sun.

I listen

Rapt

As they speak

Places far away

Gona, Buna

Kokoda.

Who are these

Ragged

Bloody heroes

Who served

Our country

So long ago?

-[by Stuart Beaton]