Chapter 1909: No Longer Tortured
The under-tier carried its wounded in so they would miss nothing. The kneeling soldiers of the personal guard were herded in too, disarmed and dazed, because tonight belonged to them as well, whether they understood that yet or not.
The First Hammer of the royal smithy lifted Everwright back off the table, walked the length of the hall, and stopped in front of the Primordial Villain.
The noise of the packed hall died on its own, tens of thousands of dwarves falling still at once, and the hush ran out the open doors and down every gallery until the whole vertical city held its breath.
"Unworthy kings ordered us," Brokk said. Her voice came off the walls flat and exact. "Corrupt councils demanded of us. That ends tonight."
Her eyes, under the helmet she had forged while her people rose, measured the man in front of her.
"You came to my hall a villain and worked like a smith. You fought a battle that wasn’t yours." She paused, and the next words came out as a verdict. "The mountain chooses its own hands now. And its hands choose you."
She did not bow.
The First Hammer raised Everwright and brought it down on the stone at the Villain’s feet.
*CLANG!*
For one heartbeat, the strike hung alone in the hush, and the whole hall listened to it fade.
Then the hall answered her.
Every dwarf holding a hammer struck stone with it. Axes reversed and came down haft-first. Fists came down, then boot-heels, then the flats of surrendered blades, one strike apiece, tens of thousands arriving as one.
*CLANG!*
*CLANG!*
*CLANG!*
The rhythm caught, and the mountain became the drum. The strikes rolled out the open doors and down the galleries, tier taking it from tier, until the beat came back up through the floor of the hall from a city striking in time. Dust sifted from the vault with every pulse.
At the edge of it, the disarmed soldiers of the personal guard looked at one another. Then Captain Torvek brought his bare fist down on the flagstones, and his kneeling guardsmen followed him, knuckles splitting on the stone, striking with everything they had left to swear with.
"All hail the new sovereign of the dwarven race!" an old smith bellowed over the thunder.
"ALL HAIL! ALL HAIL!"
The answer came out of a hundred thousand chests at once, an oath taken in the only language the mountain had ever fully trusted.
Light rose at the corner of Quinlan’s vision.
[The dwarven people of Iskaris have acknowledged your dominion.]
[Peoples of Iskaris conquered: 3/4]
[Conquer the beastkin people to claim rulership of Iskaris.]
[Reward: ???]
...
Through all of it, upright on the council table of his own hall, the last king of the mountain had watched.
He had watched his personal guard kneel in the corridor. He had watched the council die to porters and smiths. He had watched his people choose, with one voice made of stone, and no part of any of it had been addressed to him.
The hall’s thunder was still rolling when Quinlan crossed to the table.
What sat among the maps scarcely held the shape of a dwarf. The flesh had sunk to the bone, the fused plate ran slick with the night’s leavings, and a dark pool was widening beneath him on the council table.
Ragnar looked up at him. The hatred was still there. It had simply run out of things to stand on.
"Finish it, Villain. I’ve watched enough."
Quinlan considered him for a moment.
He could’ve tried healing Ragnar, he could’ve tortured him more for what he’d done. But frankly, Quinlan no longer cared. All of it was in the past. Ragnar taught him a good lesson, paid for the treachery many times over, and that was that.
Quinlan wanted to look toward the future, toward becoming the ruler of the Iskaris Continent, toward venturing out into the grand world of Thalorind.
Keeping this grudge no longer interested the Primordial Villain.
"Greet her for me."
He turned and walked back toward his family.
He closed his hand without looking back, and the ritual’s black threads came apart around a heart they had cinched shut all night.
His wind gathered the royal torso up and bore it out through the hall’s shaft-side arches, out into the open dark at the center of the mountain, the only sky the deep city had ever owned.
"Finally..."
The orange glow of the ritual woke in the ruined chest, and this time no black threads came crawling to strangle it.
Ragnar did not scream. The glow spread through what remained of him, brighter and brighter, veins of fire mapping a body the ritual had spent a war devouring, and for one stretched heartbeat the last king of the dwarves hung burning in the middle of his mountain’s sky.
"Goddess... I’m coming..."
Then he became light.
The cascade filled the great shaft from wall to wall.
A sun bloomed at the heart of the mountain, and its glare poured through every tier, every gallery, every doorway of the vertical city at once, throwing the shadows of a hundred thousand watching dwarves against their own walls.
The boom that followed went through the mountain’s bones, the last sound of the old era, and faded.
Miles below, the light reached even the royal smithy, and the smiths looked up from their anvils into it, and did not sing.
At the shaft-side arches, Captain Torvek watched his king become light, helm under one arm, fist against his chest in a soldier’s last salute to his ruler. Down the rail from him, his kneeling guardsmen did the same, one after another.
Brokk pulled her helmet off, let it hang at her side, and did not look away until the glare died.
And just like that, the age of dwarven kings was over.
...
The hymn came back slowly, from far below first, climbing tier by tier, and this time there was celebration in it. The forges burned brighter, and somewhere down the corridor, dwarves were already singing.
"Three down," Serika said, rolling her shoulder, thoroughly satisfied with the night.
"One more to go~" Kitsara chirped, five tails swaying.
The tails stopped mid-sway.
"Wait." The Slutty Foxy’s ears went flat. "We have to conquer my people!!"
"Yeah," Quinlan hummed. "I have something quite special in mind."
"Quinnie!! Not my dad!!" Kitsara yelped.