Vice

The glow of the Harvest Moon did nothing to guide his way into the Silentwoods. Mirth and joy still rang in his ears as he stumbled over twisted roots and jagged stones. He clung to it, held it in his breast hoping to steel himself for the task at hand.

At the festival he had found peace. He ate heartily, laughed loudly, and smiled wide with his family and friends. The Silverbeards, Halguer, and even the Daromir turned out for the event. Assembled with his clan, the four families lined the river for a quarter mile. The smell of roasting meats, the sound of drinking and contest, and most of all the roaring laughter was carried downstream with the breeze. It had been decades since the dwarves had come down the mountain and truly celebrated as one in the verdant hills. His reasons for the gathering were lost and forgotten amidst the revelry. 

Belegrim Ironjaw of the Silverbeards had even set up a forge and seemed to be making some handsome coin. The sound of his hammer driving home set the tune for many of their dances and songs. Late in the evening, one of the forgemaster’s axes caught his eye. Not an axe for cutting trees, but men. It shined like the sun, the mirrored surface gleaming brilliantly. 

“You’ve got good taste lad.” said the elder dwarf. “At’ll cut a dwarf in full plate from shoulder to hip.”

He felt its weight, tested the edge with his thumb, and swung it casually through the air. Everything from head to haft was perfect. He slid the handle through one of the loops on his belt and handed the dwarf his well earned coin. Even his son was enamored with the weapon, asking how the etching of their gods had been done so precisely and the leather on the grip tanned so finely. His wife cast her judgment but kept it to herself. It was not in his nature to be impulsive, so she was shocked when he took her hand in his abruptly and awkwardly. Their marriage had been filled with love of a kind, but intimacy and gentleness had not been a strong suit of his. So often he avoided it. Traila had known him better than any other for the better part of a century now and he could feel her unease when his skin pressed against hers. He brought her hand to his lips and kissed the back of it. “I love you.” he whispered so that only she could hear. 

The moment felt poised to swallow him. Her gaze was too much for him to bear as he watched her try to form a response.

“Just tell me so we might face it together.” he could imagine her saying. 

She did not get the chance. Friends bombarded them, cajoling and cracking jokes about how he was going soft after all these years. They surrounded him and his wife, carrying him away for games and stories and drinks together. 

They had been his companions since he was young. From them, he had learned much. The man he had become, and the man he wanted to be, he often saw in them. Part of him yearned for their aid, to unshoulder his burden at their feet so that they might help him bear it. Instead he drank more, he ate more, and he was rowdier and more boisterous than any other. Of all the things he wanted to be, today, he would be the dwarf he wanted them to remember. 

After night had fallen, and the others had begun the trek back to their mountain abodes, he returned to the place he had been most often as of late. He readied himself, his muscles groaning and pleading for mercy. He swung his axe with measured cadence, burying it in the ancient, gnarled wood. Every few swings he would pause, catch his breath, and drink from the flask at his hip. The dull thud as his axe struck was the only sound that echoed between the trees. The moon was full above him and dim shafts of light pierced the canopy, guiding his aim. A blessing to hunters. A blessing to harvesters. Tonight though, this frigid and solitary stretch of time that seemed to skulk between dusk and dawn, there would be no song or prayers of thanks. Only curses haunted this dead and festering grove.

The flask draped his belt since his father had passed. A gift ungiven, inherited from his late father who had received it in the same fashion. Passed down by countless other dwarves as far back as time’s grasping talons could reach. Or so the story went. A memento from the dead, to the dying. Vice given form, unassuming and cold. Forged of iron that would never rust, it was a well of spirits that would never run dry. Only, he knew some-thing had infused the drink. Smoke would billow out of the vessel when uncorked, and a voice would creep through the porous stopper, imploring any who held the thing to drink fully and freely. 

As he worked, he drank. His body was warm, but the mouth of the flask was ice on his lips. It was a lover’s kiss, begging him to stay and drown in its embrace. Had he been a weaker dwarf, his son would have buried him amongst the tombs of his fathers. Instead, he resisted the call and replaced the flask on his belt, swinging the axe once more. 

He might never have known the nature of his metal companion, had it not been for a scrap of text found and unbound from its ancient leather wrappings. A year ago now, he found himself lost within the bowels of tunnels that his clan had sealed long ago for reasons forgotten by. It was there, miles further than any had dug in centuries, he stumbled upon the truth. 

The memory still burned in his mind. Statuary lined the passage as his footsteps echoed onward, heralding him to the nothing that lay before. He could not say how far or fast he walked, only that he came to a twisted iron door that had been blown off of its hinges. Its snarling face was melted so that only one glaring eye and a mouth full of jagged teeth remained. The eye seemed to follow him as he entered the chamber. Reflexively he grabbed the flask, then released it and drew the hammer from his belt. The light from his torch flickered across the walls. The air was stale.

 It was some sort of dark wizard's domain or the lair of an unknown evil. Bones lay haphazardly, clothes still clinging to their frames. Something had scorched large sections of the walls and floor, setting the room alight. Ancient tomes were scattered about, burned and torn asunder, their text largely illegible. There were carvings on the floor, deliberate markings that spread in a strange and alien pattern. The South-East corner of the room was a messy pile of rubble and debris from where the ceiling had collapsed. A support pillar lay in fragmented pieces all across the room. In the center of it all lay a podium, untouched by whatever catastrophe struck this place, and unweathered by age. Atop the podium lie a tome which he tried to make sense of., And though the words swirled and morphed in shape. Their meaning was imparted to him. 

A curse. A demon, ancient and powerful, had been bound here. It had been destined to be woven into the sword which lie mangled near his feet, but something had gone awry. He could feel the enmity radiating outwards from the flask, a blistering hatred that made sense of his family’s history. It had been bound to the flask, trapped in the vessel by folly. The cold iron of the flask had been a far better conduit for magic than the steel of the blade. At least, for this magic. All he could think of was that writhing essence, attempting to bend his will. How it was not his own weakness, but something that had willfully been the bane of his line for untold centuries. It filled him with a fire hotter than any warmth within the little flask could imbue him with. It filled him with dreams. 

He was roused from his memories by shouting and lights bobbing through the trees towards him. His friends trudged into view, weapons in hand, cursing and spitting. Sweat poured from their brows and their eyes darted to and fro before finally locking onto him. Explanations were short. His story did not shake their resolve and they made no effort to turn him from his course.

They helped him load lumber onto the small cart of his, and they pulled it up the hill and into the mountain. The calluses on his hands had worn off. His palms began to bleed, his fingers were tight and the ache in his muscles only fled him when he drew from the flask. 

They were not alone. They could feel it. The flasks aura had been drawing them nearer night after night. He had tried to imagine that it was a trick of the mind, some horrid illusion that the darkness had manifested to steer him from his task. Now they gathered, huddling in throngs near the edge of their torch’s light. If they wandered about these woods on any other night, he had no doubt they would have descended upon him and his friends leaving nothing but gnawed bones and bits of clothing. 

They weren’t here for him. No, their eyes followed his hand as he drew from the flask which shone gold and crimson, reflecting the light from the torches and the moon overhead. The light kept the creatures at bay but did nothing to ease his nerves. 

As they approached the ritual site, they all coiled their hands tightly around their weapons. Frangen, his oldest and dearest friend, made a sign to the gods when he first laid eyes on the scene. They began piling wood around the pedestal, drenching the hastily formed pyre in oil that he had carried with him on the cart. When they were finished someone made a joke, trying to ease the nerves but he barely heard it. Others laughed though he didn’t see it. There was a pounding in his head as his friends fanned out, lighting the oil with their torches. A great gust of heat washed over him as the fire began devouring the oxygen in the room, but his blood ran cold. 

I will kill you. 

Clear as still water, the voice he had been hearing all his life warned him from the place on his belt. One final time, he drank greedily from it, grateful for the thing at last. It was heavy in his hand. He lobbed the flask into the flames and readied his axe. 

“Perhaps.”