The Dwarven Council was on fire.
In month that followed the fall of the Adventurer’s Guild, a steady bubbling pressure had built in the hearts of their mountains and steadily built to a boiling point. It turned out that a great deal of the Council Members had been a lot more reliant on the Guild’s funds than anyone had initially thought.
In their greed, many of them had taken on additional commissions from the Guild in private, hiding it from the other Council Members — and investing every scrap of that money into enriching themselves further. They’d started great projects that never should have been funded in the first place. Most of them were useless, and the ones that weren’t were simply impossible to sustain without a ridiculous flow of gold.
And when that flow dried up… cracks appeared in their control. Anger built quickly. Not every dwarf had known the full extent of the Council’s involvement with the Guild. Some had known a little, but most had known nothing at all. The memories within the Quest Arwin sent out tore those curtains away.
The Council tried to sacrifice one of their members, pinning everything on his back, but it didn’t work. Even the stores of gold they still sat upon were nowhere near enough to pay the price of the blood that their aid had spilled. Their attempts to keep the other dwarves pacified had been growing less and less effective with every day.
No matter how much the remaining members of the Council claimed to have been unaware of the Guild’s doings, it was becoming increasingly clear that they couldn’t hold on forever. The dwarves — and the rest of the kingdom — demanded answers… and as the chaos from the fall of the Guild cleared up, people were increasingly determined to recieve them.
It all came to a head when Necrohammer arrived on the dwarves’ doorstep after years of exile. He’d come bearing an iron book on his back. Every single page within it had been carved with the doings of the council over hundreds of years. It bore the commissions that the guild had sent them for resources, many of which Necrohammer himself had used to create the magic-stealing daggers.
The old dwarven smith had dropped the book down right outside the council’s doors — which they had sealed for their own protection — and left without a word.
Nobody had tried to stop him.
It didn’t take long for word to spread.
And, with the proof outlined in metal, the Council’s doors hadn’t lasted much longer.
Ida wasn’t sure what had happened to the majority of the Council Members. She hadn’t been there when the horde of dwarves had apparently swept through the mountain. She hadn’t been there to see what they’d done to the room. But she could certainly see the results. The room was in ruins. All the extravagant beauty that had once inscribed every surface had been torn to pieces and set alight — fires that were still somehow burning even though the rebellion had happened days ago.
Maybe it was wrong, but Ida found it hard to feel bad. Even though her mother had been amongst those who the crowd had… dealt with, it was impossible to simply forgive what had happened. The Council had grown too greedy. They’d harmed countless people with their actions in supporting the Guild’s fake war.
Ida hadn’t been close with the woman who had given birth to her for a very long time. There had been no lost love between them. In truth, the only thing she was truly confused about was why the Dwarves had sent for her in the first place.
She’d been hard at work within the newly rebuilt streets of the Menagerie, finally improving her craft after years of stagnancy, when they’d come for her and Wallace. It hadn’t seemed like an angry mob. The dwarves had simply requested that she and Wallace accompany them back to the Dwarven Mountains if they had time.
The two of them had agreed. But, despite that, neither of them had the faintest idea why their presence had been requested in the first place.
“Why am I here?” Ida asked for the dozenth time, turning to one of the dwarves that had come to bring her to the mountain. “Good riddance to the Council. I couldn’t care less about their end.”
“We do,” the heavyset man replied gruffly. “It could not be tolerated. But life must go on… and the long-fire we cast the room with will soon burn out. This place will be nothing but ash and memories.”
“Good,” Ida said.
Wallace nodded in agreement. “Best to leave it that way. No loss.”
The dwarf shook his head. “We cannot. The Council went awry. That does not mean we can do away with leadership. Our relations with the outside world are damaged beyond belief. Many did not know of our existence — and now they know us as nothing more than monsters. Actions must be taken.”
“I agree,” Ida said. “But what does that have to do with me?”
“Or me?” Wallace added, crossing his arms in front of his chest and arching a bushy eyebrow. “I don’t give a rat’s arse about the old fools you shredded to bits. I got better things ‘ta be doing with my time.”
The dwarf’s gaze bore into them.
But it wasn’t just him. All around the crowd, stores dug into Ida’s skin uncomfortably. She shifted. Wallace didn’t seem much more comfortable than she felt.
“What?” Ida asked.
“You are both members of the Menagerie,” the dwarf said. “More than any other, the two of you are suited to establish connections with the rest of the world. People have seen you. In the visions that the Hero Arwin created. Your honor is known. There is no better to represent us.”
A sinking pit formed in Ida’s stomach. “What are you talking about?”
“Absolutely not,” Wallace said sharply. “My role is amongst metal. Not sitting with a stick up my backend and pretending ‘ta be better than everyone else.”
“We need your support,” another dwarf said. He nodded to the still-smoldering room. “And this must eventually be remade so that we can welcome humans and monsters alike into our halls. Who better to do it?”
Ida froze. That hadn’t been what she’d been expecting.
They don’t want me to somehow represent the dwarves because of my connection to the Menagerie?
She and Wallace exchanged a glance.
“What? You mean this isn’t about trying to get me to join the new Council?”
The dwarves around her laughed.
“You are not a politician,” one of them said, shaking his head. “Neither of you are. You’d probably start another war. And even if we asked, we know enough to realize that neither of you would be willing to sit. But that is not why we called you here. What we seek is your skill. You specialize in art and meticulous design, do you not? And Wallace is a longtime master-smith.”
“…I do,” Ida said slowly.
“I am,” Wallace said. His eyes narrowed.
“Then we would like to request that you be the lead designer for the new Council room,” the first dwarf who had spoken said, looking to Ida. Then he shifted his gaze to Wallace. “And we would like you to work with her and help manage the rest of the team. We cannot think of anyone more appropriate to handle it.”
Ida felt a lump in her throat. She looked out at the large crowd gathered around her, then back into the smoldering remains of what had once been. Several long seconds passed. Old, vile flashed through her mind one after the other. All the time she’d spent wishing she could be a smith instead of her mother’s tool. All the days she’d spent dreaming of creating something worthwhile.
Wallace tilted his head to the side. They locked eyes for a moment. Then the older dwarf gave her a faint nod.
A small smile crossed Ida’s lips.
“Well,” Wallace drawled. “When you put it like that…”
“Yes,” Ida said. “We won’t sit on the Council seats. But if you want us to build one… I think we can do that.”
You know what it is! A few epilogues left, I think. Still reviewing old comments as well, will definitely be doing the Mesh POV as well as a chapter showing the future fo the guild, but those will be the last two I think, so thinking on if there should be 1-2 more before that.