>>5372584>>5372545>>5372499>>5372463>>5372399>>5372385>>5372375>>5372371You enter the chamber where the kobolds are keeping the traitorous ‘Dwarf Infiltrator’—the one who the late Herbalist exposed, drugged, and turned over to you. She’ll surely die—maybe even gruesome, painfully, and publicly—but you see no reason why you can’t humour this ‘last request’ business first. You might even learn something useful.
“You’re still limping,” the dwarf captive notes dryly, when the gag is removed from her mouth.
“I am in better condition than you are, traitor,” you reply in her surface-speak.
“Traitor?” she balks. “I’m not the traitor! The dwarves that are working with you… They are! They’re betraying our gods, our husbands and fathers, our mothers’ wishes and our children’s futures! For what? The chance for our sons to work themselves to death to make your petty, tyrannical vision of an ‘Age of Darknesssss’ a reality? So you can fuck our daughters, use them up, and leave them to die—just like you did Davora?”
Your eyes widen. You aren’t sure how much the kobolds have understood of this, if any, but you order them to leave. You draw your dagger and advance on the captive, hauling her bound body up easily—with your good arm, not the one still recovering from the crossbow bolt which embedded its adjacent muscle-groups.
“Did you think you were subtle, you great big horny toad?” this dwarf mocks you. “Maybe you lizards are oblivious, but I can recognize when a lass I’ve known for over a year is fawning like a little girl… And I know sex-hair when I see it. Plus, ugh, your SMELL.”
“How many know?” you demand, knife to her throat.
“Any dwarf woman worth her salt,” the traitor tells you, eyes empty of triumph despite her surface-level amusement at your reaction. “And every dwarf man, soon enough. We gossip. We talk. We REMEMBER, and we hold GRUDGES, lizard.”
“Why did you call me here, then?” you demand through gritted teeth. “Wass it jussst to goad me? To get a reaction? I have dealt with your type before. You have achieved nothing.”
“It was to tell you to your face that you’re doomed, and that I’ll gladly go to the Hall of the Mountain King—or to the Hells, for that matter!—knowing it’s the Gods’ own truth. The dwarves have seen what comes of loyalty to the likes of you—even for your little girlies. You’re just like another kobolds—wasteful, petty, greedy. You don’t maintain your tools, not even one well-crafted—you use them without care, and you wreck them, and you throw them away.”
