OOC – Author’s Note:
This story is one of several within the chronicle “Where Webs Whisper”, and follows on from BIG events in Ost Guruth in “The Well’s Awakening”.
Additionally: This piece was shaped with a little help from AI. It provided assistance on things like the structuring, some names, shortening some verbose language/ideas as I'd written them, and it gave me the odd turn of phrase here and there. The heart and shape of the story are my own, but I realise it is important to be transparent about my use of AI assistance.
“The First Rat is the Hardest”
The stink of the marsh clung to everything. Even this deep beneath the ruins of Harloeg, the air was foul with stagnant water and mold. Only the brittle threads of spiders’ webs which were hanging from the walls like forgotten banners provided any 'decoration' to the place.
Vratni Copperhand lay on the hard stone floor of a cell that was no cell at all. It had no door, no lock, just a row of black iron bars driven into the rock, as if some cruel hand had hammered them in place without adding a door. His ribs ached from a fall he did not wish to remember, his wrists were raw from the silk that had bound him, and his stomach rumbled with hunger like he hadn’t felt in years. But this was no time to think about food… for around him lay the proof of what awaited… skeletons, half-wrapped in webs, the faces of men and elves reduced to hollow sockets staring blindly back at him. Some still wore scraps of armour, now rusted through; one even clutched a broken dagger, as if defiance had lasted even as breath did not.
Time passed in trickles and drips. He counted it by the beads of water that slipped down the wall, collecting in a shallow groove where he, reluctantly at first, drank them up like a beast at a watering hole. The first swallow had near brought tears to his eyes, cold and sour… he’d wondered if he’d ever had worse…
Days and days later, when the weakness in his arms near bested him, he caught a rat. He felt fortunate to have learned how from observing the Bree rat-catcher on slow market days. It had skittered out from a crack in the wall, its whiskers twitching; a bold attitude in its manner… in the way of vermin that had never feared a dwarf before…. But he had leapt at the right moment and caught it nonetheless. Hunger had emptied him of disgust. He crushed it with his hands and gnawed at it with his teeth. He muttered a few curses and forced it down. It sat heavy in his belly, but it kept him alive. How long had it been…
The spiders never left him to sleep. They lingered at the edges of the bars, weaving fresh silk across the bones of his cell-mates; crawling over the ceiling so that their shadows danced above him against the only illumination of a single candle that never went out. Small ones mostly, though once or twice he saw the larger kind: thick-legged things with eyes like wet beads, watching. The kind that had dragged him to this place against his will. The kind they had fought back in Amon Ros and before that… long ago it now felt, in the Midgewater Marshes. How innocent those times had seemed to him now…
It was in this state of half-starved contemplation that the Stranger came. The same cloaked figure he had seen emerge from Ost Guruth’s well, eyes burning with that same sickly green fire. He stepped into the cell as if it were his own domain, passing through the bars, his presence colder than the damp stones. Had he been observing him?
“Dwarf,” the voice said, smooth as silk and cruel. “The marsh remembers you. The broodmother fell, her spawn broken. I care not for her loss, now…. For her full brood still lies sleeping… but I do care for what was taken from that place… give it to me.”
Vratni’s tongue stuck to his mouth. His mind leapt at once to the circlet crown he had hidden back in Staddle, safe away from the eyes of elf or man. The circlet that had been found within the depths of the Marsh, past the Broodmother’s den… He thought it clever then, keeping it secret, tucking it away as a merchant hides his best wares for the right buyer. But now it might come in handy to save his life. “A crown,” he croaked, voice raw. “I kept it safe, hidden where none can touch it. That’s what ye want, isn’t it?”
The Stranger’s laugh was colder than stone. “A shiny bauble. A trinket for fools. Do not waste my time.” His hand rose, green fire curling round his fingers. Pain ripped through Vratni like a hammer blow, his body convulsing, beard bristling as every muscle clenched. He gasped and choked, falling back to the stones, a cry strangled in his throat.
“I do not seek gold and jewels,” the Stranger said, his voice flat. “There was something else. An artefact of true power taken from that place. Tell me… where is it?”
“I don’t know,” Vratni gasped, every word dragged from him like iron from the earth. “I swear it… I don’t know…”
The fire flared, and agony followed. His bones felt as though they would break, his lungs as though they would burst. Only when he was near to fainting did the power relent.
The Stranger let him fall, his shadowy cloak billowing like smoke as he turned back through the bars. “You will remember,” he said, “or you will break in the effort.” And then he was gone, his steps fading into silence, leaving only the stir of spiders in his wake.
Vratni lay trembling for a long time then. His sweat freezing on his brow as the cold lingered. How long had it been… He closed his eyes, willing the pounding in his skull to still. His thoughts turned, inevitably, to his companions. Tivlyn, stubborn but stalwart, still clutching her father’s hatchet… no, clutching no more… for Vratni had lost that memento on her. Cirvalad, with his fiery sword and his equally terrible calm. Oh how he wished he could see its terrifying sight once more. Mel, steady as stone and twice as resilient… her spear flashing in the dark. Tay, sharp-eyed and quick even for an elf, and wiser than his face portrayed. Dreamlike Feay, with her blasted mushrooms that smoked and banged with a force unthinkable for such a halfling. And Wittkun, the grumbling dwarf afraid of going below ground… and yet Wittkun had ventured not once, but twice into such places to protect his companions… would… would he… would he venture once more below ground to protect me? Vratni wondered.
He hoped they were safe. He hoped they had not paid the same price that he now did.
And then, as his mind drifted, he thought of Flent. ‘Boots’, with his mutt… his silence, his ire… and his sharp eye. This had all started with Boots and Vratni heading into the mashes at Midgewater. Back when life was simple and the goal was just to get rich. It was where they’d met Tivlyn and Wittkun too, and eventually Aevil. Damn it, how long had it been…
Vratni still remembered it plain: the chamber in the marsh fort, the webs, the broodmother slain. And… in the moment when others caught their breath, Flent’s hand had closed around a polished stone…. iridescent, glimmering like it held secrets. He had pocketed it swift as a cutpurse might, and said nothing, and none but Vratni had noticed him doing so. A dwarf’s eye for shinies missed little, even in the aftermath of great battle.
He laughed then, a bitter sound that echoed against the stone. “Aye,” he whispered, voice cracked, “…that’s it. Boots took it….. He bloody took it, and I’m the one left payin’ the price.”
The spiders stirred at his voice. One dropped from the ceiling, landing near his boot before skittering away again. He had been careless… he shouldn’t speak of it aloud.
Vratni sank back against the wall, closing his eyes. For the first time in his life, coin and clever words would buy him nothing in the depths of Harloeg; under the marsh… All he had was Dwarven grit, stubborn as the earth itself, and the faint hope that his friends… his friends, aye, he dared use word… would find the satchel he’d left by the well and know he had not vanished by choice… but by malice… and to Harloeg. A place for them to start…
Whether he rotted in this cell or broke under the Stranger’s hand, that much at least would remain true… his friends. He realised it didn't matter how long it had been.
They'd find him, even if it would be too late.
You can find more stories related to this in the chronicle "Where Webs Whisper"
