Gondolin plummeted headfirst—this he remembered with brutal clarity, for as he fell, his face pressed squarely against Rose the whore's buttocks. And that sensation—one he would find himself recalling in quiet moments long after—ultimately preserved his life.
If not for the screams from the street below and the scalding steam that filled his ears, Gondolin might have imagined himself back in his bunk at Cynthia Palace, blissfully asleep and ignoring Gamlin's bellowed orders. The dwarf heaved himself upright, one hand braced against a woman's flesh, and expelled a ragged cough.
Screams saturated the air. He recognized they weren't mourning the woman's descent, but rather the boiling water, the cold steel, the hungry flames. Several panicked townsfolk trampled across Rose's back, apparently oblivious to the human form beneath their feet. Her treasure chest had tumbled several yards away; that stomach of wood which had swallowed gold and jewels had regurgitated a meager offering onto the cobblestones—rings adorned with multicolored gemstones, scattered like waystones upon the street. An elderly woman cowering in the corridor of the opposite tenement licked her lips, then, heedless of the Imperial soldiers who might sever her head for the transgression, darted into the open and gathered the rings into her grasping hands.
The dwarf had expected the sight of the treasure to spark a riot, the panicked townspeople tearing each other apart for a share, maybe even trampling him to death in the chaos. His contingency plan formed the instant his face peeled away from the whore's posterior, his hand instinctively finding the hatchet secured at his back. Yet the coffer proved more miserly than its keeper—yielding only a few rings and chains before refusing to surrender more. Gondolin waded through the slickened blood and approached Rose. Gently, he lifted her face; the shattered nose was masked in crimson, fresh droplets steadily descending. He exhaled heavily. (Wasn't this pointless.) (Surely she was already dead.)
There were fewer Godman soldiers in the street than Gondolin expected, and none seemed to pay much mind to the whore and the dwarf who'd just fallen out of the sky. They were far more concerned with the other things still raining down on them. Before his expeditious descent atop another's broken body, the thoroughfare had been congested with armored men. (Where did they go?) He executed a slow, bewildered rotation, like some provincial tourist gawking at city sights—then his breath caught in his throat. The wall of the washerwomen's building was freshly painted—a gruesome mural of crimson splatters and pale, glistening viscera.
He seized his axe, instantly banishing thoughts of Rose and her coffer. Within the tenement's modest courtyard, the slaughter crescendoed. Stone benches served as makeshift biers for the contorted corpses of tenants. A cluster of dwarven sentries at the gate battled furiously against Godman soldiers, while residents who had been queuing for escape were methodically butchered where they stood.
Hard Stone pirouetted with lethal precision, his massive scimitar seeking vulnerable hips and thighs. This targeting strategy wasn't born of inability to sever throats—merely an acknowledgment that such strikes required additional time and exposed his flank. The blade was unmistakably dwarven craftsmanship, possessed of an edge that defied description. Even layered in cured leather armor, Godmans were eviscerated beneath its arc, their entrails spilling forth like macabre offerings. Gondolin vaulted onto a bench, launched himself skyward once more, and buried his axe deep into the nape of a Godman's neck. Hard Stone picked up a knight—choking on his own blood—and tossed him into the cistern. The pool had become a swimming hole for the dead. "Gondolin!" Hard Stone scooped a handful of the reddened water and smeared it across his face, a futile attempt to cleanse the gore. "Upstairs! They remain above!"
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Gondolin observed with grim fascination as his companion merely redistributed the blood across his features. "Rally here!" he commanded sharply. "The gate! We consolidate our forces at the gate!" Hard Stone had already charged away, scimitar leading his advance, disappearing into the chaotic press of bodies.
The dwarf had never ascended so many flights in succession. Sporadic skirmishes along the stairwell diverted his attention and disrupted his count, causing him to lose track despite his whispered enumeration. After completing a fruitless circuit of the fifth floor, he heard it—a scream that could only belong to a dwarf. His breath abandoned him. One hand clutched desperately at the wall while the other seized the rings of his mail shirt. He recognized that agonized cry—Off-Key's distinctive voice. When Gamlin had removed her from her grandfather's care, she had wailed with identical despair. Gamlin, his uncle, had sworn to Off-Key's grandfather that he would make her a true warrior—brave, honorable, fierce—the absolute opposite of that spineless Hovek Browal Harowink they called the "Shell-less Snail." A warrior who, lacking a cock, could still stand rigid with fury and battle-fever. With that final, terrible scream, every aspiration and future possibility seemed to dissolve into nothingness. (She was still on the path to becoming an exceptional warrior.) He clawed his way up the final flight. (And upon that very path, another warrior extinguished her life.)
The same landing. The same corridor. The same chamber. Yet Gondolin instinctively understood that nothing remained unchanged. He drove his boot against the door. The room's arrangement appeared largely unaltered; the kitchen area remained in its familiar position, with various vessels still adorning the countertop, though significantly depleted. The stark difference was Christine, bent forcibly over the hearth, skirt violently hiked to her shoulder blades, legs unnaturally splayed, only the very tips of her toes maintaining contact with the floorboards. Behind her stood a gaunt Godman soldier devoid of helmet or mail. He accelerated his rhythmic hip thrusts with increasing fervor. The sounds escaping Christine's lips contained no vestige of desire or pleasure—only raw, unbridled agony. He was violating her.
The same door concealed another threat. Gondolin instinctively ducked. Unlike Rose's previous attack, this assailant didn't slash—he delivered a powerful kick directly to the dwarf's abdomen. The impact propelled Gondolin across the entire room, culminating in a bone-jarring collision with the opposite wall. His midsection surrendered to numbness; his mail armor seemed to have been forcibly embedded into his internal organs, leaving an impression upon his very heart. "So there's another dwarf present." The human who had orchestrated the ambush wore minimal protection—merely a leather jerkin—with a longsword his only armament. His unkempt hair suggested years of neglect. His expression conveyed an unhinged mirth, reminiscent of a proper dwarf's countenance after consuming two substantial kegs of Riss-brewed ale. "Absolutely hilarious, isn't it? Don't you agree?" Gondolin couldn't discern his intended audience. His companion remained engrossed in his rhythmic violations, occasionally entangling his fist within Christine's hair, as though breaking a particularly spirited mare. Movement stirred in the corner shadows. It was the other washerwoman, wrapping torn strips of her own dress around herself, trying to cover her nakedness. Evidently, she had been subjected to the intoxicated man's attentions—until the dwarf's intrusion disrupted their perverted entertainment. "Observe, dwarf," the drunken man announced, swinging the door closed while indicating the female dwarf affixed to its surface. "What's your assessment of our decorative addition?"
Off-Key had been cruelly impaled against the wooden door by fire-tongs thrust completely through her body. "Wasn't easy pinning her up like that, dwarf," the man remarked, tapping the tongs with a casual finger. Off-Key didn't move. "Took her a while to die. Didn't know dwarf cunts were so tough. Respectable, in a way! Course, the tongs were red-hot, so she put on quite a song and dance for us first. Neck's nearly cooked through, gods above!"
