The chill still had not left Dundale Stoutfoot's body. His eyes were stuck wide in shock as he stared at the blood still staining the floor and the cracked stone. These halls had been unchanged for generations, trampled by dutiful dwarves, tended and cleaned and carved lovingly with stories of their culture and history. Now they were marred with a death and destruction that his generation had never experienced.
A horrifying potential outcome crept into his brain, the one where the homicidal automaton had been accurately directed to the cells where Dundale had been. Hultgram, the brave sentry that directed that remorseless pile of machinery to the regular prisons, would receive the highest commemoration from the Stoutfoot family when it came time to pay respects. He rubbed his fingers into his palms, forcing feeling back into the digits.
Dundale closed his eyes and muttered a small prayer for the fallen sentry in particular, then for all the other dwarves who had been in the wrong place at the wrong time. Then, he raised his head and marched on to his destination.
Emergency cleaners and morticians clogged the hallways, making foot traffic have to use a detour through the boiler room. Dundale glanced around the milling crowds and caught far too many panic-stricken faces and tears. More than one angry voice cried, "We should have never allowed such scum into our home!"
Still shivering, Dundale cleared the detour and approached the Granite Room, the meeting room that Wurmdring Gleamhilt had claimed for the evening. All manner of Gear Guards and sentry groups had been gathered together. A sea of brown, black, and a smattering of blonde dwarves of all beard lengths jostled for a seat and grunted lowly to each other. Most attention fell to Tenstrad Eastrock, a Second Footer who had lost both of his brothers in the rampage. Tenstrad barely responded to anything, eyes drifting around the room in a haze of despair.
Wurmdring suddenly stood to his feet and the room hushed. The Fanged Guard examined all of his subordinates before announcing, "This day will always be remembered, comrades. The wound to New Romai is still fresh and oozing. Until the camera feeds can be examined properly, the proclamation of responsibility will be withheld. But I know my crew and I know that every last dwarf under the banner of the Guard did his duty to the fullest."
The vampire raised his head, jewelry clacking from his beard from the movement. "That being said, this automaton –Hoplite Thirty-Seven as it has been identified–is now public enemy number one. Its capabilities are far beyond expected. If reports are to be trusted, Hoplite Thirty-Seven slaughtered the Fanged Guard Nujet Baragal, apparently without weapons."
Horrified whispers circled the room.
Wurmdring continued stoically, "The fault cannot fall to any one of my dwarves not doing his duty against such a remorseless automaton. His power and ability outclass us on a scale we had not conceived. Therefore, once morning shift starts tomorrow, each group of sentries will be accompanied by a member of the Fanged Guard and must carry two radios. Each outpost at the Gear Doors must report at fifteen minute intervals with me and receive frequent visits by Fanged Guards throughout the shift."
"Needless to say, procedures will be followed to the letter now. No ale on the job, no breaks longer than forty-five minutes, and every abnormality must be meticulously documented. The Cavern's Gear Door will be given as high of security as we can give it with three Fanged Guards and Suits. I expect a Long Lord to linger by the Cavern's Gear Door to minimize potential casualties in case that metallic scourge tries to emerge once again. Any dwarf stationed there will be expected to do no less than perfect."
The dwarves all quietly nodded their heads. Guard duty had always felt like a throwaway position before, a job to do nothing and get paid for it. Now, brutal reality had shaped them into the first line of defense.
Dundale gulped and straightened his back. He would not crumble under the new weight or complain. Lives depended on him.
Wurmdring continued with a debrief for night shift's procedures and the promise of more information as it came to him. The vampire then softly concluded the meeting with the reading out the names of the dwarves confirmed dead, and said that close relatives of the fallen could take half a day off. With that, they were excused. Some dwarves raced out of the room to check on their families, others like Tenstrad didn't react.
Dundale lingered just outside the door, warring with himself what his next move should be. Part of him wanted to curl up in his bed, but deep down he knew he couldn't sleep. The other part wanted to find and dismantle Hoplite Thirty-Seven despite the certainty of death. The lure of Outworlder tech paled in comparison to the wanton death the automaton had wreaked. If there was a way to cause a machine pain, he would do it.
Approaching quietly, Wurmdring paused next to the First Footer. He hissed, "The First Prince entrusted you with a gift, I suggest you use it. Interrogate the bastards all night if you have to, Stoutfoot."
Dundale glared. The sentence was not a direct order, giving him some leeway to push back. "Our Outworlder prisoners have indicated loyalty as their defining trait. It would be foolish to push for information on Hoplite Thirty-Seven and risk destroying any chance at building rapport."
"Rapport." The vampire scowled. "Lesser races don't deserve-"
"They are given the illusion of sympathy and friendship, sir," Dundale corrected. "Of course they are lesser, but they must not feel that they are treated that way." A retort about how little his superior seemed to know about befriending someone popped up in his mind, but he held it back. One little gold shield did not mean he had gained any rank or could act insubordinate.
"So you'd prioritize the feelings of the prisoners over gleaning information about that metal menace?"
The dwarf shook his head, but he couldn't look Wurmdring in the eye. "It will be unwise to alert them to our loss. Keep them in the dark, hopeless that they cannot ever escape. Let that belief eat away at them. I will not give them the dream that their automaton could potentially free them."
That finally satisfied the Fanged Guard. He pulled at his long grey beard, playing with the ornaments and braids.
Something pestered Dundale in the back of his mind about the attack, but he had to find evidence to prove it before he could properly voice it. He felt at the little pin First Prince Megad had given him while sinking deep into thought. Before his superior could leave, Dundale asked, "Is there a chance I can see the footage of the fight?"
"We have many trained analysts. There's nothing a Footer like you could add to the conversation," he snorted.
"As a guard, we prioritize observation skills and picking out the fine details. What does it matter if the details are behind a screen?"
Wurmdring narrowed his red eyes. "Know your rank, Stoutfoot."
He bowed and acquiesced. "Yes, sir." He'd have to find eyewitnesses instead.
Ketbram and his engineers would be the first targets, but Dundale guessed that they already were being pestered by any number of vampires or even the Long Lord's themselves. It would take too long and might prove fruitless to pry at those witnesses. Other dwarves had encountered the murderous machine and had survived. Logically, the highest rate of retelling their stories would be at the nearest pub, more specifically the Watering Hole, known hangout of single male dwarves. He himself could use a good dose of ale. With that in mind, Dundale saluted his superior and turned down the familiar pathway.
It didn't take long for him to reach it, he knew the path like the back of his hand, but the same could be said of about the rest of New Romai. Any dwarf worth his ale could claim that; their perfect memories allowed as much. When he finally found the thin stone batwing door, he sighed, it had been a while since he'd been in here, it felt almost nostalgic seeing the carved illustration above the door. It depicted a strange beast, with four legs and hooves, two humps atop it's back as it drank greedily from a pond. Just beneath this carving were two words, Watering Hole.
He pushed through the batwing doors, the patrons not bothering to look at him as they buried their beards in mugs of strong ale. Almost every seat was filled, the stone tables littered with dozens of empty cups. The smooth rock counter at the other end of the room was much the same, every stool holding up a drunken occupant.
It took no time to overhear the tales of bravery and terror the ale brought from the mouths of the survivors. All patrons in the pub had gathered around a gaggle of infantry dwarves and offered them more drinks. Dundale slipped into the fringes of the group and listened carefully.
The heroes largely recounted their brave assault on the automaton, firing off the weapons with as much precision as they could muster, searching for weak points. The survivors happened to be on the fringes of the defensive line and had barely avoided being trampled.
One observer remarked to the sea of talkative drinkers, "It's clear to see which path Hoplite Thirty-Seven took, seeing as it destroyed every camera on the way."
"Maybe it hates cameras."
"Or it was programmed to limit how much it is monitored."
"But crushing everything by hand? Seems spiteful."
"I heard it had some sort of deception programming. What will the Outworlders think of next?"
"Shame we can't get ahold of such advanced tech."
"Did you see him running around with hostages?" One dwarf asked. "No one it grabbed survived the encounter. I think I heard talk that the machine was looking for the Pillar-Born."
"Thank the Long Lords it didn't find them. Can you imagine the collateral if they got out too?" Another asked, leaning back in his chair and shaking his head.
"And we should be glad that it didn't have any tracking or homing devices. It needed the monitor room and destroyed it after it got what it wanted."
"Good thing that we won't be seeing that menace again." A Second Footer grunted. "It went into No Man's Land. Can't say I've heard of a single living thing being able to return from the Caverns since the Great Quake two-hundred years ago."
"It's not living though, and it killed a Fanged Guard without guns."
"Still, nothing gets through those Caverns." A footer pointed out, receiving a chorus of nods.
"And the Long Lords themselves will be patrolling the only Gear Door into the Caverns." A sentry piped up. "Our losses today were great, but at least it will not be repeated."
"I'll drink to that." A dwarf announced and raised his mug. His fellows followed suit and toasted in unity.
Dundale's eyes narrowed as he stared into the amber-brown drink. Tidbits about Hoplite Thirty-Seven's movements and actions seemed slightly off. Granted, there was no way to predict what technology from another realm was capable of, so maybe Dundale was overthinking things. But a suspicion still brewed in the back of his mind all the same.
Once he finished his drink, he let his feet take him down the familiar path back to his home. He pulled out a small notebook from a pocket and jotted down the question he wanted to ask the prisoners when he could. He would have to ask it very carefully in the middle of an engaging conversation with guards lowered. Either he'd have to quickly gain the Outworlder's trust or attempt to pry the talkative Twindil for information… But it was a necessary bluff to pull.
Satisfied in seeing the words on paper, Dundale tucked it back into his pocket. The sentence turned around and around in his head as he prepared for bed. He approached his mirror, and asked himself the question in preparation for tomorrow.
"Is Hoplite Thirty-Seven the name of the man, or of the suit?"