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Dismay and distrust was common through the dwarven village that day. Few dwarves felt they could trust any of their neighbors enough to believe anything said. This day, many of them spoke, and no one dwarf made any case noticeably louder than another. And yet, even without one dwarf pushing the thoughts and actions of the others, they seemed to move together, as though led by some unseen force.
How it started, no one quite knew, but it became evident that one dwarf woman had fallen under much distrust.
“It is not me! It cannot be me! It is him, I tell you,” Gal said, pointing towards the dwarf she suspected, “he’s not normal, I know him and he hasn’t been acting normal today! Why don’t you distrust him? Why do you distrust me?”
“A strange hunch, you know?” a dwarf replied with a shrug. “We haven’t much else to go on.”
“Brilliant. So you’ll help the Forges by knocking me off, will you? That won’t do the lot of you a bit of good. Look, it’s him, I know it is – and the loud one who spoke yesterday.” She craned her neck to look for the dwarf who had led most of the debate the previous day. “One of them, probably both of them, are the one’s you’re looking for.”
“We’ve had enough talk,” a dwarf growled. “Let us do away with her.” He moved threateningly towards her, and the crowd murmured their approval. They were becoming dangerous and violent.
“She is a woman, let us put her to death in a gentler way than Bom,” someone suggested.
“Gentler death? It all ends up the same doesn’t it?”
The dwarf ignored the protest, and stepped up to the condemned dwarf. “Will you submit to death, or must we bind you?”
“Take me,” she spat out. “I will not fight. I am not a coward. But stay – let us to the river and there I will take my own life.” She pushed through the mob and they parted before her and then followed as she went to the bridge that spanned the mighty river running down from the mountain. There she turned and climbed onto the stone wall. She faced the dwarves standing at the far end of it, and then she leapt, jumping to her death in the water and the stones below.
Later in the evening, her body was washed up on the shore some miles down from the village. A passing dwarf found her, and he looked, surprised. The sleeve of her shirt had been torn by the rocks and the current, and on her shoulder was a brand he only recognized from rumors he had heard, and it made him shiver, for he thought wrongly that the Valley Forge had found another victim.
Alive
Sally
Inzil
Nerwen
Boro
Eruhen
Finduilas
Rikae
McCaber
Pitchwife
the Phantom
Mithalwen
Dead
Folwren - Moddess
Bom - Member of the Valley Forge
Wilwa - Night Watchdwarf
Glirdan - Ordo
Gal55 - Member of the Valley Forge
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