The taskmaster’s head struck the mine floor in a shower of his own teeth. A downward swing of a mining pick kept him from rising. Dhormir cleared the body and stopped only long enough to wrench the pick free of its morbid sheathe before he ran further into the labyrinthine tunnels. Even those few seconds represented unaffordable luxury.
The upper levels of Blackrock Mountain raged with rebellion and war. Queen-Regent Moira led armed uprising against the minions of Ragnaros to reclaim freedom for the Dark Iron. Word trickled through the cracks of the mountain with promise that any who aided her cause would be rewarded, be they slave or nobility. The slave-miners fought their way to the upper reaches, clashing against armored taskmasters and fire elementals, with aching muscles drunk on vengeance and a deeper need to escape the lava flows overtaking the lower tunnels.
The Firelord would see the whole mountain consumed than to see it taken.
Dhormir Ironmantle rushed into the flaming bowels of the mountain while his kin fought upward. This left him with only a bare token of resistance, but the ravenous magma flows crept ever onward. Time, not the taskmasters, posed the larger threat. Still, he rushed on. Behind him, blood-specked footprints on the mine floor marked the long strides of his passing. Blisters wept through clenched fists and ached against loose rocks on the mine floor, but the dwarf long ago accustomed himself to pushing through the pain. Those who did not fed the core hounds.
There were things more important than freedom, victory, or pain. Some types of vengeance required more than a Queen-Regent’s vague promises.
He knew the path like a lover’s curves. The memory of it rested in his mind as deeply and steadfast as the mountain into which he’d carved. Beads of sweat trickled through the dust and blood covering his face. A distant glow from the tunnel ahead warned of molten death. Dhormir suddenly turned off from the main tunnel, but the ravenous heat followed at his heels. Two more turns, with tunnels growing rougher and shorter. By the time he reached the small room, Dhormir raced on hands and knees.
The pitiful nature of the place belied the years of digging to carve it; years of sneaking away with discarded picks, little better than nubs, to sacrifice sleep for memory and hatred. Barely enough for three dwarves to fit, and only if they knew each other well. The ceiling was low, and bit deeply into forgetful shoulders. Yet, nowhere in the whole of the mountain held as much importance to Dhormir as that tiny room. If he died in the attempt, he could go to his ancestors knowing he died well.
Calloused hands struck a match. Even as precious as oxygen could be so far underground, he wanted to see it one last time.
The whole of the room lay covered in runic script. Painstakingly carved in letters nearly too small to read by sight, each wall, the ceiling, and floor held not a single unused inch of rock. The story of his family, the lives of his ancestors, laid out from the beginning of their scrolls to the modern day–or, at least, what he knew since being chained. While his father, mother, and sister yet lived, he took every story told and recorded it in this dark place. The records of their libraries were burned when the plans of rebellion were discovered. Dhormir refused to allow his family’s history to be lost to the ages but, despite his best intention, it now seemed it would be lost to the lava flows. He scanned the record, trying to commit to memory what he could.
Important as the stories were, they were not why he returned while others fled.
In the back of the room, kept in clay vases hidden within recesses carved into large rocks, lay the precious few family records he knew to exist. Paid for by heavy bribes and heavier shame, he’d managed to smuggle them, parchment by parchment, into the bowels of the mines. Some were lost in the attempt, and the aching voids they left would never know peace nor rest. The names of his father, his father’s father, going back to the very founding of the Ironmantle name, scratched to parchment by hands untouched by a mining pick in generations. The family became soft. The whole of the Dark Iron became soft. But the fiery coming of Ragnaros offered a single blessing; they were soft no longer.
The clay vessel scratched against the floor as he pushed it aside. Behind it, lay the true prize.
Dhormir lifted the lid to find not the records of his family line, but the records of an off-shoot of cousins and aunts and uncles belonging to the Steelmantles. They, along with the Ironmantles and a dozen other families, met in secret so many years passed to plot the end of the Firelord. Months of planning, promises, secret dealings, and blood oaths laid the foundation for rebellion. The old ways of the family were found, giving hope and strength to those who neglected forgotten rituals. Dhormir became the first to don the Iron Mantle since his great-grandfather. A cloak of iron rings, heated to piercing white, placed upon his shoulders and requiring ten paces be taken before its removal. The brand marked him still, though blemished by the cruelty of whips and the anger of knives. Even if they lost, the Ironmantle name would be reborn in fiery fury for the briefest moments before being snuffed out forever.
The chance to lose never came. The Steelmantles, surrendering to second thoughts, betrayed them to the Firelord. They received all the family properties, money, records, and artifacts in reward for their betrayal. The rest, unrepentant or otherwise, were put down in the Ring of Law, fed to core hounds, tossed into lava flows, or banished to the mines in chains. Their faces visited Dhormir in his dreams, watching as they signed treatises and took ownership of that for which they would not fight, while his family were dragged through the streets of Shadowforge. But, faces were not enough. He needed names of those who grew fat on the Firelord’s teat.
He picked up the vase and cradled it in his arm like a newborn babe. A brief glance he offered to the vase which contained the history of his family. He could carry both, potentially, but that would require he leave the mining pick behind. Crude as a weapon it was, a crude weapon is better than none. So much would be sacrificed if he did not bring it with him, yet all would be lost if he stumbled across one of the patrols. Dhormir bit a thumb and rubbed it against the side of the vase, until the crest of his family peeked through the years of dust and grime. His cracked thumbnail traced the outline, blood seeping and mingling into the rock. Then, with a gaze elsewhere directed, Dhormir Ironmantle shook out the match and left the room for the final time. He took the mining pick with him.
The Ironmantle name would be lost to flame, he accepted, but the Steelmantles would be lost to fury.