Primordial Villain with a Slave Harem

Chapter 1902: Song of the Rebellion

The high council of the dwarven capital was in session.

It was always in session these days. The throne had sat empty since Ragnar’s fall, four claims had been filed against it, and the high clans had spent every night since shouting at each other across the council table at the crown of the city.

Lord Harrek of the Copper Vaults never got to finish his argument.

*CLANG!*

One anvil strike came up through miles of solid rock without losing an ounce of itself. Crystal rattled in the chandeliers, wine jumped in the lords’ cups, and every beard in the hall turned toward the floor.

”What in the deep was that?” a lord whispered.

”An anvil,” said another, barely louder. ”That was an anvil.”

Nobody argued. Every dwarf in the hall had been born over that sound, and dread crawled up through Harrek’s boots along with the echo, because an anvil was exactly the problem.

Stone ate sound. A hammer strike died within three floors of its own anvil.

Whatever had just driven a smith’s note through the bones of the whole world was mana beyond anything the mountain had ever held. And this very council had named the one creature with mana like that an enemy of the mountain only hours ago.

The council hall sat at the heart of it all, the highest chamber of a city carved in rings around a great central shaft. Beneath it hung the lords’ terraces, then the trade halls, then the crowded districts of the under-tier, gallery after gallery.

At the very bottom burned the royal smithy, whose forges lit the shaft from below like a sunrise kept in a well.

The lords had always found the glow beautiful. It was, after all, theirs.

Tonight the glow was climbing.

The war hymn rose with it, tens of thousands of voices dragging one melody up the great shaft until the council hall’s floor buzzed under Harrek’s boots.

”A tantrum,” Lord Mogrun declared across the council table, though he had to raise his voice to do it. ”Cut the coal to the low districts. They’ll remember their place by breakfast.”

”You cut their coal last week,” Harrek snapped. ”That’s half of why they’re singing.”

The great doors banged open, and a captain of the terrace watch stumbled through with a dent the size of a fist in his breastplate.

”My lords! The third gallery is gone!”

”Gone where?”

”Up, my lord! They’re coming up!” The captain’s voice broke in front of the most powerful dwarves alive. ”The tunnel-wardens joined them at the second landing! The lift crews cut their own chains and rode the counterweights down to join the mob! And the... the household companies are requesting orders!”

”Requesting orders.” Mogrun’s beard bristled. ”Against porters. How many rats can one stair hold?”

”All of them, my lord.” The captain had gone grey around his own beard. ”The under-tier is empty. Every district, every warren, every mine, empty! The watchers counted forty thousand on the processional stair and gave up counting when the royal smithy’s geomancers began widening it for them.”

The council hall took a moment to digest the number.

A third voice slid in from the side, oiled and reasonable, from a cousin of a cousin who held the thinnest claim to the empty throne and wore the strongest perfume in the room. His household soldiers guarded half the passes above the trade halls, and he never let the council forget it.

”Perhaps a gesture first, my lords. An amnesty. Rebellions are expensive, and dead laborers pay no levy.”

”They aren’t asking for amnesty,” Harrek said. He was watching the floor. The song had gotten louder. ”They want our blood. Wake the anchors.”

The order reached back past every clan at the table.

Sunk into the lintels and thresholds of the lords’ tiers sat anchor-stones of ancient dwarven master craft, ward-cores older than the council itself, laid by smiths whose names were etched into legend.

Their promise had held for all of recorded history: within a warded threshold, magic died. No spell had ever crossed one, from the meanest candle-spark to a king’s grand working.

The dwarves who owned everything had slept soundly behind that promise.

Around the hall and down every approach to the high terraces, the anchors woke. Ancient blacksteel drank mana for the first time in living memory, and rune-light crawled the doorframes and settled into a steady burn.

Harrek let out a long breath at the sight. ”Haaah... Magnificent. If only modern craftsmen were half this proficient.”

Around the table, lords who had been sweating into their collars began to remember how important they were.

”Our professional soldiers hold the lords’ tiers,” Mogrun said, loud enough to convince himself. ”And the old stones hold the halls. Let the long-ears’ pet monster come. In here he’ll be one man with a saber, and rabble is still rabble. Grind them on the processional stair and be done with it!”

Far below, beneath the war hymn, a new sound came up through the stone. Lord Harrek needed a moment to place it, because it was coming from the household companies’ positions.

It was screaming.

...

Three tiers below the council hall, on the great terrace of the processional stair, the household army of the high clans had chosen its ground well.

The processional stair was the capital’s one grand road, forty dwarves wide, climbing from the trade halls to the lords’ tiers past the statues of dead kings. Anything that wanted to reach the high clans had to come up it, and the terrace at its head was built to make sure nothing ever did.

Fifty thousand soldiers held it tonight. Shield-walls of steel and tower plate stood in ranks twenty deep across the terrace, crossbow lines packed every balcony above, and the entire rebellion was funneling toward all of it up one stair.

Every officer present had run the numbers and liked them. Their enemy was brave, furious, and made of smiths, porters, and miners. The companies were made of soldiers.

”First rank! ADVANCE!”

The shield-wall took one step down the stair.

The stair moved first.

Hidden in the rebellion’s front ranks, the royal smithy’s geomancers pressed their palms to the steps, and the stone answered the men who had shaped it their entire lives. The stairs beneath the descending shield-wall melted flat, steepened, and froze again as one polished chute.

Three hundred soldiers in full plate lost their footing at once. They rode their own shields down the length of the stair, a screaming avalanche of steel, and the rebellion’s front line stood waiting at the bottom with hammers raised.

The under-tier fell on them roaring. Hammers rose and fell, and what they left on the steps no longer looked like soldiers.

”GEOMANCERS!” an officer howled from the balcony rail. ”Find their geomancers! Counter-”

The rail turned to magma under his hands, and his howl chased it down into the shaft.

Below, at the foot of the stair, the crowd was parting around a man walking up.

He came unhurried, arms loose at his sides, dark armor breathing around him, two red eyes burning behind the visor.

A tide of molten rock climbed the stair with him, step over step, parting around every rebel boot and spreading wide around his own. Wind that had no business existing indoors screamed along the balconies, and frost webbed the statues of dead kings as he passed them.

The rebellion’s roar found its shape.

”THE VILLAIN!”

”LORD ELYSIAR IS WITH THE DWARVEN REBELLION!”