Mourning and Regret

[Hrokaz 631]

 

20th of Sun’s Smile, 2A 277Y

03/23/2026
POSTED BY:

Alaric Grimgold

First Admiral of the Ark Fleet Tagar Tazarak

ᛉᚨᛗᛖᚱᛞᚨᛉ ᚾᚨᚱ ᛚᚨᚱᛖᚢᚨᛉ

Mourning and Regret

Zamerdaz nar Larevaz
ᛉᚨᛗᛖᚱᛞᚨᛉ ᚾᚨᚱ ᛚᚨᚱᛖᚢᚨᛉ

 

Spoiler

 

 

The roar of the harbor had faded into a distant memory, replaced by the groaning of the iron hull and the slow, mournful churn of the steam engines beneath the deck. Below, where the light of the burning capital no longer reached, Alaric Grimgold stood alone.

The weight of centuries pressed more heavily upon him now than any armor ever had.

Piece by piece, he had removed it. The gilded plates, chased with the runes of his line. The mask, his clan’s proud, unyielding face to the world, set gently upon a crate as though it, too, were a relic of something already gone. Beneath it remained only the truth. Age, ruin, and endurance.

His hair, once the deep burnished gold of his forebears, now lay dulled to and streaked with ash. One eye, clouded and pale, caught the lanternlight like a dead moon. The other, still sharp, still burning, stared for a long while at nothing.

Or perhaps at everything. At the past. At the flames.

He had watched a kingdom be born.

He had watched it die.

Alaric drew in a slow breath, the air thick with oil and salt and the faint, clinging memory of smoke that had followed them out to sea. It filled his lungs, settled in his bones. It would never leave him now.

“The Fourth…” he murmured, though none were there to hear it.

He could still see it as it had been. The great halls of Arcas, hewn with purpose and pride. The clang of hammer on anvil, the chorus of a people reborn beneath the stone. He had been young then, by Dwarven reckoning, and fierce with it. A Legionnaire of Dungrimm’s own, marching beneath banners that still smelled of fresh dye and hope. The Under Kingdom had not yet known what it would become, only that it would endure.

And endure it had.

Through war. Through fire. Through the stubborn will of Dwarves who refused to fade.

He had stood there when Utak Ireheart’s triumph had lifted them from a kingdom beneath the earth to a Grand Kingdom among all others. He had felt the tremor of that declaration in his chest, like the first strike of a hammer upon a new-forged blade. He had believed then that it would last forever.

Alaric let out a low, rasping breath, something between a laugh and a sigh.

Fool.

No kingdom lasts forever. Not even those carved in stone.

His thoughts wandered, unbidden, to faces long gone. To Dorimnur; blood-brother, rival, fool, and kin. The arguments, the ambition, the bitterness that had seemed so vast at the time. How small it all seemed now, measured against the ruin of an entire people.

He remembered the deathbed. The clasp of hands. The forgiveness. Too late, and yet not too late.

“Ye were wiser than I, in the end,” Alaric muttered, voice low. Or perhaps they had both simply been old enough to see the futility of pride. He turned from the empty space and moved deeper into the lower deck, where a small shrine had been hastily erected. It was nothing compared to the temples he had once presided over, no towering pillars, no great braziers, no carved epics upon the walls. Only a simple altar of dark stone, its surface marked with the sigils of the Brathmordakin.

War. Death. Forge. The Ancestors.

He reached for the black diaphanous shawl laid beside it, drawing it slowly over his head. The thin fabric softened the harsh lines of his ruined face, casting it in shadow. In that moment, he was no admiral, no marshal, no relic of a fallen age.

Only a servant. Only a Dwarf before his gods.

Alaric lowered himself to one knee with a stiffness that spoke of long years and longer burdens. For a time, he said nothing. The silence stretched, filled only by the distant thrum of the engines and the creak of the ship as it cut through dark waters.

When he finally spoke, it was not with the booming authority that had once commanded legions, nor the measured cadence of a High Preceptor addressing the faithful. It was quieter, worn.

“Brathmordakin… hear me.” His good eye closed.

“I have given ye war. I have given ye death. I have given ye the work of my hands and the strength of my arm. I have crowned kings in yer names, and buried them beneath yer gaze. I have held to yer ways when others faltered.” His voice wavered, just slightly.

“And still… the Kingdom is gone.”

The words hung heavy in the dim space. Not accusation, not quite, but close enough to taste. Alaric’s brow furrowed beneath the shawl, his scarred hand curling slowly against the stone floor.

“Was it pride? Was it folly? Was it the failing of one King… or the failing of us all?”

He exhaled, long and slow.

“Nay. It matters not now.”

The sea had taken the answer, as it took all things in time.

What remained… was what came next.

He lifted his head slightly, clouded eye catching the faint flicker of the altar’s flame.

“There are Dwarves above, huddled like children in the dark. Scattered, kingless… broken from the stone that birthed them. A diaspora, cast upon the waves like ash.”

His jaw tightened.

“They look to me. They look to us.”

Not for glory or for conquest, but for something far more difficult...

Meaning.

“Tell me, then,” Alaric whispered, the edge of steel returning faintly to his voice. “What task do ye set before us now?”

The Brathmordakin did not answer in words. They never had.

They answered in burden, in trial, in the long, unyielding shaping of a people through hardship.

Alaric knew this. He had preached it. Lived it. Bled it.

And still, he waited.

In the silence, memory returned, not of halls or crowns, but of the island. Da Kirkja Gorix. The Holy Rock. The place where his clan had once hidden from the world, clinging to what remained when all else had fallen away. They had survived then, not by might, but by endurance.

A slow realization settled into him, as steady and inevitable as the tide.

“Not an end,” he murmured. “A tempering.”

His shoulders straightened, just slightly. A kingdom had been shattered, its people scattered, its legacy reduced to refugees and memory. But Dwarves were not defined by their halls… they were defined by what they built.

Alaric placed a scarred hand upon the altar.

“Then I will be yer hammer once more,” he said, voice firming.

“Not for a throne. Not for a crown. But for them.”

For the children above deck, who had never seen the old halls.

For the smiths who had lost their forges.

For the warriors who had no more walls to defend.

“For as long as breath remains in me… I will see them reforged.”

The flame upon the altar flickered, or perhaps it was only the movement of the ship. Alaric rose slowly, the years settling back upon him like a familiar cloak. For now, he turned toward the narrow stair that led back to the world above. To the refugees. To the sea. To whatever future awaited them beyond the broken chain of the Kunai waters.

Behind him, the small altar burned on in silence.

Before him, a people awaited their next beginning.