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Night Two
Find someone who can help you. Someone who you can trust and send ahead to warn people. That had been the advice given to him, and now was the time to take action on it. As darkness fell, before he was required to be at the forge to meet about what to do, he waited and watched, hoping to find the one who could help him. But who could it possibly be? Most of the dwarves slunk off to their homes, bolting their doors behind them, as though that could keep them safe.
Then he saw the one. A dark, hooded figure standing in the shadow of an alley. He glanced up and down the street and then ran across, coming up behind the hood stranger silently.
“Friend, can you help me?”
The dwarf whipped about, and Galin turned his face away. “No, do not try to see me. It is better if you do not know me. But listen, I will bring word each night about this time of whom the Forge may seek to kill. I cannot promise that I will know, but it will be my best guess.”
“Why should your guess be any better than anyone else’s of who the Forge will kill?” the dwarf asked.
“Because I am one of them, but I am also the king’s messenger. So, hark, this night protect with your life. . .” and he whispered a name so low the other could scarcely hear. But he did hear, and he nodded.
“Good luck, friend,” Galin said, and turned away.
The debate at the forge was hot that night. They were angry and distraught, frightened at what Bom’s death foretold them. They knew they had to strike back, hard and swift, and sure, but how? The decision was not quite made and dawn was coming swiftly. “The first one we come to,” they decided. “Quickly now, we must be ready to face them come day break.”
They leaped up, loosed their daggers in their sheaths as they went and exited into the cold open air.
They almost immediately caught sight of the same hooded dwarf Galin had spoken to. Galin recognized the dwarf at once, and he stopped dead in his tracks, struck dumb with horror as his campanions hurried on, locked into their kill.
It was over quickly, and the body was left in the street. When the first dwarvish citizen dared to open his door and peek his beard out, he found the cloaked body of one of their women. He drew back the hood.
It was Wilwarin.
Alive
Sally
Inzil
Nerwen
Boro
Galadriel
Eruhen
Glirdan
Finduilas
Rikae
McCaber
Pitchwife
the Phantom
Mithalwen
Dead
Folwren - Moddess
Bom - Member of the Valley Forge
Wilwa - Night Watchdwarf
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