The Day the Music Died

The Day the Music Died
By: The song of the dead
This story was originally submitted to Mythic!

This is a tale of sadness and misery. This is a tale of the day the dwarves lost their land.

The legend is about a single dwarf, who was considered a fool, a disgrace to his clan, and for the full dwarvenkin. He used to spend his days outdoors, singing (or, as he used to say, speaking with the birds).

His name is lost, because he lost it in the days he was considered a disgrace, but in any case, he never took care about his name, because “birds don’t call me using a dwarf name”.

When that black day doomed the dwarven kingdom to the exile, the fight was crude and intense. Dwarfs are well known because their strength and fierce skills in battle, but they were treathened, and the battle was lost from the beginning. That day, a group of dwarven children (those called children by dwarfs) were trapped in a little passage, waiting for a certain death, when they hear a song. A song of blood and death, the song of someone who has died many times and still he waits for that last death to free his soul from doom.

A shadow emerged from the depths of the passage and charged those orcs who were trapping the children. There was nothing else but greenskin’s shouts, battle sounds and the sounds of fear and pain from the mountain itself. And the song. That sad song who talks about the death of the happy days and the illusion to continue living, a song sung by everybody who has lost his land.

The mighty warrior finished his work, cleared that passage and left rear (and in front of) him just a pile of dead corpses, and then he continued his way to the outside, still singing the dead of the hearth and the pain for the lost. There was no rage in that song, no vengeance thirst nor craziness, just plain dead at the end.

When the way to the freedom (if dwarfs are free out of our land) was clear, the children were able to see who helped them in that bloody day. They did not know his name. They had just been told he was a disgrace, a fool who ruined his clan’s honor because his mental illness, someone who did not deserve life as a dwarf.

This is the tale of a beginning. The beginning of an orphans’ clan. A clan born to fight for freedom, and freedom means the returning to their land. A clan who makes its battles singing a song, a song of dead, pain and blood. A clan of dwarfs who follow the path of a dwarf who did not live as a dwarf, but died like the best of them.