This is the story of Thikut Omudib, "Crushedsyrups," who served briefly as a Recruit in the Bentknife militia before becoming the latest victim of the Curse of Bentknife.
Thikut came to Bentknife in 266, 60 years old and in her prime. At the Mountainhome, her role had been assisting the doctors in the hospital with feeding and cleaning the patients. She had rarely been sick a day in her life, so work as a nurse was ideal for her, although she lacked the patience for any serious study of medicine. Although she worked diligently, her work was undemanding; dwarves are hardy, self-reliant creatures by nature, and only the most seriously sick or injured needs or wants any more than superficial care. As a result, she arrived in Bentknife lacking any real skills to set her aside from the peasantry. As basic care of the injured is a required activity for all dwarves in Bentknife, and the lack of skilled doctors means anyone seriously injured doesn't live long anyway, Thikut was, against her will, drafted into the militia.
Upon reporting for duty, Thikut was told that there were no weapons available, but she should begin training as a wrestler in anticipation of the day a superior might fall and she would be allowed to inherit a weapon of her own. She reported to basic training as ordered, but before she could even don a set of training armor, the alarm sounded throughout Bentknife -- goblins were at the gates!
Thikut was the first to rush out the door and meet the incoming hordes. Her commanding officer shouted to her that she had no combat experience, and that she should stand down and allow the armed and armored soldiery to handle the invaders, but Thikut paid them no heed. She charged the first goblin she saw, an ugly little green creature wielding a knife nearly as tall as it was. Thikut went into a combat stance that a soldier had once demonstrated for her in the hospital and swung her fist forward with all her might.
The goblin laughed, and in one easy swipe of its knife took her left hand off at the wrist. Thikut screamed in collapsed on the ground, struggling to remain conscious and pinching the artery shut with her remaining hand. The other goblins advanced into Thikut's comrades and the skirmish commenced around them. Despite the crash of the goblin's copper weapons against the dwarves' iron armor, and the screams and gouts of blood as the dwarven weapons pierced green flesh and shattered goblin bone, Thikut could hear nothing but the beat of her own heart, ticking her life away. The goblin standing over her sneered at her feeble attempts to stem the flow and rammed its dagger into her right arm near the elbow, severing a tendon and causing it to go completely limp. As she watched her blood pumping uselessly onto the ground, the laughing goblin took a crossbow bolt in the throat and spun over backwards in a heap. At that point, though, Thikut was too far gone to even take satisfaction in its death.
She awoke a week later in Bentknife's ramshackle hospital, having been dragged there by some kindly dwarf after the fight. She said a prayer of thanks to Ral, the Goddess of Earth, and Doren, the God of Minerals, for lending her the endurance of stone. A hospital worker noticed she was awake and wandered over, explaining that a doctor in training had somehow managed to sew her back up, but that nobody had really expected her to survive. News of Thikut's recovery spread through the fortress in an instant, and everyone agreed that it was truly miraculous that their new arrival had been spared by the greenskin menace.
All was not well with Thikut, however. She was extremely troubled by the loss of her left hand, and tried her best not to let it show to the stream of well-wishers who visited her bedside to introduce themselves and perhaps share in the blessing of the gods. Most of the visitors attempted to cheer her by reminding her that anything a dwarf really needs to do can be done with one hand anyway. She smiled and laughed, attempting to play along, but a new realization was beginning to dawn: she had completely lost the use of her right hand. Even her elbow was stiff, but the hand just hung limply. None of the visitors seemed to notice, and Thikut remained in bed for another few weeks, hopeful that it would heal on its own.
After a time, the hospital workers began to give her funny looks, since she remained there despite having demonstrated the ability to walk and feed herself. Before leaving, she asked the chief medical dwarf to take a look at her arm. A brief examination confirmed her fear: the goblin's knife had severed a motor nerve in her arm, and she would forever be without the use of her only remaining hand.
Dejected and filled with despair, Thikut wandered the halls of Bentknife. The chief medical dwarf had promised to keep his knowledge a secret, and Thikut told no other dwarves about her condition. Seeing her listless and jobless, they simply assumed she was still shaken up by the loss of her hand. Thikut was still able to feed herself, but she had to eat her meals off of the floor, and drinking wine from a barrel was even more of an embarrassing ordeal. For all her fellow dwarves pitied her, they'd had no experience with cripples; every similar injury had ended shortly in death. When Thikut was able to remove her bandage and consider her smooth stump, she was amazed at how little she felt.
For the next five years, Thikut wandered around Bentknife without purpose or personality. New migrants at times mistake her for a ghost, though she eventually became known to every citizen of Bentknife as a sort of sad joke, a lesson to children about the value of hard work and what can happen to someone who doesn't work hard enough. Thikut's old squadmates couldn't understand why she refused to pick up a weapon and spar with them; every time they passed, they would cajole her into joining them in the practice room. She would slowly wander in and stare at the weapon rack soundlessly. She would reach her stump out to the weapons and imagine that she was holding them, standing there for hours living out imaginary glories. Eventually, though, the squad became too disturbed by her behavior, and she was asked to stay out of the barracks.
Thikut sought to end her misery several times, but each of the ways out of Bentknife and into the snowy wilderness was closed with a door that she could not, without a working hand, open. The goblin arena that had been constructed in the caves under Bentknife was closed to her as well, though she tried to have the Arena Overseer let her in to make her last stand. Friendless and alone, Thikut realized at last that there would be no easy release from her misery, and merely took to standing in Bentknife's front hallway, awaiting nothing.
Over the years, the constant military campaigning took its toll, and Thikut's old squadmates died and were replaced by fresh, able recruits from the Mountainhome. The new migrants to the fort did not know of Thikut's divine recovery; in fact, a new training regimen was in place at Bentknife, and the idea of an untrained recruit charging into battle was as ridiculous to them as an elf butcher. The consensus among the new blood was that, whatever her suffering had been, Thikut's injuries had been her own fault. They were tired of her disturbing presence in the hallway. The new mayor of Bentknife, Roderducim "Baldnesswork," heard their words and understood that, if he wanted to win the next election, he would have to do something about the Living Ghost of Bentknife. Too many dwarves had lost loved ones to the goblin hordes to spare any sympathy for a wretch with only one hand.
One day, as Thikut stumbled into the food storage hall and knelt down next to a barrel of prickle berry wine, eight hardy dwarves slipped into the hall behind her. She struggled with the barrel's spigot as usual, trying to tilt the barrel enough for her to catch some wine without spilling too much on the floor of the hall. She paid no heed to the eight dwarves carrying large stone blocks in their arms. She finally managed to get the wine flowing at just the right rate, closed her eyes and tilted her head back to enjoy its flavor, one of the last true pleasures in her life. Suddenly, she heard the sound of eight stone blocks slamming into place. Her eyes snapped open, but she found herself in total darkness. She quickly adjusted to the lower light and saw that she had been closed in on all sides by stone walls. Ever ignorant of the reactions other dwarves had to her presence, she assumed that there had been a freak cave-in, and that rescue would be coming shortly. At any rate, she had ample prickle berry wine to last her until the miners were able to dig through. She thought about banging her arm against the walls, but realized that it would be painful and pointless, considering the poor design of a stump for any sort of hammering. She settled in to wait.
Weeks passed, but no sign of rescue came. She had long since given up crying out for aid; she couldn't hear any traffic through the thick stone walls anyway, so it was likely, if dwarves were on the other side, that they could not hear her. Starvation began to sap at her will, as even the best-brewed prickle berry wine lacks the nutritional content of a good biscuit. She began to move less and less. Eventually she accepted that no rescue was coming, at first believing that the other dwarves must have assumed her killed in the collapse. Her voice completely gone from shouting for help, she could do nothing but listen...and then she realized she could hear the sounds of activity all around her. She started to cry, then, when she knew they had sealed her in purposely. She looked back on her time at Bentknife and saw that she had been nothing but a fool and a burden. Her last thoughts, as starvation took her, were of her days of toil and labor at the Mountainhome, cleaning linens and changing bandages; the last time in her life she felt useful.
One week later, a full two weeks longer than the chief medical dwarf had said Thikut would be able to survive without food, the builders took down their walls. They found Thikut, emaciated and pale, lying on the floor next to the empty wine barrel. She had lines of mold growing on her face where it had been streaked by tears, and her stump had swollen with bodily fluids to grotesque proportions. But when they flipped her over, they found her right hand clenched into a fist, and knew that she had been unyielding to the end.
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