A Return

[Diamondedge]

The steel and chains of his full platemail rattled with every heavy step. His shield, bearing the standard of the great Dorand, Master of Crafts, scraped along the ground as he stepped, the heavy iron shield weighing his arm almost painfully so. His hammer, however, never touched the ground, never drew a path through the dirt road. He held his hammer high, up about chest height, carrying it for the whole of his journey up the road from Leilon proudly.

Now, at Haven, he had to pause, to look to the south, to the north, all around, to take in the majestic sight, the beautiful mountains tugging at the lad's heartstrings. Shrugging finally, he turned back down the road, heading toward his home once more. His beard was now a ragged silver, almost off white. Something was wrong with that, for sure; he hadn't aged nearly enough in his journey to have caused the great black, grey bespeckled beard, to become anything else than more grey-bespeckled. He gave a shake, and set his shield against the wall of the house. He reached into his pocket, and drew out the old key; the sacred item he hadn't lost, would never lose. Sliding it into the lock of his house, he turned it, and was relieved to find that his lock had not been changed; he hadn't been evicted.

Much exhaustion beat at his arms as he opened that door, pushed it open with his shoulder and walked in, muttering with his achey back troubling him. He stopped in the doorway and picked up his shield, chuckling quietly as he brought it in with him; foolish old git that he was, nearly forgot the sole thing that brought him home, that kept him alive long enough to turn back the goblins' spears, the orcs' axes, the bandits' knives. But now, he was home.

He noticed right away that all was as he had left it in his house. The old dwarf took two steps in and closed and locked the door behind him, looking around. Nothing had been touched. Nothing had changed; the rubble from the dismantling of that ludicrous fireplace was long swept away, perhaps by some homekeeper that a friend may have hired.

He removed his cloak and set it on a nearby hat-rack, before stretching widely. In a tempest fury, he began disassembling his plated shell of metal, dropping metal plate after metal plate to the ground. He kicked off his greaves and tossed his gauntlets to the floor. He tugged at the belt around his midsection, the one pinning his chain underhauberk to his body, and quickly removed that, as well. Over his head next was tugged the soft leather padding, the gentle tunic that kept the cold steel from breaking his body, and stood very much in the nude in his hallway, standing in those old sooty black pants. He smiled as he nodded, finally at ease, out of those damned plates.

He walked forward, and turned to go into his kitchen... and spied a large, ivory bathtub, sitting there in the middle of his kitchen, chauk full of water. A vein became quite prominent in his brow, over his eye. A shakey, tired hand grabbed at his hammer and he began to shudder violently. "Lestahr, ye durned halfwitted wizard! Ah'll chop yer treehouse down an' burn eht fer the pleasure o' burnen eht, ye... ye codger!"

It took him two feel strokes to destroy the tub of ivory, crumpling it into dust. The water spilled out over his everything and he growled, stepping back keenly to look at the mess. With a shrug, he decided he'd deal with it later; another time. He set the hammer down, head on the floor, haft against the wall, and dusted his hands. With a sniff, he went up to his bedroom, and began filling his bathtub with hot, hot water, pouring forth from the magical faucets. As his room began to fill with great steam, he went to his desk, pulling out a sheet of fresh parchment. He dabbed a quill in an ink bottle and drew four quick words in both the Dwarven script as well as the common. "Turor Sunderstone has Returned". At the bottom of this quick sign, he stamped it with his family's sigil, a sword's blade slicing through two halves of a triangle. In one of those triangles was the hammer of Dorand, and in the other, the axe of a long forgotten ancestor of the Sunderstones, the head of the line. All of this was encircled in a very even, perhaps perfect circle.

The sigil of the Sunderstones. Turor was back.

[cappyra]

*Derrick plodded along the road and then stopped. He turned his hooded head an sniffed the wind.

Nah... couldn't be... could it... bah nothin smells that bad.

Turor

"spose I b'er get brewin. That rascal be want'n ta drink fer sure. I hope he gathered a bit a gold in his travels. Har!"