A Thief’s Bargain & The Exile’s Price

Days bled into weeks in the cold, damp blackness of the Undercroft prison cell. King Throrin Goldfist, stripped of his finery and his crown, was left with nothing but the gnawing emptiness of his losses and the consuming fire of his undiminished greed. He no longer raged against the stone walls; instead, a low, unsettling cunning had settled in his eyes. He spent hours tracing invisible maps on the damp floor with a broken fingernail, muttering to himself about "the Unseen Hoard," "the Dragon's Tear Ruby," and "the Mithril Vein of Midnight." His gluttony, denied its vast kingdom, had simply refocused, becoming a sharp, desperate point aimed at escape and reclamation.

His gaze often fell upon one of the younger guards, a dwarf named Borin – not Borin the Younger who had vanished in the Deep Deeps, but another of the same name, a distant cousin perhaps, whose eyes held a certain restless flicker when talk of treasure inadvertently arose amongst the guards. Throrin, a master of avarice in others as well as himself, recognized the nascent seed of it in the young dwarf.

One moonless night, as Borin brought him his meager ration of hard bread and water, Throrin’s voice, a dry whisper, snaked out from the shadows. “You yearn for more than this drab existence, don’t you, boy? For the gleam of true gold, the fire of real gems?”

Borin started, looking around nervously. “The Elders say such thoughts led to your own downfall, ex-King.”

“The Elders are fools who fear what they cannot control,” Throrin hissed, his eyes glittering like chips of obsidian. “They locked away a fortune that could make a hundred generations of dwarves richer than any king. But I know of another cache, Borin. A small, secret emergency hoard. King’s ransom gems, untraceable, known only to me. Enough to make you a lord in some distant hold, far from this dreary rock. Help me from this cage, and half of it is yours.”

The young dwarf’s breath hitched. He tried to feign disinterest, but Throrin saw the flicker of covetousness ignite. For days, Throrin worked on him, dripping promises like molten gold into the cracks of Borin’s ambition. Finally, Borin succumbed.

Under the cover of a lax midnight watch, the cell door creaked open. The escape through shadowed back-tunnels and forgotten maintenance shafts was tense, Throrin moving with a surprising agility for his bulk, driven by the singular vision of freedom and riches. As they reached a small, concealed postern gate leading to the wild mountain passes, Borin, sweating and anxious, turned to the former king.

“The gems, Sire?” he whispered, his hand outstretched. “Our bargain?”

Throrin Goldfist stopped. A terrifyingly serene smile touched his lips, a sight more chilling than any of his previous rages. “All riches have a price, boy,” he said, his voice soft, almost gentle. He reached into a tattered fold of his prison rags, not for a sack of jewels, but for a jagged shard of granite he had patiently scraped from his cell wall and sharpened to a deadly point. “And mine,” he continued, his eyes suddenly blazing with the old, familiar fire of possessive wrath, “are mine alone!”

Before Borin could react, Throrin lunged, plunging the crude weapon into the young dwarf’s throat. Borin gurgled, his eyes wide with shocked betrayal, and collapsed, his own dream of riches extinguished in a pool of his own blood.

Stepping over the body without a second glance, Throrin fumbled under a loose stone near the gate – a true, tiny hiding place he’d used in his youth – and retrieved a small, surprisingly heavy leather sack. It contained a handful of truly exceptional, easily portable gemstones he had secreted away years ago, a king’s emergency fund.

Clutching his meager, blood-stained treasure, Throrin Goldfist slipped out of Mount Hearthstone. He was a hunched, furtive figure disappearing into the cold, uncaring darkness of the mountain wilderness, a pariah consumed and defined by his sins. Behind him, the citadel remained, its heart forever scarred by the reign of its gluttonous king and the eternal, ominous silence from beneath the great sealed stone. The last King of the Goldfists was an exile, his only companions the cold weight of his ill-gotten gems and the howling emptiness of a greed that had cost him everything.