omnicat | FIC: Geg means Insect [Death Gate Cycle, Haplo & Dog]

Title: Geg means Insect
Author: Omnicat
Rating: K+
Genre: General
Spoilers & Desirable Foreknowledge: Book 1; Dragon Wing
Warnings: Angry Haplo. Haplo’s somewhat messy thoughts magnified. Nothing really unusual, actually, but I thought I should warn you. c:
Pairings: None.
Disclaimer: I do not go by the names Tracy Hickman or Margaret Weis. Therefore the Death Gate Cycle and its earnings aren’t mine.
Summary: One–shot ficlet. Haplo’s point of view, his feelings about the Gegs. ...‘Haplo would have never thought he could be so disgusted about anything other than a living, breathing Sartan.’...
Author’s Note: Set during Dragon Wing, when Haplo travels around Drevlin with Jarre and Limbeck to promote the revolution, before Alfred, Hugh and Bane crash in the Lower Realm. I’ve used various sentiments expressed by Haplo throughout the book, added my own input and combined them. So it’s your own decision whether you consider this OOC for the time it is set in, or not. Enjoy!

Geg means Insect

Haplo would have never thought that he could be so disgusted by anything other than a living, breathing Sartan. He did have to hand that to the Gegs. But all it had taken was a Sartan rune for obedience and submission on one of the plates of scrap metal serving as floorboards. At that moment, he loathed everything about them.

He had to fight to keep his subdued composure perfect, because if the rage he felt was uncovered to the Gegs around him, they’d surely panic and flee and talk, and Haplo did not want to have to find a solution to that problem. So instead of tearing his hand from that of the Geg in front of him, like he wanted to, he shook it and smiled calmly, while inside he wanted to gag at the touch.

Gegs... Insects.

The dwarves did not realise how they so proudly called themselves, but Haplo had recognized the elfin word. It was fitting. Haplo was inclined to think the dwarves deserved the way they were treated. What he proclaimed in his speeches everywhere on this island was true, in a way: the Gegs and the Patryns had suffered a somewhat similar fate, though the cruelty of their respective prisons was proportional to the power of the people captured in them.

The Patryns had fought, and were still fighting, with tooth and nail, spear and rune, against the Labyrinth. Throughout the countless generations Haplo’s people had spent in that hellish world, they had not ceased fighting the Sartan, no matter what their creation had thrown at them. The Sartan had made a dangerous miscalculation concerning their enemies; the Patryns’ hatred for them had only grown because of the hardships and the horrors they had to face in the Labyrinth. The Patryns had not kneeled for the Sartan, had not accepted them as their masters - because they were not. The Sartan and the Patryns were of equal power, and if anything, the Patryns, who were ruthless and ambitious, should be the ones to rule.

Here, of course, lay the difference between the Gegs and the Patryns. The Gegs were mensch; inferior species. It was only natural that superior species would submit them and rule over them. Their current state only proved this further.

But it shouldn’t be like this.

Sadness welled up in Haplo as he watched the descendants of the proud, feisty dwarves flock around him in the spacious room, a hall the Kicksey-winsey had created not a fortnight ago and abandoned immediately, leaving a block of houses uninhabitable for seemingly nothing. It was a weakness, such a feeling in the heart of a Patryn, so he quickly tried to suppress it, but only managed to cover it with a layer of boiling disgust and icy hatred.

The dwarves had once been full of fire, blazing like a busy smithy, but they had let themselves be quashed and numbed by the Sartan. No, even worse - they had let their fire die out in the misery of heavy and monotonous labour for a Sartan machine. Haplo saw no way they could have been forced into this existence by the other mensch; they would have fought - they should have fought - for their every shred of honour and every foot of land they saw as rightfully theirs. But they hadn’t, and now the dwarves, who used to be able to give the Patryns a run for their ‘monna’ when it came to fistfights without the use of magic, panicked and whined over a black eye or a nosebleed.

Haplo’s chest tightened and a shudder ran though him. He wanted to draw runes of mass-destruction, to bring down the hall, the cluster of buildings around it, the tunnels underneath, and destroy the limbs of the Kicksey-winsey in such a wide radius that it would be noticeable in the capitol!

Instead, he retreated to the corner where Jarre, Limbeck and a small group of Geg revolutionaries were making their final preparations, crouched down with his back against the wall, and stroked the ears of the dog, which had followed obediently. The animal whined contentedly as Haplo’s emotions settled down.

The dwarves should have gone down fighting. They should not have admitted defeat and giving up, should not have submitted to their disgraceful fate. This degeneration... it just wasn’t right.

The dog looked up at him, and Haplo saw his own eyes, like cold blue fire, reflected in the warm, compassionate brown ones of the dog.

"We’ll save them," these-brown-and-blue eyes seemed to say. "We’ll return their pride to them, their hope."

Haplo snorted and patted the dog’s flank.

"Don’t get your hopes up, boy," he muttered. "We’re going to stir things up here to prepare for my master’s takeover."

He didn’t look the dog in the eye anymore.

Haplo’s controlled calm returned, and with it, his small smile. He would ignite the Gegs’ revolution, and when his lord came, he’d conquer this world in a way that was worthy of the dwarven spirit of old.

When Jarre’s small hands started poking and prodding him, he rose, and his words that day were like fire, leaving scorching marks in the gathered Gegs’ hearts, and like a kindling breath, reviving the glow in the embers of the dwarves’ souls.

PSAN: Hope you liked it. ^_^