“Hah!”

  “Hmph!”

  Crack.

  “Hah!”

  “Hmph!”

  Crack.

  The sound of steel on stone resounded through the deep. With every strike, great hunks of dense rock crumbled from the inhumanly strong blows assailing it. Long, impossibly dark tunnels strafed out in every direction, spider-webbing and crisscrossing over themselves in impossibly confusing ways. Many of these tunnels were collapsing, appearing to have done so long, long ago. Long enough that it was sometimes hard to even tell that there had been a path through the stone in the first place. Great boulders the size of houses blocked off some, while others were blockaded by small avalanches of granite and sandstone.

  In the dim light of these tunnels, deep, deep beneath the surface of Vereden…two Dwarves hewed against the obstructions with massive picks. In the dim light of their Mana lanterns, hanging from hooks they’d embedded in the tunnel wall, the surface of the tools shone in a familiar, strangely bright manner.

  That of Mithril.

  Both examples of Dwarvendom were tall for their kind, although one was more so than the other. They were stripped down to their waists, leaving their heavily muscled torsos bare to the hot, muggy air of the tunnels. The dust of their exertions clung to their sweat-drenched bodies, painting them in grim hues. One, the younger and relatively shorter of the pair, bore a long, blonde braid that trailed down his back, brushing up against a belt that clattered with yet more instruments and tools. After finishing another strike against a particularly stubborn boulder, he grimaced and reached up for the long beard upon his cheeks. He folded it upwards and used the coarse hair to wipe the sweat from his brow.

  Sensing a break in the work, the other dwarf sighed and leaned on his pick. This was a particularly tall example of his people, and yet the oddities with his appearance didn’t stop there. While red hair was uncommon among Dwarves, metallic, crimson-shaded hair was downright unheard of. It cascaded unbound down his shoulders, shimmering not unlike the Mithril of his pick, while a wild, similarly colored beard clung to his cheeks and chin. They almost seemed like veritable rivers of magma flowing down his back and chest. Odd golden accents traced every inch of his skin, only visible when the light of the lanterns caught them, revealing themselves to the Dwarve’s strangely colored veins.

  The taller, older Dwarf snorted at the blonde one. “Filthy habit. I told ya that ya should have bought a bandana back in town," He said, thumbing his own black bandana around his forehead. "But did ya listen to me?”

  The blonde dwarf just scowled at his companion. “Oh, la dee da, look at me,” He mocked. “I’m a big ol’ noble, tellin’ people what they should and shouldn’t do. I’m sorry, me lordship. Next time I’ll buy whatever ya tell me to.”

  That earned him another snort from the red-haired dwarf. “Oh, whatever,” He grumbled. He didn’t even notice the odd look he received at the strange, non-Veredenien standard parlance. “Let’s take a break. We’re gonna have to work at this one a bit more before she gives in, and I’m hungry. Let’s have lunch.”

  “Fine by me, Az,” The blonde dwarf shrugged, slinging his pickaxe over his shoulder. He didn’t even flinch from the added weight of the massive instrument. He paused, though, looking around for a moment. “I thought it was darker in here than it should be. Where’s that lazy cat o’ yours?”

  “Sena?” ‘Az’ scratched his roughened cheek. “Oh, she’s out huntin’ down dinner. I bet ye’ll never guess what it’s probably gonna be, Torgir me ol’ pal.”

  A sigh was his answer. “More gods be damned rodent, I’m sure. Moles are just about the only damned thing down here.” As the two of them started trudging back down the tunnel they’d been working in, heading for their campsite, ‘Torgir’ turned to his companion with a scowl on his lips. “Have I ever told ya how much I wish I hadn’t come with ye, Azarus ‘me ol’ pal’?”

  Azarus of No House, formerly of both House Savoy and House Florens, current Captain within the Order of the Polaris Reach, and chosen Envoy of Tarus, Great Spirit of the Sun…

  Shrugged.

  “Only about every five minutes, Torgir Gravelfoot. Now c’mon, we’ve got some mole jerky with our name on it waitin’ on us.”

  ……………………….

  As he and Torgir munched on their bland mole jerky, with varying degrees of enthusiasm, Azarus mused on the strange circumstances that had brought him here.

  And, to be honest, cursed them.

  He should have just told Tarus to screw off when the Great Spirit had asked him to go north. But, well…ol’ hothead had learned what buttons needed pushing to get Azarus to move when he needed him to. He was Dwarf enough to admit he could be a bit predictable at times.

  Mentions of a little good old fashioned revenge against the cannibal clans as a side-benefit worked a little too well to get him moving. That hadn’t been the task Tarus had asked of him, of course. Dealing with the refuse of the Dwarven mountain holds wasn’t the purview of any of the Great Spirits, much less Tarus.

  But the task set before him as Envoy was going to take him right into the heart of the bastards, and his benefactor saw no reason to keep Azarus from enjoying a little…

  What was the term Nate used sometimes?

  Side-quest?

  Yeah…a little side-quest, cutting down some mad cannibals.

  Of course, while he was willing to go, Azarus was still cognizant that slaying some trash wasn’t the end goal of the Great Spirit. When he had learned just what it was Tarus wanted from him, he was…honestly a bit underwhelmed.

  Going all that way, just to make contact with some crazy, kooky old Spirit that physically lived in one of the northern mountains? Apparently, this guy disdained the Concord in general, preferring to live as an outcast in some dark hole in the ground instead. Tarus had been tight lipped about just who he was going to be meeting, and for why, but at the time, he had told him that it was going to be easy enough. This Spirit wasn’t hostile, despite apparently being older than the Great Spirits themselves.

  His, its name, was apparently something like ‘Nehushtan’.

  When Tarus had mentioned the possibility of this task, Azarus hadn’t really thought much of it. He hadn’t told Nate any of this yet, but he’d already finished all the coursework he needed to for the semester. The Academy in general had turned out to be…really easy for him. Sure, sometimes he learned some interesting stuff, but most of the time, Azarus just viewed it as getting recognition for the skills he’d already accumulated over the years. And with the foundation of the Polaris Reach, well…the Academy was even less important to him now.

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  Azarus thought he had a fifty-fifty chance of even finishing out the Academy in general.

  As such, he’d found himself with such an abundance of free time, even with his Order duties, that he’d ultimately accepted the task his patron had set before him. He’d thought, oh well, it’d probably take him about a month in total to finish the entire matter. Azarus had been deliberately vague about what he was doing to all of his friends, but that wasn’t anything new for him. Ever since he’d accepted the mantle of Envoy from Tarus, he had been keeping that part of his life separate from everything else, something Tarus and Sena both approved of.

  While Nate did have a Spirit as a bonded Familiar, he wasn’t really involved in Spirit matters. The man had more than enough on his plate to be worrying about all the unrest in the Concord.

  Azarus had concocted some tripe about heading up to Silvercrest to take out a Prime, and sought out Torgir. After all, the Gravelfoot had his own grudge against the cannibal clans. A little backup couldn’t hurt.

  With that, the two of them set off.

  Only…

  The world had ended on the way north.

  In a series of events that were so cosmically ironic they almost felt like a divine joke, Azarus and Torgir had been in Silvercrest when the ‘event’ happened. They’d been knee deep in the markets, browsing the stock of Mystically charged ores, when the screaming had started. At first, they looked around, searching for attacks.

  And then they followed the fingers, looked up, and saw the sky had been stolen from them and replaced with some bizarre lightning cage thing.

  That was about the time the pressure started.

  Oh god, the pressure. Azarus didn’t like thinking of that hour. How it had slammed him straight into the flagstones, feeling like his organs were being squeezed from within him. How the strength of that grip had swiftly grown to where he thought he was going to fall apart. How it had plateaued and maintained that strength for long, agonising minutes, while the poor crafters and low-levels about him started to die like flies. And then, mercifully, the strength began to abate over the course of one agonizing hour until it just...disappeared.

  That first day, he and Torgir assisted with the bodies from the event. It was the absolute least they could do when the city had been devastated as hard as it had been.

  So many, many bodies…

  Azarus would never forget the mother kneeling in the middle of a bakery, there next to the two of them. Sometimes, he thought he might still be able to hear her weeping, whistle sharp screams as she clutched uselessly at her child who…hadn't made it.

  In his heart, he knew that he was lucky to have been in Silvercrest when the ‘Crush’ happened, as the mountain city had started calling it. It didn’t take long for everyone to realise that the world had been tainted outside of the wards, and it was now deadly to set foot outside of them. If he and Torgir had been either a little quicker with their shopping, or a little slower in reaching the city…

  Azarus shuddered and focused back on his bland mole meat.

  It didn’t bear thinking about.

  Still, there was one upside to being in Silvercrest specifically, when it all went down. This mountain, this city…it held importance to Dwarves in particular.

  After all, this was the furthest point that the Dwarven people had ever pushed south against the Humans.

  It was hard to remember exact dates from lessons he’d had over two decades ago. But, as Azarus recalled, in the bad years after the Initialization, the boundaries of the ragtag Human Kingdoms and the fractious Dwarven Clans…tended to clash. They ebbed and swelled now that the knife-ears had well and truly lost it, one people ceding land to the other in an endless tug of war. At one point in time, before the Mountain Holds and surface Dwarves under the five Houses split from each other, the Dwarves had owned this mountain and everything north of it. The connection had stretched all the way up through northern Herztal, through the Barren Forest, and into the heartland of the Principality.

  It didn’t last long, of course. Some Human king or another had rallied the Kingdoms and driven the Dwarves back.

  But…in those days?

  Well. Dwarven authorities tended to build deep.

  It had been a long shot. Azarus hadn’t been sure if it had been worth the effort, while Torgir had been convinced it must exist. It was practically myth to modern-day Dwarves, and most Velancians would just roll their eyes at you if you even suggested it was still traversable.

  Hell, the Humans in general had no idea the Long Road had ever even existed. It’s not like the ancient Dwarves were going to tell their mortal enemies about a potential path through their defences.

  But, searching for myths was a damned sight better than moping around Silvercrest, embarrassed at being trapped, mortified he hadn’t explained himself better to his friends and found family, and generally…depressed about everything.

  To Azarus’s shock…they’d found it. Deep in an abandoned mine that the Humans were using as meat storage of all things, behind an entire series of false doors that only Mountain Dwarves would recognize…

  There it was.

  The entrance to the Long Road. The underground connection between the Dwarven nation in the north…and their stronghold here in Human lands at the mountain of Tor Veyr, as they had called it.

  The Watchmount.

  Supposedly, the Long Road of the Watchmount stretched all the way into Velancia. And, maybe once upon a time, it did. But that had been millennia ago.

  Most tunnels that he and Torgir had found down here were long since collapsed. Massive boulders or even small failures in the integrity of the tunnels had rendered them impassable.

  For quitters, that is.

  Neither he nor Torgir could go back. The world outside of the wards of Silvercrest was deadly now. Trying to go overland back to Blutstein was sure death, but underground?

  The corruption outside the wards didn't extend into the bedrock.

  He wasn’t going to stay in one place, either. That was a slower death, but a death of hopelessness all the same. And so, he and Torgir had purchased all the Mithril they could find in the downtrodden markets of Silvercrest, and together forged a pair of patently ridiculous pickaxes. Azarus wasn’t sure any of the old Mountain Thanes had ever used the precious metal for something as mundane as a tool. It probably would have driven that old bastard Jorvik insane with rage.

  Ha.

  Once they were finished, they’d gotten to work, carving their way north through the collapses in the Long Road. It was hard work, of course. But it was all they had. That had been…

  Azarus stared up at the darkened stone roof above him in thought. Two? Two-ish weeks ago now, at the most.

  Still.

  At least he wasn’t alone. Torgir was an old friend that he was glad to reacquaint himself with, one of the only people who knew him from the bad old days. Sena was a surprising source of comfort as well. The two of them had grown much closer in these days of desperation. Shurenga’s eldest daughter was also an excellent source of food down here in the tunnels. The native, dog-sized moles that had turned out to inhabit them were a filling, if not bland, source of nutrition, and she was an excellent huntress.

  And then, there was the last person with them.

  Or rather, still with Azarus.

  A wisp of a faint, fiery voice reached his ears. It was weak, as if it were being spoken through a thick blanket.

  But it was there, even though it wasn’t for Sena.

  What progress have you made?

  Azarus stopped in his chewing to stare up at the roof once more. “Ain’t gotten much farther,” He grunted out loud. “Two more boulders, I’d say. By now, I’m guessin’ we’re…maybe about halfway to Hollow Hill.”

  Torgir didn’t even look up from his own jerky meal. He had long since been read in on the connection Azarus had to the Great Spirit.

  A considering noise was his answer from the Great Spirit of the Sun, Lord Tarus himself.

  Who he had not been cut off from, in the Crush. Apparently, he might be one of the only people still with a line to the Concord. It had something to do with his Envoy endowment, from what Tarus had told him. It was the only connection strong enough to pierce through the veil now shrouding the Concord from Vereden.

  It was really only thanks to Tarus that they were even still moving in the right direction, honestly. It’s not like it was easy telling north from south, down in the darkness of the Long Road.

  And there were so many false paths they could have gotten lost down without him.

  I’d say you’re perhaps three-fourths of the way there, in truth, Tarus eventually responded. Not anywhere near your destination, but you’re making good time, all things considered. Another month, and you might just reach the connecting roads to the Mountain Holds.

  Those were much less mythical, but still just as dilapidated. There was a long, long length of time Azarus had to look forward to, doing nothing but pick away at boring old boulders.

  What he wouldn’t give for his old portable forge.

  Azarus shook those thoughts off and stood up from the broken hunk of granite he was using as a stool. Rolling his shoulders, the forgemaster Envoy picked up his pickaxe once more…

  And kicked the stone out from under Torgir.

  As the other sputtered and cursed at him, Azarus just smirked at his old friend. “C’mon, Gravelfoot.”

  “There’s work to be done.”