Magnus Thorne 04

04 – Dwarves

Crouching, I slowly made my way towards the dwarves in the distance. The lights of their settlement were clearly visible now, at the far end of an underground room that was so big to have weather and mist hiding its ceiling from view.

“Greetings,” I said, approaching a lone dwarf who was carrying an empty wheelbarrow after a trip back to the city. “I am Magnus Lazarus Thorne. May I ask you where the fuck the exit of this place is?”

The dwarf didn’t even turn to face me.

“You’re a new face.” He said. His skin, I noticed only now, was grey like the stone of this side of the cavern. The way I came through was sandstone and torches, but here the dungeon was back to grey stone and luminescent moss. “You’re tall. Not a dwarf.”

I squinted. “No. I said I am Magnus Lazarus Thorne.”

The drawn hummed. “You did say it.”

“Doesn’t ring a bell, does it?” I asked, defeated. Thinking about it, perhaps flaunting my name was not the best idea I had all day, and it’s lucky that this guy did not know of it. Seeing that the dwarf was not interested in more conversation, I tried my hardest to appeal to his natural sense of greed. “Listen, if you show me a way out, I’ll pay you.”

Just the mention of the word was enough to make the dwarf stop in place. The sudden event also caused another dwarf who was behind him to bump into him, but the two just growled at each other more in acknowledgement rather than with anger and moved on.

“If you have gems, artifacts or valuable ore then we can talk.”

Ah, good. “Well, if you help me leave, then I—”

“No goods, no talk.”

“Listen.” I said, a little annoyed. “What’s your name?”

“Designation-077.”

My eyes slow-blinked on their own. Now, hear me out. I have met dwarves many times in my life. Dealt with them, conquered them, briefly enslaved an enclave of them, bribed them, so on so forth. Never in my life, not once had I met a dwarf with a name like this. What was he, a golem? Not only that, but he seemed to be resistant to all forms of bribery, perhaps having sensed my utter helplessness.

“Fine, 077. Can I call you 077?” I waited but there was no answer. “How much do you want?”

The dwarf wordlessly pointed with his small, stony finger. At the end of the projected line extending from his finger was another dwarf, carrying goods back to the encampment at the far end of the cavern.

“A wheelbarrow. Full of ores and gems.” I said, mouth agape. It was inconceivable. “Just to tell me where to go?”

“To speak. Yes. Wheelies are out of the walls. Tell them you have a deal with 077.”

***

Dwarven structures are not made for normal height human beings such as me. I had to crouch to get inside the deposit where all the tools were stored, and in doing so my wound flared up in pain and almost made me slam my head against the low ceiling. A dwarf also stopped me on the way in.

“You are tall. Not a dwarf.” He told me.

“A sharp one, eh?”

I admit my answer was not the best one among many. I blame the poison for this.

The dwarf cocked his head. His beard and hair were both white, and his stony skin wrinkly like old, black leather.

“I have a deal with 077. He told me to fetch a… wheelie here.”

The dwarf pointed at one of the free wheelies. “Okay.” I say. “Now what?”

“Now you mine.”

“Do you have a pickaxe?”

The dwarf harrumphed. “You are not a dwarf.” He said, and literally pushed me out of the room with the wheelie in tow.

If it wasn’t for the disbelief, the pain in my wound, my head spinning, and me being weak as hell, I’m sure I would have reacted. Instead, I tried to formulate a plan on how I was going to even begin excavating enough goods so that 077, provided I even managed to find him again, would tell me where to go to leave this place.

In the end, after having reached the end of the excavation tunnel and seen what the other dwarves were doing, I realized the foolishness of my ways. It was finally clear to me why I wasn’t given a pickaxe. The fuckers can literally manifest them out of nothing, and surely their system revolved around mining ores and gaining power by crafting stuff with them.

[Power is available. 2 charges.]

Fine. Let’s waste yet another charge or two.

“My wheelie is empty. | It is not full of ores.”

[0 charges.]

And suddenly, full of ores it was.

***

“Exit is portal.” 077 told me.

“…and?”

Silence. I inhaled, and while my state of mind was clearly visible on my face, I doubted 077 even cared about it. I have never met a race of demi-humans like this, and to call them dwarves is to do them a great wrong, I fear.

They are just nonsense. Are they monsters, perhaps? I had assumed they weren’t, at the beginning. Just a colony of dwarves that made this place their home. But perhaps I was wrong?

“How can I leave?” I asked, contemplating violence but choosing not to resort to it. I had seen only dwarves coming and going through the mining tunnel, but I had no idea how many there were in the fortified city in the distance. Even fighting two of them would be a problem, let alone an army of them.

077 briefly considered the question, his eyes darting between me and the wheelie full of ores. The ores looked suspiciously identical to the ores in another dwarf’s wheelie, but they were real enough that 077 didn’t question me.

“I will give you one more of these.” I said.

Finally he decided to speak. “There is portal. In the middle of the city. It doesn’t work for us, too… changed. For you it might.”

Without hesitation, I made a run for the city. 077 looked at me perplexed, shrugged and went back to his business. I, on the other hand, made a beeline for the city walls in record time, the pain in my body and the shadow in my vision due to the poison barely an afterthought.