"Spiderwebs and dust. Reminds me of when me Pa used to trap me in our family mine," Thakin reminisced to the good times of his childhood.

"Should have kept you there, rock-eater. It would have done the world a favor," Asharis commented.

The dwarf turned red and exploded with rage, "Shut yer damned beardless mouth! Not one damned elf would even survive a single minute in any mine. I'm surprised that you haven't decided to run away already. If anyone needs a consultant on sniffing daises or mushroom-dancin’, then we'll call on you, but when work needs to be done, let the useful races work," he trailed off," damn it all..."

Asharis was surprised when he reacted that way. She would, of course, expect him to return an insult but not genuinely return with such anger.

She was unaware that Thakin took the slur 'rock-eater' as a particularly personal and painful one.

Little Thakin occasionally went without food for weeks at a period when his family was extremely impoverished a century ago, while he was still very small. Out of desperation, his family turned to eating the rocks of the Mountain of Anvilsburn in secret.

The practice of eating rocks was one that dwarves despised, but much worse than that were rock-eating dwarves who consumed the pieces of their own home mountain.

Destroying the place that generations of dwarves labored and struggled over to create, often at the expense of their own lives.

"Shush, there's someone up ahead," Mine alerted the others. "Keep your voices quiet and your heads down."

He moved cautiously, albeit he wasn't as good at it as Vethra would be.

Mine peered around the bend in the torchlight and noticed two hooded men in black standing watch in the dim, deep in the tunnel they had been traveling down for some time.

They were staring straight in the direction that our group needed to go in order to advance deeper into the mountain.

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Both of them were mumbling incoherently, not to each in a sort of conversation but to themselves, or to the air surrounding them.

Going back to the fact that this was a cult, Mine guessed that it must have been a short chant or some sort of prayer which was repeated endlessly.

Even though they haven't noticed our adventurers, Mine thought the situation hopeless; especially with Yam in tow. Even now he was barely able to squeeze into the narrowing tunnels of the mountain hideout.

Asharis, as a dark-elf, would simply refuse to sneak around the guards or use her quietest spell.

They were much too proud of their 'being' and their 'craft' to hide it away when confronting possible opponents, strangely this is a similarity they shared with War-Orcs, but they would never admit such a claim.

The dwarves on the hand were not too proud to do most things, except for backstabbing, which was reserved for the lower rungs of dwarven society. But Thakin methods were too loud or too attention grabbing. A sudden smoke bomb or another distracting gadget would alert the guards.

With these three in tow, there was no way for them to get past the guards without alerting them.

However, he could consult one individual in his party to find out what to do in circumstances like these.

"Vethra?" He looked back, "vethra!" he whispered.

She wasn't here.

Mine panicked. Where could she have gone?

Once more sticking his head out to watch the guards, his eyes caught a familiar face in the shadows behind the troops.

Silently, the goblin was on her way toward them, two daggers in hand.

'How did she get there?' Mine asked himself.

There was no way around them, in his opinion.

Without making a sound and in two quick motions, Vethra hurled one of her daggers into the head of the left man and stabbed the right one, also in the head.

They dropped like heavy sacks on the floor, their robes muffled the sound of their fall.

She searched the possessions of the now dead, waving for the party to come out, "It's safe now."

Mine reprimanded her, "Next time inform us when you take action, we could have gotten useful information out of them."

"Oops, sorry," the goblin responded while giggling, "of the seven, I should have at least let one live."

"There were five more?" Mine questioned.

"Yeah, and I call dibs. Everything they own, or owned, is mine now."

If Vethra had not acted on her own and against Mine's orders, he would have praised her lethal efficiency.

He was somewhat unnerved by her.