Gruff and Dunc, sitting at the same table they sat in the day before and the day before that, watched as Kura practiced her shooting skills on a stone dummy from across the massive cavern. Like most dwarven women, she chose to grow out very little hair, being about an inch long. It was still more than most dwarven men had on their heads. An inch more, to be precise. She was also very tall for a dwarf, reaching a staggering four feet and eleven inches. The average dwarven man reached four feet and nine inches, the average woman being three inches shorter. For a dwarf, she was a behemoth of a woman.
Another thump, followed by a thrum, from her heavy beam cannon, which she herself simply called the ‘Loan Shark’ for reasons that yet escaped Dunc, rang out and produced a thick spear of fast-moving mana. Mana that slammed into the stone dummy and barely dented the reinforced construct. “Ha! I did it, Gruff! You owe me an ale tonight!”
“You’ve owed me ales for fifty years, you witch! I’m not giving in to your machinations!” the thoroughly annoyed Gruff replied, huffing a bit.
Dunc laughed, slapping Gruff on the back, “Like that’s ever gonna happen! I give it till tomorrow morning. By then, you two’ll have shared drinks and fallen asleep in each other’s arms.”
“Boss, cut me some slack and give me some credit!” Gruff retorted as Kura giggled a bit, “She can’t tempt me! Not for a couple days, at least. And, what’s your problem with us sleeping together?”
Kura laughed and slung the Loan Shark over her shoulder, “Well, that sounds like a challenge if I’ve ever heard of one, Gruff. I’ll be in your room tonight, you little rascal,” she said, putting the smaller dwarf in a headlock. As her victim sputtered and struggled, Kura turned her attention to Dunc, “But he’s got a point, boss. What’s wrong with me taking this little pipsqueak for a while? You jealous of him or something?”
Dunc, groaning, shook his head, “First of all, there’s nothing wrong with it. I just find it funny that he thinks he’s so great just because you find humoring him funny.”
“That’s not what happens,” Gruff sputtered from within Kura’s headlock.
“Secondly, why would I be jealous of the pipsqueak?” he asked.
Kura laughed, letting the ‘pipsqueak’ go from her headlock, “Maybe it’s because you want a nice, big, strong woman to keep you safe?” she said, smirking, “Or man, in your case.”
“Piss off, I’ve got my tastes.”
Kura raised her hands in fake surrender, “I never said otherwise.”
Gruff breathed a sigh as he slumped in his chair, “You two are too much for me. Where’s Jran? He won’t try to choke me to death…”
Dunc and Kura laughed as he grumbled to himself, “He wouldn’t put up with you for half a minute!” Kura laughed, “He’d gun you down the second you annoy him. So, would you rather a big strong woman coddle you or would you rather get shot by the grody old man?”
“I know I’d rather try my chances with the old man,” Dunc muttered, getting a punch from the woman beside him. He chuckled, rubbing his shoulder, “Well, I’ve got to go find the Keeper. You two keep… I don’t know, flirting.”
“I’m not flirting with her,” the 'pipsqueak’ asserted, his comment dying out as Kura put him into another headlock. Dunc turned away and made his way over to the watchtower in the center of the cavern.
Carn’s Vigil was not the greatest watchtower across the entire underground, nor was it the most important, but it was one more root for the dwarven people to sprout from, were they to be forgiven by the gods. In fact, the first Keeper of Carn’s Vigil was quite the fanatical worshiper of the twin Creators, as evinced by the large Shrine the tower was built around.
After the first Keeper was such a devoted follower, it was almost law that the Keeper of Carn’s Vigil devoted almost every second of his time to maintaining the offerings to the gods.
Dunc walked into the center room of the tower, with its fifteen foot high ceilings making the room feel far too large for anyone to properly use. In the center of the room there was an obelisk, made of some bone white stone, with two shrines jutting out from the base of it. One was the shrine to the god of the sea of death. The other was the shrine to the goddess of birth and growth. Finding the Keeper nowhere in the Shrine room, Dunc circled around the obelisk and made his way down the flight of stairs hidden behind a decorative banister.
He descended the stairwell, the walls dimly lit by stones engineered to retain mana and use it as efficiently as possible. It was the Keeper’s job to refuel the stones with mana manually, though he complained about having to do it despite Dunc and the others offering to help many times.
He stepped onto a landing a few dozen steps down and looked around. He did not find the Keeper. He did, however, find some of the offerings kept in their proper places. He looked over the coffin holding the corpse of a raving madman, preserved for hundreds upon hundreds of years, ever since the gods punished the dwarves for their hubris.
This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
The next coffin held the corpse of a renowned scholar, the perfectly preserved body still wearing the robe in which she wished to be buried. The next held the body of a common farmer, cradled with the pickaxe and hatchet he used until the day she died. The next coffin held the corpse of a warrior barely known in his day.
Dunc passed two dozen similar coffins, all holding the bodies of those who wished to be offered to the gods when their forgiveness came. There were scholars, soldiers, mages, farmers, artisans, and more in those coffins, all locked within magical prisons of stone and mana and glass.
Dunc continued down the staircase, thankful that the gods found steps small enough for him to use suitable. He could not have imagined himself making the trek down if he had to contend with steps a foot and half high.
By then, the carvings of Keepers past began appearing. Of their talents, carving seemed to be among that of the Keepers, as all of them were ornate and beautiful, with little details attributing each to a certain Keeper. Dunc personally liked how most of them were about funny stories, like how this dwarf planted his head into a wall due to eating a bug’s eye. It was nice, letting the ancestors of generations past have something to laugh about.
He came upon the second landing, finding fifty more of the same coffins, all lined up and with their names and professions on them. He was about to pass by them when one corpse caught his eye. It was a dwarf, but she was… different. Her skin was a shade too blue. Her hair was a few inches longer than most would dare have it. She also, much to Dunc’s shock, had a pair of wings on her back.
Dunc read the plaque listing the woman’s name and profession, suddenly feeling like it all made sense. The woman was a mage from before the gods took away their gifts, from before they were ordered to live beneath the earth and wait for their time to come again. Dunc, out of respect for the woman who’s life was so uncorrupted that her gifts from the gods were not taken back, prayed for her soul.
He then continued on, pointedly ignoring the shelves upon shelves of materials ready for the gods, were they to need them. Another terrace flew by, this time the bodies stacked up on shelves and numbering in the hundreds and the materials all refined to perfection. Finally, after yet another flight of stairs, Dunc reached the bottom of the tower.
It was a tomb. That was the only way he could describe it. Multitudes of coffins filled it. All in all, there were probably a thousand people buried there, all waiting to become offerings to the gods. Dunc walked briskly through the tomb-- it was better to avoid disturbing the ancestors in their sleep-- and finally found the Keeper.
The Keeper was short, but the word did not do his height justice. The elderly dwarf was barely four feet tall, with only his superb posture over the years keeping him above the threshold between dwarf man and dwarf child. Dunc knew it was a bit mean, but height was important to them, seeing as how pretty much every threatening tunneling bug around was over seven feet tall.
Apart from his distinctive height, the dwarf also wore his ancient gray robe and clutched his gnarled wooden staff like a walking cane. The dwarf was pushing three hundred years old and was one of the oldest dwarves to ever live. “Ah, Dunc. What hath you come to this humble corner of the world for? Dost you require advice for your vocation?”
“Keeper,” Dunc began, “Please stop using the ancient dialect. You sound like an idiot.”
“Bah, kids these days,” the Keeper complained, “No respect for your elders.”
Dunc held back a sigh. He really did not hate the old dwarf, but he was unorthodox before he became older than many trees and that was doubly so at that moment. Dealing with him was a chore, was all, “Keeper, I came down to see if you needed assistance with anything. Maintenance, perhaps? There are many things that could do well with a repair.”
The Keeper grunted, “Nothing you need to worry about. Remember, your job is to ensure the safety of this tower. I will handle everything else. And ask Jran for help when I need it.”
“You don’t trust us, then?” Dunc asked.
“Not at all. In fact-” Before the Keeper could finish his sentence, a very loud, very worrying crack emanated from the cavern above the tomb. Dunc barely waited to figure out what it was before breaking off into a sprint, running up the stairs. Another crack came, then a third. Suddenly, it sounded like the world was ending, with rock breaking and explosions booming from somewhere.
Dunc eventually made it up to the cavern, just as the sounds settled. The sound was then replaced with the distinctive thumping and thrumming of a beam gun. Dunc looked over to where Gruff and Kura were playing to find, to his amazement and confusion, a skiff halfway dug into the ground, with a massive hole above it. Not only that, but there was a veritable swarm of flying Clockworks descending upon the skiff and, consequently, them.
Kura was already firing shots from the Loan Shark into the swarm, cutting large swaths through their numbers. Gruff soon followed, firing some weird beam that popped the Clockworks like tin cans. Dunc, seeing the two firing beams into the swarm, opened up with his own beam gun, his trusty unnamed gun with a Pierce lens and a Tear lens.
The beams tore chunks out of the Clockworks, giving Dunc enough time to slap the button to tell Jran to turn on the perimeter defense shield. Despite their combined fire, the massive swarm advanced, making steady progress against them. They began firing potshots, all going wildly off course, though with the sheer number of them, they were still left making their own cover.
Then a beam of light shot from the stern of the skiff, cleaving through a number of them and sending more than a few tumbling down. Beams of light continued to fire off, cutting through the numbers with scary accuracy, when a resonant boom exploded off from the distance. Whoever the mysterious spell caster was, they immediately threw up a shield in front of the skiff.
It came not a moment too late, as the destruction wrought by the explosion gave Dunc a sense of how the skiff burrowed into the ground through twenty feet of stone.
Though, the fact that he had ignored the cracked stone did not work against them…
Eventually, the firestorm ended, and more Clockworks rushed into the breach, trying to drown them in bodies. The popping of gunshots soon followed them, and even more Clockworks feel before their onslaught. Another explosion came from the distance and the spellcaster put up another shield. It was not needed, however.
The perimeter shield came up a moment after the spellcaster’s, shielding the skiff from the resulting devastation. A moment of confused stillness came over them before palpable relief washed over them. Dunc sunk to the ground in front of his position, where he breathed a sigh of relief.
A moment later, an armored figure jumped from the skiff, clinging to the walls as she fell. She was definitely human, seeing how tall she was, but she was also quite strong, holding up so much weight with a single hand. She landed onto the ground and looked around for them. Her eyes, which glowed for whatever reason, met his and she quickly made her way over to him. He sighed internally, ready for their cover to be broken and for the ensuing onslaught of questions.
Instead, the mysterious woman stopped in front of him, pulled down her faceplate, and smiled. With her bony face, “Thanks for that. They’ve been chasing us for days now. My name’s Mori Athanatos, Lich Extraordinaire. Your’s?”