Axel gazed in wonder at the walls, floor and ceiling of the mineshaft as his new Perk bloomed all around him. With the all-encompassing nature of Earthsense, he could see and feel through all the dirt around him. As he looked, he could make out pockets of softer stone, veins of metal ore, and, by the absence of soil and stone, the tunnels that he was walking through.

"Thank god it has a distance limit," Axel muttered to Drago who offered a short chuff as he approached his master. "There's so much stuff, I don't know if I can do this and walk through a city. Sure, it'll be easier since a city isn't underground, but even just half of this stuff is gonna be- What's that?"

Whirling to face the direction of the new sensation, Axel faced toward one of the tunnels that continued deeper into the mine.

"There it is again," he muttered to himself. "It's not getting closer, it feels like whatever it is is staying still. Is this the vibration part of the Perk?"

Whining in concern, Drago leaned into Axel and offered what support he could as the young man worked through what was going on with him.

"It's fine, buddy," Axel assured him, scratching behind the Rockwolf's jaw. "I'm gonna be fine. Let's go see what that thing is,"

At the first step, Axel shuddered as the force of his step echoed around him through the Earthsense and simultaneously deafened him and made him feel as though someone was behind him.

"I really need to get a handle on this," Axel told himself through gritted teeth as the hair at the nape of his neck stiffened and raised itself defensively.

Gritting his teeth, Axel moved carefully through the tunnel following the supposed vibrations that were leading him deeper and deeper as they came faster and faster. Eventually, an echoing clank filled the tunnel at the same rhythm as the vibrations he followed. Following the clank and vibrations further down the tunnel, a person's humming began to fill the air. Taking a final turn, Axel and Drago came into sight of Dwarf cheerily swinging his pickaxe into the wall by the light of his lantern.

"Excuse me," Axel called out. "Are you Wulf Stouthammer?"

The Dwarf froze at Axel's words before turning his head slightly to look behind him and answering.

"Who wants to know?" his deep, carrying voice asked.

"I'm Axel," Axel introduced himself. "This is Drago, I met him down here. Willow asked me to find her father and bring him back."

"My Willow asked you to find me?" the Dwarf asked as he turned to face Axel and the lantern at his belt illuminated the tunnel they stood in allowing Axel to see the Dwarf's dark red hair and graying beard. "She's an adult. What's she need me for?"

"You know, I don't think I was worried about that," Axel told the older Dwarf. "She said she had a job and I was looking for one and now here I am."

"Fine, fine," the Dwarf said unhappily. "Give me a moment to get my stuff. Can you carry some of it?"

"If it's in a bag, then I guess I could," Axel answered him, realizing that he didn't have more than the small pouch that was meant to hold his money and he wasn't like Jim who would fashion a crude bag out of sticks and leaves.

"It's in a bag," Wulf grumped at him. "First rule of leaving the house, bring extra bags. Don't they teach you children anything?"

"I was taught not to go down dark holes in the ground after Dwarves, but I never did listen to my mother," Axel quipped at the Dwarf.

"Did your mother also teach you to go into dark places without a torch?" Wulf asked.

"I brought a torch," Axel waved the unlit stick in the air. "Just didn't have anything to light it with."

"It's a fucking miracle you found me," the Dwarf said shaking his head at Axel as though in pity. "And that you managed to befriend a beasty like that one there."

"Well, I nearly killed him, I think," Axel said as he patted at Drago's shoulder thoughtfully. "But then we were attacked by an Ore Eater and we worked together to kill it and now we're friends. Right Bud?"

With a short yip, Drago agreed with Axel's words as Wulf looked on at the two of them critically.

"So you failed into having a rare breed of Rockwolf as a Tamed Beast?" he confirmed.

"I guess in a way, yes I did," Axel answered. "Are you okay, man? You're looking kinda pale, maybe it's the light."

"I'm fine," the Dwarf snapped at him. "Just grab the damned bags there and follow me."

"Touchy, touchy," Axel muttered to himself as he grabbed the two bags and nearly pulled himself to the ground at their weight.

"What's in these things?" he asked just before his Earthsense answered for him.

"Potential ore samples," the Dwarf told him. "I just won this mine in a dice game with an old friend and I was checking to see if there was still ore in it. I need samples to do that."

"I can tell you that this tunnel doesn't have any sort of ore in it," Axel said as he turned his attention to his Perk.

"And how do you know that?" Wulf demanded turning to face him.

"Tamer Perk," Axel said absently as he looked around the tunnel, not noticing the Dwarf's lantern illuminating his face. "I got Earthsense, let's me see through dirt, stone, and ore. Also let's me feel vibrations. It's how I found you."

"So you mean to tell me that you can tell where ore veins are?" Wulf asked, a cheery note in his voice.

"If it's in my perk's radius then yeah, I can," Axel told him. "Don't really know how far that is though."

"You said it was Earthsense?" the Dwarf asked. "That means it's one of the perks that affects perception in a way. All vision perks and perks that can be used through the eyes have a sixty foot radius minimum. You can get others that make them better and give them more radius, but the rule of thumb is sixty feet."

"Well then, in sixty feet in all directions there's nothing but dirt and rock," Axel said before turning his attention back to the Dwarf. "Let's go."

"Can you keep an eye out for me as we go?" Wulf asked hopefully. "It'd save me some time and heartache later."

"As long as we go back to the entrance and not through the whole mine," Axel said firmly.

Practically gnashing his teeth, the Dwarf relented after looking at Drago standing beside Axel, staring him down.

As they walked, Axel asked the Dwarf as many questions he could think of about the mine. Which was none. Coming up to the intersection that Axel and Drago had met at, the Dwarf stopped when he saw the corpse of the Ore Eater that Axel and Drago had killed.

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"This is your handiwork?" Wulf confirmed.

"Yeah this is ours," Axel nodded, gratefully setting the bags he'd been carrying down as he massaged his hands where the straps had dug into them.

"Well, let's check and see if it's got any goodies for you then," Wulf said as he placed his own bags down and approached the Ore Eater. With a grunt, the Dwarf heaved the monster onto its side and stomach before gasping happily.

"You got yourself an Ironback," Wulf told Axel as the Wolf-man looked on. "And it looks like it was eating pretty good from another vein. What is that?"

As the Dwarf peered closer at the Ironback Ore Eater's coating of metal, Axel studied the monster itself carefully in the light of Wulf's lantern.

With four legs that ended in stubby, clawed feet, the Ore Eater would have stood maybe six inches off the ground and risen to Axel's torso for a total of fourish feet in height. It's head and back were armored in a shell that reminded Axel of a turtle's if that turtle knew how to crudely work metal from ore and shape it. Nodules formed rounded points where the metal had collected itself.

"It's silver," Wulf finally said. "That's good for me, now I just have to find where the damn thing was eating it all from."

"I think it came from down there," Axel pointed to the tunnel he thought the Ore Eater had come from. "Let's go, I want to get back into the city before dark."

"Hold your pick," Wulf said impatiently. "No way we're leaving a full Ironback Ore Eater behind. Not when you've already killed the damn thing. Help me."

"I don't know what I'm doing," Axel complained as the Dwarf waved him over.

"It's easy," Wulf said. "All you do is take that little knife of yours and wiggle it under the metal. It'll pop off after a bit of work. Like this."

As the Dwarf spoke, he demonstrated to Axel with his own belt knife. With careful wiggling, he slid the knife beneath one of the nodules and after a moment of pushing and levering, he pulled his other hand away and held up the now freed node of crudely refined metal.

Sighing and exhausted, Axel pulled out his own skinning knife and followed the Dwarf's instructions as they stripped the Ore Eater's body of the metal it had grown.

"We're lucky another of the damned things didn't appear while you were finding me," Wulf said as he placed all the nodes into another bag before passing it to Axel. "Here, your kill, your loot, you carry it. I'll introduce you to a friend of mine that'll pay good money for that."

"Oh thanks," Axel said, accepting the bag gingerly. "Don't suppose you might have another backpack I can borrow?"

"Just brought the one," Wulf told him as he hefted his own bags and marched toward the exit.

"Of course," Axel sighed to himself as he followed after the Dwarf, arms crying at the extra weight and hands screaming as the straps of the bags dug into his still tender palms.

After walking for a few minutes, daylight, fading and orange, illuminated the mine's entrance as Axel, Drago, and Wulf stepped onto the small ledge that jutted out from the cliff.

"Just drop the bags onto the dirt down there," Wulf said, doing just that as he approached the ledge. "They'll be fine. Won't take us long to get down there anyway."

"How did the guy you won this place from get the ore down to the ground?" Axel asked. "For that matter, how did his miners get up here?"

"They didn't," Wulf said as he started down the cliffside, climbing picks in hand and a rope secured to a piton in the wall. "He found the place after exploring the area, it was empty when he went through. Except for beasties and monsters, of course."

"How am I gonna get you down?" Axel asked Drago as he scratched behind the wolf's jaw and examined him in the late afternoon sunlight.

With a low wuff, the black wolf with iron-gray teeth and claws approached the edge of the protrusion they stood on and jumped off the ledge into the river fifteen feet below. Rushing to the edge, Axel looked down in time to see his Tamed Beast climb onto the river bank and shake himself furiously to remove the cold water from his fur coat.

"I guess that's one way to get down," Axel said with a grin as he looked out at the river and plotted a distance and course. Wulf looked up from watching the wolf sniff curiously at the bags on the ground before his face took on a note of horror as he watched Axel back away from the edge.

"Wait, no!" he yelled as Axel's running start took him to the edge of the ledge in an instant and he let out a whoop of exhilaration as he jumped several feet outward before beginning to fall.

With a splash, Axel entered the cold water and kicked his way toward the surface and the river bank. As his head broke the surface, his feet touched the ground and he stood, neck deep, in the icy water as he looked up at the climbing Dwarf.

"That was awesome!" he yelled at him as he pulled himself further out of the water, arms pumping in the air. "Let's do it again!"

"Not on your fucking life!" the Wulf answered back as he returned to climbing muttering to himself as Axel stripped out of most of his clothes and wrung them out.

Before redressing himself, Axel looked at Drago and grinned before shaking his entire body in a scene mimicking the Rockwolf's attempt to dry himself earlier. With a playful growl at getting wet again, the Rockwolf knocked him to the ground as they began to wrestle on the riverbank, laughing at each other in their own way. Once Wulf had gotten to the ground, he shook his head at the scene before sighing and speaking.

"Put your damned pants back on so we can go. I don't want to be walking through the woods and on the Southern Road with some jackass in his skivvies," he said as he hefted his bags again as Axel and Drago broke apart from one another.

"No problem," Axel said, following the request and dressing himself in the damp clothes. "Maybe I'll dry by the time we get back to the city."

"Maybe," Wulf said tiredly as he watched the young Beastkin finally grab the bags he was supposed to carry. "Let's go."

"I'm telling you dammit, I am Wulf Stouthammer, owner and proprietor of the Barfing Minotaur tavern and citizen of this city," the Dwarf angrily told the guard at the gate as the sun went further behind the horizon. "This boy is a member of the Hunter's Guild and he's escorting me home at my daughter's request."

"I have to make sure that everything's in order," the bored guard said as he peered closely at the stone plate Wulf had handed to him and Axel's wooden token from the Hunter's Guild. "No telling what sort of folk would try to enter the city this late and cause trouble after we shut the gates."

"If you don't hurry up, you're dooming the two of us to die out here tonight," Wulf griped.

"Not my concern," the Human shrugged before spending another moment inspecting the two items. Finally, he handed them back to the two of them. "Don't cause any trouble, you hear? You especially, mutt. Make sure you keep your beast on a short leash."

"Will do," Axel said, ignoring the man's blatant racism as he gathered his bags, his Dwarf, and his Rockwolf and entered the city.

"Jackasses like him should never be made into members of the City Watch," Wulf said angrily as he stomped down the busy street with Axel and Drago in tow. "They're the reason that the damned Pantheons are divided! If it weren't for people like him, then Dwarves would be happy drinking beer, mining ore, and fighting beasts! It's the damned idiots like him that make us all so damn mad we want to kill people."

"We've got people like that where I come from too," Axel said. "They think they're better than everyone else because they don't have the same skin color. Never considered how bad it might be when there's actual other races."

As the Dwarf angrily led them further into the city, Axel looked around at the people moving back and forth on their ways home or to and from taverns for a drink or entertainment. Gone were the stalls that had seemed to sprout from every crack and the carts selling food were empty as they were pushed down the street. In their places were groups of guards that seemed to stand out even more in their armor and green cloaks as they kept eyes out for people that might have had less than kind intentions to be traveling the streets so late at night.

"Hey Wulf," Axel called to the older man. "Is there some sort of curfew in place in the city?"

"Nope," the Dwarf said easily. "The guards just know that they can catch the most criminals in the act at this time of day. While they're moving into position for whatever it is they're planning to do. Doesn't mean that they get many of them, but they still have better luck now, than they do earlier and later."

"Weird," Axel said. "I've never seen so many guards and peacekeepers out in the open like this."

"You'll get used to it the more time you spend in cities," Wulf told him as he turned down the alley toward the Barfing Minotaur. "They all have reasons to keep their common folk safe from criminals."

As the Dwarf pushed open the door, the sounds of people drinking, eating, and talking spilled out into the alleyway with the warm light that illuminated the interior. Axel followed after the Dwarf with Drago on his heels, taking in the sight of the busy tavern that night as Willow and two other women moved easily through the tabled floor, tankards of ale and pitchers of beer in one hand and bowls and plates of stew, bread, roast, and vegetables in the other. Players, easily discernible in their cheap starter gear, brushed shoulders with the citizens and workers of Hero's Crypt as Axel looked on. In the corner, by the fire, he saw Pear sitting at a table with an older Human man.

"Come on Drago," Axel said. "I'm gonna introduce you to a friend of mine and then I'm gonna get hammered after I talk to Willow."