As it turned out, the wooden furniture was actually made from a sturdy fungus that grew in some of the caverns around the city. They got remarkably large according to Jasper, and the stalks of the mushrooms were an effective stand in for wood once dried. Sebastian lost interest in the subject almost immediately, more interested in exploring his new arm. He made a note to get a glove for padding, as the clicking of his fingers when they touched anything was already getting annoying. That and learning to control his strength with that arm was surprisingly tricky. He could feel touch, pressure, and temperature just fine, but gauging them was hard for some reason.
Jake interrupted his experimentation. “Well if you are feeling better now, I have a meeting with my father and his council. Would you like to accompany me? You can petition them for aid.”
Sebastian nodded with a sigh. “Politics? Oh, I was meaning to ask, how are we going to get to Clearlake when we leave? I’m guessing Sarah has that communication book? Has there been any updates? Is the timeframe still, uh, three weeks?”
Jake nodded and turned to the others. “You two should get back to the Forge and get back to work on the golem.” He waved for Sebastian to follow him as he made to leave. “Yes, Sarah has that book, she took it out of your pack and has been keeping in touch with them. She said they had a few more mages make it in from a few outlying towns that have been making a big difference. It’s still a stalemate though, and eventually they will run out of supplies. Apparently the abominations are spreading out along the lake and will eventually make it impossible to supply the city. As for how we get there or how long it would take, I ordered them to start extending the track in that direction as soon as we got back in the city. You will have my aid regardless of whether the others join us, and that includes getting us there in time.”
They turned towards a section that Sebastian hadn’t seen yet, and Jake pointed to a massive structure ahead of them. It was, as far as Sebastian could tell, in the dead center of the city, and it was spectacular. A colossal stalagmite and stalactite had joined in the middle, and they had both been carved and sculpted into a fantastic castle, with balconies and external walkways lined with magnificently designed railings that gleamed a tell-tale blue-silver, and was brilliantly lit in blues and greens. “Family colors, we have spent generations carving out the fortress, and it can house every dwarf in the city for years if it has to. Now, before we see the council, a word of advice. The houses won’t want to help if they don’t think you have anything to offer them in exchange. I was talking with Sarah, and I know that there might be difficulties getting things magicked, so I recommend not making any promises along those lines while demonstrating the possibilities.” He tapped at Sebastian’s arm to emphasize his point.
“Be respectful, but be careful not to beg. If they say no it might be a test, but even if it isn’t, don’t try to bargain, it will make you look desperate. You have something new to them that they will want, if we show them, and let them know that the only people that can provide them with it are at risk of being wiped out. We shouldn’t have any real problems though, the prospect of being able to go to the surface will likely garner support from at least half of the major houses.”
Sebastian paused for a moment, and Jake turned to face him with a questioning glance. “Why are you doing all of this for us? I know you said it’s because we saved your life, but as I understand it you saved mine in return already, you don’t owe us anything, yet you are giving us priceless gifts and offering me advice on how to get your own government to help us even more.”
He was shocked when a dark and bloodthirsty look crossed Jake’s face. “Did anyone tell you that I have six brothers? That I am third in line for the Obsidian Throne?” When Sebastian nodded he continued. “There used to be seven. A tribe of those abominations you call Twisted tunneled into an outpost and slaughtered almost everyone inside it. We found my eldest brother surrounded by the corpses of the freaks and his own men. They sacrificed themselves to get the women and children to safety, but they were cut off. A single child survived, hidden in a storage room by his mother before she drew the monsters away.”
There was a long, heavy silence. “I want to see them suffer. I want to make them suffer. They took family from me, and now I know where they are. I need an army though, we need an army. The royal family will march to war, as will a couple of the houses that also lost sons and daughters that day, but if not enough houses answer the call it will likely mean civil war. Marching to the surface will be in violation of our most ancient traditions and laws, you need to give them a reason to do that.”
He turned and started up the stairs that led into the massive fortress without waiting for Sebastian to respond. Sebastian was completely on edge now, entirely too much was riding on this meeting, and he didn’t usually do particularly well with first impressions. He hardly paid any attention to the interior of the place as he was led through it by Jake; only really noticing the bigger things, like the colossal black iron gear that served for a door, and the intricate mithril chandelier suspended in the entry hall. He doubted that the door could ever be breached if they shut it, while the chandelier supported a marvelous array of crystals that caught the light from the glow-moss and scattered it throughout the cavernous room in beautiful sprays of color that drifted through the room as the chandelier slowly spun.
Jake led him to a set of double doors at the far end of the entry hall that were nestled in between a pair of sweeping staircases that led upwards in a dizzying spiral. He stopped there for a moment. “The council meets through here. It’s this close to the entrance because sometimes people that do not normally frequent the castle have to bring something to their attention and nobody wants them to know more about the layout of the palace than necessary. Of course the arrogant fools still want to impress them with their power, hence the overdone entrance hall and the insistence on meeting inside the castle, instead of in one of the nearby buildings. Now, remember what I told you earlier.” He rapped on the door twice, and it immediately swung open silently.
A dwarf wearing what Sebastian guessed was a formal uniform bowed to them before turning on his heel smoothly and belting out at the top of his lungs. “Prince Jake Steelheart and his guest, Mage Sebastian Hunter!”
Sebastian was startled but when Jake noticed he leaned closer and whispered in his ear as they approached the center of the room. “Everyone that enters gets announced, I got your full name and title from Sarah as soon as we knew you were going to survive so I could schedule this meeting.”
Sebastian wanted to reply but he was interrupted by a roar of derisive laughter. He turned and actually looked into the room they had entered and saw that they were standing in front of a long curved table carved out of solid stone. There were thirteen dwarves seated at it in high backed chairs facing them. The dwarf that was laughing waved his hand at them in a dismissive gesture. “Mage? Are you going to pull a rat out of a hat for us? Maybe saw someone in half? Is this a joke? I didn’t come all the way down here to watch some parlor tricks Prince Jake.”
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Jake just shook his head gently. “No, esteemed council members, you should know by now that most of my unit was killed when reapers tunneled into the outpost we had discovered. My life was saved by this man, who brought news that the surface world is not the toxic wasteland we thought it would be. He also requested aid for his people, who have suddenly found themselves beset by hordes of those mutant abominations that we thought were all that remained of the surface.
“And, as difficult as it may be to believe, he does indeed possess true magic. I have seen it with my own eyes. You yourselves are seeing it with your own eyes, he lost his arm in a fight with a nest of widowers and I built a new one to his specifications. A new one that is effectively a replica of a normal arm and should not be capable of moving. He also enchanted my hammer. Aiding these people and forging an alliance with them will not only avenge those that fell to the mutants’ cowardly attacks, it could result in a golden age the likes of which we have never seen should we combine this magic with our technology.”
The dwarven council all turned their gazes to Sebastian, and the one in the center chair, which was also the fanciest chair spoke in a deep authoritative voice. “If you could roll up your sleeve sir? I would see this arm my son speaks of with such pride in his voice.”
Sebastian froze up for a long moment, he had just casually strolled up to the table with Jake. A table with a king sitting at it. It didn’t really click until that moment that he was in a room with the most powerful people in this entire city. He was definitely not prepared for anything like this. It wasn’t that long ago that he was just hoping he wouldn’t be forced to wander around a monster infested forest with nothing but a bow and his terrible luck.
The king’s brow quirked a bit, and his lips started to turn downwards almost imperceptibly, and Sebastian hurriedly started to roll up his right sleeve so they could see his arm. A few of the dwarves openly gawked as he moved it around as though it were a normal arm even though it was clearly made from mithril. The laughter guy wasn’t willing to be impressed though. “Tricks, wires and string. I have seen plenty of performers do far more impossible things and it is always a trick of some sort. Magic doesn’t exist, and I’ll not send my people to their deaths for parlor tricks and the prince’s foolish quest for vengeance.”
An awkward silence filled the room. Jake broke the silence after an interminably long moment. “Sebastian, can you enchant something in this room that will convince Lord Boulderfist? Make it indisputably magic so we can move on please.”
Sebastian shrugged. “Alright, what do you guys want enchanted and what do you want it to do?”
Jake grimaced a bit at the casual response, but the king just chuckled. Lord Boulderfist pulled out a dagger and tossed it to the ground at Sebastian’s feet with a sneer. “Why don’t you make that able to cut stone as easy as bread.”
Sebastian scooped it off the ground and looked it over. It was well made, but he expected that from a dwarven dagger owned by a dwarven lord. “This will take a few minutes, and probably won’t work particularly often. I can modify an effect I’ve used before, but it is fairly energy intensive, it will likely run out of power in an hour or so and you will have to leave it alone for a day or three to let it recharge.” He was much more at ease doing this sort of thing than the whole politics thing.
The dwarves waited patiently while he worked, he only barely noticed a few surprised gasps as the runic patterns on his skin lit up with the iridescent light he was so accustomed to now. He had to change a few things with his gravedigger enchantment, making it stronger, but focusing it on the blade of the dagger at the same time. The original version would take too long to carve through solid stone. Counteracting friction worked on a very small scale, meaning it would allow the repelling effect to break up the stone it hit eventually, but it took more power based on how dense the material was, and the enchantment only countered so much at once, now that he thought about it, his gravedigger mines could probably only go so deep before hitting rock they couldn’t tunnel through. By focusing both effects along the blade of the dagger and strengthening them a bit he turned the dagger into something truly dangerous. He remembered right after starting the work that bones were mostly minerals and a protein he couldn’t remember the name of, which meant the dagger would cut through bone with just as much ease as stone.
Metal was a mineral too, although the bonds holding it together were usually stronger, and the dagger would carve through armor only a little slower than it would carve through flesh and stone. Basically he was making the perfect assassin’s weapon for a dwarf that clearly didn’t like him. He would have to come up with countermeasures, or keep the dagger. The glow vanished as he finished, and he thought of an elegant solution to the whole ‘dagger of super-murder’ problem. Give it to someone that he didn’t think was against him, and that could probably keep it without much of a fuss.
He turned the dagger so the hilt faced the king. “If you would, your sir-ness, er, majesty. Press your thumb or a finger to the crossguard to activate the enchantment, and be very careful while it is active, it will cut through almost anything. You probably know much better than me what you don’t mind having hole cut into in here. The enchantment will only be active while you are touching the crossguard, that way it can be sheathed without slicing through the sheath and your leg.”
The king didn’t react to his fumbling address, he simply took the dagger, pressed his thumb to the crossguard, and sank the dagger effortlessly into the center of the table in front of him. A fine dust sprayed out around the dagger as it pierced the stone all the way to the crossguard. The dwarves all stared for a long while. “The Ashen house will march with you Prince Jake. In truth, we would have marched anyways, we seek retribution for the daughters we lost in the raid that took your brother and shall not pass up an opportunity to get it.”
Another dwarf, this one with his fiery red hair and beard woven into intricate braids, turned his gaze to Sebastian. “What else is possible, and can you promise us more of this magic if we help?”
Sebastian hesitated for a moment. He looked around the room, taking in the marvelous craftsmanship put into everything the dwarves made, he remembered the wonders that he had seen filling their city, and he made a decision. “If my people refuse to trade magic for your aid after you save Clearlake, and I cannot convince them otherwise, I will return with you to this city and we can see what is possible when we combine our knowledge and abilities. Actually, you could likely claim the spot my old home was at as a surface outpost without a struggle as long as you are willing to let the people that lived there return to their homes.”
The dwarf nodded, “Then you have the Weaver house’s aid.”
“To return to the surface alone is enough to get you the aid of the Stonebinder house.”
The king spoke up. “All in favor, show of hands.” All but three of the dwarves raised their hands, Lord Boulderfist being one of them of course, just sitting there scowling. “It would appear Undermount is going to war, Mage Sebastian.”
The meeting ended shortly after that as the council scattered to prepare their people. Jake led Sebastian back out of the castle. “So where to now?”
Sebastian grinned, his eyes glowing with a strange mix of trepidation, excitement, madness, and iridescent light. “To the Forge, we have work to do, and I need some new toys if we are going to go and play with the Twisted again.”