The dwarves, within their enormous mountains, built increasingly deeper mining tunnels. In one of these mines works a dwarf named Gundar Hardrock, the fifth son of Gibly Hardrock.

In the background of the mountain, powerful pickaxes wielded by dwarves can be heard, each strike on the rock yielding more ore to be found. Gundar is swinging his pickaxe alongside 10 other dwarves; one of them is his friend, Nori. They all take a brief pause to enjoy a succulent lamb with potato soup.

"This is fantastic!" exclaimed Nori as he took a bite of the meat.

"Take your time, my friend," Gundar offered Nori a jug of water.

"Thank you very much."

"We'll be heading back to the upper levels soon for the festivities that probably started a few days ago," Gundar remarked.

"I completely forgot about that," said Nori after another bite, "Well, the folks from Vale always get invited to these festivities and they always bring those wonderful treats made with honey," Nori added.

Gundar laughs and agrees with his friend.

"By the way, Gundar, why are you down here? I heard you were a soldier."

Gundar briefly looks at his pickaxe and responds, "I gave up on being in the fights. I fought for a long time, but now I just want to live a peaceful life."

"I have to agree that hunting goblins isn't a cool task. I heard they stink quite a bit."

"Not more than you, my friend." They both laugh and continue eating.

...

Finally, the shift is over. Both gather their belongings and prepare to head back up. Unfortunately, they are deep in the mountain, so it will take about a day to reach the nearest residential colonies.

Now they are in a large elevator to the next floor, one of the genius inventions of the dwarves' engineering, these elevators are super useful, and without them, it would take several days to go from the deepest point of the mountain to the top. In total, there are 50 elevators to the highest point of the mountain. To reach the entrance of the mountain, there is no need to go up to the top floor, just up to the 25th floor, which leads to the grand central hall where the grand gates are located.

"What are you holding?" Gundar asked when he saw Nori holding a piece of paper.

"Oh, this? I believe it's a letter. I found it lying on the previous floor. I can't read, so I was thinking of taking it to my wife to read and try to find out who it's from, maybe it's important."

Gundar can read, but he doesn't like to show it much. Most dwarves don't care much about literacy and leave that function to the women. Gundar learned to read on the advice of his mother when he was still very young.

Suddenly, they hear some loud noises before their elevator stops on the next floor.

"What do you think is happening here?" Nori asks.

"I believe those cursed moles probably reached this floor too," said one of the dwarves also in the elevator.

Everyone heads toward the next elevator. But to their surprise, they see a dwarf guard. He is sharpening his axe, a beautiful and ornate axe.

He looks at them and says, "Dear friends." He stands up and puts his axe on his back. "Unfortunately, the elevator is closed. We have some dwarves causing a commotion near the elevators. And for some reason they didn't tell me, there's a blockade three floors from here."

"But that's very strange," said another dwarf, "who are these troublemaking dwarves?"

"They came from the 15th floor, they say they've heard rumors of a big mess on the upper floors, so they decided to come down here in large numbers."

"Is that why they closed the elevators? But it doesn't make much sense, we're still on the 7th floor," Gundar said to the guard.

"Nothing has made sense for about 2 days. Everything was going well for about 5 days when the festivities started and the grand gate on the 25th floor was opened."

"And so now, probably due to a confusion they don't even know if it's real, these cowards are trying to hide down here in the lower floors, right?" said a dwarf, his temper already altered.

"Look, in a few hours, we'll reopen the elevator just for going up, then you can go up to the tenth floor and try to see why they closed elevators 11, 12, and 13."

The guard then guides the 10 dwarves to a large hall, which is crowded with dwarves from floors 10, 9, and 8.

"You can stay here while you wait, I'll inform the prefect of this floor that you'll be going up, I give you my word that you'll be the first ones to go up. Until then, wait for someone to come and take you to the elevator on this floor." The guard then leaves and goes back the way he came.

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"This must be a joke," said a visibly irritated dwarf.

"Let's stay calm, we'll continue our way soon," said a dwarf trying to calm his companions.

Gundar strokes his beard as he tries to distract himself, but the place is too noisy due to the huge number of dwarves in one place, mostly children, elderly, and women.

"Gundar," said Nori, "which floor are you going to?"

"28," he replies, "and you?"

"I live on the 29th floor, I didn't even know we lived so close, in fact, my relatives lived for many years on the 28th floor."

"Maybe I've seen them before," a commotion in the crowd caught his attention, Nori becomes confused by his friend's abrupt change of expression, so he looks in the direction where he is looking.

What he sees leaves him perplexed, a dwarf was attacking another, but with bites. Two guards run toward the commotion to separate the supposed fight.

"Hey, you two, stop it now!" said one of the guards while grabbing the attacker to pull him away from the victim. The dwarf being attacked loses consciousness, possibly due to the injuries. Another dwarf guard appears and helps carry the unconscious dwarf.

Meanwhile, the attacker continues to struggle and tries to break free from the guard at all costs. "Stay still, I've already told you that you're under arrest."

All the guard receives in response are just horrifying growls. Unfortunately, the attacker bites the guard's arm, tearing off a piece of flesh. His long beard, now all covered in blood, begins to drip as he is pushed back by the guard, who falls to the ground screaming in pain and cursing the attacker.

The attacker advances toward the guard, who can't grab his axe, but before he could attack, Gundar's pickaxe pierces his back, making him fall to his knees and roar. But not in pain.

Everyone stands there watching as that dwarf with the blood-soaked beard stands up as if

he wasn't feeling any pain. Now his target is Gundar, he jumps on the dwarf, knocking him down to the ground, a physical struggle ensues, and the Dwarf tries to bite him all the time. Nori joins the fight and pushes the dwarf to the ground, getting him off his friend who wastes no time getting up and heading for the guard's axe, who by now was also unconscious. He grabs the axe, and before the aggressive dwarf could get up, he buries the axe right in the middle of his forehead, making him stop growling instantly.

He looks around and sees everyone's faces around him shocked. Nori keeps asking if he's okay constantly. He nods that he's fine and hands the axe to him. The previous guard who was guarding the elevator finally appears.

"What just happened?" he asks while looking at the dwarf with his head split open and his fallen companion with a huge bite on his arm.

Nori promptly responds, "he was out of his mind and attacked 3 people before being killed, we had no choice."

The guard puts his hand on his head and sighs, "all right," he looks at his fallen companion and then at Nori, "let's clean up this mess..." before he could finish the sentence, the guard on the ground stands up as if he had never fallen and attacks him from behind, biting his neck and taking him to the ground. "Get off me!" the guard yells as his companion tears into his neck before Nori and Gundar could help they were pushed by the crowd screaming in despair. Gundar looks out of the corner of his eye and sees that first dwarf that was attacked, he was standing attacking. Growling and biting other dwarves. He wasn't the only one, wherever Gundar looked he saw dwarves attacking and biting each other. He saw when a guard thrust his axe into the heart of one of them and he just jumped on top of him and started biting his face furiously.

"We have to go to the elevator," said Gundar.

"We do, but first, we have to get out of the middle of these people or we'll end up dying," replied Nori.

They see a group of guards with spears pass by them, all wearing chainmail and helmets.

"I hope the situation on the upper floors isn't like this too," Nori said breathlessly.

When they finally reach the elevator, the hallway is crowded with people, they are trying to go down to the 6th floor or even deeper.

"Damn it!" shouted one of the dwarves who was with them. Of the 10 mining dwarves, 3 got lost in the crowd, and now only 7 remain.

"I know an old passage," said a dwarf. Everyone turns their attention to him as the screams of despair in the background become louder and louder.

"Let's go through the old stairs."

"I thought they had been destroyed," said Gundar.

"That's what everyone thinks, but they were just closed, I know a way to them, my great-grandfather used it before they built these great elevators."

"Then let's not waste time here and go to those stairs," said Nori.

"Lead the way," added Gundar, "by the way, my name is Gundar, and this is Nori."

"I'm Tauro."

They greet each other as they run through the extensive corridors. As they turn a corner, one of their companions is impaled by a dwarf guard, one of those who had a spear and chainmail. They were all covered in blood, growling. The impaled dwarf screams in pain as the guard grunts even louder. Gundar pushes him against the wall, making him let go of the spear. He gets up and goes after Gundar, then Nori screams Gundar's name and hands him the axe, when the guard approaches growling he strikes his legs and rips them off, then he splits his head in half, making him stop and finally die.

"Why is this happening? Why are these people going crazy?" one of the dwarves asks.

"It's surely witchcraft," says Tauro.

"Now it's no use speculating, we have to continue,"

They look back and see dozens of crazed dwarves growling and running toward them as if all they were thinking about was killing everything in front of them.

"RUN!" Gundar shouts. All six remaining dwarves run following Tauro, who shows them the way to the stairs. Those crazed dwarves are still running toward them, and it seems the horde is even bigger now.

"They don't give up," said one of the dwarves.

"They're like demons!" shouted another.

After running for a while, they finally arrive, but the entrance to the stairs is blocked by a large oak door and a silver lock holding chains.

"Those things are still coming!" shouted one of the dwarves, pointing to the horde of crazed dwarves.

"We need to open this lock," Tauro takes two pickaxes and hands one to Gundar, "help me, let's break these chains, and the rest of you kill any of these madmen who try to get close!"

The rest of the dwarves grab their pickaxes and prepare to hold off the crazed dwarves until the chains break.

Gundar and Tauro repeatedly strike the chain, but it is very resistant. "Damn blacksmiths," Tauro shouted as he gave a blow so strong it could have split a rock in half.

Meanwhile, the first crazed ones were getting closer, one of them was knocked down and took a precise pickaxe blow to the head.

"I think they only die if we pierce their heads," said Nori.

"We did it!" Gundar shouted as the chains and the lock fell to the ground.

"EVERYONE TO THE STAIRS!" Tauro shouted. One by one, the six dwarves ran to the stairs, but before Gundar closed the doors and put a pickaxe in the handle to block the crazed dwarves who were frantically pushing the door. "I hope this holds until we're far enough away." He thought, then he joined the rest of the dwarves and ran through the dark stairways.