"You daft fool," Dwindle snapped, pulling against the tunic of the dwarf standing in their wagon and shouting at the White Scale Viper doormen.

Dwindle had sent word to his family in the upper districts that he needed aid. The old dwarf that accompanied him and Red on so many quests helped drive Dwindle to gather his kin. Once together, they rode as a group of seven to the brothel, “Goddess’ Lair,” to uncover Red’s whereabouts.

“Lorbrite,” Dwindle continued hounding the other dwarf, his button-shaped eyes narrowing, “Why did you throw your ‘Finder Hammer’? We are trying to infiltrate unseen, not commit to an all-out war with the White Scale Vipers.”

The dwarf being berated was muscle-packed and had a blaze of fiery red hair that grew from his scalp. His face was typical for a dwarf, with a bulbous nose and a shrewd expression that looked to hold immense scrutiny for whatever happened to be in front of him. His red beard was as lengthy as any proud dwarf would want theirs to be.

Lorbrite scoffed, but instead of responding to Dwindle, he said to a dwarf at the end of the wagon, “Doyle, my hammer.”

"Take care of your things, and they will take care of you," Doyle counseled, his eyes obscured beneath goggles and his body smeared in soot. On his hand, he wore a metallic gauntlet with a glowing sage symbol that cast light on his charcoal-colored beard. He extended the gauntlet to where the hammer lay beyond the street and then made a snatching motion as if pulling something out of the air.

A magnetic field along with thin electric currents appeared around the hammer sitting on the unconscious doorman and pulled it back through the air. Lorbrite caught the flying hammer and guffawed, “This will be a day to remember.”

He then sent the hammer again, which broke apart one of the doormen’s vain attempts to block it with mana, smashing him directly in the face. The hammer was one of Lorbrite’s inventions, called the "Finder Hammer," which had sage symbols that could send the hammer anywhere within a certain range. The invention was made to allow craftsmen to hammer into hard-to-reach places. The only problem was that the hammer was more likely to destroy than to help build, and Lorbrite couldn’t get the return function to work.

“Lorbrite,” Dwindle barked, “My friend is going to be sold into slavery! I needed to sneak in there quietly.”

“Peace, Dwindle,” another dwarf remarked, holding up two vials of smoking liquids in both hands, “The craftsman must be steady handed as well as steady minded.” The dwarf who spoke was balding, and his beard was smoking and also patchy in places. He brought the vials to his face, and a discolored tongue poked out from between his chapped lips to taste both. In response, a spark came from both ends of his moustache as his eye perked up.

“Nasty habit, Bonfere,” another dwarf commented, watching the balding dwarf, Bonfere, taste the vials. This dwarf had long hair and a beard the color of a raven. His dark eyes left Bonfere to lock onto Dwindle. “You asked for our help,” the dwarf grunted, “Our methods, you will have to cope with.”

At that moment, Lorbrite’s hammer knocked out the last doorman that tried to run for the door.

Dwindle could barely meet the other dwarf’s eyes. The dwarf was the oldest cousin, Glick, and the most successful dwarf among them in both invention and forging. The surrounding dwarfs calmed at the sound of Glick’s voice. Even Lorbrite eased his shouting when the dwarf spoke.

Glick was the reason Dwindle didn't communicate with his relatives in the upper districts. Dwindle wasn't sure if it was their opposing social status or different worldviews that prompted them to butt heads—or both. It was a mystery why he had come along. It could’ve been dwarven bonds or dwarven status that prompted the successful dwarf to join in; either was just as good a reason.

Dwindle turned his head dejectedly and murmured, “I just want to save my friend…”

Glick’s eyes softened, he sighed, “Gromp.”

Another dwarf in the wagon, bald and fat, awoke from his sleep. The wagon finally eased to a stop in front of the brothel. The fat dwarf, Gromp, turned to Glick curiously, drool from his sleep still hanging from his lip and wetting his blonde beard.

“Help Dwindle sneak into this building,” Glick ordered.

Gromp’s bald head nodded dumbly then locked onto Dwindle.

“Wait a moment,” Dwindle hesitated, “How is Gromp of all our cousins supposed to help me sneak in? He’s the slowest and laziest one.”

“Go ahead, Gromp,” Glick prompted.

Before Dwinde could react, Gromp turned him around and with boots glowing with sage symbols, kicked the dwarven manager into the sky.

“Damn you Glick…!” Dwindle screamed, going through the air like a rock launched from a catapult.

The dwarves in the wagon began laughing. “What was that for?” Lorbrite chuckled, watching Dwindle crash onto a balcony three floors up.

“He wake us at this gods forsaken hour,” Glick scoffed, “He’s lucky we’re dwarves. Humans would’ve sent him away.” Though the dwarf condemned Dwindle’s late-night call to action and would never say it out loud, he had missed his cousin quite a bit. A dwarf missing from the family is like a house without a door; everyone couldn’t help notice the clear absence what was once there.

Dwindle wanted to send curses and rude gestures down at his cousins, but he needed to hurry. They got lucky that the weather helped veil their attack on the doormen. No telling when their actions would be found out, he had to find out where Red was being kept without delay.

If you stumble upon this tale on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

On the balcony, he turned away from his rambunctious cousins and saw a sliding door, one more commonly found in the far east part of Eronia. Whenever high affluent socialites felt like stepping above their peers, they’d take inspiration from foreign places.

Moving the door either way could not budge it. Dwindle’s stubby hands deftly picked one of the many pouches attached to. Like many scenarios, he came prepared. A thief’s lock-picking kit was soon applied to the door, and with a whisper of friction from wood on wood, the door slid open. Dwindle eased in, passed the door, and entered a blackened room with the absence of sage symbol light.

Before he could take two steps, a voice groaned, “Did you leave the door open?”

The dwarf halted.

Another voice, feminine, answered with a purr, “Dear customer, it is bad business to leave anything unlocked.”

Both voices silenced at the sound of splattering of rain and a gust of wind that carried moisture through the room. In a flash of lightning, two faces lying in a bed saw they were not alone. In the brilliant burst of light, they could see a stout dwarf in the room with them.

The lightning disappeared and with it, the light.

“…was that a demon?” the woman gasped.

A body was rising from the bed with the sound of feet falling onto the wooden floor. “No, daft woman,” the male voice snapped, “There’s a damned dwarf in here!”

Dwindle scurried across the room and found the exit which led into a walkway that spun around an open area. Looking down, there was an expansive area where many men and women dressed in their best had gathered. A single man on a stage of sorts was in the midst of giving a speech.

A disgruntled naked man came out as soon as Dwindle made a move to find a place to hide.

“Damned dwarf,” the man growled with only a sheet to cover his lower half, “Get back here! This is White Scale Viper property you’re trespassing on!”

Dwindle, of course, did not stop or heed the man’s words. Instead, he ran as fast as his short legs could carry him.

Under the pouring rain, Dwindle’s five dwarven cousins stood under the roof of the tall building when they heard clamoring from where Dwindle had infiltrated.

“…that’s not good,” murmured a dwarf with a single thick braid sticking out from his head.

Lorbrite commented solemnly, “If they catch Dwindle, the White Scale Vipers will do more than just harm him.”

“Not if we can do anything about it,” Glick growled, "We'll give him cover with a distraction." His cousins watched as he walked up to the tall red doors and kicked them open.

In the room beyond the doors, nearly a hundred men and women in black turned their heads of slicked-back hair at the ruckus near the entrance.

“Bonfere,” Glick barked, “They’re having a celebration in here. What’s a celebration without a show?”

Bonfere had two glass vials in his hands as he went past Glick before tossing both vials into the air. But before the vials could break on the floor, two men appeared like apparitions and caught them. Both men had shadowed eyes that crinkled as they smirked at the dwarves.

“Men,” Boss Harvul shouted with his amplified voice, “Grab our new guests and show them White Scale Viper hospitality.”

Bonfere put a finger in the air and began to draw glowing symbols with mana, “They always say alchemists are only craftsmen,” Bonfere smiled, revealing many colored teeth that showed the aftereffects of his constant chemical tasting, “They fail to mention that we also know magic.”

When his symbols became complete, symbols appeared on the vials in the hands of the gang members. The chemical liquid then exploded, combining into a purple cloud that consumed the entirety of the room. Coughing and curses sounded from the people gathered, each person fumbling about in an attempt to escape the gaseous substance.

Three figures glowing with mana cut through the gas like knives and arrived at the entrance wielding weapons. One was battered by a flying hammer. Another was kicked away by sage symbol boots, and another became like a ball and bounced away when faced by an exploding vial. The dwarves held strong at the entryway. With such a narrow path to funnel enemies through, they had an advantageous position.

A dwarf wearing a wooden barrel on his back pushed forward through the dwarven group. In his hands was a metal nozzle connected with a hose that attached to the barrel on his back. A sage symbol came to life on both the barrel and nozzle, which he then pointed at the purple cloud.

“I’d be careful with that, Fezzer…” Bonfere warned, but as his words left his mouth, fire spewed out of the Fezzer’s nozzle like water out of a whale’s blowhole.

On contact with the flame, the purple cloud ignited and with a flash, became a cloud of fire. Glick whistled impressed, “Fezzer, did you replace the water in your ‘Flame Surpresser’ with flammable liquid?”

Fezzer wheezed a laugh.

"Poor sods are probably burning alive in there," Doyle feigned pity, the light of fire reflecting in his goggles, his soot-stained moustache turned up in a smile.

A glowing symbol came into creation within the flames and drank in the fire until none remained. Men and women in black staggered about, their clothes singed and their bodies smoking. Behind the glowing symbol stood a woman on the dais with pale skin and a thin frame. Her face under the glow of the floating symbol looked to the dwarves coldly.

“It's a mage,” Glick spat, “The gang members have a mage with them.”

The woman flipped the symbol, and out of it spewed the same flames it had absorbed—the flames directed at the dwarves. Glick tapped his coat, and sage symbols came to life along the fabric that erected a barrier, blocking the flames entirely.

“Little human girl,” Glick scoffed, looking down on the mage, “I was one of the dwarves that helped humans in this city build the sage symbols that keep you safe at night. Your attacks mean nothing to me.”

The three gang members who had previously been rebuffed reappeared and landed attacks on Glick's barrier. The sage symbols sent a jolt through their bodies, causing each to soil themselves. None of the three had enough time to feel shame before they felt the counterattack from the dwarves, sending each mind into the void as they went unconscious.

“I don’t know what all the fuss is about,” one of the dwarf cousins laughed at the sleeping gang members with newly stained pants, “The White Scale Vipers seem a mighty bit overestimated.”

Before any dwarf could agree, a body the size of a wagon landed against Glick's barrier, causing the dwarf who was powering the magic to take a step back. A face like a gorilla looked at the dwarves from beyond the barrier, smirking at them with eyes shadowed by a lurching brow.

“I didn’t know humans could grow so big…!” grunted Glick as his cousins grabbed him to steady him.

Another figure could be seen climbing the ceiling above them like a spider with glowing mana claws. A single eye was painted on a black mask covering his face. The lower part of the mask opened, revealing a mouth that summoned a sage symbol, which released an energy bolt that blasted downward.

An explosion then rocked Glick’s barrier, sending a shockwave through Glick and his cousins holding onto him.

“Steady, lads!” Lorbrite roared, the strongest among them acting as the pillar, keeping their leader on his feet and the barrier upright.

The colossal ape-like man jumped back to start another charge. The masked man above opened his mouth again to summon a sage symbol. Another gang member appeared with a spear, stepping through the air on the wind with sage symbols as he ran toward the dwarves to attack. The female mage began to draw a more powerful symbol, creating a stronger spell.

“Dammit,” Glick cursed, “Humans and their damned bloodlines...!”

Dwindle, Glick thought, you better hurry. We might not last much longer!