"What part of fuck off did you not comprehend? Do I have to degrade my dialect even more?"

"Sir, I need to know what happened here. To be honest, I only ventured into this temple because I wanted to find clues on how to escape this pocket dimension."

"Too bad. Because I don't know what you are talking about."

"Let me finish speaking. I'm curious about who Vanderblitz is and what this temple represents."

I looked around the room, and it looked like a bedroom. A decrepit bed missing a leg is slanted in the corner. A burnt-to-shit desk stands next to it with a chair that doesn't have a back.

The walls are littered with parchments and shelves filled with dusty nicknacks, and the floor is covered in garbage.

"Fuck Vanderblitz, rat bastard. Leaving me here to rot!"

"Sounds like you don't like him. I thought he'd be revered?"

"Eh, I hate him, but I love him. He's done more good for me than anything else. But he still abandoned me."

The dwarf brings his head into his hands and starts sobbing uncontrollably.

"Why didn't you take me with you? I dedicated my life to you, and as soon as the opportunity was presented, you left me behind to 'handle worldy affairs' what the fuck does that mean?"

I awkwardly pat the half-naked dwarf on the back to console him. He grips my clothes and starts crying into my gui.

"I left my wife and kids to learn under him! I was a follower before the church was made in his honor! I witnessed his growth in real-time and became a competent crafter just by watching him make marvels."

"There there, buddy. Let it all out."

I think this dwarf is bi-polar or very lonely. He stops crying and lets go of me.

"It's been many centuries since I've talked to somebody and one since I've seen somebody."

"How does that work?"

"I'm well aware of my spiritual state, lad. I've been like this since before the desert formed. This place is where Vanderblitz left for a better place. Dwarves would pilgrimage to this site, pay their respects, and ask for blessings.

I used to keep this place clean and maintain everything, but I died in a freak gear accident past a door not open to the public. I wasn't found.

Something happened that churned the sands and set the sun in the sky to an eternal blaze. The dwindling number of pilgrims completely stopped at that point.

Years past. I've seen my brethren come by the mountain, but they wore different clothes and spoke with an unfamiliar accent. They came in and took everything. EVERYTHING.

When they couldn't get passed the vault door, they destroyed it. The unpickable door. Induced the volcano the temple was built on to erupt, undoing Vanderblitz's quelling. Destruction instead of understanding its mechanisms. Savages...

Vanderblitz deligated me the task of watching over this place in his absence, and with my failure, I'm doomed to stay here forever."

"How is this place visible to me?"

I purposely forget my plans of breaking down the door earlier.

"This is an important place. It has a soul of its own. A god accended here after all. Born a mortal, challenged the old god of the forge to a competition and won.

The old god of the forge descended and gave Vanderblitz a run for his money, but obviously, Vanderblitz succeeded. He tamed the raging volcano under his iron fist and created a pair of sabatons from iron that could let anyone walk on anything.

Anything, even concepts.

I created the temple afterward with my own two hands. The door was Vanderblitz's creation, but I'm the one who installed it. Now I can't even restore this place, spiritual places can only be fixed by the priest types, and I'm just a sad artist."

"..."

"It was nice talking to somebody. It's been a while. Please leave me to my depression."

"I can heal this place."

"...pardon, lad? Don't be fucking with me!"

"Check the statue in the main room if you don't believe me."

"If you're playing with an old dwarf's heart, you'll suffer."

He runs off, leaving the vault door open. I hear echoing off the walls his voice!

This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.

"Holy shit, lad!"

I hear the mismatched footsteps of one shoe and one bare foot slapping down the hallway. I listen to him fall over and curse, but I won't mention it to him.

I walk out of the vault door and meet the dwarf in the hallway. He grabs my hands and looks me in the eyes.

"I'm so happy, lad. I can kiss you."

"Please don't. Don't you have a wife and kids?"

"Not for a long time, lad. And that's an expression. I'm not interested in your kind of type. Too tall, just like an elf."

"It took a lot out of me to fix that statue, and I won't be able to see the temple forever. I'll need to find more cacti."

"It's fine, I just need to fix one thing, and you can have anything that remains!"

"Is there anything left? You heavily emphasized that nothing was left. Plus, even if something was left, wouldn't it just disappear after I stop seeing the temple?"

"Kid, shut up and follow me."

He walks over to the other door and touches it. The door unlocks and swings open. It leads to a staircase leading down.

"By the way, what's with the ant on your back."

"Don't worry about it."

Speaking of Beryl, I should leave her here, just in case.

"Hey, I never got your name. I'm Ellis Vincere. Nice to meet you."

"Durnar Firebottom, from the Firebottom clan. Named after my war hero grandpa. One of the founders of the city of Kildan and its surrounding sister cities... if they still stand. Do your people have a culture around names?"

"Yes, but I don't know the history behind my name. My grandfather mentioned the origins of our last name, but I'm not sure if he was spouting out of his ass."

"Respect your elders, kid. They managed to grow old for a reason."

"..."

"Sometimes I miss my family and my clan. I don't regret what I have done, not really. But something I would've done if I had a chance was to show my kids what their deadbeat has accomplished, maybe get prideful from their pity."

"You mentioned earlier about a royal dialect. Are you actually royalty?"

"Eh, not really. My clan, Firebottom, is prominent. Directly under the twenty-third war king and his vassals. Making tools of war and that sort of thing. I was never really good at that in my clan days and wasn't too well off money-wise even though I was educated."

'War king?"

"Unless you were lying about not having too much time, getting into dwarvish politics would probably kill you since we're underground. Poof and you're in a rock."

We've been walking this entire time. The staircase leads us deeper into the volcano.

"How much farther do we have to go? You're making me worried now."

"Eh, not too much farther. I was just saying because if I start talking politics, I need to sit down. You know."

I don't know.

"Do you know how this cactus works? How do I see everything and interact with things that aren't there? You said something about god making this place, but that doesn't explain how I'm actually seeing it."

"I'm not some spirit guide or shaman. If I was, I'd probably be able to do the repairs I wanted. Whatever ritual you undertook didn't extract the proper ingredients and was a rush job by some hack since you are only halfway... Do you know what the spirit realm is?"

"Is that where ghosts come from."

"... Are you stupid on purpose?"

"No, but I'll get smarter if you tell me about it."

"... There are many types of spirits, but the only kind I'm going to talk about is memory spirits. I'm not a scholar. This stuff I learned way back in my clan days, so take what I say with a pinch of salt.

I ain't a nature spirit, and I ain't an undead sort, so that leaves me as a memory. The idea is that the mana here was so potent that it seared a 'memory' into reality. Of course, reality still exists, so the 'sear' is only one layer under. Understand?"

"Now I have way more questions."

"Save it for later. We're here."

The staircase descends into a large cavernous room withed with stalagmites and stalactites. In the middle of the room is a cracked forge surrounded by metal tables and rusted tools.

Metal boxes of junk fill this place, littering the ground with rusty metal and half-completed equipment.

Pools and streams of lava litter the room, but they seem they are 'drying up.' Half cooled and barely moving. The forge in the middle isn't lit.

"How are you not an undead? Shouldn't you count as one on a technically?"

"I said save it for later... no necrotic energies were present, so take it as that. By the way, who made your arm? I fully expect you didn't make it yourself with those wimpy ass arms, or I guess arm."

"You'd be right, but I don't need the insults. It was made by a master's daughter, someone name Rain."

"Oh, what master, do I know him?"

"Probably not because he's a human martial artist that was probably born long after you died."

"Pity. Anyways. The metal is quite interesting, but the lack of enchantments is sad."

He rubs his fingers against my prosthetic and tries to pinch it.

"It's like a sadist made it, who would purposely make something that transfers 100% of the pain felt. I get that input is important in the heat of battle or for dextrous crafting, but it seems like the creator purposely only made the pain felt normal levels. Pain receptors are different from touch and heat receptors, and those were more neglected"

"..."

"I mean... They didn't even put the other receptors to normal levels. Did you piss off your missus or something?"

"... can you show me what I need to heal."

"Oh shit. You're right. By the way, in an hour or two, this place will fill with lava and kill the shit out of you if you aren't immune to fire. Don't worry about all the stuff in here. The metal can't be melted by normal lava."

"..."

He leads me to the centerpiece of the room, the forge.

The metal behemoth is kinda crude looking. It's rough and jagged. I expected something intricate in design like the door, but it looked like slag metal fused together in the ruff shape of a furnace.

Its dark exterior is only highlighted by the dull light the lava streams produce.

"Ellis, it might not look like much, but this is what Vanderblitz used to create his crafts. It was his first furnace, and he never bought a new one. Anyways what's important is what's inside."

I apprehensively stick my head in and see many arcane sigils caved into the smooth interior. At the back is a well-sized hole that leads deeper into the ground. Deeper than I can see. Everything here is coated in dark metal, covered in arcane glyphs.

"Here, tie this chain to yourself and go down. You'll see what you have to fix. Whatever's down there should still exist in reality. Oh, I threw a lockbox down there years ago. Can you get it for me as well?"

"..."