The imager had only contained that single scene. Garnet had some kind of secret? Of course, I could guess what it was. She had some kind of connection with this the Deep. Rather, she had been here at some point. Was the reason she had come down to the Deep purely to get acquire resources as she had claimed, or was there something else to it.

The deep dwarves had fled the deep over a hundred years ago. This was before Aberis conquered Osteria, and even before humans started to migrate into Osteria. At that point, it wasn’t even really a country so much as just the lands of a people. The Osterians lived in the Osterian plains. Then, the deep dwarves seemed to be fleeing something, so they made the month-long trek to the surface looking to relocate. The dwarves rejected them, the Dioshin attacked and enslaved them, and the Osteria ejected them.

I had always figured that Garnet had been the daughter of a slave, or that there was some tribe of Deep Dwarves that had managed to remain in Esmore. Esmore was mostly made up of the esmere in the valley, who I had learned talking with Pait recently were called halflings, and the dwarves of the mountains. However, some deep dwarves might have been holding out in some mountain village that was ignored by the rest. Just who did survive and where did they end up? More importantly, how did Garnet remember the deep, when she reported to only be in her twenties.

I hadn’t thought much about it, but there had been something odd about Garnet from the beginning. Since passing through Esmore and having a chance to see more dwarves, I found that they didn’t have that permanent youthful look. First, she had claimed that changing names was something that dwarves did, but I had asked Pait and he said he didn’t know that to be a custom of dwarves. Second, dwarves aged slower than humans overall. It wasn’t like they stayed permanently child-like. So, while I had presumed Garnet was only in her twenties or thirties, I recalled her slave auction had suggested she was older with many skills above her expected age.

The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

At the time, that hadn’t been surprising to me, because all of my girls had similar levels, but Garnet hadn’t been fighting with a multiplier in dungeons with her life on the line. Then, there was her strange connection to the church. She had a flat chest, but she seemed to be a close connection with Mary the Archbishop of Aberis’s church, who had sent me to save her. I had achieved that goal, but various things came up and I hadn’t spoken with her in some time.

I had originally believed that her oddities were just a part of her rare species. Like Miki’s nine-tail fox or Faeyna’s status as an elf, the deep dwarves were all but extinct in this world. These were just customs from her. I had to imagine the lack of sun made it so deep dwarves typically looked younger than surface dwarves. At least, I had heard such sentiment. Yet, I had run into King Diorite as well. He was a middle-aged man, although who knew how old he was.

In short, Garnet was a woman with no name and no past. She carried the knowledge of the deep dwarves and seemed to remember things she shouldn’t remember. She had no age. She was tied to the church and the Deep. She had the body of a thirteen-year-old girl, but the flirtatious tendencies and curiosities on sex of a middle-aged virgin. I started to realize that I didn’t know anything about Garnet. She was a complete mystery to me.

I put the stone away and looked at Sapphire, who gave me a wondering look back. I knew what she was asking. What do we do next? That was a good question.