Chapter Forty-Four

“Come with us… we will give you a chance to explain.” The dwarf said, “My name is Dwarnav Denikov. I’m the ruler of this city, the one that twit tried to summon!” He snapped his walking stick toward Tess, who wisely said nothing in return.

Though I’m fairly sure she mouthed another ‘sorry’. Dwarguy did not need to be told he’d have to leave his mech, at least, which saved us some awkward moments. Thankfully the embedded stone chunk fell free when his mech shrank into its gem.

Loysa hadn’t said anything, but I didn’t need to be psychic to know that her brain hadn’t gone into stasis or anything. It just wasn’t the right time.

So I focused on the moment, “Light it up!” Dwarnav shouted into the darkness, and a series of lights flashed on, racing away from us and into the distant cavern, steam shot out of pipes of stone as the source of power in Undercity activated or… maybe connected to us? I wasn’t sure how it all worked, and just looking at a few pipes wouldn’t cut it.

The lights were a dim blue that blended with the cavern’s atmosphere and made everything somehow more ethereal than before. It also, thankfully, disguised the worst of the dwarven faces and the rot that was evident.

That however, made all this more magical. Do you know how much I longed for magic in my old life?! To know something other than the predictable and banal, the routine of work and bills and wondering if I’d have enough to afford the distractions of my borderline dystopian existence?!

If you do, then you know me. How I felt right then. Even surrounded by the undead dwarves after a steampunk battle of mechs and magic that nearly killed us all, despite fearing that things could still go wrong for me and I could die before the day was out…

‘I’ve got my adventure!’ So despite everything, that spring came into my step and wouldn’t go away, and all nine tails wagged and wiggled with the blue mana light at the tips shone all the brighter.

I think my team must have thought me borderline insane in that moment, but even so, there’s something to be said for my unnatural positivity.

It’s infectious.

And the undead who led us deeper into the cavern seemed to find me curious in their minds, at least they weren’t overtly hostile. Dwarnav looked up at me as we walked and asked, “You, are you touched in the head? A mite crazed? Like that’n?” He asked and jerked his thumb over his shoulder toward Tes’alay.

“No. I don’t think so.” I answered. “Why?”

“Lass, yer bein led into a city of the undead, deep beneath a mountain, ther’s no reason to expect yer get’n out alive as you’ve gone’n brought the one who did this to us back here with ye!” He snapped, and I gave a sober nod, my ears lowered a little.

“True. But we’re talking, and that’s the start of every peace, and I think we can help you… I can’t undo what she did, but maybe if we can find a solution to make your lives alright again, it won’t be so bad?” I suggested, “I know what it’s like to just trudge from day to day and wait for the end, so if I can help you make that problem go away for you, I’ll do that.”

That had Dwarnav’s eyes linger on me for a little longer in silence before he muttered, “Aye, yer touched in the head after all.”

The city, when we reached it, was a stunning piece of engineering. With pipes of stone and copper alike lining the walls, the porous stone had moisture running down the sides which in turn seemed to serve as a kind of ‘stone farm’ where moss grew wild, while copper pipes ran in little channels cut within the street itself. A dwarf rode a giant bat beneath a massive blue gem that hung like an underground sun above the city itself and gave off a steady, constant light.

There were things that were obviously ‘factories’ of some sort, with pipes that thrust up into the stone sky, it wasn’t hard to guess that the smoke was meant to carry outside and not pollute the interior.

The buildings themselves were cut into terraces of stone blocks each one over the other seeming to be a residence, each one with what I could only conclude was some sort of outdoor cooking station. At a guess each dwarf home was about the size of my cheap apartment. ‘Then again, they’re underground, space must be a premium….’ I could see numerous other small figures walking the streets, all of them…

‘Dead…’ I shivered to think of what that must have been like, everybody living their lives, then just out of nowhere the sound of a boom… and then it’s all gone. Those farther away might live long enough to see the others just ‘die’ it must have seemed apocalyptic, and for anyone who survived by being away, returning home to find everyone just… dead?

I couldn’t fathom it. Not in a million years.

I thought it was impolite to bring up their deaths though, so I asked, “How many ah, people, does Undercity have in it?”

‘About one hundred thousand dwarves.’ He said with a hint of pride, “This is just the surface, follow that road,” he said and leveled his stick toward the end of the visible wide road, “and it runs down many more levels where we grow moss and take fish from the underground river or… we did. Before we died.” He asserted.

“I had nothing to do with that!” Tess snapped. “People all over Steelven keep saying I did, but I didn’t!”

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That really seemed to bother her. I suppose that made sense. It would bother me too, for there to be a rumor that I’d killed a hundred thousand people through negligence of some sort.

Dwarnav grunted. “That we know, lass. We thought after we came back that, maybe you had. But the cause was a methane pocket, a big one. So much so that now we’re dead and all we’ve been setting up access to more like em to use as a fuel source. Or… we’ve got plans to do that, just no tools!” He snapped.

“Well, like I said, I can help with that, I think.” I emphasized, I had no authority over Yorgim, but this seemed like the sort of thing he’d be totally for if it made him some money and secured his investment in the future. Being able to confirm the quality of magitite would be a big sell for him right now I’m sure.

He lead us down into the city interior and over to a thick stone door, his palm went to the surface, and the door broke not into four pieces, but into countless tiny fragments that scattered like dust at our feet. “In. Except for you.” He pointed to Dwarguy. “One of’r people will show ye where ye can gather magitite. You’ll need yer mech, so keep it. The rest, ye wait, in here, I’ll be gather’n the council for a public hear’n ah yer proposal. An it better be a good’n or magitite’r not, don’t count on leave’n here with that’n!”

He leveled his staff at Tess, who put a fairly brave face on it, stepping through the door before Loysa or I could do so.

“I understand.” I said gravely and stepped inside trying to hide the pounding in my chest.

Once we were alone after Loysa followed me in she hissed, “What are you thinking?!” I don’t think she was angry, but rather confused, uncertain, “What is a casino and how will that help anyone?!”

“Casinos are big places devoted to gambling. They have all kinds of games of chance that let people put money on winning, not just cards either!” I raised my voice to cut off her objection, “They make a lot of money, and more importantly, the dwarves can’t enjoy alcohol, but alcohol isn’t the only high. They still have emotions, that means they can still feel things that don’t require drinking or eating. That means they can still enjoy winning, and they can enjoy schadenfreude!”

“What?” Tess and Loysa asked at once.

“Schadenfreude, taking pleasure in somebody else’s misfortune. Like when you take somebody’s money at the card table, that’s schadenfreude.” I explained and went to sit down. The room we were in was utterly empty, not even a table or a chair or a pot to piss in… which would be a problem if we were here too long.

“Listen,” I said as I sat down with my back against the wall, “they’re like this roommate I once had. He got really into whatever he was doing, he’d spend hours a day on video games… a kind of entertainment, to destress from this job he did that was also really hard. And he monitored every penny spent, he was kind of obsessive about stuff. If he lost one thing, like a game system broke, he’d just get another. Beat a game, get another. He hated doing without. He needed his fix to cope with work and his work to have a sense of purpose. But if he got what he needed out of the replacement, he was just fine.”

Loysa scratched her head, “I don’t know what some of those things mean but…” She shorted and covered her nose with her hand, “I do know how good it feels to take the last cred off a guy who deserves to lose it all. So, boss, what’s the plan?” she asked.

“Yeah, how am I going to avoid being fertilizer on some corpse farm?” Tess asked, “I agreed to come along, but not to be a living sacrifice.”

I think I’d won some credibility with her in that she said what she did instead of suggesting I’d intended to sell her out, that was a plus. I held up a hand and curled my fingers toward me to explain everything I had in mind. How casinos worked, the games, the plan that was rapidly coming together in my mind.

It took a few hours to explain everything, but by the time Dwarguy came back with a pair of magitite ore lumps glowing under each arm. Each lump roughly the length of his forearm, I didn’t even have to ask before he said, “They got them some dem good ore here, lassies, an ah tell ye, I’m ‘appy to sign off on a letter to Mr. Schnee swearin it’ll nae only be good fer mechs, but better’n the stuff he bought already. The ore’s got’a be at least ninety-six percent pure!”

“That’s why I used it. And that’s why I wanted more.” Tes’alay said with an emphatic agreeing nod, “It’s hard to get even eighty percent pure magitite ore most places.”

“What even is magitite?” I asked.

Tes’alay held the necklace in between her fingers and fidgeted with it, the little blue stone glowed in its center placement, “Nobody can really say for sure, unlike most stones it doesn’t seem to have a natural process. Some say it’s just a gift of the gods, but me, I think it is mana crystalized by pressure and time. If it’s trapped for long periods, I think it just ‘hardens’ of course some people think magitite comes from the bodies of ancient magic casters who were buried by their contemporaries. It’s possible that they’re right, so much history is just lost…” She sighed.

“I don’t think anybody but the gods know, and they won’t say. One more reason not to trust them.” She snapped briefly then shook off her spark of temper. “Regardless of what it is, it comes in various purity grades, the more pure it is, the more useful it is. Eighty-five percent is the minimum purity needed to operate a mech. But eighty percent is considered commercial grade, as it’s also the highest you can use as a spirit being.”

“So magitite might be say… dead spirit being bodies?” I guessed, and Tess flashed a little smile my way.

“I knew I’d like you. You saw right to the logical conclusion.”

“I don’t like the thought that I might be just… well, never mind.” I snorted. “I guess I can’t dismiss it.”

“Nobody can. Nobody has ever found ore more pure than ninety-nine percent, once you get into the high nineties, we start getting smaller and smaller measurements, which conversely means larger and larger gaps… if you get what I mean.” Tess searched my face for understanding, and I had to grope for a comparison.

Finally, I found it. In video games, gaining the first twenty or fifty or eighty levels was easy, depending on how many total they were, but as you went to ever higher levels closer to the max, the gains decreased which meant everything you accomplished did that much less good. It was easier to get from level one to eighty than it was to get from eighty to eighty five. And easier to get from level eighty-five to ninety-nine than from ninety-nine to level one hundred.

She saw my understanding dawn as I realized how broad magitite ore purity could be.

“Well, damn.” I said as Dwarguy set his sample down and claimed a seat.

“Now we just wait until they call for the rest of us and… hope my suggestion takes.” I said.

And we did not have to wait for very long.