“Twenty silver pieces! Twenty! These prices do not fly anymore, laddy!” spat a slick bearded dwarf as Pim stood his ground, daydreaming in front of the bulky master of a workshop to whom all the miners brought their daily yields.

Pim was the only one dropping anything off that evening. Short and stocky, he was what people around the area might call a hillsman. Thought to be of dwarven decent, yet not dwarven enough to be welcomed by their longer lived and more resiliant distant cousins. To his dwarvish looks, he owed his luck, as a wide stumped nose akin to a squashed sweet potato and deep brown and bushy eyebrows were enough for most of the dwarven workshops set up near the mines to accept whatever he managed to drag out of those ever lit mines that dotted the hills and deep sloped peaks near the port town. He was covered in soot and had the visage of a mole, hunched forward like a starved beast.

This was it. Dimwater Bay. The only harbor city in the region that still produced anything of note. All thanks to a diminished but still active trithorium mine next to it. The Empire showed great interest in the blue hued crystal fragments called trithorium. Dwarven crafter guilds were never far off wben that strange mineral was anywhere to be found. They fused together and built powerful sources of light using trithorium as the source, capable of eminating bright blue hued light for an eerily long periods of time. Trithorium had been all people in town ever talked about, as they were used to mount expeditions and send military forces through an unnatural sea cloaked in maddening darkness, nicknamed the Gloom.

Trithorium meant trade, trade meant jobs and so, for a time, Dimwater Bay had become a hot-spot of commerce, drawing in the young and impressionable who came with the trithorium fever, a promise of wealth gleeming in their eyes. Those dreams quickly turned to dust, as the road out of improvishment slowly turned into a prison. Breadcrumbs, where loaves were promised. Desperate souls toiled the mines, fighting for scraps of crystal dust. Yet more arrived still, fresh faced and eager to put their name on the Empires ledgers.

“These new requisitions are no joke, lad.” the dwarf explained with a grim undertone.

The smithy Pim was told to drop his haul off to had lowered their asking price of trithorium and as of today, he realized, was creeping ever closer to destitude. He imagined himself tripping and breaking his back on a sharp loose rock in the mines. Then being dragged off in a squeaking cart to the fringes of the logging camps, near the the charcoal huts. As the latest rumor in the mines had it, dark hooded figures, wearing the seal of the Empire on their cloaks burned the crippled workers like logs, stripping away the flesh to harvest and grind down their bones for motives unknown.

Pim shivered at the thought, yet dismissed it as another sailor's story, as was the custom of the place. One could hear all manner of unbelievably horrific tales at the docks and mines. Spread like wildfire, they did. Everyone had an outlandish story to tell, especially about the dark seas, almost visible on a clear cloudless day from the deforested hills around them.

So working toward that next mole-rat on a stick at the end of the day meant digging for tiny fragments of blue dust and pieces of crystals all day every day from now on.

His head hurt. There was a soft sound of thumping coming from the upper floors of the drop off point, where the dwarven smiths assembled their machinations. Noting the panicked pace of the footsteps and muffled voices, the muscles in his neck cramped and all he could do was look down to ease the pain.

“I hate it here.” he mumbled to himself, staring at his crusted, bruised hands.

Cold sweat ran down his brows as a detachment of fresh draftees marched past them in the distance. He thought of the grub they serve to every able body who enlists down at the docks and the powders the Empire cooks use to make the otherwise tasteless mush into a sweet tasting glorious dish made for kings. His salivary glands roared in unison as they filled his dry mouth with moisture.

Living had gotten progressively harder these past months as the all encompassing Empire, cold to the needs and will of it's peoples, steadily drained the whole world as Pim knew it of it's natural resources to fuel ongoing conflicts and wars so old, they had been going on long before he ever came around.

“They do not even pay us in silver anymore!” yelled the dwarf, stepping into grabbing distance to yank the shimmering crystal fragments from Pim's rucksack.

Thumping noises from the upstairs workshop continued and muffled speaking became louder, resembling twisted grunts and panting. Pim felt the sense of impending danger. His shock was interrupted by the dwarf still going on about the Empire and now staring him straight in the face like a lunatic.

“Instead they give us equipment lists and leave us with these funny looking pieces of paper. Empty future promises, the lot of em!” spat the dwarf, taking the fragment sack and flicking one such crumpled up piece of paper on the ground in front of Pim.

With it, after a short pause, fell six pieces of silver, less than thrice the price of the collected crystals the day before, clanking about as they hit the ground after the crumpled paper.

“For three whole years now they have been sending ships across that cursed sea.. and what have they brought back? Nothing! Nothing ever comes back from there. You better hope they do not draft you, boy. Saw a bunch of scrawny fellows just like yourself get dragged away into the drafting tents the other day.” claimed the dwarf and stuck his crusty index finger close to Pim's forehead.

The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

“They take just about anyone these days. You would do well to leave this place. Whatever lies across that sea is not meant for the likes of us. Madness, this whole obsession with that darkened sea, that's what it is!” he blurted with spit dripping down his long braided beard. A stern, penetrating look followed.

The dwarf flicked his finger against Pim's forehead and his vision blurred as vertigo set it.

“Sea sickness. But why?” Pim thought.

“They just throw people into barges, give them our latest gadgets, a belly full of sugary grub and send them off across that watery hellscape of the Gloom.” the dwarf went on, starkly.

“The trithorium candles we make upstairs.. you know, from the scraps of fragments you've been digging up from those hills over there.. we build them to last for a month! That really makes you think, doesn't it. Doesn't it, lad! They say madness grips you, should one spend even half a day around in that dark sunless sea without the candle's light next to his noggin!”

Pim crumbled to the ground as his senses screamed and imaginary footsteps thumped around him. He felt a sharp shiver run down his spine as the dwarf leaned over him and gave Pim a cold, wet slap over the left side of his face, sending him sprawling. His face slammed against a cold damp ground, making him gasp for air. Everything felt wet to him.

He noticed the six silver pieces next to his face. Some still depicting the various rulers that once reigned over these lands, before being assimilated by the all consuming Empire. Many of them looked likehim, he thought. History written in silver, yet to be smelted down and re-minted by the Empire that now gripped this whole continent.

“I'm probably descended from one of them..” he thought, entertaining the idea of it. Then he opened his eyes and woke up on the wet ground of a barge ship, dripping in cold sea water.

“Time to wake the hell up!” he heard the dwarven smiths raunchy voice echo in his ears for the last time.

***

As he finally looked up, he saw the cook of their battle barge, a stocky brute of a man nicknamed Big Modo, dump a bucket of water from a cooking pot on another conscript's head, bunked next to him.

“Wake the hell up, we are under attack!” the cook bellowed across the whole quarters as he waded through dangling hammocks, stacked up and swinging like pea pods in the wind all across the walls.

Reality set in.

Pim was on a battle barge called the Tidebreaker and they had finally made it somewhere after what seemed like an eternity of floating in darkness. It was either this or scraping by in the mines. Pim had made up his mind and walked into the drafting tents like a man posessed. Defying the dwarven craftsmans advice to get the hell out of town, he did the opposite. Perhaps it was the idea of being decended from a long lost culture that was in the brink of being erased around him.

And now here he was. Sensory depraved for an unknown amount of time, awakened from his comatose like slumber. To this. What is this? The battle barge he was on had seemingly crossed the Gloomy Sea as the long silent drifting in darkness had finally come to an end. But crossed into what? A new world? Or had the trithorium candle finally run out and the jaws of madness gripped them, just like the sailors in Dimwater proclaimed in their wild stories.

Pim rubbed the salty seawater from his eyes and stumbled to his feet. Time slowed down as his adrenal glands started pumping out adrenaline. Red blood mixed with blue dripped from the upper decks.

Unsure if madness had finally gripped him, Pim took an unsure step forward, only to be slammed to the side by the force of something big and heavy ramming the side of their ship, creating a gaping hole in the hull. The side of their quarters creaked and tore. Water gushed in and splinters flew around the room.

Pim struggled to keep conscious as he was pulled back up from between the twisted ropes of the hammocks by the cook, Modo.

“To your feet!” the cook once again bellowed, shaking him around.

They waded hand in hand through the floating rubble, towards the stairs that lead up to the rowing decks. The cook was moving slow, gripping what seemed like a chain in his right hand and dragging something heavy along with them. Pim failed to keep his balance in the now almost knee deep current of water, slipping and falling arse first to the floor.

Scrambling to get up, he looked back. Pure shock twisted his bruised face, as he could see several dark silhouettes slipping in from the breached hull and lurching towards them. A smell most foul filled the room and Pim found himself staring down three gloomy monstrosities, knee high and clad in what seemed to be moldy crustations all across their bodies.

Their eyes gave him a fright. Creamy white translucent sacks stared back. Their jaws lowered, revealing intruding teeth as jagged as a crooked hacksaw. Rusted chains rattled around their necks like one would put a collar on a pet mole-rat in the mines, yet these chains looked eroded and old, almost fused into their necks.

They shied away from the light eminating through the trithorium lanterns still swinging wildly from the tall ceiling of the room. The lanterns cast long, dark shadows behind the creatures, twisting and flickering their shadowy visage around the whole room.

“Step aside, arseling.” growled the big fellow behind him and pushed Pim aside as he treaded against the current towards the otherworldly beasts, dragging something beside him in the water.

Pim's cold hands twitched as he stood there, bruised up and frozen in place, about to watch this unbelievable chain of happenstance play out in front of him without a thought in his head.