The shadows of the rubble littering the floor of the expansive room danced to the tune of the torch's flame. The chairs, tables and their pieces haphazardly scattered all over implied this was once a dining hall; various cracks, canyons and holes in the stone walls, floors and ceilings of the room likewise implied this ‘once’ was long past.

Underneath the thick layer of desolation and destruction coating the rock surfaces, one could see the engravings of masterfully chiselled lines. Many centuries ago, these would have come together to form a portrait, or maybe a landscape - unfortunately, time did away with anything that may have been glimpsed between the fissures penetrating each image.

Drawn in white - a stark contrast to the dark stone - various maps, diagrams and paragraphs coated almost every patch of floor and wall even slightly less damaged than the average. Joakim stood in the room's centre, admiring his handiwork.

The man was skinny. Indeed, most would also see him as frail. The many layers of torn clothes he wore were soaked through with grime, dust, blood - his overgrown hair and beard were equally filthy. Coated in a thick layer of chalk, his palms constantly rubbed in an attempt to restore their former colour.

Despite this, Joakim was humming a tune.

“The officers are dead,” a voice interrupted his thoughts. A female voice.

He turned to face the source. A woman stood in the entrance to the dining hall, barely lit by the torch. The flame couldn’t penetrate much further - the hallway behind her was engulfed in a void of darkness, smothering any trace of light with its thin fog of dust.

“Seems like they did a number on you, fräulein,” he replied.

Her face was heavily bandaged, with thin slits for her eyes and mouth. Blood had already seeped through the cloth on one side.

“Seems like you were wrong about High. Your mistake cost me my face.”

“And your hand?” He pointed to one of her palms, wrapped in a thick layer of gauze.

“One of them was a vampire, but you could not have known that. It is still mostly functional - anything below the index finger has lost dexterity, but not completely.”

“A very surgical way of describing a lifetime wound,” he sighed. “Another thing - did anyone see you bleed into the gruel?”

“If they did, I would not be here.”

He sat down on a boulder, setting the torch on the ground next to him.

“I suppose that is true. Moving on, I’ve finished mapping all ruins I have dug through and joined them with the exclusion zone you graciously explored for me. With this much written out, I’m sure I can figure something out in terms of structural points to bring this whole place down.”

“What I need is the landslide map. I have no use for simply dealing further damage to something already beyond repair.”

Joakim tapped his head.

“Have some trust. What you need is me alive and I want to keep it that way for as long as possible. Show me the sun and I’ll bury these ruins like nothing else could.”

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“You need not worry. I have no illusions for the basis of this alliance, Joakim.”

He shrugged.

“I can only hope that what you say is what you feel, fräulein. Now, as for my end of this deal - if those old dwarven carvings of this fortress’s design were accurate, I believe I have a good grasp of where I can find what I came here for.”

“You have not set out yet. This means-”

“That it’s in the exclusion zone, yes. I will need your assistance to find it."

She was silent.

"Or, you can stay here and leave me to die alone in the search," he quipped, "That could also work.”

“It would not work.”

Joakim paused, looked up at her eyes in the small gap between the bandages. After a few seconds, he shook his head in defeat.

“Yes, it wouldn't. That was, in fact, the joke. Either way, you’ve arrived just in time for me to leave - I’ll let you make up your own mind when it comes to following me.”

He stood up and picked up his pickaxe, disturbing a few stones. Rolling down the shallow slope of the dining hall, they slipped into deep cracks or were otherwise swallowed by the sea of black beyond the flicker of the torch.

“You have a weapon, fräulein?”

“I do.”

He nodded, full of confidence.

Unfortunately, the only confidence he had was in the fact - for it was very much a concrete fact - that any confrontation they encounter in the depths of the dwarven fortress would have the same outcome with or without weapons in their hands.

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The prisoners’ faces were sullen, their eyes sunk deep inside their sockets.

Shuffling along in neat rows, they scraped the stone of the winding stairwell with their bast shoes. Some left behind sticky, red footprints; any trace of this suffering leaking through woven strips of wood was quickly smeared into nothing by the following tide of similarly tortured legs. Between every single man and woman in this cruel procession, there was not a single murmur.

And yet, the echoes of laughter and conversation carried themselves all across this vertical tunnel. Through the entrance to this spiral of stone into the abyss, another group sauntered in to descend - these men shone with cleanliness, especially when placed next to the browns and greys of the countless layers of filth sticking to the unwashed clothes and bodies of the prisoners.

Waltzing in the air, embers flaked off the many torches held in the bony fingers of the prisoners. The faint, orange aura of light each emitted could not reach far before suffocating in the still black abyss and its accompanying fog of dust.

The guards following the tortured crowd carried much brighter and much safer lanterns - the hard soles of their leather jackboots stomped down with certainty, adding to the cacophony of their small talk with resounding, satisfying crunches.

Then, the creak of leather being stretched tight over skin.

The prisoners’ ears had long learned to pick up this sharp sound. Almost lost amidst footsteps and chatter, the noise forced their bodies to recoil not unlike under the crack of a whip.

There was no need for any to turn their heads or shift their eyes to see the source - it was permanently engraved in their retinas, forcefully thrust into view by their minds.

Flay followed the small platoon of guards into the stairwell entrance. He had a real name, of course - this was little more than a moniker adopted by the convicts, a name to call him in their suppressed whispers.

Unfortunately, there was no hidden meaning behind this name.

Having finished adjusting one of his two gloves, he reached his hand for the other. His face was set with grim satisfaction; tormenting the prisoners with little more than a simple reminder he was present seemed quite amusing to him. Hooking the edge of black leather with his thumb, his fingers gripped the glove in a vice.

Flay pulled.

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Joakim blinked, his eyes stinging from sweat. It dripped from his forehead, cold, in spite of the underground chill penetrating his bones. Strangling the chalk-stained handle of the pickaxe, his skin stretched taut over his knuckles.

In large, steady gulps, he adjusted his breath. Sticking to the inside of his moist mouth and throat, the dust forced a few coughs.

”I must have forgotten to ask,” he said, turning to face the woman, “did you remember to check the bodies for any signs of life?”

“Have some trust, Joakim.”