I went to report to the bureau and get my fifteen coppers. The Guild had picked up a new clerk this week, to whom old Mrs Rheynes was showing the ropes. A plain regular human girl, who didn’t quite seem the sharpest pencil in the case. My landlady was nowhere to be seen.

The senior clerk could have covered her frustration with the new hire a little better, but it was easy enough to see what galled her. Even in the early evening, the hall was bustling with activity, a far cry from the days I first set foot in it. It would turn noisy quickly if the line didn’t proceed as fluidly as it should.

On the way to the momentarily free counter, I overheard bits and pieces of a subdued conversation the two clerks were having.

“...Have they checked in since then?”

“No, ma’am. It’s been three days now since I last heard from them.”

“Well, three days isn’t anything so unusual yet. They often stay there far longer than they should. But you could discreetly inquire those reporting in if they’ve seen…”

They suspended the exchange when they saw me approach.

“Good evening,” I said.

“Good evening, Miss!” the new clerk energetically responded, while Mrs Rheynes remained hovering close by to oversee the proceedings. “How may I help you?”

“I'm finished with my assignment. Here is the card and my tags.”

“Oh, nice work!”

So you could, as a matter of fact, receive regular service in this place. It even came with a smile.

The trainee got to work. She didn’t write very quickly and her cursive was somewhat shaky, but it was quite admirable by Northern standards that she could read at all.

Mrs Rheynes did a double-take on seeing the name on the paper.

“You did work for old Klaus?” she asked, rhetorically, apprehensively. “How did you find him?”

“Alive, astonishingly,” I answered. “Seeing the state of his kitchen has made me develop new respect for the resilience of dwarves.”

“You wouldn’t talk that way if you knew him as I do,” Mrs Rheynes told me a tad reproachfully. “That dear dwarf was old already when I was your age. You cannot imagine the pains he’s had to endure in life. We do our best to look after him, but he has his pride, as dwarves do. He doesn’t welcome the hand of just anyone.”

“I harbor no ill feelings towards Mr Klaus, and did what I could so he could manage a little longer.”

Then I sought to change the subject.

“Did I hear correctly that someone’s gone missing? Might I be of assistance?”

“Oh,” the young clerk spoke up, as she passed back my tags, “a fairly famous B-rank adventurer went to Baloria with a party of four the other day, but they have yet to check back. But I’m sure they’ll be fine! The leader has seen dungeons before, and he looked really strong too—”

“—Shush now, Pip.” Mrs Rheynes tapped the chatty girl on the shoulder and looked then at me. “Each adventurer’s business is his or her own.”

“'What happens in a dungeon stays in the dungeon',” I recited the common catchphrase.

“We must all bear the consequences of our choices,” the old woman grimly added.

Even were the adventurer and his party dead now, the Guild wouldn’t send anyone to look for them—unless his relatives made a request and paid the fee. The Guild wasn’t a rescue service any more than it was a charity fund. But it wasn’t simply concern for a colleague that bothered me.

Had something in the dungeon become the doom of an accomplished veteran and his squad? Mere trolls or walking dead wouldn’t bother a raider skilled enough to reach B-rank. Certainly, the rankings were only contrived symbols, not cosmic laws, and we all had our bad days, but—was that all there was to it?

Either way, my task for the Guild may have been finished, but there were still things left to do.

The alehouse known as Public Corner was one of the places we visited with the hero’s party, so I experienced no trouble finding my way back there. I was a little worried if Mr Klaus’s memory still worked reliably enough, though, and if the Martin Selleck he wanted me to seek was still among the living.

Surprisingly, he was.

As a matter of fact, Mr Selleck was only a bit past fifty at present, a very good-natured gentleman with a long history of running pubs. It went in the family, apparently. Mr Selleck’s memory was not any worse off either, and he recalled his pledge to the old dwarf right away, though it had taken place near ten summers past. He had given up believing Mr Klaus would ever call in this favor, but for the sheer wonder that he now did, Mr Selleck had his staff haul out a keg of his best mead at once and gave away a new, steel-banded tankard on top of the deal.

“Tell the old fellow I'll come see him soon!”

Thankfully, it was not a full barrel he had promised, and I was able to carry the oaken container in my less than dwarven arms to Woodrow 5.

Knowing he’d been a carpenter, I realized Mr Klaus had to have constructed his cabin by himself too. Appraising the residence anew under the light of this knowledge, I saw that it was a quality dwelling indeed, despite the visible age. Not the least bit drafty, it retained the heat of the day well.

But nightfall was on its way and I rekindled the faded flame in the fireplace. I felt such occasions called for fire and Mr Klaus didn’t object to the effort. He uncorked the keg at the dining room table, filled the gift tankard and sat down, mumbling something about how people were too good for the likes of him.

I feared he would get himself too drunk too quickly to give away anything intelligible, but the first serving of mead failed yet to bring the slightest color to his world-weary, snow-pale face. The hardy constitution of dwarves was not to be underestimated, even in old age. Even in death.

I sat down opposite of Mr Klaus, settling for a much smaller cup. Personally, I had no thirst for mead at all, but the master said it felt wrong to indulge himself while I stared on empty-handed.

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“Before I answer your request, Missy,” he then said, “I would like to give you one last word of warning, as your elder. If you know what’s good for you, you will stay in Faulsen, or any other town of man, and put this business of going into Baloria out of your mind. Is there no way I could convince you of that?”

“There isn’t,” I answered, without bothering to pretend I even considered otherwise.

“And why would that be?”

“Because returning to Ferdina by the shortest possible route is my duty.”

“Duty, is it…?” he murmured. “How many out there in the world have had to lose their lives for that one word!”

“I believe,” I answered, “that if there is any one word worth losing your life for, it would be that one.”

Mr Klaus snorted into his tankard and for a time quietly sipped his drink.

Then he began to talk,

“My family once lived in Baloria.”

I raised my brow with some surprise at the news. “It has been more than two hundred and twenty years since the kingdom fell.”

“Aye.” He nodded. “I was but a wee lad at the time; eighty-seven. Our family had a workshop uptown in Arden. We had been carpenters since my great-grandfather’s days. I’d finished my apprenticeship formally ten years before and was getting ready to take over the shop side—but really, we were tinkerers from the cradle. Me and my brothers. There were five of us, and we had three sisters. Ash…”

Mr Klaus interrupted himself and wiped his eyes, overcome by a sudden emotion. But he mastered himself shortly and continued,

“The neighbors sort of looked down on us, our family, for only dealing with wood. What dwarf is he, who doesn’t work metal, or stone, or fire? It was as if we were skirting honest work by choosing a material so soft and easy to handle. But I tell you, Miss, it gets mighty cold to plant your arse on hard stone all winter—as Pa would tell us. Wood is needed for many a thing and it is not a material for fools. We struck a deal with the traders and got the first dibs on all timber imported from the human realm. That was why we got ourselves a residence close to Argento’s gate too. A shorter trip to haul the logs from the warehouse. And—that was likely what saved our hides.”

The gaze in the dwarf’s gray eyes grew distant, as though he was peering through time and space into a world to here remote and obscured. In a voice quiet and bereft of warmth, he continued,

“It was in the next burg, Mirth, that they punched through. In the Well of Kings. The deepest shaft we’d dug to date. It was the last week of August. We heard old wives in the neighborhood say there’d been an accident in the mines. It wasn’t any precious stones they were digging there, or gold, or such things. There was to be a new residential area; mansions more elaborate and fancy than any seen thus far—so they said. Hence the name, Well of Kings. It wasn’t the site's formal name, we only took to calling it like that because the making of it was to cost a pretty penny. But nobody could guess just how pricey it would end up.”

His voice had gone hoarse. Mr Klaus cleared his throat, bitterly shook his head, and drank.

“Damned fools, they kept a lid on it for the longest time. Tried to deny anything was wrong. Only an innocent accident! Hazardous materials! Risk of a cave-in, and so on. The integrity of the supports had to be verified, so nobody could be allowed near the lower levels. So much lies. No investigators, no guards, the folks over in Mirth refused everything. But in time, it got people talking, you know. Families began to wonder why their sons and fathers weren’t coming home even for the holidays. What was keeping them? It was only when it was far too late that the Mayor finally fessed it up. They’d made contact—to the hollow of the earth. Even as we carried on about our daily lives, the miners and watchmen were fighting for dear life under our feet, trying to push the monsters back and block the breach. But the things that came through—they weren’t something shirtless miners could do a thing about! It was our leaders’ stalling that cost us the kingdom. For the worst was yet to come.”

Mr Klaus shuddered, as though cold, his face even more ashen and lifeless. Staring past his tankard at the tabletop, he spoke,

“First came Sentaniel, the Blue-blooded Drake, the mother of the Frostails, beckoned by the cries of its slain spawn. It tore straight through the defenders, a mighty damn lizard, large as a dragon, cold as the arctic winter. It broke through the whole burg, and cleared the way for others to follow.

“Then came Radobolg the Torturer, the Red Orc, with his seven brothers, and they brought the goblin hordes with them. Pity on those left in the fiends’ hands while still alive! Their end did not come easy.

“Then came Oruthan, the frenzied Taurus Champion, chasing the smell of blood and battle, hungering for worthy foes. We had no match to give the colossus, but through many, heavy sacrifices was the beast trapped to roam the labyrinth of Kilzen. Our greatest stronghold, made a mass grave.

“And last, after the dust had settled, followed Mithora, the Dreadweaver, the Collector of the Dead. A vile necromancer, skulking in the dark, it surrounded itself with the bodies of the fallen sewn back together. Even Ser Glormig, our greatest hero, fell into Mithora's clutches and was denied the sleep of death, instead becoming a bane to his own. And that was that.”

Mr Klaus raised his tankard and drank.

“For two years we held on,” he said, “but house by house, block by block, those abominations wrung all the twelve great burgs of the Kingdom from our grasp. In the end, we could only admit the price for keeping our realm had grown too high for us to pay, and let go. Baloria is not part of our world anymore but of the other. So it is likely to remain till the day the topside and under are no more.”

Setting down his mead with a clatter, he looked me in the eye and said,

“It was us dwarves of Baloria, who founded this town of Faulsen, Miss. As a temporary reprieve, our stepping stone to retaking our homes after we'd regained our strength. We never ceased to dream of the day. But our brethren in Knuvesland wouldn't come to our aid. If we lose more to the beasts, humans will take the rest, they said. We were on our own. The result you can see for yourself when you gaze out of the window yonder. We could not even hold the town. Fahls ehn, we named it, fittingly. ‘Fool’s end’!”

The old dwarf concluded his tale. I reflected on his words for a quiet moment and then asked,

“Do you think the enemy leaders yet live? After two long centuries?”

“What would kill them?” Mr Klaus answered with a helpless shrug. “Monsters die not, save by violence. Such is also the nature of dungeons. They are formed and sustained by the life of their denizens, and whilst the core, the lord of the dungeon, survives, so do all of its parts. Oh, they’re still there, waiting. Waiting and building. Till the day they’re strong and many enough to come out.”

The situation certainly appeared a great deal more troubling than I had dared imagine at first.

“I had no idea such things existed. No travel journal or study I came across made any mention of their like. Neither is the story of the dwarves' war well known in the south.”

Mr Klaus chuckled bitterly. “Of course not! It is not such a proud legend you would want to share with strangers. We are reluctant to even tell it among ourselves. And the dungeon is apt at keeping its secrets. Anyone unlucky enough to run into a named beast will not see the light of day again. The fiends rule the western realm, and we made it hard for them to come hither, as hard as we could. In this, the monsters' great size worked against them better than our axes. Rock in the Ursi is hard. It won't yield before mere claws.”

“I see. Then does even the Guild know what is in there?”

“Oh, we warned them,” Mr Klaus answered with an air of irony. “Or, we warned their predecessors, when the Guild first came to town. But it has been, as you said, two hundred years, and human memory tends to be of the shorter side. Your kind believes only what they see with their own eyes, and most of the men now in charge are too young to see past their own noses! No offense to you or yours, Miss. Moreover, the Guildmaster of Faulsen today…I am not very fond of that lad, nor he of me. I dare say it is more Jarl Fossler’s coin that Master Braghin cares about, rather than the Guild, or duty, or the town. Never mind the dungeon, or the wretches who seek it.”

The dwarf pushed his tankard aside and stood.

“But you...As young as you are and a stranger to our ways, you went above and beyond the call of duty for this old dolt of a dwarf. And for such a person, I have one more gift to give.”