Most people think the life of a dwarf is terrible, and if Eitri was being honest, it was. But not entirely.

The trick to it is that like those not aesthetically pleasing to the eyes—and when he said aesthetically pleasing he didn’t mean the horrendous to look at or those who looked like God’s personal affront to reality, he meant those who weren’t beautiful—all a dwarf had to do was accept that they were dwarves and there was nothing wrong with it.

For him, his acceptance came at the age of twenty-one when his longtime girlfriend left him for a man who was taller. Five feet and four inches to be exact, which was hilarious considering she was a midget.

The pain had stood out to him more because it wasn’t from heart break but from a disappointment in her. She was a midget. The least she could’ve done was end up with a dwarf who’d loved her. Instead, she’d gone for the gene pool, praying her children would not end up in her height category.

Perhaps he couldn’t entirely blame her for not seeking out a spouse for love. Some may even argue she did seek out a spouse for love, just not love for him. Love for her children and a need to give them a better chance in the world would be apt.

When Eitri had accepted that there was truly no fault in dwarfism, things changed slowly. Most people would claim that they had finally come to terms with what they were or who they were, but most of them simply lie, put up a façade in an attempt to deceive the world. Most of those people still hated it, the cripple hated the fact that they could not walk, the ugly hated the fact that their smile didn’t light up a room, and the short hated that everyone they came across looked down to meet their eyes.

Accepting what they were wasn’t the same as not hating it, it simply meant acknowledging that it wasn’t going to change and living life with it. It was the ability to not reflect every facet of life off of a trait they possessed.

Once that happened, Eitri developed his interest in creation. He found his hands were good with metal works and he made himself a jack of all trade in it. He never found love again. For him love had existed in a one-time girlfriend who had left him for a short man amongst those of normal height and he took his love in the girls that flocked the streets at night at the cost of a few dollars or more.

He could not have the real thing so he paid for the close substitute, no matter how pretentious it was.

When the first awakening hit the world, shaking it like bullies had once shook Eitri as a child, he had been lost in his workshop, calming his mind in the creation of the abstract. He’d been fusing metals and wringing wires like an artist with no destination, simply making brush strokes over canvases until something became of it.

It was only after the chaos had settled and the world had become aware of mana did he discover he had been a number of the selected few who’d become mages. But magic proved as useful to him as high heels in a race. He needed water to conjure water, fire to conjure fire. He never found the trick to work with metals or wires which was ironic considering his life revolved around them, and it irked him every time.

Regardless, Eitri played with his ability to wield magic whenever he could. His friends, the little he had, appreciated him more for it. Whether their appreciation was genuine or false was of no importance to him; they had been his friends before the magic and they remained his friends after it.

However, Eitri wasn’t stupid. He realized rather quickly that his friends began to get into more trouble and just as easily get out of it. Not long after, he found himself in little bits of pickles he did not bargain for. One gang or the other seeking him out for a pound of flesh or a length of bone. Time told him why eventually. His name was the tool his friends employed to escape trouble, after all, mages were already a feared existence. No one wanted to get into a conflict with a person who could shake the earth and drown them with just a few words.

But Eitri had never truly worried because he was a gatherer. A gatherer with a big bag. He went nowhere without it and it carried everything he’d ever believed useful in each pocket and compartment, from a shiny screw driver to a gun that didn’t shoot right to a ball of dried mud he’d found inside the chest of a rotten dog that had felt odd to him. Only later did he discover the last was actually a monster core and the dog a dead monster.

When the second awakening hit, slip-space pulled Eitri away from his world and to a place he did not recognize. With his departure was a new gift, one he did not know he could ever have: a specialization in space magic.

It was a boon Eitri employed whenever he could. He wasn’t a mage that called on water and fire to fight for him, he was a mage who never forgot he was a dwarf, and as hard as some dwarves would try to refute it, getting anywhere in life as one required they didn’t play fair. Thus, he was a mage who fought with guns and sticks and knives and clubs.

And a space specialization gave him just the tool to possess infinite weapons.

And infinite weapons, he had.

So when the Olympians had promised whatever he wanted for a trip into a forest in search of the fabled mana surge, he was more than happy to say yes. He’d always wanted a few rune blasters or a mana sword, simply something complicated. And if none of those sufficed, then he wanted a ranked weapon, something befitting of a mage, because he was getting to a point where the enemies he was making were growing impervious to the simple weapons he had.

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Even now, in the last battle, it had taken a lot of his fire power just to put down the monsters he’d faced, pulling out weapon after weapon from his storage space as he pulled guns out of what seemed to be thin air to anyone watching.

Now he sat in a corner, daunted by the fact that he was required to assist in a fight against three Bishop rank monsters, as if the single one that had almost killed them at Madam Shaggy’s little get together hadn’t been life risking enough.

A part of him wanted to quit here and now as the Olympian who called himself Ven concocted a plan just for the sake of the mana surge, but his pride would not let him.

He was a dwarf, and since the day he’d been born the world had always been a challenge; a challenge he’d never backed down from. Such a thing molded a man in a certain way. It gave them a certain pride most people thought was unwarranted.

A priest had once told Eitri that pride was a deadly sin and Eitri had not argued it. His response to the priest then had become a mantra that kept him going in challenging times. A mantra he told himself even now.

“Pride is my sin,” he muttered, his senses feeling for the weapons in his storage space, checking them. “And if it’s deadly, I hope it keeps me a deadly man.”

………………………………………

Madam Shaggy walked with a deep frown on her face, not deep enough that it morphed her entire face though. She was a mage, but she still wrinkled if she didn’t care for herself well enough.

The party had since left its resting place, advancing forward as Ven instructed. They strolled in the silent dread of the task that awaited them at the end of this damned mission.

She’d tossed in her lot with the Olympians for a chance at a reward. Even now, she wasn’t certain what she wanted. She couldn’t ask for sovereignty over Hillview considering she knew Abed would rather die than allow it, and she couldn’t ask for more beautiful girls to assist ply her trade. So she settled for thoughts. Perhaps at the end she would find a reward she wanted.

But to get that, she needed to see this journey to the end, put her life at a deeper risk than she’d anticipated.

Three Bishop ranks, she thought as she stepped past a tree that smelled of lilac and berries, strawberries to be precise. It was the way with the forest, everything was just wrong in large doses. From glowing grass to glowing trees to trees with furs instead of barks.

But those were not the things that bothered her. What bothered her was the fact that a possibility remained that she might be forced to stand up to a monster of Knight rank. Knight rank was no man’s game. It was so rare that the world was more than capable of counting how many it had, not in the continent, but on the surface of the entire globe. And in a population that counted at more than a billion but less than two billion, fifty plus was quite honestly a handful.

It had taken eight Rukh mages to make a single Bishop rank retreat at her failed get together and now the Olympians wanted their help in stopping three of them. Three of them!

It was madness.

Worse, the Olympians truly expected unselfish teamwork from them when there was no mage in this gathering that didn’t know that not all of them were going to survive this encounter.

There was no way the fight that was coming was going to end well.

Also, the fact that there was a chance of a Knight rank monster meant any Bishop rank they met was going to be at the precipice of the rank. A category three Bishop rank was a monster a category two Rukh rank such as herself had no place fighting. Still, she accepted her fate as she prepped herself mentally for what was to come.

With her size, speed was not her forte, amongst her equals she was outclassed significantly in that department. But like Abed, she possessed an explosive power, one that was adamantly literal. So she would rely on her fire specialization and grow herself in the only way mages knew how to.

In combat against enemies capable of killing her.

After all, it was the only way to get stronger. If she wished to rise to the acme of Rukh rank or even stand on the threshold of Bishop, she needed to step out of her comfort zone… or be pushed out of it.

She watched Abed as they drew closer to the line of fallen trees and for the first time she found herself pitying the man. She had been happy to have him under Shanine’s thumb but watching him now since they’d found the child was simply pathetic.

The decisiveness he always possessed and the air of superiority he’d walked about with that had kept any from going after his place as a power of Hillview was slowly ebbing away as she watched him pine over Shanine who’d found herself a new mage to be attached to.

Abed walked with his conjured great cleaver of earth hefted over his shoulders. In the light of the day above, the smatterings of glowing grass were dull, their glow almost nonexistent now. The infamous weapon was chipped and cracked, consequences of the brawl they’d stepped out of.

All Madam Shaggy could hope for was that Abed didn’t let his rage blind him so much that he got them all killed. If he was patient enough, she was more than certain she could get Shanine back from her new mage.

And if they couldn’t negotiate their way into getting the girl back then they needed to accept that she was gone. The red head she walked with might be an insignificant fly in the presence of their power but he had friends with enough strength to win any fight they got into. The one they called Jason was the strongest of them all. Even before now, the mage had done enough jobs for Abed for anyone paying attention to know he was a category three Rukh. That would make fighting against the entire party with him involved a definite loss.

But the main reason violence would play no part in this battle for Shanine Abed seemed more than eager to engage in was a short old man who walked through the forest without a worry on his face. For the moment he was without the book he’d spent most of his time with his face buried in.

Madam Shaggy’s gaze panned to the location of the book and her frown only deepened more. The red haired mage held it in his hand, his face buried within its contents so deeply that the beautiful Shanine walking beside him was all but forgotten.

Suffice to say, should Abed choose to take violent action against the mage in his pursuit for Shanine, she would not back him.

The ire of a Knight mage was not something she wished to experience. She had not faced one before or even seen one. She had only heard of them in the rumors and stories the world told. But if the captain of the Olympians was more than willing to offer him great levels of respect after discovering his rank, she was more than willing to roll over without being asked to.

Abed’s mission for Shanine was one he would have to embark on his own. And if he somehow came out successful, who was she to say he didn’t earn the rights to her.

Thoughts of mages and survival still danced around in Madam Shaggy’s head when captain Ven brought them to a halt with a raised hand.

What stood in front of him gave them a clear understanding of where they were. They had come face to face with the path of the fallen trees.