Outside a dwarf is waiting for me. I don’t think I’ve seen him before. He looks up at me and asks, “What do you need, Ellie Troll?”

“Oh! Um, well, I want to cure your king, of course, so I was wondering… do you have any mercury? Err, I mean, quicksilver?”

The dwarf nods. “Mercury and any other resource is yours as long as it’s in the service of curing our king. Follow me.”

The halls—tunnels, really—he leads me down are sized for dwarves. Thankfully my spine seems to be very flexible, and I am able to follow him easily. We pass several other dwarves, all of whom barely give me a second look.

“Does everyone know I’m here, or are trolls just not that uncommon?”

“Every dwarf in the Undergallery knows you’re here and why. We all know to give you whatever support you need. And to make sure you don’t do anything to violate our agreement,” he adds.

“Well, I don’t plan on doing that,” I say, and he looks at my words before nodding.

“Truth. Good! I wasn’t sure what to think of you. Humans are by nature very flexible with their honesty, and elves… well, the less said the better. Your companions will no doubt agree with me. But trolls are something we’ve never had enough communication with to form an opinion. Are you typical of your race?”

“Probably… not. I’m actually a human who was cursed by Jinx to be a troll, and I’m from another world, too.”

The dwarf’s sharp intake of breath tells me he just heard something that he didn’t like, or at least that surprised him. I hope it’s the latter, but he doesn’t speak again until we stop.

“Here is one of our storerooms. You can take anything in there that might help you with our problem. I will wait outside.”

“You don’t want to keep an eye on me?” I ask curiously.

“I’m not permitted inside. I will keep the door open for you.”

He taps part of the wall that looks like any other part of the wall, and it melts away into one of their dwarven doors. I step inside and am immediately overwhelmed.

My Eyes of Alchemy fill the room with words. Everything in here seems to be an alchemical ingredient! I pan my vision around and take note of a few of the more interesting items.

Coal Dust - Explosion

Tar - Waterproof

Iron Oxide - Corrode Metal

Copper - Sanitize

Silver - Protection

Quicklime - Desiccate

All that is interesting, but what I’m looking for is… right there.

Quicksilver - Reversal

There it is! A bowl of mercury as wide as a human’s hand sits open on a flat stone table. I pick it up and slowly drain it into my bag. Only when I empty it do I realize just how much I have. According to my innate sense of what’s in my Alchemist’s Pouch, I have enough mercury for hundreds of potions! Apparently a little goes a long way.

What else might be useful here? For a moment I consider just not taking everything, but that’s just greedy. Instead I focus on getting a little bit of everything and a lot of what seems to be less valuable.

First, the iron oxide. It’s just a fancy name for rust, I realize, as I start whisking it into my pouch. There’s a fair bit of it all over this room, mostly attached to other items. Interestingly, iron itself seems to have no alchemical effect whatsoever. It takes me a while, but once I’m finished, everything in the room is rust-free and I have dozens of potions worth of iron oxide.

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Next up, silver and copper. I take these sparingly, only enough to make ten potions or so. This is because there’s not that much of it in here compared to other things. Also, it’s probably more valuable than rust, and the dwarves might ask more questions about it.

A bit of tar, a bit of coal dust, and a bit of quicklime later and I’m ready to go. I step back out, where the dwarf has been waiting for me. “All finished?” he asks.

“Yep. Can I go back to my room? I’m going to need my friends for the next step.”

That’s not entirely true, but it’s not entirely false either, so my words don’t come across as lies. I’m a lot more comfortable with Marika and Theo nearby when I’m dealing with the dwarves. They definitely know more about dwarf culture than I do.

Once I’m back it’s only a few more hours before a gentle chime wakes the humans up. It comes from a little device mounted on the wall of the room.

“That’s the dwarves’ daytimer,” says Theo as he stretches. “No sun down here so they need something to tell them when the day changes.”

“Although as I understand it they work on a different definition of day than we do. It’s a few hours longer. Or is it shorter?” Marika and Theo fall into a discussion while they get themselves together. The three guardsmen take a few minutes to check things over and then we tap on the door.

The dwarf who led me around is gone, replaced by another with a longer beard. He looks up at me and nods. “Where do you need to be, Ellie Troll?”

“Take us to the king, please.”

If the dwarf is surprised by my words, I can’t tell. He just nods and starts walking. We follow him until we reach the room the king sleeps in, and once again we enter it and encircle his bed.

“You were able to find quicksilver?” says Marika. I nod. “Good! But…”

“We need to know what poisoned him,” I finish for her. “Now, I need to get the king to drink a little of this.”

With a mental flex I select two ingredients from my satchel, then combine with an idea in mind of what I want.

“Create a reversed potion of dreamless sleep.”

The vial is in my hand the moment I speak. I look at it with my Eyes of Alchemy.

Potion of Alert Wakefulness

Exactly what I need! I step forward and lean over the king. “May I open his mouth?”

“You, and only you, may touch him,” says our guide.

His expression tells me he’s very interested in what’s about to happen, so I’m careful. I tilt the king’s head back slightly; it’s not easy because his neck is solid muscle. Then I open his mouth and drip a little bit of the potion in. When it rolls down his throat, I pour a little more. He reflexively swallows it, which is a relief, and then his eyes burst open. He sees me and immediately lashes out.

“Troll! Get the oil!” he shouts, smashing his fist into my face and making me drop the rest of the potion on his bed. I’m glad I don’t really have a nose because he definitely would have broken it.

“No, your majesty! The troll is here to help you!” The dwarf guide grabs the king’s arm and turns him back to face me. “She woke you from—“

“From my slumber. I see now.” The king’s eyes are bright and piercing as he stares at me. “Troll! What manner of thing are you?”

“My name is Ellie, and I’m an alchemist. The potion I made—“ that you just spilled! “—woke you from your coma, but it won’t last. We need to know what poisoned you so I can make a cure.” I don’t mention that it would have lasted longer had he not made me pour it out on his bed.

“What bargain have you struck, troll?”

“Passage for herself and us through the Undergallery into Montcalm, avoiding the Soleil border guards,” says Marika before I can answer.

The king looks at her shrewdly. “A poor bargain for you, then. I was poisoned by a demon beast, deep in the tunnels of privilege. A cure would require its venom.” The dwarf climbs back on his bed. “Tell the council to begin deliberating. I will resist the end no longer.”

The dwarf king closes his eyes, and the dwarf who guided us here nods. “As you will, king. Die in peace.”

We all stare at him. “What? I can make the potion, as long as we can get the venom!”

The dwarf shakes his head. “Impossible, for two reasons. First, no dwarf other than the king can enter the tunnels of privilege. Second, demon monsters exist only partly in this world. You can’t properly harm them without special means. Magical means, which are anathema to dwarves. The tunnels are lost, the king will die, and we will name a new king.”

“What about our bargain?” asks Marika.

“The bargain will be voided when the king dies. You will exit the way you came in.”

Back in our room, Marika paces. Her worry is clear on her face. “By now someone will have alerted my father’s men that I’m here. The moment we step outside I’ll be taken, Theo will be executed, and you’ll be—“

Theo, for the first time I’ve ever seen, wraps her in his arms in a hug. “Hush. We’re not out there yet. Whatever happens, we face it together.” Her guards nod, although they look much grimmer. I smell fear and apprehension from everyone.

That night, or what passes for it, I think. A lot. Everything I know about dwarves, which admittedly isn’t much, combine with what I know about myself, tells me that I can do this. I make a decision. While my friends sleep, I knock gently on the door. When it opens, I look down at the dwarf guide.

“Take me to the tunnels of privilege.”