With my closed fist I bang on the door, and the bar is lifted. When it opens I squint; there’s a lot more light in here than I remember.

“Ellie! You’re safe!” Marika runs up to me, and for a second I think she’s going to hug me. Then she pulls up short and wrinkles her nose. “You need a bath.”

She’s not wrong. I am covered in giant monster guts and dust and a fair amount of my own blood. I nod and set down my load, which is just the king’s tools. “Sorry about that. I had an idea and I ran with it.”

I can see that Marika is angry at me for leaving her out of the plan, but I can smell relief on her that I am back. Which one do I react to? It is not easy being a troll. I go with the relief. “There was a bit of a fight but nothing I couldn’t handle. I even got the king’s poison. Er, the medicine. The poison that I will make into the medicine.”

“Right, the medicine for the king. The king’s medicine,” says Theo. I nod.

“Sounded like you were blasting down there. Explosives are not tools of the dwarf,” says one of the dwarf guards.

“They’re good tools for trolls,” I say and wink. He narrows his eyes at me and I change the subject before he can reply. “Let’s get to the king already.”

In the king’s room the mood is somber. The king himself looks worse than he did the first time I saw him. I recall that he said he’d stop resisting the poison. I shake my head. What a fatalistic view! “Okay, let’s see. Create a strong potion of… Reversed DMC Venom!”

“DMC?” said Theo and Marika at the same time as the vial tinkles into my scaled palm.

“You had to be there.” I hold the potion up and look at it critically.

Potion of Potent Dimensional Mutant Crab Antivenom

Looks good. I tilt the king’s head back and pour it down his throat. The effect is immediate! His skin goes from dead grey to a jaundiced tone, and then to a ruddy shade of tan. His body, wasted away from the poison, begins to fill out too. It only takes a minute until he’s moving and his eyes are flickering.

“Oh, aye? Is this the deep heaven?”

“No, my king. This is the Undergallery,” says a guard.

“Hm. Then I’m not dead. No, I’m cured!” The dwarf looks at me in surprise, amazement and then—the first time I’ve seen the emotion on a dwarf—gratitude. “Ellie Troll. Alchemist. Was this you?”

“Yep! I got the venom and made the antidote.” I grin widely, not caring if he doesn’t like it. “I also found your tools.” I don’t mention what else I found. I’m sure he knows.

“A dwarf is nothing without his work, and without tools work is made much harder. Thank you.” He tilts his head slightly. “And now, everyone, please leave us. Not you, Ellie Troll.”

Ah. I think I know what’s about to happen. Everyone else files out and I get comfortable on the floor. The king waits until we’re alone, and then stares me dead in the eye. “Tell me what happened. And… what you saw.”

* * *

“…and then it closed.” I finish my story. I don’t lie, but I don’t tell the whole truth either. For example, he doesn’t need to know about my evil twin trying to kill me down there. Or that Jinx decided to pay me a visit.

The king is silent for a while. Then he looks me dead in the eye. “My name is Radavad, and I am the second of that name. You have seen the secrets of our people. Will you keep them?”

I take a deep breath. Will I? On the one hand that was the entire royal history down there. Or at least the parts that the royalty didn’t want anyone to know, which to me sounds like the best parts of history. On the other hand, to the king it’s sacred, but to me it’s less than gossip. It’s nothing to me to keep their secrets for them. And I haven’t told anyone else about it either. “I will. I won’t tell anyone any secrets. Heck, I won’t even tell anyone there are secrets. Is that all right?”

He grabs my hand. His grip is as strong as mine, although he can only grasp two of my fingers. “Then Ellie I name you troll no more. Be Ellie Dwarf to us from now on. No hall will be barred to you. No tunnel unworkable, no forge cold before your wish. Keep the speaking stone as well. Every dwarf needs a voice. And of course you will be guided to Montcalm. The humans with you will be welcome as well, though I will not name them dwarf.”

“Oh, wow. That’s… really cool.” I mean it too. It’s like I’ve been adopted. Then I get a weird sensation in my eyes. I blink away… tears?

Why would I be crying of all things? I can see the king has noticed so I wipe my face and sort myself out. “Thank you so much, um, king. King Radavad? King Dwarf?”

Radavad laughs and slaps my shoulder, which is easy because I’m still comfy on the floor. “Alone you may call me Radavad. With dwarven company I am King Radavad to you. In human company I am simply King. My name, and the name of every dwarf, is secret. Now, let us eat. And drink! I haven’t had a drink in ages.”

Dwarves, it turns out, can drink. So can trolls. Humans, not so much. By the time the dwarves and I are feeling tipsy, the five humans have been out cold for hours. Marika herself didn’t even make it to the bottom of the tiny thimble of thick, golden liquid the dwarves drank by the cupful. They are all sleeping in various poses in the dining room, which has been cleaned up and the bad food removed.

“So! A blessing and a curse from a god brought you here. Lucky, you are,” says King Radavad.

“Oh yeah? Lucky? You think so?” My mouth is full of some kind of mushroom steak. Thankfully table manners are optional at dwarf parties.

“I do! You kept your mind and gained a strong body, and a god’s gift beside. That trick with the potions is unheard-of.”

The potion trick, as Radavad calls it, has come in handy tonight. I have already handed out a number of healing potions; dwarves like fist fighting as much as they like to drink. Even the king got into it with a guard. Came away missing a tooth, which I was able to replace with a Potent Healing Potion. He said the regrowing of the tooth felt worse than getting it knocked out in the first place. Maybe he’ll learn not to fight so much, then.

If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

At one point, after my human friends have passed out, the king tries to convince me to stay with them. I guess the only dwarves that leave their mountain homes are banished for crimes that can’t be repaid with labour or work, and I am no criminal. He is concerned that I might suffer from wounded pride if I am accepted and then leave so suddenly. But after a while I manage to explain that I won’t be offended or anything if they let me go. Also, please excuse me from a lifetime of mushrooms and whatever the potato things are. I mean they are edible but my trollish constitution demands more meat!

Speaking of meat, the king has plans for the cavern that I cleaned out. Or rather, that I made a mess of; it’s filled with dead monsters now and probably smells awful.

“I’m going to take some slates into the tunnels and record my ancestors’ secrets on them. Then, once every secret is recorded and dated and filed away, I’ll destroy the original carvings and open those tunnels up to the rest of the clan. Those little crab beasts are good eating, as I learned before I made my… mistake.”

“Won’t that take a long time?” I think about all the secrets on the walls. I didn’t read every single one, but there were so many!

The king shrugs. “I am a dwarf. As long as I don’t see the sun or meet a violent end, time is nothing to me.”

That gets me thinking on dwarfish lifespan. “How long do most dwarves live?”

“Rare is the dwarf that lasts beyond a few centuries. Grudges accrue and are repaid in kind, and some grudges can only be repaid with death. As king I walk a fine line; each judgement I make risks angering a dwarf even as it pleases another. I hope to be better than my father; he died in his first century in a duel and is an embarrassment to me.” King Radavad grins suddenly. “On the other hand, I didn’t have to repay him for my upbringing. So it’s not all bad.”

The dwarves return to their taciturn selves the next morning. Marika and the others all wake up sick as dogs, which I am unable to help them with. I know alcohol is technically a poison but it seems that if I use my alchemy to mix it with mercury, all I get is a potion of sobering up, which literally nobody in the Undergallery has any interest in whatsoever. I’ll have to figure out how to make a hangover cure, because that would make me rich!

“This is where I learned the portal magic from,” says Radavad in a moment that we’re alone. He pulls a small book from his jacket and hands it to me. “I want nothing more to do with it. Years I spent reading it, piecing together the meaning of the words and the order in which they needed to be carved. I thought I was special because I could read the spells written in it, but it brought me nothing but woe.”

I take the book and when the king has left I open it up. It’s full of all kinds of strange dwarven runes and just like the portal, trying to read them hurts my head. I close the book and strongly consider throwing it into a forge. There’s plenty of forges to choose from, but I decided against it. Instead, having no pockets, I pass it off to Marika and ask her to take care of it. She looks inside it, her eyes cross, and she closes it in a hurry.

We spend another two days with the dwarves. The first one is us getting our things together and trading potions for supplies. The Potent Healing Potions I can make are in great demand, because it seems that working in a mine or forge without safety goggles is a great way to earn yourself an eyepatch. I wind up bleeding myself to the point that I feel faint before the dwarves supply me with much-needed food in the form of cave crab, which the king has retrieved from the royal mining tunnels.

Speaking of the king, he tells us on the second day that we can’t leave because the omens are bad. I have no idea what that means but he’s the boss so I don’t argue and neither does Marika. Theo grumbles a bit, though. I think he’s getting sick of all mushrooms all the time for food. I offered him some of my cave crab but he turned a little green and politely refused.

The dwarves are fast workers; I learn this when they show up with heavy bundles, one for each of the men. Inside them, wrapped in oiled cloth, is a breastplate made of a dark metal that reflects very little light.

“Deepsteel,” says the dwarf who gives it to us. His name is Frain, but only I know that. “Proof against lesser weapons and the claws of beasts. Go on, put it on.”

Caine shrugs the breastplate on, and Andrew tightens the straps. Once it’s on he spins in place.

“Wish I’d had this in the fight with the orcs.” He shows how there are small, linked plates that hang low on his hips to protect his belly.

“Ellie Dwarf, try to attack him.”

I glance at the dwarf, and then at Caine, who shrugs. I flick my talons at Caine, and the metal deflects them. “Oh, very—“

“Like you mean it!” the dwarf says. He sounds irritated.

Well, I can heal him if things go sideways. This time I strike him hard, slashing down like I was clawing him. The force knocks him back a step, but there isn’t even a scratch on the metal. Heck, when I look, I realize I lost a talon and I get to watch it grow back.

“Thank you, sir dwarf,” says Marika. Is she pouting? Oh, there’s no present for her.

But that’s wrong, because the dwarf pulls out another package, this one small and light. Marika unwraps it and finds a dagger, made of the same metal as the breastplate.

“Human women rarely seem to wear armour, so it was decided you might make use of this. Here, the sheath is meant to be worn thus.” The dwarf reaches out and ties a leather sheath to her forearm. “Practice drawing it. You will look foolish if you drop it when needed.”

We spend the rest of the night variously admiring our gifts and wondering what might happen when we leave the Undergallery. All we’re sure of is that we’ll come out in Montcalm, but apparently there’s many ways in and out of the Undergallery. We might be close to a city when we leave, or we might be a long way from civilization.

The morning of the third day, two dwarves knock politely at our door. They guide us to the king, who wishes us well, and then on through the Undergallery. It seems we’re finally leaving.

“The tunnels through the mountains are our greatest defence,” says the dwarf guide who leads us. “They are a maze no enemy can solve before falling to our defenders.”

“See here,” says the dwarf who is taking up the rear. He points to a spot on the wall, then taps it. It opens up to reveal a little cubbyhole with small barrels and a weapon rack. “These guard positions are scattered throughout our tunnels. An invader would never know he was ten feet from a dwarf, armed with deepsteel and drunk on deep wine. Dwarven warriors feel no pain and take no prisoners!” He claps himself on the chest with a large fist.

Well, I believe them. I certainly get lost in less than ten minutes. Countless turns, twists, and branching pathways take us ever deeper into the mountains, and if I was alone I would no doubt starve before I found my way out. But then, after what feels like most of a day, we find ourselves facing a dead end. But I know better, and when the dwarf taps the wall and it opens, I am not surprised.

“Here,” says one of the guides. He hands us each a large iron ring, with a carved rune on it. “Wear these with pride, dwarf friends. Show this to any of our people and you will be treated with respect. Show them here and you will receive any aid you need. I can go no farther; the light of the sun spells a dwarf’s doom. Take this and go forth. Best of luck to you.” He hands Marika a glowing blue torch and steps back.

We put the rings on and walk. The tunnel is not so long; it takes us less than ten minutes to leave. The blue light is overpowered soon enough by daylight. The sun is low in the sky; it seems we are just in time for making camp. However, on this side of the mountains there is no dwarven exile outpost. Instead there is nothing but woods, with just a small clearing by the mountainside.

“Looks good!” I say after a long breath. Fresh air is wonderful!

A sharp pain hits my chest, followed by two more. I look around and see that from the woods several men and women have appeared, and at least three of them seem to have crossbows. I can tell, because they just shot me!

“Take it down! Subjugate the beast!”

Oh, crap.