“When Ed told me that the Underkeepers were going to become a guard organization, and that we were going to open applications to the general public, I told him he was out of his mind -- and he was!” Fiora looked around at the humans, dwarves, goblins and gnomes assembled in the center of the Undercity Market.

Behind her stood what Bernt assumed was going to be some kind of monument – currently covered in an enormous sheet of cloth. It hadn’t been there last night.

She offered them a wry smile. “But Ed has always been the best kind of crazy. He didn’t care that nobody had done this kind of thing before. He wanted change, so he made it happen. Or rather, he invited you to make it happen, and you showed up. Now, barely a month later, you stepped up to defend this city against invasion, and our new community in it. We were new and untested, but you trusted in yourselves and in us – many of you proved it by moving your families down here. And that trust was vindicated when the Duergar came for us in force, we stood in the way.”

Fiora paused for a moment, lending gravity to her words. “Many of us aren’t here today to appreciate our hard-won victory, but their families are. Some won’t be able to return to work, but their families will. We’re here today to memorialize those who didn’t make it…”

As Fiora continued, Bernt noticed just how many people had turned out to watch. The Underkeepers were a relatively small organization, numbering barely over a hundred people when the Duergar attacked. Now, he estimated that they had maybe 70 left. Most of those were deaths, but a few had been maimed and would be forced into retirement.

Bernt stood near the back of the Underkeepers, behind Nirlig and his father and a few gnomes, but the crowd was much larger than that. Beyond the cluster of grey-clad Underkeepers stood hundreds more people. Many of them were the families of the dead, but others were passersby and people who’d come to shop at the market only to discover a ceremony in progress.

Still others were evacuees from the surface. For many from the Crafters' District, the reality that their homes had been completely destroyed was only now starting to sink in. Bernt expected that some had taken notice of the fact that their evacuation had been entirely managed by the Underkeepers, rather than the City Guard.

As the crowd grew, Fiora’s magically amplified voice grew in volume to match. Bernt hadn’t expected her to be a gifted public speaker, but she was. She had little difficulty holding the crowd’s attention, lauding the dedication of the Underkeepers to their community, and reaffirming the importance and the value of their work. When she thanked them for their service to the city of Halfbridge and drew down the cloth that obscured the monument, there were even a few gasps from the crowd.

It was a black stone obelisk. The Underkeepers’ symbol was carved at the top of each of the four faces and painted gold, a crescent over an arcane glyph with a line down the middle. Bernt wasn’t sure exactly what the glyph meant, but the shape alone made it clear it was related to hydromancy.

The two faces that Bernt could see from where he was standing were inscribed with dwarvish runes and the strange goblin script that Lin had been using respectively. He couldn’t read dwarvish well, but he recognized enough characters to realize that he was looking at the names of the dead. He stared at the goblin script, trying to work out how many names there were – he still didn’t know exactly who was dead, and who he just hadn’t seen since the battle. The text just looked like a continuous line with little branches coming off of it.

As the crowd started to disperse, he leaned over to Nirlig. “You know, I think it would have been better to carve it all in Beseri. This way, nobody’s going to be able to read the goblin names, and most people won’t be able to read the dwarvish or the gnomish ones either.”

Nirlig smiled. “No, it’s good. I think they did it because of us, actually. I guess Fiora knows about our customs. Or maybe Kustov – he probably made it.”

“What do you mean?” Bernt asked, puzzled.

“We don’t write down the names of the dead.” Morix explained, taking over from his son. “Only their direct descendants are allowed to speak their names or tell of them to others.”

“Oh. Alright… what does it say, then?” Bernt asked, taken aback a bit. Why wouldn’t you be allowed to talk about the dead? Wouldn’t that mean anyone who died without children would be forgotten inside a single generation?

“It’s a poem about the battle – a song.” Morix explained. “Any goblin who comes here can get a first hand account right from the memorial, as long as they can read. We don’t write down songs, normally, but I suppose Lin had to give Kustov something to appease him.”

This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.

Bernt examined the script again, wondering exactly what it said. He started to ask, only to be cut off by the arrival of a large, unfamiliar goblin who pushed past him as she berated Morix.

“My poor nephew, just look at his hand! I told my sister that you were trouble! I told her! The poor boy! How is he ever going to meet a nice young woman like that? You’ve always been reckless, Morix, but this is too much!”

Bernt backed up, extricating himself. That would be Nirlig’s infamous Aunt Striga, he guessed, and he did not want to answer questions about Jori right now. Besides, he needed to get to the surface. He still hadn’t found the time to check in on Therion and the others and he wanted to make sure they were alright.

***

“Tell me about Nuros.” Iriala said in Duergar, walking in a slow circle around her prisoner. The abjurer she’d captured was shackled to a stone ring inside a circle of wards. She’d prepared her questions ahead of time, and brought one of her mages, a dwarf who claimed to understand the language well enough to help her if she didn’t understand something.

When you were questioning someone, preparation was critical. You needed to know what to ask and how to ask it, and you had to make sure you took your time about it. Ironically, rushing to get answers tended to result in stall tactics. It gave people the idea that they could ‘win’ by just holding out for a while. Not that she predicted it would be an issue with a Duergar.

“Our sources suggest he’s not your prince, but rather the demon possessing him,” she went on. “So I wonder. Why doesn’t anyone speak the name of the warlock – your prince? Was he hiding his identity? Why? We already know we’re fighting the Duergar Empire. For the gods' sake, you sent us an ambassador!”

The dwarf stood impassively, watching her whenever she passed by in front of him. He didn’t try to follow her with his gaze, and he didn’t appear intimidated. Neither did he seem overly resistant. The Duergar mage just looked weary.

Enki, her interpreter, grunted something impatient sounding at the prisoner, who sighed. After another lengthy pause, he finally responded.

“You do not fight the Empire.” he said slowly, staring at her as if trying to make sure she understood. “The Empire is big…. we are a small… the surface region…” he continued, but Iriala didn’t understand the rest. Fortunately Enki noticed and helpfully translated.

“He’s saying they’re only a small part of the empire – their ‘king’ is something more like a regional governor, by the sound of it. Their king sent them out to 'lay low' the enemies of the Empire, or something like that. I'm guessing either he or Nuros just wanted get to the surface for his own purposes.”

“To harvest souls. As we found out.” Iriala said darkly. She returned to her pacing, thinking out loud. “Though I don't think they really cared about us specifically. They were fighting the kobolds, first. We might just be a target of opportunity. Did they even know we were here?"

Enki shrugged. "I doubt he's going to give us an honest answer, but probably. We knew about them, after all, at least to a point."

Iriala nodded. "To a point, yes. We knew the Duergar Empire was larger than Besermark, though he’s certainly trying to make it sound much larger.”

This might be a good thing. If the larger empire saw this entire war as a meaningless border skirmish, then Nuros’ influence likely didn’t extend beyond this single ‘’kingdom’ within the Empire. It meant there might be political fault lines to exploit here. For that matter, was their central government even aware of the conflict? She would need to gather more information.

Filing that away, she turned back to the enemy mage, repeating her question in Duergar. “So, why do we still not know the name of the Duergar warlock behind all this?”

“Because you asked a summoner, I assume,” he said matter-of-factly. “Summoners turn their eyes from every crack in the stone.”

Iriala blinked and looked over to Enki, who explained.

“He means their warlocks prefer to ignore obvious problems. I’m going to guess he doesn’t think very much of them.”

Iriala scoffed. “Then why go to war for them? And what the hells does it mean?”

Enki fired off her questions in Duergar. Iriala could mostly understand her, but it took too long to try to put the sentences together coherently on her own. She frowned. Who would have thought that she was ever going to need to have a serious conversation in Duergar?

The dwarf answered easily this time, speaking faster and quite a bit longer. Enki grimaced in disgust after a few sentences. It was something about the king and some kind of conversation he had with Nuros. Did he mean the prince? As he talked, Enki’s grimace melted into horrified fascination. When he finished, she spat on the ground as if trying to get a bad taste out of her mouth.

“What is it?” she asked. What could get that kind of reaction?

“Their king is called Grundrik. He’s an ancient warlock of some kind, apparently. Unnaturally ancient. He initially pacted Nuros a few decades before this fellow here was born. Powerful demons like that don’t grow on trees. You can’t just give it a soul or two as payment. So the rumor is that he gave the demon his young son, instead. It’s a rumor, because nobody can actually confirm that he had a son, just that the duergar Nuros was riding around bore a family resemblance to Grundrik. If the Solicitors said that the demons called him a duergar prince, though… well, what reason would they have to lie? He's been here that entire time, building influence in their kingdom.”

Iriala scowled. What a disaster. It was the fall of the Madurian Empire all over again.