The Maid Is Not Dead

Again the realm of dwarves showed a different face to me. The burg I faced in Mawé had no august mansions, nor cushy cottages, warehouses, stables, and no battlements, nor were there excessive stairs, or channels. Tall clusters of cubic apartments walled the wide streets like artificial canyons, bearing a visibly industrial feel to them, functionality greatly favored in the design, at the expense of beauty. These houses were constructed to the theme of economic minimalism, which might have led you to believe I had arrived at a dwarfish slum. But who would put their poor in the middle of the realm?

By the overall air and location of the neighborhood, I ventured to guess that I drew close to what had been the hotly beating heart of the kingdom, the defining core of dwarf settlements, without which the rest of the sprawling body could not exist—the crafters' quarter.

The small folks' life revolved around mining. Why go to the trouble of carving your home into solid mountain rock, unless to make use of the displaced materials? It was the dwarves' talent at capitalizing on every step of the process which had made their race legendary, why they were loved and respected, and why they were hated and envied, and so often brought to ruin by those around them. Unlike many other life forms, dwarves didn't dread toiling for profit, but rather genuinely perceived the work as its own reward.

Mr Klaus's map had taught me that towards the southwest from here lay the grand processor lines and smelters, where the raw ore excavated from the mines were refined to usable states, and from there taken to forges, armorers, jewelers, traders, and wherever, to be converted into goods of value.

I was not a smith any more than I was a miner, and my knowledge of heavy industries was limited to only literary mentions in less than professional books. But if I had to use my imagination a little, the town upon which my eyes rested was where the apprentices had once dwelt; those still in the early learning stages of their career, who hadn't yet the skill to work commercially, nor the income to support a larger family. Naturally, they needed affordable, temporary housing also, and as close to the workplace as possible.

On the scale at which Baloria ran business in her heyday, hundreds of hammer hands were needed, if not thousands, and new blood to seamlessly pick up where the elder generations left off. Being able to provide cheap homes for the apprentices in mass scale like this spoke volumes of the former grandeur of the kingdom. Rouler sur l'or.

Professional life started from a simple roof above your head. Further comforts one had to earn through time and diligent effort. A mighty positive notion, suggesting luxury could indeed be attained via sheer persistence, unlike in the human lands, where work only tended to reward you with more work to no end, until your health and time were spent, and either you were born into privilege, or had better forget about it. But I was not there for cultural exchange.

The map told me that through this burg and the industrial areas in the southeast awaited the nearest exit out of the dungeon, into Vandalia, my homeland of yore, whence the road might at last take me back to the imperial capital. The remaining distance did not look insurmountable, on paper. It was dramatically closer than circling all the way around to the original entry point in the burg of Glim on Ferdina's side.

Encouraged by the progress, I journeyed on along the desolate lane past the lifeless, barren faces of the high-rises and the deserted storefronts on the ground level.

What had been sold there? The display windows were gone, the shelves emptied. Logically, these had to have been where the more successful senior trainees had had their budding businesses, the catalog of which the owners had taken with them, or else the goblins had repossessed.

Until now, I had seen only the tidy civilian quarters close to the guarded gates, which adventurers had kept clear and clean to the best of their ability. But no janitor had set foot in these parts in ages, and here, in the interior of Mawé, I came to see a civilization after its downfall.

A robbed, vandalized, ravaged ruin to which spectral echoes of violence and terror yet clung, and where even ghosts were afraid to show themselves. The locked doors and battened windows of the many apartments were enthusiastically pried open, everything good-looking inside taken, everything unappealing dumped out onto the streets. Goblins had no need for pots, or jars, or chairs, or barrels, desks, closets, drawers, or tables. These all they had smashed apart and used to fuel their spontaneous campfires.

The same fate has befallen everything flammable over the long decades, leaving only hollow shells of stone houses stripped bare of moving parts. But the creatures were not even apt at destruction; instead of letting one fire burn thoroughly to ashes and reusing the same camp later, they abandoned it ere the flames had even faded, and started a new one a few steps away, never again in the same exact spot. As a result, the streetview was riddled with black mounds of coals and scattered ashes, from which barely half-burned furniture, or someone's withered remains stuck out to tell the tale of what had been and how pointlessly it was wasted.

Since the air was so dry and cool, old corpses retained their shape astonishingly well, unless purposefully obliterated. That was the favorite pastime of the goblinkind. They had hung bodies of dwarves and old adventurers, or parts of such here and there above the ground and used them for target practice—or rather, only for idle sport. It was inconceivable for these creatures to seek self-improvement. All they ever did was but for momentary gratification.

I hardened my heart to the exhibit of past atrocities and walked on, still feverish and unsteady, but unwilling to stop or turn back. I couldn't rest in such a place, at any rate, or it was likely I would never open my eyes again, my throat slashed in my sleep. The safety offered by the broken houses was not to be trusted.

I dragged my feet past the smoke-streaked apartments stacked high to the hewn ceiling, and the avenues decorated by the statues of old dwarf lords. Many of the stone figures had had their noses, beards, ears, and helmets chipped off to create ambiguously monstrous portraits. I had no idea goblins could have an eye for art. The day had been full of learning experiences. Although, I believe I could have lived happier without the knowledge.

I passed sparse goblin patrols in the city, but hid and let them pass without a fight and the further I went the less frequent they became. It was not easy even for their noses to pick up my track in the ever-present reek of burn and rust emanating in thick waves from the industrial quarter towards the west side, where the primordial fires of the mountain never died. In the east side, the heat mixed into the cool mountain air blowing from the Vein's side, coiling and unwinding, subjecting you to a sickening switching of sweat and shiver.

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——Clang!

The strangest observation reached my ears. I had to stop to listen for a time, unable to believe my senses. I even wondered if I had accidentally inhaled the vapor of Master Vivian's potion. But as I waited and waited, the sound continued steadily in the distance, impossible to confuse. What I observed was the iconic sound of a hammer smiting iron.

Clang. Clang. Clang. Again and again it struck, with a distinct vigor and purpose.

Had my understanding of goblin culture been this far off the mark? I never would have imagined them capable of such focused, diligent labor. No. There was no chance a monster could play such a tune. That strong ring of metal was free of any chaotic, amateurish floundering, and beastly impatience. The lone hammer struck like clockwork, pure and unwavering, and inspired admiration in its stalwart timbre.

Inconceivable. Someone still possessed of culture and civility lived in this cold Hel!

It occurred to me then that even if it was to be the end of me, I had to see this marvel with my own eyes. I set out in pursuit of the source of the sustained beat and chased it like a religious zealot with a crisis of faith seeking a sign from the Heavens. My nutty pilgrimage led me eastward, away from the direction of the entrance I'd been looking for, but that song of iron had turned as if into a siren symphony for me, luring my boat onto rocks, while I feared nothing more than it stopping unannounced.

I came across a long, raised structure among the houses that resembled an aqueduct upheld by sturdy stone legs. The line ran across the burg, high above the streets, all the way from west to east. Nearby stairs took me up to that strange wall, which turned out to carry no water in it, but two sets of steely cart tracks, such that might be used to transport heavy materials. The tracks were easier to travel than the hazardous streets full of litter and rubble, and they took me directly towards that now clearer beat in the east. I followed the steel-dressed path, trying to keep low, cautiously eyeing the rooftops below me, but saw no motion. I hiked on unchecked and at last came to a dignified building at the end of the railway.

It was a longhouse assembled of grand blocks of dark stone and a copper-plated roof, isolated by a heavy perimeter wall, an iron gate barring the entrance, through which the rails proceeded. Someone or something had run a loaded coal cart into the gate with formidable force, and bent it just enough out of shape to leave a maid-sized gap in it. I squeezed through and came to stand in the front yard of the handsome facility, which any lord of man would gladly have accepted as his noble house.

The yard was cluttered with more orphaned mining carts and stored piles of materials eternally awaiting delivery. Gargantuan piles of steel sheets and beams caked in thick crusts of rust; long, hollow pipes, perhaps meant for in-house heating systems, or drains, or sewers; high mounds of coal to burn and crates of cargo containers, and what have you. It was not a pleasure for a maid's eyes, but a work site abandoned in the middle of a busy day, and in desperate need of tidying up. I could only be thankful that this job did not fall on me.

The hammering appeared to come from inside the wide building.

I went on to approach the main entrance, but found it firmly shut and barred. There were no windows in my reach either. After coming this far, I was not about to give up simply because of a locked door, however, but went looking for an alternative method of access. An uncouth soul might have called my plans burglary, but technically, the site no longer had a lawful owner and no one to rightfully prohibit entry either. I was committing no crimes here.

Upon a cursory look, the mansion seemed solid and impenetrable all around. But I followed along the tracks, which curved sharpy northward from the front yard, and led me to the north end and a loading area of sorts built there—or perhaps an unloading area, or however you wish to call it.

The place was shaped like a dry dock with its mechanical cranes and wheels and levers and leverages, for bringing in and out things too heavy to move by hand. The door in the back of the area was also locked, but there was an observation deck of sorts above it. I was able to reach the deck with the aid of a suspended crane arm, and discovered a broken window, and let myself in.

I could only call it a successful break-and-entry.

The harder you were resisted, the greater the pleasure of overcoming it. And that was most certainly not something a maid ought to say.

Feeling faint after the acrobatics, I caught my breath and saw I'd wound up in a most peculiar place.

A somewhat redundant statement—there was no place in a dungeon that was not peculiar by nature. But here I came to witness a site so very alien to me, distant in both time and society.

The long building was essentially one extensive hall inside, without walls to divide it, no separate rooms, or complexities of architecture. Into the left side wall were cut long, deep, glassless windows which let in fresh air and provided a broad view into the nearby branch of the fathomless Vein. The ventilation was exceptionally well arranged for a smithy, which was precisely what the place was.

Both sides of the hall from here to the far end were decorated with long lines of enormous anvils, each armed with its own small furnace, though now gone cold. There were stations for perhaps as many as two hundred workers in this one building, and, given the placement and quality of the smithy, it seemed those two hundred had been something exceptional.

I could only imagine the deafening noise of their tools banging away all at once.

Today, however, it terrified me to find even one hammer hand still in business in the domain of monsters.

I crossed the floor of black stone and approached the heart of the hall. In the rounded central area was set a wider, circular forge with five fancy anvils set radially around a singular cylinder furnace that yet had heat in it. It rose as a dark tower of cast iron from the floor to the ceiling, featuring a maw that could be manually opened and closed, and within raged an intense, white-hot torrent of flames to render frigid metals more compliant.

And all around the tower hearth and the anvils lay weapons. A right jungle of blades. Tools of war of many varieties, spotless and never used, set to lean against the walls at first, and then, when the available wall space had fallen under cover, they'd been put against each other, row upon row, the ring of sharp edges growing steadily smaller towards the middle, before spilling over onto side aisles. It was a view that commanded a reverent silence. And then…

As unbelievable as it was, in the eye of the deadly forest was yet a smith at his task.

And with that encounter, our tale comes to its pivotal turning point.