The Swords of August

Reading the sensor data wasn't the issue, I could see it just fine. Actually understanding it? That was a confusing mess.

My suit finally spit out the results I wanted.

"Is that a dwarf?" Chen asked.

"What?"

"It's a short guy with a pickaxe. That's a dwarf."

"He's just sitting there."

The little guy was just over three feet in height and was standing in, so far as I could tell a completely enclosed pocket of space. The sand should've caved it in, but like a lot of things here magic told rhyme and reason to fuck off and stay gone.

"What happens if I shoot him?" Chen asked.

"Uh, what? I don't think that would help. He's got to be ten to twenty metres deep, anyway you'd just wreck the place trying to get to him."

"I'm okay with that."

"I'm not. Hold your fire." I had thought it might be a Vitaru or something, but this was new. That didn't necessarily mean harmless, but I didn't want to shoot something without a positive ID.

For all I knew that dwarf was actually the town's sacred mascot or something.

"Hey, sand isn't that dense. I'm just saying." Chen said, trailing off.

"Chen. Focus."

"Alright, let me try something."

"What something?"

In answer, Chen stomped his boot on the ground three times.

Nothing happened.

"Wow… that's…"

"Shh!"

Then he tried again. Two stomps, pause, three stomps.

Nothing again. He looked over at me. "You can tell I'm not a very good ambassador, can't you?"

"What the hell are you doing?" I rolled my eyes. The little guy still hadn't moved. "He's probably wondering what the hell we're doing."

"Just wait a minute. Let me try…" He thumped out a very familiar pattern with his boot.

A moment passed. Nothing. It… or he, I suppose, until proven otherwise, just sat there. Silence.

"Really? Shave and a Haircut? What th—"

A much louder double thump came back, shaking the sand around us slightly, ending Chen's incomplete pattern.

"No fucking way."

"Everyone speaks English, this isn't even that outrageous." Chen snickered, smugly.

"This is so dumb."

"No. It's communication!" He proclaimed.

"Still dumb." I sighed. "Can you communicate with your thumps and ask him where Carver is? Or if he took him?"

"Uh… I'm afraid our communications only extend to thumping and thumping back."

"Right. I guess… we dig to him?"

What followed was a scene out of a slapstick comedy, or maybe a regular day at the beach. Just two guys digging a massive hole in the sand. My gauntlets were actually very effective shovels, and I had two. With Chen helping, we dug a truly massive hole in record time—about nine metres in depth. I watched as the dwarf just sat there, watching. When we'd actually gotten decently close to him, he thundered back another reply, another double-thump.

We both stood up. "What do you think that means?"

Chen shrugged. "I don't know. We communicate in thumps."

"He's moving!"

And he was. I watched as the stout and short dwarf spun like some kind of human drill and popped up above ground. The first thing I noticed was that he was armed with a large pickaxe nearly as tall as his own four feet. It was blue-black and glossy.

As far as I could see, it was seamless, all made of one piece of metal like it had been drop-forged. The second thing I noticed was that he was short, and covered in rock. I couldn't see anything but two eyes. I didn't even see a mouth or a nose.

The second thing I noticed was that he was covered in a layer of rock coloured in the same tones. All I could see was a pair of dark and curious eyes.

"How can he breathe in that?" Chen wondered.

"He's probably thinking the same thing about us. We don't exactly have any air holes in our suits at first glance, either."

"Zakev Omat Korak!" The little guy thrust his pick into the air and cheered a throaty phrase. Not that I had any idea what the hell it meant, of course.

I shrugged, giving Chen a glance. "When in Rome?"

"Zakev Omat Korak!" Chen cheered back with me, each of our hands thrust high with our rifles in them.

I had a feeling things were about to get interesting. More interesting, I should say. When the rock-covered dwarf jumped and then a hole opened up and swallowed him, I was sure what to do. When two other holes opened up, each about three times as large as the one the dwarf had used, I sighed.

They seemed to continue down far enough to drown every bit of light in shadow. I couldn't see a thing. Even augmented vision and scanners couldn't get anything other than it was deep. For all I knew it was hundreds of metres deep.

"Damned magic." Chen scowled. "How deep is that?"

"How the hell should I know?" I swapped over to give Leyndal and Jordan an update. "Be advised, we've made contact with… some kind of dwarf. We're proceeding to investigate. We think he might know where Rovald and Carver are. We'll try to keep you posted if we can."

"Understood? What's a dwarf?"

"Have Larsen fill you in. If you don't hear from us by this time tomorrow… bring lots of backup and have her help you track us down."

"Got it. I don't know if the King will be willing to send anyone else this far out, but we'll see."

"Riley out." I flicked the handheld radio off and breathed deep. "Here goes nothing."

A single step and hop later and I plummeted into the deep dark below, vanishing from the quiet street completely.

I fell for a while and if I hadn't had a system clock to measure time against I might've said it was minutes of free fall. In reality though, my suit only elapsed a total of seventy-eight seconds.

Still a long time, to be sure, but far from minutes.

I hit the ground softly, which was both something of a surprise and not really much of one. It was probably rude or unnecessarily wasteful to ask mages to slow their fall themselves when some kind of runic array of magic could do it for them. Whatever the reason, I touched down with barely a bump to see very familiar cavernous corridors rendered in shades of false-colour. Shades of blue and red draped themselves over surfaces with even hues.

"The area is dark, go augmented."

"I got that, thanks. Any idea where we're meant to go?"

The tunnel we'd been dropped in went two ways and I didn't see anyone. It was also suspiciously spacious especially given our armour.

"I'd have expected four-foot tall dwarves to build smaller."

"You see where he went?" Chen asked. The lack of anything except rock, and a clearly artificial tunnel was creeping me out. There had to be some sign of life here, somewhere.

"No." I admitted. "One second."

I swapped over to thermals. While seeing through walls with a thermal scanner was the work of fiction and movies, seeing footprints with it was actually far more realistic. The insulating properties of most structures didn't apply to a scarcely used passageway that was dark and cold for much of the time.

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

"I don't see any footprints." Chen remarked.

I swept my gaze up the tunnel and then down the other way. One continued on straight while the other curved to the left. No footprints. I would've expected there to be something, even if it was just a muddle of something that proved the passageway was used.

"These tunnels look familiar."

"You think these things built those caves that Davian escaped through?"

"Don't call them things." I snapped. "But, they look the same, yeah."

"I mean, are they people?"

"They're people. I know it's weird, but everything about this place is weird. Just pretend they're a host-nation and we're on a joint training op."

Chen shrugged. "Alright." I inspected the threat scanner, even though it was as dark and quiet as the tunnel we were in. I had a practically religious relationship with the tool. Every time it lit up it usually spelled trouble on the horizon. Fortunately, the horizon looked peaceful, for now.

"I looked over your sensor data but I have to admit, this is way creepier in person. Where is everyone?"

"I don't know, but I'm not trying to figure it out on foot. Let me map this place out."

I pulsed our new surroundings with a burst of ultrasound. The gratifying sight of a city filled with twisting corridors and open chambers was actually fairly close to what I was expecting, though somewhat larger in scale than I was expecting. Instead of a structure that could house a few hundred, I found something that could house thousands and that was just what I could see.

"Looks like a plant, the way these tunnels are built, I mean. They're crystalline, the walls."

"Does that mean something? What's it scan as?"

The cave walls were rough and textured, not smooth concrete like we would build them. They also curved and twisted in a very organic way. They weren't laid out like a bunker, but most people didn't have to worry about shrapnel or overpressure.

Before Chen could answer a sonorous cry from deeper somewhere within the structure startled me. I shifted to an alert firing stance, covering one end of the tunnel we were in. I knew Chen would cover the other.

"Uh… I hope that's friendly?"

My suit attempted to pinpoint the location of the noise, but it really just gave me a vague direction. It wasn't surprising. I was equipped for space-combat and urban terrain more than anything else. A subterranean battlefield was definitely one of the weakest parts of my technological strengths.

"I don't know, but stay sharp and get moving. That was in my direction and I'd rather not sit still." I ordered.

Dirt burst into the air from behind me and my finger hovered on my half-depressed guard before I realised that my threat scanner wasn't going off.

"Damn it! Don't scare me like that." I lowered my muzzle with a deliberate motion and took a quick look around.

"Zakev Omat Korak!" He repeated his earlier display, though with no less enthusiasm, still carrying his pickaxe.

I rolled my eyes. "Right, right, yes. Zakee Omo Kora-Kora. I don't suppose you speak English? Eenglish?"

"Inglish!" He exclaimed. Very cheerfully, but it was clear he didn't understand us.

"I don't think he understands you."

"You think?"

I debated snapping on my shoulder-mounted lights but for all I knew that would blind them. Maybe they could only handle light on the surface for a limited amount of time. I didn't strictly need to, but it just felt weird walking around in tunnels that I knew stretched for entire kilometres in a complex probably as large as entire towns back home.

When our guide took a step towards me with his pickaxe I stepped back quite suddenly, well, it was more of a hop really. Of three or four metres.

"Herat Karak!" He waved me towards him, leaning in the direction of the sound I'd heard before.

"Come on." I followed close behind at a languid pace as the dwarf ran along.

"This place is huge. Wonder why." Chen asked.

The dwarf jabbered back at him, then at me and continued to do so even as Chen and I held our own conversation.

"I think it's a city."

"You sure about that? Looks more like that dead mage guy's hideout."

"Yeah, but what else would you need this much space for? If it's not a city, it's something that's taking a lot of space."

About thirty seconds later I got my first look at a second example of whatever species this dwarf. I don't know what I was expecting but there was a virtually identical gaggle of three of four dwarves singing in their strange language as they passed us running the other way.

They each had slight variations but they were all short, strong and I couldn't make heads or tails of them by sight alone. I shrugged, continuing to follow along until we entered a large chamber.

Unexpectedly, it was some kind of brewery. I could see kegs of stone, not wood, on one side behind a bar. I tensed up slightly as a pair of stone arms and a featureless head raised itself from behind the bar. As it stood up, I could see a long-limbed stone golem. It didn't speak, but it began filling mugs from the kegs just the same.

"Is it just me, or is this kind of a stereotype?"

"Can you stereotype things that didn't exist until yesterday?" I asked.

"I guess? Let's just follow the little guy."

We followed him over to a trio of rocks, about waist-height and made of the same rock as the surrounding room. He thumped on it and it melted into a large chair, far larger than the dwarf. He gestured to it, then to me.

"Kaz."

"I guess that means sit?" I asked, taking the offered seat.

He repeated the process with another rock nearby and Chen took that seat. Then, the golem came over and rock flowed upwards from the floor, forming a very simple square table. It set the two mugs down for us, and then retreated back to the bar.

Our dwarven friend meanwhile, pushed a rock over from the other side of the room with strength that belied his size, hopping up on top of it. He stomped on it a few times, a subtle shifting of its shape speeding up with each impact.

It turned into a seat, though probably quite a tall one from his perspective. We were something like twice his height.

After we all took our seats, he pointed at himself. "Karulf!"

"Karulf?" I asked, palm-up and hand pointing generally in his direction. It wouldn't do to offend, or accidentally threaten.

He nodded vigorously.

"At least that's universal." Chen tapped on his own chest. "Kwan."

"Gung?" Karulf said, almost questioningly.

"Should've gone with Chen."

I reached over and tapped Chen's chest. "Chen." Then I tapped my own. "Edward."

"Chen. Edward." Karulf repeated slowly. He held out his hand a rock jumped up and settled into it. Then, it reshaped itself into nearly a perfect recreation of our armour.

To no one's surprise, linguistics wasn't really my strong suit. I spoke passable German, but that was about it. That was why I didn't feel too bad when his next sentence went over my head. Just imagine a room full of people all speaking every Germanic language at once, very excitedly and that about sums up what he said.

"Did you catch any of that?

"I speak Korean, English and Mandarin, not Tolkien."

Karulf was smarter than he looked, or at least he had anticipated the massive language barrier we were dealing with. A sheet of stone melted from the ceiling to hang next to us all and then it began to change into very recognisable shapes.

"Jenag!" He exclaimed, pointing at a picture of a tree.

"Tree." I said.

I made sure my suit recorders were directing all the information to be filed and analysed. The recorders were never off, but I needed to actually give them instructions if I wanted anything useful done with the data.

The stone changed again. A pickaxe.

"Pickaxe." Chen said.

"Terak."

We continued this way for, I don't know how long, probably an hour. I wasn't the impatient sort, but I was hoping this lead to something and I hadn't just wasted an hour playing anthropologist. Eventually, we had a rudimentary system of communication and I could finally get to the issue that was burrowing at the base of my neck.

I picked up one of the little man-representations and held up three fingers. Two more appeared on the table and I arranged them together, then pushed two of them off to the side. I waited a few moments, then knocked one of them off the table, and brought the other two back to where they'd all started. For added effect, I started jumping the two figures up and down on the table, though I have no idea if that got my point across.

"I'm not anthropologist but… I think he knows where Carver is."

Karulf was speaking fast, but I got the gist and my suit filled in the gaps where it could.

"Friend-man Carver here."

"Where?" I asked, leaning forward slightly.

He hopped up and sprinted out of the room. I followed without a moment's hesitation, matching his pace.

The tunnel, before a simple crystalline pattern became more beautiful and elaborate. Jewel-encrusted walls, and then walls made of jewels, until we reached a large translucent wall. I stared in shock as my scanners told me it was a single solid ruby gemstone.

"Where is he taking us?"

I had no idea. "To his leader, I guess?"

"This does look… leaderly."

"If leaderly means rich, then yeah."

Karulf walked up and knocked on the door with his fist. After a few moments he spoke to it, or someone on the other side of it more than likely.

"Tarek Nom Kriga! Toz Paf Gorak! Nemath Tagra!"

"Whatever the hell that means." I muttered.

The gemstone door slid open, retracting into the floor.

"Open sesame?" Chen suggested.

We walked into a gigantic hall. And I do mean gigantic. Humongous. Utterly huge. It was the size of some ships I'd served on, or at least it looked that way.
The room was flanked by guards on all sides. They wore the same black-blue metal as Karulf's pickaxe, only these dwarves were armoured statues, unmoving and at first, I thought they were unthinking.

They wore helmets, deep shadows obscuring their exposed eyes and features. Each of them stood so still I'd mistaken them for statues, if very life-like statues. The amount of people needed to form a proper perimeter for a room this size had to be in the hundreds but I didn't bother counting.

Sturdy looking shields flanked them on one side, while their other hands held long-handled hammers, spears, axes or swords. They certainly looked like they were guarding someone or something important.

"What brings two surface-dwellers to the Khazdori?"

Loud. That was my first impression. Loud and deep and somewhere in the hall. Old, but with an old kind of strength. That was the second thing I picked up.

"Come!" Karulf led us onwards, his short legs eating up more ground than I would've thought possible.
We arrived to stand in front of a throne sized for the room we were in. Oddly enough, there was no huge giant sitting on it, but instead there was a very normal-sized if bejeweled throne in front of it.

The dwarf in said small throne was wearing a cloak and crown and many other impressive things. I ignored them all and came to a standstill a short distance from the throne. Though I hadn't felt compelled to for Marden, or anyone else for that matter, it felt somehow polite to drop to one knee. I think perhaps it's because the stature of these dwarves made me want to present myself as non-threateningly as possible.

I watched Chen lower himself to the ground on one knee, mimicking my actions.

"I apologise for any intrusion, or for any rudeness. We are from far away, and seek only to return home." I started out polite and not just because there were hundreds of guards surrounding me and I was on someone else's territory.

"Is it not within your power to return?" The voice emanated from the larger throne. The man in the smaller throne in front of its larger cousin was silent. Was it some kind of powerful magical being? Or was the voice that magical being?

I hesitated. Technically, we could return, but right now? This very second? Not a chance.

"It is not. We require great constructs to carry us beyond the sky. We had hoped to build them and leave, but in the course of working for the materials and labour we needed, one of my people was taken. I cannot leave without him and I'm told he is here."

Silence. Maybe deep and foreboding, or thoughtful. It was hard to tell.

"Tell me, sky-man, what are your intentions?"

"I intend to find my missing friend and then rid this land of a plague, as I promised a King on the surface. After that, I will pay in knowledge and equipment to safeguard King Valebrook's people. Then, I will build a great ship and sail it through the sky to our homeland."

"Valebrook." The name came from wistful lips. "I once knew a Valebrook, a long time ago. Do you believe that the Vitaru will be defeated this time?"

That threw me for a loop. Not that it, or he—it?—knew what the Vitaru were, but that it knew who I'd been talking to. The answer to its question was one I didn't even know how to begin answering. I didn't even know my enemy yet, and I had just the barest understanding of my allies.

I took a deep breath. "I don't know."