by B G Mitchell
He took his seat and waved at his advisors to do the same. He then started, “I have news as to the possible location of the human who destroyed the mighty prince Quargath, and he is in a dark elf city, one which has turned from the goddess Zateria. It has, I am told by a reliable source, fifteen thousand dark elves. A worthy target and would have been no match for his legion of evil.” (Again demons are not that imaginative with names and usual are Legion of (insert intimidating word here) and they only allowed duplicates when all they were left with was legion of meanies.) Zargon lay back in his chair. He had a problem which was many of his legion of terror and other demons in his service had become sick. He would have suspected foul play but it seemed to be affecting other princes as well.
An advisor stood up. This one had a large, round belly and had a small grey beard as well as no wings. His name was Vargathon and was Zargon’s most trusted advisor. “Forgive me, my prince, but most of our soldiers are unwell at the moment, and we do not have enough soldiers to conquer a dark elf city as well as defend ourselves.”
Zargon nodded at his advisor. “That is true, as many of you know, Largarthas is also using Quargath’s destruction as an opportunity to expand his domain, but I have a plan. You, Vargathon, will see if you can convince one of the deep orcs in the area to summon you, and when you are on their realm, we shall unite the orc tribes and capture the city. Then with the human’s power, I will be able to smite Largarthas and all those other princes who have been ignoring our pleas for assistance.”
He smiled to himself. It was good to be a demon. He reached up to scratch his head and pulled away with a clump of his hair. His advisor looked at him. It was one of the signs of the sickness that had come after the destruction of Quargath’s realm. Zargon slammed the table in defiance, sending follicles of hair flying everywhere. “And I want this human alive.” Hopefully, he thought to himself, the human had the cure. Of not, he would make him suffer like victims of the sickness.
Gary awoke feeling like he had mixed his drink the night before. His head ached and his body ached as well. He tried to move and found that one of his ankles was in a metal cuff that was attached to a metal chain. As his eyesight adjusted to the light, the only source of which was a small, bared window in a heavy, wooden door, he saw that he was in a small, solid stone cell. He noted that his bag was gone and it was just him and his clothes. He looked at his shoes and rather sadly and noted that even in this lack of light they needed a polish.
As he sat in the cell and tried to look out the window, it gave him time to reflect and think about home. He had his job and the family he did have was a couple of aunts and uncles as well as his father who had retired up in oxford while he worked in London. He also had a couple of friends, mostly work colleges and no girlfriend as of yet, despite his best attempts at hanging out in bars and looking single. He wondered how they were all doing. He had been gone for about five days now. They must have filled in a missing persons report by now. No doubt his face would appear on posters all over London.
The other thought that did occur to him as he had plenty of time to think, was what was happing with the job he had been working with the company for about a year and it was your run of the mill computer support role. It was a large company where he felt like another cog in the machine. Well, it did pay the bills, and now he had not shown up for a couple days. He wondered what company policy was regarding sudden disappearances. Would he ever have a chance to find out? He had rather burnt his bridge back home as the one person who got him here was rather dead. He sighed. To top it off, he still really wanted a hot cup of coffee.
He must have been awake for a couple of hours before he heard the heavy, wooden door creak open and in stepped a couple of dwarves in armour, both of them holding rather heavy axes. One pointed his axe at him while the other one unlocked his ankle chain. He stood up and had to stoop as the ceiling for the cell was only about four feet tall. The second dwarf took up position behind him he got the hint and headed out the door, following the first dwarf. Once he got out of his cell, he found he could stand up, but his hair did brush the ceiling, and he still had to duck for doorways.
He walked past many other small cells. Some seemed occupied, judging by the moans and voices of general unhappiness coming from them. He was led out of what he suspected was the prison corridor into an even larger corridor which did impress him. Here, the ceiling was at last fifty feet tall and the corridor itself was about forty feet wide, and it had in the centre spaced ten feet apart columns supporting the ceiling, all of them carved with scenes of brave dwarven warriors battling against various foes.
It seemed to be one of the main streets for the dwarven city and had a fair amount of dwarves rushing about on their own business, just giving the human and his escort an odd glance. Along the walls there seemed to be a collection of doors and windows, and some of them had signs above. He assumed these where places of business. Eventually they reached a pair of ornate, large double doors which had two guards on either side. As Gary got closer, the guards went up to the round iron handles and pulled the large doors open.
Which revealed a large hall with many rectangular tables and benches, and beyond them was a platform with a grand chair with a large back. In the chair sat a dwarf in golden armour with a crown on his head. Gary was going to go out on a limb here and assume he was in charge and the chair was in fact a throne. Next to the throne were a couple of other dwarves all talking amongst themselves. They all fell silent as Gary’s entourage approached. He half expected one of the guards to knock his knees out, forcing him to kneel, but he was allowed to stand as the dwarf on the throne studied him like a scientist would look at a microscope at a colony of amoeba who just happened to spell out an advanced mathematical formula (bacteria are never that smart, the formula would of course be wrong).
The dwarf himself had a long, red beard that seemed to mesh into his long, red hair and looked like a short Viking warrior who, regarding shaving as some sort of unholy act, the dwarf also had a golden breast plate and a small golden crown on he assumed it was his work crown. He then spoke in a gruff voice, “I am King Ulwreth, leader of the city of Blindstone. What realm do you come from, human?” He noticed the guards had flanked him and held their axes in a ready pose. Given their height, they could take out his knees in a moment’s notice, not exactly an instant kill but it would still prevent him from running marathons for some time.
“Well it is kind of hard to explain. My realm is very far away. I was sort of summoned by a demon, and I managed to escape through an open portal into the dark elf city.”
The King looked at him rather sceptically like he had just announced that he was a Nigerian prince whose father had just died and left a lot of money in a bank account that he could not reach unless he had help. “So tell me why did the dark elves let you go then, human?”
Gary cleared his throat. He doubted that even though these dwarves clearly lived in a fantasy realm, they would most likely not believe him if he told them that Zateria had given him the city.
He was also rather reluctant to point out that he had turned a part of hell into a crater, on the off chance this realm had the equivalent of Nuremburg and saw that even though demons were evil, viscous fiends, they were still living creatures and nuclear genocide happened to be wrong even against the princes of evil. This opened up all sorts of question of is it ethical to commit nuclear genocide against evil people. He put those questions to one side as he thought of an answer to the more pressing questions asked by a dwarvern king, whose two warriors happened to be in range of his knees with an axe. “Well, they seemed to be in the middle of denouncing their old goddess and a leadership change which I may of… sort of got involved in.”
The dwarf looked at him like he just said that for a small fee he would be able to access the large sum of money his father had left behind and he would get a substantial reward. He then stood up and turned to one of his advisors. “Bring forth the sword of Al-demaher.”
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br /> A ceremonial sword, thought Gary to himself. This can’t be good.
His advisor nodded and rushed off out of the door. He then turned to the human. “Now, human, we shall give you the test of Al-Demaher. You shall hold the holy sword, and if you are evil you will be struck down like the fiend you are!”
Gary hoped he was not evil and hoped the test did not included the pointed end of the sword and one of his soft, fleshy bits.
The large entrance doors opened again and in entered the dwarf from before, as well as a group of dwarves dressed in white robes with bright blue sashes that had gold lining. One of them seemed to be holding a cushion on top of which rested a gleaming silver sword with a golden handle inlaid with runes and symbols. The dwarves in the white robs stopped in front of him and presented the cushion to him. Gary reached out for the sword’s handle and then paused for a second as everyone held their breath. As he paused, he thought to himself, was he evil? The normal human response would be no, but so much had been done by those who thought themselves to be doing the right thing.
He did have the chance to do good but ignored it, and he had lied and done to others what he hoped were minor sins, like walked away with a coffee and forgetting to pay. No, he thought to himself, he was not evil, he was human. He grabbed the sword like someone would grab a live snake by the neck. He instinctively closed his eyes and only opened them when all he felt was the weight of metal in his hand. The sword felt heavy but not too heavy as he would have no trouble swinging it. It was a good, solid weight. He took a practice swing, making sure not to hit any of the dwarves and then laid it back on the cushion.
The king looked at him as if he was making at his mind, then slowly nodded. “Well, human, you are not evil, but you will be under guard, and I believe our chief smith is interested to talk to you about the other bag you had, so he will be in charge of you from now on. Oh, and the gold you had has been cleansed of evil and melted down. We shall consider it payment for your keep and your guard’s.” The Dwarf king smiled at him as another dwarf step forward. He had a long, black beard with touch of grey and wore a brown leather apron. The dwarf looked like he had performed hard labour for most of his life. He then spoke in a gruff voice, “I am Bloodhammer, son of Gilmertra. We have much to talk about. I will show you the forge, your new home.”
He then walked out of the door, and Gary, although not thrilled at having to following someone called Bloodhammer, did not see much of a choice. He duly followed. He was also followed by the two dwarf guards he had picked up. Going through the same large hallway as before ended up in another small tunnel where Gary’s head scraped the ceiling. After about five minutes of walking, they reached a large cave that was unusually hot and had patches of red light which hurt his eyes. He had to squint. It was one of the things he had not been thinking about when he had been underground, but the ambient light level was a lot lower than what he was used to, and his eyes had adjusted without him even thinking about it.
Once his eyes were able to take in all the light, he saw that the red pits looked a lot like furnaces used in smelting and were surrounded by dwarves all dressed in heavy brown pants and leather aprons. Some even had on primitive looking goggles. The cavern was large and look like someone had managed to carve a little bit here and there as the needs of the foundry dictated. Bloodhammer went to a staircase carved into the wall. It led up to an office that was also carved into the wall. Gary duly followed. Inside the office was a single wooden desk and a couple of chairs. The large one was of course behind the desk and behind that was a carved out of the wall window overlooking the work going on below. But what really got Gary’s attention was that his laptop was sitting on the desk without a charger and running in this heat.
Bloodhammer then pointed to the laptop. “Currently your magic tome displays an interesting article about how we can manufacture steel cheaply, but I was wondering if there is anything else it can tell us?” Gary rushed around to the laptop and checked. For some reason it was displaying the Wikipedia page on the Bessemer process, which was very odd as he never remembered browsing that site. Another thing he noticed was the battery power was at a hundred percent.
“How long has this been on?” he asked, somewhat confused by the fact his old laptop was able to hold any sort of charge, as it had continually failed to do so in its previous world.
Bloodhammer stood at the window, looking at the dwarves working below his office. He then replied, “So far, about two days. Quite an impressive tome, as soon as I touched it, the text displayed.”
Gary clicked another link which opened up to open hearth furnace. This webpage too was cached. He opened a new browser session and found it could not connect to anything, but it did have a few cached pages, all of them to do with metal work, something Gary was not in the habit of looking up.
Bloodhammer turned and looked over his shoulder. “Ahh,” he replied with a smile. “An open hearth furnace. This should make good reading. Well, human, you have just proven your worth around here.”
Gary then clicked on a third link to make sure he understood this fully and opened up a page on Japanese sword making. He could practically feel Bloodhammer’s smile grow as he read the text over his shoulder. Gary got up and let Bloodhammer continue his reading.
King Ulwerth hated waiting, but he did not have much of a choice. Currently, he was in the outer caverns despite his advisor’s best attempts to let someone more expendable handle the meeting. They did not trust the people he was about to meet, and to be perfectly honest, nor did he, but he wanted to see this in person. In over a thousand years of living close to the dark elves, there had never really been any contact made in peace, but now there were rumours floating around supported by the arrival of the strange human, who would have been sacrificed as soon as someone found a sharp dagger (well you try and sacrifice someone with a blunt dagger), as well as his spies’ reports of some sort of evacuation of the loyal Zateria followers.
He had for a while heard rumours of a growing dissatisfaction with the priestess of Zateria, helped by the fact that the dwarves had more than once defeated the dark elves in battle, but was shocked by the sudden change. One of his guards shouted out a warning as he noticed a torch light in the distance travelling towards them. He got on his portable Thorne and held his ceremonial axe as his guards took their positions just in time to see the party of dark elves approach him. In the front was a tall dark elf female with light blue eyes and a streak of light blue hair on her fringe. The rest of her hair was longer and white, pulled into a ponytail. She also wore an ornate metal breast plate and a black skirt that just covered her knees as well as a pair of tie around flat heeled sandals. He took note of her scabbard which contained the short dagger like sword favoured by the dark elves. Behind her was another female, this time with short, spiky, white hair. She seemed to have more armour on her, which included knee guards and a simpler sturdier metal breast plate. The second dark elf also had a scar along her cheek.
Behind them were a couple of tarantulas of burden and of course some more dark elves that looked like the normal soldier types. The elf with the ornate breast plate performed a bow which was a bit odd as females in royal functions tended to curtsy but this was the first time he had met a dark elf.
She then began to speak, “Greetings, good king, my name is Sylvania, and I am authorised by the leader of Narderba to conduct a trade between our two communities.”
Ulwerth stood up. “And we too welcome the elves, and on behalf of the dwarves of Blindstone, we wish to be in peace with our neighbours. Now that the niceties are out of the way, what do you want to trade?”
She led him and his small party to a small chest. She opened it up and found it contained a collection of gold coins. He picked one up and felt the weight on it. He also felt a small tingling sensation in his hands. He could tell that this was gold just by the feel. It was something that dwarves could tell just by touch how valuable a metal was. He dropped the coin down and nodded to a man next
to him. He then turned to the elf. “Right, Sylvania, you have my attention. What do you need?”
“For the moment,” replied Sylvania in her best diplomatic voice. “We shall ask for high quality tools and food, especially fungus bread.”
The king look thoughtful for a moment, then nodded. “And you shall have it. I imagine the rumours I am hearing about your city at the moment makes you wish if you could ask for weapons, but I think as a show of good faith I can give you twenty high quality swords.” The king held up his hand to silence one of the advisors who was going to speak. He then continued, “We also give the following offer to you as well. We will send down fifty miners protected by forty guards to mine one of those seams of ore. In exchange, you will be able to take thirty percent of the ore and those guards will also help protect the city, should it become threatened.”
Sylvania thought for a moment before replying, “An interesting offer, but I must take it back to my leader to get approval.”
“Of course,” replied the king. “You and your friends are welcome to stay the night.”
“No, but thanks for your offer. I think we need to load up these supplies and move on back as will be needed by the city. I have much to discuss with our leader, but tell me how is the human we sent across doing?”
Ulwerth merely smiled before replying, “He is doing well and is currently helping out in the foundry. Apparently he has given the head of the foundry some unique ideas. Which why you will find the tools and…” He paused for a moment. “…weapons to be of superior quality.”
The king made sure he emphasised the word “weapons,” not as a threat but as a warning, reminding the elves that they may have good quality weapons, but so did the king, and he could make more.
“He is an interesting human. Do you know where he came from?” Sylvania frowned slightly. That had been a question on many elves’ minds.