Downtown Druid

Dantes didn’t have to walk much further to reach the first dwarf. He was short and stocky, which was unsurprising, with a shaved head and a long braided beard full of decorations of bone and carved stone. A large stone hammer was leaned against the wall next to him as he observed the hall with a calm sturdiness.

He noticed Dantes as he approached, and casually lifted the hammer off the wall to hold it in his hands.

“The hells are you doing here, Mutt,” he asked, sounding almost bored in spite of his aggressive words and posture.

“Looking to make a deal. Want to meet with Iron.”

“What’re you looking to get from him?”

“Protection.”

The dwarf looked Dantes up and down. “Yer not nearly pretty enough for him to take that deal.”

Dantes shook his head. “I wouldn’t travel all the way through Kobold territory to be his bitch. Got some information. A way to hurt the Elfland Kings.” He wanted to play things close to the chest. If he could get all the way to Iron without revealing exactly what he had to trade, it could only benefit him.

The dwarf tested the weight of the hammer’s head in his hand. “Why don’t you tell me the information, and I’ll see if it’s worth bringing up.”

“What if I just break your arms and legs until you tell me what you know? That way I get it for free.”

Dantes laughed. “I can’t stand pain. I’ll pass out the moment you start and you’ll never get anything out of me anyway.”

He scoffed, and went from testing the weight of his hammer to stroking his beard. “I’m getting bored sitting down here smashing the occasional spider anyway. Fuck it, come with me.” He turned around and put a small carving into an impression in the wall and turned it. The stone doors slowly opened and he gestured for Dantes to walk in front of him.

Dantes complied and they began moving through the dwarven hall. The dwarves were probably the race best suited to life in the Pit, aside perhaps from the kobolds. They were used to living underground, preferred it even. Now they still missed easy access to women, booze, and food. Not to mention the complaints he’d heard from every dwarf he’d ever spoken to about the geography, hardness of the stone, and their lack of easy access to metal to shape it.

While Dantes had been impressed with how the dwarves had shaped their territory, now that he was actually walking through it the space felt…cramped. The walls seemed tighter, and the ceilings even lower than in the other dwarven hall he’d been in in the city. He also noticed that while the hall he’d been through before in the city had almost no seams on the walls. These, on the other hand, seemed to be layered with evenly sized bricks. It clicked with Dantes that rather than carving the walls to make things better suit them, they’d instead taken stone from elsewhere and carved it into bricks to create rooms and halls within a space that had already existed. With their limited resources that was the only way they could’ve done it.

This realization distracted him as he was escorted through a half dozen halls, and into a room with a large stone table in the center. The table wasn’t full, only around a dozen dwarves were sitting at it, chatting and drinking, two were wrestling shirtless near the table in a circle of sand, and five more were watching the fight, cheering on whichever of them they’d wagered on. Presiding over it all on a wooden throne, a true luxury in the Pit, was Iron from the Mine. He was broad, even for a dwarf, and his dark hair was braided with gold and silver rings, in sharp contrast to the copper and bone of the dwarves around him. On his waist was, somehow, a gun. Some kind of blunderbuss Dantes would guess. He hadn’t seen many of their kind, they’d been relatively new even before he’d been thrown into the Pit, but to see one in the Pit truly surprised him.

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Dantes had only ever seen Iron from a distance in the past, it hadn’t been prudent to be noticed by him then, but up close he could understand the appeal of having a man like him in charge. Iron practically radiated authority.

The dwarf that had been escorting Dantes stepped forward toward Iron, and slapped his hammer against a bangle on his arm, creating a surprisingly delicate tone that drew the room's attention to them.

He nodded to Iron. “Iron, this mutt approached us from Kobold territory. He says he has information for us regarding the Elves, though I believe he may have something different in mind. He asks us for protection.”

Dwarven eyes moved toward Dantes sizing him up. He didn’t shrink under their stares. Dwarves were shrewd negotiators and harsh judges of character. Showing weakness could sometimes be beneficial when you wanted something from them, but in this case he needed to radiate confidence to demonstrate that what he had on offer had value.

Iron took a long swig from the clay mug that sat in his hand and gestured for Dantes to approach. “Alright. I was getting bored of watching these short-bearded shits try to stay entertained anyway. Go ahead mutt, what’s your offer?”

Dantes reached into one of the hidden pouches in his jacket, and pulled out the mirror. “This is my offer. One of the elves' magic mirrors, and how to use it. You can have it, and my knowledge, in return for you and your men’s protection.”

Iron whistled. “Now that is an entertaining fucking surprise.” He stood up from his throne and walked toward Dantes. Once he was close to the mirror he nodded. “Yes, it’s got the shimmers around it. That’s true magic right there.” He laughed. “So you’re the one that managed to steal it from them. How’d you do it? Bribe someone? Wear a disguise? Cut throats until you reached it? Scratch that last one, someone who could do that wouldn't need my protection.”

He took a step closer, but Dantes stood his ground, standing two heads taller than the dwarf.

One of the others spoke up. “Hey, is he the same mutt that the Kings have been looking for?”

Iron smirked. “That’s a good question. Are you some kind of genius who decided he’d just double down on pissing them off or what?”

“Something like that.”

Iron laughed, and the rest of the room joined in, then he stopped suddenly, and the rest of the room did its best to stop with him, one of them getting a firm smack to the back of his head when he kept laughing a little too long.

“So you give me that mirror and tell me how to use it, and then what? I can pretend I’m an elf to get them to smuggle me pithy little materials until they get wise and then the mirror’s useless? Or I can put the tip of this,” He pulled his blunderbus from his belt and pointed it at Dantes, “through it and pull the trigger for a laugh?”

Dantes stayed quiet and still with the gun’s barrel in his face. Normally in life or death situations he had a number of ways to survive pop into his head. In this particular case he was drawing a blank, but forced himself to talk anyway. Appearing weak would do him no favors.

“The possibilities are endless.”

Iron chuckled and lowered his pistol, though he didn’t holster it. “It isn’t a bad offer. We don’t often miss an opportunity to fuck with the Kings. Anything to shut up their comments about height and the ‘weaknesses’ of having a beard.” He sneered. “Unfortunately for you, we made peace with their grand duke just yesterday.” He swung his blunderbuss with more speed than Dantes thought he’d have at his disposal, and struck the mirror, shattering it into a dozen small pieces. He followed that up with a fist to his gut, causing him to hunch over and fall to his knees.

Dantes gritted his teeth, and carefully picked up the pieces of the mirror while he was pretending to recover, slipping them into his pockets. As he picked up the last of the visible shards and slipped it away, Iron drove his foot into his side.

His vision went white with pain, but it wasn’t just his own. Jacopo had been sitting in his jacket exactly where the dwarf’s foot had struck. Dantes adjusted his position so that Jacopo wouldn’t be in any danger from the next several strikes that hit him.

“Now,” said Iron, “I’m still not the biggest fan of the Kings, and I appreciate the balls it took you to get this far, so I’ll tell you what… I won’t hand you off to them, but I will have my men drop you in the maw.” He climbed back up to his throne and sat down. “I’d wish you luck, but honestly? I don’t care if a mutt like you lives or dies.”

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