Chapter 108

 

 

In the Dwarven settlement keep; aftermath

“Can we go home and rest soon?” Asakura asked me with puppy dog eyes right before we go through the door made of weird faintly glowing stars and starlight. She’s still in happy mode. I like it. But she’s kind of giving me a pleading kind of look.

“I’m feeling kind of itchy. Can you give me a back rub?” she asked. She rolled her shoulders when she did it. She looks very hopeful.

“Back rub? Why a back rub? That’s the second time you’ve asked that,” I said.

“I don’t know. I can’t explain it. I just feel so much better when you do. Maybe I should ask a third?” she smiled big.

“Not a good time for that,” I shook my head, gesturing at the door.

Before going through the door we used some of the alcohol wipe sealed packets that I was able to get from the summon supply box spell. There were also disposable combs there too, which Asakura found fascinating. She likes them almost as much as Sunghee does. It only took another couple of additional minutes before we step through, looking all cleaned up and freshed.

“Sweet. I love these. If only we had a house and electricity too. Wish we could stay in here longer. It was fun just being a couple alone for awhile,” she said giving me puppy dog eyes.

“We need to make sure Rina is OK,” I countered.

I heard her muttering something.

Then we stepped through the magic twilight door that’s been waiting for us this whole time. It warps us back to the dwarven town’s time space zone after leaving the dimensional pocket arena zone.

After a rush of vertigo we find ourselves back in reality. Then we like…it’s like we spilled out onto the ground. Vertigo really isn’t a fun thing to feel. It takes a second to get to our feet after feeling like we’re made out of jell-o.

“What the hell?!” Asakura cried out putting her hands up.

“Don’t shoot!” she added with wide eyes in half panic.

We hear them sound something in dwarven at us. I suspect it’s the dwarven version of “don’t move or we’ll shoot, or don’t make any sudden moves. The dwarves keep saying it several times. Because I’m also a magic user they are probably also scared I’ll set off some kind of bomb in front of them.

There’s a barked command from one of the dwarven officers in their language and the men which were excitedly running this direction suddenly stop. They are hurrying to get control of the situation while we have to sit there with our tired hands and arms up in the air until they ache. There’s more shouting and orders but things calm down quickly.

But they are staring at us, and some of them are the dwarven heavy armors with about a dozen crossbows being pointed at us. It’s a sort of half circle formation around the door we’d stepped out of. It seems the door of twilight had been standing in the middle of the dwarven town plaza. Because of that a whole squad of dwarves had also been standing here for several hours guarding it wondering what was going to come out the other side.

And we just happened to have the luck of the draw coming through when they were worried about demon invasions going through it.

Some of them argue back and forth. They still look tense. We’re lucky that they’d been getting bored watching the doors because it looks likely we could have easily been accidentally shot just for being the first thing they see coming through the door.

Uh oh…is there the possibility that…

“Um Shun, it shouldn’t be like this right?” Asakura looks worried breaking my train of thought.

“Right. Why are they pointing their weapons at us?” I voiced aloud.

“I asked you first,” she objected. When she has her hands raised it’s got her midriff exposed just a little bit more than usual. I try to not stare.

“Why aren’t they standing down?” I asked with my voice stressed out. We technically still have the runic shielding up but I hadn’t expected to be testing it so soon. Also the psychology of mob mentally could easily activate here and I’m not sure how the runic shielding would hold up if it happens to come to pass that more than ten dwarves start shooting us all at once.

Surely they don’t think Asakura or I is a demon right?

No, we haven’t given them any reason to have suspicion over us yet.

“Don’t shoot,” we call out again.

They look hesitant. Many of them recognize us.

What gives? Why won’t they let us relax?

“They are wondering if it’s a trick of some kind I think or if the demons copied our image somehow,” Asakura says, or at least she said what she thinks is going on. She bit her lip and then put her arms around me protectively.

The dwarven shooters are a bit freaked out on why such a beautiful girl would protect me. Some of them give me odd looks and lower their weapons. But some of them still have their weapons up.

I also realize some of this might be from racial distrust and fear.

“Don’t shoot!” Asakura calls out again. She’s more convincing than I am.

“Ah, that’s probably it,” I admitted. Though I’m sure it’s possible I wasn’t sure how common that could happen, since just because you were a mage didn’t mean you all had the same type of abilities.

She’s right. I wanted to say their reasoning was silly but in a world of magic it was probably necessary.

“It’s because they feel threatened huh?” she asked while we watch to see what happens. Those two seconds felt like the longest 2 minutes in my life.

“Yeah,” I sighed.

“Please don’t shoot us,” she gives a pleading look.

“Stand down!” I hear a familiar voice. Who was it again? It sounded a bit feminine? But it wasn’t Rina’s voice.

Oh that’s right…

“Stand down!” Deinan confirmed using the language enchant again right after. “We know these guys. It’s OK,” she reassured the officers. They looked reluctant and were scowling a bit.

“That’s close,” I said. I still am keeping an eye on the sharpshooters and they are still eyeing me as well.

“Thanks for coming to get us,” Asakura sounded relieved, talking to Deinan.

“Yeah, I think they are just mad and want to hit stuff. You know how it is. If someone wrecks your sand castle you get so mad you want to hit anything nearby whether or not it belongs to that guy or not. So it made them stand down slower, even though they don’t have anything against you. It can’t be helped that they are seeing red after having their home attacked,” Deinan said.

I’d agree with what she just said. But it’s scary how hard it was to get them to lower their weapons. But is this racial profiling? It’s scary too. They even got the wrong race. We aren’t those filthy goblins.

“I get it,” I said, understanding what she meant. I’m still now happy about it.

“That doesn’t make it OK,” Asakura frowned. “We’re on the same side supposedly. She and Deinan were sort of eyeing each other with aggression. It’s sort of interesting seeing a short dwarf looking up at her however. Asakura finally put her hands down, she’d kept them up longer than the others and was still standing in front of me protectively.

“Yeah…hey you seem livelier now,” Deinan observed. She continued to scowl at Asakura in distrust.

“It…was the trauma from before. She’s pulling out of it,” I said to cover her.

Asakura gave me a funny look. She’s impressed with my cover up scheme coming out on the drop of the hat. “Right…the trauma…” she glared at me, but it was a mask and her eyes looked playful instead.

“Well I’m surprised something with tits that big could even be smart,” Deinan said making Asakura blush. It’s very clear where Deinan is look.

No way…she isn’t?

Could she be…also…like Yuna?

“Hey, I’m not a bimbo! My hair isn’t even blond and I taught AP Calculus. And my head works just fine so I resent that comment,” Asakura tried to protest. I could tell she was feeling self conscious. “Uh back to business now…” she added right after that. She wanted to change the subject quickly as a way out.

“Oh…sorry I mentioned it. There have been dwarves that have had things like that happen to them. So I understand. Come let’s go to debriefing. You can then get the low down on what’s going on so far.” Deinan motioned for us to follow.

Where’s Rina? I suddenly had that thought.

I’m surprised she’s not around. But it took me a bit of looking around to see that. I wanted to see her behind one of the guards or something. Or maybe that she’d show up later.

“Hey look at that!” Asakura’s eyes are wide open.

Overall the dwarven town looks intact, but it has its scuff marks on almost every building and smoke damage. It looks like someone tried to set fire to two of the houses. The scorch marks stand out a lot because a lot of these houses looked like perfect gleaming beautifully made and so well crafted that they looked brand new. It tends to draw out the scuff marks more.

Still it’s not too bad considering the damage is all cosmetic so far.

“Oh I’m so sorry…you must feel awful that they tried to torch your town,” Asakura said with empathy.

Deinan scowled. “Actually dwarves take it with pride. A house that has withstood an orc invasion or two without letting anyone actually die in it will sell for more than a newer house since its considered battle tested. You’ll see…next year this town will be neck deep in the best real estate offers now that it’s held its own.”

“Wow, really?” I looked at Asakura, who shrugged.

“I guess it makes sense. They would think it’s safer if nobody died and its defenses stood. Of course it has to have an internal armory and its own food cellar for sieges for a real offer,” she replied.

“I guess there’d be a catch somewhere,” Asakura nodded.

I almost said aloud, “it’s still weird in a way,” but decided that would just offend our new allies so I didn’t.

“For some reason we always compare our houses to bank safes. People don’t buy vaults that can be broken into. Don’t ask me why, although we like vaults period,” Deinan said sarcastically while waving a hand in the air. She laughed out the last part.

We don’t say anything right away and Deinan shakes her head, “…it’s a dwarven joke. Non dwarves never get that. Safes…get it?” she tried again. Dwarves must have weird jokes, I decided after hearing that part.

Asakura and I just looked at her like she was a weirdo.

“Like a money or a bank safe?” Asakura thought aloud.

“Yeah that kind of like a safe,” Deinan confirmed.

“That’s still not funny though,” I said.

Deinan scowled. “Sure it is.”

“Hm, dwarves sure are interesting,” Asakura winked at me. She nudged me playfully to my side with her shoulder like a lover or close friend might. It’s really fun seeing the unpredictable warm feeling that seeps out of her sometimes.

The thought was somewhat interesting, shedding some light on how dwarves thought differently than humans. More than one of the houses has this sort of besieged look, and a lot of them have smoke still coming from places where they’d tried to be ignite them. Overall the roofs and everything still look OK.

But was we turn a bend in the corner of one of the streets I see near the main gate. We can see that the wall has a gaping hole in it not at the main gate per se but near it where the walls were thinner and there was no tower.

“Wow they got through?! That wall was so thick!” I protested.

“That wall was over five feet thick too and solid stones cut and placed by hand by expert craftsmen. We had special ‘mortar’ in place too holding all the big chunks of bed rock foundation in together. It’s going to be a pain to repair,” Deinan grumbled.

“I don’t get it. By my …figures in my head…a stone wall that thick with solid cement should have stood up under the goblins,” Asakura frowned.

“Should have…” Deinan scoffed in echo right after that, shaking her head.

“Was there some kind of fault in the wall or the concrete?” I asked hesitantly.

She looks at me after saying that with a look like murder in her eyes. “What did you say?” in a ‘are you picking a fight with me’ voice.

I didn’t realize a suggestion like that could set her off but Deinan was livid at my comment for the next five minutes. We didn’t dare ask her anything after that until her face wasn’t red with anger anymore.

“Shun, I guess dwarves take offense at anything like doing cheap work,” Asakura whispered in my ear.

“Looks like,” I confirmed.

“Sorry,” I said.

No answer back.

We’re slowly walking closer to the hole in the wall while Deinan is calming down.

From here as we get closer the hole is oddly a perfect circle shape. But what stands out even more is that there are dwarven heavy armors in place of the hole that are standing guard on the outer side looking forward into the darkness surrounding the small keep with stoic looking expressions. This must be the rest of their troops. They also have a significant number of snipers up above to cover them. There are even two special type heavy armors that aren’t armors at all but look different somehow that are moving about the hole that looks like it was cut with a huge ass planet sized laser, while trying to move debris and damaged rock around.

“Those two golem armors don’t look like the others,” Asakura noted pointing at them.

Oh, she’s right.

Deinan smirked, “that’s right. Not bad for a human. Those two are wall repair golems. Anytime there’s any kind of damage to the wall we bust them out. They are designed to blend in with the other armored units so I’m surprised that you picked them out.”

“Oh! I see,” I noted. Even I hadn’t seen it right away. It was yet another proof that having Asakura around was good luck, because of her quick attention to details, logic reasoning skills and smart thinking.

Now that we could see it better they were moving big pieces of rock and salvageable wall parts to try to put them back in place. Near them a couple of other dwarves had a wooden trough of some kind and were clearly trying to make some kind of cement.

“I’m surprised that you guys have cement or concrete,” I noted.

Deinan gave me an odd look sucking in her breath. “Wait? How do you know what concrete is? Are you an alchemist?” She was giving me an incredible expression.

Uh oh.

Was this good or bad?

Dwarves liked crafting. And it seems that they think concrete is special elite knowledge!

Oops...

If I answered yes would that be good? But what if it was perceived rivalry or that I know something that I wasn’t supposed to know? That could cause all kinds of negative response too? What if rival crafts had to go through some extra paperwork?

Those were some of the thoughts I had on how I could have responded. But I chose to be honest again. Lies are always exposed through the sand of time anyway.

“No, but I know some things about chemistry in general theory. We know what cement is and it’s basics on how to make it,” I said.

She gives me a stunned look. “Most dwarves don’t even know what cement is still, in many parts of this world. Humans don’t…”

“Portland cement is a chemical reaction from gravel, silicates, water, sand and rock to create a…” Asakura described it briefly but suddenly found her mouth being clamped down shut by Deinan.

“Shut the fuck up! Holy shit human! Don’t be revealing the sacred secrets of our fathers so easily! The secret of concrete is why we’re still winning the war with the goblins and orcs!” Deinan looks like we’d just committed some kind of sacriledge and abomination with a horrific look on her face.

“Really? Just from concrete? How like…weird,” Asakura looked to me to see what I thought but I kept my mouth shut since I’d already offended her once today. Although technically I was wondering if they were trying to cheat; did they always try to pass stonecutting and concrete to be the same thing? Because they are two very different things and the labor would be totally different.

Asakura and I look at each other…we’re probably thinking the same thing.

Deinan interrupted us but won’t look at us in the eyes, “we live honorably by our father’s traditions you know. No one here would trade extra labor for extra rounds at the tavern by passing off concrete to be stonemasonry hand cut stone blocks,” she sort of punched my in the shoulder to make her point.

What a weird little dwarf. Her punch hurt though; she’s strong.

“Who sold you the alchemy information on concrete huh? Maybe I should have the local gaurds interrogate you?” she suddenly asked.

“Uh, sorry, we’re not always familiar with how to live with dwarves. The place we came from is a bit different in customs from here and had such knowledge. We didn’t take anything from the dwarves. We’re as legit as you are,” I explained quickly.

Deinan looks unsure how to act and still has a wide eyed expression. “Good hell, just be more careful. You have to watch what you say here. What if a goblin or orc had heard that secret? We live in constant warfare you know? They love to try to find out secrets to building fortifications and lairs. It’s why they target us, almost as much as for our gold and silver.”

“I’m sorry I take responsibility. Please forgive us,” Asakura pleaded bowing and bending a bit forward. “But Shun and I do know stuff like that in general from his skills,” she tried to placate with an explanation.

“Well he is a mage,” Deinan accepted. “A mage would know a lot of things I suppose…”

“Don’t worry we don’t share secrets,” I said to Deinan. “Nor do we steal them either,” I added at the last second.

“We’ll see about that,” she gave Asakura an odd expression.

I just sighed in response. “We’re sorry.”

That seemed to get her to relax somewhat. “All right but just be careful what you say. A lot of dwarves consider our survival dependent on keeping those same secrets.”

“But that hole in the wall, what caused it?” Asakura asked.

Deinan seemed hesistant to say. She wasn’t sure if it was OK to tell us yet? Or maybe it wasn’t up to her?

Svinn had just walked over then and had heard parts of what we’d just talked about but hopefully not all. He was coming out of a field medic tent, which I recognized from the symbols on front which were identical to the symbols in place in the tents we’d used while under siege trapped in the gnome’s colony.

“It’s OK, I can take it from here. You’re relieved Deinan,” he said, relieving her with a wave of his hand. She looked both relieved and disappointed.

“But…” she started to protest but he waved her off.

“I’m a bit worried about that hole still, sir,” Deinan said to him with a disturbed look. Everybody was in worry of the hole now that I could see things for what they were.

“Can’t be helped. You did good kid. You are relieved of duty. Go take a rest and sleep it off,” he said with his hands behind his back. It’s kind of interesting how very militaristic these dwarves are.

She of course saluted him, but lingered a few seconds longer, “are you sure the perimeter is secure?”

He nodded, “every house and basement and tunnel has been searched several times in our vicinity to be sure.”

She then left with a contented expression while we’re all still walking as close as we can to the hole.

“We’re a bit paranoid about safety,” he said explaining her comments.

“After seeing what it’s like in this…in this part of the world, I can see why,” Asakura replied dryly.

“Back to the hole in the wall…” I coughed light.

“Yeah that’s my biggest headache right now. It stands out too well. They’ll in the future have noted that particular spot thinking it’s weak too. So I have to make sure that part of the wall is the strongest now,” he sighed.

“That can’t be an accident it’s too perfectly circle shaped to be anything natural. Plus we know the goblins were here and it almost looks like someone hit it with a huge laser cutter,” Asakura said speaking for me. Since I trusted her, it wasn’t a big deal.

“You’re right. You have a good brain,” he noted. Of course he wasn’t looking at her brains…

We’re all looking at it. It’s weird now that we’re close it’s a massive hole. Not only that but the inner inside edge of the perfectly spherical hole is made of glass and still cooling molten rock that looks slippery and almost like the inner barrel of a giant gun or rifle.

He continued…

“Our men saw you two sucked into the pocket realm by that other goblin shaman. We have our own enchanters watching the whole area so we saw it but couldn’t do anything to help you in time. We’d also seen that same shaman go after dwarven leaders before, then kill them and leave us the bodies decapitated afterwards so we knew what had happened instantly. After you two were sucked into the vortex or whatever that place was the rest of the goblins with the other two shamans did a surprise attack.”

“Don’t you mean three shamans? The one we were fighting plus the other three means four total,” Asakura interjected.

“So you were paying attention,” Deinan admitted hearing her.

Asakura ignored her, as the small fry dwarf.

He nodded, “yeah that worries me too. The fourth one doesn’t always engage and we’re not entirely sure of everything he’s in charge of for that reason. That makes it confusing whether or not we should count him or not but he’s clearly powerful. Sometimes he just guards the others or covers their escapes and protects the other three. We have reason to believe he’s the most powerful of the four and why they have been able to survive so long since he’s pulled them out of jams many times before now.”

“Damn,” I said realizing how big our current land mine was.

“Yeah we just ran into him,” Asakura said stiffly as we looked at each other. I can tell she’s afraid of him too, like I am, and she’s frowning. He was obviously powerful enough to leave an impression on both of us.

Svinn nods slowly. “The fact that you both lived means he was probably shaken up and rethinking things. They haven’t had something like that happen to them recently and it was completely unexpected. They thought they’d just come in here and own the place and kill a bunch of isolated dwarves at the outskirts of the reach of the armies.”

“Is he really that dangerous?” I asked.

“After facing him, and how much he could spam summons how can you even ask that?” Asakura rolled her eyes at me with her hands on her hips facing me.

Svinn continued, “All of our spies and anyone with contact with that particular special shaman hasn’t lived to tell about it. He’s very sneaky and smart even for a goblin. At any rate we think that he gave the other two shamans some kind of power engine limited use device scroll. After you two were sucked in, it gave them a window of opportunity to exploit. They then activated it in tandem with a few minor shamans and some blood sacrifices acting as some kind of mana battery system and their own power shot a whole through the wall so powerful that mages a dozen miles away have heard it and have already asked what’s going on via magic contact spell work through mage messengers.”

“Hm, that’s interesting. I thought the dwarves would have a mage messenger system of some kind,” Asakura guessed.

“Wow. She’s sharp,” Svinn said to me.

I just chuckled. It wasn’t such a big thing to figure out…but it was how quickly she’d noticed it that had made him see it in her.

“It does make sense I guess. You’d have to have something in place when you are all underground with a hard to navigate kingdom that is spread out from each other,” I reasoned.

“So we couldn’t hear the explosion because we were in the pocket dimension right Shun?” she asked me to make sure she was getting the details right.

“Yeah, we wouldn’t have been able to hear anything like that in that pocket realm,” I said to confirm.

“So part of why the houses are all scuffed up and burned…” Asakura tries to reason but she’s interrupted by Svinn.

“…is because that magic cannon or whatever it was pushed molten rubble through the air hitting everything around town. A lot of buildings were hit but luckily most of our people were already under cover.

“So how many died?” I asked.

He looked down sadly with his hands in his pockets. “A magic cannon that big and with that much power takes time to charge up, so most people were able to get to cover in time and how flashy the charge up and how awful their blood sacrifices were made people get behind walls. But we did lose about three people killed by flying rubble and another twelve are being treated for damage to their eardrums. Of course another died from wounds shortly thereafter.”

“Damn.”

“Yeah damn is right.”

“Although it doesn’t sound like much, with yesterdays and today’s losses that is just over ten percent of the population over night. It takes dwarves a long time to replenish our folk, unlike the goblins,” he said seriously with a worried look. “So those four deaths are pissing us off.

“But who did they sacrifice to fuel the spell? It wasn’t other dwarves was it?” I wondered.

He shrugged, “ironically they were all their own people. Believe me in a heartbeat that yes goblins do that sort of thing often. They’d be happy to even if they didn’t accomplish anything just for the fear it starts and for wanting people to believe they are powerful. I’m guessing a cannon like shooter effect like that probably took a lot of sacrifices.”

“Wow, I’m so glad I’m not a goblin,” Asakura said in shock.

“So after that hole was opened up, basicaly every goblin alive that they’d had waiting outside was pouring through the new molten hole. Interestingly enough they didn’t realize how hot and molten the rock was and ended up killing a lot of their own men pushing and trampling each other through it, which is funny in a way. But because we were able to kill so many before the shamans showed up we didn’t really lose anyone. Their shamans were too out of power at this point to do anything,” he concluded.

“That’s amazing you guys are still alive,” Asakura said with awe.

“I’ll say…can’t agree more. It came to hand to hand combat in the end. I got six of them with my own blade,” he gestured to the sword hanging from his belt, which looked recently cleaned.

“Good job,” I said. I didn’t actually like killing but he’d been brave and I’m sure the dwarves would appreciate our sticking things through with them and acknowledging their contribution.

He couldn’t help but smile.

He also listened intently as I explained we’d faced off against the ‘Imp Summoner’ shaman. Apparently he confirmed that’s also his nickname. He was actually a bit scared of us after hearing we bested that particular shaman in solo combat, looking rattled and giving us odd looks. But his face fell when I told him that the other fourth goblin shaman had shown up to save him in the end.

“I guess it’s enough that you stopped their advance. The truth is last night one of our spies had told us there was an unconfirmed report they’d intercepted from one of the goblin messengers that the ‘The Four,’ would show themselves on the dwarven front lines to help their people capture a dwarven city.”

“So these aren’t just any shamans then, but some kind of special high up people in the goblin kingdoms?” Asakura confirmed.

“I’m kind of wondering the same thing. It would help to know how they are organized and how their leadership system works,” I admitted. I suspected though that a violent culture chose its leaders also through violence in general, but there’s clearly more than that and a whole system of inner workings.

He nodded, “apparently so. They have four chief shamans over their whole kingdom but under their goblin king. One shaman for the west, another for the east, and one for the north, and south with the idea being each is charged with spreading the goblin kingdom’s growth in all directions under the sun and across the whole world.”

“That gives me the willies to even think about,” Asakura frowned.

“It should…they’ve advanced more territory in the last ten years than at any other point in history,” he confirmed.

“So is the Goblin Kingdom its own faction or part of the Demon World faction?” I asked.

But Svinn suddenly looked very spooked. “We don’t talk about that Demon faction openly here. Meet me at my house tonight after dinner. I’ll tell you more then. But there’s a saying ‘even the crows have ears’, which is why we shouldn’t talk about it in the open.”

“Got it.” Asakura confirmed, hushing up quickly.

“Where’s Rina?” I asked him pointedly. It’d been on my mind this whole time.

Svinn looked down and very worried. “That’s also a problem. We don’t know. Deinan was supposed to be watching over her, but they somehow got separated during the fighting.”