As Jon dismounted his horse, he looped the reins over the hitching post and took a long look at the plain brick building that had dominated his old life. The train station was exactly as it had been when he’d left five years ago. As he walked up the wooden stairs he caught a glimpse of himself in a window reflection and realized it might be the only thing in his whole life that hadn’t changed. He’d grown into a man that was nothing like the innocent and idealistic boy that had left the cozy little town of Dalmarin on the train so many years ago. That much was hardly a surprise - he’d known that for a long time. He hadn’t realized that the town he’d spent half his life in would change almost as much as he had in his absence, and that this building would be the sole constant in his world when he returned though. 

He’d imagined that he would find his home just as he’d left it, however unrealistic that might have been, and at first glance you could be forgiven for thinking things looked like they always had in the valley. The fields had been plowed and planted this spring so things looked normal enough, but if you looked past the orderly lines of growing grain to the homes scattered throughout the valley behind them, it was easy to see the problems. Some homes towards the edge of town looked like they’d been completely abandoned, and the rest showed signs of disrepair. Peeling whitewash, swayback roofs, and visible gaps in some of the thatching were hardly the sign of a healthy community he’d hoped to return to. 

The rot had set in even before he’d laid eyes on Dalmarin though. He’d seen the signs ever since he left the main trade road at Malora pass. The switchback filled roads from the pass to the valley were a real mess. The ruts and the washouts hadn’t disturbed his blue roan much as he’d picked his way through the uneven scree. He couldn’t help but wonder when the last time wagons had tried to come to town, and if they’d been successful. Whoever was the warden of the area now didn’t seem to be bothered by this terrible state of affairs. The palisade at the edge of town was barely manned, and they hadn’t even asked his business as a stranger like him had ridden through the open gate alone. The two men on duty had just looked up from their game of dice briefly at the sound of his horse before going back to ignoring him. 

No, he thought as he stood on the wooden platform, it wasn’t just his life that had gone to hell. The whole world had come along for the ride. That probably suited the dwarves just fine though. If the roads weren’t fit for trade then they’d have a complete monopoly on everything entering and leaving the Dulcine valley. Those blood suckers would love nothing more than another excuse to pay even less for harvests than their already lean prices. Just that one factor might have been all it took to turn this once thriving community into a shadow of its former self, he thought, though something told Jon that there was probably more to it than that. He paused on the platform, unwilling to go inside quite yet because he knew exactly what would happen when he finally finished the first part of his journey and set foot in Boriv’s office. Instead he leaned back against the railing and followed the track with his eye as it climbed the gentle hill north east of town before disappearing into the tunnel in the mountain that started the return journey to the deep runs. 

Jon stared at the tunnel for a long moment and was surprised to discover the first stirrings of sadness he’d felt in months. He’d thought that anger and resentment had already devoured his other emotions, but apparently coming back to the place where all this started was enough to bring his last vestiges of humanity out of hiding. He turned away in disgust, as much at his weakness as at the tunnel itself. That trip had taken everything from him, and it had taken him years to get into a position where he’d be able to start taking it back again. Instead he looked at the main street that cut the small village in half, with the Warden’s home at one end and the train station at the other. There weren’t many people out this time of day, and at first none of them seemed familiar, but after a minute of watching, one redhead in a light blue frock jumped out at him. 

He hadn’t meant to linger this long, but now that he’d recognized the woman walking towards him, Jon couldn’t bring himself to turn away. The village might have grown shabbier in the years that past, but she hadn’t, and his heart sang to finally see Claire again. She’d been a beautiful girl when they were both young, but she’d become an even lovelier woman in his absence. He wanted to call out to her or to at least wave and smile, but he held himself back. That wasn’t just because she held a basket of laundry against one hip while she dragged along a young child with her free hand, or because he didn’t want to get her mixed up in what was about to happen next. It was because when she looked at him her eyes slid over him without a hint of recognition before she turned and continued on her way. She’d long since moved on from the childhood romance they’d had, and he could hardly blame her for that. Even if he’d clung to her memory on so many terrible nights just to keep going doesn’t mean she’d thought about him for years. 

Now she was just one more thing he’d never get back, he thought. He’d just have to—

“Can I help you with something stranger?” the voice of a dwarf said behind him in heavily accented Wenlish, interrupting his thoughts and ruining the moment. Jon turned and was surprised to find that he didn’t recognize the speaker. He could tell by his grease stained overalls that he was an engineer, but he hadn’t been one that worked here before he left. 

“I’m just here with a message for Boriv,” Jon replied, taping the bag he’d slung over his shoulder. 

“I expect he’s in his office then.” the stranger replied, before turning away and walking back into the station. Once Jon seemed like he had a reason to be wherever he was, the stonemen generally lost all interest in him, as a rule. They didn’t care about humans, only threats, and as soon as you removed yourself from the latter category you might as well not exist to them anymore. 

With one last look at Claire, Jon turned and followed the dwarf into the station. Station was almost the wrong title for such a rural railyard now that he’d seen the scale the dwarves worked at underground. Five years ago it had seemed like the grandest building this side of the capital, but now knew that this was just a glorified warehouse next to rail siding and a coal depot. Still, he could hardly call it anything else after years of habit. For better or worse it would always be the Station to him. 

“If you want the boss you just need to go left until you…” the dwarf added helpfully, only to trail off as he saw that Jon was already headed that way. 

In his memory it would always be huge even if today it was just a few rooms cramped with boxes and crates destined for one route or another. Most of these grains would be shipped to breweries, and most of the timber would go with the barrels into the deeps. Having seen the prodigious appetites of the stone men first hand he wondered how they’d ever managed without forcing man to farm for them. When he was young he believed that it was all just commerce - fair trades between equal parties, but now that he’d come full circle it was hard to imagine how a few farmers scratching at the surface could ever be the equal of the mercantile machine he’d only caught glimpses of in the depths of the world. 

His brother’s words came back to him as he squeezed himself between a row of boxes and precariously stacked bags of grain. “We toil in the fields to feed them, and they give us bits of metal in return so we can afford to pay our taxes. They get fed, the Lords get rich, and everyone else just works until they drop.” Jon had thought Marcus’ point of view was selfish and jaded, and more than a little bit ironic since he’d never managed to work a day in his life when he’d said those words so long ago. It was hard to see the world any other way now that Jon had seen so far beyond his own sheltered existence. That’s exactly how the world worked, and if he’d listened back then, then his life would be a much happier place today. 

As he walked through the depot he glanced around casually, trying to get a count of how many people Boriv had working here today. It looked like there were only two, plus whoever was out working in the yard, so maybe five on one. Jon liked those odds. He knocked twice and then waited. The old dwarf had a habit of waiting until he finished what he was doing before answering. When Jon had been a clerk in this office he’d seen his master make people wait as much as five minutes before letting people come in and interrupt his day. He considered just barging in, but it wouldn’t do to rush this moment. He’d dreamed of it for years. Waiting another minute or two would do no harm. 

A minute later the word “Enter!” bellowed out. Jon pushed the door open against its protesting hinges, and was relieved to find Boriv alone in the office. Either he no longer kept a human clerk, or the boy had luckily decided to stay home today. Either way it was one less complication for Jon as he shut the door behind him and walked over to the only other chair in the office not filled with logs or ledgers and sat down across from his old master. Jon was wrong. There were exactly two things that hadn’t changed after all these years: this station, and its master. Boriv wore the same clothes, had the same haircut, and looked up with the same annoyed expression as he always had whenever someone sat down in his office uninvited. 

“Just who in the hells are ye and why d’ye think you can just sit anywhere ye please?” Boriv said, glaring as he spoke. 

“Me? I’m just a messenger - no one important,” Jon said, “You certainly never thought so anyway.” 

“No?” Boriv answered, furrowing his brows in mild annoyance. “Then I must have been right, because I can’t recall ever setting eyes on ye before today.”

“Unlike you, humans change,” Jon continued, toying with the dwarf, “Our lives might seem fleeting to your dull, steady existence, but—”

“Just get on with it then,” the dwarf interrupted. “Give me that message of yers and then get out of my hair. I have no time at all for idle chit chat.” 

“I don’t think this is a message you’re going to want to rush,” Jon said, reaching inside his shoulder bag. When he pulled it back out, it was no longer empty. Instead it was holding a heavy four chambered revolver which Jon pointed at the dwarf sitting across from him as he thumbed back the hammer. “You’ve had this coming for a long time, so you’ll forgive me if I want to savor it.”