Fortress of Flames (2)
Dwarves are creatures who, if they do not dig into the earth, grow thorns in their mouths and sores on their flesh until they can no longer bear it.
Though they were no vampires, these short folk who shunned the sunlight of their own free will took up their pickaxes and turned toward the ground.
During the Thousand-Year War, every race suffered grievously — and the dwarves were no exception. They had hauled out their most advanced magical armaments of the age and torn countless demonkin to shreds, yet against a dragon's scales those weapons amounted to little more than a tickle.
The Black Dragon had sneered at their assault, and in recompense poured black flame down into the tunnels where they hid, roasting them until not even rubble remained.
In the end, victory belonged to humanity — but the dwarves, having endured such catastrophic losses, resolved that such a thing must never happen again. They began to dig deeper, and to fortify their tunnels more stoutly than ever before.
A thousand years passed.
And somewhere along the way, a fortress of their own had taken root beneath the northern lands.
"So that's what happened."
"You didn't know, Oppa? You read the book."
"I forgot."
"Ugh… um, so… if my identity got found out here…"
"A few thousand dwarves would probably come charging out with battle-axes, don't you think?"
"Uh, um… would it be all right if I stayed outside? Sleeping rough doesn't bother me…"
Tene found it deeply unsettling that she had set foot in a place where, for generations — no, where an entire race regarded her as a mortal enemy to be torn apart. Of course, that mad Black Dragon of the past was a separate being from herself. But inhabiting that body made even deeds she had never committed feel uncomfortably close.
"We came here because of your scales in the first place. What are you even talking about?"
"No… I just… what if they find out…"
"They won't. It's fine."
"Anyway — why did they bother putting an entrance all the way up on a mountain peak like this? If they're just going to dig down for ore, couldn't they have put it at the foot of the mountain?"
Felix overtook the pouting Tene and stepped up beside Louis to ask.
"Ah~ Did I not explain? This fortress has more entrances than just the one we came through. Dozens of them, probably."
"What? Why would they make that many?"
"Well… being underground instead of above, having multiple passages is convenient, and there are various other practical benefits. That's the official reason, anyway."
"The official reason?"
"When they were building this place, going back and forth between the surface and the underground was such a hassle that every time they needed to leave, they just dug themselves a new exit on the spot. Those stuck around as the years went by."
"……So what I'm hearing is, every time they needed to go inside a building, they ignored the perfectly good door and smashed through the wall."
"Exactly."
"Are they idiots?"
"Especially if they came up late from mining, they'd end up stuck with lukewarm beer. Dwarves are smart, but they're also a race that tries to headbutt their way through problems, so…"
The curiosity Felix had nursed ever since laying eyes on the fortress was resolved in the most absurd fashion imaginable, and his face said as much.
"Well, I get it! That's what you call romance!"
Louis, apparently sharing some kinship of spirit with the dwarves, pressed a hand under her nose and murmured to herself.
Kuuung—
"We're here."
While they traded idle chatter, the stone platform descending from the air settled flush against the ground, and they found themselves before the entrance of Karak-Zar.
"There he is — old man!"
The moment Louis stepped down from the floating stone, she bolted toward a structure that looked like a guard post and shouted.
"Who're you calling old man? I'll have you know I'm only seventy-two, you little brat!"
Recognizing her, a figure gripping a spear snorted and bellowed right back. His voice was so thunderous that even from what had to be two hundred meters away, it rattled their eardrums as if he were standing right beside them.
"Then what am I supposed to call you? Calling you 'old man' was me being generous. To the kids around here, you're just a grandpa."
"Tch. Anyway — what is it? You threw a fit and stormed out of that academy or canary or whatever just the other day, and now you're back with a bunch of humans in tow?"
"Uh… hello?"
"A pleasure."
"Ah, hello…"
"Friends and a professor from the academy. Nobles, supposedly? Ah, and this one's a servant."
"Hmph. Noble or not, makes no difference to me."
"Introductions. This is Old Man Kaval from the guard post. Just think of him as a guy with nothing better to do than sit in this post all day drinking beer."
"Kaval of the guard post. Humans."
"Uh, huh…"
Until they actually saw a dwarf, the three of them had been stuffed full of preconceptions about the race. Short. Pot-bellied. Bearded, foul-tempered, and thoroughly manly.
And upon meeting their first real dwarf, all three came to understand that stereotypes are simply big data accumulated over ages.
The dwarf introduced as Kaval was the absolute stereotype of what anyone would draw if told to picture a dwarf.
"So. What's your business? You kicked up such a storm when you left — why come crawling back? And with humans, no less."
"Well, I got my hands on some pretty good material… but the academy doesn't have the facilities to work it. So I was thinking… I'd like to use the Dragon's Breath."
"The Dragon's Breath, you say?"
Kaval, who had been scowling at Louis's endless chatter, went wide-eyed at the words that left her mouth and repeated them in surprise.
"Just how fine a material did you get your hands on? Orichalcum? Adamantium? Or don't tell me… Gromril — meteoric iron?!"
"Shh, shh…! It's classified material, either way. I have to forge this with my own hands!"
"Hoh… If that's the reason, I can see why you came scrambling back."
Just as Louis had said, the dwarves clearly remembered her storming out of the fortress in disgust. Kaval had eyed her early return with suspicion — but at the mention of rare material, he nodded, every inch the dwarf.
"But you know, don't you? If an outsider who entered on your recommendation causes trouble, the blame falls on you as well."
True to his post as the fortress's gatekeeper, Kaval immediately fixed her with a sharp look and laid down the warning. If crossing from one nation into another were that simple, every dog and his brother would wander in and raise hell — and the dwarves, already closed-off and hostile to outsiders, regarded Rosaria's party with distinctly unfriendly eyes.
"I-I know. But look at them. Do they look like the type to cause trouble?"
"Hehe…"
"…."
"…Hee."
"Hmm. Well. They're all a bunch of skinny twigs, so I suppose they'll behave."
At Louis's words, Kaval looked the three of them over again, slowly, then shrugged. From a dwarf's perspective — short in stature but thick with muscle and bulk — Rosaria's party looked about as sturdy as dry branches that would snap if you poked them.
"Anyway, I'll grant you temporary entry passes. Once you're inside, head straight to the main hall and complete the formalities."
"Of course!"
"Looks like that worked out."
"I was a little nervous… thank goodness."
"Whew…"
Sensing that the atmosphere had improved, they all let out a collective sigh of relief.
Getting a foreigner into a dwarven fortress was no easy feat — but one defining trait of the dwarves was the strength of their bonds. School ties, regional ties, blood ties, and even drinking ties. Their web of relationships was not unlike the Chinese concept of guanxi; a friend of a friend was as good as your own. And so, as acquaintances of Louis — a half-dwarf, but a dwarf nonetheless — they had been waved through with relative ease. (It also helped that, by dwarven standards, they looked thoroughly fragile.)
Had they arrived with no connection to the dwarves whatsoever, they would have been driven off at best — and at worst, found themselves staining well-honed axes with blood once more. Such incidents were far from rare.
"Still, it's a shame…"
"What's a shame?"
While Rosaria's party filled out the paperwork for their temporary passes — for all their isolationism, the forms came in both Imperial and Dwarven — Kaval clicked his tongue with regret, and Louis asked him about it.
"Bringing fine material is all well and good, but the timing's rotten."
"What? Another fight? What is it this time? Did the Bobgin clan skim the beer rations again? Or the Saokin? Or maybe the Brekan?"
"No, you idiot. That was the Helchanki last week."
"Then what?"
"……Hmm."
At Kaval's reaction, Louis rattled off her candidates for the worst-case scenario — most of which involved someone shortchanging the beer supply. Once dwarves got into a brawl, they would drop the forges and everything else, grab their axes, and charge out, grinding all work to a halt.
"It's the Dragon's Breath."
"What about the Dragon's Breath?"
"Seems there's been a problem with it."
But the words that left Kaval's mouth were the kind that made every other problem look trivial by comparison.