Scram the Scallie was packed. This was no great feat as a dozen warm bodies filled the place, but that night two dozen and more squeezed in through that ancient stone door. A larger place ought to have been chosen, but the little alehouse was the only place near the center of town that every Dromeian knew but the big folk didn’t.

Gravis was there for a drink.

Everyone else was there for the meeting.

“The drain lines are nearly all blocked from tier seven to tier five,” Copper Pot said. His real name was Niblangree Optimverganon, but only his mother ever called him that, and it was suggested, by more than a few, that she had only ever gone to the trouble on his first birthday and regretted it ever since. “While I can’t say because I haven’t looked at ‘em myself, but it would be my assumption that most of the drains are in dire need of a washout.”

“The fresh water lines are even worse than the sewers,” Trig the Elder leaned in at this point. “The Alabaster Chute portion of duct-line seven had a cave-in. Nothing devastating mind you. Happens all the time. Roots push through the soil and rock, and then runoff gets in there, and erodes the ceiling. The Chute is a special problem because it draws from the hot springs, and with that you also get steam which can be mischievous. Normally, I’d have sent a team in to reinforce the section and clear the debris, but a’course…we’re not doing that. And while the Alabaster Chute isn’t the only blocked or clogged feed, the Chute services the baths and that’s something the scallie notice. They go in to soak and find the basins barely deep enough to cover their knees.”

“What about drinking water?” Sloan asked.

“Tur’s not likely to ever run out of that. The ancient runs are nearly fool-proof, but the end lines, the ones that run from the big channels to the homes…those might see some clogging, only…” Trig nodded. “I know that was what you were most hoping for. A lack of drinking water would put the fear of Drome in the scallie, but it’s not likely to happen, and that’s probably for the best. You don’t want to be losing the Primes. A lack of potable water out here, with all these people, would be more than dangerous. Be you Dromeian or human, no one can last long without water.”

“It’s not working,” Sloan leaned hard on the bar. “I thought it would. I thought they would come around asking for help, but they haven’t.”

“And didn’t I tell you that it wouldn’t work,” Gravis said. He was on his fourth pint and had never been a big drinker, though he was getting plenty of practice lately. Bubbles or no, the ale went to his head and loosened his tongue. The normally taciturn descendant of Andvari and Alberich Berling was becoming more opinionated everyday.

“You also said you were going to steal Drumindor, now didn’t you, Berling?” Baric shouted at him. “Well, what happened with that? Towers are still there, aren’t that? Sloan here is trying to actually do something. You on the other hand just talk and talk. Big words always coming out of your little mouth, but you never do anything.”

“Leave him be, Brock,” Sloan said. “He’s right. He did tell me it wouldn’t work. And it isn’t. It’s as if they’ve forgotten we exist.”

“That’s your fault, not theirs,” Auberon said. He was near the door. Either the ancient one had slipped in late or just liked to be near the exit. At the sound of his voice the room went silent.

“Auberon,” Sloan said surprised. “I wondered if you’d come.”

“You invited me, didn’t you?”

“I did.” She nodded, and gathered herself. “And what do you mean it’s my fault?”

The old dwarf with the sunbaked skin and pure white beard took a step more into the room. He was what the word ancient was invented for and yet he managed to stand straighter than any other in the room. “Everyone’s underground,” he said. “That was your plan, yes?”

Sloan nodded.

“Smart idea,” he nodded. “You never know how these things will turn out. Best not to leave families vulnerable to revenge, or to be used as bargaining chips. Problem is, you didn’t leave anyone topside for them to bargain with. They haven’t forgotten us. They think we’ve left.”

“Left?” Sloan stared confused. “Where would we go? This is our home.”

“They don’t see it that way. All they know is the dwarves are all gone.”

Sloan studied the bar counter for answers. “Maybe I should go and talk to them,” Sloan said. “Maybe I should go to the…”

She looked up to see what everyone else did: Auberon shaking his head.

“No?”

“You go down there as spokesperson and they’ll target you as a leader, or more accurately, an agitator. Appear before the Triumvirate and layout an ultimatum and they will see an insurrectionist intent on starting a revolution—an enemy. You want to start a war, that’s a good way to go about it.”

“I don’t want a war.”

“I know you don’t, and that’s good. Wars never achieve the goals that start them, but they do make living with the prior problems more palatable by comparison.”

“What should we do?”

Auberon shook his head. “I’m the last person to ask. More than anyone here, I’ve proven I’m an idiot. And only a fool would ever take my advice.”

“You’re the wisest person I’ve ever known,” Sloan said with a sincerity that no one hearing those words could doubt.

Auberon nodded. “You should get out more.”

She continued to stare at him with desperation in her eyes.

“Good luck to you,” Auberon said. “To all of you.” And with that he made use of his nearness to the exit and walked out the door.

Sloan continued to stare at the place where the ancient one had stood.

“We need to let them know we’re still here,” Kiln said.

Sloan nodded. “But how do we do that? How do we stand up for ourselves—how do we demand fairness—without appearing to threaten them?”

“Everything threatens the scallie,” Trig the Elder said.

Sloan had that towel over her shoulder and walked out from behind the bar. The place was packed tight, but they made room for her to pass. She wasn’t going anywhere, just walking and thinking, then some of those thoughts spilled out of her mouth. “We need to show them we’re still here… We need to show them…” She stopped her eyes shifting left and right. “But we also need to show them who we are.”

“I think they know who we are,” Baric said.

“No, they don’t,” Sloan’s eyes widened. “All they know are the stories—the bad ones. The tales of Gronbach. All they ever see are dwarves scurrying about like rats—fixing this, breaking that. We’ve become fairytales to them—and cautionary ones. We need to show them we’re more than that. We need to show them our true history in all its glory.”

“Got a crystal ball, do you?” Gravis asked. “Even if you could, how would that help?”

Sloan looked at the floor. “I don’t know.”

“Bah!” Gravis waved a dismissive hand.

“Aw, go and be on your way, Berling!” Baric shouted at him. “Be off—you and your mouth. Don’t you have a pair of towers to steal?”

“Baric,” Sloan said gently trying to make him heel.

“He’s no right to denounce anyone,” Baric went right on. “The dwarf is a bag of air. He blows out all manner of grand talk, but he hasn’t the courage to act. I pity you, Berling, I truly do. You’ve only ever been good at being a cog in a machine, and now here you are without any teeth.”

Gravis wanted to remove a few of Baric’s teeth, but he saw no allies in the place—not that this was new. His whole life he’d been alone except for Ena. She had been his friend. She had loved him, but he only realized that the night she died.

Gravis saw no more point in being there and not quite as dignified as Auberon, he walked out.

“Don’t be pushing him you fool!” Sloan’s shout whispered through the stone. “Do you also jump on the thin ice? The poor fellow is suffering, can’t you see it?”

“Where do you think he goes?” someone asked. “They forced him out of his shack, you know.”

“He’s a Berling,” Trig said. “Lived here his whole life. He knows places the rest of us have never discovered.”

“Likely has a secret palace somewhere deep in the cliff.”

“Aye, he’s probably in a room of gold, sleeping on King Linden’s bed.”

They’re voices faded as he walked away into the dark.

Being a three-quarter moon the sand was bright when Gravis reached the beach. He was well north of the towers away from the city and its lights where the world was normally as dark as it had been at the beginning. While he’d lived in Tur Del Fur all his long life, Gravis knew the city—this sparkling gem at the tip of the world—was not a big place. He was no more than a mile, maybe two, outside its influence and already he walked a virgin coast—a world untouched by anyone since time began, but that night Drome had left three-quarters of a light on for him.

With few exceptions, Delgos was all rock and saltwater. Rich farmland she was not. The whole peninsula was an arid plateau especially around the southern edge where cliffs kissed sea. Only Dromeians would look at a landscape of stone and think paradise! Few others had ever tried to hack out an existence in the rough beyond the city, and fewer still managed it. Of those, none succeeded for long. As a result, the rocky coast ran desolate and empty for hundreds of miles in either direction. Desolate beaches were dotted by massive sea stacks—great rocks that had been eaten away from the headlands until they stood alone as massive monuments to a forgotten past. Driftwood and seaweed littered the sand that was home to howlers, seabirds and turtles, but nothing that walked on two legs.

Gravis could think of no less inviting place. The sea was too vast and unpredictable; it rendered the same anxiety he felt standing too near a sheer drop. The stone was harsh, jagged, and sunbaked such that touching it burned bare skin. Everything else was worthless sand. Little wonder the majority was never settled. And yet for the two hundred and sixty-eight years Gravis had called it home he’d never once noticed. Strange how the view through the shack’s cracked window pane had always seemed so beautiful—as long as Ena was looking out beside him.

The wet sand was easier to walk on, and not wanting to risk soaking his boots, Gravis traveled barefoot leaving perfect toe-topped prints in a waddling line. The damp beach glowed with moonlight, and the sea had a bright line stretching across it, but to either side of the moon’s refection it was black—nothing more than a void. Only it wasn’t nothing. Even the abyss was something, and Gravis could hear the waves growl and imagined a tail flicking back and forth as the void watched him with far more interest than it should.

Thinking he’d missed it, Gravis began to worry. His new home did not stand out. More than once, in bright daylight, he had walked right by. He might overshoot and never realize his mistake. How far is too far? And if he did miss it, if he walked into oblivion, what might be waiting in the dark? This was a real concern because Gravis was haunted. Since Ena died he felt untethered, adrift in a storm. He had bad dreams, but not the sort he expected. Any sane widower would face nightmares centered on the loss of his wife. Gravis dreamed of Drumindor.

The towers had been his home for well over two centuries. The ancient fortress had always been a playground as comfortable to him as a nursery to a child. He knew and loved every lever and gear. Gravis had worked day and night within those walls often sleeping on the floor before the great furnace. In no other place had he spent more time, nor would he have wished to, but since Ena’s death, Drumindor frightened him.

The dreams began the night Ena died. He hadn’t fallen asleep—he had fainted. Gravis was down on his knees bent over their bed with Ena’s hand in his, and her last words in his ears. He cried until his body and mind just gave out—then the dreams came. Drumindor called to him with a muffled voice. Gravis didn’t understand the words, but he grasped their meaning. Someone was trapped inside and wanted to get out. He heard the pounding, felt the vibration of the struggles. Gravis went to the north tower but couldn’t get in. Lord Byron had sealed it against him. Still the voice begged for help. There was nothing Gravis could do, and even if there was he didn’t know if he should. Something about that voice, and the pounding disturbed him. The tone of both was too deep, and so strong that he felt it. And there was something else. With each successive dream Gravis became certain that the sounds did not come from within Drumindor, but from underneath the fortress.

All but certain he must have missed his new home, Gravis was lost in a mental debated over turning around or not, when he spotted the bone-white body of a tree laying on the beach. The wooden cadaver—except for a lack of leaves—appeared oddly whole. The tree was not ravished, not shattered or broken after the fashion of all other driftwood, but lay preserved as if having died of fright. The pallid remains, though sad and even a tad morbid, was a welcome discovery. He knew the tree as a landmark that declared his new home was just ahead.

Likely has a secret palace somewhere deep in the cliff.

Aye, he’s probably in a room of gold, sleeping on King Linden’s bed.

Gravis smirked. If they only knew how grand my new abode really is!

Veering up-beach into the dry sand, Gravis soon spotted the shattered hull of an upside down fishing boat. Mostly buried, the stern looked to have been bitten off by a giant sea monster. Gravis had found the old skiff shortly after the Port Authority had thrown him out of his shack. On that day, he had wandered in a daze down the beach trying to decide what to do with his life. His choices had bounced between walking north until he died of thirst, or swimming past the breakwater until he drowned. As he argued with himself, he found the old boat.

The skiff was one of the dory types, or so he figured because it had flared sides and a flat bottom, but Gravis wasn’t a shipwright. All he knew for certain was that he’d seen similar boats on the decks of schooners and also spotted fishermen using them to haul in nets from beyond the bay. This one was a sad thing; a once useful tool that carried the lives of men through storms and high seas, now rotted on the beach. Looking at it Gravis forgot about swimming. He wiped the sand away from the prow and revealed the name painted there—letters that were nearly weathered off: Fanny Mae.

For no reason he could determine, kneeling in the sand with his hands on the hull, Gravis had cried until he was weak. By then it was late and he was tired of walking and didn’t feel like getting wet. So like a groundhog, he had dug an entrance on one side, crawled under and slept with the upturned prow acting as his roof. Like lying in his grave, he found it suited him. Each day afterwards, he told himself he’d find some better place. Each night he returned to the boat—to Fanny Mae, to his grave.

He had improved it—sort of. Gravis now had a blanket under there and had spread out a sheet of canvas over the sand making a more civilized floor and limiting the nocturnal sand fleas access to his space. He had built a tiny fireplace out of smooth beach stones with a chimney that ran through a broken plank. He had made it out of boredom, but guessed it would work. Still, he had never tried to light it for fear the draft would fail and he’d smoke himself out, or the flames might even catch the hull on fire. He also had the ends of several loaves of bread he had pulled from garbage bins. They were all stale, but had very little mold. He had accumulated as many as eight pieces, but guessed some would be stolen by crabs, rats, gulls, or who knew what. He took little precaution to protect his treasures as he hadn’t much of an appetite anymore. These days he drank his meals, just he had done that night at Scram the Scallie.

Gravis crawled under the hull careful not to get too much sand on the canvas. He considered checking his bread supply to see what was left, but it was so dark. The hull blocked the light the moon allowed, and all he could see was a line of silver edging the side where his hole was dug. He abandoned the idea and lay back. There wasn’t room to do much else. The sand was soft though lumpy. He squirmed a bit to smooth a trench for his body, then lay his head down, taking inventory on all the aches and pains that plagued him. That night it was the pinched ache at the base of his neck that took the top prize. He tilted his head first left then right, and finding no relief sighed and gave up on that, too. He shook out his blanket and lay it across his body tucking in the sides. He would check for the bread in the morning. Light made everything better while the dark was an awful realm increasingly ruled by fear. This was something else he’d never noticed before. Age had a lot to do with it. As the birthdays piled up, the world—that in his youth had been so full of attractive opportunities—had been eaten up leaving a hollow husk that in his old age was filled with the two primary consequences of passion: guilt and regret. This too had only been a faint hint on the edges of his mind while Ena lived. She had somehow kept all the wolves at bay, shielded him with such great skill he never even noticed. He rarely saw his wife, spoke with her even less, but just knowing she was there kept all the demons chained in their holes. With her last breath, she’d unleashed them all. And as he lay looking up at the black underside of Fanny Mae, those demons came knocking to reminded Gravis that nothing mattered anymore. That previously perceived important practices such as eating and breathing were pointless. For him life was over.

Wind blew across the hull brushing sand and making that now familiar but never pleasing moanful wail. Outside, the crash and drain of waves, the thrush of beach grass, and…

Gravis held his breath as he heard something else, something new. Faint but not too far away, he picked up the disturbing, regular pattern of thumps.

That almost sounds like footsteps.

The idea was absurd. He was in the middle of nowhere in the dead of night.

Still, the footsteps came closer.

The muffled slap spoke of feet on wet sand that soon shifted to the soft padding on dry. Then Gravis saw something block the light that entered around the edges of the hull. He held his breath.

And who knew what might be waiting in the dark?

“Gravis Berling?” A voice whispered—not a wholesome sound at all. Even if he’d heard it in the full light of midday in a crowded market place, such a voice was certain to raises every hair on his beard. Whispered in the dark of a forsaken beach, it was heart stopping. Clutching his blanket to his neck, Gravis no longer held his breath, he couldn’t breathe if he wanted to.

He didn’t answer, didn’t dare speak, and couldn’t move except to shiver.

What was out there? The idea it might be a who never crossed his mind.

Something thumped the hull. Making Gravis flinch and forcing sand from the underside to fall on his face. He sputtered and wiped his mouth.

“Gravis Berling? Dost thou cower beneath this shell?”

In terror, he blurted out, “Who wants to know?”

A brief pause followed durning which, Gravis was certain the Fanny Mae would be thrown aside and reveal a demon of smoke and red eyes bearing down on him. Instead the voice replied with quiet resolve, “We are a friend.”

“Gravis Berling has no friends,” he declared truthfully. Over the course of his long life, Ena was the only person who could have honestly worn that mantle, but even she was always more his wife. If he were honest with himself, Ena had been his friend, he just wasn’t hers.

“’Tis not true, for we art he,” the voice from beyond the hull said.

“And who might you be?”

“We who shall grant Gravis Berling his heart’s desire.”

Nothing about this sounded good. In the plentiful catalogue of dwarven epic sagas, bets were most often won by wagering against optimism. Dromeian history was sick with the debris of promises made but never kept. Still, a talking demon was better than one that bit. “And what might that be?”

“Drumindor.”

Gravis debated if this was a person or an evil spirit he chatted with. Someone might have followed him to the Fanny Mae. He had taken no precautions to avoid pursuit. But no one sane and mortal could make such a promise as this. “No one can do that.”

“We can,” the voice said once more in a whisper. “At least such power shall be ours most soon.”

Gravis, still sitting on the fence about mortal verses demon, didn’t want to ask the next question, but he was still a Berling: Solving puzzles and a need to know, defined them all. And led to their undoing.

Unable to help himself, he asked, “Why?”

Once more the voice whispered in reply, but this time so low the waves nearly took the words away. “For reasons equal to thine just as thee wish entry, the masters desire to escape.”