Of Anumia
Part 5The Dwarf Section
Anumia scrambled through the narrow choke point, his knees scraping gravel. Rounding a jagged bend, he collapsed onto a subterranean ledge where a dwarf in a grease-stained leather apron sat on a crate, sharpening a heavy pickaxe.
“Water,” Anumia croaked.
The dwarf paused, eyed the ragged human, and tossed a dented iron canteen into the dirt. Anumia drank greedily, coughing as his stomach revolted.
“Where did you crawl out from?” the dwarf grunted.
“Gniagom,” Anumia rasped. “The mob drove us into the caverns. I’m trying to reach the southern lowlands.”
The dwarf let out a booming laugh. “The lowlands? Through the Deep-Spine Reach? This tunnel stretches for three hundred miles through dead air, sulfur-flooded shafts, and nesting desert husks. You’re a hundred and fifty miles off course. Walking in here alone is suicide.”
Anumia slumped. “The gates were closed. I didn’t have a choice.”
The dwarf’s mockery faded into tense curiosity. “The High Lord locked down Gniagom? What happened?”
“A gnomish extremist stabbed a human knight during a trial,” Anumia whispered. “A guard panicked and killed the gnome. The High Lord used it to banish all humans as a ‘rot inside the machine.’ The mob threw us into the caverns.”
The dwarf swore under his breath and stood up. A human purge meant the lower-ring dwarven workforces would be locked down next, crippling the economy.
“The gnomes are tearing the Partition apart,” he muttered. “I’m Thul. I was supposed to mine quartz, but the world just changed. There’s a deep-rail shaft six miles ahead that connects to the Under-Tracks. I can get you to Karag-Mora, the dwarf capital.”
Anumia hesitated. “Why help me? Your people led the chants. They shoved people into the waters.”
A heavy, hollow horror settled over Thul. Looking at his dirt-caked hands, he felt a sickening ache rather than the territorial pride driving his kin.
“Because throwing an unarmed man to the husks isn’t mining, and it isn’t justice,” Thul growled, his voice thick with shame. “It’s cowardice. My ancestors didn’t build kingdoms just for us to become a mob.”
Shaking the anxiety away, he slung a heavy leather satchel over his shoulder and quenched his lantern.
They walked in tense silence for nearly three miles, the steady clack of Thul’s heavy boots the only sound anchoring them to reality. Anumia kept close, his eyes locked on the dim, purple glow of the amethyst stone at the dwarf’s hip as it cut through the oppressive underground dark. The floor gradually sloped downward, the jagged stone walls pressing tighter around them until the path sharply dipped, and the air suddenly grew heavy, tasting faintly of rotten eggs and copper. Thul clamped a hand onto Anumia’s shoulder. “Hold your breath,” he whispered, covering the glowing stone and plunging them into total darkness.
“What is it?” Anumia hissed.
“A choke-drain,” Thul murmured. “The tunnel dips ahead, flooded with sulfur runoff. There’s a pocket of choke-gas trapped above the waterline. A single spark from the magic stone will ignite it and blow this shaft apart.”
In the pitch black, they heard the wet slosh of water, followed by a dry, papery clicking from the low ceiling. A husk was nesting directly above the gas pocket, listening.
“We have to wade through it chest-high,” Thul whispered. “Keep your head close to the sulfur. Do not breathe through your mouth, do not splash, and do not make a sound. If it drops in, we can’t use steel without killing us all.”
Anumia instinctively gripped the cold tailoring shears inside his tunic. Strangely, the touch of the metal made the oppressive darkness feel different—like a heavy silk sheet draped over the ceiling.
“I’ll go first,” Thul muttered, his boots sliding into the freezing, oily water.
The freezing, oily water bit into Anumia’s chest. He tilted his chin up, his nose just inches beneath the low stone ceiling.
A heavy splash shattered the silence. The dry clicking erupted into a furious screech as a skinless husk dropped from the darkness onto Thul’s shoulders. The dwarf didn’t scream; he snarled, throwing his massive weight backward to crush the beast against the stone wall before both went under in a violent eruption of black water.
Beneath the surface, a brutal wrestling match shook the tunnel. Anumia didn’t think; he just lunged into the thrashing foam, reaching out blindly to grab whatever he could. The moment his bare hands slammed into the husk’s slick, leathery hide, the creature violently stiffened. It let out a horrific, muffled shriek of pure panic—as if touched by a sudden electrical shock—and kicked wildly off Thul’s chest to break contact, scrambling up the wet cavern walls to flee into the dark.
Thul exploded out of the water, coughing up sulfur and spitting curses, his hands already locked onto the rock wall. He wasn’t panicked; he was pinned.
“My boot’s wedged in a root-crack!” Thul growled, his massive shoulders straining as he tried to wrench his leg free, his knuckles turning white against the stone. The sheer weight of his iron-shod armor and waterlogged gear was anchoring him down in the deepest part of the dip. “I can’t get the leverage to snap it! Human—grab my collar and lean back! Pull me forward, or I’m going to have to cut my own foot off!”
Anumia threw his weight backward, gripping Thul’s heavy leather collar until his knuckles cracked. With a wet, metallic shuck, the dwarf’s wedged boot broke free from the root-crack, and they scrambled up the sloping floor together, bursting out of the oily water and gasping for clean air.
They didn’t rest, the air too toxic, too thick. Thul immediately led the way upward, his heavy breathing settling into a grim, determined rhythm as they walked for the next three hours. The cramped, jagged cavern walls gradually gave way to ancient, calculated masonry—massive blocks of carved granite that signaled they were entering the outskirts of old dwarven engineering.
Finally, the tunnel terminated at a massive iron archway. Beyond it lay a dizzying, open abyss: the deep-rail shaft. Massive iron tracks dropped vertically into the black void like a frozen waterfall, flanked by rusted gears the size of houses and thick, grease-coated steel cables that disappeared into the depths below.