Having thus agreed to immediately begin their well thought out and not at all hazardous project, the dwarves now trotted back to the cart and prepared to enter the mountain by force. Taupe and Than402 were the strongest in the group, and they were the first to strike the earth. The basalt was dense but fairly porous, and before long there was a sizeable hole in the wall.
The work was tiring and unfamiliar at first, but the dwarves agreed to dig in shifts while the others busied themselves with games such as "Count the rocks" and "Pull my beard". When nightfall came, they slept on the cavern floor. The next day the rock seemed a bit more crumbly, or perhaps the dwarves were beginning to learn where one should strike and where one should not. On the third day Than402 discovered a more efficient swinging technique, and soon they all found themselves singing merrily:
"We dig through the mountain with a pick with no name
It feels good to be out of the rain
On the Peak of Fire you can't remember your shame
Cause there ain't no greenskins to give you no pain."
The hole was now a tunnel, and the work went smoothly. However, the dwarves had exhausted their knowledge of games to play whilst not digging, and there was little else to do besides eat and drink.
"I've been thinking," said Neblime, "won't we be needing a fair load of smooth, square, even-sized blocks to build this bridge? The rocks we dig out here are fine and all, but they don't exactly fit together very well."
"You're right," said Magnus.
"I suppose I'll be the one who gets to cut all those blocks then?" Neblime's beard twitched ever so slightly, and there was an eager gleam in his eyes.
"That you will. Unless anyone else here wants to do it?"
Even if they did Neblime would not have heard them, for he had already disappeared out of the tunnel and was now vigorously filling a sack with various tools from the cart. He came back a few minutes later and began sketching out a quadratic space on the tunnel floor.
"This here is my workshop, lads and lasses. Keep your mitts off it. I'll be cutting stone from now on, so we'll have enough for the bridge. It'd be best if I did that instead of digging."
"Carve us some seats then, while you're at it!" shouted Iamblichos from further inside the tunnel. "I can't tell my arse from the rock anymore!"
"And we do need a dining table. I'm sick of picking gravel out of my food," Taupe added. The dwarven spirit was indeed one of pride, and not slavery.
"Chairs and tables, eh? I quite agree on that. Guess I'd better get started then."
And so he did. A few hours later the dwarves were admiring a fine piece of furniture.
Yet, when nightfall came they would all be sleeping in the dirt, waking up sore and stiff the next day. Having now seen what craftsdwarfship could do, a few days later the dwarves decided it was time to further improve their standard of living.
"I could do with a bed," said Magnus, to general agreement. "No disrespect to your skills, Neblime, but I'd prefer not sleeping on stone."
"I saw a tree outside," Than402 pointed out. A laconic remark considering the peak was in fact densely forested, but nonetheless true.
"I suppose axes aren't that different from picks. I'm going to go outside and see if I can't chop one down." Magnus did so, and the others prepared for breakfast.
It turned out that axes were indeed not very different from picks. It took but a moment's effort for her to bring down a mighty ash. She returned carrying a decent-sized log on her shoulders, to find the others engaged in their meal.
"Mind helping me bring all these logs inside?"
Taupe dropped the slice of plump helmet she had been chewing on. "Bloody hell, that was quick! Think it'll be enough wood for a bed?"
"Tell you what. You folks go outside and see for yourselves. I've got work to do."
That night the dwarves slept very well.
Winter had now come to the Peak, and the ubiquitous rain showers had given way to gentle snowfall. The dwarves stayed inside the warm volcano where the cold could not reach, but they were getting rather concerned about one thing: the booze. The cart had been well stocked with dried horse meat, but there had only been three barrels of liquor, and they were down to their last one.
"I'm afraid I have some bad news, everyone," announced Magnus during breakfast one day. "We're going to have to ration the drinks."
The temperature around the table sank a few Urists as the dwarves absorbed the reality of this situation. Digging the tunnel was tiring enough already. Sober, it would become a living hell.
One dwarf, who has not been mentioned earlier on account of his unusual predicament, did not seem to mind the grave news. He was his own cheerful self, playing in the dirt beside the table. His name was LuckyKobold, and those were the only words he knew and could speak. The others in the group knew little about him, but they knew that in the deepest dungeons beneath the Mountainhome were gruesome laboratories, wherein the goblin alchemists plied their foul science by conducting experiments on the dwarven physique to see how it could best be broken.
Evidently they had not succeeded with this particular test subject, as LuckyKobold seemed to exhibit an almost superdwarvenly endurance that had proved useful whenever the group needed to haul stone or wood, which was often. His mind, however, was somewhere else. Where, no one could say. As the others continued their meal in somber silence, he scampered off to play in the sand by the tunnel entrance. It was where he spent most of his time when not on haul duty, making strange little patterns in the ground that only he understood.
The next day, breakfast drinks consisted of water that had been collected from a stagnant pool outside. Than402 smelled the nasty substance, clear and odorless as it was. Then he slammed his mug hard onto the table, shaking the others out of their ennui.
"Curses! Whose idea was it to drag our arses onto this bloody peak anyhow? We could have gone anywhere we wanted! There are villages to the south, we could have gone there! They're probably drinking their morning schnapps as we speak."
"The villages are all under the thumb of the goblin army," interjected Iamblichos. "As soon as they learned who we are they would have turned us in to the sheriff. Or worse," she took a tentative sip of her mug and winced, "the Necromancers."
"To blazes with the Necromancers!" Than402 was a particularly nasty dwarf when sober.
"Lucky Kobold!" said LuckyKobold.
"And to blazes with you!" Than402 turned towards the simpleton and shook his mug at him. "We should have left you by the road when the axle broke!"
"Ko-BOLD!" LuckyKobold snatched the mug out of his assailant's hand, and ran off towards the tunnel entrance. Than402 leaned back with a heavy sigh. The others glowered at him.
"Here's an idea," said Neblime. "We turn YOU in to the villagers, and trade for a few barrels of rum in return. They can use your thick head as an anvil."
"ENOUGH!" Magnus rose from her chair. "We can't let this tear us apart! We will find booze somehow, I promise. Let's send a party out to speak with the villagers, see if they're willing to trade."
"Trade for what?" Taupe had been silent so far, but now she was raising her voice as well. "Rocks? Or perhaps there's a sack of coins in the cart that we overlooked?" She gestured towards the tunnel entrance where the cart still stood, and felt her hand brush against a beard. LuckyKobold, who had returned, dodged Taupe's hand and set Than402's mug down at the table with an affirmative "Lucky!". The mug was full of wine.
"How in Armok's left testicle..." The dwarves were stupefied. There had not been any wine in the cart. Than402 grabbed the mug and downed it in one gulp, returning the color to his face.
They all rose from the table and praised LuckyKobold, wanting to know how he had accomplished such a miracle. He motioned for them to follow and led them back to the very entrance of the tunnel, where he proudly displayed a strange apparatus that had not been there a week before, seemingly constructed out of old refuse, beard hair, parts of scrap and discarded rocks. A slow but steady drip of wine fell from one of its spouts into a barrel. LuckyKobold then pointed at his patterns in the sand next to the still, where several jolly-looking plump helmets now sprouted.
"I think", said Magnus later that day, when they had all drunk their fill, "that we're going to need a few more barrels.
The dwarves were now quite content with their daily life, and work on the tunnel proceeded at a breakneck pace. It had grown to be roughly 500 Urists long, and took a sharp bend to the north about halfway through, heading straight for the lava pipe. They could already feel the rock getting warmer at the deepest section, to the point where it had become necessary for the miners to work shirtless.
One night as Taupe was digging the last shift, her pick suddenly sank into the rock wall and hit empty space. A sliver of red light flowed through the hole as she pulled it out. It brought with it the smell of brimstone and industry. They had arrived.
"We made it!! Everyone, wake up! Come look at the tunnel, it's finished, we've finally made it!" she screamed hysterically as she ran back to the living area to wake the others. They all hurried after her, picks in hand. Very soon the hole had become a tunnel opening, and it had breached the pipe at exactly a dwarf's height above the lava, just as they had planned.
Barrels were brought out from the larder, and the dwarves drank deeply as they revelled in the sense of accomplishment that only a dwarf who has just completed a half-mile long tunnel into a volcano can feel. It was a good night.
At breakfast, the topic of the drawbridge came up.
"So," said Magnus after the food had been eaten and everyone had burped as best they could, in accordance with dwarven etiquette. "We have a drawbridge to build. Who knows anything about mechanics and architecture?" No one raised their hand. "Come on, one of us must have some experience with this sort of thing! What did everyone do before the Mountainhome was taken over?"
"Smith," said Taupe the smith.
"Furnace operator," said Iamblichos the furnace operator.
The others replied in turn what their profession had been, but none of them admitted to knowing the first thing about bridge building. It would seem that our dwarves had taken lava over their heads, so to speak.
"Well, we'll just have to improvise then," said Magnus. "I suggest we set up a workshop near the Glow (which was the pet name they had given the lava pipe), and see if we can't work out some schematics. Tools and measuring instruments everyone, let's get to work."
A few months later, at the foot of the Peak:The bag was heavy, but the dwarf carrying it was stronger than any other dwarf Elagn had seen, and certainly the strongest in the group. She didn't talk too much, which suited Elagn perfectly. Her other companions were a farm hand who hardly spoke at all, and a cook who might as well have been a mouth with legs. Elagn and the strong one got along just fine.
She had been fortunate enough to come across these travelers while escaping from a goblin raid, and felt safer staying with them than going it alone. Having someone else to carry her mechanical instruments was a boon as well, and the strong one did not mind doing so. If fortune smiled on them, they would reach the Peak the next morning. Surely an active volcano must be a safe haven from the greenskins.
Elagn hoisted her backpack to a more comfortable position, and trotted on with a confident smile. Things were finally looking up.