And on into the tunnels. Today I laid 13 of my kin to rest. They walked dead through their halls carrying boxes of sand and fines, ground from a boulder of good pegmatitic granite with silver spoons and formed into a cement to seal in... something. They had worn grooves in the floor. We had to beat them down to get them to stop. Was a shrine boulder, and just back and forth like that, was like a horrible mockery of dwarvenkind. Had somebody *done* that, set them up like that? Or maybe they somehow ...did it themselves? Major blast of heat had gone through those halls; if sealed-in thing was a Gate, or connected somehow, could be some sort of sick post-Cataclysm atonement ritual. Well, they lie still on stone now, no cairns, but their axes at least. I took their ornaments, rings and chains and such. The Silver Clan core hoard now, I suppose. I could hand it out as clanpledge if I took husbands. If Silver should live again. It was terrible to see them walk like that.
Later, were about to settle for night when tremendous crash and
clang. Clouds of rust in the air thicker than smoke. Metal stair -
very long metal stair - falling apart as someone came down it.
Turned out to be a pair of human adventurer types come through a
hole opened up at the surface, and down near the whole
quarter-mile on the stair. Bit of dodginess as to why we were all
there - taller fellow turned out to be looking for Illendi, on
behalf of somebody not a Tower but to do with Towers. Offered
introductions back in Telperest in a few months while trying not
to look at Parna (now Syrak as Parna fugitive from Correllendor
Army). Other guy used to *be* army, now not, likely not an
honorable retirement. Said we were going to end of tunnels, didn't
get into why. Could be useful to have a couple of hack-and-slash
types along, and want to find out about this Tower job.
Camped down together uneventfully until something put the magic darkness on me. Quicksilver popped off some sunlight charm - turned out to be weird flying cloak thing with nasty face and tail. Started moaning and everybody else froze up - I popped a thunderstone to deaf myself and we started fighting back and forth. Parna unfroze and was deaf too and joined in; the humans got the fright whammy and ran and it did some puke thing to Quicksilver. Could feel it in my bones all sick but the deaf worked to keep it off me. It did Parna quite a bad hit but he still came in to pull it off when it got itself all wrapped around me, then it took him down with the tail. We had got it pretty ragged and then one of the other humans ran in raging, back from the fright whammy, and sliced it in half. The other pulled Parna out and Quicksilver got him up again. Don't know if he got a look at Parna's other arms or not, or if he'd tell his friend with the Illendi job if he did. Also don't know how long will stay deaf. Whole "what's up with Parna's arms" talk would figure. But nice to see the deaf thing really works against that noise hoodoo.