Deep under the Glacia mountain range enormous caverns stretched for hundreds of miles below the peaks, allowing any brave miner access to a plethora of minerals, ores, and in Alex’s case, a page to an ancient spellbook.
Finding the page would be a task in itself. Through the thick rock and geology of the mountain Alex was unable to use his senses to locate it directly, only getting a vague idea of where it was. To make matters more difficult, the mines were still actively worked by thousands of dwarves. The three-foot tall bearded men often did not mind the occasional outsider trying to come in and strike it rich, just so long as they did not make a mess. Alex was well-liked amongst the dwarves, hopefully they could help him find what he was looking for.
“Goodness!” Midna cried, gaping at the sheer size of the subterranean caves, “This place is huge! We’ll never find that page in six hours.”
“Don’t be so sure,” Alex replied coolly, “I know of some help we can enlist.” He pointed to one dwarf in particular, who had just driven his pickaxe into a rock to take a break. He wore red coveralls and a metallic mining helmet with a candle-lit headlamp. He took a swig of his pint of beer and wiped the sweat from his great brows.
“Excuse me, Barnes?” Alex called over to him.
“Yes, what is it?” the annoyed dwarf turned around, to see a large metal man twice his height standing before him. “Hey! I don’t know who you are, but I don’t like the looks of you! How did you know my name?”
“Barnes, it’s me, Alex,” he took off his helmet, revealing the familiar face Barnes knew.
“Good God, man! You gave me a scare! How ya been, Alex? Haven’t seen ya in a while.”
“I’ve been busy,” Alex replied. “Liberating a once-utopian city from enslavement.”
“Do tell!” Barnes exclaimed, sitting his rump down on the rock. He looked over to Midna. “And a fine hello to you, ma’am. Say, you’re a fine-looking little lady. What say you and I get together later?”
“Perhaps another time,” Midna retorted, taking her spot at Alex’s side.
“Barnes, we have a favor to ask of you,” Alex said.
“After you saved my life all those years ago from that rockslide, I don’t think I can do enough to pay you back!” Barnes chuckled. “Shoot.”
“Well, you see, we’re kind of looking for something.”
“Can you be a little more specific?”
“Sure. It’s a page out of an old book that I’m trying to put back together. I know it’s within these mines, I can feel it. Have you found such a thing in your mining?”
“Well, we did find something strange up that tunnel a few miles,” he pointed to a large opening in the cavern leading north. “Though for some reason we can’t proceed any further. A rockslide collapsed at the end of the tunnel and none of our equipment can dislodge it. You can try your hand at it if you want but you would really just be wasting your time…”
“Can you take me there?” Alex asked.
“I would,” Barnes went on, walrus mustache twitching atop his boundless beard, “but the steam carts were put out of commission when the rocks fell. It also trapped some of our miners behind it, and we can’t get them out. If you want to head up there, I’m afraid you’ll have to walk…”
“That suits me just fine,” Alex replied. “Though you got anything I could use to try to dislodge those rocks?”
“We’ve tried everything,” Barnes said. “We’ve tried pickaxes, drills, all manners of explosives. Not even our cannons can move the rocks. In fact, the cannonballs shatter!”
“God,” Alex said, astounded. “What the hell are those rocks made of, then?”
“Some unknown material,” Barnes noted, “stronger than that runite stuff. We even tried a few runite cannonballs, but they shattered like glass.”
Alex winced. Runite was expensive stuff.
“We’re not sure what caused the cave-in,” Barnes went on, “the area’s been geologically stable for the past eighteen months…why it’s acting up now is anyone’s guess.”
Though Alex had a pretty good idea of what might be causing it. Bet anything it’s de Sade, he thought to himself. He’d do anything to impede my progress. That son of a bitch.
“So are you going to head up there and check it out?” Barnes asked.
“Doesn’t seem like I have much of a choice,” Alex said. “If I help your miners out up there, I might also find what I’m looking for, so everyone wins.”
“Good to know,” Barnes said, shaking Alex’s hand.
As Alex proceeded to the tunnel, Barnes shouted to him one last time.
“I’d be careful if I were you!” he called. “Ever since that last cave-in the whole mine’s been kind of unstable! Don’t set off any huge explosions or stuff like that!”
“I’ll be sure to keep that in mind!” Alex hollered back as he continued up the tunnel and disappeared from view.
Alex turned back to Midna as they kept walking. “Was he hitting on you back there?”
“Oh hush,” Midna snapped back, crossing her arms as she drifted alongside him. “You’ve got six hours to find a book page, not figure out love triangles.”
“Hey, you said it, not me,” he replied as the two kept walking in silence, Alex’s metallic footsteps echoing throughout the cavern on for miles and miles…
“Sir, it seems like your rockslide worked perfectly!”
“Such trivialities,” sighed de Sade, “I honestly thought he would be more of a challenge than this. I’m disappointed.”
De Sade and Carmine stood over a massive ravine that had once been part of the mountainside, now the collapsed region that impeded the dwarven mining ops.
“So what do we do now?” Carmine asked.
“Why bother asking,” de Sade replied, “when you clearly know the answer?”
“Err, we wait out the six hours you designated, sir?”
“Carmine, you disappoint me,” de Sade sighed. “All of this military training and you have naught to show for it?”
“…”
“Of course, Alex will acquire that page, make no mistake about it, but he will not leave these mountains alive.”
“So we track him down and destroy him inside the mines.”
De Sade sighed once more, annoyed with the lieutentant’s naďveté. “Just come with me,” he finally hissed to him. Carmine, being the word warrior he was, followed behind the sorcerer without so much as another aggravating word.
